We know today that smoking tobacco leads to serious health effects. It is the the greatest cause of preventable death globally, and killed at least a hundred million deaths in the 20th century. Current smokers are estimated to die an average of 10 years earlier than non-smokers. Tobacco contains 70 known carcinogens, plus nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive drug. As early as the 1700, it was generally known that tobacco caused cancer. But tobacco companies succeeded in selling their product to the public. I heard that China still smokes a lot, so I asked Google AI: Despite a slight decline in the percentage of individual smokers, overall cigarette consumption in China has surged by 39% over the past two decades . The country now accounts for nearly half of the world's total cigarette consumption , selling approximately 2.4 trillion cigarettes annually. [ 1 , 2 ] The rising trend in cigarette sales and consumption is driven by a combination of institutional, economi...

On Sunday, I indicated that my life had three 27-year periods after the age of 5, and provided details of the first trio, but only got through high school.  Today, I will complete this initial educational cycle with Stanford University, an important learning experience in the Hawaiian sugar industry, then graduate school. So in 1958 I left Hawaii for the first time. My brother by then was working at the Naval Civil Engineering Center in Port Hueneme, California.  I stayed with his family that summer, for he secured for me a summer job at this center. Stanford was a challenge, for I was below average, again, in all facets of life, sociologically, economically and intellectually. There were no Black students, Hispanics were not yet even identified and I was the only student of Japanese ethnicity. Actually, there was one Black in 1891, the year the school opened, Ernest Houston Johnson.  He graduated in 1895 in economics, but sadly died of tuberculosis in 1898 at the age of ...