Roundup time!
(1) You know that U of Penn transgender (male to female) swimmer Lia Thomas who’s been winning all the women’s meets? Of course you do. Well, move over Lia, here’s comes Iszac Henig, who beat Thomas in the 100 yard freestyle on Saturday (not the 100 meters, as some of the articles about it state).
Who is Henig? Also transgender. I initially assumed that Henig was, like Thomas, a male-to-female transgender person, but that’s not correct. It turns out that Henig was born female and is currently “transitioning” to male, but claims to have never taken male hormones despite having had what’s known as “top” surgery.
If indeed Henig has not taken male hormones, what’s going on? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some skillful female swimmer could beat Thomas, I suppose – after all, neither Thomas’ time (52.84) nor Henig’s time (49.57) are near the women’s NCAA record for the event of 45.56. But on Saturday, Thomas swam uncharacteristically slowly in this event, finishing sixth, and yet won many others.
(2) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes has tested positive for COVID. I’m going to assume that her youth and generally good health will mean a mild course. It’s a reminder, though – although we already know it full well – that vaccinated people can certainly get COVID or at least test positive for it.
(3) RIP Bob Saget. It seems as though there have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately, doesn’t it?
(4) Manhattan’s new leftist Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg can’t figure out why so many people, including the DAs of New York’s other boroughs as well as New York’s police commissioner, are so angry with him.
(5) What comes after James Webb? Maybe this.
Why do biological females compete in women’s sports?
Who do they think they are anyway?
I suppose the good news for AOC is that the Director of the CDC just admitted that over 75% of COVID deaths had at least four comorbidities. Of course the bad news is that she continues to look like an idiot. Someone should enshrine the picture of her, bare faced at the Florida bistro, as Omicron raged through NYC; and mandates were announced.
The CDC Poobah also announced a major change in the guidelines for isolation after a positive test. Whatever is politically expedient. The ambulance company that my Grandson works for as an EMT just announced that anyone who is capable of working should show up, regardless of test status or symptoms–in line with the latest edict from Gruesome Newsom.
I am accused by some close to me of not believing anything. Not true. But, anyone who is not highly skeptical, even approaching the point of cynicism, is just not paying attention.
Multiple recent cases among younger members of my family who are out in the world. Some are reporting being “pretty sick” for a few days, but no serious effects. Health care professional daughter is now insisting on N-95 masks as the only ones worth using against Omicron. She still believes in masking..
With respect to their DA, I am trying to generate some sympathy for the people of Manhattan, and other sites that have elected Dingbats (to borrow a phrase) to positions of power. Wait, that could apply to the whole country.
Neo, on #1 just mentioning that Lia Thomas is at Penn, the University of Pennsylvania, not Penn State. Yale and Penn compete in the Ivy League and wouldn’t dream of acknowledging the existence of cow college Penn State.
I suppose the good news for AOC is that the Director of the CDC just admitted that over 75% of COVID deaths had at least four comorbidities.
I’m going to wager that all four are correlates of (1) age or (2) excess weight.
(3) RIP Bob Saget. It seems as though there have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately, doesn’t it?
See Chesterton: “Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”
A futuristic proposal for a space telescope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft)
Neo–
Not to do with pencils, but a recent post you wrote not too long ago. This is why I don’t think Republicans will make much in the way of inroads in the next two elections. This woman b***ches about the Democrats, and then writes: “None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/
“I’m going to assume that her youth and generally good health will mean a mild course. ”
Well if she’s swapping wet kisses with rappers she should know she’s got a huge helping of bacteria right there. And after hot party times at drag shows who knows what viral load of STDs she’s got to contend with. I do not, of course, hope she has a mild course, but a life-changing dance with death.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-caught-maskless-again-in-miami-drag-bar/
Perhaps Lea Will Thomas wasn’t feeling well or perhaps intentionally losing allows ‘her’ to claim that females can compete with biological males.
Is there any doubt whatsoever that, if it suits her, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes won’t freely lie? So exactly how do we know that she’s actually got Covid? Could she be preending? But if she does have Covid, isn’t one possibility that she contracted it intentionally? But whether she has it or not, it allows her to claim it to be proof that De Santis is facilitating the spread of Covid. We know that pretty much anything she does is politically motivated, so that has to be a possibility. I’m skeptical that her maskless vacation in Fl was happenstance.
