vxbush 12/17/2021 6:20:31 AM

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Occasional Reader 12/17/2021 6:28:32 AM

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Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 6:39:59 AM

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In #2 Occasional Reader said: Question for the day: do coyotes really eat road runners?

Not around where I live. Coyotes, but no road runner birds.

In general, I don't know.

vxbush 12/17/2021 7:06:00 AM

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In #2 Occasional Reader said: Question for the day: do coyotes really eat road runners?

There's a web page on that. The answer appears to be yes. 

JCM 12/17/2021 7:20:04 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 2:

If they can catch them......

Occasional Reader 12/17/2021 7:22:14 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 4:

This inter-net gizmo is amazing!

Alice in Dairyland 12/17/2021 8:05:45 AM

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In #4 vxbush said: The answer appears to be yes.

I would have guessed no.  Everyone knows road runners are way smarter than coyotes.  Just watch the cartoons and you'll see it's true.  Follow the science!

JCM 12/17/2021 8:31:21 AM

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Reply to Alice in Dairyland in 7:

The coyote needs to find a new supplier!

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 8:54:48 AM

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In #8 JCM said: The coyote needs to find a new supplier!

You see, ACME is really run by road runners! All the stuff they send to ol' Wiley is deliberately defective.

doppelganglander 12/17/2021 9:24:14 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 3:

If you have coyotes but no road runners, clearly the road runners have all been eaten by coyotes.

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 9:47:53 AM

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Alice in Dairyland 12/17/2021 9:58:39 AM

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In #10 doppelganglander said: If you have coyotes but no road runners, clearly the road runners have all been eaten by coyotes.

What about the people that have road runners but no coyotes? 

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 10:25:48 AM

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In #12 Alice in Dairyland said: What about the people that have road runners but no coyotes? 

It means they can't get deliveries from ACME

vxbush 12/17/2021 10:34:35 AM

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In #11 Kosh's Shadow said: So the replacement CMOS battery (little watch battery size with wire) for a computer arrived. Package had been opened and battery was loose in the box. Had it been something valuable like an SSD, it wouldn't be there. Fedex needs to fire someone

Heard the story that one of our neighbors had sent gift cards via the mail, and someone opened all the envelopes and stole the cards. 

Alice in Dairyland 12/17/2021 10:49:18 AM

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In #14 vxbush said: via the mail, and someone opened all the envelopes and stole the cards.

Well clearly, we need to hire more government employees.  They are our heroes you know.

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 11:57:34 AM

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For some reason, PJMedia lets me read VIP articles (I think noscript extension for Firefox breaks their scripting to block access)

So I am posting a lot of this article (link) because it corresponds with what I have been thinking - the omicron variant produces so mild cases we should just let it go and give us immunity to worse variants

This is most of the article:

Fewer than 2% of detected COVID cases required hospital admissions in the second week of this omicron wave, compared with nearly 20% in the second week of the delta wave. That’s according to South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla.

Bloomberg can’t help but indulge in a little fear-mongering, reminding readers that “new cases in that week of the current wave were more than 20,000 a day, compared with 4,400 in the same week of the third wave. That’s further evidence of omicron’s rapid transmissibility.”

    “Mild” is the same word used by Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who was one of the first to identify the latest variant. People she treated with omicron had symptoms “so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” she said.

    Virtually all of Netcare’s patients “presented with mild to moderate flu-like symptoms, including a blocked or runny nose, headache and a scratchy or sore throat,” according to a summary by News24.

    “Take a NyQuil and don’t bother calling me in the morning,” is pretty much what my doctor would tell me to do with those symptoms, provided they didn’t get any worse.

In that same column, I quoted Richard Friedland, head honcho of South Africa’s largest health provider: “I actually think there is a silver lining here and this may signal the end of COVID-19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it’s highly contagious, but doesn’t cause severe disease.”

Indeed. As of last week, non-deadly omicron had almost completely crowded out the barely-deadly delta variant, accounting for three-quarters of all new cases.

Nevertheless, I had to read a week’s worth of warnings from our nation’s 24/7 panic mongers that we still didn’t know enough about omicron to give the All Clear! signal. Keep those double-masks on and stay hidden in the basement.

Well, is a 90% decrease in hospitalizations and exactly zero omicron deaths enough for our professional panic-mongers?

Probably not.

Is anyone with half a lick of sense still paying attention to them?

Certainly not.

vxbush 12/17/2021 12:35:48 PM

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In #16 Kosh's Shadow said: Is anyone with half a lick of sense still paying attention to them?

The only ones paying attention are those with no sense. One of my coworkers is a very nice lady who works hard, but she hasn't gotten a lick of sense in her. She frets about everything. Part of that makes her good at her job, but it also means she is fearful way too much of the time. She is still freaked out about COVID. 

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 12:42:42 PM

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In #17 vxbush said: She is still freaked out about COVID. 

The media and the government are deliberately making people scared. Early on, I thought there was more to it; certainly we needed to protect the elderly, which we did not do. Now I think a lot of the scare was Chinese disinformation, but the government wants control and is going with it.

Like the article I quoted a while ago "We're fighting a virus from China with a public health policy from China that is making the world into China"

The only reason I'm getting the booster is because where I work requires it, and the risk of it is low enough not to be worth losing my job.

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 1:30:00 PM

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In #18 Kosh's Shadow said: The only reason I'm getting the booster is because where I work requires it, and the risk of it is low enough not to be worth losing my job.

I note, however, the risk of the vaccine to children is higher, and the risk of COVID lower, than for me (over 65). 

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 1:30:11 PM

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In #18 Kosh's Shadow said: The only reason I'm getting the booster is because where I work requires it, and the risk of it is low enough not to be worth losing my job.

I note, however, the risk of the vaccine to children is higher, and the risk of COVID lower, than for me (over 65). 

JCM 12/17/2021 1:50:16 PM

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On my LinkedIn feed...

Hans Koppies• 3rd+Orthopedagoog - publicist1d • 1 day ago

"I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned" - Richard Feynman

vxbush 12/17/2021 2:19:13 PM

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Reply to JCM in 21:

Word. 

Occasional Reader 12/17/2021 3:19:38 PM

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Reply to JCM in 21:

also: I would rather have a bottle in front of me, then have a bifrontal lobotomy.

Kosh's Shadow 12/17/2021 4:30:47 PM

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So the system that failed Monday still doesn't work. I didn't think the CMOS battery was the problem. They're sending a new SSD. I hope FedEx doesn't steal it.

BTW, the computer is called Coyote. Should never have bought it from ACME

doppelganglander 12/17/2021 4:36:51 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 16:

This is exactly what I've been saying. 

JCM 12/17/2021 4:45:15 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 25:

Yet local media is selling fear pr0n...

King County health leaders warn of surge in Omicron cases