JUST SOME POSTS

  This is a continuation and supplement to the previous post. If you have not read that one, I highly recommend you do so as they connect and augment each other. After I published the previous post - after almost 2 hours of writing while reviewing notes and doing additional research - I realized that I had left out quite a bit of information that I had intended to include. This post is to remedy that. First, in the previous post I referenced being "fully-vaccinated" and said I would address it later. That was referring to another of the moving goalposts that the CDC/NIH has set-up concerning this illness. Fully vaccinated against Covid-19 was defined as a shot of either Moderna or Pfizer with a follow-up at a later date - typically 3 or 4 weeks after the first depending on which vaccine you had. It also referred to a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine. I do not think it has been officially changed at this writing, but the head of the CDC said last week t...

I had hoped not to do another Covid-19 post, but here I am - doing one! As I noted in a previous post, I have been amazed at the sheer panicked response to this virus. I guess since I do not watch any TV news, nor ever watched a press conference by anyone concerning the virus, maybe I have missed some of the worst hyperbole. Maybe since I actively work on my health and especially my immune system regularly I have not been as affected by it. I am not sure. Let me start out by saying I am not an anti-vax'er, at least by my standards. I do have and get the DPT and MMR vaccines. I have been vaccinated against polio and smallpox. I have also had the Covid-19 vaccine, and am what is still referred to today as "fully vaccinated" with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. (more in a moment on that). In the spirit of disclosure, I have never gotten a seasonal influenza shot, and at this time I cannot ever see myself getting one. Currently I am also not planning on getting a Covid-19 ...

  The amount of fear being spread about the current viral pandemic - Covid-19 - amazes me. Yes, this virus has killed many, many people. Any unnecessary death is tragic. Any premature death is tragic. I understand that. My heart goes out to any family that lost a loved one due to this disease. What I don't understand is the sheer terror that seems to have affected people, especially those that are younger. I reported last summer (on this EXACT date!! I just noticed!) about how deaths were concentrated among the portion of the population that is over 60. If you want to see those numbers and my comments, go here:  https://justsomeposts.blogspot.com/2020/08/covid-19-for-ages.html I got the numbers again today and here they are: You can see that less than 3% of the total deaths to this point have been in people under 45 years old! The danger if you are under 45 is very low. Even if you are 64 or younger, less than 21% of the total deaths are in those age groups.  One thi...

I am sitting here in my humble abode listening to the rain that has been going on, with intermittent pauses, for hours. That is not all I am listening to. For the better part of an hour, a frog has been trying to set a record of some sort for the loudest sustained croaking. I just read that male frogs croak to announce to other males that this is their territory. They also croak to find a mate. Some frogs croak during the act of mating, depending on the species this croaking can be done by the male or female. So, this guy is either extraordinarily desperate for frog sex or having the best sex of his froggy life. Whichever it is, I hope it is all over soon!

This one has been rolling around in my brain for a while. I was on some online forum a bit ago and we were "discussing" energy, specifically the need and uses of energy to support our modern life. We got to a discussion of electric vehicles and the growth of solar and wind power. I realized with one comment that the person I was "talking" to really did not understand electric cars and power generation. He seemed to think changing all vehicles to all electric would solve all our problems. (FYI, I say "he" as the self-description was a 20-something male college student - I only "know" them from an exchange or two on the forum).  I explained that one problem with that is that electric cars to do not produce any power, they just consumer power. A battery does not produce energy, it stores and releases it. The power has to come from somewhere. I really don't think he had ever thought of that and after a brief exchange, he left the forum.  Batterie...

I am writing this on the morning of the 4th of July. As noted in the title, the 4th of July happens everywhere. What does not is Independence Day. The 4th of July is celebrated in the U.S. to mark the day the 13 colonies of North America declared their independence from Great Britain. But, why the 4th? It is at the top of the Declaration of Independence, the official document that was drawn up by Thomas Jefferson at the behest of the Continental Congress. However, there are a lot of other dates that we could (and maybe should?) celebrate or at least publicize. As you might imagine, I am going to do a bit of that for you now. By July 4th, 1776 the Colonies were already at war with Great Britain. (fyi, for simplicities sake, I am going to follow convention and just refer to Great Britain and her armies as "the British" in most cases) The first shots "officially" fired at British troops by Continental militia were at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts on April 19th...

  Unless you have been living under a rock you have probably seen a couple of news stories (and maybe other types of mentions) about the recently passed law that passed in Georgia on voting - "The Election Integrity Act of 2021". It has been labeled by most of the media and an increasing number of celebrities and athletes as "racist", the "revival of Jim Crow", "suppression of the minority vote", and other scary names.  As with some other laws and proposed laws, I decided to actually read the bill to see what the uproar is about. I would wager that most of those railing against the bill have not read it. The bill is 94 pages long. It contains a lot of "stuff" that probably could have been said more clearly and simply - like most bills. It seems those that write the bills at the State and Federal level live by the theory that if 20 words is good, 100 words is better. I am going to try to give you a synopsis of the bill and tell you what ...