Happy Monday.
It’s Seattle Forest Week— a yearly campaign by Seattle Parks to promote the city’s green spaces, healthy urban forests, and encourage the planting of native plants.
Hello to you, too! We don’t have these furry creatures here in the Pacific Northwest. I had to do a picture search to find out that they are tree-kangaroos, native to the Huon Peninsula of northeastern New Guinea island, in Papua New Guinea. It is an endangered species with only an estimated 2,500 left in the wild. [Picture posted by Woodland Park Zoo @woodlandparkzoo on X]
I ran out and got the new RSV vaccine yesterday (from Pfizer, marketed as ‘Abrysvo’). It does feel like my system is reacting to it, more so than was the case for the flu shot or the latest COVID vaccine.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is spread through contact with contaminated surfaces (and from what I understand, not by airborne transmission).
RSV causes mild cold symptoms in most people, but if the virus ends up flourishing in the lungs, it can lead to hospitalization and even death in older people and babies.
Researchers have been trying for decades to create effective RSV vaccines.
One turning point came with the investigation of an RSV protein called ‘RSV prefusion (RSV preF)’ that turned out to provide potent stimulation of the immune system.
Abrysvo contains proteins from the surfaces of two strains of the RSV virus. When a person is given the vaccine, the immune system treats the viral proteins as ‘foreign’ entities and makes defenses against them. If, later on, the vaccinated person comes into contact with the virus, the immune system will recognize the viral proteins and be prepared to attack it.
An illustration of how subunit vaccines work, from Pfizer’s website. This mechanism is one of SIX major categorizations of vaccines. Ready? 1. Live-attenuated vaccines (such as for measles/mumps/rubella, chicken pox). 2. Inactivated vaccines (for polio, flu). 3. Subunit vaccines (shingles, hepatitus B, and now RSV). 4. Toxoid vaccines (such as for tetanus, diphteria). 5. Viral vector vaccines (such as the Ebola vaccine, some COVID vaccines). 6. Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines (used for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine).
Bok, bok, staan styf Hoeveel vingers op jou lyf? Vier!
(An Afrikaans rhyme from a children’s game.
Loosely translated, it says
‘Bok, bok, hold still.
What number of fingers do you feel?
Four! says the Bok).
Top: Reporting in The Observer/ The Guardian by Robert Kitson at the Stade de France. Cartoon by South African cartoonist Dr Jack. One more stripe can now be added under the Rugby World Cup trophy on the Bok’s sleeve. The event takes place every four years, and South Africa has now won four times: 1995, 2007, 2019, 2023. The first RWC was held in 1987 and other past winners are: New Zealand (3 times), Australia (twice) and England (once).
Art and text posted by Jamie Schler@lifesafeast on X:
Shabbat Shalom.
Peace, joy, kindness to you all.
‘If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope’. – Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall, La Vie, 1964, Fondation Maeght, Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Paul de Vence, Departement Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Cote. Side note: The Israeli parliament building, known as the Knesset, is decorated with huge tapestries by Marc Chagall depicting biblical scenes.
Brutal political cartoon in South African daily newspaper ‘Die Burger’ (The Citizen) from yesterday.
The cartoonist goes by the alias Dr Jack.
Pandor*: Thanks for taking my call. Hamas Terrorist: It is good to talk to someone that KNOWS how to bring a country to its knees. *Dr Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa since 2019. The African National Congress party (of which Pandor is a member) continues to demonstrate their abject incompetence and pervasive corruption while governing (make that: supposedly governing) the country. And lest we forget: the ANC was a terrorist organization in the 1980s in South Africa, killing civilians with pipe bombs and the like. (The South African government of the day engaged in atrocities itself, torturing and murdering ANC party members in return). Pandor has flip-flopped about denouncing Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine and in fact, called Russia a ‘valued partner’ after foreign minister Lavrov visited in January. She has criticized the International Criminal Court (ICC) for not having what she called an ‘evenhanded approach’ to all leaders responsible for violations of international law.
