Newsmax has a vaccine mandate??

 

Apparently so.  One of their "journalists", former Trump henchman Steve Cortes, is resigning his short-lived position at the the propaganda outlet because they are complying with the Biden administration vaccine mandate.  (This seems unusual because I thought a court decision had derailed the mandate, but maybe it's under appeal.)

Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes will leave Newsmax after refusing to comply with the network's vaccine mandate

"The veteran news pundit had voiced on social media his discontent with Newsmax's requirement of proof of vaccination, which followed President Joe Biden's executive order forcing companies with 100 or more employees to obtain proof of vaccination from their workers or subject them to weekly testing and masking."

I'm surprised that Newsmax is actually complying and not putting up some kind of symbolic protest or something like that.  

Here's some clarification (but note that this is from November 9). 

Newsmax tries to assuage furor of conservative hosts over vaccine mandate

Upper Peninsula and Highway 41 -- rivers and golf

 

Seriously, they do play golf in the Upper Peninsula, but I think the golf season is pretty short.  Here are four more views on the Highway 41 end-to-end Streetview trek.

Crossing of the Big Cedar River.   (Check the sign.)

This particular Streetview view confirms the northern nature of the environs.

Now passing through Bark River, Michigan.

If you care for a round of golf up north, the Highland Golf Club is to the right.

The next destination is famous (yes, it is) Escanaba, Michigan.

Pretty girl post: Carina Zavline

 

It's been awhile since I've done a "pretty girl" post, and I may try to make it more of a regular feature.  There are a lot to choose from!   So this pretty girl is Carina Zavline, and she's unique enough to have a one-name Instagram address (instagram.com/carina).   

And she's notable enough to have at least one article about her on the Web:  Verge Meets:  Carine Zavline, from which we learn that she speaks five languages and has a B.A. in communications.  And she's 22.

So, now for the prettiness.   And she has a lot of that, with quite a bit of variety.

The look that makes you wish to be at your destination as quickly as possible.

The look you hope to see at the destination

November update on COVID-19 in South Korea

 

Well, this isn't the trends they were hoping to see.

South Korea loosened covid rules after massive vaccine uptake. Now cases and hospitalizations are surging.

Here's the not-so-good news:

"On Wednesday [November 17], the country reported a record 522 coronavirus patients hospitalized with moderate to serious symptoms requiring intensive care, intubation or oxygen to help with breathing. It tallied 3,187 new infections the same day, the second-highest daily figure since the start of the pandemic."

But still, there's this:

"Though daily deaths are rising, South Korea’s covid fatality rate is low — and has fallen from 2.4 percent in May 2020 to less than 0.8 percent now, according to Our World in Data. This, experts say, is partly due to its high vaccination rate."

So yes, vaccines work, and they're still working, even if they aren't working quite as well as when they were first injected. 

Biased much?

 

Sometimes you just shake your head and worry about how politicized the USA court system has become. 

Trump-appointed federal judge says Congress' bid to get his tax returns is driven by politics and asks DOJ what would happen if Republicans asked for Hunter Biden records

Before I excerpt from this, let me note:

1. President Trump is both a political figure and held a government office;  Hunter Biden is neither.

2. President Trump's decisions, if based on his own personal income and economic concerns, could have national policy and foreign affairs implications;  this is not true of Hunter Biden.

3.  President Trump did not release his tax returns when running for office;  Hunter Biden did not run for political office.

Now the excerpt:

     "The House panel maintains the tax returns are important because Trump's 'actions and statements raised unprecedented and serious concerns about his tax compliance and foreign entanglements and about the IRS's ability to enforce the tax laws against him while President.'
     'Compared to past Presidents,' the committee's lawyers said in a court filing in October, 'Mr. Trump's returns appear to be inordinately large and complex, reflecting his sprawling domestic and international business activities, which raises the question of whether the IRS has the requisite resources and authority to examine such returns as effectively as needed for a President.'
     They added: 'And he repeatedly attacked the IRS and its audits of him both while a Presidential candidate and while President, which raised the important question of whether IRS employees are properly protected from a President's attempts to improperly influence its audits.'

Exactly.   The Trump judge is out to lunch.

Comical, yes; commerical, no

 

The Daily Mail shows that when you make a big misspelling mistake, do it in ALL CAPS.

Lighthouse of the Week, November 21-27, 2021: Jackson's Point Harbour, Ontario, Canada

 

This lighthouse is pretty new -- built in 2019.  It's an aid to navigation, a little, and a tourist attraction, a lot.  And it appears to have slipped under the Lighthouse Directory radar. 

