Thursday, January 30, 2020

A Quick Run Around the Web (1/30/020)


  • Wuhan coronavirus news:
  • "13 Japanese show symptoms after evacuation from virus-hit Wuhan"--The Mainichi. The article relates that "[t]wo Japanese men were diagnosed with pneumonia Wednesday while 11 others are showing symptoms including a fever and cough after they were evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the center of a deadly virus outbreak, authorities said."
  • One of the things that you may notice if you see graphs of the number of deaths versus the number of infected is that the number of dead has barely crept up. There may be a nefarious reason for this: Zero Hedge reports that Chinese authorities have been covering up the number of dead. Although some deaths have probably been misdiagnosed as having occurred due to other causes, Zero Hedge indicates that "The East Asia Correspondent for DW cited reports in a tweet claiming that health officials have been secretly moving some bodies directly from the hospital to the crematorium" without the dead being identified or included in official tallies.
  • Some other disasters in the news:
           The worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the bugs swarm into the East African nation from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter-century, destroying farmland and threatening an already vulnerable region with devastating hunger.
           “Even cows are wondering what is happening,” said Ndunda Makanga, who spent hours Friday trying to chase the locusts from his farm. “Corn, sorghum, cowpeas, they have eaten everything.”
             When rains arrive in March and bring new vegetation across much of the region, the numbers of the fast-breeding locusts could grow 500 times before drier weather in June curbs their spread, the United Nations says.
          A map in this article shows the progress of the swarm and it looks like they came from Oman and Yemen over to East Africa. (See also this Al Jazeera article and this article from Zero Hedge).
                  Authorities in the Kazakh capital declared a state of emergency after a winter storm pummeled the city with strong winds and heavy snowfall. Transportation links to and from Nur-Sultan were cut on January 27, while all schools in the capital were closed.
                   A spokesman for Nur-Sultan International Airport, Zhenis Akhmetzhanov, told reporters that all flights had been postponed on January 27 for safety reasons.
                      Dozens of highways across the Central Asian country were closed due to winter storms.
                      Last Wednesday, there were flash floods in Melbourne, while just 125 miles (200km) away, brutal fires tore through remote communities.

                      The next day rain came to Sydney – the first significant rainfall the city and its scorched surrounds have seen all summer. ...
                * * *
                     Bushfire ash and sludge was washed into rivers and waterways and is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of native fish. The fires had stripped the land of brush and undergrowth, meaning that when the rain fell it led to flash flooding. At one animal park north of Sydney the floods swelled the alligator enclosure to such a degree that zookeepers had to fight alligators off the banks, pushing them back into the water with brooms.

                      And, just when people had recovered from the whiplash of the rain, came the next thing: mighty dust storms that charged across the flat, brown horizons of drought-stricken land in western New South Wales.

                      That same day, in Melbourne, the hail arrived; huge chunks of ice, the size of golf balls, pounded the land. When the hailstorms reached Canberra the next day, the ice shredded trees, shattered windscreens and tragically – adding to the biodiversity loss – killed hundreds of bats. In the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, where 80% of the world heritage forest has been destroyed by fire this season, there were storms that led to two people being hospitalised after they were injured by lightning.

                       On Thursday, people awoke to find the Yarra River, which snakes through the centre of Melbourne, had turned brown. Brown rain fell across the city, filling bird baths and swimming pools with dirty sludge, a result of the rain collecting dust from the dust storms.

                      As the week closes out, fires still rage across the east of the country. People continue to choke on suffocating particle-laden air. A heatwave building in Western Australia looks likely to spread to the burning east coast from next week causing concerns that conditions will worsen.

