MOS – JOJO’s Bizarre Adventure
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who correctly describes this as “Short, energetic, and very brassy.”
Year: 2021
A data-based broad look at the entire COVID epidemic, one year later
The Scream by Edvard Munch
One year ago I posted an essay entitled COVID-19: the unwarranted panic. At that time we had just begun a “15-day-lockdown” to slow the spread of the virus, a lockdown that has ended up lasting a year with literally no signs of ending, even though vaccines for the coronavirus are now available and are being administrated widely to millions.
In that essay I reviewed four early science studies that provided some solid initial data about the coronavirus, all of which strongly suggested that it was not the plague many government healthy officials at that time were proclaiming it to be. Instead, these studies showed that it was only a threat to the elderly sick, that it was relatively harmless to a young population, and that the death rate was low, likely well below 1% and possibly very comparable to the flu.
These data strongly suggested to me that lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and restrictions on the freedom of the healthy and young were all a bad idea. Better to follow the traditional response to past such epidemics in which you quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable (the elderly), and allow everyone else to go about their lives as normal.
We did not do this, however. Instead, as a society we chose in the past year to do the exact oppose, imposing strict lockdowns, mandating social distancing and mask use everywhere, while quarantining the healthy. We did this based on the worst scenarios and models put forth by health officials, who firmly believed COVID-19 was far worse than any past epidemic, and required a new, radical, and much harsher response.
I now want to ask, one year later: Whose conclusions about the seriousness of COVID-19 were more accurate? Was it just another type of flu, though maybe somewhat worse, as I posited, or was it the deadly pestilence predicted by the world’s health authorities?
» Read more
Today’s blacklisted Americans: Anyone who worked for Trump
A document no one in Washington believes in.
Blacklists are back and the Democrats got ’em: It is now very clear that anyone who worked for President Trump during his term in office is now being blackballed by the political class in DC and in the media.
[R]esumes are gathering dust, book manuscripts are being rejected, and corporations are being threatened with boycotts if they hire members of Trump’s team. “They are being blocked everywhere,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union.
It’s “natural for the party that lost the White House, just as we saw after the Bush and Obama administrations, to spend a few months in the wilderness, so to speak,” added Brian Walsh, a partner at PLUS Communications.
But this time feels different, and many critics have said it is deserved. “They took a wrecking ball to the ‘swamp.’ Why would the ‘swamp’ want them back?” a top K Street lobbyist asked. [emphasis mine]
I find the highlighted quote especially ironic, in that I think Trump’s biggest failure is that he did not take a wrecking ball to the “swamp,” never truly cleaned house, even when it was patently obvious — especially in agencies like the FBI and the Justice Department — that a housecleaning was desperately needed.
» Read more
Twisted and tilted bedrock in Martian crater
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, is only a small example of the strangely tilted and twisted strata in the central peak region of 38-mile-wide Martin Crater on Mars. The full image shows more.
The picture was taken on January 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section I’ve cropped out shows a series of stratified strata that are are not only significantly tipped from the horizontal, but have also been bent and deformed.
The crater itself is located about 260 miles south of Valles Marineris, as shown on the overview map below.
» Read more
March 23, 2021 Zimmerman/Pratt podcast
My second 35-minute podcast from last week with Robert Pratt is now available here. Unlike the previous podcast, which focused on the modern blacklisting and censorship efforts of the Democratic Party and its Marxist allies, this new podcast was wholly focused on space and science.
Perseverance dumps debris shield in preparation for Ingenuity deployment
Click for full image.
On March 21st the Perseverance engineering team released the debris shield that had been attached to the bottom of the rover to protect the Ingenuity helicopter during its journey to Mars, and thus began the deployment process for releasing the helicopter itself.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that debris shield on the ground. The rover will next drive away from this spot and find the flat area where the helicopter will be placed on the ground for its April flight.
Yutu-2 & Chang’e-4 complete 28th lunar day on Moon
The new colonial movement: China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 and its lander Chang’e-4 have successfully completed their 28th lunar day on the far side of the Moon, and have been placed in hibernation for the long lunar night.
According to this article from China’s state-run press, Yutu-2 has now traveled 683 meters (2,241 feet) since its landing. In the past two lunar days the rover has traveled about 180 feet, continuing its journey to the northwest away from Chang’e-5. Their pace continues to be about 80 to 100 feet per lunar day.
Rocket Lab completes second launch in 2021
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully launched six smallsats today from New Zealand using its Electron rocket.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
8 SpaceX
6 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
Including all its other launches, the U.S. leads China 12 to 6 in the national rankings.
Dave Matthews Band – Ants Marching
An evening pause: Performed live prior to the album’s release in 2007.
Nice way to start the week, with some energy.
Hat Chris McLaughlin.
On the radio
For those who wish to listen to me and even call in to ask a question or comment or disagree with something I have said, I will be on The Space Show with David Livingston. tomorrow night for probably two hours, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific).
As always, your calls will be welcome. I don’t bite, though as John Batchelor says, I can get grumpy.
In addition, I will be on WCCO-AM in Minnesota to talk space stuff on the next night, March 31st, for forty minutes, beginning at 10:00 pm (Central).
A visit to Cydonia on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The Cydonia region on Mars, located at around 30-40 degrees north latitude in the northern lowland plains just beyond the transition zone up to the southern cratered highlands, is well known to many on Earth because it was here that the Viking-1 orbiter took a picture of a mesa that, because of the sun angle, made its shadows resemble a face. Thus was born the “Face on Mars” that consumed the shallow-minded among us — and thus the culture, media, and Hollywood — absurdly for decades, until Mars Global Surveyor took the first high resolution image and proved without doubt what was really obvious from the beginning, that it was nothing more than a mesa.
Cydonia however remains a very intriguing region of Mars, mostly because it is home to a lot of strange geology, as shown by the photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here. Taken on January 16, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows some of that strange and inexplicable geology.
While Cydonia is inside that 30-60 degree latitude band where MRO has imaged numerous glacial-type features, I do not know if many such features have been found there. Except for the pits and depressions in the photo’s lower right — which suggest decay in an ice sheet — little else at first glance in the picture clearly invokes any of the obvious glacial features one comes to expect. There appear to be what might be lobate flows in the image’s center going from the west to the east, but if they are glacial, they are so decayed to as leave much doubt.
The overview image below shows where Cydonia is on Mars, and helps explain partly what is found here.
» Read more
Today’s blacklisted Americans: The oppressed fight back at Boise State
A typical slide from a critical race theory class.
They’re coming for you next: Forced to attend a bigoted critical race education class at Boise State University where a white student was apparently treated like scum, it appears other students there taped the session and forwarded it to the Idaho state legislature.
The results were somewhat gratifying.
[A]dministrators have abruptly suspended all of the school’s general education classes called “University Foundations 200: Foundations of Ethics and Diversity.”
“We have been made aware of a series of concerns, culminating in allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values,” states a March 16 memo from President Marlene Tromp to the campus community. “This is never acceptable; it is not what Boise State stands for; and we will not tolerate this behavior,” Tromp stated. “…Given the weight of cumulative concerns, we have determined that, effective immediately, we must suspend UF 200.” She goes on to note that academic leadership will determine next steps “to ensure that everyone is still able to complete the course.”
Tromp’s decision came around the same time as Idaho lawmakers passed a state education budget that takes away about $409,000 from Boise State University because of its social justice curriculum, Idaho Ed News reports. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words provide us the real reason Boise administrators suspended these race lectures. » Read more