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[andydp]

Background: USPS does not hold mail past 30 days. You can get a service where the USPS mails you a priory mail box once a month or… do a temporary address change.

We did the address change to our son. Since we got home earlier than we programmed, I changed it on line to restart today.

I am happy to report the mail restarted today. As they say in Blighty: I am chuffed !!

[andydp]

The fun of home ownership:

Yesterday: almost three hours cutting down a wind damaged tree, chopping up branches and making logs for our friend's fire pit.  Added bonus: even though I took my Metoprolol before the fun, I still had about a two hour recovery.  Added bonus: about midnight I was awakened by a foot cramp.  Went downstairs, used massager and finally settled it about an hour later

Today:  Easy peasy:  Power washed the patio pavers, the deck and the shed.  Only took about 2.5 hours.  I'm ready for tomorrow's car show.

This evening:  Zoom cocktail party with the frat boys (and wives).  

[LFC]

The American women's soccer team is finally paid the same as the men's despite being more successful, more popular, and at this point I suspect vastly more marketable.

The stars of America’s world-beating women’s soccer team are finally going to get paid exactly the same as the U.S. men’s team after an historic agreement that sets a new standard for the sport. The deal will mean equal World Cup prize money, equal appearance fees, and equal revenue-sharing, “so identical in every respect,” said Cindy Parlow, president of U.S. Soccer. The USWNT have won FIFA women’s World Cup four times since its foundation in 1991, while lagging behind the far less successful U.S. men in pay and bonuses. NBC News said the new collective-bargaining agreement came after stars including Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan won a $24 million settlement from U.S. Soccer in February after an unequal-pay lawsuit. “For us as players, I’m just so proud of the way we stuck together, and really just kind of put our foot down,” Rapinoe told the network. “This is really a huge win for us.”

[LFC]

This is really cool. I had no idea that ancient cultures made objects out of meteorites.

In 1925 Howard Carter entered the tomb of Tutankhamun unleashing a fictional curse, a photogenic boy-Pharaoh, and a new wave of Egyptomania upon the world. As beguiling as his iconic death mask is, it was not the only striking object in his tomb. Tucked among his burial wrappings were two exquisitely made daggers: one made entirely of gold and a second with a gold hilt and a metal blade. Unusually, the iron dagger is more valuable. This is because when King Tut was buried during the 18th Dynasty (around 1352 B.C.), the smelting technologies that allowed people to heat iron had yet to be discovered. Where did the dagger come from? It was a mystery that recent research may have solved.

The blade of the dagger is made of a kind of rust-resistant iron. The beautiful, decorated sheath and hilt reveal an extraordinary level of craftsmanship. Given that contemporaries of Tutankhamun could not make iron themselves the iron must come from somewhere else. And so, for some time archaeologists have assumed that the dagger had extraterrestrial origins. For scientists what that means is that blade was constructed out of a metallic meteorite that was discovered nearby. Even before the Iron Age began, circa 1200 B.C., humans had been pounding implements out of space iron. And, thus, it was reasonable to suppose that the “dagger from outer space” was constructed out of this valuable yet rare ancient resource.

Two recent studies, which utilize the most recent non-invasive technologies, confirm that the iron used in the blade comes from a meteorite. In an article published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science a team of scholars based in Japan and Egypt argue that the meteoric blade was manufactured using low-temperature forging (<950 °C). The authorial team of the soon-to-be-released book Iron from Tutankhamun’s Tomb agree.

[andydp]

Jun 2, 2022 16:34:51 GMT LFC said:

This is really cool. I had no idea that ancient cultures made objects out of meteorites.

I don't give much credence to a movie, but one movie said Jim Bowie (Bowie knife fame) had a Bowie knife made out of a meteorite.

Meteorite fragments from the one that formed the crater in AZ, were searched for by the cowboys.  They sold the fragments to blacksmiths for extra money.  The blacksmiths then made horseshoes.

[andydp]

Dodged another bullet.  Chapter MCMDLXVII. 

We have USPS "Informed Delivery" so we can see what mail is coming here.  

We get an image of an envelope from NYS Taxation.  Their usual tax refund is in one of those tear apart envelopes.  This was in a window envelope.  In our experience, usually meant we made a mistake and owe money.

Got the envelope, opened it up.  Got a property tax refund. 

Party hardy dude !

[goldenvalley]

Microplastics found in fresh Antarctic snow.  I wonder what we are doing to ourselves with plastic. 

