a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Here’s a graph tweeted by Prof Peter Hotez* MD PhD @PeterHotez that illustrates what booster shots do.
*Professor in Pediatrics Molecular Virology at Texas Children’s Hospital, vaccine scientist, author and committed to combating anti-science information.
The FDA approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine on Monday.
Will that move any anti-vaxxers to get their shots? Probably not, but more organizations big and small, public and private, will now mandate that their workers get vaccinated. For me, it’s nice to know the vaccine is officially A-OK.
Will Pfizer market Comirnaty on TV? I guess we shall see. It looks more and more likely that most of us will need booster shots by year’s end.
P.S. The US and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow full direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and vaccines. Pharma companies spent $5 billion on marketing in the US in 2016. (Sigh.)
The weather people say we will stay below highs of 80°F (26°C) into next week, so the summer’s really warm weather is behind us.
A large piece of the 12″ Key lime pie I had bought at Costco ($14.99) is left over from yesterday.
I had a piece for dessert tonight (of course).
We did not take a group photo last year, and I insisted we do one this year. I set my camera up on its tripod, and had it take 8 pictures, 3 seconds apart.
Hold still! But no — the objects being photographed got a little restless towards the end of the photo shoot.
‘It’s intended to be friendly, of course, and navigate a world built for humans. We’re setting it such that at a mechanical and physical level, you can run away from it and most likely overpower it’
– Elon Musk describing the Tesla Bot
Yesterday, Tesla hosted what was billed as ‘AI’ (Artificial Intelligence) Day, in the same vein as last year’s Battery Day. The intention was/ is to draw attention to Tesla’s prowess in developing the AI that will power self-driving cars. It’s good for marketing & promoting the Tesla brand, and for attracting talented people from fields such as Machine Learning, to join Tesla.
After the presentation and just before questions, ‘one more thing’ was announced: the Tesla Bot, a ‘definitely real humanoid robot’. Tesla Bot will leverage some of the hardware and software used in Tesla’s cars, it was said. The robot will be able to do unsafe, repetitive and boring tasks, ‘essentially helping the company solve the problem of labor to some extent’.
Hmm. Is this thing for real? I think I go with the view of technology news website The Verge: ‘Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke’.
I had a lovely day here in the Northern Hemisphere. It was not too warm and not too cold.
I have now completed exactly sixty trips around the Sun, and that earned me felicitations from family and friends (which I appreciated very much).
The Thursday night social tennis group also made a fuss over me— with cupcakes and beverages and a little gift bag and balloons. There will be more festivities on Saturday, when I plan to have a few friends over.
All teachers and school personnel in Washington State — including coaches, bus drivers and volunteers — will need to be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment, under a new policy announced by Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday. The requirement applies to staff regardless of the type of school in which they work: public, charter or private.
The policy is the strictest vaccine mandate imposed to date by any state for teachers and other staff members in schools, allowing for only a few exceptions. School staff must be vaccinated by Oct. 18 or face possible dismissal.
– Dana Goldstein reporting for the New York Times
Governor Inslee also announced a mask mandate for indoor public settings for the entire state of Washington.
Masks are ‘recommended’ for crowded outdoor settings.
Oh- and booster shots are coming, for everyone. It’s only 2021.
The Puget Sound Energy (electric utility) website has a cost calculator for equivalent electric and internal combustion engine ‘ICE ‘(gasoline) vehicles.
Here are the results for a Tesla Model 3 Long-range vs. a BMW X1 sDrive2Bi. Bottom line for me: It’s no contest. The Tesla wins from Day One (zero emissions), and outright from a total cost of ownership perspective, after 4 years.
A typical gas-burning passenger car puts 4 US tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere every year: 20 pounds for every gallon of gasoline burnt. It seems impossible that a gallon of gasoline (about 6.3 pounds), could produce 20 pounds of CO2. However, most of the weight of the CO2 doesn’t come from the gasoline itself, but from the oxygen in the air that it combines with.
I finally built the LEGO Creator Safari Wildlife Tree House (31116) that I had bought in July.
The giraffe is the star of the set. I added the alligator* in the reeds, some leaves to the tree, and the color embellishments on the ground and around the flamingo.
*The alligator is one molded LEGO piece with a movable jaw and tail. Nice.
I was out of milk and eggs, and thought to go check out the new Amazon Fresh store on 23rd Avenue & Jackson St.
