China spending millions planning Taiwan President attack.

 This site appears to be for real in Inner Mongolia:  A mock-up of the presidential palace area in Taiwan for practice attacks.  China doesn't love peace unless it's peace on its terms.  Everything else is lies.   You know Taiwan isn't going to attack China.  (linked from Baldings World twitter feed.)

Trees Feasting on Sky, Drinking the Earth.

 Have you ever wondered why you don't see pits in the ground around every big tree?  Skiers know about snow pits around trees but the big question is "Where the heck did all that wood come from?  Where are the dirt pits?"

Trees eat sky.  The wood is made of cellulose which is made of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.  The carbon doesn't come from the earth.   Carbon is consumed from the sky.  A forest doesn't go hunting for its dinner.  It eats the air that comes to it freely, sucking it in through every leaf pore, packing away the carbon from the trace carbon dioxide and leaving the oxygen part  of the CO2 to drift further.

The dinner menu according to Wikipedia : 
(Note how tiny the edible portion is, 0.04% and almost two thirds of those table crumbs is the oxygen part of the CO2.).  While some of our colleagues are frantic about excess CO2, our green brethren are full of joy at the feast and in fact crops we plant are up and forest volumes expanding. (A related article here at carbonbrief.org.)

By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide

The composition of wood: 

The chemical composition of wood varies from species to species, but is approximately 50% carbon, 42% oxygen, 6% hydrogen, 1% nitrogen, and 1% other elements .. by weight.

The formula for cellulose:

        Chains of C6H10O5

Great Barrington Declaration: 4000 health professionals call for Focused Protection and Immediate return to normal.

Called the Great Barrington Declaration, the group issued a letter saying “as infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection. “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. “Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. “Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

Reported at legalinsurrection.  Links to the credentialed signatories are at the site. (Three professors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford respectively take the lead.)
Also called out:  "Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health....Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity."

 And in summary:  "Allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection."

 

When Will Hugs Be Okay Again?

 To a first approximation, hugs will never be okay again.   To a second approximation, one generation from now.  A whole generation has been damaged by Covid fright and Wonk Wisdom From On High.  The Nomenklatura that mandated masks and magisterial shutdowns will never say they may have been wrong to ruin the livelihoods of millions or chill the beating heart of community life.  They will gradually stop highlighting their rightness, will gradually stop shaking the finger and censuring the ones who will not agree with them.  It will be largely an individual matter.  People like you and me will make choices to hug at times, to wear masks less often, to overlook their customers who chatter in happy back-slapping groups.   Civil disobedience.  People like my dear aunt in her nineties will go to her grave frightened to touch the people she loves.

This is fun: Tuba Skinny with "Jubilee Stomp", guest appearances by dog and dancing couple.

 

Masks Are Not Virus Filters.

 Input from a filter designer reported by Andrea Widburg at American Thinker:

"Surgical masks were not designed as filters and were not intended to be used as filters. Surgical masks were designed to be used by surgeons standing face down over an operating table holding a patient with an open wound. The surgeon wearing the mask would be able to talk to others in the room without discharging spittle droplets into the patient's wound. Spittle droplets are large and can cause infection." 

Then a test is described. 40 micrometer white plaster dust was puffed into a room.  A surgically-masked man went in and out briefly and was then checked.  His face behind the mask had white dust.  Virus particles are about one hundred times smaller than those dust particles.

"Surgical masks will not prevent the wearer from inhaling or exhaling viruses or bacteria. They provide absolutely no protection for either the wearer or anyone nearby. They create a very dangerous false sense of security for everyone. They also force the wearer to re-breathe carbon dioxide, which will, over time, reduce the wearer's blood oxygen level. That can become very dangerous, especially for older people."

Thagomizer on a Dinosaur

 

Wikipedia Censors Diversity

 Bitchute is an alternative publishing platform to YouTube to bypass leftist censorship.  Wikipedia gives an example of censorship.   My search on Google this morning:

If Only Singles Voted in 2016, America Would Be Blue. If only Marrieds Voted, America Would Be Red.

 Sourced here:  The first chart shows results in 2016 if only the unmarried had voted.  The second shows what only married people with children, commitments to one another and property would have voted in 2016.

In Praise of a Good Burger with Brioche Bun.

 

 "The brioche buns I served the burgers with were perfect. Maybe it's in the bible." 