[andydp]

This showed up on my feed.  Pass it on so we can be reminded there are still good people out there.

John Cena makes Make-A-Wish history

The WWE wrestler-turned-Hollywood-actor has granted more than 600 wishes for Make A Wish kids.

www.newscentermaine.com/article/entertainment/john-cena-make-a-wish-wwe/521-12fe453e-20ec-4793-99ae-6ae09a4369b8?fbclid=IwAR0S2BvGc_2RX4KFLaAIOeY4hBj0ObvSve7A5Fbs_-R5RqjJOkSL6DEaaMU

[LFC]

My wife has been on the phone with AT&T for about an hour and a half trying to get our bill straight. That was after going to an AT&T store to get set up properly. Which was a follow-up to having gone to two different AT&T stores which screwed up before that. I'd say their customer service was in free fall but that means it could get much worse which I'm not sure is possible.

[LFC]

There's a serious flaw in pulse oximeters for people of color. My wife has circulatory issues in her fingers but her hands are also fairly dark, much darker than the rest of her, from spending time outside. It makes me wonder if that's a contributing factor to why they have so much trouble getting these to work on her.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the pulse oximeter something of a household item, for at least a large chunk of the public. The devices, which measure a person’s pulse and the amount of oxygen carried in their blood, inform a common benchmark for managing COVID infections: If someone’s oximeter reading indicates a 92 percent oxygen saturation or lower, they need to go to the hospital immediately.

Clinicians rely on pulse oximetry as a basic vital sign, not just for COVID. Concealed within “normal” blood oxygen measurements above 92 percent, however, are cases where a pulse oximeter’s estimate of blood oxygen levels are erroneously high. In a new study published Wednesday in the journal BMJ, researchers found that pulse oximeters failed to detect hypoxemia (i.e., oxygen deficiency) in Black patients at a rate 1.25 times higher than in white patients.

The reason is infuriatingly simple, study lead author Valeria Valbuena, a general surgery resident at Michigan Medicine, told The Daily Beast. Pulse oximeters made today rely on two wavelengths of light to measure blood oxygen levels, and melanin is one factor that affects the accuracy of their readout. In other words—these devices haven’t been designed for accurate use on people with darker skin.

“There has been information about this for as long as I have been alive, and I didn't learn any of this in medical school or residency,” Valbuena said. “It drives me insane.”

Valbuena took pulse oximeter readings at face value while treating patients for COVID at the beginning of the pandemic. But she soon noticed that Black and darker-skinned patients with pulse oximetry readings in the range considered “normal” were doing worse than white patients. She and her colleagues realized that the culprit was the oximeter, and they published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2020.

[goldenvalley]

Here's something you don't see every day...

One night last month, Britt Gerhard and her husband heard a bang on the roof of their house in San Francisco around 8 p.m. It was so loud, they thought it was an earthquake.

The couple had just put their 4-year-old daughter to bed, and Ms. Gerhard, a 38-year-old artist, was alarmed. Suddenly, shiny and silver things, each just a few inches long, began flying past the window.

They were anchovies.

“We went outside, and there were just fish everywhere, about 20 to 30 fish,” Ms. Gerhard said. “I was like, ‘OK, we’ve had a pandemic and fires and now, fish are falling from the sky.’”
In the past month, a handful of residents in the Bay Area have reported similar occurrences. Then, last week, several thousand dead anchovies washed up about 30 miles north, on the shore of the Bolinas Lagoon.

Why?

The happenings might seem bizarre, or even biblical, but scientists say they have a perfectly rational explanation: The anchovy population off the California coast is booming.

Those that washed ashore were likely chased by marine predators into the shallow lagoon waters, where they soon got stuck and ran out of oxygen, said Jarrod Santora, a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As for the fish falling from the sky, he added, “That’s just birds carrying them back to their chicks, and they can only carry so many, and some of them fall out.”


Dr. Santora said that the gulls that nest atop buildings in the city often fight one another for food, and that they might drop their fish in a process known as kleptoparasitism: “That’s when a bird beats up on another bird for its lunch.”
Anchovies are a boom-and-bust species: Their populations naturally shrink and expand, and scientists don’t know exactly why. But since a marine heat wave that ended around 2016, the population of anchovies off the California coast has exploded “by orders of magnitude,” Dr. Santora said. It has created a banquet for the birds, sea lions and whales who feast on them, he added.

[LFC]

Uvalde teachers are begging for basic supplies. Welcome to the American education system. We're the richest country in the world and we can't even run a basic public school system.

