This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I recently came across two shared items from Facebook friends that, since they were in sequence, seemed to be sending a message.
The first concerned a study conducted by Gerald Crabtree, a geneticist at Stanford, which concluded that humankind is basically getting dumber.
He explained that of the roughly 5,000 genes he considered the basis for intelligence, mutations through the years have forced modern humans to be only a portion as bright as their ancestors.
"New developments in genetics, anthropology and neurobiology predict that a very large number of genes underlie our intellectual and emotional abilities, making these abilities genetically surprisingly fragile," he writes in part one of his research. "Analysis of human mutation rates and the number of genes required for human intellectual and emotional fitness indicates that we are almost certainly losing these abilities," he wrote in a second report.
Right below that item on my Facebook page was another shared link from The Economist magazine.
It said that because of a recent massive expansion of coal production, China could have 3.3 billion tons of excess capacity within two years, which is ominous because its domestic consumption of coal is less than 4 billion tons a year and dropping.
That means, said the article, that China soon will have a glut of coal that it will need to dump on the international markets. So instead of importing coal, which China traditionally has done, it is shifting to exporting coal.
Now, consider the recent action by the Utah Legislature that approved obligating $53 million of taxpayer money to provide a loan to rural Utah counties to help pay for a deep water port in California to ship Utah coal to China.
So here we have China experiencing a coal surplus and needing to export its excess product abroad while the Utah Legislature is betting $53 million that there will be a demand in China for Beehive State coal — and a Stanford geneticist reports that we, as a species, are becoming more stupid.
Perhaps some more rapidly than others.
Dangers of technology • It's a good idea to review your emails before hitting the send button and putting what you wrote out in the ether for everyone.
Former Democratic state Sen. Scott Howell — who twice ran against U.S. Sen Orrin Hatch — recently sent an email to residents of soon-to-become Millcreek City, announcing his run for mayor.
The problem is the email contains more editing marks and suggested corrections than the papers I turned into Roy Gibson in my beginning journalism class at the University of Utah.
"Having grown up in Millcreek" is crossed out and replaced with "I grew up in Millcreek."
"I believe Millcreek is a jewel with wonderful potential" is blotted out and substituted with "Millcreek has potential."
The rest of the email has several notations and crossed-out lines, replaced by edited versions.
The email also contains a query, asking if "this paragraph comes across as name-dropping?"
The section in question says "as a teenager and young adult, Scott had personal relationships with prominent Millcreek residents such as Lowell Bennion, O.C. Tanner and Gordon B. Hinckley and was profoundly influenced by their examples in his life."
Tit for tat • Cucina Restaurant, a 20-year-old establishment at 1026 E. 2nd Avenue in Salt Lake City, is boycotting Mississippi, whose Legislature recently passed a law allowing businesses to withhold services from gays and lesbians on religious grounds.
Proprietor Dean Pierose says in a proclamation that no magnolias (Mississippi's state flower) will be planted on Cucina's grounds.
No sweet potatoes (Mississippi's state food) will be served. Anyone caught clogging (Mississippi's stage dance) will be escorted off the premises. No alligator (the state reptile), white tail deer (the state mammal) or largemouth bass (the state fish) shall be used in any Cucina dish.
It's a good thing a similar bill sponsored in Utah last year by Rep. LaVar Christesen, R-Draper, didn't pass. Could you imagine the boycotts by stargazing groups against the Dubhe (the state star), which is on the tip of the Big Dipper? Or boycotts against Jell-O, which the Utah Senate declared the state snack food?
And what about beehives and sugar beets and sea gulls?