Observatory Version of Misc Musings, Ravings, and Random Thoughts
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Why economists would publish in the health field is weird, I guess they don't have an outlet like Paul Krugman does in the NYT.
I read the opening disclaimers and abstract. The disclaimers are strong enough if you open the document, which is iffy as a citation. Reading it, you can't miss that they are economists.
The rest of the this paper goes over my head in some ways, in others it appears to me that they are acting like cold blooded capitalists who only care about the bottom line, and don't care if 1) we were/are still learning about this fucking bug and 2) all experts were guessing about the impacts. Hell, the agreement on this disease being airborne vs tactile isn't really that old, we got to that early last year and the damage to the economy was already vast.
OK, today we can agree that some of the means used to try to save lives didn't work, like sanitizing your groceries, but PEOPLE tried them, they weren't mandated, weren't the NPI's. The impact of COVID on air travel wasn't due to bans, it was due to you and me saying, no way, I'm not getting on an airplane until I know for sure it won't kill me. We all saw the pictures of empty planes in route in 2020. The knock on impact to car rental and tourism is well known, our area is a tourist destination and it really did fuck things up here for a while. I'd like to see them quantify the fear that we all went through in 2020 which propelled us to stay home, it had little to do with any lockdown, per se, we still shopped for groceries and hardware as needed, but no one knew enough to say we should do THIS and not THAT.
Fucking eggheads ...
Your opinion is topical to me today as in our local newspaper there was a lengthy Sunday article on how the latest 30 day ban on groups of 50 or more in our county "blindsided" business, hurt catering and event planners, and on and on. It could have been a press release from the Chamber of Commerce, which was quoted more than once. One mention of the possible impact of infection in our "rural county with limited medical facilities" from our local Health Officer and then on and on about the costs. It seems this is going to be rehashed again and again, armchair quarterbacks blaming the public health officials and the costs of being safe.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/artic...conomic-toll-of-sonoma-countys-latest-ban-on/
I read the opening disclaimers and abstract. The disclaimers are strong enough if you open the document, which is iffy as a citation. Reading it, you can't miss that they are economists.
The rest of the this paper goes over my head in some ways, in others it appears to me that they are acting like cold blooded capitalists who only care about the bottom line, and don't care if 1) we were/are still learning about this fucking bug and 2) all experts were guessing about the impacts. Hell, the agreement on this disease being airborne vs tactile isn't really that old, we got to that early last year and the damage to the economy was already vast.
OK, today we can agree that some of the means used to try to save lives didn't work, like sanitizing your groceries, but PEOPLE tried them, they weren't mandated, weren't the NPI's. The impact of COVID on air travel wasn't due to bans, it was due to you and me saying, no way, I'm not getting on an airplane until I know for sure it won't kill me. We all saw the pictures of empty planes in route in 2020. The knock on impact to car rental and tourism is well known, our area is a tourist destination and it really did fuck things up here for a while. I'd like to see them quantify the fear that we all went through in 2020 which propelled us to stay home, it had little to do with any lockdown, per se, we still shopped for groceries and hardware as needed, but no one knew enough to say we should do THIS and not THAT.
Fucking eggheads ...
Your opinion is topical to me today as in our local newspaper there was a lengthy Sunday article on how the latest 30 day ban on groups of 50 or more in our county "blindsided" business, hurt catering and event planners, and on and on. It could have been a press release from the Chamber of Commerce, which was quoted more than once. One mention of the possible impact of infection in our "rural county with limited medical facilities" from our local Health Officer and then on and on about the costs. It seems this is going to be rehashed again and again, armchair quarterbacks blaming the public health officials and the costs of being safe.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/artic...conomic-toll-of-sonoma-countys-latest-ban-on/
On http://www.spaceweather.com is this image of a far side plume from the 15th. What does it remind you of?
The Tin Man Popeye blowing his stack? -
We keep a bucket in our kitchen sink to catch gray water. It gets soapy often. A random tests of the pH returned values of 7.5 to 8.5 which made me think this is too sweet for blueberries and the azalea. A quick check shows that many crops like lettuce, arugula, spinach, chard, kale are all OK with alkaline, so the water is being used there. Life in a severe drought sucks, but at least we learn as we conserve.
