BENNU Tour an asteroid, see every rock, just before US probe touches down.

 This 3D tour of the BENNU asteroid (the size of a football field) inspires awe.  The detail is exquisite

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Getting older: A few leaves still to fall

 Below each maple is the summer's CV,  reddened leaves.  Here's the narrative to date, clustered on the hard ground, lovely little bits that we remember of the tree's life this summer past.  And there's some more tale to be told and ready to fall. But not a lot.  

Seasons over. Looking good

 That's my life today.  Much is past and accomplishments of not much note are still pretty to look at.  What's left to live looks lovely too.  For some trees most is already on the ground.  Even a single scarlet and leather leaf twiddling down in the breeze is worth appreciating.

Last leaf is worth appreciating too

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.