Ace praises this mouthwatering morsel.  Do not omit bun.

The good old days for Fire Apocalypse were the Thirties and Forties.

Burning the forest fuel load is basic recycling and suppressing that is coming back to bite us after a long downturn since the thirties and forties.  You're in favour of recycling, right?   And you don't wan't super fires whose great heat sterilizes the forest floor, right?   A century ago, we were seeing 20 to 50 million acres burn every year, not two million.

"Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California."

Globalism: Follow the Money

 

 I like the idea of everyone getting along too.  Wearing different coloured costumes isn't diversity, DISAGREEING is diversity.  Make disagreement safe again.

Will Covid Suddenly Get Better After The Election? Administrators of America's Largest School District Think So.

 Quoting from a conference call among Los Angeles school administrators, the words of Los Angeles County Public Health Director, Barbara Ferrer:

"We don’t realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, in early November. When we look at the timing of everything, it seems to us a more realistic approach to this would be to think that we’re going to be where we are now until we are done with the election."

As John Hinkeraker of Powerline Blog comments:

"What does the election have to do with the reopening of the public schools? And what does Dr. Ferrer mean when she says that “we’re going to be where we are now until we are done with the election.” Who is the “we” who will be “done with the election”? Teachers and administrators? LA County officials? Democrats? What exactly is the relationship of these groups to the election, that they need to be “done with” it before kids can go back to school?"

Sturgis: Experts pratfallen, Infection almost zero.

 Almost half a million people went to Sturgis this year.  (460,000).  Including out-of-state totals, some 260 new infections reported.  One of them died.    

Pratfallen experts predicted a quarter million new infections costing the US health system $12, billion dollars.  Headlines continue to appear even after the event, some even claiming the 250,000 infections had actually happened.    (e.g. write up in Houston Chonicle).   Instead of a "superspreader event", came proof positive that public fellowhsip is almost totally safe now.

Related:  Surging caseloads in Britain are not showing up in hospitals and morgues.  The first time around the old and weak were dropping.  This time around it's mostly younger people  who get sniffles or are even unsympyomatic.  While crazed UK leaders are making gatherings of more than six people illegal, the storm has actually passed.

Human Nature Guarantees COVID Posturing Will Last A Long TIme

 The pandemic protocols will last for years because the standard of proof to rescind them is higher than the standard to implement them.   To implement them brought funding, new staff, microphones and a strange new respect to the medical and political nomenklatura.    The evidence to rescind the protocols leads directly to a loss of budget, loss of staff and loss of attention and respect.  This runs against the first rule of all bureaucracies.

California is a third world country: "If your government is too inept to deliver the basics"

California is now a third world country.

"There is no better sign you live in a third world country than rationed electricity.  Honestly, if your government is too inept to deliver the basics, and other than water — something else California can’t deliver — there is nothing more basic than electricity, you live in a third world country.
Sorry, you just do."

What the Mayor of Los Angeles said: 

 

 

Wolves transformed Yellowstone Park,, even changed the rivers. Watch 4 minute Trophic Cascade talk by George Monbiot

 As a warm up, try a few paragraphs from "Yellowstone: How Not To Manage A National Park".  Lying eco-elites in the Park Service were killing  predators and favouring others, making a wasteland of the park.  Reminds me of today's Covid-elites casting their policy curses on the people while believing in their own purity of heart.  

Overgrazing changed the flora. Aspen and willows were being eaten (by elk) at a furious rate and did not regenerate. Large animals and small began to disappear from the park.

In an effort to stem the loss, the park rangers began to kill predators, which they did without public knowledge. They eliminated the wolf and the cougar, and they were well on their way to getting rid of the coyote. Then a national scandal broke out. New studies showed that it wasn’t predators that were killing the other animals. It was overgrazing from too many elk. The management policy of killing predators therefore had only made things worse.  

Actually, the elk had so decimated the aspen that now, where formerly they were plentiful, now they’re quite rare. Without the aspen, the beaver, which use these trees to make dams, began to disappear from the park. Beaver were essential to the water management of Yellowstone, and without dams, the meadows dried hard in summer and still more animals vanished.

And now the video:  The "Trophic Cascade" from a small population of wolves is a real thing and so is the change in how the rivers flow and how the banks flourish.

Electoral Crime Before It Happens: What's coming after November's Vote.