.. but here is what Washington Post opinion columnist Ruth Marcus writes: If you are feeling any sense of relief that Jim Jordan won’t be the next House speaker, stop and worry again.
The new speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), might be more dangerous than the firebrand Ohio Republican. For Jordan’s shirt sleeves demeanor and wrestler’s pugnacity, substitute a bespectacled, low-key presentation, a law degree and an unswerving commitment to conservative dogma and former president Donald Trump.
This is not an upgrade.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) gives a thumbs-up after he was elected House speaker on Wednesday, Oct. 25. [Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images]
Uncle Ike’s pot shop on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue East.
There’s a steady rain here in the city tonight, and the first winter snow headed for the Cascades (more than a foot expected in some places).
I will grab my scarf from now on as I head out the door.
The daytime highs have dropped to 50 °F (10 °C) or so.
Surely there can’t be flowers anymore in Thomas Street Gardens, I thought, as I made my way there yesterday.
I was wrong though, and there they were— outrageous splotches of color against the gray sky.
The sun came out late this afternoon, and I chased myself out of the house.
I was rewarded with spotting this beautiful 2023 Rivian R1S all-electric SUV here on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue.
Congratulations to the Bokke from South Africa, coming from behind and notching a 16-15 win against England, in today’s 2023 World Rugby Cup semi-final.
New Zealand’s All Blacks easily dispatched the Argentinian team by 44-6 in the other semi-final on Friday.
The final is next Saturday, in the Stade de France stadium, in Paris.
Handre Pollard of South Africa kicks his side’s second penalty during the 2023 Rugby World Cup semi-final against England. The only try (‘touch down’) of the match came in the 69th minute, when South Africa’s replacement lock RG Snyman went over the line. [Photograph: Adam Pretty/World Rugby/Getty Images]
This Jordan guy is Trump’s guy.
The divisions in a bitterly divided Republican Party where some members have seen death threats over their speaker votes have been on full display, but at least we did not get the Trump coup plotter as speaker.
So what happens now?
Here’s CNN’s reporting: What Republicans are saying: A number of Republicans left Friday’s closed-door meeting sounding more confused than ever about the path forward and who is best to lead them. Many expressed frustration and some called for reflection after the collapse of Jordan’s speakership bid. “We’re back to square one,” South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson said. The chamber is still in limbo: The House remains effectively frozen as long as there is no elected speaker. The paralysis has created a perilous situation as Congress faces the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolds abroad. The battle for the speakership has now dragged on for more than two weeks with no end in sight.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer plans to run an “entirely positive” campaign for speaker and “won’t attack his opponents,” a source close to him says – betting it will be a welcome change in style, following weeks of nasty infighting in a bitterly divided GOP where some members have seen death threats over their speaker votes.
Update Tue 10/24: Tom Emmer was speaker-elect for just a few hours, and then rejected by the Republican conference before there was even a vote on the floor of the House. Are Republicans clowns, all of them?
Here is Eric Margolis writing for the Japan Times (just the introduction of a long article): You may have learned that “I” is 私 (watashi). And while this is a handy all-around term to use when referring to yourself, a 2019 survey showed that over 30% of Japanese women and around 70% of Japanese men don’t regularly use it. To make things even more confusing, people do or don’t use 私 entirely depending on the situation. While 80% of women in their 50s expected to use 私 to address colleagues or acquaintances their own age, just 30% expected to use it for people they met for the first time. Meanwhile, 60% of men in their 50s expected to use it when meeting a young person for the first time. But that percentage dropped to 40% of the time when they were meeting someone their own age. Japanese dictionaries and resources list over 30 different words for just one in English: “I”. Every word expresses different nuances about how the speaker views themselves and what their relationship is to the person they’re speaking with. There’s わたし (watashi), わたくし (watakushi), あたし (atashi), 僕 (boku), 吾輩 (wagahai), 俺 (ore), うち (uchi), 儂 (washi), 麿 (maro) and 自分 (jibun), just to name a few. So how to know which one to use?
P.S. I would have loved to be in Japan right now, at the tennis courts watching some Japan Open tennis action.
