In a recent competition of the best and brightest of Americas High schoolers, kids demonstrated real genius in developing products with real utility, including adding an ingredient to soap that combats Melanoma. Here's the picture of the 10 winners up on the stage with their medals:
Click to enlarge. Note that most of the winners seem to be Asian. Big surprise.
The Finns finally got their new nuclear plant turned on to full capacity. Yup, It caused a national disaster. In fact the output from the plant drove the price of electricity in Finland into negative numbers, necessitating throttling back the plant so the rest of national power grid could actually show a profit.
The low, flatt(ish) area on the right is when the reactor was running in test mode. The green circled area is when it went full time on line.
The article also mentions that the plant was 14 years late getting going without mentioning why, exactly, but given that this is almost certainly a government project, I would be surprised if it didn't come in about 2-4 times the estimated time, and 10 times the original estimated cost.
All reports should be viewed warily, as they are diminished by the fog of war and you have no real good idea by how much. Some observations, however, can be considered more reliable if they don't change much over time, or if they are backed up with images. Be careful, some of the "Ukrainian images" out there seem to be from Russian operations in Syria. The Traffic Jam on the road into Kiev from the north as been photographed repeatedly and doesn't seem to have changed much in the last 8 days. This is really bad news for the Russkies as large offensive operations generally require movement of some sort to be considered effective.
Pictures of Russian heavy equipment, mired in mud, with the tires coming off the wheels does not inspire confidence, especially with people close to the situation describing this as a common problem with vehicles fitted with Chinese made tires. When you think about it, you have to wonder: With sanctions and a generally dismal Russian economy, what percentage of their ground forces have been serviced with parts from Harbor Freight? Tires? Diesel engine parts? Combat boots?
On the one hand there are reports that the Ukes have adjusted the dikes and levees in the area surrounding the roadway resulting in the "off road" becoming a swamp. The road itself seems to be best described as 2-lane blacktop with a breakdown shoulder on each side. The Russkies are taking full advantage of this by stacking their vehicles 3-abreast and some 40 miles deep. The problem here is that if the front ranks are out of fuel, the tankers can't get up to service them. If they are damaged, a T-84 tank becomes an 80 ton paperweight. Repairable? Probably, if you could get a repair vehicle up to it. Tankers and wreckers are relatively soft targets, and the Ukes know this. Shoot and scoot. A reliable technique for the last 2000 years.
Here and here are articles by people who seem to be much closer to the action than most of the pundits who are getting the media time. Give them a read and then consider the phrase "Potemkin Army". Keeping in mind. of course that while judicious use of force can drive a bear away from your trash cans, you do NOT want to run up and engage it with bare knuckles. It IS a bear after all.
I'm rather surprised to see this. Yes, the panic buying was settling down, but this represents a bigger drop than I expected. Note in the annual overall chart that the projected total for '22 is right in line with the general trend prior to the Covid outbreak and the "mostly peaceful" demonstrations.
The starting number for Jan '22 is 2,591,588 and the pale blue X is hard to see in the monthly chart. Quite reasonable. Of course it could follow the 2020 curve into low earth orbit depending on what the animated meat loaf in D.C. decides to do. Or what the Czar of Russia or the Emperor of China or Punxsutawney Phil do.
On the positive side a new ammo plant will soon be opening up in Texas and will be manufacturing primers in addition to finished ammo so maybe all those new gun owners and us reloaders will be able to take a trip to the range without arranging a 2nd mortgage from our bankers first. Again, it depends on the unpredictable actions of a bunch of unpredictable people.
Not only has our governor announced the end of the pandemic, but one (so far) head of state has joined the movement.
New Zealand PM Arden has issued a return to normal statement:
eTurboNews reported, in an article headlined, "Sex orgies of up to 25 people are OK now in New Zealand," that it was an "unexpected early Christmas present" when Ardern made the announcement.
the drawback is that getting into NZ in the first place may be difficult so allow plenty of time for a quarantine stay in a hotel which may itself permit up to 25 of its guests to pass the time in whatever manner they see fit. Call in advance.