 From PJmedia.com, a summary by David Solway of the assault on the Republic to come:

There is only one way that Donald Trump can lose the forthcoming election, and that is if it is stolen from him outright. A fair election would likely lead to a landslide triumph for the incumbent president, but a fair election is precisely what the hard-left Democrats appear to have no intention of permitting. The methods they will deploy to ensure a Biden victory are pretty well known to anyone who has been paying attention: vote harvesting, counting mail-in ballots (“at least once,” as Rick Moran writes), the dead vote, the multiple vote, the illegal immigrant vote, polling booth intimidation, a media blitzkrieg, Big Tech platform censorship, state pressure on the Electoral College, and anything else a felonious party can come up with. 

The Democrats are no fools. They know that, in the event of a tainted Democrat victory, Trump would be in his rights to refuse to acknowledge a corrupt and misbegotten result and would have every incentive to initiate a legal battle protesting an electoral travesty. Consequently, the Democrats have developed the strategy of accusing Trump of intended malfeasance before the election has even been held.

Best Government Diversity Strategy: Do nothing to diversify.

 Robson's article in the National Post is a must read.  

"So I would abolish all business subsidies in Alberta, not despite or because of bad policy coming from on high, but regardless of it. Every one of them substitutes the judgment of an observer or theorist for that of consumers and entrepreneurs who personally benefit from, or pay the price of, a decision.

Here I do not indulge in mockery of politicians or bureaucrats as dumb or lazy, no matter how hard some of them strive to bring that cliché to life. But I do mock the folly of attempting to improve our prosperity by placing crucial decisions about huge sums of money in the hands of those who will reap no reward for being right and pay no penalty for being wrong."

And more in this vein:

"If you want a list of things the Alberta government should just stop doing, I might need more space. The provincial government’s website lets me “Find the Alberta government services and information you need” under 15 headings from “Arts and culture” to “Parks and recreation” and I would abolish at least five entirely (including “Life events”

Link to John Robson's site. 

Why aren't there big holes around the base of every big tree?

 Because those forest giants feed on air.  The wood you fell for furniture and fire was created out of the air blowing through the leaves and needles.  C02 was harvested for its carbon. 

You'll find a hole in a tree
but not a tree in a hole.

   Water and trace elements generally come from the dirt but the thousands of pounds of fir and teak and spruce were formed from air.

So, that's why CO2 is called plant food.    It's not a vitamin, it's the number one body builder.

If you like this thought, what about how heavy is a cloud?  A cubic foot of water weighs just over 62 lbs.  So, 1 inch of rain on a square foot of pasture weighs about 6.2 lbs.   1 inch of rain on an acre is over a quarter million pounds.  Those clouds usually dump on hundred or thousands of acres and don't immediately disappear either.

Testosterone melting fat and saving lives: Major study over a dozen years

 Quite a few hundred fat older German men participated in the study over a dozen years and all the testosterone injections were done by the doctors.  No one dropped out of the study by Dr. Saad's team.  The control group gained an average of ten pounds and about a third died of all causes with any major cardiovascular events.  The injected group lost an average of over fifty pounds and less than a tenth died, mostly accientally.

After 11 years of data collection in the registry (covering the period 2004-19 with all patients having at least 11 years of data) weight (kg) decreased by a mean of 23kg in the T group (from 114kg to 89kg before adjustment, and to 87 kg after adjustment for baseline age, waist circumference, weight, fasting glucose, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides and the quality of life scale AMS). Conversely, mean weight increased by 6kg in the control group. In percentage terms, the results were similar – with the T-group losing an average of 20% bodyweight, whereas controls increased by 6%.

There was also a significant mortality difference between groups: 21 patients (7.6%) died in the T-group and 63 (32.3%) in the control group. More than a quarter of men (28%) in the control group had a heart attack, and 53 (27.2%) a stroke. There were no major cardiovascular events in the T-group. All the deaths in the T-group were related to traffic and sport accidents and post-surgical infections.

Life Form That Survives Inside Suns: A Wondrous New Idea - Bubbles on Strings.

 This is a truly original life concept: 

It all depends on how you define life. If the key criteria are the ability to encode information, and the ability for those information carriers to self-replicate faster than they disintegrate, then hypothetical monopole particles threaded on cosmic strings - cosmic necklaces - could form the basis of life inside stars, much like DNA and RNA form the basis of life on Earth.