So here's a bit about it from this site:  Lighthouse

• Complete height upon completion: 30 feet or nine metres 
• Lighthouse base: nine feet by nine feet.
• The original beacon will be replaced with a modern, more technologically advanced and efficient LED light source.
• The amber beacon will be approximately 30 feet above water level and will be enclosed, programmable and visible up to five nautical miles.

The lighthouse is on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto, located here. 

So, a couple of pictures and a video.

Video:

Models who've had babies

 

A couple of articles here from the Daily Mail about a gala called Baby2Baby, and Paris Hilton's wedding.  I don't know much about that, but I do know that a couple of my favorites from years past, Miranda Kerr and Elle Evans (whom I first met when she was using a different name) showed up.  They've moved past their lingerie -- and less -- modeling days, and they've both become mothers, Miranda thrice and Elle once.   So they don't look as they used to, but they still look quite fine.

Pretty in pink! Miranda Kerr stuns in an intricate lace dress as she attends the Baby2Baby 10th anniversary gala in Los Angeles

Matt Bellamy, 43, cuts a dapper figure in a quirky blazer as he attends Paris Hilton's wedding with his ab-flashing wife Elle Evans, 31

Miranda

Elle and her +1 (Matt Bellamy, designated husband)

He appears to want more people to die

 

Irresponsible and malpracticing Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is calling the Florida legislature back into session to pass laws against vaccine mandates.

I mean, seriously, what does that really accomplish except allowing more people to go unvaccinated, which means they have a much higher chance of getting sick and dying?  

This was in the article:

"The Florida Chamber of Commerce, whose members are usually enthusiastic supporters of DeSantis, has been more muted on his latest moves."

Perhaps some of them actually possess a modicum of sense.

DeSantis brings back Florida lawmakers to crack down on pandemic mandates

A great loss to literature

 

I only read two of his books, but Wilbur Smith wrote a lot of them -- good solid adventure novels, most of them in Africa, which he was very familiar with.  One of the novels I read was Hungry As the Sea, which could have been a pretty good movie with an environmental theme (and there even was a screenplay for it). 

All things must end, but he took everyone who read his books on a lot of exciting journeys.  And a lot of people went on those journeys -- the article says he sold over 140 million books. 

He lived a full life as well; according to the same article, "Smith was a noted bushman and survivalist. He was also a big game hunter, a pilot and an expert scuba diver." (+ four wives!)

Legendary thriller writer Wilbur Smith dies 'unexpectedly' at home in Cape Town aged 88 having spent the morning reading and writing with his wife Niso

Highway 41 Streetview trek sees more of the Upper Peninsula

 

Here are a few more views in Michigan's Upper Peninsula along Highway 41.

The view here is looking into where the map calls Nadeau, Michigan. Streetview didn't even bother with the side streets up here.

Just north of Nadeau, to provide an idea of what it looks like.

Now the trek is entering the Powers-Spalding communities. This is by the Candlelite Motel, in October 2019, again with nice autumn color. They timed it well.

Turning left here would head to Iron Mountain. Highway 41 goes right, toward Escanaba.

The North Central Junior and Senior High Schools. I think there are some long bus rides up here.

Lighthouse of the Week, November 14-20, 2021: Marine City, Michigan, USA (former Peche Island Rear Range Light)

 

This Lighthouse of the Week post has a long title, because the subject is a lighthouse that moved from an Canadian island that is just south of the U.S/Canada border in Lake St. Clair (the smaller lake between lakes Huron and Erie, which Detroit fronts) to a town/city on the St. Clair river, somewhat incongruously named Marine City, where it is restored shiny and new in Lighthouse Park (zoom in on the map).   

So there is some history here;   and some Web sites.

City of Marine City:  Peche Island Rear Range Light

Lighthouse Friends:  Peche Island, MI

Travel the Mitten:  Peche Island Rear Range Light, Marine City, MI

That last one has a great summary of how it was moved.  While the island is in Canada, the light was located in U.S. waters in Lake St. Clair.

So for the basics (which could be somewhat complicated), here's what the Lighthouse Directory says.  This tower was replaced by skeleton tower lights in the lake. 

"1908 (station established 1898). Inactive officially since 1982, but a decorative continuous white light is displayed and the lighthouse is charted as a landmark. 66 ft (20 m) round cast iron tower, painted white with black trim. Original 6th order Fresnel lens in place. ... A contract to scrap the lighthouse was awarded in 1983, but a Marine City bank intervened to purchase the tower and relocate it to Marine City. In 2013 the state denied an application for funds to restore the lighthouse but the city proceeded with exterior restoration using the intended matching funds. Repainting and repairs were completed in 2014."

