August 30

The weather people say we will have a break from the high temps starting this week. I hope so. We were supposed to get some rain last night but I don't see any evidence of it. I will have to water the containers this morning.

My morning reading started with an article in The NY Times questioning the data behind the recent push for COVID booster shots. We have listened and read what has shown up on our feeds but remain skeptical. We have learned that initial news reports are often unreliable. I did think that the Israeli trend might be replicated here at least as far as the spread of the Delta strain of COVID and the rapid full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. I expect that the Moderna and J&J vaccines will soon follow into full approval. I expect that COVID will (if it hasn't already) become an endemic virus we have to deal with every year. That will probably mean we will need new vaccines periodically like we do for the flu. But I don't care to be pushed into getting a booster  sooner than it is needed just to bolster the bottom like of drug companies.

My reading was interrupted because we impulsively decided to do our shopping today instead of tomorrow. Neither of us had anything planned that couldn't be postponed. It was a fairly big shopping trip because we hadn't really restocked after the last freezer failed. Just sort of holding off to really check what we needed and what we are phasing out. We were low on veggies, wet cat food, cat litter and a few other items. We had to go to our alternate grocery story because we couldn't find any beef bologna. The alternate store had it but it is weird when something you could always find suddenly not there. (We go with the beef because we have never liked the kind the chicken or turkey varieties even if they are mixed with pork.) That made it a very exhausting morning especially as we found a sale on a local brand of cat litter--2 35lb-buckets for $20.

This morning, during one of the news segments on the masking controversy, the doctor being interviewed made a very important point that was passed over without much comment. The politicization of masking has drowned out the hygienic arguments for masking--the fact that the masks minimize, not eliminate but minimize, all viral respiratory infections. I remember how surprised when the medical establishment was pleasantly surprised that flus and colds were much lighter last year while, it should be noted, when we were masking and distancing because of COVID. 

 August 28

Almost the end of another month. It is early yet so nothing visible outside other than a few house lights. The weather people say it will be another warm and sunny day with possible thunder showers later. Thankfully, we aren't on the gulf coast. I hope I have some time to do a bit of garden maintenance before it gets too warm.

The political blame games are intensifying as the pull out from Afghanistan winds down. At least on the Republican side where those (sort of) human moral pretzels are bleating that Biden should resign and mewling about impeachment. They conveniently forget (and hope we will forget) that the debacle started under George W. and the withdrawal was "negotiated" between the Taliban and The Former Guy without any consultation with the Afghan government our supposed ally. Soon we will hear pundits talking about the "lessons" we should "learn" from the mess. Actually that may be starting already as seen here. What David Kaiser describes is a program for failure for both putative allies and for ourselves.

 August 26

We have had hot, humid, sunny days that have brought evening and overnight thundershowers for the last couple of nights. We saw pictures of the lightning show over Chicago last night and on our side we had lightening bright enough to light up the room as though we had switched on a light momentarily--through the closed curtains. It is hot and humid now and I wonder if we will get more thundershowers tonight.

Mom read something on problems with the Former Guy's "big, beautiful wall" a couple of days ago. I found this item on Gizmodo which goes into more detail. It looks like he was as good at finding competent engineers and builders as he was at finding lawyers to work on his "stop the steal" legal cases. I wonder where all the money really went.

Saw a couple of good political cartoons on the Direct ezine this morning. I especially like the one showing the Four Horsemen (War, Famine, Pestilence and Death) joined by a fifth horseman punching something into his smartphone. "And your are?" the four ask. "Misinformation" replies the fifth. Oh and the one with Hubris and Folly marching along with Hubris saying "We're rich. We're powerful. We can do anything we want." and Folly saying "We should take over a backward tribal country and remake it in our image. What could possibly go wrong?" That last echoes a comment on one of the commentaries on TV a couple of days ago which declared our "adventure" in Afghanistan as being like a Greek tragedy. Anybody remember which human failing was at the bottom of most of those plays? HUBRIS. An overweening pride. 