According to the new study, cosmic necklaces could form in a sequence of symmetry-breaking phase transitions. In the first stage, monopoles emerge. In the second, strings.   This can produce a stable configuration of one monopole bead and two strings, which in turn could connect to form one-, two-, and even three-dimensional structures - much like atoms joined by chemical bonds, the researchers say.   A one-dimensional necklace would be unlikely to carry information. But more complex structures potentially could - and they could survive long enough to replicate, feeding off the fusion energy generated by the star.

Beach Creatures (Strandbeest) Video of Wind Walker Devices.

 Here's an article on artist/engineer Theo Jansen who creates these animated creatures from PVC.

 

Democrats: "My beautiful ugliness is melting!"

 

Covid Policy Killed People, lots of them, says UK National Statistics Office.

The estimates, made by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and analysts from several government departments, suggest there were 38,500 excess deaths in England connected to Covid-19 between March and 1 May.    However, the report concludes 41% of those deaths were the result of missed medical care rather than the virus itself.    Of the 16,000 deaths, the paper estimates 6,000 were as a result of a "significant reduction in A&E attendances and emergency admissions".   ..  Although the calculations found that 2,500 lives may have been saved by people adopting healthier lifestyles during lockdown, the modelling suggests there could be a further 26,000 excess deaths by March 2021 as a result of ongoing restrictions to medical care.

Lightning strikes water. Water explodes in turmoil.

 A security camera caught this one.

What's wrong with this picture 002? Biden narrow-cropped by sycophants. Biden wide-cropped by observors. Philadelphia appearance

 

Also from CDC: Actual deaths from COVID have almost zeroed out across the land. Hype and Fear remain.

 

Deaths from COVID alone a small part of the totals: CDC 6%?

 Sourced from CDC itself, August 2020.  https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Biggest ever bomb test declassified by Russia with wonderful analog control panels and complex chairs to sit upon.

 Posted by VICE, this declassified and polished footage shows the context in 1961 for the 50 megaton explosion of Tsar Bomba.  The chairs and analog control panels are wondrous things.  

.

Vigilantes or Police

 "Ultimately, the police are there to protect criminals from the populace."

 

Brennan in a Perjury Trap

 Highlights from the Red State article:  The Durham team's 8 hour interview by design was at CIA offices and that means in Virginia not Washington DC.  Any false statements under oath can be addressed by Virginia courts.  As to Brennan being "not a target", this is not something that investigators volunteer.  

That brings you to the next point that the promoted statement from Brennan isn't a statement, it's all second hand.  Brennan hasn't been shy in the past to tweet what he thinks but here he shelters behind indirection and a planted story that never quotes his actual words.   Eight hours is a long time for an interview.  As Brennan wasn't going to be a forthright source of new information, the conclusion is that facts had been verified beforehand through others and are being played back to Brennan to hear him speak the truth or to speak an actionable lie.   There's quite a bit more at the link.

 

Cracks appear in "All Good Blacks Vote Democrat" Narrative. Wonderfully done Baltimore Ad from Klacik for Congress.

 After 53 years Democrat led ruination of Baltimore, cracks in the narrative appear.  Beautiful Kimberly Klacik is running for congress and deserves to win by a landslide.  A great ad follows her in red heels into the crumbling infrastructure of Baltimore, an area mostly home to Black Americans, and calls for an end of 53 years mismangement. 

Most of the world used Hydroxychloroquine early and saved lives. One chart.

Verify but don't forget this comparison of hydroxychlorquine use..

The chart has been fiddled  since "limited early" and "widespread early" are fuzzy terms.

The 660 million in the LIMITED category had a death rate of  720/million population and the 2,000 million in the WIDESPREAD category had a death rate of 156/million population.  Who is in the LIMITED category with the extra dead bodies?  The wealthy and credentialed countries predominate including, sad to say, Canada, USA and the UK.   The source site is here.

Vitamin D: The cheapest, easiest, safest armour against COVID-19

From a recent study in the Phillipines: The Vitamin D level was found to be lowest in critical cases and highest in mild cases (of Covid-19). Most of those infected had Vitamin D deficiency.