The first picture shows why they had to move it.  Yeah, that's not good.

So it was moved, and restored, and there's a sign explaining all that.

The proudly restored light:

Hard to comprehend the horrendousness

There are a lot of bad environmental things happening in this world at present. It can boggle my mind.  Just this week, as the climate change conference was wrapping up, there were reports about a river in India, the Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganges, nearly covered with toxic pollutant foam.  And because it's a sacred river, many citizens are bathing and wading in it, despite the danger.  

And then there's this.

Outside of Iquique, Chile (a port city), in the otherwise pristine and skeleton-dry Atacama Desert, there's a massive mountain of discarded clothing. 

It is "leftovers" from the fashion trade, items that either didn't fit or didn't sell. And it's piling up a lot faster than it can be turned into insulation.

I did a quick look with Google Maps and it's not surprising that the satellite view can apparently detect them.

Here's another view of what they look like.  The fashion trash is piled on either side of a dirt road.

So here's a satellite view showing where Iquique is on the Chilean coast.  (It's almost due west of Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni salt playa, by the way.)   The small gray pin at mid-picture right is where the final zoomed-in view looks.

Now, zooming in:  (click on this image for a larger shot)

It looks like there's some piled on either side of the paved road at left, and then the mottled area at righ has a main road through it, which one would guess is where the trash trucks drive before they dump their load of shirts, pants, shoes, sweats, socks, and underwear.  

It's a sad state of affairs the world is in, isn't it?

The Hubble is still with us (it seems)

 

After glitching and going into safe mode several days ago, the Hubble Space Telescope appears to be recovering.  I don't know how many comebacks the old 'scope still has in it, but it's happy science news that it isn't done scanning the cosmos yet.

Hubble telescope team gets one science instrument running again, continues troubleshooting glitch

From a CNN article about Hubble's 30th anniversary, which went somewhat unnoticed in April 2020 because of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, this image of the galaxies interacting in the ARP 273 group is so amazing it's hard to comprehend that it's real.

11 years and four kids (+1) later

 

It's because of the Daily Mail that I can keep up with who's with whom, and who'd having whom's baby, and basically all of the other couplings and decouplings that happen in British sport and society.

On this topic, 11 years or so ago I wrote about a model and beauty queen named Danielle Lloyd, who had some life challenges, having a baby with a footballer named Jamie O'Hara. (Life challenges:  getting assaulted and injured in a bar fight with members of a group representing an ex-boyfriend; losing her beauty queen titles because of posing in Playboy - but they gave them back later; maybe some sexy pictures leaked; polycystic ovaries; and had to have a bad boob job fixed.) While Jamie was never a superstar, I guess they had a decent home life, because she had two more kids with him. But they broke up, and she met this fit electrician chap at the gym, and they met, procreated, married, and now have procreated again.  (Her husband Michael also had a scrap with Jamie -- can't say their lives are boring!)

Well, she's having another baby, which is reportedly her first girl after four boys in a row.  And that's why I'm writing about her again now, because as the Daily Mail dutifully must report, she posed nude again (but not revealed), burgeoning with pregnancy, as is the style of the blooming and beautiful.

And the ovaries appear to be just fine. 

Pictured below, the current couple and parents-to-be for the second time, probably sometime prior to them becoming parents for the first time (but the motivation is pretty obvious).

A pillar of glass in the desert

 

Let's get Biblical.

"They set out from Succoth and camped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And the LORD went before them in a pillar of cloud to guide their way by day, and in a pillar of fire to give them light by night, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place before the people ... " Exodus 13:20-22

These verses (especially Exodus 13:21) occurred to me when I read about the description and postulated cause of the shards of glass that have been found over a stretch of Peru's Atacama Desert (that's the really dry one by the coast).  LOTS of glass.  So recently there was a study of this glass, analyzing its composition in detail, and the conclusion was that it resulted from an incoming meteor, which gets very hot, and thus the entry and explosive heat of the meteor turned the surface sand into glass before it disintegrated and scattered its remnants over the Atacama (and grains of the alien debris were embedded in the glass). 

Yes, indeed.  Quite strange and unusual, but definitely in the realm of strongly-indicated probability.

Mysterious Shards of Glass Are Strewn Across Miles of Desert, And We Finally Know Why

"The results, the team says, unequivocally suggest the glass is not wholly of this planet.

