DaveRant

210915SciDig

Space Junk and Solar Flares’ Threats

University of Warwick (UK) is looking at ways to protect our critical satellites that provide our communication, navigation and weather from space junk and solar flares.

New ways of tackling the threat that space junk in our skies poses are being explored by Uni- versity of Warwick scientists, as they pioneer new research that could help the UK fulfill its am- bition to become a responsible spacefaring nation.

Scientists at a new Center for Space Domain Awareness are to focus attention on threats to the technology filling the skies above our heads in anticipation of a huge expansion in the number of satellites that provide vital services such as communications, navigation and defense.

The University of Warwick is launching the Center for Space Domain Awareness to create a critical mass of research that tackles the growing threats to technology in Earth orbit.

From the space junk that could collide with orbiting satellites, to the solar winds that could inter- fere with their electronics, the researchers at the new Center will pioneer new work to understand and characterize the near-Earth environment to support scientific, commercial, governmental and military applications.

Info: shpr.fyi/spacejunk

We are always very vulnerable to a once-per- century solar storm

The sun is always showering Earth with a mist of magnetized particles known as solar wind. For the most part, our planet’s magnetic shield blocks this electric wind from doing any real damage to Earth or its inhabitants, instead sending those particles skittering toward the poles and leaving behind a pleasant aurorain their wake.

But sometimes, every century or so, that wind escalates into a full-blown solar storm — and, as new research presented at the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference warns, the re- sults of such extreme space weather could be catastrophic to our modern way of life.

In short, a severe solar storm could plunge the world into an “internet apocalypse” that keeps large swaths of society including food and fuel delivery offline for weeks or months at a time.

Info: shpr.fyi/solarstorm

World Security Items:

• Al Qaeda leader al-Zawa- hiri appeared in a Sept. 11 video commemorating 20 years since the 9-11 attacks. He was thought to have been killed months ago.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelendsky on Sept. 12 warned Russia of a ‘full scale war’ indirectly while speaking at the Yalta security forum in Kyiv.

• UK in March, 2021, decided to increase their nuclear warheads from 160 to 240, the first increase by a major western nation since the cold war.

• Japanese military on Sept. 13 spotted a Chinese submarine North of Okinawa in Japan’s con- tiguous zone.

• Both Erbil and Harir airports in Iraq, which have US air bases, have reportedly been attacked by two explosive drones.

• North Korea carried out successful tests of a new long- range nuclear-capable cruise missile over the weekend.

• China is using social media to convince the world that COVID was originated in the US by U.S. military.

• Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke for the first time since February last week with reports of the call from both mentioning “confrontation.”

• Havana Syndrome is the worst challenge ever for US military intelligence. Agents’ fear of it is obstructing US foreign diplomacy and intelligence.

• A third of Washington State Patrol officers polled say they will accept termination instead of vaccination.

Will COVID end?

Almost 90 percent of immunologists, infectious-disease researchers, and virologists working on the coronavirus surveyed by Nature in February concluded the virus that causes COVID-19 was “likely” to become endemic, permanently infecting us.

This does not mean we are destined for a grim future of continually crowded hospitals, quar- antines, restrictions, social-distancing, masks, and avoiding crowds. According to Nature, “Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds are also endemic but a combination of annual vaccines and acquired immunity means that societies tolerate the sea- sonal deaths and illnesses they bring.”

The only “end” of COVID will happen when we reach herd immunity with somewhere near 80% immune. Essentially all the increase from 50% of Americans immune now to 80% must occur among the unvaccinated.

If SARS-CoV-2 becomes like other coronaviruses, it will become a virus that most future children will encounter early on in life, fight off, and develop a lasting ability to fight off with minimal symptoms.

In other words, someday, COVID won’t end but will become a public-health nuisance.

Info: shpr.fyi/covidnoend

Governments partly to blame for deepening of anti-vaxers’ resolve

On Sept. 9 Biden said, “Based on available data from the summer, only one of out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day,” he said. “Recent data indicates there is only one confirmed positive case per 5,000 fully vaccinated Americans per day.”

Yet he says vaccinated people continue to be at high risk from the unvaccinated.

The vaccinated are not at much risk from COVID.

The high risk is to the unvaccinated.

Many ask, “If I’ll still be at risk after vaccination, why should I get vaccinated?”

He said, “The bottom line: We’re going to protect you vaccinated workers from the enemy, unvaccinated co-workers.”

Info: shpr.fyi/govttoblame

Biden is framing the unvaccinated as the enemy.

The progressives have built such “power (??)” as they have by demonizing us Republicans (“deplorables”) for the last four- plus years.

We are not deplorable.

We proved in the 2020 election that we were then half of Americans. Biden’s shameful debacle in Afghanistan, his opposition to the rule of law and his dictatorial mandating of vaccinations have turned most Americans against him so we are now the majority. As the majority we can’t be demonized and executed as was done infamously to a minority during WWII.

Now he is continuing to galvanize his supporters by demonizing the 80 million unvaccinated as the terrorist enemy.

Dave Personal re: vaccinations:

I believe in the vaccinations and have been vaccinated.

We MUST slow the new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths which are almost entirely among the unvaccinated. COVID hospitalizations are overwhelming our hospitals. Lewis County COVID infections rate is three times the Washington State average.

