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Bosco:
Russia Russia Russia
Back then we were brain washed to be afraid of Russia.
Funny, after serving my 6 month sentance in a Siberian coal mine in 1983, seeing that they had guns but no butter, I left being no longer afraid of the Russian bear!
I think I have finally figured out why so many US politicians are against Trump cutting US funding to the WHO.
It is because so many of these politicians must be getting kickbacks from the WHO.
The same goes for any kind of foreign spending by the US government.
The name of the game is kickbacks! The more money sent outside the US, the bigger the kickbacks!
Send the taxpayer’s money out of the US to be laundered, then return the cleaned money back to the US!
The Ukraine is one of their favorite laundry mats!
An irrelevant fact.
Coyotes can run 10 miles per hour faster than road runners. That means they lied to us when we were growing up!
Bosco:
Obviously the movie studio didn’t understand “convexity”!
After it flopped, their balance sheet sure did!
Raul:
Everybody wearing masks (and gloves too) is too simple a solution for our leaders to grasp or get
It is sort of funny that engineers (those trained to apply science) seem to have a better grasp of risks than most scientists.
As an engineer I get convexity. Maybe that is because by training we often wonder what could possibly go wrong (Murphy’s Law) with our assumptions in the real world!
In the people mobility graph (graft?) above, Canada doesn’t exactly win honors for staying put! Sure Canada is a big space so social distancing should be easy, but the trouble is we are all crowded into a few big cities!
In Toronto, I would say about 2/3rds are wearing masks (plus many wearing gloves) now up sharply from a several weeks ago.
Social distancing outdoors seems to be understood by all. Indoors not so much!
Whenever I do break my quarantine, rarely, people give you a wide burth, evoking internal feelings that maybe they don’t like you, or maybe you just lit a big barn smell!
On the subject of writing.
When it comes to my ability to write, the only encouragement I ever received, was from my Father!
“Don’t worry, you will make a good engineer!”
I failed English and Spelling every year in grade school. Teachers always voted thumbs down on me to repeat! No doubt being hard of hearing played a role in all of this.
My Father always twisted their thumbs to the upwards position! Hard to argue with a man whom you know is your intellectual superior! My Dad was quiet, but you knew as soon as you met him!
I had many good English teachers who tried their level best to pound the English language into my skull! They would have all cringed mightly, if they had known my future!
One I remember, in grade 10, was Mr. Black! A man who knew English inside and out! I was terrified of him!
Well not of him personally but rather of his great knowledge of the English language! I used to sit in the last row slumped down low in the chair, in he hopes he wouldn’t ask me what the hell a certain word’s function in the English language was!Was it a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb and all their related cousins?
“Please don’t ask me Mr. Black because I don’t know and besides I am already having a really bad day, so please don’t make it worst by asking me a question for which I don’t have the answer to!”
Somehow I managed to survive and escape the terrifying Mr. Black!
Then in my last semester, I had a technical writer professor. He said if we didn’t know what a noun or verb was, he couldn’t help us, but if we wanted to know how to glue words into sentences and paragraphs, he could help. I am still not sure exactly what he did to me but he did do something terrible to me!
Then I got a job as a service engineer with a Milwaukee mining equipment manufacturer. Being out in the field, the company demanded weekly job reports so they could keep track of what the hell we were doing!
You got to remember this was in the good olde days of snail mail and teletype machines. In other words, in the days before instantaneous communications!
God, I so hated writing these weekly reports! Because I didn’t want to embarrass myself, I spent hours and hours writing these reports which then got read by my many higher ups! Especially if there were problems. There were always problems!
I wrote weekly job reports for eight long bloody years before they finally kicked me to the curb and put me out of my misery! That was the end of my world wide mining career!
I returned to Toronto and started working for a plastics injection molding manufacturer.
