Hey, it’s December.
The sands of time for 2021 are running out rapidly.
Seattleites have to hang in there a few more weeks before the black nights that come so quickly, ease up and become shorter again.
Wednesday/ it’s December
Tuesday/ quick trip to U District
It was already dark when I walked down to the Capitol Hill light rail station tonight.
From there I took the train to the U District stop to the Neptune Company record store, just a hundred steps away from the train station exit.
Top to bottom:
Northbound train at Capitol Hill station.
Southbound platform, U District Station.
Southbound train, U District station.
Capitol Hill station plaza.
Monday/ a beautiful blue sky
Here comes the No 12 bus on 19th Avenue.
I’m on my way to the barber shop in First Hill.
Sunday/ the tree is up, on the Needle
It rained most of the day, but it cleared up as night fell.
I made a run down to the Space Needle to take a few pictures of the ‘Christmas tree’ on it.
I went up Queen Anne hill for a few pictures, as well.
So should humans torture monkeys in the name of research? No, we should not, but we do. We should also not make weapons to kill each other with. We should also not destroy Earth.
This tower was constructed a few years later, in 1952, and stands 570 ft (174m) tall. The site itself is 430 ft (131 m) above sea level.
Saturday/ the days are short and wet
It has been a soggy, soggy rain season so far.
Since Oct. 1, some 15 in. of precipitation had been measured at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
Average for this time of year is 9.37 in. and the record is 16.6 in.
Those time references are Zulu Time.
21Z = 1 pm Pacific Standard Time (PST);
06Z = 10 pm PST.
Would it not be simpler if the entire world switched to Zulu Time? Zulu Time was called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) before 1972: the time at the zero meridian in Greenwich, London. Today it is also called Coordinated Universal Time or Universal Time Coordinated (UTC).
[Graphic from NOAA Weather Prediction Center]
Black Friday/ B.1.1.529
Hopefully it turns out that Black Friday meant the purveyors of products-at-a-discount ended up in the black, and not that the B.1.1.529 variant (Omicron) had started a really bad turn in the pandemic. (We will know in about two weeks if this ‘variant of concern’ can evade the antibodies produced by the current vaccines*).
Angelique Coetzee, chairperson of the South African Medical Association, says in The Guardian newspaper: ‘It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild’.
*From the New York Times: The B.1.1.529 variant has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” with more than 30 mutations in the spike protein alone, Mr. de Oliveira (director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, in South Africa) said. The spike protein is the chief target of antibodies that the immune system produces to fight a coronavirus infection. So many mutations raised concerns that Omicron’s spike might be able to evade antibodies produced by either a previous infection or a vaccine.
Update Sat 11/27: Per the BBC, 61 of these 600 travelers tested positive for Covid-19. (Not yet known if any is the Omicron variant). 61 sounds like a lot to me. Surely almost all of these travelers have been vaccinated. Was the testing (in South Africa) three days before traveling not very reliable? Did the travelers get infected on the airplane?
[Picture obtained from social media by REUTERS]
Happy Thanksgiving
Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
Tuesday/ Sixth Avenue, Tacoma
If you’re going, go to Tacoma today, boyo, I told myself this morning.
Tomorrow will see bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 5 for Thanksgiving (on Thursday).
And so off I went. I know of second-hand record stores on 6th Avenue, and mural artwork in the alleys there, and that’s where I stopped to spend a little time.
Monday/ Europe’s spike
Several countries in Europe are in bad shape, in the grip of another spike of infections. Austria has started a 10-day national lockdown, which could be extended to 20.
A national vaccination rate of 60% —or even 70% —is just not cutting it. Too many people still refuse to get vaccinated. As someone noted wryly, many countries may have reached herd immunity: immunity from the truth.
Wow. The map shows the number of positive Covid-19 tests per 100,000 residents, per country. More than 500 new infections per 100,000 residents in one week, is not a number that I recall seeing that any state here in the USA came close to, not even at the peak of the previous wave. (The bar graph below shows patients in intensive care per million residents).
[Infographic from Dutch publication NRC Handelsblad]
Sunday/ at the car wash
My car needed a wash, and off I went tonight, to Uncle Ike’s on 23rd Avenue. (Uncle Ike’s Car Wash, that is— not the Uncle Ike’s pot shop that is right next door).
