August 26, 2024

Posting twice

When I post to a thread, it has started posting twice over the last week. I'm deleting the other one that pops up constantly.

I also can't just go back to where I was. I have to keep going back and forth to get there, or finally give up and hit Latest Discussions again.

What's the deal?

August 24, 2024

Anybody else had gall bladder surgery?

Had mine out yesterday, laparoscopic. I have 4 holes in my belly and staples. Very sore. Super dooper pain meds, but I'm not taking them, since I'm already on diclofenac.

How long did you stay so sore? How long to get over the whole thing where you could go back to normal? Anything to avoid?

thx

August 22, 2024

If RFK JR. is dropping out,

How worrisome is this if he endorses trump as well? Does he have enough supporters to swing the election? Especially in swing states that may be razor thin?

August 18, 2024

Funny And Baffling Signs

August 18, 2024

Earth's days once got 2 hours longer

Earth’s days once got 2 hours longer — and that may have triggered one of the biggest evolutionary explosions in history, study suggests. The moon once drifted thousands of miles farther away, and Earth's days got 2.2 hours longer, a new study finds.


New research shows the moon's distance from the Earth played a role in the Cambrian explosion. (Image credit: Sciepro via Getty Images)


Earth's days once got more than two hours longer, thanks to the moon drifting thousands of miles farther away in its orbit over two periods, researchers have discovered. The extra hours of sunlight, in turn, may have led to oxygenation events that ushered in a period when life's complexity exploded, the study researchers say. "Daylength changes may influence the distribution of solar energy and temperature gradients, potentially impacting weather systems and atmospheric dynamics," the researchers wrote in the new study, published Aug. 6 in the journal PNAS.

Nowadays, the moon orbits at an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) from Earth. But our satellite hasn't always been where it is now. Earth's days are currently around 24 hours long, but that wasn't always the case. Over time, the moon tugs on our planet. As it does so, it migrates away from Earth, siphoning away its kinetic energy. As a result, our planet's spin around its axis slows, thus lengthening Earth's days, according to the study. Modeling changes in how Earth wobbles as it spins can give a rough picture of this slowdown over the planet's history. But this estimate is clearly flawed, because it leads to a prediction that Earth and the moon would have collided around 1.5 billion years ago, the study authors noted.

In the new study, a team led by geologist He Huang from the Chengdu University of Technology in China, tried to clarify Earth's spin history by looking at eight datasets that captured rock layers from marine environments dating to roughly between 700 million and 200 million years ago. These tidalites, as they're called, can record the strength of the tides over time, in part because they reveal the ocean's thickness. The team combined these datasets with models of the tidal forces acting between the moon and Earth to map how quickly Earth spun around its axis over the half-billion-year study period.

The researchers found that there was a "staircase" pattern in Earth's spin, with two periods where the planet's rotation quickly and dramatically changed, followed by periods of stability. Over the study period, days got 2.2 hours longer. The moon, during this period, also got an average of 12,000 miles (20,000 km) farther away. One of these time periods, roughly 650 million to 500 million years ago, encompassed the Cambrian explosion, a period when life diversified dramatically and radiated into new niches. The second "step" in the staircase of Earth's spin occurred roughly 340 million to 280 million years ago, which corresponded to a period when massive glaciers covered the planet.


https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/earth-s-days-were-once-2-hours-longer-and-that-may-have-triggered-one-of-the-biggest-evolutionary-explosions-in-history-study-suggests

August 16, 2024

Best In Show

Dog shows are serious events. Participants - both dogs and handlers - are expected to look and act the part. But apparently, this Afghan Hound didn’t get the memo.

Afghan Hound has a blast at the dog show
The show took place at the end of April in Idaho, USA. All the dogs were on their best behaviour - standing still and waiting for their turn to show off in front of the judge. That’s when the Afghan Hound decided it was time to remind everyone that dog shows should be fun, too. Somehow, he broke loose from his handler, and simply couldn’t handle the excitement of being FREE.

It’s a wonderful life
The huge dog can then be seen prancing around happily all over the dog showing ring, as if overwhelmed with joy and telling his dog friends to join in. He expertly avoids all the handlers who try to catch him, running faster at every turn, thinking its all just a big game! All eyes are on the Afghan, and some dogs can even be seen pulling and lunging on their leads to try and join in the fun. To be honest, we’ve never seen a dog have so much fun at a dog show.

The Afghan probably didn’t win Best In Show, but if there was an award for ‘Best At Living’ we think he’d have won it hands down. Just look how happy he is! If only we all could make the most of these little moments…the world would be such a better place!


You can see the rest of the Hound Group just dying to join this guy, especially the Greyhound on the right

August 10, 2024

A bit of vintage humor before bedtime.....

August 9, 2024

Operation Beluga

Operation Beluga — or how a Soviet ice breaker played music to thousands of ice-trapped whales to save them from starving

Sometimes, you just need an icebreaker and some classical music to make your day better.

The Soviet Union (USSR) is a thing most people today know only from memory or history books. And many parts of its history are unsavory, to say the least. But Operation Beluga (‘Belukha’ in Russian) isn’t one of those. Operation Beluga was not your typical Cold War covert ops. It involved sending an ice-breaker and blasting classical music at full volume to save a pack of thousands of whales that were trapped by ice in the Chukchi Peninsula.

In 1959, the Finish company Wärtsilä delivered the ice-breaker Moskva to the USSR. The contract for this ship was signed three years prior, and as part of its stipulations, the ship was equipped with one of the most powerful diesel-electric engines at the time. It would go on to help hundreds of ships navigate the iced-covered Northern Sea Route, which spans from Murmansk to Vladivostok, cutting the travel time down to an average of only ten days — which was quite fast for the day. Moskva’s powerful engines allowed it to break through thicker ice than its peers at the time, which effectively extended the shipping season possible along this route. Crowned with shipping glory, the Moskva was later stationed in Vladivostok and sent to escort ships along the eastern stretches of the Northern Sea Route.