Today's release of the PROMED bulletin had these notes about the FLU:
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You mean the "Fouine" aka pine marten? Nasty. Had that rider on my car insurance in Switzerland, but never saw one nor any damage to my Twingo.
One other question :devious: - for the gardener, anyone have a recommendation on one of those low magnification, video enabled microscopes for examining bugs? I need to replace this old Radio Shack Micronta magnifier
Lovely, the impact of international (and inter-specie) collaboration!
Added: Just ran across this:Totally stuffed: Cern's electrocuted weasel to go on display
I was browsing the stacks at the county library historical branch and came across a "Historical Atlas of California". In it was a heading for Transhumance Grazing in the Sierra Nevada where, to this day, livestock is herded up into the mountain pastures over the course of the summer season. I had never heard this term before and spent some time reading up on it on the internet. I think it is a subject that would make a great video documentary.
We have two fancy wood cut-out/silhouette Swiss trinkets celebrating the cows going up or down to the pastures, flower wreaths in their horns. Some places still do value this, but the Swiss are like that. I read that there are others who do the same trying to preserve the traditions, French Basque, Basque and others in the hills, IIRC, some places in the Balkans as well. These are the easy reads in a search on transhumance, much better documented than the way things work in California, say.
One essay I read mentioned that in the early days, 1850's in California, the European shepherds who migrated here also set the high pastures on fire when they left them, a trick they learned from the Native Americans. In some respects, these ideas are coming back full circle as prescriptive burns are being discussed in the state today.
The ownership of marginal lands in eastern California, the water rights, mining, grazing are all tied together in this topic as well. The state is still charging a grazing fee per head on the sheep that are moved up slope on the eastern Sierras.
My family is engaged in a large farming effort which attracts a lot of young people every year. They're working towards an organic remake of the farm, livestock, orchards, truck farm, and harvesting (animal and crop) and the young 'interns' are working their tails off. The only problem is, they can't get a foot hold once they strike out on their own, the land is the hardest thing to find. Here the large dairy farms are burning out, no more water, market crashes, other crazy forces are going to break up "old ag" and hopefully the kids will get to apply their knowledge before Bill Gates and the hedge fund assholes turn it all into something else.
Let's just hope that the toe-hold that transhumance has remains and doesn't die off.
One essay I read mentioned that in the early days, 1850's in California, the European shepherds who migrated here also set the high pastures on fire when they left them, a trick they learned from the Native Americans. In some respects, these ideas are coming back full circle as prescriptive burns are being discussed in the state today.
The ownership of marginal lands in eastern California, the water rights, mining, grazing are all tied together in this topic as well. The state is still charging a grazing fee per head on the sheep that are moved up slope on the eastern Sierras.
My family is engaged in a large farming effort which attracts a lot of young people every year. They're working towards an organic remake of the farm, livestock, orchards, truck farm, and harvesting (animal and crop) and the young 'interns' are working their tails off. The only problem is, they can't get a foot hold once they strike out on their own, the land is the hardest thing to find. Here the large dairy farms are burning out, no more water, market crashes, other crazy forces are going to break up "old ag" and hopefully the kids will get to apply their knowledge before Bill Gates and the hedge fund assholes turn it all into something else.
Let's just hope that the toe-hold that transhumance has remains and doesn't die off.
It was Karl Polanyi who outlined the decline of the agricultural systems of the commons in Europe by the monarchies giving title to lands their barony could then fence off and exploit, along with the labor which was communal prior and became feudal. I forget what the act in England was called that facilitated that, but it was early (~1450?). He was the first to introduce me to that piece of history.
After reviewing the abstract of the above citation, I was curious if there are any range lands left in a state that can prove or disprove the benefits of efforts to restore them to their preindustrial levels. The Wikipedia has a List of protected grasslands of North America but protected is not the same as wild, for example. The prairies here in the USA were targeted for their rich soils which we promptly mismanaged and degraded. The efforts to rewild the countryside in England gets enough coverage in the Guardian to catch notice, but again, will it ever go back to the state it was in?