But governments’ dictatorial vaccination and masking mandates are very hard for me and all free Americans to accept.

All of us veterans continue to be depressed after the shameful Afghanistan debacle and our remembrance of 9-11.

One veteran says he is, “…troubled with the nation I have fought for and profoundly angry with its leaders.”

All of us– be kind to our veterans!

Dave Bunting, Sept. 13, 2021

See my blog: daverant.com

The progressives are now spinning their untruths even more emphatically to divert our attention away from their atrocious abandonment of Afghanistan.

Don’t let them do it! Truth is still Truth!

I’ve had many close Democratic friends who were good honest people. Where are the good Democrats now?

The FOUR TACTICS they’re using:

1: “Ghostlighting” is repeating untruth again and again and again and again. “The U.S. is racist” is one of their primary ghostlighting lies.

Certainly we’re not perfect on racism and we must always improve but we can be proud of our progress against racism- we’ve come a very long way from Civil War Jim Crow to 2008 when we elected a black president. Very sadly in the last fifteen years they are intentionally increasing racism to divide us.

Remember that, in the 2020 election, even in the face of their mad four-years-long hatred of Trump, we proved we were half of Americans.  They are not our majority rulers.

Recognize these and other of their ghostlighted lies and call them lies!

2. “Astroturfing” is saying or implying that “everyone” agrees with an untruth when it is believed by only a few.

The large majority of Americans disagree with their insulting ideas of who we Americans are.

3. Accusing everyone who disagrees of racism, to silence our objections.

We all want equal respect, rights and opportunity for all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, sex or national origin!

They lie when they call us racist!

Accusing anyone of racism is deeply hurtful, an incredibly effective weapon.

Don’t refrain from speaking up for fear of being called racist. We are not racist!

4. Separating us, using exaggerated fears of COVID, to prevent us from being assured of our long-held truths by each other in personal contact.

Don’t continue separation from your friends! Get together! Talk to each other in person, by phone or online. Share your feelings!

Especially veterans– get together and push yourself to share your feelings openly! We’re all hurting about Biden’s dishonorable abandonment of Afghanistan. Show our feelings to each other! We’re all crying!

Perhaps it seems impossible that such simple and obvious tactics as these four tactics to promote untruth could be successful– but they are being very successful!

Millions of our fellow Americans believe their untruths.

When someone we’ve known well and trusted tells us something, we believe it, are assured and are confident in its truth far beyond most things seen on social platforms.

Social media doesn’t replace face-to-face conversation because social media is so often not truth.

Watch for these four tactics being used against us on the media and identify the tactic being used by name. Recognize and name each time the untruth that is being promoted.

Civil Order

Civil Order is basic communal behavior in which we have rules- laws adopted by us or by our elected representatives, that we all agree to abide by, with anyone including ourselves who breaks the rules being discouraged and, if necessary, punished (the police function), so all abide by the rules we’ve all adopted.

Civil Order is all of us agreeing to follow the rules-laws WE have adopted.

The progressives advocate the abandonment of our civil order allowing themselves and their friends to break our laws.

Immigration

Part of the Progressives’ anti-Civil Order agenda is opening our nation to free immigration by anyone who wants to come here.

Our basic Civil Order also includes private property ownership.

The property we own includes not only our physical property such as land or money but also American privileges such as freedoms, education and health care we’ve earned as a nation through our hard work and great successes and defense in wars.

It is also abandonment of Civil Order to end respect for private property,

They want us to abandon Private Ownership Rights and Civil Order.

Ask them, “Do you lock your door when you leave your home?”

If they truly advocated open borders, they would open their homes to all to come and enjoy and take what they wished.

We must now work to rebuild our friendships.

The COVID separations, declining religious involvement, lower marriage rates, and changes in the workplace have caused us to see our friends less.

After a prolonged period of social isolation, Americans are dusting off their social calendars. But as Americans try to rebuild and reconnect, a new survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life finds that the social landscape is far less favorable than it once was.

The number of close friends Americans have has plummeted.

This friendship recession is particularly bad for men. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. The study also found the percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase.

Single men fare the worst. One in five American men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not having any close friends.

Active close friendships assure us that the truths we’ve always known are still true.

Close personal friendships assure us the anti-truths promoted by some groups are not true.

Each of us must work and move to regain and resume our personal friendships in such groups as::

1. Churches.
2. Civic/community activities.
3. Volunteer work.
4. Work friendships.
5. Sports.
6. Men’s/women’s groups.

Dave Bunting, Sept. 6, 2021
See these columns on my blog: daverant.com

Help for Afghanistan

Help for Afghanistan

Billy Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse was sending extra chartered planes to Afghanistan to evacuate people that our US Gov’t can’t or wouldn’t evacuate, including getting them to the airport.

They are helping Christians and other Afghans in need with food and supplies and this help can continue after the evacuation is done.

Please join me in giving to them now!

SamaritansPurse.org

American Veterans Volunteering to save Afghans

A group of volunteer Afghanistan veterans smuggled into Kabul this week to save hundreds of Afghan Special Forces troops and their families by getting them to the airport to be put on flights out of the city.