Reportedly, Bob Saget received his booster on Nov. 26th.
Me thinks Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg protest too much. Count on it, he knows exactly why they’re angry with him.
Regarding #1, when I read the story and the Yale swimmer’s name, Tom and Ray Magliozzi’s go to phrase of shock and surprise, “Sonja Henie’s tutu!” popped into my head.
Could she be preending?
Of course. She has a histrionic personality. Riley must have exceptional equanimity to put up with her drama.
bof,
I’m all for pure science and while pursuit of pure science doesn’t preclude the pursuit of applied science, I wish there was as much interest in developing a method to deflect or destroy asteroids on a collison course with earth.
Disaster movies aside, all of humanity’s ‘eggs’ are currently and literally in one basket. Until we develop Tech to safely live in space, we need as a simple matter of prudence, to devote some resources to that issue.
12 solar powered lasers in geosynchronous orbit could cover any approach vector. Whether that would work is less important than that we start thinking about it.
Of course such lasers could be directed at eath as well. As always any tool cn be used for ill.
Geoffrey Britain,
Seems to me there is a fair amount of interest, research, work and funding towards deflecting dangerous objects in space on a collision course with Earth.
Do I wish we reach a working approach soon? Yes. But I don’t think our current lack is from a dearth of attention or trying. We’ve really stepped up the global game at detecting threatening and potentially damaging objects. That was no easy feat and we are orders of magnitude ahead of where we were at the turn of the century.
I’m not sure your 12 laser answer is as effective as you claim, especially with current technology, but even if it is there could very well be cheaper and/or better methods to remove or reorient a threatening object. From what I’ve seen of proposals there are a lot of clever approaches.
However, detection is essential and the earlier the better. The closer an object is to Earth along its path to hit the Earth, the more Force required to nudge it off that path. A nudge of an inch, far enough in space, can put an object hundreds of thousands of miles off target by the time it reaches Earth.
I’m not sure one approach would be best for all situations. Landing a small probe and thrusting its rockets may work for most stuff we identify in regular orbits that are still several orbits away from hitting us. But there will always be a threat of something with such a large orbit that we haven’t seen it since we’ve begun monitoring, or something thrown off course by some other object’s gravity that is newly careening towards us for the first time in its history.
It’s not an easy nor inexpensive problem. That’s why I’m not unimpressed by current progress towards solving it.
But don’t worry. Leo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence are on the job:
https://youtu.be/RbIxYm3mKzI
🙂
Rufus T. Firefly,
Apparently I’ve missed the “fair amount of interest, research, work and funding towards deflecting dangerous objects in space on a collision course with Earth” because I’m unaware of any efforts in that direction. Every time a near earth collision makes the news, my impression is that it’s but days away. Would you be so kind as to point me in the right direction to view the information to which you refer?
I have no idea whether with our current tech, lasers could effectively be used in that manner. I offered it as an impetus to thinking outside the box. I fully agree that the sooner deflection is implemented the better. But as you point out, sudden surprises are possible, which is why I see the need for tech that is effective even at close range. In the meantime, we’ll have to pray that God still sees hope in us.
I was aware of the stray asteroid problem when I was a child. Practically my favorite Superman episode was “Panic in the Sky” (episode #38), December 5, 1953:
“Superman rams a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The impact causes the asteroid to now orbit the planet. However, Superman is staggered as he returns to Earth. He manages to change back to Clark Kent (apparently a reflex action) but doesn’t remember who he is. Meanwhile, the orbiting asteroid still presents hazards for Earth. Only Superman can place an explosive device that will demolish the asteroid — and no one, including Clark, knows where Superman is.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Adventures_of_Superman_episodes#Season_1_(1952%E2%80%9353)
Ahhh, to be so young again . . .
Geoffrey Britain wrote:
I’m not Rufus, but I can point you in the direction of the Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) mission launched by NASA this past November and intended to collide with and deflect the asteroid moon Dimorphos this September. It is meant to test the physics of high-speed impacts and validate computer models used to plan such contingencies. The project is being run by NASA’s Planetary Defense office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test
A follow-on mission called Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) is planned for 2025 that will, in combination with the LSST ground-based telescope under construction by the National Science Foundation (NSF), detect an estimated 90% of the Earth-crossing asteroids 140 meters in diameter or larger. (An asteroid this size would cause regional devastation if it collides with the Earth.)