I'm woefully unread in this area but that chance encounter at the library did peak my interest. The combination of "rights" outlined in our posts above, it is a complicated issue. It makes me want to watch "Manon of the Spring" again
Coincidentally, I started to reread DUNE, I have the edition with the appendices, one of which covered the work of Pardot Kynes and his terraforming work on Arrakis. It is all about water here in California too. Fiction isn't a complete waste of time if it makes you think about topics like this (or I tell myself.)
Tonight, west coast USA is in a good position for a potential meteor outburst.
For a change, we had a clear sky last night. We're in a coastal status belt, 95% of the time, we have cloud cover by 20:00 local.
There was no outburst between 10 and 11 PDT last night, but I saw one Tau, slowly went from yellow to red from Antares to the south.
There was no outburst between 10 and 11 PDT last night, but I saw one Tau, slowly went from yellow to red from Antares to the south.
Carbon Dioxide Levels Are Highest in Human History
This article in the New York Times sums up the studies which show the May to May data for 2021 had the greatest increase in CO2 ever at 36 billion tons.
The saddest thing is there were only 228 comments and understandably most of them dismal.
Like guns and COVID, we're getting numb to the facts, which isn't good. Granted, it was published on a Friday, but still ...
This article in the New York Times sums up the studies which show the May to May data for 2021 had the greatest increase in CO2 ever at 36 billion tons.
The saddest thing is there were only 228 comments and understandably most of them dismal.
Like guns and COVID, we're getting numb to the facts, which isn't good. Granted, it was published on a Friday, but still ...
While I'm not as old as the industrial revolution, I was born at 312 ppm (1951) and we're now at 414 ppm. Hmmm, I thought this revelation would have more impact, but it doesn't. I now have a life goal to burn less, but that was acquired post Y2K - it will never make up for the 1961 Cadillac I drove for years in my youth.
Planting the right trees can help.
Especially if you do it in a bog or near a subduction zone
So, if we buried our unrecyleable plastic in the bog, would it be considered carbon sequestration? Yucky for whom ever digs it up, but ...
The boss does chickpea pasta often, and TJ's quinoa+brown rice fusilli which is her go to pasta. The brown rice stuff by Jovial almost passes my tests, we use that for Caccio e' Pepe and mac'n'cheese and I don't complain, but I prefer semolina every time. She even has some pasta shapes made from teff, whatever that is.
I have a couple of 1930's era radios with their original tubes (or valves) and they all test fine on emissions and work like a champ.
Northern California will have king tides this week, about 1 foot higher than our normal highest tides at 7 feet. The cycle runs every 6 months, next expected in December 2022. Local flooding is also expected.
Seward Alaska will have 12 foot tides. about 3 feet higher than their mean.
Seward Alaska will have 12 foot tides. about 3 feet higher than their mean.
Meanwhile, over on the Guardian:Antarctica bathed in dazzling colours in afterglow of Tonga eruption
It is common knowledge among galley cooks that porridge like substances are both sentient and out to get you.
Lesson #1, never trust grits to stay in the pot, it will always erupt and get you on the back of the hand even if it too is in a hot water bath in a steam table. In the years I spent in the galley, I don't recall oatmeal having any special properties other than it will burn the fuck out of you when you are serving a heaping helping to a hungry ship mate, which will cause the bowl to fly across the galley and land in the sink next to the 3rd cook. But, I was never shocked by oatmeal.
Also, the slickest substance known to man is commercial grade FRY-KING by Cargill. Next is rendered bacon fat.
Lesson #1, never trust grits to stay in the pot, it will always erupt and get you on the back of the hand even if it too is in a hot water bath in a steam table. In the years I spent in the galley, I don't recall oatmeal having any special properties other than it will burn the fuck out of you when you are serving a heaping helping to a hungry ship mate, which will cause the bowl to fly across the galley and land in the sink next to the 3rd cook. But, I was never shocked by oatmeal.
Also, the slickest substance known to man is commercial grade FRY-KING by Cargill. Next is rendered bacon fat.