 August 21

It is very early here on this Saturday. I have been awake--sort of--for a couple of hours already. Our cats simply did not want to settle down so I am now waiting for my kettle to come to temperature and I can get my coffee made. The weather people promised us rain today but I'll wait and see. Those promises are more often broken than kept. The weather is so much more unpredictable nowadays.

Well, the War on Terror has suffered a major blow if not a total defeat. It was always a stupid idea in the first place. Terror is a technique, a tactic, just as saturation bombing or machine guns. It is not territory you can occupy (for however long), or bodies you can kill or maim, or "hearts and minds" you can try to "persuade". Now the blame game and spin games are going at full speed. Oh we didn't really lose because there hasn't been an attack on the "homeland" in the last 20 years. (No, we grew our own terrorists which no Republican it seems wants to call terrorists.) Or The Former Guy was right but Biden botched the whole thing converting a glorious "negotiated" peace agreement into an ignominious and chaotic retreat. (Pure crap.) Or hand wringing over the plight of Afghan women. This piece in Gods and Radicals pretty much describes what self serving non-sense that is.

My feeling that our society is spiraling into insanity keeps intensifying. It isn't just the schizophrenic responses to the pull out in Afghanistan. It is also the responses to COVID. Remember the couple last year who decided to take hydroxychloroquine formulated for aquarium use? Both landed in the hospital and one died. Well, here is another COV-idiot. This time a guy took veterinary ivermectin which is a cattle  dewormer. Or this unbelievable bit of insanity. I can, sort of, understand an ordinary Joe, but for an EMS director to offer ivermectin to his firefighters is totally bonkers.

August 24

Well, it is warm and heading to hot. I did get out on the patio early and did some deadheading and checking on the moisture in the containers. They are all doing very well though we haven't had any rain and I haven't watered for the last four days. The weather people keep promising rain but it all goes north or south or falls apart. I think I will go out early again tomorrow and water things a bit unless we do get some rain.

I saw that the Pfizer vaccine has full approval. But given the response the Former Guy got at his rally I doubt any of his hard core supporters will follow his advice and get the vaccine. The FDA and other medical groups are still considering boosters for all the currently used vaccines. Nothing definite has been announced as of this moment.

I have been trying to ignore the clusterf*&k in Kabul. All of the critics of the pull out annoy me. I don't know if Biden's people had a plan but the old saying that battle plans never survive the first contact with the enemy goes for any kind of plan with a tweaking: no plan survives first contact with reality. Robert Reich's post today says what I have been feeling: too much news on some items (Afghanistan, Cuomo, the Olympics) and not enough on what is of urgent importance here and now.

 August 20

It is bright and sunny today--and hot. The patio was already touching 90F just after we finished breakfast about 8am. I had thought I would do a bit of tidying up but decided not. Mom had some banking to do this morning and we decided to take a side trip to a little local bakery for some sweets. I am just hanging out reading the feeds in my e-mail.

I found this piece on Naked Capitalism that is interesting and not in a good way. I have been reading stories about the declining efficacy of COVID vaccines for the last couple of weeks including one from Israel about two weeks ago which reported that they are advising boosters for all people over age 50. I wondered at the time when we would get that advise over here. Over the last few days the CDC has issued that advise for those who got the Modern and the Pfizer shots when the reach 8 months after their last shot. I noticed that cases in my state have gone up though my county isn't as bad as places south of us. We still wear our masks and are "getting religious" about it. We have noticed lately that most of the employees of stores we have gone to are wearing masks. Today many of the customers are also.

We have noticed the rising food prices (and prices of almost everything else) for some years. Our usual joke is that the government economists don't shop for their own food because the inflation we saw never seemed to get into the official figures. According to Bloomberg the phenomenon is world wide and has gotten worse with the pandemic which drastically reduced incomes and disrupted supply chains.

Researchers at the University of Washington have reported that heat related deaths have increased by 74% since 1980 and deaths related to extreme cold has increased by 31% since 1990. I would love to see a graph of the year by year deaths put against the increasing global average temperature. Also did the researchers take into account population increase?