Etching depicting some of the most significant plants of the Carboniferous. The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 mya. [Picture: Bibliographisches Institut – Meyers Konversationslexikon]From the 2021 book ‘A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth’ by Henry Gee: The Carboniferous* lycopod forests were not like this at all (trees with wood and bark). The lycopods, like their Devonian forebears, were hollow, supported by thick skin rather than heartwood, and covered in green, leaflike scales. Indeed, the entire plant— the trunk and the crown of dropping branches alike— was scaly. With no columns of vessels to transport food, each of the scales was photosynthetic, supplying food to the tissues close by. Even stranger to our eyes, these trees spent most of their lives as inconspicuous stumps in the ground. Only when it was ready to reproduce did a tree grow, a pole shooting upward like a firework in slow motion to explode in a crown of branches that would broadcast spores into the wind. Once the spores had been shed, the tree would die. Over many years of wind and weather, fungi and bacteria would etch away at the husk until it collapsed onto the sodden forest floor below. A lycopod forest looked like the desolate landscape of the First World War Western Front: a craterscape of hollow stumps filled with a refuse of water and death; the trees, like poles, denuded of all leaves or branches, rising from a mire of decay. There was very little shade and no understory apart from the deepening litter forming around the shattered wrecks of the lycopod trunks.
The mushroom spores in the ground in my backyard have started to sprout— the way they usually do in October.
The right kind of soil, and changes in temperature, light and water, trigger them to start growing.
Mushrooms, as living organisms, belong to a kingdom separate from plants (see table below).
Kingdom
Organisms
Monera
Bacteria, blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), and spirochetes
Protista
Protozoans and algae of various types
Fungi
Funguses, molds, mushrooms, yeasts, mildews, and smuts
Plantae
Mosses, ferns, woody and non-woody flowering plants
Animalia
Sponges, worms, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals
A Tesla Cybertruck was spotted here in the city yesterday, at Pike Place Market.
It is not known if it will stick around for a while, or move on. This one was spotted in Northern California and in Oregon as well.
The picture is a still from a 6-second clip posted by S.E. Robinson, Jr. @SERobinsonJr on X on Oct 15.
South Africa’s Springbokke prevailed 29-28 over the hometeam ‘Les Bleus’ from France in tonight’s 2023 Rugby World Cup quarterfinal. The match was played in the Stade de France, the national stadium of France, located just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis.
Next Saturday the Bokke will play against England.
In the other semifinal Argentina will take on New Zealand.
Eben Etzebeth played in the No 4 lock position, and is scoring a crucial try here, 27 minutes into the second half, to win the game for the Springboks. [Photo by Associated Press]
The band of area from which the ‘ring of fire’ view of the solar eclipse could be seen ran through the Pacific Northwest, New Mexico and Texas. Farther afield, the moon passing in front of the sun made it appear as a crescent shape. [Source: Eclipse data from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio]The ‘ring of fire’ as seen from Albuquerque, New Mexico. [Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP]Here in Seattle, the sun came out from behind the clouds just in time for this morning’s partial solar eclipse.
At about 9.20 am, 81% of the sun was obscured.
Here is my own ‘pin hole camera’ view of the sun, taken at about 9.11 am in Seattle. (The sun’s light passing through three pin holes in a piece of tin plate, catching the crescent shape of the sun not obscured by the moon).
It was a lovely day here in Seattle (71 °F/ 22 °C).
Four of the amigos played a little pickleball this morning.
Afterwards we had something to eat and drink, on the patio of the dive bar called Twilight Exit, in Central District.
With the war in Israel and Gaza only on day 6, all other news on my TV seem to be in the By The Way/ Not Too Important category.
(The House of Representatives still does not have a speaker, and there are no viable candidates at this point).
The homepage of the Washington Post tonight. A ground invasion of Gaza seems imminent, says everyone— but what about the Israeli hostages there (including American citizens?), and other civilians, trapped without water, food and electricity, with nowhere to go? Associated Press: ‘Hamas officials say they are prepared for any scenario, including a drawn-out war, and that allies like Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah will join the battle if Israel goes too far.’