Ideally NEO Surveyor would have been launched before DART (first scope out the size of the problem, then work on solutions), but DART got an earmark in Congress and thus bumped to the front of the line.
There are vague plans for follow-on missions to test other methods (such as a gravity tractor), but they probably won’t get funded until after the results from DART are in.
As for the M-to-F swimmer getting beat by a F-to-M swimmer, I’m calling “B$” on that event. It was a setup, designed to “prove” that the U-Penn swimmer doesn’t have an unfair advantage. And, in the process, build up the record of a F-to-M swimmer.
Lia Thomas threw the matchup away – deliberately, as “she” thinks this will get all those “Transphobic Haters” off “her” back.
By the way, if anyone else is interested in the topic of asteroid hunting, the most prolific asteroid hunters of the last 15 years or so are the Catalina Sky Survey and Pan-STARRS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalina_Sky_Survey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-STARRS
They are about to be joined in the search by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is scheduled for first light this October and to begin the sky survey next October.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory
It’s a topic that gets a fair amount of attention in the aerospace community, but apparently not a lot of popular press.
@Ed: “Yale and Penn compete in the Ivy League and wouldn’t dream of acknowledging the existence of cow college Penn State.”
Penn State is in the Big Ten. The Ivy League may have more social cachet. But Big Ten athletics are far superior.
Geoffrey Britain,
(thanks for the help, mkent!)
Like most everything the press covers the press almost always botches near miss asteroid stories. Yeah, a six-mile diameter rock buzzing by us at the distance of the moon’s orbit is a really close call, astronomically, but that’s still a quarter of a million miles away.
If you scroll to the “Ongoing Projects” section of this wikipedia article it lists some of the stuff done in the last 3 – 4 decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#:~:text=In%20April%202018%2C%20the%20B612%20Foundation%20reported%20%22It%27s,to%20be%20the%20biggest%20threat%20to%20the%20planet.
The “Collision Avoidance strategies” section a bit after that one lists many of the proposed solutions and progress, if any, towards prototypes.
It does seem a near mathematical certainty some chunk of something large enough to cause a massive, if not total, extinction event is bound to strike Earth in the future. It’s happened in the past. But the number of such objects has been greatly reduced since the solar system formed and it’s not an absolute certainty. But it only takes one! 😉
World governments have greatly stepped-up attention to this matter, along with funding. At the current rate we’re likely to have a reasonable solution in 30 – 100 years and detection will just keep getting better and better. That may sound like cold comfort, especially since one could hit this year, but based on the reality that we only became able to do something about it in the past decades, it’s not a bad pace.
Walter Sobchak,
As an Illini grad I’m not sure I can back up your testament to Big Ten athletics. At least Illinois’ contingent. I think our football team would struggle against Bryn Mawr!
Linda S Fox at 7:53 p.m.: That makes some sense.
mkent and Rufus,
Thank you for those links.
Linda S Fox,
That’s certainly a real possibility, even probable. If Lia/Will was feeling poorly, why not just call in sick? As being there for the team wouldn’t be a consideration. Since we know he could care less about his teammates, having demonstrated he’s willingness to participate in the destruction of women’s sports. That is, as long as he has the leading role.
Anything to be in the record books!
@ Linda > “Lia Thomas threw the matchup away – deliberately, as “she” thinks this will get all those “Transphobic Haters” off “her” back.”
Andrea Widburg agrees with you, and so do I.
Precedent and stats.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/ostensibly_a_biological_woman_beat_a_socalled_transgender_woman_at_a_swim_meet.html
Ed:
Thanks, fixed!
“…cow college…”
Hey, NO demeaning Penn State!!
(It’s right up there at the top of the pile…when it comes to athletic department corruption…)
Besides, where would we—or AOC—be without cows?
– – – – – – – –
Speaking of AOC…regarding “Could she be preending”…that last is a delightful construction, a wonderful word, a masterful malaprop—an ingenious cross between “preening” and “pretending”…
And it fits AOC to a T.
Note: In spite of the wishes of some of our most enlightened commenters, one MUST hope that for her sake stupidity is NOT a comorbidity and that she recovers Absolutely, Overall, Completely. (Otherwise, who will be left to entertain us…?)
“The fact is that even teenage boys are faster and stronger than grown women …”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYxj9fSe5yw
And she looks great!