Howdy y’all!
We’re going to try a couple of new things with this Whaz Up! post. First, we’re making the Cambodia #COVID19 news permanent. When I started this regularly occuring post, I intended to do it every time, but I forgot last time. Declaring that it is now a feature of every post won’t make it so no more than saying it will go every every Monday means that I’ll get the date and day right every week! Sheesh. Last week I posted it on Sunday, and entitled it with Monday 20 June. 20 June was Sunday’s date. I’m a paragon of details, so sue me, why don’t you?
Second, I’m going to start featuring a few of the blogs I follow or specific posts that I’ve enjoyed. I’ve been linked to on several such regular posts from other blogs and greatly appreciate it. It is a good way to give back to the blogging community that has been so good to me and to show the world some of the great bloggng that is going on out there. Sound good?
Now onto our show!
Whaz Up!?!
By the time y’all are reading this, no one will be rising with apologies to Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb, but the missus will be in Canada jumping through all the hurdles and hoops that international travel entails in the time of #COVID19! Including getting a #COVID19 test just 72 hours before departure. Unfortunately, I developed cold symptoms, so I’m maksing in my own apartment to keep her from catching my cold! We got her test results, she’s negative for #COVID19. Whew!
I’ll be doing the single dad thing for the summer. Just me and La Petite Fille. Our one big summertime adventure is that we’ll be moving apartments. It’s no big deal. Just across the complex from our two-bedroom to a three-bedroom apartment. There you have it.
Everybody probably realizes that I’ve been a little more revealing of my personal life. My About-the-Blog page talks a little more about my life as an international school teacher, I blog about my autism and pathological demand avoidance, and I’ve added a recent picture of myself to the masthead. Take a look at the picture. I have a really big beard. I grew it out during lockdown. I had a head start since I grew it out to be Santa Claus in 2019. Recently, I went to get a haircut, though, after Phnom Penh’s recent lockdown was lifted. There’s a very nice woman with a shop on the ground floor of our apartment building. I sat down and said, Can you cut the left side a little longer, and the right side a little shorter? And, leave three or four holes in the hair wherever you please. And, maybe cut the back in a very jagged way. She looked puzzled and finally replied, I can’t do that. That would be terrible! I said, why not? You did it last time!
That was a joke, y’all. Let me know how hard you laughed in the comments and maybe leave one of your own.
The monsoon has started in Cambodia. We literally get rain everyday. The other day after it rained, we got this lovely rainbow just outside of our balcony. Between us and the river. It was quite close:
After our move, we’ll be on a lower floor, but still facing the same direction. I’m going to miss this view, but my fear of heights won’t be missing it. I am anxious every day over the height. Just looking out of the window sets it off.
You can see it’s being a slow summer, right?
Blogs I’ve Read
Blogs Kind Enough to Link to Ye Olde Blogge
- Crooks and Liars daily column Mike’s Blog Round Up has linked to Ye Olde Blogge about every two weeks. Be sure to check out MBRU EVERYDAY as they highlight five small blogs that whover is currating has been reading. Always some fun stuff to be found there. Crook’s and Liars is engaged in a fundraising campaign trying to keep the bytes flowing over there, so give if you can.
- Burr Deming’s Fair and Unbalanced gives a snarky look at week’s news and opinion on various blogs and articles around the Internet. That’s up every Sunday, so y’all check back.
- Infidel, small blogger-in-chief, I guess, also offers a Sunday smorgesborg of blog links that always has something interesting.
- Friend of Ye Olde Blogge, Tengrain, often links to us over at MBRU, and has a daily offering of snarky news on Mock, Paper, Scisors that’s always sure to amuse, confuse, and otherwise leave you feeling abused.
Lookee What I Found!
- The Old Liberal, Joseph Urban, has some insights into the GQP states cutting off the $300.00 weekly unemployment insurance supplement.
- The Rushour Blog, American Coffee offers Malcolm X’s observation that the enemy of Black people is white liberals who only use them as political footballs. We all know that Ye Olde Blogge is all about ending white supremacy and racism, so be sure to get this important observation and point-of-view.
- Jerry Coyne over on his blog, Why Evolution is True, addresses liberal reluctance to leave the mask behind despite CDC guidelines. I think someone should direct Joe Scarborough to this particular post, and maybe shut him up. It’s probablynot impossible to shut Scarborough up — lord knows Micah tries just about every weekday morning — but it’s worth a try. Sharp-eyed readers of Ye Olde Blogge know that it is because of adjustment reaction.
- For an interesting look at #COVID19 in India, checkout Dynastycrook’s post about liberals, tragedy porn, and Western hypocricy by Chaiwallah. Fun fact, Ye Olde Blogge is curiously popular in India with lots of daily views every day and quite a few followers. Go figure.