I do a pre-rinse, put soap on, wash the car & wheel caps by hand with a big mitt, and then rinse everything off.
I dry it all by hand. There is a new blow-dryer gun right there for use in the wash bay, and I might try that next time. Hopefully it won’t fry the paint. Yikes. That will be bad.
Time in the wash bay is money, though. I spent $12 on the wash cycle tonight, a little more than usual. I also forgot to put the car in wash mode before I started washing (it gets the windshield wipers out of the way).
*With a set of drying cloths called ‘Dry Me A River’, that I had bought on Amazon.
Caturday
The Norwegian Forest Cat (or Wegie as it’s often called) is a sweet, calm, and gentle feline who’s often shy around new people, but is known for being sociable and affectionate with those they know well. During World War II, the breed became nearly extinct.
Friday/ National Absurdity Day came a day early
I see tomorrow is National Absurdity Day.
All right/ whatever .. but can anything that happens tomorrow be more absurd* than today’s Rittenhouse verdict?
*ab·surd
/əbˈsərd,əbˈzərd/
adjective
wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.
“the allegations are patently absurd”
arousing amusement or derision; ridiculous.
Similar:
preposterous
ridiculous
ludicrous
farcical
laughable
risible
idiotic
stupid
foolish
silly
inane
imbecilic
insane
harebrained
unreasonable
irrational
illogical
nonsensical
pointless
senseless
outrageous
shocking
astonishing
monstrous
fantastic
incongruous
grotesque
unbelievable
incredible
unthinkable
implausible
crazy
barmy
daft
Opposite:
reasonable
sensible
The Rittenhouse trial was about the events in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August last year.
From Wikipedia:
On August 25, 2020, during the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois, fatally shot two men and wounded another during three confrontations.
Rittenhouse had armed himself with an AR-15 style rifle and said he was in Kenosha to protect a car dealership from being vandalized and to provide medical aid.
Rittenhouse had been pursued by a group that included Kenosha resident Joseph Rosenbaum, who was unarmed.
After armed Racine resident Joshua Ziminski fired a shot into the air, Rittenhouse turned towards Rosenbaum, who lunged at him and tried to take his rifle.
Rittenhouse fired four times at Rosenbaum, killing him. Rittenhouse then ran down the street while being followed by a crowd of around a dozen people.
He tripped and fell to the ground after being hit in the head, then fired twice at a 39-year-old man who jump kicked him, his shots missing both times.
While Rittenhouse was still on the ground, Silver Lake resident Anthony M. Huber struck him in the shoulder with a skateboard and attempted to take his rifle.
Rittenhouse fired at Huber once, fatally striking him in the chest. When West Allis resident Gaige Grosskreutz approached Rittenhouse while pointing a Glock pistol at him, Rittenhouse shot him once in the right arm.
Public sentiment of the shootings was polarized and media coverage both polarized and politicized.
Rittenhouse was charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, two counts of reckless endangerment, one count of unlawful possession of a firearm, and one count of curfew violation.
Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed the unlawful possession charge and the curfew violation during the trial, which began in Kenosha on November 1, 2021.
It ended on November 19 when the jury found him, by unanimous agreement, not guilty of all the remaining charges.
That does not make me feel better. A 17-year old illegally bought a legal (why? WHY?) AR-15 assault rifle. Brings it across the Illinois-Wisconsin state line to a volatile protest. Gets in trouble and kills two people with it. Innocent because he ‘defended’ himself?
[From the New York Times online]
Thursday/ The Neptune at 100
The Neptune theatre in U District is now officially 100 years old.
I took this picture last night as I made my way back to the light rail station around the corner.
Wednesday/ monitoring the pandemic
We still have 60 million unvaccinated Americans that qualify for the vaccine, which is free, and widely available.
The 7-day average for the number of new Covid-19 cases is 87,000 (16% up in one week). Dr. Fauci said today that it needs to be well under 10,000 per day, before one can declare that the pandemic is under control in the United States. Asked when that would be, he said it’s impossible to know.
Cases gave gone up in 12 states the last two weeks. (Washington State is one of them. Seattle and King County is doing better than most other counties in the state).
Tuesday/ Snoqualmie Falls
I drove out to Snoqualmie Falls today.
