a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index closed above 30,000 for the first time today. (Trump can eat his words now— the ones where he had said the stock market would crash if Biden won).
These slides are from the online Wall Street Journal. The annotations are mine.
Move over 2017’s LEGO Millennium Falcon (7,541 pieces) and LEGO Taj Mahal (5,923 pieces)!
The up-and-coming LEGO Colosseum (on sale this Friday) clocks in at a colossal 9,036 pieces, making it far-and-away the largest official Lego set ever.
And yes, it comes at a high price for that many bricks: US$ 550.
Am I tempted to go for it? Well, I would rather spend that kind of money to buy bricks like I did for my Doon Drive House creation.
Maybe I can design and build a LEGO Castle of Good Hope – the one in Cape Town, with its brick walls and five-pointed footprint. Now that would be a challenge.
I see President Obama’s memoir ‘A Promised Land’ is available at the Red Balloon toy store here on 15th Ave. Even though it runs 800 pages, it is only the first volume. The second volume is in the works, apparently.
Obama had aides that assisted him with research, but he wrote the manuscript himself, by hand, so that ‘half-baked thoughts’ could be exposed and highlighted in a first draft. (That’s certainly his prerogative — but surely phrases and sections can be very efficiently highlighted and annotated in digital text?).
I like my confections bittersweet (marmalade, dark chocolate).
My kitchen cupboard had been out of marmalade for a while, and it was time to order some online.
Looking south from Galer St & 19th Ave, tonight at 4.17 pm. Sunset was at 4.26 pm.
P.S. In the town of Utqiaġvik (UUT-kee-AH-vik, formerly known as Barrow) north of the Arctic circle, and near the northernmost point of Alaska, the sun came up on Thursday at 12.54 pm, and disappeared 34 mins later. The sun will not appear again for two months; the polar night has started there. There will still be a number of hours of so-called civil twilight, every day, though.
We now know most of the answers to the questions we had pondered in March, about the pandemic.
Looking back, some of them are really shocking. We had to forego most of the public celebrations of summer. Kids could not go to school. Even so, the country is now in worse shape than in March. We have to give up this year’s traditional Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year celebrations as well.
The patchwork of approaches to mitigate the pandemic, and the communications failures from the White House down, did little to stop the virus.
We have now crossed 250,000 fatalities here in the States, and logged some 170,000 new infections just today.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. The milestones that I look forward to are –
1. The Pfizer-Biontech/ Moderna vaccine gets its Emergency Use Authorization (by Dec. 31);
2. President-elect Biden takes office (Jan 20).
tillerman (plural tillermen)
noun
(US) A person who steers the rear wheels of a fire truck (a tiller truck) or controls its ladder
I first heard ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ by British singer-songwriter Cat Stevens from a vinyl record in 1980. A friend of mine in Stellenbosch, South Africa, played it for us in his dorm room. The record was made in 1970, and the artist changed his name to Yusuf Islam in 1977.
Fast forward 50 years from 1970, and now there is a ‘reimagined’ Tea for the Tillerman, issued on CD. There is a clarinet to accompany the piano in ‘Wild World’. In the ‘Father And Son’ remake, the young Yusuf’s voice for the son’s lyrics was left intact, but the today-Yusuf (72) sings the lines of the father— very heartfelt.
These screenshots are from a German TV commercial that has an older man from the future reminisce and talk of the ‘Corona Winter of 2020’, as if it had been a war. (Germany reverted to stricter stay-at-home measures on Monday Nov 2).
The commercial is nicely done, but has had a lukewarm reception in Germany. Someone on Twitter said that Germans like to complain about Germany.
Washington State Governor Jay Inslee was on TV this morning, announcing that indoor social gatherings are prohibited. (No, the sheriff or policemen are not going to knock on the door and arrest people, but everyone is asked to take responsibility and comply).
Indoor dining is prohibited. In-store retail is limited to 25% indoor occupancy. No wedding and funeral receptions, and so on. The restrictions are statewide and will remain in effect until Monday, Dec. 14.
– It’s still safest to stay home.
– If you go out, stay six feet apart, wear a face covering and wash your hands.
– Stay local.
– Fewer, safer interactions are crucial.
I lost what little tennis the ESPN channel offered on TV when I cancelled my cable TV subscription. So with the year-end Nitto ATP* Finals looming (it starts in London on Sunday), I had to make a plan.
I subscribed to ATP Tennis TV – very reasonable at $8 a month for streaming of year-round tournaments with no commercials. Looks like it excludes coverage of the four Grand Slam tournaments, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
*Association of Tennis Professionals. (Nitto is the main sponsor, manufacturer of high-quality car & truck tires).
With very few votes still being counted, the New York Times and other news organizations now report that Biden has won Arizona and Georgia, and Trump has won North Carolina. Biden 306 electoral college votes, Trump 232.
The pictures below are from Wednesday when it was still dry.
I walked down to the Capitol Hill public library — looking like a bank robber with my mask and woolen skull cap.
Only the lobby of the library is open right now, but that’s OK. It’s a hot spot for downloading electronic newspapers with the Pressreader app onto my iPad.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill Biden, attended a Veterans Day observance at the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
Trump & his Trumpublicans have not conceded the election.
They need to — and NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME.
Professor of History at Yale, Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder on Twitter, writes in a series of tweets:
1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional.
2/20. Democracy is undone from within rather than from without.
3/20. The occasion to undo democracy is often an election.
4/20. The mechanism to undo democracy is usually a fake emergency, a claim that internal enemies have done something outrageous.
5/20. A tyrant cares about his person, not the Republic.
6/20. A tyrant fears prosecution and poverty after leaving office.
7/20. Donald Trump faces criminal investigations and owes a billion dollars to creditors.