- Elizabeth on her blog, Bluewater, reports about a Pew Poll that found that 56% of liberal women are depressed and anxious. You would be, too, if your only prospects for dating were depressed and anxious liberal women, liberal men, or the conservative variety of either, but I snark.
- And, rounding out our inaugural list is P.O.P. over on The Propaganda Professor warning us against when “liberals” go bad and become conservative, you know, like Candice Owen. What? That’s a thing? I always thought that was just something that liberal parents told their liberal kids to scare them into behaving, Be careful or Candice Owen is going to come turn you into a conservative!
Well, that wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.
Hey, do me a favor, though, and after you’ve visited each of these fine blogging establishments, leave them a sign of life because blogging is a lonely business and each one of them would appreciate it. Also, let us know what you thought… in the comments!
#COVID19 in Cambodia
Cambodia’s struggle against #COVID19 continues to be eratic with some weeks ebbing and some weeks flowing. This week we’re definitely flowing! We’re up to 47,649 total cases, but worse, new daily cases are outstripping recoveries for the first time in months, 800 new cases, and deaths are up significantly rising by 146 in a week to 540.
We continue to make progress with the strategy of vaccinating our way out of the quagmire with this good news:
- People in Phnom Penh have until 8 July to get vaccinated and 3.86 million of a targetted 10 million people vaccinated putting us on schedule for herd immunity by year’s end.
- A million more Sinovac doses have arrived. They promise that we are well on our way to herd immunity by the fall.
- The latest hot spot is now in Seam Reap site of Angkor Wat.
- And, they’re fretting over the Delta variant which could easily blow all of their hard work out of the water.
Huzzah!
Jack
If you liked any of this grab bag of personal news, sign up for the email list below!
Image Attribution
“We’ve Found Something New, Ivanka!” by outtacontext is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Psy of Life 
Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – updates and blog suggestions
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Well, Jack, nothing like handing the readers a To Do List. 🙂 That’s quite a selection of blogs I had never heard of to check out. It’s a good thing I spent yesterday evening doing Bookmarks housekeeping, even though I didn’t get to the Blogs folder.
The Delta Variant is likely to blow a lot of people’s hard work on COVID fighting, and worse where few if any are vaccinated. A BBC report was mentioned today on /. that some (so far, not many) fully vaccinated people in UK have caught the Delta – did not mention severity of symptoms, or how long ago those patients got their jabs (I like the British usage better than the American “shots” which figures given our love of guns), which might give a clue to the durability of the immunity.
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Howdy Bob!
I read a news article the other day that 4,100 (I think it was 4,100; 4,000 something any way) people in the US have had “breakthrough” infections, meaning infections after they’ve been vaccinated with some even dying. No mention of what percentage got sick enough for hospitalization, or died, or which variants might’ve been involved. Stephen Curry or some other famous basketball player got a “breakthrough” infection, too, during the playoffs. I did the math, though. With 300 million vaccinations out there and a 95% efficacy rate, that means 5% of the 300 million could get infected. Five percent of 300 million is 15 million. It puts the 4,100 or whatever the number was into some perspective. Most of those folks will not get very sick. Most won’t die. A few will get sick and fewer still will die.
Thanks for visiting those blogs. I’ve been the beneficiary of yours and other people’s pingbacks for a while. I try to link to blogs when and where I can, but finding the right supporting material is time consuming, when I’ve tried to limit myself to blogs, it’s become downright impossible. I did for one post way back in 2016 when I started the blog and was all ideaistic.
Have a good evening and night!
Huzzah!
Jack
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It sounds like that report also did not indicate whether the breakthrough infections also involved complicating conditions that tend to reduce efficacy.
Almost all the blogs I follow, I found by word-of-mouth (word-of -blog, actually). We spread the word.
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Howdy Bob!
I’ve seen some people use the breakthrough infection thing as a reason not to get vaccinated — what’s the point, they ask. Unless the breakthrough infections start occuring in millions of people, the point is, it will very likely save your life and those of others.
Huzzah!
Jack
PS Me, too. I find blogs by reading other people’s blogs. I guess that’s the only way. I’ve made some of my “closest” online friends in the blogging community and certainly had some of my most meaningful online social interactions in the blogging community.
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People will latch onto any excuse they can find if they don’t want to get vaccinated. Humans are so bad at risk-benefit assessment when motivated reasoning is involved.
My experience with blogging is much the same as yours.
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Howdy Bob!
I am daily in awe of our ability to rationalize any behavior and tolerate any level of stress in order to preserve for just a second longer some perferred version of reality. But, there you have it. That’s us. Human kind.