This oatmeal thing makes me want to move my BK Isolation Transformer from my bench to my kitchen.
If I was king of the forest, my kitchen would look like my bench, but alas, it is a shared space.
If I was king of the forest, my kitchen would look like my bench, but alas, it is a shared space.
Do you think the radiology department at your local hospital would be able to help with some "test materials"?
On Saturday last, the neighbor lady found a dead crow in her driveway. It was the first of two, the second being today in our backyard. We think they are the pair of juveniles being raised since spring in the 'hood. Due to "business hours", we buried the first carcass on Saturday, the folks at our mosquito control service only want to pickup on weekdays, preferably during business hours, 8 AM to 4:30 PM.
So, this time, I double bagged the carcass according to instructions found here and will wait until they can come and get the critter tomorrow. They are testing for avian flu and West Nile viruses.
It will be quiet in the trees until the next brood comes along, hopefully, Ma and Pa are OK, we'll keep our eye out for them. They are regulars at our "feeding stone" where we leave scraps for the neighbor cat, what he doesn't get, they do. We are guessing that it is the young ones, they grow large quickly and it is hard to tell by size. The call of the young ones, if missing, will tell us who died.
Added: The unmistakable call of the juvenile was heard, so we wasn't the deceased. Now, we have to try to determine who it was. Tough when everyone looks alike but sounds different.
So, this time, I double bagged the carcass according to instructions found here and will wait until they can come and get the critter tomorrow. They are testing for avian flu and West Nile viruses.
It will be quiet in the trees until the next brood comes along, hopefully, Ma and Pa are OK, we'll keep our eye out for them. They are regulars at our "feeding stone" where we leave scraps for the neighbor cat, what he doesn't get, they do. We are guessing that it is the young ones, they grow large quickly and it is hard to tell by size. The call of the young ones, if missing, will tell us who died.
Added: The unmistakable call of the juvenile was heard, so we wasn't the deceased. Now, we have to try to determine who it was. Tough when everyone looks alike but sounds different.
I'm reading up on landfilling plastic as a carbon sink. One group suggests that we store our plastic waste until such time as we can really recycle it or find another use for it. In the meantime, it is carbon stored out of the system and if done right, it wouldn't degrade as it would in a landfill. Where to store so much material is a stumbling block.
The chit chat about using cryogenic sorting for EV batteries made me wonder if something similar could be used to sort plastic by density, which I understand is one problem in its reuse, mixing the types of polymers in the recycling systems.
Also, any complaints about microplastics is conflicted by tire shredding in our daily driving.
The chit chat about using cryogenic sorting for EV batteries made me wonder if something similar could be used to sort plastic by density, which I understand is one problem in its reuse, mixing the types of polymers in the recycling systems.
Also, any complaints about microplastics is conflicted by tire shredding in our daily driving.
Over on http://www.spaceweather.com is this:
Also mentioned on today's posts was that August 4th had more rocket launches for any day since March 16, 1966.
Also mentioned on today's posts was that August 4th had more rocket launches for any day since March 16, 1966.
Ok - other than money (delta-v) and relying on Russian technology for rides, and other practical reasons. I don't know if there's any other sciencey reason to build it there.
Ah Ha! You are the screenwriter Drew Goddard in real life! Love your work, man.
After the enlightening article on liquid hydrogen rocket fuel in ARS, this caught my eye in the Guardian:
I don't know if the tech used by these nut pickers would assist NASA at the pad, but you never know. If they can keep a gas bag inflated with hydrogen for days, they might know something we don't. I know, unlikely it was liquid.
I don't know if the tech used by these nut pickers would assist NASA at the pad, but you never know. If they can keep a gas bag inflated with hydrogen for days, they might know something we don't. I know, unlikely it was liquid.
On SWISS-INFO is an essay on Nant de Drance, a pumped hydro facility in the Canton Valais. Until today I was unaware of its storage capability which is "400,000 car batteries," pretty impressive (and a new metric to add to Olympic sized swimming pools, blue whales etc.)
In the New York Times today, an article on Perseverance and some new rock samples. They say:
So, we'll need a mnemonic for this mission: Mars Sample Return Pick-up or MSRP, no?