I was testing new injection molding machines on the shop floor. The operational sequence of the molding machines was displayed on red LED readouts. It was very tricky to relate the readout numbers to what step the molding machines was performing. So I made and drew up a simplified diagram on a single sheet of paper, to corealate the two functions. I gave copies to the other testers.
One day a guy shows up with a copy of my diagram! He wanted to know if I made it! Next thing I know I am a technical writer, writing machine and robot manuals!
You can see where this is heading! Not good!
A guy who can’t write, writing complex technical manuals! The only thing I know about writing, is a picture is worth a 1,000 words! Imagine earning a living writing! Manuals translated into every major language in the world!
I swear to God, that God has had it in for me!
Because I can’t write, he has been punishing me ever since, by making me write on the chalk board, a million times, I will learn to write even if it kills me!
Honestly, I know I still can’t write very well! I can only glue a string of words together.
P.S. And another thing! I still can’t spell worth beans! Spell check usually can’t figure out what word I am trying spell. And dam Auto-correct! I don’t need your help to mess things up! I do very nicely all on my own, thank-you!
Today was the day of risk, breaking quarantine, by going out for food and meds.
Toronto grocery shelves are slowly being restocked while many shelves remain completely bare. Milk is still in short supply as dairy farmers continue to dump milk.
In Ontario, common meds like blood pressure, cholesterol, etc are now only being issued in 30 day amounts rather than the usual 90 day amounts. Clearly there are now shortages of common meds.
That means for my wife and I, more frequent calls to renew prescriptions and much more frequent outings just to obtain meds. About 8 times a year before now 24 times a year now. That entails more exposure to virus risks mandated by government!
Noticed about 2/3rds of people shopping are now wearing masks and gloves. Most grocery store employees are not wearing masks. Outside line ups are getting longer too. Cashier lines ups are few, long, and slow too. Shopping takes 2 to 3 times longer, again increasing exposure risks again mandated by government.
So yes, I can see some people’s argument that governments create more problems than they solve. Governments are setting the stage for their power grab to collapse of its own weight. Just like in the end communism always collapses.
At some point people will say “enough is enough”! That time period however can be many generations! For Russia, it took about 3 to 4 generations.
John Day:
I see in the state of Maine, the governor has banned the sale of seeds to state residents! Sad!
Glad you don’t garden there!
Bosco:
I purposely left out the conspiracy angles. The science was more interesting!
Even your source can’t rule out nature or a lab. But obviously the labs helped speed things up!
After working in communist Russia, in 1983 for six months, the very poor adherence to rules is a feature not a bug of communism! I saw this repeatedly! Yes, yes, of course, I broke even more of their stupid rules!
Nothing like selling dead lab animals for a little extra cash! If they couldn’t manage that, then they got themselves infected! The final result is the same!
Oh, yes, I knew all about how the black market in Russia worked and who was running them! First hand experience! Of course, who else but the KGB! How in hell do you think Russia had an instant mafia once the Berlin Wall fell?
UpstateNYer:
Our cottage neighbors are from Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. We are located on Tar Island, about 5 miles down river from where interstate 81 crosses over into Ontario.
My son works for GE Energy so he has been to GE in Schenectady, northwest of Albany, several times for wind turbine training, including this past winter.
No my problem is I built my boathouse based upon 50 year high water records not 100 year high water records! (Pre internet days!)
Just for an engineering safety factor, I added another foot in height. Well guess what! The100 year record water levels is about 16 inches higher! So my boathouse work shop floor gets flooded with about 4 inches of water!
With my luck, I am being hit with 3 once in a 100 years events in short order! 2017, 2019, and now 2020! The previous record water level in Lake Ontario was about 1918! The last 50 year event happened in the 1950s.
All 5 great lakes are very high at the moment. Lake Erie never froze over this winter so you probably got more snow than usual?
The killer for Lake Ontario water levels is the spring April/May run off from the Ottawa river basin flooding Montreal. As long as the Ottawa River spikes, the water folks have no choice but to hold back the water from Lake Ontario.