One teacher climbed out a window to escape the gunman. Another is still nursing bullet wounds. Many of them have since been told they’d find it too disturbing to even go back inside to fetch their belongings.

But after surviving the horrific mass shooting in May that killed 21 people and injured 17 more, teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas now find themselves in another unenviable—but all too common—position: asking for donations simply to buy necessary supplies for the upcoming academic year.

“I am the STEM teacher for Robb Elementary school,” one educator’s Amazon Wish List reads. “...This year, because of the tragedy in my building, I was displaced. I at the moment, do not have my class materials, and I still do not know where my class will be at my temporary school. I am creating this list to provide the best learning environment for my kids… Please help me continue giving them the education they deserve.”

In Uvalde, teachers from Robb Elementary have posted public requests on Amazon for items such as pencils, markers, desk organizers, scissors, bulletin boards, wall calendars, globes, crayons, construction paper, and books. Classes, which start again on August 15, will be held for now at other schools in the area as Robb Elementary is torn down and replaced by a memorial.

“My name is Jennieka Rodriguez and I am heading into my fourth year of teaching and we will be transitioning from Robb to Flores temporarily,” reads a second teacher’s public page. “It will be an adjustment, but we as teachers and students are flexible. Therefore, we will make the best of the situation and embrace it. Thank you in advance for your generosity and prayers.”

“I am a 2nd grade teacher at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas,” says a third. “After the tragedy, my goal this year is to focus on creating a calming and inviting atmosphere for my second graders at our new campus. Thank you so much for your generosity, these items will be well-loved by the sweetest kids!!”

One Robb Elementary teacher who lived through the shocking massacre and is now soliciting assistance with supplies, told The Daily Beast that she needs to replace some of the things that were damaged during the shooting.

[LFC]

It appears that Nikon and Canon are discontinuing development on future DSLR cameras and are, instead, going all in on mirrorless. This has been predicted for a while but I've found the speed that it happened to be pretty amazing. Because of the physics of the two camera technologies entirely new lens mounts were created and while there are adapters from the old DSLR lenses to work with mirrorless the opposite isn't true. That means all new lens development is also going to the support of the mirrorless mounts.

Nikkei Asia reports that camera maker Nikon will discontinue further development of its single-lens reflex (SLR) camera lineup, leaving the longtime professional standbys behind and shifting its efforts to smaller mirrorless models.

For its part, Nikon has denounced the report as "speculation" and stresses that the company "is continuing the production, sales, and service of digital SLR." But this rebuttal does not mention the development of future SLR cameras—the company's last new DSLR, the Nikon D6, was released in February 2020, and the company discontinued its entry-level D3500 and D5600 DSLR cameras last month. The Nikkei report indicates that Nikon's development efforts will shift to mirrorless cameras, which are smaller and more lightweight.

Early mirrorless cameras generally couldn't match the image quality or lens selection of DSLR cameras, and their electronic viewfinders lagged behind the real-time previews that a DSLR's optical viewfinder could provide. But newer mirrorless cameras have largely addressed those shortcomings while retaining their smaller sizes and lighter weights. Mirrorless cameras also usually offer superior video quality, which is useful for people who need their cameras to multitask.

Nikon's biggest competitor in the dedicated camera business, Canon, has also indicated that it is winding down its DSLR development efforts; the company announced in late 2021 that its EOS-1D X Mark III would be its last professional DSLR model. Canon will also shift focus to its mirrorless lineup, though it will continue developing and producing entry-level DSLR cameras "for the time being."

[Bact PhD]

Jul 12, 2022 18:21:04 GMT LFC said:

It appears that Nikon and Canon are discontinuing development on future DSLR cameras and are, instead, going all in on mirrorless. This has been predicted for a while but I've found the speed that it happened to be pretty amazing. Because of the physics of the two camera technologies entirely new lens mounts were created and while there are adapters from the old DSLR lenses to work with mirrorless the opposite isn't true. That means all new lens development is also going to the support of the mirrorless mounts.

Nikkei Asia reports that camera maker Nikon will discontinue further development of its single-lens reflex (SLR) camera lineup, leaving the longtime professional standbys behind and shifting its efforts to smaller mirrorless models.