The men made their own way into Kabul after watching the bungled evacuation from afar. The ad-hoc group have been able to get more than 600 vulnerable Afghans to the airport to be put on flights.

According to members of the group who spoke to ABC News, the week-long rescue operation, which was dubbed the ‘Pineapple Express’, was carried out by a group of special ops veterans including retired Green Berets and SEAL commanders. This group of highly trained US military veterans secretly rescued hundreds of allied operatives in Afghanistan, all volunteering because otherwise these allies would reportedly have been left for dead. 

Info:  shpr.fyi/vetsrescue

List of links to many other organizations helping needy Afghans, including for evacuation

Several other organizations that provide assistance in Afghanistan are calling for aid during this time. Some areas are impossible for humanitarians to reach, especially right now, thus it helps to support organizations that have pathways to provide in-person and remote support already. Below are a few of these organizations

Info:  shpr.fyi/afghanhelp

The Charge of the Light Brigade.

1.
Half a league, half a league,
⁠Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
⁠Rode the six hundred.
“Charge,” was the captain’s cry;
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
⁠Rode the six hundred.

2.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
⁠Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well;
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell,
⁠Rode the six hundred.

3.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d all at once in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
⁠All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Fiercely the line they broke;
Strong was the sabre-stroke;
Making an army reel
⁠Shaken and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not,
⁠Not the six hundred.

4.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
⁠Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
They that had struck so well
Rode thro’ the jaws of Death,
Half a league back again,
Up from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
⁠Left of six hundred.

5.
Honour the brave and bold!
Long shall the tale be told,
Yea, when our babes are old—
⁠How they rode onward.

THE END.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1854

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglanhad intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task for which the light cavalry was well-suited.

However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire suffering massive casualties and scattered some of the gunners, even breached the line, but they were forced to retreat immediately back again through the same battlefield of cannonfire.

The assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains.

Note: The battlefield length through which the brigade advanced and then retreated under staggering cannonfire– both ways– half a league, is a mile and a half, 2,640 yards or 26 football field lengths. The brigade consisted of about 667 horse-mounted cavalrymen.

Biden’s cowardly abandonment of Afghanistan will live in infamy forever like the Charge of the Light Brigade.

‘Dramatic spread’ of COVID-19 in Yakima Valley prompts pleas for vaccinations, masks

The Yakima Health District reported 214 new COVID cases and 63 hospitalizations Wednesday, totals that echoed January’s surge. Hospital officials said there are long wait times in emergency departments, and capacity is limited with staff out for COVID-19 protocols.

Dr. Marty Brueggerman, chief medical officer, Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital. Evan Abel, Yakima Herald

“The vast majority of these patients being treated are unvaccinated and we are seeing younger and younger patients suffering complications and needing acute medical care,” Rhonda Wellner, system director of quality for Astria Health, said in a statement. “With the increase of COVID patients in our systems, we are also seeing an increase of wait times in our emergency departments, an increased need for inpatient beds, and challenges with transferring patients who are needing higher level of care or specialized care.”

Please, please, get your vaccination!

Excerpted from Yakima Herald Republic for Aug. 25, 2021 by Tammy Ayer.

Info:  https://shpr.fyi/3jnMIx5

Dave Bunting, Aug. 30, 2021

These Briefs are on my newly updated blog: daverant.com

Dave gave blood again last Friday
I hope and pray every one of us is doing everything we can to build up the United States and all Americans—very especially veterans– now when we are beaten down so low by the awful government handling of COVID, by ruinous inflation, by the loss of civil order including Defund the Police, by the “unsustainable” illegal immigration, by losses of Freedom of Speech and Religion and by this “worst-debacle-in-history” abandonment of Afghanistan.
Only 19 months ago we were the strongest-ever nation in the world!
Now thrown on the dust of Afghanistan at the feet of the Taliban lay our nation, our flag, our honor and tens of thousands of us American citizens.
We are all crying… unless we can’t cry anymore.
Everyone– do everything we can to help all of us and our USA!

Inslee’s Aug. 20 Dictates:
 Every person in Washington must wear a face covering when they are in a place that is generally accessible to any person from outside their household, subject to specific exceptions and exemptions.  
 Vaccination required of all education employees, on-site contractors and on-site volunteers at all public and private K-12 schools, public and private 2- and 4-year institutions of higher education, and early learning and child care programs serving children from multiple households.
 Info: shpr.fyi/insleeaug20

Vaccinations Rising
The pace of COVID-19 vaccinations keeps rising, with more than 1 million doses of vaccine administered in the United States on Thursday, including 562,000 people getting their first dose, White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar said on Twitter.
Thursday was the first day more than 1 million vaccinations have been given in the U.S. in seven weeks, he said, noting it was a 31% week-over-week increase in the daily average of people completing the vaccine series.
Info: shpr.fyi/vaccsrising

