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Creepy Currency?

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Is crytpocurrency the death of nationalized money?

Things change. Buildings, held revered for reasons that actually defy logic when seriously contemplated, become entrenched. Tradition, history, and because mom shopped there, are all reasons touted. Things once valued highly, such as salt (yes, that is a link to the Encyclopedia of Money), become boring condiments or relegated to the dustbin of history. Essentially, what holds value now may not hold value in the future. And, as history has taught us with painful lesson after painful lesson, not everyone welcomes change. Such is the case now with nationalized money. Or, as you might know it, the dollar, the Deutschmark, the Euro, the Pound, the Loonie, the Rand, the Dinar, the Rial, the Yen, the Gourde, and so on. There are a lot of names for that stuff you keep in your wallet or under your mattress.

There is now this thing called “Cryptocurrency” and it is scaring the hell out of millions of people. Especially those with their livelihoods dependent on the stable trade of currencies between countries. But, to figure out what’s coming we first must know what’s here. And, as head slappingly obvious as it might seem to you now, you will find you probably don’t know what money is.

Let’s start simple; “Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a particular country or socio-economic context.”

In other words, if where you’re at says this or that is money, it’s money. It has value and may be used instead of barter. You need not trade a chicken for a duck. You can just hand them whatever accepted representation is in your possession and say “Thanks for the duck.” It makes transactions easier.

In America we use dollars.

So how did we get here? Let’s head on over to the International Monetary Fund for a fun history.

No, really, it’s kind of fun. And silly if taken out of context.

… (M)oney is something that holds its value over time, can be easily translated into prices, and is widely accepted. Many different things have been used as money over the years—among them, cowry shells, barley, peppercorns, gold, and silver.

At first, the value of money was anchored by its alternative uses, and the fact that there were replacement costs. For example, you could eat barley or use peppercorns to flavor food. The value you place on such consumption provides a floor for the value. Anyone could grow more, but it does take time, so if the barley is eaten the supply of money declines. On the other hand, many people may want strawberries and be happy to trade for them, but they make poor money because they are perishable. They are difficult to save for use next month, let alone next year, and almost impossible to use in trade with people far away. There is also the problem of divisibility—not everything of value is easily divided, and standardizing each unit is also tricky; for example, the value of a basket of strawberries measured against different items is not easy to establish and keep constant. Not only do strawberries make for bad money, most things do.

But precious metals seemed to serve all three needs: a stable unit of account, a durable store of value, and a convenient medium of exchange. They are hard to obtain. There is a finite supply of them in the world. They stand up to time well. They are easily divisible into standardized coins and do not lose value when made into smaller units. In short, their durability, limited supply, high replacement cost, and portability made precious metals more attractive as money than other goods.

Until relatively recently, gold and silver were the main currency people used. Gold and silver are heavy, though, and over time, instead of carrying the actual metal around and exchanging it for goods, people found it more convenient to deposit precious metals at banks and buy and sell using a note that claimed ownership of the gold or silver deposits. Anyone who wanted to could go to the bank and get the precious metal that backs the note. Eventually, the paper claim on the precious metal was delinked from the metal. When that link was broken, fiat money was born. Fiat money is materially worthless, but has value simply because a nation collectively agrees to ascribe a value to it. In short, money works because people believe that it will. As the means of exchange evolved, so did its source—from individuals in barter, to some sort of collective acceptance when money was barley or shells, to governments in more recent times.

Even though using standardized coins or paper bills made it easier to determine prices of goods and services, the amount of money in the system also played an important role in setting prices. For example, a wheat farmer would have at least two reasons for holding money: to use in transactions (cash in advance) and as a buffer against future needs (precautionary saving). Suppose winter is coming and the farmer wants to add to his store of money in anticipation of future expenses. If the farmer has a hard time finding people with money who want to buy wheat, he may have to accept fewer coins or bills in exchange for the grain. The result is that the price of wheat goes down because the supply of money is too tight. One reason might be that there just isn’t enough gold to mint new money. When prices as a whole go down, it is called deflation. On the other hand, if there is more money in circulation but the same level of demand for goods, the value of the money will drop. This is inflation—when it takes more money to get the same amount of goods and services (see “What Is Inflation?” in the March 2010 issue of F&D). Keeping the demand for and supply of money balanced can be tricky.