This is the first time we have clear evidence of glasses on Earth that were created by the thermal radiation and winds from a fireball exploding just above the surface," [lead author Pete] Schultz says.

According to the researchers, minerals in the glass called zircons had decomposed to form the mineral baddeleyite, which would have required extremely hot temperatures of above 1,670 °C, which is far hotter than a wildfire."

So, maybe not a pillar of fire, but at least briefly, it was a fireball over the desert.

Here's what the stuff looks like:

Caption:

"Figure 2. (A) Example of large glass slab at Chipana (Chile) that folded over during emplacement. (B) Twisted glass slab with two contrasting surfaces from Puquio de Núñez: one side is rough with sediments attached; the other side is smooth with flow patterns. Contrasting textures indicate formation on a sedimentary surface with subsequent mobilization. (C) Thin-section view of folded glass from Puquio de Núñez (Fig. 2D) showing typical green color, vesicles, and schlieren. (D) Cut section of large vesicular glass slab with multiple folds that indicate folding while still molten. Small yellow dot corresponds to the site of Figure 2C. These and other glasses contain signatures of extreme temperatures and numerous meteoritic fragments."

Here's the actual paper from where the figure and caption came from:

Widespread glasses generated by cometary fireballs during the late Pleistocene in the Atacama Desert, Chile

Some more ridiculous survey bias

 

Somehow I don't think that the statistics gathered by this survey will be very useful.  But the sentiments expressed in the questions and answers are quite indicative of the political slant.

Do you think this might have some influence on the attitudes of the survey takers?

And this question doesn't have a lot of grey area in the provided choices.

Obviously, this is ridiculous, but as an attitude control method, quite effective.

Small towns in the Upper Peninsula - Highway 41 end-to-end Streetview trek

 

A few small towns to pass by or through on the Highway 41 Streetview trek in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Ingalls, Michigan

Stephenson, Michigan.

Little Cedar River, just off the highway in Stephenson.

Daggett, Michigan, in October 2008. (Nice colors)

Out this far in rurality, even a side road is remarkable. This is the Chalk Hills Road.

The map says that this is Bagley, Michigan.

And this is Carney, Michigan. The map says that the Carney General Store is to the left.



There are a few more small towns, and then some larger domiciles. And some more waterfront, eventually.

2021 International Photography Awards cast a wide net

 

I have an extended backlog of Daily Mail articles about photography contests and their winners, and I will probably never get to look at all of them, and even less post about them here.  But I'm going to do better trying to keep up.

This one features the 2021 International Photography Awards.

There are a lot of categories, and the Daily Mail article emphasized the nature photos (though a number of pet photographs snuck in to the article).

I noted this one, by remarkable photographer Alfred Minnaar, who does a lot of underwater work in addition to several other specialties.  It was third in "Professional Nature, Underwater".  This version is much reduced from the original.

I did determine that there is a Nudes category, too.  Well down the page.

 

Lighthouse of the Week, November 7-13, 2021: Fanale di Senetosa, Corsica, France

 

I thought that I had featured a lot of Corsican lighthouses here on the blog, but when I looked back, it turned out that I had only featured four, in three posts, because one of the posts was about a pair of lighthouses that stand on either side of the entrance to a harbor.  (Search with "Corsica" on the blog to find them.)

So, since I only had featured three, and not very often, I picked another one.  This one is unique because it has what looks like a big keeper's house between two lighthouse towers, which somewhat resemble chimneys.  The Lighthouse Directory says that it's not clear if they ever lit a lamp in the second tower, which currently has a big red fabric rectangle on top of it.

There's a small Web site about it, because there's a nature refuge around it that takes its name from the lighthouse. You can hike to it.  It does not appear that you can drive to it.  Campomoro-Senetosa (but that's not how it's spelled in the URL)

It's on the southwestern coast of the island;  I had to zoom out a bit to show where that is, so the map shows most of the southern half of Corsica.  The satellite view shows a couple of what look like some very nice isolated beaches where it would be possible to do beachy things that are best to do on isolated beaches (wink).

Now let's get some words from the Lighthouse Directory. 

1892. Active; focal plane 54 m (177 ft); flash every 5 s, white or red depending on direction. Twin 15 m (49 ft) round masonry towers attached at opposite ends of a 2-story masonry keeper's house; the north tower has a 3rd order Fresnel lens, lantern and gallery, the south has a gallery and a red screen on a tripod. Building painted white; lantern, galleries and daymarker are black. Only a few twin lighthouses were built in France, but it is not clear whether the second tower here was ever lit. Located in a rugged coastal area roughly 15 km (10 mi) southwest of Grossa.