But as fate would have it, this would not be the last time we heard of the Moskva’s adventures — ‘we’ here meaning us humans, as well as beluga whales. Every good heroic story needs someone in need, and around December 1984, thousands of such someones were found. Along the frigid landscape of the Chukchi Peninsula (this is the bit of Russia that’s across the pond from Alaska) lives the Chukchi or Chukchee, an indigenous people closely related to the original inhabitants of the Americas. Their traditions and lifestyle hadn’t changed much until 1920 when the Soviet government organized state-run schools and industries in the area.

Even after this point the Chukchi relied heavily on local wildlife for food and provided raw materials for some of those newly-minted industries in the form of fishing, hunting of marine mammals, or reindeer herding. Subsistence hunting (for the purpose of obtaining food) is still practiced by the Chukchi to this day, although it’s greatly reduced in scope. In late December 1984, a Chukchi hunter or hunting party — it’s not known exactly how many people were present at that point — happened upon the motherlode of prey: roughly 3,000 beluga whales trapped in the frozen waters of the peninsula’s Senyavin Strait. The hunter realized they were trapped because the whales (a prime local source of food) were flocking around small pools of open water dotting the strait, desperate to catch a breath of air.


https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/history-and-humanities/history/operation-beluga-whale-rescue/

August 9, 2024

CDC issues new guidelines for RSV vaccines, citing side-effect concerns

The CDC has clarified and narrowed its recommendations for which older adults should get an RSV vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has narrowed its recommendations for which older adults should get a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). It now states that only adults 75 and older, or those ages 60 to 74 who are at high risk, should get the shot. That's partly because the vaccine may slightly increase the risk of a rare side effect that can sometimes lead to paralysis or death.

RSV circulates seasonally and hospitalizes 60,000 to 160,000 older adults in the U.S. each year. An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people in this age group die due to RSV infection annually. The first-ever RSV vaccine was approved last year, and a total of three have now been approved for use in people ages 60 and up: GSK's Arexvy, Pfizer's Abrysvo and, most recently, Moderna's mResvia. Initially, the CDC said all adults ages 60 and older could get one dose of one of these RSV vaccines after discussing it with their doctor.

Now, "based on currently available evidence," the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has concluded that the benefits of RSV vaccination do not clearly outweigh the potential harms in adults ages 60 to 74 who don't have risk factors for severe RSV. However, people in this age range who do have risk factors could still benefit. With that in mind, "providers should continue to have flexibility in offering RSV vaccine to patients they assess to be at increased risk for severe disease even if they do not fall into an explicitly named risk category," the CDC noted in a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Tuesday (Aug. 6).

Thus, people ages 60 to 74 can still consider the shot if they are at high risk of severe RSV infections. That would apply to people with chronic heart disease or a weakened immune system, as well as those who live in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes. Adults who have already received an RSV vaccine "should not receive another dose," the report notes. The updated recommendations were issued because of higher-than-expected rates of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) tied to the vaccines. GBS can cause tingling, numbness and muscle weakness and sometimes progress to paralysis. In severe cases, the condition can affect muscles that support breathing and thus be life-threatening.


https://www.livescience.com/health/medicine-drugs/cdc-issues-new-guidelines-for-rsv-vaccines-citing-side-effect-concerns

August 9, 2024

98% of evangelical leaders say pastors shouldn't endorse candidates in the pulpit

The shocking survey results from the National Association of Evangelicals ignore the reality of how evangelical churches operate

98% of evangelical Christian leaders say pastors should not endorse candidates from the pulpit, according to a new survey released by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). But that shocking number appears to obscure the reality of the situation. The NAE itself presented the survey result as if it wasn’t surprising at all. The purpose of church is to spread the Gospel message, he said, so telling people how to vote would be unnecessarily divisive:

“The pulpit should be used in a prophetic manner, bringing the gospel to bear on today’s complex cultural issues,” said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). “Church leaders should inform, uplift and draw people into deeper discipleship that impacts how they engage in their communities, including how they vote. Endorsing a political candidate is rarely helpful and most often breeds division.”

The 98% number, the NAE says, is up from 89% back in 2017. That sounds perfectly sensible but it ignores how pastors—usually white evangelical ones—push politics in church even if they don’t take the explicit step of telling the congregation what to do on Election Day. We know there’s no shortage of pastors who spread messages that are anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, anti-science, anti-sex, anti-environment, anti-civil rights, anti-women, etc. None of that is directly political, per se, but Republicans often run on those “culture war” issues rather than more anodyne ones like economics precisely because they know it’s much easier to fire up their base by demonizing groups outside their fold. When pastors focus on who they hate—or which supposed “sins” are more damning than others—they’re effectively telling their churches who to vote for. There’s no need to give them a name when the winks serve the same purpose. Even if they’re not going all in on culture war battles, they will often use code words that achieve the same goals.

But some pastors do it anyway because they know there are no consequences. As I’ve written about before, the IRS has very lenient rules when it comes to what non-profits are allowed to do (and not do) if they want to maintain their tax-exempt statuses. One of those rules, known as the Johnson Amendment, says non-profits cannot tell people how to vote. Plenty of conservative pastors, however, still argue that the rules are too onerous and they’ve deliberately tried to goad the IRS into revoking their tax-exempt status just so they can file a lawsuit over it.


https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/98-of-evangelical-leaders-say-pastors