Union Gap landslide slowing down
Measurements taken in August show the slab is moving less than 2 inches each week. In 2020, the slab was sliding 2 to 3 inches each week. The slab is imagined continuing sliding south into a nearby quarry.
Info: shpr.fyi/uniongapslide
Over-65 booster recommended
The FDA said last month that people 65 years and older and others at high risk of severe COVID-19 should seek a booster shot.
Info: shpr.fyi/boosterover65
Mix, rather than match, COVID-19 booster dose
The study also shows mixing different kinds of vaccines appears to spur the body to make higher levels of virus-blocking antibodies than they would have gotten by boosting with a dose of the vaccine the person already had.
If regulators endorse the study findings, it should make getting a COVID-19 booster as easy as getting a yearly influenza vaccine.
Info: shpr.fyi/mixbooster
Nobel Prize in Physics goes to climate predictors
Climate modelers deserved the physics award because they’ve been proved right again and again.
Climate prediction requires a mix of complexity and emergent behavior that shows up in many other systems involving aggregate human behavior, as well as in areas of physics, chemistry, and biology. This year’s Nobel in Physics is split evenly between two aspects of studying these systems. Half of the award goes to Giorgio Parisi, who helped find methods for understanding complex systems that can be applied more generally. And the other half is split between two climate modelers, Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, who helped develop systems that we now use to understand how the climate’s behavior emerges from the complicated interaction of its components and influences—including the growing influence of greenhouse gases.
This award couldn’t be timelier, as the most recent IPCC report, based on state-of-the-art climate models, states unequivocally that humans are already influencing many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.
Info: shpr.fyi/nobelclimate
China tests nuclear & U.S. capable missile
China startled the U.S. military last week by successfully testing a hypersonic mach-five nuclear-capable orbit-to-cruise missile capable of hitting anywhere in U.S. The cruise stage missile flies low, often below radar, and so fast that current defenses couldn’t see and identify it quickly enough to attack it.
Info: shpr.fyi/chinesemissile
Goose Prairie solar project planned near Moxee
OneEnergy’s plans call for building an 80-megawatt solar energy collection system with battery storage on 625 acres about 8 miles east of Moxee. The site is near State Route 24, Den Beste Road and Desmarais Road.
Info: shpr.fyi/moxeesolar
China threatens US with nuclear attack if we defend Taiwan
China’s large ongoing military invasion exercises across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan has invasion-ready forces 110-miles from Taiwan’s shores. China last week threatened the U.S. with nuclear attack with ICBMs if it tries to defend Taiwan.
Info: shpr.fyi/taiwanthreat
New Yorkers still banging pots and pans for healthcare workers
They yelled their thanks to healthcare workers and first responders for saving a city ravaged by COVID-19.
But as the pandemic wore on, and many succumbed to crisis fatigue, the whoops and hollers for the healthcare workers slowed, replaced by the usual noise of honking cars and pedestrians.
But 18 months later, some of the faithful are still saluting these heroes.
This nightly ritual has continued in neighborhoods throughout the city, including nightly renditions of “God Bless America” on the Upper West Side and noise-making minutes in Hell’s Kitchen, a New York City neighborhood that bore much of the brunt of the pandemic.
Info: shpr.fyi/stillbanging
Johnson & Johnson booster recommended
A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on Friday voted 19-0 to authorize second doses of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
Info: shpr.fyi/jjbooster
Canadian had meteorite land on her pillow.
Ruth Hamilton, a resident of Golden, British Columbia, was asleep in her bed on the night of Oct. 3 when she was jolted awake by a fist-size 2.8-lb meteorite plummeting through the roof and landing right next to her head.
Info: shpr.fyi/meteoritepillow
Most COVID-19 survivors experience long-haul illness
Most COVID survivors have functional mobility impairments, pulmonary abnormalities or mental health disorders for six months or more, often disabling them for work.
Info: shpr.fyi/covidlong
China sends 150 planes into Taiwan airspace.
Over four dozen Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone on Monday, Oct. 4, in the latest round in a weekend of provocation that has seen nearly 150 sorties since Friday– as Chinese state media issued threats to Australia.
Info: shpr.fyi/china150planes
Have your kids learn Chinese?
Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s first chief software officer who resigned in protest against the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, said the failure to respond was putting the United States at risk.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he told the newspaper. “Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal.”
He says China has already won the artificial intelligence battle and is likely to dominate also:
• cyberdefense
• synthetic biology
• genetics
• media narratives
• geopolitics
Chinese companies, Chaillan said, were obliged to work with their government and were making “massive investment” in AI without regard to ethics.
Among AI’s capabilities are creation of fake but very real-appearing videos with real people saying untruths that they would never say. China is already using such methods to convince world populations that COVID was developed and loosed by the U.S. military.
Info: shpr.fyi/chinawin
Dave Bunting, Oct. 18, 2021
See these columns on my blog: daverant.com