So what changed? Quite a lot actually. You see money has become a bit of an abstract concept. Its value is based more on perception than reality. Were the world held to a common standard, such as gold, then the amount of that standard that you held, or had immediate access to, would be your worth. That doesn’t really apply to individuals as much as countries, or accepted institutions issuing money, but the core concept is the same.

Of course, you can see the problem. All you have to do to render that type of money worthless, or seriously devallue it, is to find more of whatever the standard is. It’s called “flooding the market” and it can lead to all sorts of heinous consequences. Mostly devaluing the money people hold until it’s worthless.

The inverse is also true. A finite amount of the standard can lead a government to print and distribute more currency in an attempt to bolster the economy, think 1930’s Germany or 1970’s Mexico, and, instead, lead to situations where wheelbarrows full of local currency would be needed for a loaf of bread.

So, stability becomes an issue that needs to be dealt with. And that, as noted above in the fun article from the International Monetary Fund (you did read it, didn’t you?) is how we got to fiat money.

To recap; Fiat money is materially worthless, but has value simply because a nation collectively agrees to ascribe a value to it. In short, money works because people believe that it will.

Gold, silver, and other precious metals, still provide the basis for all currencies, and their worth still fluctuates. But, by using fiat money, those fluctuations, in and of themselves, can’t wipe out a country or its economy.

Okay, so here we are. Now, for the record, you’re reading this on a digital device. Odds are you use digital money more than you think. Whether a credit card, a PayPal link, an app from your bank, or something else, you really don’t need any hard currencies in your wallet. Hell, you really don’t need a wallet at all if you live somewhere that digital identification is accepted (not anywhere yet, so relax).

That leads us to the development of cryptocurrencies. And this is where things get weird.

Brad Mills, senior tech engineer at Block Tech, took some time a couple of years ago to do a detailed breakdown of the whole affair. Please click his name if you want the deep dive. For now I’m just going to cover the gloss.

Few people know, but cryptocurrencies emerged as a side product of another invention. Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown inventor of Bitcoin, the first and still most important cryptocurrency, never intended to invent a currency.

In his announcement of Bitcoin in late 2008, Satoshi said he developed “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.“

His goal was to invent something; many people failed to create before digital cash.

Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It’s completely decentralized with no server or central authority.  – Satoshi Nakamoto, 09 January 2009, announcing Bitcoin on SourceForge.

The single most important part of Satoshi‘s invention was that he found a way to build a decentralized digital cash system. In the nineties, there have been many attempts to create digital money, but they all failed.

… after more than a decade of failed Trusted Third Party based systems (Digicash, etc), they see it as a lost cause. I hope they can make the distinction, that this is the first time I know of that we’re trying a non-trust based system. – Satoshi Nakamoto in an E-Mail to Dustin Trammell

After seeing all the centralized attempts fail, Satoshi tried to build a digital cash system without a central entity. Like a Peer-to-Peer network for file sharing.

This decision became the birth of cryptocurrency. They are the missing piece Satoshi found to realize digital cash. The reason why is a bit technical and complex, but if you get it, you‘ll know more about cryptocurrencies than most people do. So, let‘s try to make it as easy as possible:

To realize digital cash you need a payment network with accounts, balances, and transaction. That‘s easy to understand. One major problem every payment network has to solve is to prevent the so-called double spending: to prevent that one entity spends the same amount twice. Usually, this is done by a central server who keeps record about the balances.

In a decentralized network, you don‘t have this server. So you need every single entity of the network to do this job. Every peer in the network needs to have a list with all transactions to check if future transactions are valid or an attempt to double spend.

But how can these entities keep a consensus about this records?

