Life Spans, Photo Editing, National Debt, & Nobel Prizes

October 8, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Tuesday! Today, we’ll be talking about life expectancy, oil prices, a photo-editing mishap, Macron getting some backlash, voting rules in North Carolina, the national debt, and Nobel Prizes.

Here’s some good news: Doctors have found a new drug combination that stopped lung cancer from advancing for more than 40% longer than the standard treatment. Also, botanists have grown a long-lost tree species from a 1,000-year-old seed found in a cave in the Judean Desert in the 1980s.

“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

The Days Are Long But The Years Are Getting Shorter

(Elderly people by Cheng Xin via Getty Images)

As time goes on, economies grow, tech gets more efficient, and our lives generally continue to improve – right? Well, if your definition of a good life is also a long life, then you’re in for a surprise. According to a new analysis of some of the longest-lived populations in the world (including the U.S., Japan, Australia, France, and Sweden), the trend of life expectancies growing is beginning to slow dramatically, and in the U.S., life expectancies have actually fallen.

According to the paper published in Nature Aging, life expectancy rose by one year every century in the 2,000 years leading up to the 1900s. Since the turn of the 20th century, those gains shot up to an average of three years every decade, but researchers estimate that life expectancy in the longest-living countries has gone up just 6.5 years between 1990 and 2019.

We’ve basically squeezed all the young blood we can from the stone of aging. “In the modern era we have, through public health and medicine, manufactured decades of life that otherwise would not exist,” said the study’s lead author. “These gains must slow down. The longevity game we’re playing today is different to the longevity game we played a century ago when we were saving infants and children and women of child-bearing age and the gains in life expectancy were large. Now the gains are small because we’re saving people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.”

Black Gold Gets Scarcer

As fears of a growing conflict in the Middle East continue to rise, so do oil prices. Israel promised a response to a barrage of Iranian missiles last week, and some analysts are worried that Israel might target its rival’s oil infrastructure, which might prompt Iran to attack refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Tehran might even try to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if attacked, cutting off a critical artery for oil shipments moving through the Persian Gulf.

“This is an extraordinarily precarious global situation,” said a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “The world is probably the most unstable that it’s been since the Cold War. That’s not even mildly an overstatement. It could get worse in a hurry. That would certainly have a big impact on the global economy.”

What would a global oil shock actually mean? Analysis from Oxford Economics indicates it would cause the global economy to shrink by at least 0.4%, driving up prices and inflation. Debt crises in developing countries could also worsen, we could see another energy crisis in Europe, and there may be massive issues for the Chinese economy, already in a fragile state thanks to its real estate crisis. The one country outside Middle Eastern petrostates that might benefit from a spike in oil exports is the U.S., which became the world’s biggest oil producer in 2018.

An Electronic Wardrobe Change

(Japan’s Cabinet by Toru Hanai via Getty Images)

We’ve got a scandal of massive proportions for you. Just kidding – today, our story coming from Japan is a Photoshop scandal. On Monday, Japan’s new government was forced to admit it had doctored some official photographs after social media sleuths noticed some inconsistencies in a photo of the incoming Cabinet.
Last week, new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s office published photos of the new Cabinet, featuring some extremely disheveled looks from some ministers. Some of the politicians’ white dress shirts were – gasp – sticking out from under their suits. In a later version of the photo, those wardrobe malfunctions were edited out.
“Commemorative photos such as when Cabinets are formed or other group photos taken during official events at the Prime Minister’s Office will remain as memorabilias for the participants for a very long time,” said government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi. “And therefore my understanding is that slight edits have been conducted in the past, not just for this photo you inquired about.” For what it’s worth, they still look pretty miserable even in the edited version.

Saying “Non Merci” To Potential War Crimes

Over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that countries should stop giving Israel weapons that will eventually be used in the IDF’s offensive in Gaza. Just a day later, he was dragged over the coals for it – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an entire video statement raging at the French President, and U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey told reporters that he disagreed with Macron’s statement yesterday.
Macron’s not alone in his opinions – some parts of the international community have begun backing away from Israel. The U.K. itself has suspended some arms shipments after concluding that the weapons might be used in violation of international humanitarian law, a few U.S. lawmakers are calling for a full arms embargo on Israel, and U.N. experts have indicated that countries sending weapons to Israel could risk “complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide.”

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North Carolina Needs Those Votes

With Hurricane Milton on the horizon and Hurricane Helene having just rocked states on the East Coast, voting in the upcoming election is likely to be a bit of an issue. Yesterday, North Carolina’s election boards unanimously voted to approve changes to the voting rules in 13 western counties hit hardest by Helene.
8% of the state’s voters are located in counties where roads are closed, internet and cell service have been knocked out, and buildings have been destroyed. The new rules will allow county elections boards to vote to modify early voting days, hours, and sites, and open a polling place in another county if needed.

Counting Up Ballots & Racking Up Debt

A new analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget suggests that whether you vote for Vice President Harris or former President Trump, the national debt is going to take a hit. Total federal debt held by the public now tops $28 trillion, but a Harris presidency could increase the national debt over 10 years by $3.5 trillion.
“Wow! That’s a lot!”, you might be thinking – well, according to CRFB, former President Trump’s ideas could add $7.5 trillion onto the debt…and possibly as much as $15.2 trillion. Harris says her plans would be paid by higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, while Trump assures that we won’t notice the national debt because the country will be thriving so much.

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Tiny Molecules, Big Prizes

It’s pumpkin spice latte season, but it’s also Nobel Prize season. The winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine were announced on Monday. Drumroll, please. Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were the recipients of the medicine Nobel for their discovery of microRNA, tiny single-stranded RNA molecules that operate like mini on-off switches for various functions inside cells.
Yesterday’s announcement lauded the scientists’ “groundbreaking discovery” that “revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans” and added an “entirely new dimension to gene regulation.”
“If we take the example of cancer, we’ll have a particular gene working overtime, it might be mutated and working in overdrive,” said one expert in molecular oncology at Imperial College London. With more research, she said, we might be able to use the discovery to turn off those overheating genes, effectively ending cancer. Maybe. One day.

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