There are a lot of licensed photographs of this one, for some reason;  the four pictures below are public domain, I think.  In the third and fourth pictures you can see the red screen (whatever that's for), and the fourth pictures demonstrates the ruggedness of the adjacent coastal area.

It looks like a nice place to abide, as keeper's quarters go, but it's a long hike for groceries. 

 

Curiosity sniffs something on Mars

 

This news is really fresh, but it might not smell that way.  Plus, the actual experiment that is being described was actually performed, on Mars, in 2016.  It took some years to get the results into scientific print, obviously.

NASA Rover Has Found Previously Unknown Organic Molecules on Mars

If you don't read that, the quick summary is that back in 2016, the Curiosity drill malfunctioned, and to see if their wet chemistry analyzers worked, the drivers and scientists decided to use a soil sample that they had in the scoop.  So they dropped the soil into the vessel with the chemicals (solvents) to run the test. 

The published results state that they found organic molecules, which the article mentions included ammonia (stinky) and benzoic acid.  I double-checked and confirmed that ammonia (NH₃) is not organic, but it can commonly combine with organic molecules and make nitrogenated organic molecules. Urea is an example of a simple one. 

They've since performed experiment number two, results pending. 

If you want to see where Curiosity is now, go here.  It's still climbing up Mount Sharp.  I hope it gets to the top.

The Highway 41 Streetview trek gets closer to the end

 

Yet there's still some distance to go.   More views in the Upper Peninsula.

Over here on the right is the Yooper Winery. "Yooper" stands for residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is where the trek is now.

Crossing the Little River.  Some of the Streetviews up here are several years old;  this one is from 2009.

What does the UP look like by the highway? Something like this.

There are a couple of UP towns up ahead, which we'll see next time.

She's in the right field of work

 

According to Tiziana De Angeli's Instagram page, she's a PROFESSIONAL MODEL / NUDE ART.

In the picture below, she's still wearing something, but it's clear that she has what it takes to be successful at that endeavor.

Not an everyday find

 

Not exactly a shipwreck ... REALLY interesting news about a 1,200 year old Indian (Native American) dugout canoe found and recovered from Wisconsin's Lake Mendota.  If you didn't know, Lake Mendota is adjacent to the capital city of Wisconsin, where the University of Wisconsin is also located.

According to the article linked below, the canoe was discovered by an archaeologist, but she wasn't looking for it when she was just having a fun dive in the lake.

A scuba-diving archaeologist found a sunken 1,200-year-old canoe on a whim. Here's how divers brought it to the surface of Lake Mendota.

The next thing they'll do with it is stick it back into a tank of water with some chemicals to kill anything that might eat it, and then slowly impregnate it with resin.  It'll be awhile before it goes on display.

Worth a look

 

Just passing this along.

Silvio Testa Photography

John Eastman testimony could end Republican hopes

 

If everything that lawyer John Eastman did to encourage, foment, and exploit the attack on the Capitol on January 6 was made explicitly clear to the entire nation, Republican hopes for election success could go belly-up.   (Though Fox News and Tucker Carlson are trying to mitigate the damage already.)

I'm hoping for that.  Publicly, clearly, and explicitly.

The most shocking new revelation about John Eastman

" The big news in the new investigation from The Post’s Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Jon Swaine and Emma Brown involves Trump lawyer John Eastman, the author of the infamous memos laying out a legal case trying to get Vice President Mike Pence to help overturn the election. It turns out that even as rioters overran the Capitol and a recalcitrant Pence was forced into hiding, Eastman emailed a Pence aide to actually blame Pence for the scene.

After Pence aide Greg Jacob emailed Eastman to tell him that his “bull----” legal advice was why Pence’s team was “under siege,” Eastman responded that it was in fact Pence’s fault.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this [election challenge] to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman replied, as revealed in a previously unpublished op-ed by Jacob. "

Get him in front of the committee ASAP, Democrats.

Great picture of Fuego

 

Even though the eruption in the Canary Islands has attracted much of the world's geological attention, there are other volcanoes erupting, some of them mostly all the time.  One of them is Fuego in Guatemala, which is constantly puffing ash clouds (a style which I think is Vulcanian).  Fuego is also called Chi Q'aq', and both names basically end up meaning "fire mountain".

It fits, as this remarkable picture shows.

If you want to watch, Fuego has its own dedicated Webcam. 

Fuego can be more violent, and deadly, as it was in June 2018.