If the peers of the network disagree about only one single, minor balance, everything is broken. They need an absolute consensus. Usually, you take, again, a central authority to declare the correct state of balances. But how can you achieve consensus without a central authority?

Nobody did know until Satoshi emerged out of nowhere. In fact, nobody believed it was even possible.

Satoshi proved it was. His major innovation was to achieve consensus without a central authority. Cryptocurrencies are a part of this solution – the part that made the solution thrilling, fascinating and helped it to roll over the world.

What are cryptocurrencies really?

If you take away all the noise around cryptocurrencies and reduce it to a simple definition, you find it to be just limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions. This may seem ordinary, but, believe it or not: this is exactly how you can define a currency.

Take the money on your bank account: What is it more than entries in a database that can only be changed under specific conditions? You can even take physical coins and notes: What are they else than limited entries in a public physical database that can only be changed if you match the condition than you physically own the coins and notes? Money is all about a verified entry in some kind of database of accounts, balances, and transactions.

How miners create coins and confirm transactions

Let‘s have a look at the mechanism ruling the databases of cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency like Bitcoin consists of a network of peers. Every peer has a record of the complete history of all transactions and thus of the balance of every account.

A transaction is a file that says, “Bob gives X Bitcoin to Alice“ and is signed by Bob‘s private key. It‘s basic public key cryptography, nothing special at all. After signed, a transaction is broadcasted in the network, sent from one peer to every other peer. This is basic p2p-technology. Nothing special at all, again.

What is Blockchain Technology? A step-by-step guide than anyone can understand

The transaction is known almost immediately by the whole network. But only after a specific amount of time it gets confirmed.

Confirmation is a critical concept in cryptocurrencies. You could say that cryptocurrencies are all about confirmation.

As long as a transaction is unconfirmed, it is pending and can be forged. When a transaction is confirmed, it is set in stone. It is no longer forgeable, it can‘t be reversed, it is part of an immutable record of historical transactions: of the so-called blockchain.

Only miners can confirm transactions. This is their job in a cryptocurrency-network. They take transactions, stamp them as legit and spread them in the network. After a transaction is confirmed by a miner, every node has to add it to its database. It has become part of the blockchain.

I’m going to skip over the details of how it all works and, instead, share the simple realities of cryptocurrencies. These are the parts that effect, and scare, the nice people who control economies.

1.) Irreversible: After confirmation, a transaction can‘t be reversed. By nobody. And nobody means nobody. Not you, not your bank, not the president of the United States, not Satoshi, not your miner. Nobody. If you send money, you send it. Period. No one can help you, if you sent your funds to a scammer or if a hacker stole them from your computer. There is no safety net.

2.) Pseudonymous: Neither transactions nor accounts are connected to real-world identities. You receive Bitcoins on so-called addresses, which are randomly seeming chains of around 30 characters. While it is usually possible to analyze the transaction flow, it is not necessarily possible to connect the real world identity of users with those addresses.

3.) Fast and global: Transaction are propagated nearly instantly in the network and are confirmed in a couple of minutes. Since they happen in a global network of computers they are completely indifferent of your physical location. It doesn‘t matter if I send Bitcoin to my neighbour or to someone on the other side of the world.

4.) Secure: Cryptocurrency funds are locked in a public key cryptography system. Only the owner of the private key can send cryptocurrency. Strong cryptography and the magic of big numbers makes it impossible to break this scheme. A Bitcoin address is more secure than Fort Knox.

5.) Permissionless: You don‘t have to ask anybody to use cryptocurrency. It‘s just a software that everybody can download for free. After you installed it, you can receive and send Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. No one can prevent you. There is no gatekeeper.

This gets more in depth but I’ll give you the basics. When you enter money into the system it doesn’t matter it’s original currency. When you do work and are granted a coin for your efforts (called mining), your money is yours. No matter what though, the transaction can’t be traced.

That’s as of today.

If quantum computing becomes real then all bets are off.

But that’s a worry for later.

