Monday OT: May 4 is World Naked Gardening Day
Prickle-Prickle, Discord 51, 3186 YOLD (Discordian)
And let us not forget 13.0.7.8.11 by the Mayan Long Count
Yes, it's World Nekkid Gardening Day and why not? One of humankind's more popular mythologies holds that the very first gardeners were buck nekkid and happily so until they felt compelled to hide themselves from some wrathful celestial peeping tom who was outraged because his plan to keep them both nekkid and iggerant unto perpetuity was ruined by some promethian spirit, portrayed as a reptile because the early proponents of this myth were deadly afraid of reptiles which they accordingly portrayed as evilness incrnate. .
On this day in history:
1415 – Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance. This led to the Hussite wars, the revolt of Bohemia and Moravia, and other good stuff.
1493 – Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation. This led to centuries of unmitigated evil and depravity, but, hey, what are Popes for if not evil and depravity
1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (Manhattan Island)
1776 – Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III, ya know, one island to another.
1886 – A bomb was (or was not) thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago,killing eight and wounding 60. The police then fired into the crowd.
1904 – The United States began construction of the Panama Canal.
1953 – Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
1959 – The 1st Annual Grammy Awards were held.
1961 – The "Freedom Riders" began a bus trip through the South.
1961 – Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather attained a new altitude record for manned balloon flight ascending to 113,740 feet.
1970 – The Ohio National Guard, opened fire on unarmed students killing four and wounding nine others.
1972 – The Don't Make A Wave Committee, officially changed its name to "Greenpeace Foundation".
1979 – Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, predictabley leading to ...
1982 – The British destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War, killing 20.
1989 – Ollie North was convicted of some crimes.
Born this day in:
1655 – Bartolomeo Cristofori, instrument maker, invented the piano
1796 – Horace Mann, educator and politician
1825 – Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist, anatomist, and academic
1827 – John Hanning Speke, soldier and explorer, I will not Speke ill of him because he ain't here.
1852 – Alice Liddell, model; you remember Alice
1905 – Al Dexter, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1917 – Edward T. Cone, pianist and composer
1923 – Ed Cassidy, drummer
1928 – Maynard Ferguson, trumpet player and bandleader
1937 – Ron Carter, bassist and educator
1937 – Dick Dale, guitarist, singer, and songwriter
1938 – Tyrone Davis, singer
1942 – Nickolas Ashford, singer, songwriter, pianist, and producer
1950 – Darryl Hunt, bass player
1951 – Colin Bass, bass player, songwriter, and producer
1951 – Jackie Jackson, singer-songwriter and dancer
1959 – Randy Travis, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
1961 – Jay Aston, singer-songwriter and dancer
1970 – Gregg Alexander, singer-songwriter and producer
1972 – Mike Dirnt, bass player and songwriter
Died this day in:
1912 – Nettie Stevens, geneticist credited with discovering sex chromosomes
1916 – Ned Daly, Irish rebel commander (Easter Rising)
1916 – Joseph Plunkett, Irish rebel and writer
1916 – Willie Pearse, Irish rebel
1987 – Paul Butterfield, singer and harmonica player
1990 – Emily Remler, guitarist
1991 – Mohammed Abdel Wahab, singer, songwriter, and mandolin player
2000 – Hendrik Casimir, physicist and academic
Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
Anti-Bullying Day (United Nations)
Bird Day (United States)
Dave Brubeck Day
International Firefighters' Day
Star Wars Day (International observance)
World Naked Gardening Day
Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies 
Bird Day
Dave Brubeck Day
Alice Liddell
Al Dexter
Ed Cassidy
Maynard Ferguson
Ron Carter
Dick Dale
Tyrone Davis
Nickolas Ashford
Colin Bass
Paul Butterfield
Emily Remler
Image is Garden of Eden
It's an open thread, so do your thing
Comments
Good morning
If you garden naked in the SE, you'll end up covered in bites...chiggers, skeeters, and ticks, but I've nothing against nudity cause we're all naked under our clothes.
Funny how hung up most Americans are about nudity. As if everyone doesn't have one set of equipment or the other.
Thanks for the OT and music today, and hope you all have a good one!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ3cUgNvT_4&list=PLl-WcJbm_KvUvbLq6YFvU_...
Sorry I couldn't find Lotus' song "Pair in a Paradise" about the garden of Eden. Guess I need to record it.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning Lookout. Can't really imagine being naked
outdoors for any length of time back thataway for the very reasons you mentioned. Thanks for the music and thanks for reading.
be well and have a great one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning, el ~~
It would be easy to garden naked where I live, so why not!!! Mr RA is in favor - he's a nudist at heart, but a modest one - what an oxymoron, lol!