8/20. Donald Trump has said all along that he would ignore the vote count.
9/20. What Donald Trump is attempting to do has a name: coup d’état. Poorly organized though it might seem, it is not bound to fail. It must be made to fail.
10/20. Coups are defeated quickly or not at all. While they take place we are meant to look away, as many of us are doing. When they are complete we are powerless.
11/20. American exceptionalism prevents us from seeing basic truths.
12/20. Biden voters are wrong to see a Biden administration as inevitable. Take responsibility, Democrats.
13/20. In an authoritarian situation, the election is only round one. You don’t win by winning round one.
14/20. Peaceful demonstrations after elections are necessary for transitions away from authoritarianism, as in Poland in 1989, Serbia in 1999, or Belarus right now.
15/20. It is up to civil society, organized citizens, to defend the vote and to peacefully defend democracy.
16/20. Dance after the wedding, not before. Take responsibility, Americans.
17/20. Republicans endorsing the claim of fraud endanger the Republic.
18/20. Calling an opponent’s victory fraudulent risks assassination, as in Poland in 1922.
19/20. Creating a myth of a “stab in the back” by internal enemies, as Republicans are helping Trump to do, justifies violence against other citizens, as in interwar Germany.
20/20. Persuading your voters that the other side cheated starts a downward spiral. Your voters will expect you to cheat next time. Take responsibility, Republicans.
‘Drug companies are notorious for exaggerating and skewing their early findings in public announcements to grab attention and boost investor interest’.
– Julia Belluz writing for explain-the-news website Vox
The Pfizer-Biontech vaccine candidate BNT162b2 got a ton of press here in the US today, and boosted the stock market indexes. Is the reported 90% efficacy for real? (The Phase III trial is still a tiny population vs. the 100s of millions of humans that will get the vaccine). And does 90% mean 90% of vaccinated persons will get no symptoms? Mild symptoms? Or could vaccinated people still get quite sick, but it will cut the death rate by 90%? Will it work for young people as well as old people? We don’t any of this yet.
Then there is the matter of transporting and storing the vaccine at -80°C (-112°F) in a special freezer with dry ice, and making sure two doses, three weeks apart, are given to the patient. (This is after the patient has been convinced to get the vaccine. Will Americans trust the CDC and the FDA that say ‘get the vaccine’ after their disastrous, incoherent Covid-19 messaging, and political interference through all of 2020?).
The Pfizer-Biontech vaccine uses brand-new technology: lipid nanoparticles — fat bubbles — that surround a strip of genetic material called messenger RNA. Cells in the human body react to the messenger RNA strands by running a ribosomes over it. Ribosomes are macromolecular machines, found within all living cells, that manufacture proteins. The resulting proteins built from the mRNA strands are now the same as the ‘spike’ proteins that sit on the surface of a real SARS-CoV-2 virus. The human body detects these spike proteins, sees them as invaders and develop antibodies for the spike proteins. If the real SARS-CoV-2 virus now enters the body, the antibodies are at the ready to neutralize them and prevent them from replicating. [Graphic tweeted by Dr. Ali Nouri @AliNouriPhD on Twitter]
P.S. The leading vaccine candidates are of three kinds:
a. killed Sars-CoV-2 virus;
b. a hybrid, with spike protein bolted on to a completely different kind of live virus; and
c. messenger RNA (such as described above) that carries instructions to human cells to make spike proteins.
Behold the latest addition to my collection of Schleich animals: a reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). In North America, we call them caribou.
Some arctic regions still have huge migrating herds of reindeer. The Taimyr herd of migrating Siberian tundra reindeer (R. t. sibiricus) in Russia is the largest wild reindeer herd in the world, varying between 400,000 and 1,000,000 [from Wikipedia].
Pennsylvania goes to Biden, as does Nevada. Done.
The White House reality show is cancelled. Come January, the criminals in there will be evicted, every one of them.
The two covers from German news magazine Der Spiegel say it best (one from 2017, and one from just now).
By the time I checked the electoral map first thing this morning, Biden had overtaken Trump in Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes). His lead widened throughout the day.
As of Friday night, there were still too many uncounted ballots and provisional ballots*, though, for the decision desks at the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) to call Pennsylvania for Biden. (Same for Arizona and Nevada).
*Ballots issued to voters on the spot, but for which each voter’s eligibility to vote still needed to be checked fully.
When will we know? Maybe on Saturday, maybe only by early next week. Pennsylvania OR Arizona + Nevada will get Biden to be President-elect.
There are many ‘parlor game’ questions to entertain in the wake of Trump’s un-American, pathetic and embarrassing (for himself, for the United States) TV appearance on Thursday. He claimed that he had ‘won’ Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia; accused the vote counters of fraud and ranted about legal and illegal votes. The major networks all immediately cut away from him, refusing to be part of his lies and propaganda.
– When will Trump TV (Fox News) call Pennsylvania for Biden? They called Arizona for Biden on Tuesday night!
– Will Trump even concede that he had lost (make a speech)? If he refuses to concede, we may have a constitutional crisis on our hands. Scary.
– Will the electoral college meeting on Dec. 14, have faithless electors (that vote against the election outcome in their state)? Also scary.
– Will Trump even invite Joe Biden to the White House, per the usual protocol?
Time will tell.
It’s 1 am on the East Coast, where the Pennsylvania* mail-in votes are still being counted.
*nickname The Keystone State.
Joe Biden is about to overtake Trump on the way to claim the 20 electoral votes from Pennsylvania that he needs for the win. (The mail-in votes overwhelmingly favor Biden).
Yes, Biden can still win Arizona and Nevada (17 total electoral votes), which will also get him to 270 for the win.