 August 19

Well, I'm back again. We have had a hectic week. Saturday we woke up to find that the sewer had backed up into our apartment. Enough sewage water came in to soak at least a third of our rug. We didn't lose much when we cleaned out the closet to see what we could keep. Almost everything came out dry. The landlords did get a guy to rout out the sewer line from the house to the street and a carpet cleaner out to shampoo and suck the water out of the rug--in all four of the units on that line. Everything seemed fine until Monday morning when I checked and found the rug soaked again though not as much of an area as before. Our neighbor discovered the problem about 10pm the night before--long after we had already gone to bed. The maintenance man came out again and removed the clog. It is just now drying out again. 

But our whole schedule for the week got compressed and I didn't do much in the gardens. Although I hadn't watered anything and we hadn't had rain since sometime last week nothing dried out and died. I did water all containers this morning and have a mental list of things that need to be done starting tomorrow morning.

For several years I have read various pieces by several authors about whether the world has entered a new geological era and what to call it. A couple argue that no new name is necessary because on a geologic scale the era of humans (prehistory and history) is a mere blip. Others insist that the human passage on this earth, especially since the beginning of the Industrial Age, has so impacted the earth that some new designation is needed. The term "Anthropocene" has often been used and now I find a new candidate "Pyrocene". This piece from Grist reviews a new book by that name.

I read a long article this morning about the repercussions of the Federal declaration of a water emergency in the Colorado River basin as the levels in Lake Meade and Lake Powell have declined to the lowest level since they were first filled in the middle of the last century. Concerns over water  however, isn't limited to the Colorado River and this article hit home for me. I lived in Fort Collins for about 15 years, attended Colorado State, and took frequent day trips along the Poudre Canyon through with the Cache la Poudre River flows. It is a major source of water in northern Colorado so a Denver suburb wanting to build a pipeline to tap it won't go down very well.

 August 15--officially half past the month.

Time to take a break. Yesterday has been a time of chaos and trying to get things back to a bit of normal. Our landlords had to get a blocked sewer pipe cleared but before we realized there was a problem we had water backing up from our utility closet and half of the living room rug soaked. Then we had to have the carpet cleaned. But a large part of the day was taking care of those problems. Today we had to get all of the things we had in the under-the-stairs closet checked out and put back after it dried out. Mom just finished mopping the bathroom floor--the water that went that way soaked the rugs and made the cat litter the little monsters threw out a mass of sludge. That is all taken care of  now and our normal pattern has been re-established. I also got out for about two hours in the gardens. I pulled the fading and tattered petunias, replaced them with the calibrachoa sunbells. Those should do well there since they don't mind the full sun. Some of the plants now have to deal with partial shade because the shadow of the house is traveling back toward the fence.

Axios is reporting that the Afghan president has left the country. One of the Taliban demands has been his removal from office. Now they are talking about "unconditional surrender." I wonder "How do you 'negotiate' such an uncompromising demand?" I don't think you do.

According to the news reports the FDA has authorized a third COVID shot for Americans with compromised immune systems. My niece just said that she had already received hers. She has several conditions which weaken her immunity and has been taking steroids for sever pain associated with them. The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel, which has persistently been ahead of the curve on vaccinations, has authorized a booster for all over age 50.

The insurance companies are, according to this story, starting to get tough on the unvaccinated. The story concerns individual health insurance but I would expect the push will also target corporate customers soon--if it has't already. That is pretty much what happened with smoking. They basically gave breaks to companies that took a tough line on encouraging employees to quit. Some even refused to hire or retain smokers.

 August 9

It is one of those days when I don't really want to do anything at all. We stayed up to watch the Olympics closing ceremony which kept us up past our normal bed time. That has thrown off my rhythms somewhat. I got out to give my gardens a light watering because we were hoping for rain which has been hit and miss (most often miss) lately. However, as it is now raining heavily it is a hit today. I traced and cut out the pattern for the new style masks so I won't be using the original pattern I pieced together from the downloaded pattern. Dealing with one solid piece of paper will be so much better than working with a pattern of four pieces taped together.