SpaceX Lifts Super Heavy booster up on launchpad then mounts Starship on top
SpaceX’s first orbital Starship SN20 is stacked atop its massive Super Heavy Booster 4 for the first time on Aug. 6, 2021. They stood 395 feet tall, taller than NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket.
Puts spaceship temporarily on top making world’s tallest-ever rocket
Then SpaceX’s newest Starship prototype was briefly placed atop of its massive booster for the first time setting a new record for the world’s tallest rocket.
Engineers performed the stacking test at the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas, near the village of Boca Chica, in view of livestreams from NASA Spaceflight and Spadre.com. Multi-billionaire U.S. ruler oligarch Elon Musk sent an update suggesting the company actually wanted to complete the stacking Thursday (Aug. 5), a few hours after Starship completed its rollout to the launch pad, but winds were too high.
The Starship and its Super Heavy booster were mated for about an hour for fit checks, during which time the two vehicles posed a towering site. Super Heavy alone stands 230 feet tall and Starship SN4 added another 165 feet of height. Together they stood a whopping 395 feet tall, taller than NASA’s massive Saturn V moon rocket, which was 363 feet tall.
Info: shpr.fyi/superheavy
Info: shpr.fyi/superhvystarship

Matter created from energy
In a stunning demonstration of one of Einstein’s most famous equations, physicists are claiming to have created matter from pure light for the very first time.
Albert Einstein’s famous E=mc^2 equation says that if you smash two sufficiently energetic photons, or light particles, into each other, you should be able to create matter in the form of an electron and its antimatter opposite, a positron. 
Virtual particles are particles that only pop into existence very briefly as disturbances in the fields that exist between real particles. They don’t have the same masses as their real counterparts (unlike their real counterparts that have no mass, virtual photons do have a mass). In this experiment, when the ions zipped past each other in a near miss, their two clouds of virtual photons were moving so fast that they acted as if they were real. The real-acting virtual particles collided — producing a very-much-real electron-positron pair with mass that the scientists detected.
Info: shpr.fyi/matterfromlight

COVID infections up
For the first time since early February, the U.S. reported more than 900,000 COVID-19 cases last week, rising back to pre-vaccination levels, according to USA Today.
Info: shpr.fyi/900kcovid
Cost of vaccinations
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine costs $19.50 per dose, compared with $15 for Moderna’s shot, $16 for Novavax’s, $10 for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and $4 for AstraZeneca’s.
Info: shpr.fyi/vacccost

Delta variant stretching hospital capacity
From UW Medicine:
While over 95% of current surge cases are occurring among people who are unvaccinated, many of whom thus chose behavior likely to result in infection, the surge also causes significant capacity challenges at hospitals across Washington state.
Every hospital seeks to safely provide hospital care to patients who need it most. In response to the current surge in cases, healthcare organization across the state are working with state and public health leaders on short-term and mid-term solutions to improve hospital capacity. This includes reviewing all non-urgent inpatient surgeries scheduled in the next month and contacting patients whose surgeries can safely be rescheduled to a later date. We want to reassure you that all urgent surgeries and all outpatient surgeries and procedures will proceed as planned. In addition, all of our clinics remain open so please reach out for an appointment if you need care.
We must “flatten the curve” again!
While the rapid spread of the Delta variant is a disappointing setback in our fight against the pandemic, it also reminds us of what we must do individually and collectively to bring this fifth wave of COVID-19 under control.
Get vaccinated! Wear your mask in public indoors!
Info: shpr.fyi/hospstrain

Dave Bunting, Aug. 23, 2021

A personal note—
I am outraged and heartbroken today by Biden’s abandonment of the 40 million Afghans to the murderous and evil Taliban.
His horrifying act exhibits and verifies his total incompetence.
He promised our withdrawal would be well organized and that, if the Taliban harmed a single American, our response would be “strong and swift.”
Biden is a nice old man who has never done anything strong or swift in his life.
Back in the years after 9-11 when the Afghan people welcomed American helpers, I volunteered for a years-long mission to help them build roads, homes and sanitary facilities. To this day I am very sorry that mission did not work out and I was never privileged to go and help them.
I love those beautiful people!
Beyond the current situation, for the first time in many years, I am now concerned for the future of the United States—whether we can make it through to the end of this administration.
We are now so weak and bereft of able leadership that another disaster could bring us, the United States of America, only nineteen months after being the strongest nation in history, to our knees. Biden has thrown our nation, our flag, our honor, even tens of thousands of us US citizens, to the Afghanistan dust before the Taliban!
We must pray fervently that no additional disaster befalls us– no new virus, no major hurricane or earthquake, no cyber-attack by a foreign nation.
Dave Bunting, Aug. 16, 2021

Yakima’s new COVID surge
Yakima County is one of the counties with the highest transmission rate in Washington state.
Most of Yakima County’s new cases are coming from the community when people are getting together, socializing, hanging out doing what we like to do in summer. Localized outbreaks don’t represent a significant portion of the cases that are being found.
The virus has evolved. It got smarter and it’s much more infectious than we’ve seen it before. It doesn’t cause more hospitalizations and deaths, just more infections.
There are still a few people that are vaccinated that do get infected– always with few or no symptoms. But these still represent a tiny percentage of the cases. People in many occupations, most of whom are vaccinated, are required to be tested frequently to protect their customers. Much of the “surge” in infections among vaccinated people is being found by these repetitious mandatory tests. If the testing were being applied equally across all people, the “surge” among vaccinated people would not be noticeable.
Over 94% of new infections in Yakima County are from unvaccinated individuals.
So that’s where we just ask community members that aren’t vaccinated to please ask questions. Call your provider, call the health district, call whoever your trusted source for information is — accurate, reliable information — with your questions. Because we know that the vaccine is effective. It’s safe.
Happily, 70 to 100 Yakima County people get vaccinated every day and when the vaccine is fully approved, anticipated within days, polls find that about 30% of the unwilling will instantly become willing and will quickly be vaccinated.
Includes excerpts from the Yakima Herald.
Info: shpr.fyi/yaksurge