I think the cold is behind us. I'm not seeing any freezing nights coming up in May. Believe me, in these parts, it could snow May 31st! I remember one year going into work after the memorial holiday and kids calling parents to come home and turn on the heat! It was June 1st! So, anything can happen, but I think we've cleared the freeze hurdle - fingers crossed.
We've got so many projects going we feel slightly overwhelmed. However, I said to Mr RA - what else do we have to do? We're home now - semi-permanently! Well, while I still have a job, I'll continue working, but he's home. I'm not sure how our university will fare in the fall. I see massive enrollment declines and employee layoffs/furloughs. As long as I can draw that paycheck, I'm staying. I still have to pay off my house.
Mr RA and I were talking about the consciousness shift we are going through and I said the key is to live presently and live in love. We then discovered that we were living VERY presently because of the projects we have going on, the things we are doing with our hands to survive another day - we ARE living very presently and not projecting into the future of our new world. We don't know what's coming so all we can do is live presently! Another thing to respect about our higher intelligence virus. I'm so grateful!
Have a great day, everyone!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Good morning RA. Our climate would be amenable to the
process for many hours per day much of the year, but I'm sure somebody would spy us doing so and call the authorities. Also, our soil tuns to heavy clay, so digging new plots and turning old ones requires shovel stomping which I am not about to even consider doing barefoot.
We are in the same boat as to projects, but it sure prevents boredom.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning!
My yard fence is covered with vines, my shrubs and trees and flower beds are thick, huge, and everywhere.
Last week, I took a nice stroll out in the yard to enjoy the flowers and butterflies, just buck ass naked, and didn't get a single bug bite.
Very few days pass that I don't sit naked on my front porch and take in the scenery before I have to don the world's most enduring punishment for women being hussies: a bra.
If this rebellious, that makes it all the better.
Hope everyone is staying healthy!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning otc. Glad to hear it and glad you can do it,
and, yes, rebelliousness makes everything better.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
morning el
et al
My first thought was, wasn’t it the fashion industry that was that wrathful peeping tom because haven’t we always been a consumer economy?
Anyway, here, we are into the long sun. Lucky to have the marine layer from time to time. Things are growing like crazy and there is more to do than I can imagine. Just finishing projects up that have been waiting years. And that’s just outside. Very satisfying.
Thanks for the ot. Take good care and have a good one.
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Good morning magi. I know what you mean,
we have a couple of plants that seem to have gone giant on us, and a long list of projects to complete, but it is all good. My wife planted some bush beans yesterday while I worked on other stuff, and, of course, carrots. Back at it today. Thanks for reading.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
And you are having
Those very bush beans for dinner, right? They grow so fast. Seriously I am watering twice a day lightly and a bit deeper in the evening and all the flower seeds are sprouting. My borage is outrageous.
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Thinking of putting the sugar peas in today
out of the pot they will be naked
unprotected
maybe a little scared
before finding their new nests
the seedlings in the basement are still shy
but the tulips outside opened up today and the
hummers and bumblers are back!
Good morning QMS. SAy hi and good luck to your
plantlings for me.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Morning EL
Well, I do like to garden. And I like to be naked if the situation warrants. But gardening naked? Sounds prickly.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I could do it if I were alone.
If I had a particular volunteer helper, things would go very wrong, very quickly, planting-wise!
LOL!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Just use a 4 to 5 foot long dibble.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I am only 5'1"...
Certainly the dibble would keep me standing upright.
Very helpful suggestion.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning Anja. Given your location I figure that is
quite likely, I mean, stay out of the cactus garden for sure and be careful how you dance round the prickly pear.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
And don’t forget the Bougainvillea
Many people don’t know this, but those damn things have very sharp thorns!
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Very familiar with those, and how easily they can get out
of control, too.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Covid-19, the Good and the Bad
The Good:
One: The first full-blown double-blind trial of remdesivir indicates that it helps. It's not a miracle wonder-cure, but it does reduce the likelihood of death, and shorten the time of recovery. Also, this particular trial seems to have been for remdesivir given to people already very sick; Gilead is hinting that another trial in progress indicates that the drug is even more effective when given "earlier".
I need to make a note here: It's not clear that "earlier" is a meaningful concept in the context of this disease. Contrary to the impression I've gotten from media reports, I'm told by people on the front-line that generally, if someone shows up at the hospital with Covid-19, they either go "to the floor" or to the "ICU" -- and if they go to the floor, they don't usually "progress" to the ICU. In other words, rather than thinking "earlier", we should maybe be thinking "when given for cases severe enough to require hospitalization, but not critical care". It's a subtle distinction; nonetheless, the hope is that we'll see remdesivir results in shorter hospital stays and less severe outcomes.