It is not like these water folks are mean, it is just the roll of dice Mother Nature throws at them! One of the water folk’s Canadian Secretaries, his wife spent time on Tar Island so he is very familiar with our island!
During the winter the water board is limited to how much water they can drain from Lake Ontario by the ice conditions on Lake St. Lawrence where the power dam is located. If ice forms solidly over Lake St. Lawrence, then they can slowly drain more water out of Lake Ontario.
If however Lake St. Lawrence does not freeze over solidly, like this past winter, then they are limited to how much water they can drain by the pressure put on the ice boom strung across the river, or the boom will break, allowing broken ice into the power station. They did try a few times!
My current worry is whether my neighbors will be allowed to cross the border this spring due to the virus lockdown. Supposedly we Ontarians are not to go to the cottage either but then our glorious PM is setting a great example by going to his cottage on weekends after telling us we can’t!
Yesterday I read an interesting article (at bottom) on the coronavirus from the aspect of it’s rapid “Gain of Function”.
As I understood the article, “Gain of Function” refers to the ability of a virus to gain a new function it did not have before.
This “Gain of Function” does occur naturally in nature but usually occurs slowly over time.
Going from memory, and trying to describe what I read in layman’s terms, and my probably leaving out a few critical facts and steps, the article looks at the coronavirus and how it seems to have made multiple “Gains of Functions” almost all at once.
These gains in functions have been so rapid that a large gap exists betweening the coronavirus and any other known coronaviruses. So basically the coronavirus sits on its own branch in the virus tree as if coming out of nowhere.
Some examples of “Gain of Function” of the coronavirus are; strongly latching onto ACE2 receptors in lungs, ability to virally overload entered host cells, loss of taste and smell, appearance of altitude sickness symptoms, ability to hijack white blood cells to get into the body’s other cells particularly kidney and brain cells, and ability to reactivate.
The coronavirus’ dual abilities to attach strongly to ACE2 receptors and then virally overload it’s host cell triggers an inmune system overreaction. This process allows the coronavirus to hijack white blood cells to then get enhance entry into the body’s other cells. It is this ability that creates a number of unique symptoms never seen before by doctors.
By using white blood cells, the coronavirus can easily enter the body’s nervous system. Once there, it can whreck havoc throughout the body, not to mention permamently damage a patient’s nervous system.
The coronavirus can cause the loss of taste and smell. No other virus has this ability. This is a result of coronavirus getting into the body’s nervous system and affecting the taste and smell nerves.
The coronavirus is able to trigger the symptoms of altitude sickness by tricking the body’s sensors monitoring the oxygen levels in the blood stream. Doctors see patients gasping for air while showing near normal oxygen levels in their blood. Doctors also see sudden respiratory arrests in patients.
Because the coronavirus was cultured in kidney and brain cells, it is especially capable of attacking and damaging the body’s kidney and brain cells.
Another unique ability of the coronavirus is it’s ability to reactivate after a patient has seemingly recovered.
This long heavy going article was posted on ZH April 12th by Harvard to the Big House titled “What “The Expanse” Tells Us About The COVID-19 Pandemic And Gain’-of-Function” Research”
UpstateNYer:
On a subject a little closer to home.
Are the rising waters on Lake Ontario going to impact you? Looks like a second year of record breaking water levels is rapidly shaping up. Ottawa River is rising rapidly flooding Montreal harbor so the water folks are holding back Lake Ontario water.
That also means the St. Lawrence River will flood it’s banks again too. Maybe you live along the river not the lake? Our family cottage is in the 1000 Islands so we will be affected the 3rd time in 4 years.
The natives are restless! The sky is falling! The world is coming to an end!
Situation perfectly normal!
My igloo still hasn’t melted yet!
Spring is now being delayed until early May!
Where is Al Gore when you need him!
Dr. D:
The “powers to be” are requesting that you be reprogrammed since you are not buying their propaganda!
I am currently trying to find my old Fortran lV programming guides. I will also need a tray of new paper index cards, an index card hole puncher machine, a card reader station, and an IBM 360 computer.
Due to the coronavirus, I may have a lot of trouble securing all of this equipment to reprogram you.
So for now, I think you are safe! Carry on!
Carol:
Biofuels are green. Being green means putting in more energy than you get out.
Bio-gas means your car’s mileage is reduced requiring you to burn more bio-gas to get to where you wanted to go. This is very green.
All of this is why Greta can afford to travel first class while my daughter cannot.
Zerosum:
Look at it this way. The Saudis are just trying to limit the spread of the virus in Yemen. /s
Dr.D.Rich:
I think the simplified translated version is;
they placed “One Way” signs on the entrances and “Do Not Enter” signs at the exit of each aisle!
So now you can’t get burned in a 2 way aisle! (apologizes to Gordon Lightfoot).
UpstateNYer:
Did you know rising Lake Ontario is threatening to flood our shorelines again?
You are likely south of Lake Ontario or St. Lawrence River while I am north of you!
Own a boat?
Zerosum:
Getting the garden ready is real!
Now regarding numbers! Numbers mean whatever you want them to mean!
Example:. Company books. Up until about 1970 or so, my Father said the only way to tell if a company was cash flow positive, was to check and see if the company had actually contributed in full to it’s employees pension plan!
After 1970, due to legal changes over who acutally owned company pension plans, companies all got out of the pension plan business in a hurry! (I remember my Father telling me in real time!)
From that point onwards to this very day, there remains no sure way to determine if a company is actually cash flow positive!
This proves that numbers are whatever you believe they mean!
My Father always said, “The only honest politician, is a broke one!”
Speaking of ALMO!
ALMO being broke, is promising the Mexican poor an “unoxthodox” coronavirus plan to help create jobs by maintaning government austerity and not spending more money and increasing government debt levels!
Wow! If he can stick to his guns, not increasing the current debt levels means higher growth rates in the future! What an unselfish socialist thing to do!
Naaaaw, it won’t happen! The rich want to rob Mexicans one more time!
Poor Boris Johnson is finding acquiring herd immunity isn’t so easy!
But on the sunny side, Bill Gates will give him a Covid Pass!
A Life Time Warranty, however costs $9.99!
About rich Old Joe.
This is pure elder abuse! Please stop it!
Stick him in an old folks home so he can catch the virus!
This is the only humane option left for the DNC’s death panel!
Modelling:
There are various kinds of modelling.
Some models strutting down a fashion walkway selling an image of beauty are surreal in their thinness.
Engineering models applying known science are limited by the real world.
But scientists modelling unknown science, now there is a model you can’t believe in!
My parents said know:
Speaking of Boston, 101 years ago 21people drowned in the Great Boston Molasses Flood!
That was one hell of a sticky mess!
John Day:
Some big green thumb! And to think you somehow manage to have 3 gardens growing at the same time!
I am not sure if we could quite fit your garden into Moki’s cage even though she has a rather large walk-in cage (12′ x 12′ plus 4′ x 12′ plus 6′ x 12′ solarium) for such a small rabbit! I seriously doubt Moki could possibly eat even 1% of all those greens!
But I do know, being an European rabbit, she would dig a burrow in your garden! (North American rabbits, contrary to Bugs Bunny, do not dig burrows!)
John Day:
I envy you your garden! Up here in Toronto, I have to wait another month or more before I can plant anything!
My daughter’s little Dutch pet rabbit, Moki, all of 2 pounds, wants to come down and nibble away at your garden! She loves her greens!
It is a rare government that is ever prepared for the future.
There are always people that are aware of the future and try to warn everybody. Naturally, nobody listens!
Somehow people manage to muddle through just about everything thrown at them, even if it isn’t pretty.