The falls are only some 30 miles east from Seattle as the crow flies, but a 40-minute drive.
Snoqualmie Falls has a 268-foot (82 m) drop, and is by far the most famous waterfall in Washington State. It draws a million visitors a year.
[iPhone 13 Pro picture, standard lens]
[Canon EOS 7D Mk II, telephoto lens]
[iPhone 13 Pro, Wide-angle lens]
Monday/ the rain has stopped
The heavy rains of the last few days has stopped, but there is extensive flooding in Whatcom County (in the far northwest, against the Canadian border).
Interstate 5 is also closed overnight near Bellingham due to a mudslide.
Untitled picture of Hannegan Road, between Bellingham and Lynden (posted on the website of KGMI News). Looking at Google maps, I believe that the water is from Tenmile Creek nearby, that is flooding.
P.S. I’m not sure where this motorist is coming from, but it’s very dangerous to drive into or through running water, and even more so in the dark.
Sunday/ the Glasgow Climate Pact
The 97 points of the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26) make heavy reading for a Sunday night, but I glanced through it. Man a.. and China and Russia did not even attend the conference.
The United States is at least serious again to make an effort, but as George Monbiot writes for The Guardian, it’s too late for incremental changes, and we need a critical minority to commit to the cause.
It works like this: ”There’s an aspect of human nature that is simultaneously terrible and hopeful: most people side with the status quo, whatever it may be. A critical threshold is reached when a certain proportion of the population change their views. Other people sense that the wind has changed, and tack around to catch it. There are plenty of tipping points in recent history: the remarkably swift reduction in smoking; the rapid shift, in nations such as the UK and Ireland, away from homophobia; the #MeToo movement, which, in a matter of weeks, greatly reduced the social tolerance of sexual abuse and everyday sexism.
But where does the tipping point lie? Researchers whose work was published in Science in 2018 discovered that a critical threshold was passed when the size of a committed minority reached roughly 25% of the population. At this point, social conventions suddenly flip. Between 72% and 100% of the people in the experiments swung round, destroying apparently stable social norms. As the paper notes, a large body of work suggests that “the power of small groups comes not from their authority or wealth, but from their commitment to the cause”.
As far as the hard numbers go, here is a to-the-point summary written by Adam Taylor and Harry Taylor in the Washington Post:
Where (temperature change) are we at now?
A Washington Post analysis of multiple data sets has found that Earth has already warmed more than 1 degree Celsius on average over the past century. Some places may already have seen rises of 2 °C.
Where are we headed?
In their latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that under the current scenario, the world would likely hit the 1.5 °C threshold by 2040. Under the most optimistic scenario presented in the report, global temperatures would reach 1.5 °C by the middle of the century and then drop back down as emissions were cut further, potentially avoiding some of the worst outcomes.
Under the worst scenario envisaged by the IPCC, the best estimate was that the world will likely see a rise of 4.4 °C by the end of the century — with an extreme impact on life on Earth.
[Infographic from the Washington Post]
Saturday/ a mushroom, very fly
fly3
adjective
INFORMAL
NORTH AMERICAN
stylish and fashionable.
“Where’d you get that fly shirt?”
The fly agaric mushrooms popping up in my back yard were smaller than usual, this year.
Friday/ the river in the sky
It has been a soggy week.
The rain gauge at Sea-Tac airport has already logged more than 5 inches of rain for the month of November.
There is a 12-hour break in the rain right now, but more on the way for Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Most of the rivers here are under a flood watch until Tuesday afternoon.
*Precipitable water is the depth of water in a column of the atmosphere, available for precipitation. Tropical air masses hold a lot of PW.
[Text and graph posted by National Weather Service Seattle @NWSSeattle on Twitter]
Thursday/ Veterans Day
[Original is in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, Washington DC, United States. Picture from Google Arts & Culture]
Above is the plaque awarded to Sgt. Andrew Segal.
At the top it reads “COLUMBIA GIVES TO HER SON THE ACCOLADE ON THE NEW CHIVALRY OF HUMANITY”.
The inscription below reads “Andrew N. Segal Sgt. Co. G 316th Inf. SERVED WITH HONOR IN THE WORLD WAR AND WAS WOUNDED IN ACTION”, with President Woodrow Wilson’s signature.