We don’t have hot dogs often, but, when we do, we like them with hot dog relish.
I don’t know if it’s a local thing or not, but we haven’t been able to find it for months. Not that we look every time we go to the store, but every time we look, there’s none on the shelves.
We also like to use hot dog relish on brats.
I sometimes watch a wide variety of YouTube videos. Yesterday, the title of one caught my attention: Arkansas traffic-stop shootout caught by dashcam.
The description explains: “Dramatic dashcam video shows a sheriff’s deputy in a shootout following a traffic stop in Arkansas. About 40 shots were fired during the shootout Sunday. The suspect was later caught and faces attempted murder and other charges. (Nov. 15) — The Associated Press”
After watching the video, I wondered what had happened to the shooter, Luis Cobos-Cenobio, after he was arrested. Given the length of time since the incident, I figured he had been convicted and sentenced by now. I didn’t expect what actually happened.
On August 27, 2019, while still being held for the November 11, 2018 incident on an attempted capital murder charge, Cobos-Cenobio was apparently strangled by another prisoner.
Even with vaccines available, the delta variant is having a growing impact in Arkansas. For the 3rd day in a row, new cases today topped 1000. There were 1,155 new cases reported today. Active cases jumped by 673 to 6,605. There are 497 Covid patients hospitalized, up 16, with 81 on ventilators…… We were supposed to be past this!1
Last summer, things looked pretty bleak. Covid cases were rising and a surge was around the corner.
The future only had a couple of options.
There was the possibility, the potential, for the development of a vaccine. However, historically, vaccine development is a long, complex process with standardized procedures that often takes ten to fifteen years.2 The likelihood of creating a vaccine that could be used in the near term appeared slim, though governments around the world promised miracles.
Covid-19 (aka SARS-COV-2) is related to other coronaviruses that cause diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Scientists have been studying these to develop vaccines against them for many years before SARS-COV-2 was discovered. This helped accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines.3
Three phases of clinical trials are required after a vaccine has been developed. While these are normally done one at a time in sequence, because of the seriousness of the pandemic, the phases were overlapped to be able to more quickly make the vaccines available if they proved to be safe and effective. No trial phases were skipped. The trials included tens of thousands of volunteers with no serious safety concerns shown after more than 8 weeks following vaccination.4
Emergency Use Authorization
On February 4, 2020, the HHS Secretary (Alex Azar) determined “that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19” and later declared “that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs and biological products during the COVID-19 pandemic, pursuant to section 564 of the FD&C Act, effective March 27, 2020.”5,6
The timing of this declaration makes it clear that the federal government was aware early on of the seriousness of the pandemic that was then just beginning to spread.
Since the previous fastest drug from start to distribution—the mumps vaccine—took four years to develop, it’s natural that there would be some apprehension over the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine. The pandemic, however, spurred unprecedented global cooperation for vaccine research and development, building on the previous coronavirus vaccine research. Dr. Eric J. Yager, an associate professor of microbiology at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Albany, NY, explained that scientists had been studying coronaviruses for over 50 years and had existing data on the structure, genome, and life cycle of this type of virus. “Research on these viruses established the importance of the viral spike (S) protein in viral attachment, fusion, and entry, and identified the S proteins as a target for the development of antibody therapies and vaccines,” he said, and, “Early efforts by scientists at Oxford University to create an adenovirus-based vaccine against MERS provided the necessary experimental experience and groundwork to develop an adenovirus vaccine for COVID-19.”
There are plenty of authoritative, legitimate sources of information on Covid-19 and the vaccines. I simply do not understand how people can rely on sources that spread misinformation and outright lies.
Time and technology came together to produce multiple Covid-19 vaccines. At no other time in human history has the conditions existed that have resulted in these 21st-century scientific miracles.
I like taking photos of flowers. I am by no means a botanist or expert on plants, just an amateur photographer who likes to share some of my photos online. It’s nice to be able to provide accurate information such as the name of plants that are the subject of a photo.
I found over the years that it was often difficult to identify plants that I had taken pictures of. Sure, there are online sources that can be referenced, but they all required browsing images of flowers trying to find one that looked close. I was usually successful, but it still took time, sometimes a lot of time for a single photo.
In 2018, Karen came across an app on the iPhone called PictureThis (also available on Google Play). It was amazingly good at finding matches for the plants we saw along the trail, usually offering up several options for what it might be when we snapped an image into the app. It’s even better now.
However, I never thought to use it for pictures that I had already taken until quite a while later. It’s really easy to pull a photo from the pictures on the phone and the app identifies the plant really fast.
But what about photos that aren’t on the phone?
The picture above was taken on August 23, 2004 using a Kodak Easyshare DX4530 5.0 mp digital camera (there is one currently available on eBay for $12.99).