The US and Canada will somehow get through this but there will be casualties along the way.
The little people will as usual pay the price, not the rich.
Raul’s little managers will see to that!
Zerosum:
Speaking of bears, my brother had a friend who was out hunting deer in northern Ontario. He was walking along a dirt road. Suddenly out of nowhere a small black bear attacked him! The bear hit him before he knew what had hit him!
This guy was over 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.
He said that scrawny little black bear tossed him around like he was a beach ball, as he was curled up to protect his face with his hands.
Then for whatever reason the bear stopped and left. The guy could not get over how strong that little bear was, despite weighting less than he did!
My Father got treed twice, by mother black bears. Once in northern Saskatchewan and Labrador.
In Saskatchewan, he was walking in thick bush when her heard a bear. He managed to start climbing a small tree before the mother bear caught up to him. The tree was only tall and strong enough to support my Father and not the bear. The mother bear was able to reach and claw my Father’s boots. Then the bear left but my Father was afraid to climb down because of the thick bush. He couldn’t tell if the bear had really left or was waiting for him to come down! He stayed up in the tree until a co-worker came looking for him, several hours later!
In Labrador, my Father first heard then saw a mother bear with her two cubs. Again he barely made it up another scrawny spruce tree where the mother bear did a nice custom job on his work boots! This time he could see the mother bear leave so his stay up in the tree was relatively short! This being his second encounter, it didn’t faze him as much. He was by then a pro!
By the way, I have no idea how those poor black bears trying to make a living in northern Labrador, survive! There is nothing to eat up there! They are the smallest scrawny bears you will ever see! Winters last about 9 months up there!
Zerosum:
The bear story anology is what I keep telling my daughter, just finishing her first year of business at Ryerson, in Toronto!
She only needs to be smarter than the dumbest students in her class to pass!
Dr. D. Rich:
I can tell you there is one guy, though alive, who won’t be adding his genes to the gene pool!
This guy and a buddy were out hunting deer. When it got dark the guy discovered to his horror that his truck’s headlights did not work! After fumbling around he found that the headlight’s fuse had blown but he didn’t have a spare fuse.
Since he couldn’t drive in the dark without headlights, he was getting desperate. Suddenly he realized that a bullet fitted into the fuse holder, located under the dash, perfectly!
Sure enough the headlight’s started working again! So he and his hunting buddy started driving back home. Just before they got home there was a loud bang!
Dr. D. Rich, I don’t have to tell you what vital part got shot off!
Neoh:
Yes, the government isn’t being nice because they love us!
Maybe they are more worried that their tax slaves won’t be laboring to create enough wealth for them to steal to keep themselves in the style they have become accustomed to!
After all the government rescue packages are just more blatant emergency transfers of wealth from us to them!
It is all about their survival not ours!
Dr. D. Rich:
You forgot to include all those clueless people going for a joy ride in a self driving Tesla!
Their gene’s are no longer available to future generations!
Carol:. Yes some families would want to hide such things that happened in the past! I however, am not that way. Curiosity drives me!
The fact is most of my relatives came to the states or Upper Canada on one way tickets! None left due to happy circumstances!
Let’s face it crossing the Atlantic in a sailing ship was a very risky thing to do back then! Much more risky than the virus we face!
Mostly English, I do have some Irish in me! My Irish side (Mother’s side) has two vague stories. One came to Quebec City after the British replaced tenant farmers with sheep! The other Irish came over due to being on the losing side of some kind of Irish vs Irish clan struggle. The reason the stories only go back as far as Quebec City, is likely due to the fact that they probably couldn’t read or write. Anything recorded would have only been written by local priests in long lost family Bible’s. So all I have are the oral stories past down from gen to gen.
I do know my great grandfather (on my Father’s side) left England in the late 1890s to avoid having his young son being put to work on a grinding machine which was basically a death sentence (like black lung) in those days! Also the very bad air pollution from coal too!
