Virtual competition

 

Anybody can be a trapeze artist

Another photo of Trump supporters

 

From a Duncaster resident

"On the cusp of next month, I found an old favorite song in my head. Then I realized that some of the lyrics are timely for this pandemic, but perhaps also reminders of past summers or romances. Take them as you wish."

Glenn Gould plays Bach's Partita no5

 

The President Speaks from the White House Lawn

Where are the masks? Is this social distancing?

 

What do you say?

 

Very hard to believe

One view of Kamala

Kids can do anything

 

What do you make of this?

It sounds true to me. It's from The American Prospect.

A very powerful speech

Look out the window

Farmers are not doing well

Be careful what you wish for

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

Come to the Proms

 

They're not kids

It's from a Duncaster resident, not the BBC.

Driving is dangerous

For almost a year, the Boston Globe has been studying deaths from car accidents in the U.S. The numbers are pretty sad:

36,000 are killed annually in the US from motor vehicle crashes — nearly 100 per day.

10% of drivers have convictions that don’t appear on their records.

There are 20,000,000 unaccounted-for offenders who remain licensed drivers in the US today.

One of the major problems we have is that states do not communicate with each other relative to drivers with problems. So, for example, if your license is suspended in Wisconsin, you could go to Illinois and get a license which enables you to drive in Wisconsin.

There is a good video elaborating on this issue. But it can't be copied. 

Opera Snippets

 

The narrator must be quite young; he has problems pronouncing anything that is not English. But the artists are wonderful.

A brave kid

Very few stutterers would do this. And he was speaking at the Democratic convention!

Politics with a little humor

 

A life changer

Not too long ago, this video went viral.



And then, this eleven-year-old kid from Nigeria was rewarded with multiple scholarships from around the world. He chose the offer from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in the US.

A Virus Factory

 

America in 2020

I think an article "How the Pandemic Defeated America" in The Atlantic by Ed Yong says a heck of a lot about America in the 21st century. 

First of all, it speaks to our inability to handle the pandemic as we should have:

"Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood. The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic."

Then, the author talks about our health care:

"Compared with the average wealthy nation, America spends nearly twice as much of its national wealth on health care, about a quarter of which is wasted on inefficient care, unnecessary treatments, and administrative chicanery. The U.S. gets little bang for its exorbitant buck. It has the lowest life-expectancy rate of comparable countries, the highest rates of chronic disease, and the fewest doctors per person. This profit-driven system has scant incentive to invest in spare beds, stockpiled supplies, peacetime drills, and layered contingency plans—the essence of pandemic preparedness. America’s hospitals have been pruned and stretched by market forces to run close to full capacity, with little ability to adapt in a crisis."

Finally, he questions our president:

"No one should be shocked that a liar who has made almost 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency would lie about whether the U.S. had the pandemic under control; that a racist who gave birth to birtherism would do little to stop a virus that was disproportionately killing Black people; that a xenophobe who presided over the creation of new immigrant-detention centers would order meatpacking plants with a substantial immigrant workforce to remain open; that a cruel man devoid of empathy would fail to calm fearful citizens; that a narcissist who cannot stand to be upstaged would refuse to tap the deep well of experts at his disposal; that a scion of nepotism would hand control of a shadow coronavirus task force to his unqualified son-in-law; that an armchair polymath would claim to have a “natural ability” at medicine and display it by wondering out loud about the curative potential of injecting disinfectant; that an egotist incapable of admitting failure would try to distract from his greatest one by blaming China, defunding the WHO, and promoting miracle drugs; or that a president who has been shielded by his party from any shred of accountability would say, when asked about the lack of testing, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”

A Weird One

This is an instrument made by a Swedish band, Wintergatan. It is driven by 2000 marbles.

The following is from 2016.



The following is from 2020.



Courtesy of a Florida resident.

Meet a senior weight lifter

Women and money

 

Revenue declines from the depression

 

Where the money is

The dozen wealthiest U.S. billionaires and their respective net worth as of August 13, according to the Institute of Policy Studies, are listed below : 

Jeff Bezos—$189.5 billion 

Bill Gates—$114.1 billion 

Mark Zuckerberg—$95.5 billion 

Warren Buffett—$80.6 billion 

Elon Musk—$73.1 billion 

Steve Ballmer—$71.5 billion 

Larry Ellison—$70.9 billion 

Larry Page—$67.4 billion 

Sergey Brin—$65.6 billion 

Alice Walton—$62.6 billion - the only woman 

Jim Walton—$62.3 billion 

Rob Walton—$62.03 billion

Another from the Staude Sisters

 

They are from Australia, not Scotland as I had said earlier. This is the first mistake I made this year. Right?

A gutsy kid

Do we need prisons?

Where do they come from

Why the virus has continued

 

Another Virus Casualty

 

From the NY Times as of August 12

 

Be glad you live in the Northeast

A stampede of dolphins

 

Baby Magpie

 

Changes in GDP

 

Sing me a song

These are the Staude sisters from Albany Scotland. I had never heard them, but I think they're exceptional.

Will the supply of coffee run out?

A water rise in Australia

 

Here's a mask for you

Drawing a life

Courtesy of a childhood friend

A Lockdown Poll

Getting his PhD