Here's a noteworthy headline:
Taking Viagra reduces risk of Alzheimers by 69%
I told my wife about this. She was not impressed. My question is weather this is a cause or an effect. Does Viagra improve your cognitive abilities, or is it your cognitive abilities, reacting to some of the effects of aging, that drives you to Viagra?
For a change, here's some news about alcohol that doesn't involve burning it. Seems this fellow has come up with a way to turn alcoholic beverages into something resembling ice cream, or at least soft serve.
Yeah, I know, the purists among us will denounce this as alcohol abuse, especially as it seems to work about as well with single malt Scotch as it does with beer of any sort. The extremes though probably are alcohol abuse on the one end of that spectrum, and reportedly abuse of the consumer on the other, so if you but one of his machines (about $6000-$7000) don't pour in either Glenfiddich or Coors Lite.
Israeli doctors may have figured out how to make animal organs transplantable into humans:
Seems the whole human race is going to hell in a handbag:
Zombie nation: Third of adults walking around in concussion-like daze due to stress, lack of sleep
The stress of the daily grind plus the stress of the Chinky Pox plus the economic uncertainty... It's just too much. But wait! Help is on the way!
Hi-tech brain implants the size of a salt grain could let people choose their own mood.
What used to be done with a couple of drinks is now done with a small chip that drives LED lights implanted into the brain. The lights stimulate the right parts of the brain, and out comes a better attitude. So in the future, when you see someone with a glint in their eyes, it may be artificially induced.
Who knows, it may even help with night vision.
On this date in 1845, Texas annexed the United States:
For their next trick, Texas will revive Louisiana borders to cover
the original area, and rename it Texas Republic. Consolidation with the
Republic of Dixie and the Republic of Roadrunner will follow.
Scott Adams asked for this information on his periscope and I thought it was a valid question, so here is the ongoing death rate for the population at large. This is done from 7 day moving average data by dividing the revised number of deaths by the revised number of cases. That is, the data is presented as a continuously cumulative number, so I took each new update and subtracted the previous total to get the unit change.
It's hard to read accurately, but you can see that the disease initially was quite deadly as the first victims were probably the weakest, and of course, no one had any idea what to do about it. Early on HCQ became known as a pretty good treatment to at least slow the progress and later other drugs made their appearance. The low spots are .006 (.6%) on 6/28, and .066 (.66%) on 10/12. The initial onslaught killed a lot of people while we tried to manufacture millions of ventilators which turned out to be counter productive, and the second wave, much ballyhooed by the press as a major administration failure, looks to have been dealt with fairly well with the advent of Remdesivir, extracted antibodies, and a couple of other treatments.
You can copy the data at the link, and paste it into your own spreadsheet and massage it to suit yourself. Is the total number of cases going up? Yes, of course, it gets higher with each new case, but so what? If the fatality rate is dropping faster than the infection rate, we'll soon reach the point where very few people are left who haven't caught it and very few of those will die of it.
About those deaths. Whose fault are they? The media will tell you Orange Man Bad, but unless they can prove that Trump was operating a bio warfare lab in Wuhan, China, I'm not inclined to assign any blame to the administration. Address your complaints to Emperor Xi.
Ennie Meenie Chillie Beanee the spirits are about to speak!
On 8/14/2020 12:32 PM, Dr Spinetwist wrote:Looks like the 9th circuit is now more conservative than the 10th. It didn't work out so well for Colorado as I recall...
TRENDING: VIDEO: Leftist Protester Killed, Dragged by FedEx Truck in Downtown St. Louis after Mob Shuts Down Highway and Attack His Truck
Trump was beaming with pride!
“When you see a site like that, it’s incredible,” Trump said.This seems more prone to misinterpretation than others.