Right now cryptocurrencies are beginning to be accepted as traditional currencies at banks, places of commerce, and online for transactions. There are many scams related to it, just as there are with gift cards, but that’s not a good reason for people to avoid them. The per-coin value will stabilize as time goes on. Right now it’s inflated for the same basic reason that Ferraris cost more than Kias. There aren’t enough to meet the total demand. And, for now – just like with Ferraris, that will remain the status quo until there are enough users to justify the restructuring.

Like any good frontier mining cryptocurrencies requires a reasonable investment in software (under $500 USD), and a hell of a lot of work. But it is there, it’s not going anywhere, and you may as well get used to it.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Your Year in Preview

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The future is now.
Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, super hero movies were rife with cliches. In the 80’s, even though both Superman and Batman had darker vibes, the growth was more in line with which color palette the director used as opposed to what story they could tell. In the 90’s movies like Darkman (1990), The Crow (1994), Spawn (1997), and Blade (1998), just to name a few, changed the landscape. Movies could be edgy, feature African-Americans as lead characters, have plots that required brain cells to follow, and still make money. Naturally major studios, primarily run by middle aged white men, reacted as expected. They co-opted the obvious stuff (violence, booze, sexual innuendo), watered them down, and made very white movies like Iron Man and Man of Steel, among many others. Not bad movies, mind you. They were wildly popular and well made to boot. But the diverse casts, the real world ramifications, and so on, were all gone. The old-school super hero narrative took their place and the world settled in for more of the same old same old.

Or so the studios seemed to hope.

But people, those creatures who pay for the tickets and the popcorn and the pops and the bad hot dogs and the rest, began to complain. They wanted the big budget coo-coo coolness applied to movies that encompassed all that nifty, and diverse, stuff they’d seen in the 90’s.

As movies like Suicide Squad, Deadpool, and Wonder Woman got made, and fans clamored to them, the studios came to a fascinating realization. They didn’t have to make one type of film or the other. They could make very dark films like Logan and, the critically acclaimed, Attack the Block, and still make popcorn monsters like The Avengers while making goo-gobs (not a mathematical term invented by Stephen Hawkings) of money.

It’s become a win/win situation for fans.

Well, except for Ghost in the Shell. That was a last gasp attempt at whitewashing a culture, story, and characters. At least here, at World News Center, we are praying it was a last gasp. Otherwise we envision a world where something like Malcolm X-Man, starring Jim Carrey, could see the light of day.

Your thoughts and prayers, along with your unicorns and rainbows, should go here to prevent that from happening.

Anyway, the nice people over at Collider – actually for all we know they could be members of a Satanic cult which survives by sacrificing kittens on 4chan, but they seem nice – have a list of the next decade or so’s worth of upcoming superhero related films. That is because they have given up on ever seeing daylight again.

Goodbye kitties.

Since you may not have that luxury, I’ll just focus on the next twelve months of their amazing research.

Black Panther

Release Date : February 16, 2018

Director : Ryan Coogler

Cast : Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Sterling K. Brown, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, Letitia Wright, and John Kani.

What We Know So Far : The comics character made quite the impression with his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War , and he gets his own feature film not long after. 42  star Chadwick Boseman is filling the role of the powerful native of Wakanda, an African nation that is isolated from the rest of the world.  Marvel says the crux of the film will be how this isolationist nation meets the world, so expect some friction. Selma  director Ava DuVernay came close to signing on, but ultimately opted not to helm the film over concerns her artistic voice would be lost in the final product. Subsequently, Marvel hired Joe Robert Cole—who came up through the Marvel Studios writing program—to pen the script, and finally nabbed Creed and Fruitvale Station  helmer Ryan Coogler to fill the director’s chair and co-write. He’s forging ahead with quite possibly the most exciting MCU film to date, and he announced his intention to fill out the cast with 90% African and African-American actors, establishing a fantastic ensemble with folks like Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Danai Gurira as Oyoke, and his Creed  and Fruitvale star Michael B. Jordan as villain Erik Killmonger.

The story of Black Panther  will find T’Challa returning to his technologically advanced homeland of Wakanda after the events of Civil War , only to find himself drawn into a dangerous conflict with an old enemy.