                     The devastating, unthinkable summer continues, and the end is not yet in sight.
                See also these articles from Al Jazeera and ABC News.
                • I've actually been disappointed with Shot Show news this year, but here are some products that look interesting:
                • "Serbu Firearms DIABOLUS Rifle"--The Firearm Blog. This is an improved version of the AR-18 system designed to use aluminum cast upper and lower receivers.
                • For shooters that might have hand problems or be missing fingers: "Blackwater’s Iron Horse Thumb-Triggered AR Pattern Rifles"--The Truth About Guns. The thumb is used to actuate a trigger button at the back of the pistol grip. Of course, this requires different internals and a different lower than your standard AR.
                • "Armaspec – Rifter Linear Muzzle Brake"--The Firearm Blog. The purpose of the linear brakes are to direct sound forward of the firearm. This one uses some milled channels to redirect gases thus reducing recoil and reducing the noise perceived by the shooter or those to the sides of the shooter.
                Moose are generally wimps. For most hunters in the Lower 48 traveling to hunt moose, their go-to deer rifle is a fine choice. Yes, moose are enormous, powerful animals—but they also have large and powerful circulatory and respiratory systems. A well-placed bullet through these vitals will kill a moose quickly. So, I tend to go with a rifle that is comfortable to shoot and very accurate. There may not be a lot of flash to this list, but I doubt there's a collection of cartridges that has put more moose meat in the freezer than this one.
                With that in mind, the list includes not only the magnum rounds, but also .30-06, .308 Win., .270 Win., 6.5 Creedmoor, and .243 Win., and he notes one hunter he knew that had taken multiple moose with .30-30.
                • "A Guide to Precision-Rifle Shooting on a Budget"--American Rifleman. The author notes the expense of rifles and glass for precision writing, but notes that "we can all agree that none of us learned to drive in a Lamborghini, right?" By budget, he means both scope and rifle costing under $1,000 (although you may have to buy used).


                "Astros to Cosmos | Space Scales"--Suspicious Observers (5 min.)
                An overview of terminology to assist with an upcoming series of videos.

                • The rapists behind the Rotherham sex trafficking of underage white girls were Pakistani so, of course, the Muslims try to recast themselves as the victims: "Rotherham Muslims launch ‘guardian’ group after far-right threats"--Guardian. Per the article, "Members of the Muslim community in Rotherham are launching a neighbourhood protection group with more than 100 volunteers after three mosques were targeted by the far-right." How were these Mosques "targeted" you ask. Well, it was truly horrible and you may be scarred for life by the account:
                The far-right group Britain First has carried out what it described as a “major operation” in the South Yorkshire town over the past week, distributing leaflets and visiting mosques, taxi ranks and hotels to warn about grooming of young girls for sex.
                Anonymous Conservative is right when he describes migrants as r-selected rabbits.
                        Nigel Farage was cut off as he delivered his final speech in the European Parliament this afternoon because he and his Brexit Party MEPs started to wave Union flags.
                         Parliament vice-president Mairead McGuinness switched off Mr Farage's microphone as he was finishing his address as she told the party's MEPs to 'put your flags away, you are leaving'. 
                           The cheering Brexit Party contingent then proceeded to get up and walk out of the chamber.
                             The stormy clash took place as MEPs rubberstamped the Brexit divorce deal - the final hurdle which needed to be cleared for the UK to leave the EU at 11pm on January 31. 
                                Senior Member of European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt has made the extraordinary assessment that the lessons to be learnt from Brexit is for Brussels to push for ‘More Europe’ and to take away even more democracy from nation-states.
                                  Speaking ahead of the European Parliament’s vote on the UK-EU withdrawal deal on Wednesday, Mr Verhofstadt rejected the notion that the lesson to be learnt from Brexit is to devolve power back to the nation-state but to give more power to Brussels.
                                   The former Belgian prime minister said: “This lesson, dear colleagues, is not to undo the union, as some are arguing. The lesson is to deeply reform the union. To make a real union in the coming years.
                                     “That means a union without opt-ins, opt-outs, rebates, exceptions, and above all without unanimity rules and veto rights.”



                                4 comments:

                                1. X-ray: OUCH . . . ouch ouch ouch. I had another comment on the articles, but my brain locked up on the x-ray.

                                  Compassion will be the big thing that allows the virus to spread. r vs. K. Again.

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                                  1. The doctors may be able to pin or screw the pieces together, but that person will be in pain the rest of his/her life.

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                                2. Interesting article on the increased vulnerability of Asian men to the Wuhan Coronavirus. Although, given that the outbreak recently occurred in...and is localized to East Central China, it would at this stage be hard to conclude otherwise. IMHO we don't yet have a large enough, nor a representative sample to draw such inferences. That said...have there ever been historically documented cases of a pathogen having a "preference" for a specific ethnic group? The tinfoil hatter in me wants to think that this virus was genetically engineered to target a specific group.

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                                  Replies
                                  1. There are cases where populations had greater or lesser immunity, the most well known example being the destruction of many native American populations in the first century following contact with the Old World.

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