Commenter anat linked to a very nice visual display of the latest sunrise times across the US if Daylight Savings Times becomes the fixed time all year long, as the legislation passed the US Senate decrees. The House of Representative has not agreed as yet.
As long time readers know, I grumble about that biannual ritual in the US of changing the clocks forward by one hour in the spring (when it becomes Daylight Savings Time) and then one hour back in the fall (when it reverts to Standard Time). We just made the change this past Sunday and I went around changing the eight clocks that are not connected to the internet. You would think that I would have been on top of this issue but I was taken completely by surprise to learn that the US Senate yesterday unanimously passed a resolution making DST permanent
That does not mean that the deed is done. The House of Representatives has not passed the measure and Joe Biden has not stated that he will sign the bill into law.
[Read more…]
I am a materialist in the sense that I think that all phenomena arise due to material entities interacting according to laws of nature. I have seen no reason to think that anything supernatural or mystical is needed to be invoked to explain anything. I have sometimes been asked by people, usually the religious seeking to challenge my atheistic viewpoint that the material world is all there is and does not allow for any gods, as to how I can explain love. They seem to think that love is an immaterial quantity and that believing in its existence requires the same leap of faith as believing in a god. I reply that love is an emotion that is created by the workings of my brain that releases certain substances that cause me to have that feeling I point out that when I die, any love that I feel for anyone or anything will die with me. It does not survive the death of my brain.
[Read more…]
There’s quite a lot going on under the surface.
David Leonhardt provides an informative graph about the changing pattern of deaths between those counties where Trump won (which he labels ‘red covid’ counties) and those where Biden won (which he labels ‘blue covid countis)
I read the tragic news of his death at the young age of 62 in Rwanda. Farmer was one of the truly inspiring people. A highly trained doctor who came from humble beginnings, his mission in life was to bring high quality health care to some of the poorest nations in the world, starting with Haiti. A strong believer in the need for global justice and equity, along with Ophelia Dahl (who happens to be the daughter of children’s author Roald Dahl and Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal), he co-founded the organization Partners in Health which I have supported for many years. They sent me an email announcing the sad news and saying that his death was due to an ‘acute cardiac event’, which I understand to be a heart attack. The Miami Herald has a report.
Dr. Paul Farmer, the renowned infectious disease specialist who devoted his life to fighting deadly epidemics and spent the last several years working on four continents delivering health care to millions, has died in Rwanda, his organization Partners in Health confirmed. He was 62.
A Florida native who lived in Miami with his wife and children when he wasn’t traveling or teaching at Harvard University, Farmer was co-founder of Partners In Health, a nonprofit health care organization based in Boston with a sister organization, Zanmi Lasante, in Haiti.
The recipient of many awards, one of his most recent being the 2020 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and its $1 million cash award, Farmer told the Miami Herald that his personal mission was to change the way humans think of infectious disease and address social inequalities in health care delivery.
[Read more…]
NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) are the new rage, riding the wave of the fascination with blockchain and cryptocurrency, two other things that do not seem to deter people from getting on the bandwagon even though they may have just the haziest idea of what they are. Naturally this leads to crooks moving in, selling NFTs of items that do not even belong to them.
When Lois van Baarle, a Dutch artist, scoured the biggest NFT marketplace for her name late last year, she found more than 100 pieces of her art for sale. None of them had been put up by her.
Van Baarle is a popular digital artist, with millions of followers on social media. She’s one of a growing number of artists who have had online images of their art stolen, minted as unique digital assets on a blockchain, and offered up to trade in cryptocurrency on the NFT platform OpenSea.
[Read more…]
I am somewhat baffled by the protests that have been talking place in the city center in Ottawa and the bridge to Detroit in Windsor Ontario where truckers and people in RVs and have been blocking streets for weeks now. The police finally moved in to clear the Windsor-Detroit bridge which opened today and it looks like they are beginning to clear the Ottawa streets too. Meanwhile prime minister Justin Trudeau has invoked emergency powers to be used of necessary.
So who are these protestors? Some of them are protesting the covid-19 restrictions that are still in place but others seem to be anti-vaxxers whom one would think would be a fairly insignificant presence since Canada has one of the highest covid-19 vaccination rates in the world, around 90%. But it seems like these people are similar to the anti-vaxxers in the US, very loud and angry though small in numbers and consist of the usual suspects that we find here.
[Read more…]
We need to celebrate the successes on the infectious diseases front and there has been a huge one that has been overshadowed by the focus on covid-19.There are many diseases that are water borne and create immense suffering to people who do not have access to clean water. One of those diseases is caused by the guinea worm. The good news is that tremendous strides have been made in combating it.
While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage around the world, another disease could be on its way out. Only 14 cases of infection with Guinea worm – a parasite that causes painful skin lesions – were reported in humans in 2021.
This is the lowest tally ever for an infection that, as recently as the 1980s, was found in more than 20 countries and infected 3.5 million people a year (see ‘On the way out’) – however, a remaining reservoir for the parasite in animals means eradication could be a while off, if indeed it is possible, say some scientists.
“It’s pretty amazing,” says Adam Weiss, director of the Guinea Worm Eradication Program of the Carter Center, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The centre announced the numbers in late January. “Fourteen people on a planet of almost eight billion. It’s mind-bending to think about.”
There has emerged a rough rule of thumb for face masks that says that when it comes to reducing the chances of transmission of the covid-19 virus, N95 masks are the best, with paper surgical masks next, and cloth masks the least effective, compared to wearing no mask at all Now the CDC has come out with a study that provides a more quantitative comparison.