Avengers: Infinity War

Release Date : May 4, 2018

Directors : Joe and Anthony Russo

Cast : Everybody

What We Know So Far : Marvel is finally tackling the Infinity War storyline, and it’ll take two films to tell it. The main antagonist will be Thanos (played by Josh Brolin), although he’ll be joined by his Black Order aka the “Children of Thanos” as subvillains the Avengers heroes will have to defeat first. Indeed, the film stars nearly every single character who’s appeared in the MCU before in what’s said to be a “culmination event.” Captain America: The Winter Soldier  and Captain America: Civil War  directors Joe and Anthony Russo direct both Infinity War  and its untitled sequel, which are being shot back-to-back. Moreover, Infinity War  was shot entirely using IMAX’s brand new digital cameras. No pressure.

Deadpool 2

Release Date : May 18, 2018

Director : David Leitch

Cast : Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Zazie Beets, T.J. Miller

What We Know So Far : While Deadpool  director Tim Miller was originally supposed to return to helm Deadpool 2, he left the sequel in Fall 2016 over creative differences. Reynolds and 20th Century Fox subsequently set John Wick and Atomic Blonde  director David Leitch to take over, but then came the long process of casting two major new roles. Domino, the female lead, went to Atlanta breakout Zazie Beets, while the casting of Cable proved as lengthy as it was complex. Names like Michael Shannon and David Harbour surfaced, and Brad Pitt at one point considered the role, but ultimately Josh Brolin is the one who signed on to play Deadpool’s favorite frenemy.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Release Date : July 6, 2018

Director : Peyton Reed

Cast : Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lily, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Walton Goggins, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Randall Park, Judy Greer and Hannah John-Kamen

What We Know So Far : Evangeline Lily‘s Wasp will be the co-star of this film and not just the “female lead”, making this Marvel Studios’ first release in which the heroine is in the title. Plot-wise we don’t know much, but Michelle Pfeiffer is playing Janet Van Dyne, so we presume the story will at least partially revolve around heading to the Quantum Realm to rescue her. Meanwhile Walton Goggins plays the villainous Sonny Burch.

Venom

Release Date:  October 5, 2018

Director : Ruben Fleischer

Cast:  Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed, Michelle Williams, and Jenny Slate

What We Know So Far:  This Sony Pictures spinoff is intended to kick off a new loosely-connected universe of Marvel Comics adaptations, but Venom  will not  take place in the same universe as the Marvel Studios/Sony co-production Spider-Man: Homecoming . This is planned as an R-rated adaptation of the symbiote storyline, described as something of a twist on the horror genre, and Venom will be portrayed as an anti-hero with Carnage serving as the villain. The movie takes place in San Francisco and is primarily based on two comics arcs: Planet of the Symbiotes and Lethal Protector .

Aquaman

Release Date : December 21, 2018

Director : James Wan

Cast : Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, and Willem Dafoe

What We Know So Far : Momoa made his first appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and will be part of the Justice League ensemble. Warner Bros. has enlisted Furious 7  and The Conjuring  helmer James Wan to direct, and after attempting to fast-track this thing to production with multiple screenwriters writing separate drafts, Wan and DC Films head Geoff Johns convened, nailed down the story, and set Gangster Squad  scribe Will Beall to pen the script. The ensemble cast includes Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna and Patrick Wilson as the film’s antagonist, Aquaman’s half-brother Orm.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Release Date : November 2, 2018

Director : Simon Kinberg

Cast : Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, and Evan Peters

What We Know So Far : The sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse has been firmed up as Dark Phoenix , which will tackle the beloved Jean Grey story arc from the comics that was first broached (and botched) in X-Men: The Last Stand . X-Men writer/producer Simon Kinberg has penned the script and is making his directorial debut on the project, which also stars Jessica Chastain as maybe  the villain Lilandra and is bringing back pretty much the entire main X-Men  cast.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Release Date : December 14, 2018