Two:
Last week, I noted in a comment that you don't need supercomputers to design a qRT-PCR test, but they might help in designing an antibody test. [EDIT: to add a link]Some guys at Lawrence-Livermore have been doing just that, and a little bit more. Lawrence-Livermore is one of the premier supercomputing sites in the US -- historically, because of their research in making nuclear bombs and in nuclear power. However, when they're not busy simulating nuclear chain reactions, they use those CPUs for other interesting stuff, including protein folding predictions, and protein-interaction predictions, and what not.
So, they've been cranking some CPUs for the last few weeks, in order to design a "neutralizing antibody" for the SARS-Cov-2 S1 "spike" protein, and they believe they've come up with some promising candidates. There are two important things to understand about such a molecule:
A. Studies during previous coronavirus outbreaks indicated that a "neutralizing antibody" serum test was much more accurate than alternate tests (whose details I'm not going to get into).
B. Theoretically, neutralizing antibodies can be used therapeutically: You could give them to a sick patient (or perhaps even prophylactically) and they would bind to the viral spike proteins. Instead of trying to extract such antibodies from the serum of those who have had the virus, we might now be able to synthesize them -- and synthesize better ones -- at scale. So, yeah, that would be cool.
The Bad
People are continuing to assert that Covid-19 is, ultimately, no "worse" than "the flu". Or maybe just a little bit worse. Unfortunately, as numbers continue to come in, they simply do not support that assertion. Reviewing the data from hard-hit places like Spain, Belgium, the UK, New York State, and New York City brings some unpleasant conclusions:
A. Contrary to what some folks would like to believe, Covid-19 deaths are almost certainly being understated, almost everywhere, and in some cases by a LOT. Like, by as much as 20% to 30% in some wealthy countries, and unknowable percentages elsewhere (though it will be come more knowable when we start seeing solid overall mortality rates for places like Ecuador and Brazil).
B. Covid-19 clearly has serious and probably very long-term downstream negative effects on the health of people who survive hospitalization.
C. The "case fatality rate" for Covid-19 in general populations seems to be in the range of 4% to 10%. However, in vulnerable populations it is much higher -- possibly as high as 50% amongst the elderly.
D. We know that historically, serum tests for specific types of coronavirus have been unreliable. It is a dangerous fantasy to take to heart the results of a handful of serum-test-based surveys that indicate that large fractions of the population have already contracted the virus, with no symptoms or symptoms so mild they didn't even consider themselves particularly ill.
E. Just to throw some example numbers out there, based on C and D:
If 40% of Covid-19 infections were asymptomatic (comparable to influenza), 15% were mildly symptomatic, 20% were seriously symptomatic (ie., you're lying at home for a few days with a high fever), and 25% were serious enough that you decided to seek medical care (the last number being also comparable to influenza, ie., about 2/5 of symptomatic cases ending up at a doctor's office);
And if the case fatality rate is only 4% (it's probably higher);
And if SARS-Cov-2 is only about as infectious as a worst-case modern flu (despite the lack of any sort of vaccine at all), resulting in maybe 60,000,000 US infections in its first "season";
Then you're looking at (60,000,000 * (25/100) * (4/100)) = 600,000 deaths -- ten times the number of flu deaths in the worst flu season of the last 60 years.
And again: That's just deaths.
And it's likely an underestimate, because SARS-Cov-2 is probably more infectious than influenza, and there's no vaccine, and the case-fatality rate is probably higher. 80 million infections and 6% case fatality would mean 1.2 million deaths.
On the cheery side, that's still less than the estimate of about 1.4 million American military deaths in all of the wars the nation has ever fought (about half of which, BTW, were caused by disease).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
And here's some stuff about which I knew/know
next to nothing ("interfering particles"?), but some of it sounds interesting anyway:
https://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/how-a-uw-madison-engineer-could-help-beat...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Hmmmm. Thanks.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Interesting - interfering particles
Thx. Will dive deeper into that.
Also, I remember reading that remdesiver can cause liver problems. Something to look into more but not right this moment.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
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Extremely interesting.
There would have to be careful consideration of possible immune response, since that causes a lot of the medical problems. The delivery into cells could be complicated although that is not something I know a lot about.
It would be interesting to see more about this.
I've been wondering how the virus keeps Dicer from going after it when the virus starts replicating. Any thoughts?
Good morning Ripped. Thanks for the info, news, update
and all.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --