Sunday in the Valley

 

The Great Smoky Mountain Air Balloon Festival

Another Sunday morning in the Tennessee Valley is full of joy and relaxation as I follow in the footsteps of my own pursuit of happiness... as has been so eloquently stated in our US Constitution.

From inside the safety and security of my screen-in back porch, I am able to survey and observe nature unfolding right in front of me...  from squirrels and rabbits frolicing around our backyard, but I can see birds of all sorts flying by from hummingbirds to hawks as there are no restrictions in the sky above me.

My butt is comfortably sitting in a extra-padding deck chair; my Lenovo laptop of over five years is still functioning perfectly with the help of Best Buy's Geek Squad; my YETI cup is full of McCafe coffee from pods with a few spoons of Sugar Free French Vanilla Cappuccino Mix (it holds 3 normal cups of coffee at one time), and my ears of listening to music from 1964 to 1971 via my BOSE earplugs that fit very comfortably in both ears...

A gentle breeze blows through the screens and cools me off ever so effectively as the heat of the day slowly increases to the point that after I eat my brunch out here, I will probably return to the insides of my climate controlled (and completely owned for 15 years) house.

In the meantime, I sit out here with our 3 cats in a mellowing state of euphoria, listening to rock and roll tunes of the best decade EVER as far as music was concerned and the lyrics that were explicit between the lines...  and, as I reflect upon the decade of the 1960's, I am appalled by the simple fact that most of the same issues we had then are still with us today...   like:

• wage income disparities
• racism and civil rights
• unemployment concerns
• fighting foreign wars
• declining K-12 education
• healthcare costs
• slow economic growth
• fighting against communism

BUT...  the only difference is that I now NO LONGER GIVE A SHIT...  partly because I am retired and no longer have to KISS ASS and violate my prinicples and/or integrity and partly because all subsequent generations have allowed this to happen.

At 73 years of age, I may have 20-25 years left at best, and the last 5-10 years I will obviously not be in the best of health...  as my heart condition worsens, my internal organs degrade, and I continue to receive treatment for 2 kinds of cancer simultaneously...  there is just so much one body can withstand before it runs out of whatever it is that sustains its existence and my death will be witness by very few...  if any.

Until then, I will continue to enjoy my simple lifestyle as it slowly lingers from one moment to the next gathering its final memories of how life ended up for me.

However, I would do nothing over and have no regrets as my life has followed the only course that it was intended to follow from the getgo...

Foxy Lady

Spotted Lantern Fly

The spotted lanternfly was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014 and has since spread to 26 counties in that state and at least six other eastern states. It's moving into southern New England, Ohio and Indiana. 

This approximately 1-inch-long species from Asia has attractive polka-dotted front wings but can infest and kill trees and plants. We recently caught up with Professor Frank Hale, an entomologist who is tracking this species.

The Conversation: How did the spotted lanternfly get to the U.S., and how quickly is it spreading?

Frank Hale: It is native to India, China and Vietnam and probably arrived in a cut stone shipment in 2012. The first sighting was in 2014 in Berks County, Pennsylvania, on a tree of heaven—a common invasive tree brought to North America from China in the late 1700s.

By July 2021 the lanternfly had spread to about half of Pennsylvania, large areas of New Jersey, parts of New York state, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. It also had been found in western Connecticut, eastern Ohio, and now Indiana. 

To give an idea of how fast these lanternflies spread, they were introduced into South Korea in 2004 and spread throughout that entire country—which is approximately the size of Pennsylvania—in only three years.  READ MORE

Classic Newspaper Sunday Cartoons

 

Exercising

We know that spending hour after hour sitting down isn't good for us, but just how much exercise is needed to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk? A 2020 study suggests about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it.

Up to 40 minutes of "moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity" every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, the research says – although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent.

That's based on a meta-analysis across nine previous studies, involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker.

The analysis found the risk of death among those with a more sedentary lifestyle went up as time spent engaging in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity went down.

"In active individuals doing about 30-40 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, the association between high sedentary time and risk of death is not significantly different from those with low amounts of sedentary time," the researchers wrote in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) in 2020.

In other words, putting in some reasonably intensive activities – cycling, brisk walking, gardening – can lower your risk of an earlier death right back down to what it would be if you weren't doing all that sitting around, to the extent that this link can be seen in the amassed data of many thousands of people.  READ MORE

Waterfall

 

Dyson Spheres

Technologically-savvy aliens could be powering their society using a hypothetical megastructure called a Dyson sphere to harvest energy from a black hole. And the sphere might radiate in peculiar ways, allowing telescopes on Earth to discover the existence of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, a new study suggests.

A Dyson sphere is a speculative structure that would encircle a star with a tight formation of orbiting platforms in order to capture starlight and produce power, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, the idea might be realized by a spacefaring extraterrestrial species who had spread out across their star system and therefore required ever-increasing amounts of energy.

During a coffee break, astronomer Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and his colleagues read a paper about Dyson spheres and began wondering if it were possible to build one around a black hole instead of a star.

"Black holes are one of the brightest objects in the sky," Hsiao told Live Science.

While we normally think of them as being dark and all-consuming, black holes can radiate incredible amounts of energy, he added. Material often forms a disk as it falls into a black hole's maw, much like water circling a drain.

As the gas and dust in this disk spin and bump against each other, they heat up through friction, sometimes to millions of degrees, producing light in the X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, Hsiao said. Colossal beams of energy can also shoot from a black hole's poles.  READ MORE

Lions

 

Three Laughs

 

Not Tired of Being Retired

Retired, kicked back, and likin' everyday...  although, I am different than many people because I don't need nor do I want a lot of money...  it is nice to travel and my wife and I enjoyed traveling and did a lot of it during the first 3 years of our retirement since we both retired at the same time...  but now...  we are not that interested in traveling to all these places that speak different languages, dress differently, and have food prepared in such a way that we don't know what it is or what we are eating...

Many might say that we are NARROW MINDED about this and to them I would reply...  "yes, I suppose you are correct."  But, I do believe that I have a right to be narrow minded if I choose to be that way...  and, that your opinion is about as significant as a fart in a swimming pool.

My wife and I both worked about 45 years in low wage earning jobs, spent what we needed to spend and saved what we could save, and did only that which we thought that we should do...

Our home is modest and paid for and even now, we are saying that we need to downsize since this space is more than we really need...  and, the only reason we are still here aside from the fact that our home is paid for is the fact that we have storage space that a smaller space would not offer unless a storage building was built or purchased.

Our healthcare is above average and while that may not seem like what we should accept, we do know that our physicians are using the latest information that has been created by the top notch healthcare facilities...  so, all that remains is the skill level of the doctor in question...  and, this can be debated and more than likely in some cases, would be critical.

We've been retired since 2015 and my father lived over 25 years after he retired, so if there is anything here to being his son, then I have another good 20 years to go.  And, a lot of shit can happen in 20 years.

But, the best "thing" about being retired is that I have retired in EAST TN...  and because of that location, I am far removed from all the crazy shit that is going on the cities throughout our country.  I watch it on the Tele and all I can think of is that it is not happening here.  TN is a conservative state and a state that likes its guns as well as its faith, although, I have no intentions of becoming a SOUTHERN BAPTIST and get really annoyed when some of these self-ordained preachers get WOUND UP...  but even that is tolerable...  in that I can just walk away from the conversation.

AND...  whenever I take a notion to exercise, I can walk around the community, or I can use the treadmill and stationary bike we have downstairs, or I can go to the local gym free-of-charge because my health insurance provider has a SILVER SNEAKER program...

As my dad used to say...  he was in hog heaven...

AND like I am fond of saying...  everyday above ground is a good day.

Another Weekend in East TN

My neighbor was taken to the hospital in Knoxville last week by ambulence because she had a heart attack but was aware enough to call 911 herself.  Her heart issues were on the right side and even though she had 19 stents, she still suffered a powerful enough attack, to cause her to undergo a quardruple bypass operation.  She was released this morning and I talked with her son after helping her inside her home.

One of the issues that we talked about was the fact that east tn, at least where we were living was, for the most part, isolated away from all the garbage that was happening in the big cities.

While we were experiencing higher prices, our increase in prices were not as high as those increases up north.  We were not seeing an increase in illegal immigrants being flown to our location, nor did we have the crime and violence that we had been reading about or watching on the news.  No one in our area was ambushing police in an effort to try and wound or kill them.

• No one in our area wanted to defund the police.
• No one in our area wanted to teach critical race theory.
• No one in our area was concerned about black lives matter.
• No one in our area want to remove monuments or rename buildings.
• No one in our area wanted to wear or mandate facemasks except hospitals and healthcare facilities.
• No one in our area wanted to ban conservative thoughts, comments, or actions.
• No one in our area supported abortion
• No one in our area wanted to do away with the 2nd Amendment.