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Hide COVID-19’s Origins
Following are excerpts from the Aug. 13, 2021, issue of Vanity Fair, a very liberal publication. It is astounding that such a liberal publication would publish such facts exposing the wrongness of the basic strong liberal assertion that the Trump suggestion that COVID came from the Wuhan Lab was based on his xenophobic (anti-Chinese) racism. Not surprisingly, the article has already been taken down from the web.
From Vanity Fair:
Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits or even brutally obstructed.
On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone…”
Then came the revelation that the Lancet statement was phony, not only signed but organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting gain-of-function research—among them the WIV itself.
David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, ran the State Department’s day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry. He said it soon became clear that “there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy” inside the U.S. federal government that has acted in every possible way to protect their gain-of-function involvements and funding.
Former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield even received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab.
Article above includes many excerpts from Vanity Fair.
Info: shpr.fyi/covidchina

My opinion: That many considered Trump’s effort to learn whether COVID came from the Wuhan Lab was based on his xenophobic (anti-foreigner, anti-Chinese) prejudice is preposterous.
I’ve never met or heard of a person who was prejudiced against Chinese people—and Trump was not xenophobic.
Instead, the effort to learn the origin of COVID is from the reasonable curiosity and desire of all intelligent people who sincerely want to know the origin of COVID so we can avoid such a virus in the future.
Again- My opinion: I have long concluded the COVID virus originated in the Wuhan lab and escaped from there through a mistake by a lab worker. The Chinese government, simply not recognizing its seriousness and hampered by confusion in its awkard-to-unworkable top-down “socialist” system, allowed it to spread through China and the world. China did not and, I believe, would not intentionally allow it to spread to and injure the U.S. or the world.
We all make mistakes. The Chinese should be blamed and held liable for the mistake and injurious mishandling of COVID but not for using it to intentionally injure us.

Dave Bunting, Aug. 16, 2021

Civil Order
One of the big life differences is between most of us and the “Progressives,” those like George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and our other multi-billionaire oligarch rulers and their social media who seem to advocate and have, by political machinations and billions of dollars, moved us toward abandonment of “Civil Order.”
Civil Order is basic communal behavior, adopted by humans since people were first with people (that’s a long time ago), under which we have rules, in a democratic society, rules adopted by us or by our elected representatives, that we all agree to abide by, with anyone including ourselves who breaks the rules being discouraged, if necessary punished (the police function), so all abide by the rules we’ve all adopted.
Civil Order is all of us agreeing to follow the rules WE have adopted so our society is stable.
Rules we’ve adopted include such as stopping when the traffic light is red, not stealing and not murdering.
Advocating that those who break our serious majority-adopted rules not be punished is advocating abandonment of Civil Order, the most basic rule that we live by.

Life Rules
We all face challenges now, they seem like a lot, with many stemming from divisions between us. Many of those divisions result from differences in our Life Rules, more generally called our Life Philosophy or maybe our world view.
The fundamental Life Rule is Civil Order which many now want us to abandon.

Immigration- Part of the Progressives’ anti-Civil Order agenda is opening our United States to free immigration by anyone who wants to come here.
Our basic Civil Order also includes private property ownership.
The property we own includes not only our physical property such as land or money but also American privileges such as freedoms we’ve earned as a nation through our hard work and great successes and, when regrettably necessary, we’ve defended at high cost forcibly in wars.
It is also abandonment of Civil Order to allow others to freely enter our country thereby availing themselves of our hard-earned property such as even just access to our public spaces and privileges such as health care.
Those who advocate non-punishment of those who enter the homes and businesses of others and destroy by burning or steal their property are advocating abandonment of private ownership rights and Civil Order.
Those who advocate open borders, allowing others to freely take what is ours as Americans, stutter and mumble if we ask them, “Do you lock your door when you leave your home?”
They advocate their own Civic Order private property rights but not those rights of others.
If they truly advocated open borders, opening our property and rights to all, they would open their homes to all to come and enjoy and take what they wished.

Anti-vaccination
I am #1 Christian, #2 Conservative, #3 Republican.
I have good Christian conservative friends who are opposed to vaccination. I don’t understand their Life Rule or philosophy that supports opposition to vaccination.
To me anti-vaccination is not Christian- Jesus and the bible never taught against vaccination. Jesus taught Peter, “Feed my sheep,” and we’re also taught, “If your enemy requires your cloak, give him also your tunic.”.
Anti-vaccination is also not conservative, conservativity being basically our trying to conserve the good, familiar, and long-proven values of yesteryear. But no value of yesteryear includes knowingly accepting increased risk of disease. In yesteryear we were much more free of disease (?really? at least free of fearful knowledge of disease) so now being free of the fear of COVID through vaccination would be the more conservative way. We were free of fear of COVID in yesteryear and we can now conserve our previous non-fear of COVID by vaccination.
Note: Our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects us against search or seizure of our “person,” so vaccination, an invasion of our body, can never be required by our government. No government entity can require vaccination of us. Opposition to government-required vaccination is fully correct and necessary.