We watched quite a bit of the games. They provided an acceptable background noise to help relieve Mom's tinnitus and a relief from the interminably repeated "news." We were pleasantly surprised by the coverage. They showed a greater variety of sports from the last time I watched. We tuned in at the right time to see the archery finals, skeet shooting finals, one of the cross country equestrian heats (wish we had caught the dressage), women's canoe 100 (new this year) and skateboarding (also new). I was utterly amazed by women's skateboarding where the winners were all under 15. Thoroughly in awe Molly Seidel's bronze performance in the women's marathon which was only her third marathon ever. The opening and closing ceremonies were brilliantly staged. Successful all the way around.

August 11--almost half past another month!!

We had thundershowers and heavy rain pass through very early this morning so I won't be gardening today. I finished another cross-stitched table runner this morning--one with a fall theme. I am still in the doldrums where I don't really want to do much at all. We'll see if I find anything worth the energy to comment on this morning. 

I guess the Senate finally got off its collective butt to pass the "hard" infrastructure bill with 19 Republicans joining the majority and an outline for the "human" infrastructure bill (not fully written yet) on strictly Democratic votes (49-50). Now it all goes to the House where nothing is sure.

The news media has subjected us to an interminable series of stories (with more to come I am sure) on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Most involve a large dose of second guessing because of the advances and atrocities of the Taliban. All of that handwringing and moaning falls flat with me. All of the analysis ignores several factors and fails to ask several basic questions. First, much of the current situation derived from our Cold War against the Soviet Union. We funded and supplied the Taliban (among other groups) asking only if they opposed the Soviets. We didn't ask how they felt about the condition of women or democracy. Of course, we were shocked (SHOCKED) when the Taliban established a repressive, medieval, fundamentalist Islamic government. Second, we went bonkers when a group of hijackers who were mostly Saudis and led by a Saudi expat living in Afghanistan took down the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and crashed one plane in rural Pennsylvania. We invaded, expelled the Taliban, and supported a nominally democratic government without asking how much support that government or its leaders had in the country generally. Rather reminds me of our support for the Diem family inVietnam which turned out so well. Third, what our leaders (and most of our society) knew about the history, society, and culture of Afghanistan and its surrounding countries wouldn't even fill a small thimble. And our knowledge hasn't really increased over time. We never asked ourselves if we could even achieve whatever goals we wanted to do. I am not sure we had any besides killing Osama bin Ladin. The Taliban were unlucky enough to stand between us and our revenge. We never questioned the use of military force or whether some other means might have achieved better results. I think I will let this goal before it gives me a headache.

We live in a crazy country. We have at least two governors who are insisting they won't impose mask mandates and will forbid any one else from imposing as in cities and school boards and individual schools. Of course the two I am thinking of particularly are governors of two of the most populous with the highest rates of COVID-delta infections and hospitals near or exceeding capacity. But we also have a couple of other governors (I forget which ones) advising doctors to administer third or booster shots and a number of people clamoring for such shots on their own while a lot of others are refusing even after people near and dear to them have died of the disease. 

 August 6

I haven't posted for a few days--nothing much interesting to say. The gardens are in minimal maintenance mode right now--just deadheading and grabbing a weed that decides to poke its head up where it is noticeable and watering of course. Some of my energy is going to deciding what I will need to clear out starting in early September. That is when the garden shops and others start carrying mums. I need to clear a space for them. I am also thinking about a different arrangement for the containers next spring--something I hope will allow me to reach all of the plants more easily. Over the last week I have been collecting a couple of sweet peppers every couple of days and six pretty red peppers were ready to harvest. Over the last week the temperatures have been a bit lower and didn't rise high enough on the patio to make just watering the pots exhausting.