For its part, Nikon has denounced the report as "speculation" and stresses that the company "is continuing the production, sales, and service of digital SLR." But this rebuttal does not mention the development of future SLR cameras—the company's last new DSLR, the Nikon D6, was released in February 2020, and the company discontinued its entry-level D3500 and D5600 DSLR cameras last month. The Nikkei report indicates that Nikon's development efforts will shift to mirrorless cameras, which are smaller and more lightweight.

Early mirrorless cameras generally couldn't match the image quality or lens selection of DSLR cameras, and their electronic viewfinders lagged behind the real-time previews that a DSLR's optical viewfinder could provide. But newer mirrorless cameras have largely addressed those shortcomings while retaining their smaller sizes and lighter weights. Mirrorless cameras also usually offer superior video quality, which is useful for people who need their cameras to multitask.

Nikon's biggest competitor in the dedicated camera business, Canon, has also indicated that it is winding down its DSLR development efforts; the company announced in late 2021 that its EOS-1D X Mark III would be its last professional DSLR model. Canon will also shift focus to its mirrorless lineup, though it will continue developing and producing entry-level DSLR cameras "for the time being."

Wellll…it looks like DSLR had a pretty good run of … how many years? I’m thinking about Canon in particular— Daddy Dear had a Canon body model from *right* before they changed to EOS…and the older lenses were incompatible with the EOS body…so I bought an entry-level Pentax instead. Sigh.

[goldenvalley]

Jul 12, 2022 21:19:17 GMT Bact PhD said:

Jul 12, 2022 18:21:04 GMT LFC said:

It appears that Nikon and Canon are discontinuing development on future DSLR cameras and are, instead, going all in on mirrorless. This has been predicted for a while but I've found the speed that it happened to be pretty amazing. Because of the physics of the two camera technologies entirely new lens mounts were created and while there are adapters from the old DSLR lenses to work with mirrorless the opposite isn't true. That means all new lens development is also going to the support of the mirrorless mounts.

Wellll…it looks like DSLR had a pretty good run of … how many years? I’m thinking about Canon in particular— Daddy Dear had a Canon body model from *right* before they changed to EOS…and the older lenses were incompatible with the EOS body…so I bought an entry-level Pentax instead. Sigh.

It is sad.  I had the original Canon EOS, learned a lot with it.  Shifted to digital Pentax DSLR. Now I rely on the lovely programming in my Sony Cybershot with a 24-200mm-equivalent ZEISS lens.  Fits in my pocket and can shoot gargoyles on Notre Dame while I'm at ground level.  I feel like I've forgotten how to use f stops, etc.  Haven't used them in years.

[LFC]

I just looked it up and Nikon released the first commercial DSLR in 1988. I shoot Nikon and I'm sure that one day I'll move on to mirrorless but a) they don't have the camera body I use in a mirrorless version yet, b) they don't have the lens I mostly use in mirrorless version yet, and c) that's gonna' be a painful chunk of change, over $5,000 when all is said and done.

[Bact PhD]

Jul 13, 2022 0:34:36 GMT goldenvalley said:

Jul 12, 2022 21:19:17 GMT Bact PhD said:

Wellll…it looks like DSLR had a pretty good run of … how many years? I’m thinking about Canon in particular— Daddy Dear had a Canon body model from *right* before they changed to EOS…and the older lenses were incompatible with the EOS body…so I bought an entry-level Pentax instead. Sigh.

It is sad.  I had the original Canon EOS, learned a lot with it.  Shifted to digital Pentax DSLR. Now I rely on the lovely programming in my Sony Cybershot with a 24-200mm-equivalent ZEISS lens.  Fits in my pocket and can shoot gargoyles on Notre Dame while I'm at ground level.  I feel like I've forgotten how to use f stops, etc.  Haven't used them in years.

Truth be told, although I took the Pentax and its gear with me on my recent trip, it never came out of the bag! i used my iPhone for snapshots of college tours and theme park, and the sole hike we went on was more spur-of-the moment and I didn't have the bag in the car.

[andydp]

First world angst: cost of the new Corvette ZO6.

I know most of you aren’t gear heads, but it’s an interesting situation. After a bit of delay and unknown factors, Chevrolet is finally going to build the new ZO6. This is an upgrade from the current Corvette Stingrays. Basically a radically different car with more HP and a racing inspired engine.

So what’s the problem ? The new ZO6 BASE price is around $120k. Making it a bit out of range for some people that thought it would be less than $100k. The moaning, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments started as soon as the list came out. Some people are finding out that they may not be able to afford a $2k/month payment. A “nicely equipped” ZO6 will likely be in the $130k range.