Directors:  Bob Perschietti, Peter Ramsey

Cast : Shameik Moore and Liev Schrieber

What We Know So Far : Sony originated this animated Spider-Man  movie with an idea by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, with Lord penning the script solo while the duo prepped their untitled Han Solo  spinoff. This animated feature will kick off a new Spider-Man  franchise different from the live-action one, but the kicker is that the Spider-Man of this movie is the black Miles Morales, not Peter Parker. Which means we’ll get our first non-white Spider-Man in 2018. Dope  standout Shameik Moorehas been set to voice Spidey, while Liev Schreiber is playing the film’s villain—although character details are under wraps. Schreiber, however, has teased that the film has a throwback tone.

The story finds Morales slipping into an alternate dimension populated by a variety of different Spider-Men—which is how Peter Parker comes into play.

Hellboy

Release Date : January 11, 2019

Director : Neil Marshall

Cast : David Harbour, Ian McShane, Milla Jovovich, Daniel Dae Kim, Sasha Lane

What We Know So Far : Hellboy  creator Mike Mignola came up with the story for this new reboot as opposed to moving forward with a third film in Guillermo del Toro‘s established franchise, and Stranger Things  standout David Harbour fills the role of the titular character for director Neil Marshall, who helmed The Descent  and a couple standout Game of Thrones  episodes. The film is loosely based the Rise of the Blood Queen  arc with Milla Jovovich filling that villainous role, while Ian McShane plays Trevor Bruttenholm and Daniel Dae Kim fills the part of Ben Daimio. Oh, and this is 100% Rated R.

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A couple of fun notes. Wonder Woman and Spiderman: Homecoming set records for an origin film and reboot, respectively, with films that avoided most of your favorite tropes and involved diverse casts without focusing on them (i.e., making them tokens). Black Panther, mentioned above, is set to blow both of them away on its opening weekend. Not combined, mind you, but we’re still talking nutty money here.

More interestingly, The Spider-Verse film, noted above, will feature a bi-racial, possibly bisexual, lead character in a cartoon aimed at younger audiences. And no one seems to be batting an eye. How much of that they will deal with in the film remains to be seen, but fans of Miles Morales, the new Spiderman, are aware of those details and will be looking for them.

Hopefully, please God, Hollywood will finally realize the future is here. The U.S. population will be fewer than 50% white people by 2050 (the same year that all chocolate will be gone from the face of the Earth if things don’t change – but that’s another story), and white people are already less than 25% of the world’s population. If you’re not marketing to the other 75% you’re an idiot.

And the white, middle aged, men who run Hollywood may be many things, some of them despicable, but they are not stupid.

It is very odd the places we find hope, but we do manage to find it.

Make sure to watch the video below for some more.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Stay up to date with his podcasts here and here.
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Planting Seeds of Hope & Despair

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Humans, they’re nutritious and delicious.

We often think of ourselves, humans I mean, as top of the food chain, kings of the world. And, in some respects, that fiction can be justified. In others it cannot. I have written before how we’re not even the only creatures evolving into sentience on this planet. But we must remember that we are fragile creatures. Evolution has made us dependent on many variables. The temperature of the world affects us directly, we rely on everything around us for food and shelter, we contribute very little – ecologically speaking – to the benefit of the world, and we could easily be eliminated from the face of the Earth with a single catastrophe. So, there’s your feel good thoughts for the moment. But we humans are also resourceful creatures. We look for new ways to protect ourselves and advance our species. We are willing to take risks other species can’t envision. And, sometimes, we create amazing things. Other times … not so much.

We’ll start with something harmless, and beneficial, so you’re not stunned into helplessness and drooling on your cornflakes.

Scientists at MIT have created glowing trees. The Space Academy has the story.

Roads of the future could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to a breakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts injected specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to give off a dim light for nearly four hours. This could solve lots of problems.

The chemical involved, which produced enough light to read a book by, is the same as is used by fireflies to create their characteristic shine. To create their glowing plants, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) turned to an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase acts on a molecule called luciferin, causing it to emit light.

