Alex Trebek

November 8, 2020November 8, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

More than a year and half after announcing, on the Jeopardy! show, that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, George Alexander "Alex" Trebek died peacefully, early this morning.

While it has not been quite the daily addiction for me lately, that it was for many years, I still have the DVR set to record every episode of Jeopardy! and probably actually watch three or four episodes a month.

Voting for Drugs

November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

For those struggling with the uncertainty of last night’s election, last night’s election might provide your answer.

Among the more certain outcomes are that Montana, New Jersey, Arizona and South Dakota voters legalized recreational marijuana. In fact, one in three US Americans now lives in a state where recreational marijuana is legal.

Oregon and Washington, D. C. pushed further last night, opening the way to psychedelic mushrooms. Oregon also decriminalized small amounts of heroin and cocaine

More active cases than ever in the US

October 20, 2020October 20, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

Just a quick reminder that even if you’re "bored" with Covid, dealing with reality means accepting that there are more active cases of Covid-19 in the United States today than on any other day ever. And again, that’s active cases … discounting all of the people who have recovered or died, there are more active infections today than ever before … just like almost every day since we allowed this thing to run uncontrolled throughout the country.

If you think that what we’ve done is working … that we’re "rounding the corner" … you’re just plain wrong.

And if you’re now thinking "herd immunity", we still have a ways to go before 3% of the population has been infected, and most estimates for herd immunity require that we get well into the 40% to 80% range — so it has to get 10 to 20 times as bad, and we’ve already killed the equivalent of 75 September 11th attacks.

And you know what else, even if we never got a vaccine, masks alone might be enough to beat this thing. Or maybe not, but while masks alone might not end up being the single silver-bullet, they absolutely help … without starving you of oxygen or whatever other ridiculous ideas people are bandying about these days.

Anti-mask isn’t freedom, it’s free-dumb. Anti-maskers are 75 times worse (so far) than those 19 terrorists were. It’s truly one of the most selfish and sadistic movements ever.

Schadenfreude Is Most-Seached Word

October 3, 2020October 3, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

Donald Trump mimicked a disabled reporter at the rally in South Carolina

Sympathy and empathy are important, but it can be challenging to summon them up for a person who mocks opponents when they’re sick, mimics the disabled, and who’s fallen ill from a disease that he suggested could "magically disappear" half a year earlier.

So, it’s no great surprise that Merriam-Webster shares that "Schadenfreude was our top lookup on October 2nd, by a very considerable margin, following President Trump’s announcement that he and the First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19."

“Lookups spiked 30,500 percent on October 2, 2020,”

Many questions remain regarding the President’s illness following a mostly fact-free press conference where Trump’s doctor raised questions about the timeline of the diagnosis suggesting that Trump knowingly exposed many people, including the the Bidens, to his infection before acknowledging it as he developed symptoms.

Gesundheit II

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

Just how does the virus that causes COVID-19 spread from one person to another? To help find out, people infected with the new coronavirus take turns sitting in a chair and putting their faces into the big end of a large cone that sucks up everything that comes out of their mouths and noses for analysis.

Scientists disagree about whether aerosols are contributing to the spread of the disease, but even those who warn about aerosols say current recommendations make sense.

Wearing a mask is still important, and make sure it fits snugly. Keep washing those hands diligently. And again, staying farther apart is better than being closer together. Avoid crowds, especially indoors.

Additional recommendations align with previous guidance, but suggest greater ventilation. Spread is less likely outdoors than indoors, for example.

Choose red, you live….

September 26, 2020September 26, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

Liquorice rolls Bulk sale at a confectioner’s. (Photo by: Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

It’s a known phenomenon, but perhaps not widely known, or at least not widely enough to help a Massachusetts construction worker whose switch from red to black Twizzlers killed him.

Discussions with his family revealed he had been eating one to two “large” bags of black licorice every day for about three weeks before his heart stopped.

It’s not just Twizzlers. Licorice flavored jelly beans, and other candies, and even some Belgian beers and chewing tobaccos contain glycyrrhizic acid.

In your gut you have hundreds kinds of bacteria, as well as viruses and fungi, collectively called your microbiome. And among the bacteria are some that turn glycyrrhizic acid into glycyrrhetinic acid. In the kidneys, glycyrrhetinic acid derivatives suppress conversion of cortisol to cortisone, which regulates ion, salt, and water balances. At the end of this chain reaction, you have critically low potassium levels leading to erratic behavior by the heart and lots of other problems.

If you’re wondering why the FDA would allow even small amounts of such a chemical, remember that all rice contains arsenic, and almost all fish and shellfish contain mercury.

A spokesman for the Hershey Company, which makes Twizzlers, wrote “all of our products are safe to eat and formulated in full compliance with FDA regulations,” but also that all foods, including candy, “should be enjoyed in moderation.”

Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols

September 21, 2020September 29, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), portrayed in an illustration created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. **ALISSA ECKERT, MS; DAN HIGGINS, MAM**

Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols. This continues the pattern in which what we know about the virus has continued to get scarier even while much of the country chooses behavior that explicitly aids our enemy.

For months, scientists and public health experts have warned of mounting evidence that the novel coronavirus is airborne, transmitted through tiny droplets called aerosols that linger in the air much longer than the larger globs that come from coughing or sneezing.

For what it’s worth, I’m still taking precautions against transmission through contact. We have spray bottles of 70% to 99% isopropyl alcohol at various points around the house and a mini alcohol bottle filling station set up in the downstairs bathroom. It’s low effort, and might help, so … I keep doing it. However, I also continue to use KN95 masks pretty universally when anywhere near humans … or more recently smoky air.

Life on Venus?

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

The images used to create this view of Venus were acquired by the Mariner 10 craft on Feb. 7 and 8, 1974

This is kind of a big deal. It could mean just mean that there’s a smelly deadly gas out there, that can be created in ways that we don’t understand much. Yawn, right?

Of course, the excitement is that it could also mean that the gas came to be on Venus through means that we already understand … from life.

As Carl Sagan, who also hypothesized about ways for life to exist on Venus, said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". To be clear, humans have not discovered life on Venus … yet. But, this is evidence that might indicate that there’s life on Venus. Following up on that evidence will be a huge challenge, and we might well find life, or proof of past life, on Mars first.

World’s oldest sperm

September 16, 2020September 29, 2020 Rick BusdieckerLeave a comment

It seems that a post-coital female ostracod became trapped in tree resin about 100 million years ago, and was recently discovered by scientists. The sperm within her body is likely twice as old as the next oldest known animal sperm specimen, but it is also nearly five times the size of the male ostracod that produced it! according to a co-author of the study:

"This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them"

While the article suggests that the next oldest sperm sample is a mere 17 million years, an article in The Independent highlights a 50 million year old find.

World on Fire

by Rick Busdiecker

Tag: life