Homeschooling
Eleven percent of American families are now homeschooling as compared to 5.4% before COVID.
A large survey found the common denominator among these families: most started homeschooling as a temporary measure but decided to continue because they found homeschooling was very beneficial for their children.
Yes– we support public education whose American early adoption by our nation’s founders is one of the primary reasons Americans are among the happiest and have one of the highest standards of living among all nations.
And we all agree- good education must be equally available to all American children!
But government-operated schools, like all government operations, are very imperfect.
Now during COVID masking, homeschooling families can avoid the injury caused by school masking.
None of us should blindly advocate home, private or public schools against the other– they’re all imperfect in obvious ways.
The additional very critical issue is that religious education, essential in very many families, can be included in home or private education but is prohibited in public education.
Should we advocate public schools above currently-in-many-families-better homeschooling just so public schools get the support and money so they are able to do their imperfect masked job of providing equal education to all students?
For those families who are time- and skill-capable of effective homeschooling, and many families are- yes- capable of it, under the current damaging public school masking requirements, homeschooling is better than public schooling.

Murder
Many apparently feel intentionally killing an innocent person is OK, just acceptable everyday behavior. Television news is full of people killing other people for almost no reason, sometimes in “drive-by” shootings, targeting no one.
Often these murders are not prosecuted aggressively, sometimes not prosecuted at all.
We who are conservative believe, (I suspect ALL of us believe) as we were all taught in our homes and families since childhood, that murder is very wrong, unthinkable in everyday life.
Guns are not the problem. The problem is loss of the Life Rule that intentionally killing an innocent person is wrong and unthinkable.
Correction of the murder problem must include, firstly, re-establishing our Life Rule that murder is wrong and unthinkable. And secondly, that a person who intentionally kills an innocent person must be stopped from killing again by arrest and punishment.

New Russian module spins space station
Russia’s new space station module, Nauka, mistakenly fired its thrusters after docking on Thursday.
The mistake caused the entire space station to spin around 540 degrees and flip upside down.
NASA and Russian flight controllers were able to get it back to its original position after an hour.
Info: shpr.fyi/naukaspins

Dave Bunting, Aug. 9, 2021

Homeschooling rises from 5% to 11% of US families during COVID
Why: Some families who spoke with The Associated Press have children with special educational needs; others seek a faith-based curriculum or say their local schools are flawed.
The surge has been confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau, which reported in March that the rate of households homeschooling their children rose to 11% by September 2020, more than doubling from 5.4% just six months earlier.
Shopper Country School Districts do offer home-based learning!
Morton, Mossyrock and White Pass school districts continue to offer on-line learning options to families in their communities. At White Pass, the Home Link program offers FREE on-line home-based learning for grades K-12. Home Link provides a dedicated coordinator to assist families throughout the year. White Pass students receive high-quality school-compatible laptops for on-line access. Tutoring is available. Regular check-ins with families assess student progress. As needed, the district also provides home internet hotspots.
Home instruction expanded during the pandemic and may continue to be a valid choice for your family. If so, connect with your local school district about on-line options available. Do it today! This will offer your child the opportunity to stay connected with peers, reduce isolation, and remain plugged in with your community.
We 1000% respect homeschooling parents! Homeschooling is a BIG challenge for parents!
Info: shpr.fyi/easyhomeschool

Portland high school wins in Rocketry
Portland-area high school came out on top in a new “distributed” version of this year’s American Rocketry Challenge.
Oregon Episcopal School received $20,000 for coming within 1 foot and 6.7 feet of a specified target altitude in two flights, putting it best among 100 national finalists. As a first-time finalist, the school also received $2,500 for posting the best results among the rookies, and an additional $1,000 given to each finalist participant for placing best in their distributed launch site — bringing the total haul close to $25,000.
To qualify for the winner’s circle, participating finalist teams had to get as close as they could to 775 feet (236 m) within 39 to 42 seconds on their first flight, and 825 feet (nearly 252 m) within 41 to 44 seconds on their second flight, according to competition rules. The rocket also had minimum weight, length, and motor qualifications, among other things.
Score was the sum of two flights distance in feet short of the target heights of 775 feet on first flight and 825 feet on second flight– the lower the score, the better.
Top five contestants and number of students in program:

• Oregon Episcopal OR: 8
• BSA Explorer Post MD: 40
• Webster City HS IA: 9
• Mathmania Robotics CA: 15
• Russellville HS AL: 15

Info: shpr.fyi/rocketry

Almost all new infections, hospitalizations and deaths are now among the unvaccinated.
More than 94% of Washington’s recent COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations have been among not fully vaccinated people, according to a new report from the state Dpt. of Health.
The data released Wednesday shows that between February and June, residents 12 and older who weren’t fully vaccinated made up about 97% of COVID-19 cases, 96% of hospitalizations and 94% of deaths in the state, The Seattle Times reported.
To get vaccinated, call any doctor, clinic or hospital and you’ll have an appointment probably the same day.