 

For each standard-deviation increase in serum 25-hydroxy-Vitamin D, the risk of a severe outcome was reduced eightfold, and the risk of a critical outcome was reduced 20-fold.
My noble friend Lord Ridley, reporting this result in The Times a couple of days ago, wrote: “Of 49 patients with mild symptoms … only two had low levels of vitamin D; of 104 patients with critical or severe symptoms, only four did not have low levels of vitamin D.”

It's appropriate to boost your defences.  The hydroxchlorquine/quercetin option to improve zinc uptake by cells in another example.  Avoiding a battle makes more sense than just relying on good medical aid in a war zone. 

People are fleeing San Francisco. Houses for sale doubled lately.

The chart shows a half dozen cities with mild changes in houses for sale inventory.   The numbers are split into a solid line (the city proper) and a shaded area (the suburban areas).  The City of San Francisco is in a class by itself in this selection.   Unlivable for many.

Doing good

If it be in thy power to do good
Hold not back thy hand.

My variation on Proverbs 3:27
This goes farther than but includes, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". The Bible includes the thought, "Do good to those to whom it is due".

 

Making Normal Illegal.

Mandated anti-social distancing and liquor prohibition had the same mother. The germ of a good idea, untested by its competitors, was given the levers of power. What follows is natural law, here quoting Wretchard the Cat:

To a great extent the bureaucratic empires performed as designed. They used the crises to capture budget increases and inflate their power while carefully avoiding anything politically incorrect.

People will gather and drink together, party and pray together, fall in love and play bridge together.  If they are offside the law, then it is government that is on the wrong side.

"Blue-state politicians failed to learn the lessons of America’s failed experiment with liquor prohibition a century ago: Banning normal economic and social activity creates a black market."

Awesome Orange Blossom Special: O'Connor and Boston Pops

 

Washington Post Loving on Al Baghadi and Hating on Donald Trump's Brother.

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

 

New York City: Dead Man Walking UPDATE

 Policy has destroyed the heart of New York City.  Watch this two minute drive through Manhattan August 7th 2020.   Apart from St Patrick's Cathedral which has no windows, almost every store great and small is boarded up.  Dead Man Walking.   The Governor can make dinner for a few billionaires and ask them to come home.  Who in their right mind would do that until deep change has happens?

Don't know who recorded it but I downloaded this yesterday

He's single handedly wrecked Manhattan

Ghost town

"Beirut DeBlasio" without the explosion pic.twitter.com/5I48ZGcWTZ

— tadgermania (@tadgermania) August 7, 2020

UPDATE from James Altucher's blog: 

NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.
Now it’s completely dead.
“But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time
“But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.
“NYC has experienced worse.” No it hasn’t.
A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.

His whole article is a must read.  Bandwidth went from 3 megabits/second in 2008 to 20 megabits/second today meaning ZOOM and living elsewhere but working ghostly in New York city works well.  "the longer offices remain empty, the longer they will remain empty. "
"My favorite restaurant is closed for good. OK, let’s go to my second favorite. Closed for good. Third favorite, closed for good."        And this quote: "Another friend of mine works at a major investment bank as a managing director. Before the pandemic, he was at the office every day, sometimes working from 6 a.m.–10 p.m. Now he lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “As of June,” he told me, “I had never even been to Phoenix.” And then he moved there. He does all his meetings on Zoom. "

Big Deal: SOROS "Foreign Agent" support has to be declared by protest groups in America says Supreme Court.

 $200 million to AntiFa.  Support for the Standing Rock protest project against the North Dakota pipeline.  Through Tides foundation, support for many similar "Environmental" activisms.  BLM support.  This guy is not your friend.

From Mike Doran of Doranimated on August 15, the following:

Michigan Mail In Ballots Received From Beyond The Grave

 This is a medical breakthrough or simple fraud, you decide.

"Michigan clerks rejected 10,694 mailed ballots during the August 4 primary.
Of those, 846 ballots were not accepted “because the voter was dead,” the Detroit News reported."

Liquid fractures like a solid under stress (DST)

 Some fluid corn starch and water mixes can be fractured if hit with the right burst of air pressure.  Low impact produces a fluid response.  High impact jams grains against each other and results in fracturing and fingering as the stimulus connects.  The phenomenon can be turned on and off in liquids susceptible to Discontinuous Shear Thickening  (DST) and would have applications in soft objects that become hard only when needed as in bullet-resistant jackets and speed bumps.   More including a slow-mo video at the link.

KFC Compared US to UK. Portion differences!!!