BTW...  did I mention that my neighbor is BLACK???

AND...  did I mention that on the other side of my neighbor's house lives a mexican immigrant that neither of us knew whether he and his family were legal or not and neither of us really gave a shit either way.

Oh yes...  I am white...  and, interestingly enough, I have been white all my life...  and, the only living beings that were ever opposed by me because of my white supremacy attitude ghaniswere my CATS...  because I refused to let them go outsde...  inside cats actually live longer on average than outside cats.

Neither of us voted for TRUMP but both of us feel that our current President...  What's His Name...  is doing a horrible job and we are both tired of him lying to the public about what he supposedly believes...  we are also tired of the mainstream media covering his ass all the time pretending like he is doing a great job.

Neither my black neighbor nor I care about which political party controls the politics of the county because we have the same problems today that we had back in the 1960's which means both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for maintaining the status quo.

My black neighbor like to fish in one of our two man made Public Works lakes...  but, I do not...  So...  I suppose that we are different in that regard...  but, we don't fight about it nor do we get upset because we like to do different things...

I also have no idea if he sees me as white or just as his neighbor....  it never much mattered to me...

Camels

 

Oversupply of PIGS

The UK's pig producers are warning that a shortage of workers is causing a surplus of pigs to be stuck at farms.

Trade body the National Pig Association (NPA) said some abattoirs were running 25% below usual capacity.  "If the government doesn't do something soon there will be a lot of perfectly healthy pigs on farms that will have to be destroyed," said Zoe Davies, chief executive of the NPA.

Each week, the number of excess pigs is growing by 15,000, the NPA said.

The shortage of workers in processing plants means they are unable to take in as many pigs to process as they normally would - resulting in too many pigs on farms.  Having to house the pigs for longer, while they grow at a rate of a kilo each day, is having a severe impact on the profitability of the farms, according to the NPA.

The industry body said extra costs of feed and abattoir charges for overweight pigs means many farms are operating at a loss.  READ MORE

Hungry Dog

 

A Four Legged Whale

Scientists in Egypt have identified a new species of four-legged whale that lived around 43 million years ago.

The fossil of the amphibious Phiomicetus anubis was originally discovered in Egypt's Western Desert.  Its skull resembles that of Anubis, the ancient Egyptian jackal-headed god of the dead after which it was named.

The ancestors of modern whales developed from deer-like mammals that lived on land over the course of 10 million years.

Weighing an estimated 600kg and three metres (10ft) in length, the Phiomicetus anubis had strong jaws to catch prey, according to the study published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday. The whale was able to walk on land and swim in water.

The partial skeleton was found in Egypt's Fayum Depression and analysed by scientists at Mansoura University. Although the area is now desert, it was once covered by sea and is a rich source of fossils.

"Phiomicetus anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African palaeontology," the study's lead author, Abdullah Gohar, told Reuters news agency.  READ MORE

Walrus

 

Understanding Doodles

For Queen Victoria, it was donkeys. For Winston Churchill, it was airplanes. For Leonardo da Vinci, it was everything from crude drawings to the first workings of his groundbreaking laws of frictions. 

Throughout history, humans – whether royalty or a bored office worker – have doodled.

Usually relegated to the margins of notebooks or the back of envelopes, the doodle is often considered something messy, throwaway and unconsidered. 

If life is what happens when you're making other plans, then doodles are the result of your mind being somewhere else – a phone call, a meeting, a daydream. 

Yet in those scrawls – be it shapes, animals, lines, names – can be something powerful, with what they reveal and how they allow us to express our creativity. Hence why a new art project is taking doodles out of the margins and placing them centre-stage.

Frequencies, by Turner Prize-winning artist Oscar Murillo, collects together 40,000 canvases that have been marked, scribbled and drawn on by more than 100,000 children from around the world. 

Since 2013 Murillo has sent blank canvases to over 300 schools in more than 30 countries. The aim is to capture "the conscious and unconscious energy of young minds at their most absorbent, optimistic and conflicted" and the results are currently on show for the first time in their entirety in Murillo's former school in Hackney, east London. 

"The blank canvas is like a recording device," he tells BBC Culture. "You leave it there for six months at a minimum and then you simply allow for an individual to interact with that, however they wish. ​​

They are my collaborators, these almost 100,000 children."  READ MORE

Take My Hand

 

Under Control

 

The New Biden