So, About the COVID Numbers

 Haven't been talking about it in a while.

But, I'm going to point something out that I've noticed.

Our vaccination program is going well, but we're also seeing case numbers start to surge.

Is this the beginning of a Europe-style wave? It might be, but there's something else.

For the last few weeks I've also been looking at case numbers in Israel, which is the most vaccinated country on the planet.

We are seeing the same pattern of infection Israel was at the same point in the process.

Infections and sickness are way down in the senior population, which is now almost 50% fully vaccinated.

They are surging upwards amongst younger people.

I think there are a couple of things to blame here:

1. Just because Grandma is now vaccinated does NOT mean you can stop taking precautions. Younger people are being hospitalized. Younger people are dying. Younger people are staying sick for months.
2. Is it possible that hospitals are admitting younger patients that they would have had no choice but to send home when the ICU was full of very sick elders?

But the good news is that Israel proves vaccination can stop the surge in its tracks. It's harder here, because we are such a big country, but if everyone gets their shots as soon as they are able to get an appointment and doesn't start to relax too much, we can do it.

Oh, and in other news, trials show that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective in kids aged 12 to 15. If the same is true of Moderna (likely, as they're very similar vaccines), we may be able to get them vaccinated in time for school in the fall.

We can win this.

Do Octopuses Dream?

 We've been kind of assuming not. But they have two alternating sleep stages...active and quiet sleep. And one of them might resemble REM sleep.

This would make dreaming far more universal than we thought. We used to think it was only mammals and birds, but it's at least some reptiles.

And now octopuses and cuttlefish.

Is dreaming essential to the working of any kind of biological computer?

Do octopuses have nightmares?

So, About that Ship

 Yeah. That one.

I figured I'd just give my opinions on the matter because everyone else is.

The Ever Given is now on the move, under its own power, and moving to the Great Bitter Lake for an inspection. Thankfully, the moon is at perigee, which really helped.

So, how did it happen? I've heard people say the canal is too narrow (not true, you should see what they squeeze down the Manchester Ship Canal). Or that it was obviously the helmsman's fault.

First of all, this is not the first time this ship has been in the news, although the first time was several years ago and much more minor: The Ever Given got blown sideways in a harbor in Germany and took out a (thankfully empty) commuter ferry.

In length, this is as long a ship as current materials science allows. This means it is extremely wide and also stacked very high with cargo. That cargo essentially acts as a sail.

There was a sandstorm with high winds. I like the theory that the helmsman was steering into sustained high winds...and then the wind dropped, and he steered the ship straight into the bank. This isn't human error (although obviously investigations need to happen) but a side effect of the fact that we are probably making these ships too big. They're hard to handle and it's easy to lose control...in this case with amusing but disastrous results.

(I have every respect for the salvage specialists who managed to get the ship free without needing to unload cargo in the middle of the desert, which would have taken weeks).

Friday Updates

 Finally getting significant amounts of Tyranis done.

Other than that, no real news per se. It's spring here (which also means those pesky cherry blossoms). Suddenly went from needing a light sweater in my apartment to being too warm in a t-shirt.

Everyone stay safe and get those shots as soon as you can.

Why Are There Huge Bits Of Weird Rock in the Earth?

They're called "Large low-shear-velocity provinces" and basically they're big blobs of dense rock in the lower part of the mantle. They mess with the Earth's magnetic field.

Now we have a new theory as to what they are. In Earth's early history, it collided with another planet, Theia. One huge chunk flew off into space and became our moon.

The theory is that the LLSVPs are bits of Theia's mantle, which was denser than Earth's. Weird, eh?

And one of them is right under Africa.

Why do I see some vague plotbunny here?

Ooh, Kaboom

If you live in the northern hemisphere and own a telescope, you might want to get out and look at these coordinates as soon as you can:

Right ascension 23 24 47.73, declination +61 11 14.8 - not far from the Cassiopeia star Caph, and an even shorter distance from B-type star HIP 115566. 

If you're lucky, you will see a star that wasn't there before...a classical nova which probably came from CzeV3217 (we won't be sure until it dies down). Classical novas are massive stellar flares that come from white dwarfs that are in close binary with a main-sequence companion. They're caused by the white dwarf stealing hydrogen from its buddy.

Pretty cool, right?

The Brood is Coming

 ...thankfully, I don't mean the X-Men villains.

I mean the periodic cicadas. Here in the DC area we're looking forward to the emergence of a 17 year cicada brood.

It's going to be loud and the foxes, raccoons, etc are going to be quite, quite happy. I'm tempted to try and grab a few myself and see how they fry up.

Periodic cicadas are a weird beast. We don't know how they evolved their extended lifespan, we don't know how they know when to come out (although a portion always tend to emerge early or late). And they only exist in the eastern U.S.

The evolutionary advantage is, of course, that so many of them come out that we can't eat them all.

(Mmm, fried cicada?)