Huzzah!
Jack
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[sigh] Yep
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That which got us to evolve into the most dominate species in the history of the planet is causing us to run the risk of extincting ourselves.
Jack
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With all the talk surrounding the report on UAPs (formerly called UFOs), I get to thinking about the Fermi Paradox. It may well turn out that the very traits that allow a species to achieve the possibility of space travel are also likely to lead to the collapse of its technological system, or extinction. For example, for an oxygen breathing species to get from 15th Century blacksmithing level to the current level here, the only energy intensity pathway is through fossil fuels. Unless a transition to other energy sources is done as soon a technically possible, or nearly so, the energy source becomes a lethal addiction. This may well be why we have not met ET. And any space-faring species not of the O2 breathing sort, but some exotic (to us) bio chemistry would simply regard this place as a toxic hell and fly on by.
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Howdy Bob!
The likelihood of us actually meeting any kind of alien species is pretty small. The light we see from the stars is already millions of years old. Any sound wave or other detectable energy started millions of years ago, too. By the time any of it reaches here, it is more likely that the sending civilization has long since passed into the dustbin of their history. Should any species actually arrive on earth, would they be of a form that we would even recognize as being a living species, their ships, a mechanical thing?
None of it is completely out of the question, but it seems very unlikely.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Exactly. Unless somebody, somewhere finds or has found a way around the speed of light speed limit, the odds are vanishingly small.
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Apparently, it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light at least linearally. I guess that’s why there is all the talk of wormholes and bending the space-time continuum in sci fi stories.
I guess it is another example of the difficulty human beings have with comprehending large numbers. The distance in space is far too great to be easily conceieved of, especially when we have fiction stories telling us about how easily it is overcome. It reminds me of an old math joke. A mad psychologists decides to conduct an experiment on creativity and deprivation. He locks three men in three separate cells. One is an engineer, one, a physicist, and one, an abstract mathematician. He leaves them for a week with no food, only water. At the end of the week, he slides a tin of tuna through a slot in the door and observes their reaction.
The engineer beats the can against the walls of the room until it opens. He rips the tin apart with his bare hands bloodying himself and licks the can clean of tuna and oil.
The physicist makes an elaborate calucluation that takes up all of the space on the walls as far as he can reach and the floors. In the end, he dents the can in one place, and it springs open allowing him to eat the tuna with his fingers.
The mathematician simply sits smiling with the can before him. The psychologist watches in horrified fascination as the fellow does nothing but smile. Finally, he can’t take the curiosity any more. “Aren’t you hungary?” he demands. “I’ve left you in here a week with no food!” “Of course, I’m hungary,” replies the mathematician. “But, you’ve now a tin of tuna, yet you’ve done nothing to open it and eat!” He is outraged almost insulted that the mathematician would be so passive. “Everyone else has managed to open your can, but you sit here smiling like an imbicile! Can’t you solve the problem?” “Oh, but I have solved it,” replied the mathematician serenely. “Solved it?!?” sputters the psychologist now completely beside himself. “You’ve solved nothing! The can sits wholly undisturbed and entact!” “No, no,” insists the mathematician. “I’ve solved it.” “How?!? How?!? How have you solved?” demands the psychologist. “I said, suppose I had a can opener.”
An allegory of our time, I’m afraid.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Great story! Then there are the dangers of any contact between two bio-chemically compatible species (even bacteria) evolved on different planets, having no immunity to each other’s microbes, and allergic reactions to alien proteins. Remember what killed the martians in War Of The Worlds, the common cold.
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The difference between relative gravities, the filtering of various radiations, exposures to magnetic fields and so many other differences between planets, differences that could never be wholly anticipated and, therefore, not protected against, until arrival, could spell the end of any alien visitor.
I like the point that Niel DeGrasse Tyson makes: why aren’t we seeing UFO’s on satellite imagery? Why hasn’t anyone take cell phone video of them? Why are they only showing up around naval aircraft? It is more likely that an earth-bound explanation exists for the footage shot by the pilots than extraterrestrial.
In the past, we had whole towns having reported seeing UFOs and taken still photos of them. Now that we have cell phones, no one is taking good quality cell phone video of them. Why are they hiding all of a sudden?
Huzzah!
Jack
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As for the whole towns seeing them, I have two guesses: One is that “Q” has not mentioned aliens (except the earthly, POC kind). And, those photos of the flying saucers of the past were done on film and processed in darkrooms, which digital images are not, and get immediately shared without manipulation.
I suspect that some of the more difficult to explain sightings by the pilots could be deliberate hoaxes on them by someone projecting images or some such.
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