The Bishop part of the family comes from my Father’s Mother’s side of the family. They were all Bishops being loyal to the crown, fled to Upper Canada (Ontario) as Empire Loyalists settling around Prescott – Brockville area. (That is why we have a family cottage in the 1,000 Islands!)
One of the Bishops was a personal doctor to a British general, so obviously they had to leave! There were a lot of doctors amoung the Bishops. On my Father’s side that tradition of doctors (3) still continues.
I certainly wish I knew more about my family’s history but only on my Father’s English side can we trace the family back to early 1600. Even that family tree part took a retired engineering relative in England over 20 years to discover. He had to visit many church records and cemeteries all over England as nothing is digital.
Interestingly, even the spelling of the surname was often spelled differently amoung a given family’s siblings! Probably this was a result of different priests spelling the surname as it sounded to them!
Neoh:
Maybe my use of guard was a bit extreme! He wasn’t carrying a gun!
Actually the Walmart guard was very helpful!
He is the one who pointed out the available of the wipes to clean the shopping cart handles!
I think as far as wanting to go back to being as close to normal, we are on the same page!
We both want an end to the lockdown!
But if everyone does social distancing, wears a mask and gloves, then with a few other practical changes, we can get back to the normal business of life!
Will it stop the spread of the virus? No! But it will slow it down so we can better manage it!
Hopefully by then the medical community will be more robust along with easy access to testing for the virus as well as testing to see if you had the virus too!
Carol:
Your comment about people being “burned at the stake” reminded me of my great, great, great, … relative Bridget Bishop being the first witch to be hung on June 10, 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts!
Obviously she “objected” to charges of witchcraft to no avail!
Yesterday, I ventured out to the local Walmart to get groceries.
My how things have changed in just one week! Slightly reduced store hours.
First there is 2 meter spaced lineup to get into the store controlled by a security guard. One out, then one in. Metal handrails guide the line. More people are starting to wear masks and gloves. I wore my winter gloves but no mask. I guess I will have to sew some!
Once inside, the security guard tells you to take a hand wipe to clean your grocery cart.
Inside the store, on the floor of each grocery lane entrance, are home-made one way arrows to direct the flow of grocery carts. Grocery lane exits are marked with home-made “Do Not Enter” signs on the floor.
I must admit myself and other shoppers were initially having a little difficulty catching onto this new one way grocery cart flow system!
The 2 meter spacing part everyone seems to have no difficulty with.
Red lines on the floor plus pylons with ropes channel and space carts waiting at checkout cashiers.
Cashiers have home-made plastic shields to protect the cashier’s who now wear plastic gloves.
Overall, I have to give my Walmart store credit for making these simple but effective changes.
Less shelves are empty now than before. I got about a 90% of what I wanted.
If this is what the new normal looks like, I can live with it. The other option, I don’t want to think about it.
I agree that until a country gets serious about everybody wearing a mask, the virus will continue it’s exponential spread.
It is not about the mask preventing you from getting the virus.
It is all about the mask preventing an infected person from spreading the virus to other people!
That is why the business of life in Taiwan can continue as before.
Also wearing gloves in public helps reduce the spread too.
I think once our governments finally figure this out, then our lives can go back to normal.
Yesterday, I saw a news report that the province of Manitoba is allowing former nurses to return to work as nurses. They will wave the government’s registration fees. They may temporarily wave re- certifcation requirements. All of these are government restrictions placed upon already trained nurses being able to work.
Whomever thought of this idea should be given some credit.
However getting former nurses to go back to nursing will still be difficult. Most of these former nurses have carved out new careers away from nursing and will be reluctant to return.
Why do most nurses leave? Constantly Rotating shifts.
Somewhere I once read that for every practicing nurse, there are 2 nurses no longer practicing. That was certainly true in my family as both my Mother and sister were no longer working as nurses.