Personally, I scrimped and saved all of my life to get something like this. I can definitely do it and not go into debt. The way production is going I probably won’t see the car until next year. My hopes for getting it sooner are: people will drop out due to the price and… their funds may dry up if the economy goes south. Another factor, many are on more than one list. If they get one with another dealer, I move up.

It’s funny watching them groan about this until they get told: “What did you expect ? A regular Stingray nudges $100k.” Such is the dilemma facing the first world.

[andydp]

What else can you do when it too hot to be outside ?  Build the Corvette of your dreams.  

[andydp]

Jul 23, 2022 15:19:05 GMT andydp said:

What else can you do when it too hot to be outside ?  Build the Corvette of your dreams.  

Just figured mine out, based on a price list I saw: $ 140,275 (USD).  Like Will Smith says in "Miami":  "$100,000 cars, everybody got 'em"

[LFC]

The Earth appears to have a 27.5M year cycle of mass extinctions.

Massive, planet-impacting events are largely thought to happen randomly over time. However, a study of ancient geological events suggests that Earth follows a 27.5-million-year cycle, according to a recent paper published in the journal Geoscience Frontiers. This indicates that our planet has an extremely slow and steady "pulse" of catastrophic events.
See Also

Strangely, this geological activity keeps the time and the geologic events are correlated, not random. Notably, they include volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganizations, and sea level rises.

This study was made possible thanks to substantial advancements in radio-isotopic dating methods since early work was hampered by limitations. A team of scientists led by Michael Rampino, a geologist and professor in New York University’s Department of Biology, collected records of major geological events over the last 260 million years and conducted new analyses using the most recent age-dating data available.

The researchers looked at the ages of 89 well-dated major geological events over the previous 260 million years, including times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations.

To their surprise, the researchers discovered that these worldwide occurrences are usually clustered at 10 distinct time points, grouped in peaks or pulses roughly 27.5 million years apart. They saw that the most recent cluster of geological events was approximately 7 million years ago. This suggests that the next big geological event will occur in the next 20 million years -- which is definitely not a timeframe to get scared about.

These pulses, according to the researchers, might be a result of cycles of activity in the Earth's interior. Similar cycles in the Earth's orbit in space, on the other hand, might also be timing these occurrences.

"Whatever the origins of these cyclical episodes, our findings support the case for a largely periodic, coordinated, and intermittently catastrophic geologic record, which is a departure from the views held by many geologists," explained Michael Rampino, in a press release. The same authors also suggested that this 27.5-million-year mark is where mass extinctions happen, too, in a study published late last year.

[goldenvalley]

Note to us all...do not stand under a tree during a thunderstorm!

Three people, including a husband and wife from Wisconsin, have died after a lightning strike Thursday evening in Lafayette Square, just north of the White House, D.C. police said Friday.

Four people — two men and two women — were critically hurt in the strike just before 7 p.m. in the center of the park, in a grove of trees about 100 feet southeast of the statue of Andrew Jackson, fire department spokesman Vito Maggiolo said at a news briefing Thursday night...

The lightning was unleashed by a severe thunderstorm that swept across the District just before 7 p.m. The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for much of the Beltway area between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m., cautioning of the threat of damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph and quarter-size hail.

Chris Vagasky, an analyst for Vaisala, which operates a national lightning detection network, said in a message that there was a “6 stroke flash near the White House that hit the same point on the ground” at 6:49 p.m. He explained that means six individual surges of electricity hit the same point on the ground within half a second.

Lafayette Square, by the way, is where Prez Trump stood with his upside Bible during the George Floyd protests.

[goldenvalley]

Tennis great Serena Williams will "evolve" away from playing tennis. In other words she is retiring.  What a career she's had.  I had the pleasure of watching her play over 10 years ago when she had just finished winning the US Open Singles and appeared in Sacramento to play in a World Team Tennis match.  She should have been exhausted but I couldn't see it during the match.  She won of course.

[goldenvalley]

Here's something you don't see every day.  I 80 closed for hours due to tomato spill.  Tomatoes are big around here and used to be bigger.  Sacramento was the home of a Campbell soup plant that made only tomato soup.  

[pnwguy]

Aug 30, 2022 8:17:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Here's something you don't see every day.  I 80 closed for hours due to tomato spill.  Tomatoes are big around here and used to be bigger.  Sacramento was the home of a Campbell soup plant that made only tomato soup.  

What a waste.  Think of how many of them could be used at a Trump rally.