The twitter link: https://twitter.com/InsiderFood/status/1292823268311924738
What is the message?

A sample picture:

Schrodinger humor

 

Biden 2012 and Biden 2020 Video Before And After Dementia Is Apparent

2012 (intelligible) vs 2020 (unintelligible) BIDEN with clips from FOX. An enfeebled mind now with dis-aggregated thoughts.

TRUMP 2020: MAKE AMERICA NORMAL AGAIN

 Bookworm thought of it at the link.  I'm just voting for it.

The News Hates Trump. UPI Evidence.

 Possibly the most number of new jobs ever added in a month in my lifetime happened this July.  UPI reports "through gritted teeth" and illustrates it with the opposite:  A picture of a very employable looking man who is unemployed and can't find a job.  You know the photo is staged.  

Why Are Democrats Running Biden?

My take:  Democrat movers and shakers "knew" Trump would win back before Covid. At the time, Biden served well as a placeholder.  It was Biden's turn and it shut out Sanders.  Then came Covid making a Democrat win possible because of unhappy voters.  The strategy shifted to hide  the increasingly senile Biden they were now saddled with and to amplify Covid dangers to keep voters unhappy and to keep Trump out of those monster rallies.

Beirut and Halifax Explosions One Hundred Years Apart

Canada has a unique tie to Beirut.  In 1917, port-side Halifax was destroyed when a munitions ship caught fire after a collision and twenty minutes later blew up.  Almost 2000 died, 9000 more were injured, 2 square kilometers of Halifax were leveled and windows broke up to 80 kilometers away.    Until Hiroshima, this was mankind's largest ever explosion.  More at CBC site.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-beirut-explosion-aid-lebanon-1.5675794

Evidence Nitroprill was main component of Beirut explosion.

Bellingcat.com has the most useful review as of August 5th and publishes a photo which they consider contemporary (a face mask present?) and located at the Beirut warehouse  (door details matched) and showing Nitroprill filling the warehouse.   Nitroprill is Ammonium Nitrate, fake brand imitating Nitropril manufactured by Orca, one "L".        Sidebar:  Follow the link to see video clip of controlled detonation of a small amount of Ammonium Nitrate in Afghanistan.

Beirut Port Crater: New Photo From Above

These from above the Beirut blast scene add key information.  A blast crater 400 feet across has replaced a specific building and the dock area around it. (Aug 4 and Aug 5 ).

Before

After

Dinosaur Bone Cancer

Diagnosis of bone cancer arrives seventy five million years too late to help this dinosaur.   More on the osteosarcoma at UPI website.

Remember:  Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

Losing your sense of smell often much better predictor of Covid than cough or fever

From Scence Daily News comes reports that temporarily losing your sense of smell is often the first sign of a Covid infection.  This is called "anosmia".  It's not the smell nerve cells but the underlying support cells that are infected.  Anosmia is not as common as cough and fever but when you have it, it's a stronger clue.  Since it shows up before the other symptoms, it gives you lead time for a doctor to consider prescribing hydroxyquinone.

A majority of COVID-19 patients experience some level of anosmia, most often temporary, according to emerging data. Analyses of electronic health records indicate that COVID-19 patients are 27 times more likely to have smell loss but are only around 2.2 to 2.6 times more likely to have fever, cough or respiratory difficulty, compared to patients without COVID-19.

Hydroxychloroquine: Worldwide Chart Shows Correlation: The More You Use It (Early), The More Of Your People Live.

This chart at a glance makes the case:  The more that Hydroxychloroquine is used in Covid treatment, the more of your people will live.   (Missing is a correction for the amount of testing done since that dramatically adjusts the number of cases identified.  See earlier post of today's date.)  There is some discussion at the link including that some places only tried this on serious cases whereas evidence suggests it's more prophylactic at early stages.

Positive Covid Stats That Don't Tell You How Much Testing Was Done are BS

US has one of the highest Covid testing rates in the world. You might think it's a No Brainer that the more people you check, the more people you'll find with a virus reaction.   You'd be wrong.

The first chart shows the US rate of Covid positives before and after correcting for the number of people actually tested.  The second is a Twitter showing how people (Krugman in this case) who hate what you stand for will mislead you.     The second chart is also scaled to amplify vertical differences.   (Sourced here)

Pineapple on Pizza

From the Babylon Bee: