{"id":43589,"date":"2026-01-16T09:35:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=43589"},"modified":"2026-01-16T09:35:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:35:39","slug":"one-big-dense-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/01\/16\/one-big-dense-network\/","title":{"rendered":"One Big, Dense Network"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not much on the environmental thing? Think you stand apart from Nature? Think again<\/em>:<\/p>\n

What is becoming increasingly clear is that without [frogs], humans are in trouble. It turns out that frogs \u2014 in biblical times regarded as a plague \u2014 are actually guardians against disease.<\/p>\n

As dozens of frog species have declined across Central America, scientists have witnessed a remarkable chain of events: With fewer tadpoles to eat mosquito larvae, rates of mosquito-borne malaria in the region have climbed, resulting in a fivefold increase in cases. [WaPo<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis<\/em> (Bd), and, along with the frogs, and via the network, aka web of nature, it kills us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

Then [the scientists] compared that spread to county-level health records of malaria in humans. They found a striking pattern: a fivefold spike in malaria cases after the fungus arrived and the frogs died. Lips, Springborn and their colleagues published the discovery<\/a>\u00a0in 2022 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Nor is this a one-off, with wolves, vultures, and bats featuring in impacting human health, human lives.<\/p>\n

So what?<\/em> you say.<\/p>\n

So consider how capitalism<\/em> handles this situation. Who is incentivised to work on this problem? Who can provide a solution that is effective?<\/p>\n

Well, until we, all of us, allow that certain problems are not amenable to private investigation and remediation until government steps in with cash and, yes, even actual basic research, we’ll continue to suffer the slings and arrows of a nature that neither hates us nor loves us, but considers us, if you’ll allow the illegitimate analogy, simply another competitor in the great game of life.<\/p>\n

Thinking the Divine will protect us is simple, self-destructive arrogance, and believing capitalism solves everything is self-evidently fallacious. If I ever get around to reading Adam Smith, father of free markets, I suspect I’ll also be able to say Horrifying to Adam Smith<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But these are the folks who inhabit our current Administration and can’t figure out how we can spend so much money on this, that, and the other thing. The reason we do is because it’ll be much more costly if we don’t, on average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not much on the environmental thing? Think you stand apart from Nature? Think again: What is becoming increasingly clear is that without [frogs], humans are in trouble. It turns out that frogs \u2014 in biblical times regarded as a plague \u2014 are actually guardians against disease. As dozens of frog \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43592,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43589\/revisions\/43592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}