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"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
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Progress in Health: First Chikungunya Vaccine
Aedes albopictus—or tiger mosquito—can transmit Chikungunya and Dengue.
jijorquera
Nov 10, 20233 min read
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Future (III): Our dreams will finally come home to stay
Out of the unrelenting application of reason, and the acceptance of what we truly are, our dreams will finally come home to stay
jijorquera
Nov 3, 202313 min read
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Future (II): Sustainable Development Goals
U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals ask countries, regardless of their wealth, to promote people's prosperity while protecting the planet
jijorquera
Oct 27, 20236 min read
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Future (I): Be Ready to Respond Well to Changes
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that responds best to change (Charles Darwin)
jijorquera
Oct 20, 20237 min read
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Extreme Economic Inequality (III) is a Threat to Democracy
The top US earners averaged an increase per year close to fifteen times higher than the people at the 90% percentile, already quite an exclusive salary club. In the other extreme of the salary range, U.S. workers who receive the federal minimum wage have seen their remuneration reduced by 33% over 50 years when adjusted for inflation, while their productivity increased by 150%.
jijorquera
Oct 10, 202318 min read
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Extreme Inequality (II). Was taxing the richest what made America great?
According to Thomas Piketty if we want society to be cohesive, then we must prevent economic inequality from becoming extreme.
jijorquera
Sep 29, 202314 min read
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Progress (VII): Extreme Inequality is a Threat to Democracy
One of the reasons for the poor performance of democracies, even those most advanced and consolidated, is extreme inequality.
jijorquera
Sep 22, 202311 min read
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Progress (VI), Hunger, and Poverty
690 million people suffered from hunger in 2019 (8.9% of the world population). This disgrace is expected to reach 840 million in 2030.
jijorquera
Sep 8, 20238 min read
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Progress (V), War, and Violence
Every two or three generations, when the memory dries up and the last witnesses of previous massacres disappear, reason eclipses and other men spread evil again. —Olivier Guez, French journalist. Author of The Disappearance of Josef Mengele
jijorquera
Sep 1, 202312 min read
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Progress (IV), COVID-19, Public Health Systems, and Juan Ponce de Leon
Although for some the COVID-19 pandemic may have represented a surprise, we previously had multiple warnings, including the epidemics leading to SARS, MERS, Ebola virus disease, and the misnamed Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.
jijorquera
Aug 4, 202312 min read
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Progress (III), Pandemics, and COVID-19 Vaccines
The development of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 is an example of human cooperation. We can only define the short-term efficacy of most of the vaccines approved in the European Union or the U.S.A. against COVID-19 as spectacular.
jijorquera
Jul 28, 20238 min read
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Progress (II), Health (I), and Vaccines
The plague, (or diseases in general) is perhaps the horseman of the Apocalypses that we have managed to dismount with greater success
jijorquera
Jul 21, 202313 min read
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The Four Horsemen, the Apocalypse, or Progress (I)?
And again, a new day begins. And when the sun rises, the world will watch in horror run over its fields four horsemen enemies of man.
jijorquera
Jul 14, 20235 min read
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Anthropocene, Eremocene, and Biodiversity loss (VII).
We humans are predators. We target more than a third of the vertebrate species. Pet trading, medicine, and other uses now affect almost as many species as those targeted for food, and we threaten almost 40% of exploited species.
jijorquera
Jul 7, 20238 min read
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Biodiversity loss (VI). We waste too much food
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) we waste up to a third of the food produced. Only in the European Union (EU), with about 450 million inhabitants, eighty-eight million tons of food end up in garbage dumps every year. That is close to 200 kg of food per inhabitant.
jijorquera
Jun 30, 202313 min read
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Biodiversity loss (V). We are devouring the planet.
New Zealand—antipodal of Spain—with 4.5 million people, has fifty million sheep, more than ten sheep for every human. The municipality of Lorca, in Spain, has about 96,000 inhabitants and one million pigs.
jijorquera
Jun 16, 202312 min read
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Lands, Seas, and Biodiversity (IV)
More than 50% of humanity already lives in cities. In China, this figure reached 67% in 2024. This fact, together with the slowing rate of global population increase, could represent an opportunity for the recovery of a part of the planet's surface to a state like its original condition, prior to human transformation of the land.
jijorquera
Jun 9, 202312 min read
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Ecological serial killers and Biodiversity loss (III).
Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Sapiens: A brief History of Mankind, coined the term "ecological serial killer" to describe our image in the eyes of other living beings. Since the departure of our species from Africa, this image has not improved—quite the opposite.
jijorquera
Jun 2, 20238 min read
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Biodiversity loss (II), Homo Sapiens: an invasive species
Each extinct species because of human action, including those that we will never know about, is associated with a cost impossible to calculate. I refer both to the moral damage and the economic cost. Scientists discover around 20,000 new species every year, but they still expect to discover about 85% of the world’s animal species.
jijorquera
May 26, 202312 min read
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Joan Baez, Connie Francis, and Biodiversity Loss (I)
We function as if resources were inexhaustible and there was no impact in dumping waste under the carpet of the surface of the land and sea, into the air, and even into space, which far from becoming the final frontier can become the most recent garbage dump.
jijorquera
May 12, 202311 min read
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