The technology that Amazon had built into the ‘dash carts’ works fine, and made for a smooth experience. Is it something that will save me so much time that I will come back to the store just for that? I don’t think so— but then I have the luxury of extra time in my day, and I can avoid the crowds at stores (by going at a quiet time).
The sky was still hazy today, but it will clear out tomorrow.
Bryan, Dale and I drove out to Shilshole Bay Marina after dinner, to catch the sun as it was setting.
Kandahar, in particular, is a huge prize for the Taliban. It is the economic hub of southern Afghanistan, and it was the birthplace of the insurgency in the 1990s, serving as the militants’ capital for part of their five-year rule. By seizing the city, the Taliban can effectively proclaim a return to power, if not complete control.
– By Christina Goldbaum, Sharif Hassan and Fahim Abed writing in the New York Times
Lester Holt spent 10 minutes on NBC’s Nightly News on the Taliban’s unsettling takeover of Afghanistan.
Retired US Army general David H. Petraeus and Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2010 & 2011, said on the radio today, that pulling out is a mistake, and that US forces need to go back in. It’s too late for that. Twenty years of effort and tens of billions of dollars of aid, to train an Afghan army, succumbed to the local corruption and internal strife there. The Biden* Administration has made it clear that the US troops are leaving, no matter what.
*Yes: Joe Biden is still the President of the United States. The delusional My Pillow guy had long touted today as ‘Reinstatement Day’ (which would see Trump put back in office).
The high was 94°F (34°C) here in the city today, and the air quality was not the best (wildfire smoke from Canada and eastern Washington). Bellingham to the north of Seattle recorded 100°F (38°C), a new record for any month.
Even so, early evening found me on the Lower Woodland Park tennis courts for the regular Thursday night social tennis. I made sure I had extra water and a banana to keep me going.
Update Fri 8/13: Friday’s highs here in Seattle reached 96°F (35.5°C). It is going cool down on Saturday and Sunday, thankfully.
I discovered footage of myself on my car’s sentry video log. The ‘suspicious motion’ behind my car is me :). I am retrieving a tennis ball that had bounced out of the tennis courts by Lower Woodland Park, and landed behind my car.
When suspicious motion near the car is detected, the front & rear and left & right cameras begin recording. A lot of entries are generated simply by people parking their cars next to yours, and getting in or out of their cars.
If a significant threat is detected— a break-in or a collision— the alarm system will also activate, and the will be owner notified via the smartphone app that an incident has occurred.
I had groceries on the back seat of the car when I pulled into my garage 
tonight. I stepped out of the car, took the groceries out, closed the door, and put the charging cable in.
As I stepped into the house, the car reported ‘The rear driver side door has been left open’ on my phone. Well, it was open for a minute or two but I’m sure I closed it, I thought. I popped my head into the open garage door. Yup, it’s closed.
But 16 mins later the message came again, and I went and took a closer look.
Sure enough: the car was right. The door was ostensibly ‘closed’, but not latched properly (firmly). So to the car, the door was open.
I took the No 10 bus to downtown to go to the dentist this morning.
Here are a few pictures.
Well, that was that.
The Games held in a pandemic is now over. It was getting a little too much for me: the commercial-filled coverage from NBC with the taa-ta-ra-tataa music, and my Twitter feed filled up with stories and superlatives (best ever, most medals).
A little rain fell into the gauge at Seattle-Tacoma airport yesterday, ending the 51-day dry streak there.
There were pleasant, cool temperatures around the city today (69 °F/ 21 °C). A little bit of rain may fall later tonight and in the morning.
Summer is definitely not over, though: we are going to get into the mid-90s by Thursday, and even have to deal with wildfire smoke.
Look at all the red on this map of the USA. We are averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day, for the first time since February.
If Florida and Louisiana were countries, they would have been No 1 and No 2 in the world for Covid prevalence.
Barely a month after Washington State ‘reopened’, King County is now again red, as well (threat level: High).
P.S. So now that my rant against the unvaccinated is out of the way, here is advice from Adam Grant (organizational psychologist) @AdamMGrant on Twitter, when talking to vaccine-hesitant people:
How not to talk about vaccines:
Only half the population is vaccinated, and anti-vaxxers are to blame. Vaccines are safe and effective.
A better option:
Over 160 million Americans are fully vaccinated. Yes, vaccines have risks, but COVID poses greater risk.