Another molecule called Co-enzyme A helps the process along by removing a reaction byproduct that can inhibit luciferase activity. The MIT team packaged each of these components into a different type of nanoparticle carrier.

The nanoparticles help them to get to the right part of the plant and also prevent them from building to concentrations that could be toxic to the plants. The result was a watercress plant that functioned like a desk lamp.

Researchers believe with further tweaking, the technology could also be used to provide lights bright enough to illuminate a workspace or even an entire street, as well as low-intensity indoor lighting.

Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study, said: ‘The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp — a lamp that you don’t have to plug in. The light is ultimately powered by the energy metabolism of the plant itself. Our work very seriously opens up the doorway to streetlamps that are nothing but treated trees, and to indirect lighting around homes.’

Bioluminescence has many possible uses. Organic lighting could easily travel in space ships providing a source of oxygen as well as lighting. It could provide rural roads a cheap, and safe, source of illumination so drivers would not need to use their brights and possibly, albeit temporarily, blind oncoming cars.

So that’s nice.

Speaking of oxygen, as I was a moment ago, it’s one of the things that climate change is threatening. While a remote threat at the moment an increase in plants’ CO2 levels could spell doom for those of us who don’t breathe CO2. Combined with continued deforestation programs (that means cutting down trees and replacing them with asphalt, etc.) there could come a tipping point where we might not be able to breathe the air. And that’s a serious setback if you have plans on living.

Tanya Lewis, over at Live Science, says that those wacky scientist folks have come up with a way to turn CO2 into good old oxygen without needing plants.

Even though scientists think plants produced most of the oxygen present on Earth, they suspected some oxygen may have existed before photosynthetic organisms arose, said Cheuk-Yiu Ng, a physical chemist at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of the study published today (Oct. 2) in the journal Science.

But, it was thought that the planet’s oxygen (O2) formed from two oxygen atoms colliding and combining on some surface, not because the oxygen molecules split from carbon dioxide (CO2), Ng said.

When light breaks apart CO2, the molecule normally splits into carbon monoxide (CO) and an oxygen atom (O). One theory suggested carbon dioxide could potentially be stripped into molecular oxygen (O2) and carbon (C) instead, but “nobody had ever detected” such a process, Ng told Live Science.

Ng and his colleagues built a one-of-a-kind instrument to split up carbon dioxide, using ultraviolet light in a vacuum. The device consists of two lasers — one to split the CO2, and one to detect the fragments produced.

“This machine is unique in the world,” Ng said.

When the researchers shone the first laser on the carbon dioxide, the second laser detected O2 molecules and carbon atoms, suggesting a small amount of carbon dioxide (about 5 percent) was turned into oxygen. Though small, that’s enough to show that it’s possible to produce oxygen from CO2 by a nonbiological process, Ng said.

The findings reveal a possible way oxygen entered the atmosphere of Earth and other planets, the researchers said. This has implications on the search for extraterrestrial life, suggesting that merely detecting oxygen in the atmosphere of another planet is not enough to signify the presence of life, Ng said.

Finally, the researchers hinted that it may be possible to use this technique to make oxygen in space or on other planets. But first, more studies are needed to verify the fundamentals of how this reaction occurs, the scientists said.

One reason the experiment hadn’t been done before is because of the difficulty of creating intense vacuum ultraviolet light, Ng said. One way is to use a particle accelerator called a synchrotron, but the laser in Ng’s lab is 10,000 to 1 million times brighter than those produced by existing synchrotrons, he said.

While nowhere near being practical at the moment, a five percent return is technically useless, it’s an amazing step in the right direction. Now, while scientists look at tech like this as a great way to terraform a planet (like Venus), it could also be a great way to save ours. If they manage to shrink the size of the laser unit, an engineering issue only at this point, this tech could also make wonderful re-breathing suits for divers, astronauts, and anyone who works near hazardous waste. We’re all hoping that last description doesn’t end up applying to our whole world.

All of the threats I’ve listed seem remote and, possibly, hyperbolic, so let’s take a look at one real world consequence of human actions.