So, we'll need a mnemonic for this mission: Mars Sample Return Pick-up or MSRP, no?
And now, for something completely different; on SWISSINFO, an essay on the results of a test run during the last 18 months - Buried underwear proves good soil in private gardens.
This is a test we could do in our yard, except I'm not sure how to factor in the impact of the drought, the soil is bone dry a few inches down after our dry year.
Some of my gargantuan boxers are already getting to tissue thin stages of life, so instead of making a garden flag with some of them, I could bury them instead.
This is a test we could do in our yard, except I'm not sure how to factor in the impact of the drought, the soil is bone dry a few inches down after our dry year.
Some of my gargantuan boxers are already getting to tissue thin stages of life, so instead of making a garden flag with some of them, I could bury them instead.
My wife's MIGROS panties lasted the longest of any panties she ever had, it was a sad day when she had to move on to dainties bought in the USA. COSTCO undies are not the same, for some reason, we feel that the MIGROS undies were real cotton, the COSTCO, while labeled 100% cotton, didn't feel the same (she said ). So, my 100% cotton Land's End boxers are, I'm sure, not 100% cotton, but this technique could prove they are mislabeled.
). So, my 100% cotton Land's End boxers are, I'm sure, not 100% cotton, but this technique could prove they are mislabeled.
"Physics : a short history, from quintessence to quarks" by J.L. Heilbron was a good read. He started back in ancient history and traced the development of what we call physics today, bring in aspects from Asian and Middle-eastern history, seeding European developments through to now. He makes some assumptions about your knowledge level but brings you along as the subject gets more complex.
I was given a copy of "We Have No Idea - A Guide to Unknown Universe" by J. Cham and D. Whiteson last summer and am getting around to reading it. It is a pun filled exploration of dark matter and energy, gravity, sub-atomic and particle physics. It is laced with cute cartoons and, as I said, filled with puns. 99% of the footnotes so far have been jokes or puns, so I'm now ignoring them.
Heilbron's book was very well written and pulled you in to what could be a dry subject. He kept it interesting all the way through. Cham and Whiteson seem to be relying on cute as a means to deliver some very complicated subject matter and they do a good job, up to a point. I'm finding I'm getting annoyed with the cute and craving the dryer prose, avoiding the cartoons and pun filled footnotes. There is subject matter filling in gaps in my knowledge, which is excellent, but it is a bit of a slog.
I may have read a "for dummies" book years and years ago, but I feel like the Cham and Whiteson mode of writing is evolved out this vein. I'm going to try to finish it, we'll see if I can.
What do you think, is cute a good means to get science delivered or a hindrance?
I was given a copy of "We Have No Idea - A Guide to Unknown Universe" by J. Cham and D. Whiteson last summer and am getting around to reading it. It is a pun filled exploration of dark matter and energy, gravity, sub-atomic and particle physics. It is laced with cute cartoons and, as I said, filled with puns. 99% of the footnotes so far have been jokes or puns, so I'm now ignoring them.
Heilbron's book was very well written and pulled you in to what could be a dry subject. He kept it interesting all the way through. Cham and Whiteson seem to be relying on cute as a means to deliver some very complicated subject matter and they do a good job, up to a point. I'm finding I'm getting annoyed with the cute and craving the dryer prose, avoiding the cartoons and pun filled footnotes. There is subject matter filling in gaps in my knowledge, which is excellent, but it is a bit of a slog.
I may have read a "for dummies" book years and years ago, but I feel like the Cham and Whiteson mode of writing is evolved out this vein. I'm going to try to finish it, we'll see if I can.
What do you think, is cute a good means to get science delivered or a hindrance?
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A pilot pal of mine loaned me "Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying" by Wolfgang Langewiesche years ago. Everytime I strap into my Flight Simulator I remember some of the fundamentals discussed in that book. "Push into a stall, don't pull back" and "the plane knows how to fly."
Yes, but Heilbron's book was engaging which would pull in anyone who tried it (and can read). I doubt that the For Idiots series of books would be the phenom it is if it didn't fill a need.
So, we need a control group ...
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