SEA ASPARAGUS and DEATH

 First of all, there is no connection between Sea Asparagus and Death.  These are two different subjects.  The first has to do with an alert about one of my postings that failed to be published, but is now available. 

Secondly, maybe President Donald Trump's various threats are working.  From the New York Times this morning:

Since taking office, Trump has told several nations he would tax imports from their countries if they didn’t do what he wants. He said he would put a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on products from China unless those countries stopped flows of drugs and migrants into the United States.

He has also said he would put tariffs on Russia for waging war in Ukraine and on Denmark if it refused to cede the territory of Greenland. Colombia’s quick capitulation (about accepting back illegal migrants) this weekend may embolden Trump, raising questions for the rest of the world about how far he will take the strategy.

Oh, one more victory for Trump:

The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” (which is TRUE!) launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”

For some reason, this Google blog site, Blogger.com,  refused to publish my Sea Asparagus posting on January 19.  I appealed, they re-looked at the presentation, and agreed to approve it.  But it took a whole week.  First time in my 15 years with this blog site that anything I submitted was not initially published.  So if you wondered why you saw nothing 9 days ago on that Sunday, this is why.  So click on Sea Asparagus if you want to read it.  I really enjoyed all the cuisine I ate for that article, plus renewing personal relationships.  

The long term implication goes far beyond sea asparagus, as such, for this individual I featured, Wenhao Sun, has a concept he is advancing that someday could lead to land plants being grown in the ocean, for there is no cost attached to using the sea (to start a new crop on land, you would need to purchase or lease that plot), while irrigation would be free.  To quote from that posting:

More than a quarter century ago I assisted a young PhD graduate from the University of Hawaii, Wenhao Sun, who was interested in genetically engineering land plants to grow in the ocean.  My thought was wow, what if this can be accomplished, for expensive farm lands can be replaced with the ocean around us, where the space is largely free, with it's own source of water.  If the process can be patented, we would control the future of agriculture, for there is a lot more available space in certain oceans than anywhere on land where things can be grown.  We would also reduce global warming.  This would be a key application of the Blue Revolution.  The thought still excites me.

On this nostalgic Tuesday, I reach back to my posting of 13June2009, another experience I had in my past, when The Huffington Post declined to publish my two-part series on A Simple Solution for Crime.  On 12July2009 they did publish part 1, Background.  But the next day, my effort was rejected for being too controversial.  But this Google blog site accepted it:  SIMPLE SOLUTION FOR CRIME:  THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE DEAD.  Maybe it was the photo I used of Hitler.  Nope, it couldn't have been that because HuffPo does not use graphics.

More likely it was the substitution of Three Strikes and You're Out with Three Strikes and You're Dead.  

• In our society today, it's fine to sentence convicts to life in prison, where we taxpayers pay to house, feed and guard them, than to outright terminate their life, and save a lot of money.  

• 
  Then again, I keep reading that it costs a lot more to seek a death sentence, than not.  Our expensive legal system apparently overwhelms the simple cost of keeping a person in jail for the rest of its life.
• Let's see now, it costs an average of $43,000/year to maintain a person in jail.  So if incarcerated for thirty years, that would be $1, 290,000.  I can't imagine additional court costs being anywhere close to that figure, so something is wrong with that analysis.

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  I suspect the controversy has to do with death itself.  We are in a country which prides itself in keeping people alive.  Has something to do with morality from religion, and the 80% who believe there is a God.  This virtually same 80% also thinks there is an afterlife.  Maybe sending these criminals to Hell is also a dissuading factor.

So why did the Huffington Post decline my Three Strikes and You're Dead article, but Google accept it?

• Huffington Post is careful about anything controversial....sexual, social and more.  I had more than a hundred articles published in HuffPo, and was turned down only once.

• 
  Google keeps updating its policy on sexually explicit content, but I guess is less restrictive on matters of social controversy.  There is also a wide range of non-sexual guidelines explained here.   I guess the following explains what happened.

If your content or account was actioned against, you will receive a notification about the type of enforcement and the reasoning for the enforcement action. The notification will also contain information about steps you can take to appeal our decision if you believe it was a mistake. You can submit an appeal by clicking "appeal" or "request review." If your appeal is approved, we'll notify you and take appropriate action to reverse our prior decision.

My professional career was heavily influenced by a publish or perish mantra.  University professorial and research staff are promoted and tenured by their ability to publish what you do.  I further served on the other side of this business by being editor of the Journal Energy Engineering.  I noticed I'm still listed as an honorary editor of the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.  As such, I am quite sensitive to the approval process for publications.  I was never once rejected for submitting a research paper for publication.

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