Info: shpr.fyi/unvaccinfect

Neighbors form human chain to rescue swans
A rare summer sighting helped rescue two abandoned black swans.
Two Australian black swans were found in Southold, New York. Local Long Island residents formed a human chain to keep the birds safe until they were able to be rescued.
“I got a call Wednesday morning with someone saying, ‘Hey I looked out my window and I see these swans,'” John Di Leonardo, president of Long Island Orchestrating for Nature, told FOX News. Di Leonardo was more than two hours away at the time. “Neighbors jumped in kayaks and stayed with the swans waiting for me to come and catch them.”
Info: shpr.fyi/swanrescue

America’s Big Cities must include lots of unvaccinated Democrats
“The people who aren’t getting vaccinated are Trump voters” is an oversimplification. Yes, broadly speaking, those who are unvaccinated and who adamantly refuse to get vaccinated are more likely to have voted for Trump or self-identify as Republicans, and the data indicate that more Republican-leaning states and areas have lower vaccination rates.
But significant percentages of the residents of the deepest-blue cities in America are still unvaccinated, and simple math says that there just aren’t enough Trump voters in those cities to make up the unvaccinated group.
For example, as of this weekend, 41 percent of New York City residents were not vaccinated. Trump won 22 percent of the vote in NYC. Apparently 78% of the unvaccinated are not Trump voters.
 In Chicago, 43 percent of residents are not vaccinated. Trump carried 24 percent of the vote in Cook County. Apparently 76% of the unvaccinated are not Trump voters.
 In Philadelphia, Pa., about 37 percent of residents are unvaccinated. Trump won 17.9 percent of the vote there in 2020. Apparently 82% of the unvaccinated are not Trump voters.
 Detroit has vaccinated just under 40 percent of its residents; Trump carried 5 percent of the vote in that city. Apparently 95% of the unvaccinated are not Trump voters.
A lot of America’s remaining unvaccinated live in big cities, but most of the news coverage wouldn’t lead you to that conclusion.
Info: shpr.fyi/unvaccdems

Boeing back in black
Boeing is making money again after it just reported its first quarterly profit since 2019. Second quarter results are in.
It’s not a ton of money, but after the last two years, this is a welcome sight for our region and the company. Boeing reported a $567 million profit in Q2 — that’s not chump change, but it’s nothing like the company used to see. However, compared to the $2.4 billion loss in Q2 last year, this is a good day.
Boeing delivered 79 commercial airplanes in the second quarter, and 156 for the year. Those are vast improvements over 2020 but, again, still not what the company is used to.
This is good news for Shopper Country because some of Boeing paycheck dollars always find their way to being spent here. Those dollars roll over into paychecks for us and health for our local businesses.
Info: shpr.fyi/boeingsells

Dave Bunting, Aug. 2, 2021

Anti-vaxers being herded into box canyon
We’re all sick of hearing about COVID and trying to deal with the confusing and infinitely self-contradictory dictates about masking. I don’t want to write about it any more! But one fact we can’t avoid:
The large majority of the new infections, hospitalizations and deaths now are among the unvaccinated.
Relative to the rest of the pandemic, the nationwide numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are low—they’re far below numbers seen back in April of 2020.
But rates of cases among the unvaccinated in some places rival those seen at the heights of the pandemic. And areas with low vaccination coverage are seeing surges.
The unvaccinated are being herded- not by government but by the teeny-weeny virus itself- into a box canyon—in a few months nearly all new infections, hospitalizations and deaths will be among the unvaccinated.
Who wants to be in that sick box canyon?
Anti-vaccination opinions are not conservative—the best way to “conserve” our lives of yes-teryear with regard to COVID is to get free of the threat of COVID by getting vaccinated!
And then forget it and get back to your life!
Jesus said (Matthew 7:3): “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
Get vaccinated!
Info: shpr.fyi/antivaxbox

Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups!
by BrianKrebs
Browse the comments on vir-tually any story about a ran-somware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only they’d had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims end up paying even when they have done nearly everything right from a data backup per-spective.
One of the most common problems is that restoring from backups can take weeks, even months, far longer than the company can be out of business or the software or its key needed to do the restoration or even the backups are among the ransom-encrypted files.
Test your backups!
Info: shpr.fyi/testbackups

Dirt not dirty
Dig a teaspoon into your near-est clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that ana-lyze samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to de-termine which forms of micro-scopic life exist in the world beneath our feet.
This prompted scientists to spy on these underground work-ers, who are indispensable in their role as organic matter recy-cling agents, without disturbing their micro-habitats.
See their fascinating views in-to soil organisms in action by clicking the link below.
Indispensible- YES!
Some common soil microor-ganisms are the critters that di-gest our home wastewater in our septic systems as well as in community treatment plants where these very same organ-isms are brought in as the active ingredients.
Most people don’t understand that our septic tanks containing anaerobic (no oxygen, “septic” means no oxygen) soil organisms process 98-99% of the waste we put into them into harmless soil substances, and then the aerobic (using oxygen) critters in our drainfields take care of the rest. That’s why a river flowing near a community of hundreds of septic systems does not get polluted- the intervening soil has treated- digested- any remaining pollutants.
Also some of these common soil organisms are also the “friendly” organisms in our large intestine that do that critical final step in our digestion.
Several times in my life, after finishing treatment with strong anti-biotic pills (which kill also all the “friendly” critters throughout our body) I’ve eaten a teaspoon of yes gritty soil from my yard to replenish my “friendly” bacteria. Unthinkable? Hardly! Many root vegetables unavoidably include some soil as we eat them. Some medications to replenish our “friendly” organisms are nothing but soil with the grit removed.
Info: shpr.fyi/gooddirt