The death of chocolate.

CBS (Denver) spoke to the research team that assembled the data and came away scared.

According to a report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the changing temperatures around the world will make growing cacao plants nearly impossible within the next 30 years.

“More than 90 per cent of the global cocoa crop is produced by smallholders on subsistence farms with unimproved planting material,” British researcher Doug Hawkins told the Daily Mail.

The chocolate-producing plants only grow in specific locations that are within 20 degrees to the north or south of the equator. The plants thrive in the rainforest because of its stable temperatures with high humidity, heavy rain, rich soil, and protection from wind. NOAA claims that the effects of climate change will gradually push the perfect climate for growing cacao into higher and less suitable areas.

Researchers add that over 89 percent of the current growing areas for chocolate will not be suitable for the crops by 2050 because of the lessening humidity around the equator. In an attempt to save chocolate, scientists at the University of California are teaming with candy industry giant Mars to change the genes of the plant.

Using the gene-editing machine CRISPR, the team hopes to make cacao plants more resilient to the changing weather conditions around the world.

“We’re trying to go all in here,” Mars’ chief sustainability officer Barry Parkin told Business Insider. “There are obviously commitments the world is leaning into but, frankly, we don’t think we’re getting there fast enough collectively.”

Okay, maybe you can live without chocolate. I know many who would disagree with you, but that’s not really the point. If chocolate dies then a big chunk of the earth’s ecosystem, i.e., the rain forests, will either be dead or dying. Rain forests, which look really cool on TV, also provide a large portion of our planet’s oxygen.

That pesky stuff that’s been permeating this whole thread.

We need it, in case you missed the memo.

But, okay, worst case scenario, you’re dead. Now what?

Not to worry fragile sapien, science has that covered.

Kind of.

Janey Tracey, at Outer Places, reports that there may now be a way to bring people back from the dead.

Could we regenerate brains in clinically dead patients? A health watchdog organization has approved a new trial that will attempt to revive technically dead humans using their own stem cells.

The trial will be run by biotech company Bioquark, which is primarily focused on developing “combinatorial biologics” that get to the heart of disease reversal rather than just treating the symptoms. They believe that stem cells can be used as a kind of “reset button” for the body, erasing cell damage and stimulating tissue regeneration. They claim that their research could potentially lead to “complex tissue and organ regeneration, disease reversion, and even biological age reversal.”

In this study, twenty patients who are declared braindead (which is considered clinical death, so long as the patient is only kept alive through life support), will be subjected to a series of treatments, including the injection of brain stem cells and peptides into the brain. The researchers hypothesize that the stem cells will take their cue from surrounding cells and differentiate into fully functional brain cells, a process that has been seen in other animals, such as salamanders that regrow limbs.

“This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” Dr Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark, told The Telegraph. “To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.

We hope to see results within the first two to three months.”

The first stage, since it has such a small and non-random sample size, will just be a proof-of-concept. The cocktail of stem cells and peptides will be administered bi-weekly over the course of six weeks.

Obviously this research is still so new no one knows what will come of it. When you do a deep dive into the commentaries around various science sites you come away with the basic notion that any such person brought back will be nothing more than a vegetable.

Granted, an oxygen breathing, CO2 emitting, vegetable (the opposite of the kind of vegetable the planet needs), but a vegetable nonetheless.

More likely they won’t really accomplish their goal, at least not in this round, but the knowledge they discover could benefit humanity in ways we can barely imagine. For example, if they discover that our neuro-pathways are recoverable then that’s the first step to loading a human brain into a cybernetic being. If they discover they’re not, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to make that happen, they could still find sections of the brain which can be recovered leading to cures for diseases in the living.

There is a lot which can be gained from this research. But, just to be clear, you need to keep dying off your To-Do list for a while longer before you can take advantage of it.

Of course, there’s one fatal flaw in your plan. If the oxygen levels dip enough to kill all human life, and a whole lot more, then the human doctors you need to bring you back will be dead too.

So that sucks.


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