Student scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao                                                is Time Magazine's first "Kid of the Year

"Rao’s innovating started early. At age 12, she developed a portable device to detect lead in water."  The drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, inspired her work to develop a way to detect contaminants and send those results to a mobile phone, she said.  (The video-interview with her is absolutely fascinating ..just Google the story title: " Student scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao 

     "... A 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist who has used artificial intelligence and created apps to tackle contaminated drinking water, cyberbullying, opioid addiction and other social problems has been named Time Magazine’s first-ever “Kid of the Year.”

      Gitanjali Rao, a sophomore at STEM School Highlands Ranch in suburban Denver who lives in the city of Lone Tree, was selected from more than 5,000 nominees in a process that culminated with a finalists’ committee of children, Time for Kids reporters and comedian Trevor Noah.

     In a world where science is increasingly questioned or challenged, Rao insisted that its pursuit is an essential act of kindness, the best way that a younger generation can better the world. Science and technology are being employed as never before to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, global warming and a host of other issues, she noted...

            Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial                       New York Times, Sunday Peter Baker  8 hrs ago. Trump's growing state of depression

      Oval Office Trump advisor: "He doesn't show up for work now. No government work is being attended to. He stays upstairs and rages. He is now very moody and very depressed. He lashes out at everyone." .....Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He spends most of his time alone and firing off angry Twitter messages..." He sees enemies everywhere, much like the paranoid US Senator Joseph McCarthy back in the mid-50s. Republicans finally turned on McCarthy, denouncing the man they once 'praised'. He died, the most hated man in US government. Republicans increasingly are denouncing Trum also.

"..The president....He has fixated on purging the disloyal and punishing an ever- growing list of perceived real enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News." He can't understand 'why' Fox News has turned against him.

      Shakespearean tragedy in the making?

.........At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Mr. Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.

“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”

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