July 4 Largest Ever Ransomware Attack
The largest-ever ransomware attack timed to coincide with the US July 4 holiday weekend locked up the IT systems of “well over 50,000 businesses” across the world, according to the US cybersecurity firm Hunt-ress Labs. Many of the largest firms such as Fidelity were tak-en offline.
Fifty to 60 percent of the company Kaseya’s 37,000 cus-tomers were victimized – but 70 percent of those were “managed service providers” who provide Kaseya’s software to many oth-ers.
The attack encrypted infected businesses’ data, locking those firms out of their own IT sys-tems. The hackers demanded ransoms of $50,000 from small-er companies and $5 million from larger companies in ex-change for a special key that would allow them to decrypt their data and resume normal operations.
Kaseya’s was the worst ransomware attack to date because it spread through software that companies known as managed service providers use on multiple customers.
Astoundingly, Kaseya the firm whose software was used to safeguard the 50,000 companies’ files and then hacked to enable the attack, received a master key that would unlock all of the encrypted files. Kaseya didn’t divulge whether the millions of ransom had been paid.
But the key was provided on-ly after most companies had already spent days and thou-sands of dollars restoring their files from backups.
The attack was done by REvil, a known Russian attacker firm.
Biden called Putin to press him to stop providing safe ha-ven for cybercriminals and threatened to make Russia pay a price for failing to crack down but has not specified what measures if any the U.S. may take. Experts expect none.
Info: shpr.fyi/kaseyaransom

Indepth discussion of chances if not vaccinated
“If you don’t get vaccinated, will you get COVID?
“I think the best answer we can give right now is… probably. Odds are, eventually you’ll get it — perhaps from a currently circulating variant, perhaps from a future variant.”
Open this link to read the entire in-depth analysis:
Info: shpr.fyi/infectimmune

U.S Longevity Drops
U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the larg-est one-year decline since World War II. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than any other year in U.S. history.
Info: shpr.fyi/uslongevity
Dave Bunting, July 25, 2021

We must regain our friendships and recognize and oppose the lies

We must now work to rebuild our friendships.
The COVID separations, declining religious involvement, lower marriage rates, and changes in the workplace have caused us to see our friends less.
After a prolonged period of social isolation, Americans are dusting off their social calendars. But as Americans try to rebuild and reconnect, a new survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life finds that the social landscape is far less favorable than it once was.
The number of close friends Americans have has plummeted.
This friendship recession is particularly bad for men. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. The study also found the percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase.
Single men fare the worst. One in five American men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not having any close friends.
Active close friendships assure us that the truths we’ve always known are still true.
Close personal friendships assure us the anti-truths promoted by some groups are not true.

Truth is still Truth
The FOUR TACTICS they’re using:
1: “Ghostlighting” is repeating untruth again and again and again and again.

2. “Astroturfing” is saying or implying that “everyone” agrees with an untruth when most of us know it’s wrong.

3.Accusing everyone who disagrees of racism, silencing our objections.

4. Separating us, using exaggerated fears of COVID, to prevent us from being assured by each other of our long-held truths.

Perhaps it seems impossible that such simple and obvious tactics as these four to promote untruth could be successful– but they are very successful!
Millions of us Americans now both believe their untruths and can’t object for fear of being called racist.
When someone we’ve known well and trusted tells us something, we believe it, are assured and are confident in its truth far beyond most things seen on social platforms.
Social media doesn’t replace face-to-face conversation because we all see obviously false “facts” on social media.
Watch for ghostlighting and astroturfing on the media, identify them by name and recognize each time the untruth being promoted.
We must individually work and move to regain and resume our personal friendships. Many friendships are just one-to-one. But many also are based in our groups:

Religious activities.

Civic/community activities.

Volunteer work.

Work friendships.

Sports.

Men’s/women’s groups.

School work including adult education and

Parent attendance in children’s classrooms and

School Board Meetings.
Each of us—get back

into our friendships!
Info: shpr.fyi/resumefriends

Who Decides What Is Truth and Adam Smith Wealth of Nations

Who gets to decide the truth, essay, beautiful thoughts and beautiful writing— not that I agree with all of it but it is very interesting
https://reason.com/2021/07/24/who-gets-to-decide-the-truth/

Adam Smith ‘s 1776  “The Wealth of Nations” Summary, foundation of capitalism
https://www.gradesaver.com/the-wealth-of-nations/study-guide/summary

John Locke’s Philosophy
In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society. Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/

Adam Smith: Can a material object have a soul? Recognizes that God has the power to give soul to a material object but concludes that material objects do not have soul.

Reminds me of Physicist Stephen Hawking’s conclusion that evolution cannot have created humans because humans have illogical likes, dislikes, charitable feelings and affection (empathy) for other humans.
Hawking other quotes:
https://www.azquotes.com/author/6401-Stephen_Hawking