I just cut out the pieces for a new face mask--one based on scarves. We are not going to put the masks away. Why? you wonder. New variants of COVID, the possibility of breakthrough infections, and a flu season coming on. 

We have been following the fires in Idaho and California. It is easy to forget that other areas suffering catastrophic fires also. Just this morning the news mentioned one that had already burned over 6000 hectares (14000+ acres) on the Michigan upper peninsula. (The story was on BBC, surprisingly, which is why the area was in hectares). However, another story just along with that one was this. Yesterday I read a piece which said that people in tourist areas of Greece and Turkey had taken to the ocean to get away from the flames. One report described the Mediterranean as ringed fire from Spain through Greece and Turkey.

I listened to one of the economics pundits this morning touting the employment numbers and insisting that the current inflation was transitory because (they think) it is driven by a few sectors--cars, hospitality and housing. Pardon my skepticism. Another reporter noted that the Dixie fire in California has gone from 8th largest to 3rd largest fire in California. One just now noted that parts of California (and I assume other fire prone areas) will soon be uninsurable. They thought that would make them uninhabitable but the insurance problem didn't really affect the coastal areas because powerful interests pressured the federal government to change the flood plain maps so their expensive buildings could qualify for government flood insurance. I wonder if something similar will happen to support the real estate market in California. The problem though is the hit the local economies will take because of the destruction and loss of wealth and income. And the ongoing drought is affecting a much wider area. Already dairy farmers and cattlemen have reduced or eliminated their herds. Other farmers are giving up or plowing under crops that are dying for lack of water. Remember the groundwater is increasingly difficult and expensive to acquire. To say that the COVID will be gone and the economy will continue to bounce back ignores other factors that will drag on economic growth.

Another "sign of the times" appeared on my Facebook feed yesterday. Our favorite tea/spice/bulk grains store is going to close for good in early September. The owner's husband lost his job two and a half years ago and after failing to find a new job in the area decided to try out of state. He found one and after six months with the job appearing likely to be a stable, good fit his wife will close up her shop and join him. Damn! that is the only such shop in the area.

Gail Tverberg at Our Finite World has a long (and I did read it) on the push for vaccination against COVID and the serious questions involved. Pay special attention to the part on antibody-dependent enhancement. I checked it out an found among the virus categories noted for this phenomenon are SARS, HIV-1, and influenzas. Note also that no effective vaccine has been developed for HIV or SARS. And influenza vaccines have to be recalibrated each season.

For another long read that makes some interesting conclusions on our political condition take a look at Richard Heinberg's recent Museletter #341. And it I did read it as well as posts by Peter Turchin before. 

 July 31

It looks like we might have a nice fairly cool and sunny day. I hope so because I really need to get some trimming done on some of the plants and perhaps some watering. Have to check that out. I collected the first three ripe peppers yesterday. My lavender, petunias, and rosemary especially need pruning and shaping. A couple of other plants need to have spend blossoms cut.

Jan In SanFran has a good post this morning which I think tells the truth about politics today. I have been perplexed for some time about the utter lack of conviction in too many Republicans especially--at least those that seem to command the news cycle. But the notion of an election-industrial complex makes a lot of sense--and not in a good way.

Gizmodo/Earther has a slide show that is astounding--and somewhat troubling. We hear a lot about the fires in our western states but go just a little north into Canada to see another large fire; or head over the Mediterranean and see fires burning all around from Sardinia to Lebanon; or go further east to Siberia and see the same. For the last couple of weeks I noticed that I can't really tell if we have clear skies until the sun if well up because of the haze. On some days what should have been clear blue is marred by a dirty, rusty tinge. Note--I live over 1000 miles away from the big fires making the news.

I found this WiskeyandGunpowder post by way of Naked Capitalism. There is a saying that generals prepare to fight the last war and this analysis of a failed war game confirms it. If you want a fictional demonstration read the first half of John Michael Greer's Twilight's Last Gleaming. 

This CNBC story also came by way of Naked Capitalism and my only comment is "Ouch." Even though we are fully vaccinated here we still keep our masks with us.