I opened the file for the image on my desktop computer and snapped a photo of the image displayed on my screen. I then pulled that into PictureThis and, in short order, had this result:
The plant is called golden crownbeard (verbesina encelioides)
Verbesina encelioides is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. The species is native to many parts of the United States and Mexico. It is naturalized in other parts of North America, the Middle East, Spain, Argentina, Australia and the Pacific islands. Common names include golden crownbeard, gold weed, wild sunflower, cowpen daisy, butter daisy, crown-beard, American dogweed and South African daisy. [Wikipedia]
The app is available in both a free and pay version. We find that the free version does everything we need for it to do.
We have plenty of electronic devices connected to the internet. We each have a computer, iPhone, Kindle, and iPad.
Karen uses a laptop and I normally use a dual-screen desktop PC—though, to be accurate, my computer is mounted under the desktop.
Our computers are our main interface with the online world. When away from the computer, though, we can do just about everything we want to online with our phones—and the phones have apps that aren’t available on the computers. They also have pretty good cameras. On our recent trip to Colorado, all of our photos were taken using the phones, even though I did have a digital SLR camera with us—I never took it out of its protective case.
The Kindles, of course, only have one function, reading—and that could be done using any of the other devices, but I prefer the Kindle Paperwhite. For reading, it’s kind of like Goldilocks and The 3 Bears—it’s just right.
Out iPads have been relegated to mainly serving as devices for streaming videos when we’re using the treadmill or traveling, though much of the time we download TV shows and movies for later viewing.
Then, of course, we have TVs that are connected for streaming.
And, since I can’t take my desktop with us when we travel, I have a small, older laptop. I used it once on our trip to Colorado.
Oh, and we have a recent model iPod that we bought for playing music in the camper.
We embraced digital technology years ago, long before we entered the ranks of seniors.
Video by Joey Helms
David Attenborough impersonation voiceover by Rick Whelan
Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico, June 13, 2021
On our way to Manitou Springs, we took a small side excursion as we were running a tad early for checking in. We normally try to get in some walks during a long driving day. This walk was different from most that find along our way.
We took the 1-mile trail around the rim. It’s paved and a bit steep in places. We were glad we went the direction we did as it worked out that the longest steepest grade of the loop trail was downhill for us.
The National Monument, located in northeastern New Mexico, protects and interprets an extinct cinder cone volcano and is part of the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. A paved road spirals gradually around the volcano and visitors can drive up to a parking lot at the rim of the extinct volcano. Hiking trails circle the rim as well as lead down into the mouth of the volcano. The monument was designated on August 9, 1916, and is administered by the National Park Service. The volcano is located 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north of the village of Capulin.
The parking lot at the top is small. If it’s full, the rangers at the visitor center place each new parties wanting to go up on a waitlist and call when parking spots open up.
Rocky mountain raspberry (aka delicious raspberry, boulder raspberry, snowy bramble; botanical name rubus deliciosus)
I don’t like a lot of the advertising that’s online… even though we do have some limited income streams from ads on our pages. Ads that are in-your-face aggressive are particularly annoying.
I really dislike Facebook ads. I usually just get them when I’m browsing Facebook on my phone. Even though it’s a waste of time, I almost always “hide” them—and then don’t answer when Facebook asks, “Please tell us why you hid this ad.”
Today I got one for a foodtruck in Minnesota.
Minnesota?
I live in Arkansas. Why on earth would Facebook feed me an ad for a food truck that’s 750 miles north of us?
It’s not like we regularly visit Minnesota. We haven’t been there in three years. Most of our visits to Minnesota have been spaced years apart and, now, for various reasons, a visit to Minnesota is far less likely.
This ad really missed its target.
By about 750 miles.
The photo is from when I applied to the Houston, Texas police department in 1971. I was 19 years old.
I never heard anything from them after that.
And that’s okay—the career path I ended up with was a better fit for me. Of that, I am sure.
I can only imagine what things would have been like if I had been hired. At the time, it was a potential job opportunity and career path to a better life. I didn’t really perceive any downsides. Today, though, I see plenty.
In 2012, a study of 464 police officers linked the day-to-day stress of police work to “increased levels of sleep disorders, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and suicide.” Other studies show that 7 to 19 percent of active-duty officers have PTSD. MRIs of the brains of police officers have identified a connection “between experiencing trauma and a reduction in areas that play roles in emotional and cognitive decision-making, memory, fear, and stress regulation.”1
The lives of police officers are impacted in four key ways.2
I admire and respect people who ethically and responsibly work in law enforcement.
I do not support the calls for defunding or disbanding of police organizations. If anything, funding should be increased, with higher pay commensurate with the difficulties and stresses of the work.
With cameras of all types—cell phones, CCTV, doorbell cams, body cams, dash cams, etc.—so widespread, it is far easier today to scrutinize the behavior of police. While, in some respects, it may make the job more difficult, those who ethically and responsibly work the job should embrace the technology.
I don’t think I would have been a good fit for police work—and it certainly would not have been a good fit for me.
“Sometimes you get applause for not being dead.”
40 Years of Comedy—HBO 1997
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, and author. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comics of all time, he was dubbed “the dean of counterculture comedians”.[1] He was known for his dark comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. His “seven dirty words” routine was central to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government’s power to censor indecent material on the public airwaves. (Wikipedia)
