From The New York Times this morning:
- The federal government is rushing to roll out a $250 million public education campaign to encourage Americans to take the vaccine. Public support is split: 60 percent of people said they were likely to get the shot, a recent Pew poll found, while more than 20 percent were strongly opposed.
- Germany will enact a nationwide lockdown over Christmas, closing most stores and schools and strictly limiting gatherings, which will continue on to January 10.
- The USA had 220,298 new cases and 2307 new deaths this past Friday.
- Germany had 21,816 new cases and 351 deaths.
- The population of the U.S. is four times larger than Germany, so effectively, their lockdown policy was triggered by what for the USA would be 87,264 new case, with 1404 new deaths.
- Can you imagine President Donald Trump doing this as Chancellor Angela Merkel did?
- This tougher stand is part of why Germany has suffered 264 deaths/million and the U.S. 919 deaths/million.
The eventual departure of Donald Trump, as depicted by the Sound of Music film:
East Africa is being threatened by a second wave. I thought Africa was being spared the devastation of this novel coronavirus? Well, it turns out that this new wave has to do with locusts.
Here are Drs. Fauci and Birx being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, Saturday Night Live style.
Mount Everest got a boost when China and Nepal announced a new measurement of the world’s tallest mountain: 29,031.7 feet, about three feet taller than previously thought.
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Have you kept up with those monoliths that have been popping up and disappearing since mid-November? Remember the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick? Seems like they are all a play on his alien monoliths, that appear throughout the universe to stimulate intelligent life or omen something important soon to happen.
The first was discovered in a remote Utah desert on November 18, and was gone on the 27th. Then, another one appeared on a Romanian hillside near the Petrodava Dacian Fortress. A few days later it too disappeared. Soon after, another one at the top of a mountain trail in southern California, then not. Last week on Compton Beach on the Isle of Wight, UK. Then the middle of a field in Baasrode, Belgium. Spain, Germany and Columbia also experience this phenomenon. Finally, another one on the top of Glastonbury Tor in the UK with the words, Not Banksy. Apparently the two U.S. monoliths were placed and removed by a collective called The Most Famous Artist, and has offered a replica for $45,000.
I can't seem to find the original source, but the Star Advertiser this morning indicated that a report from the University of Sydney indicated that people who ate foods high on the glycemic index scale four hours before going to bed raised your tryptophan level to make you more sleepy. Those who did this tended to sleep in 9 minutes. The best? Dates were listed at a glycemic index of 103 at the top, while whole milk was only 30. However, this source said dates only had a GI of 43, with glucose at 100, mashed potatoes at 87 and rice of most types in the eighties. This same university in 2007 reported that a meal of starchy rice four hours before bedtime was recommended. Whether dates or rice, I'd worry about weight gain if I did this every night.
Pantone usually announces their color of next year, but this time revealed that their colors for 2021 are Ultimate Gray and Illuminating Yellow. Why two? In combination, they create an aspirational color pairing, conjoining deeper feelings of thoughtfulness with the optimistic promise of a sunshine filled day. So when you shop for Christmas gifts, remember this. Of course you knew that last year the color of the year was Classic Blue.
Definitely a trivial item for most, but with an ending 4-4 record, the University of Hawaii will play the University of Houston on Christmas Eve in the New Mexico Bowl, to be hosted at Toyota Stadium for soccer near Dallas, Texas. Houston finished at 3-4. This has been the wackiest NCAA football season ever.
My favorite song #14 is Anniversary Song by Al Jolson. Born Asa Yoelson in a Lithuanian Jewish village in 1886, his father, a rabbi and cantor, moved the family to Washington, D.C. in 1894. While his mother has been portrayed as his supporter, she actually passed away in 1895 when he was nine years old. He moved to San Francisco to cheer up the earthquake-devastated community in 1906. In 1909 he became a blackface minstrel singer, particularly Stephen Foster songs. He made Swanee a hit in 1919, George Gershwins' initial success. Jazz Singer came in 1927, the first film to feature singing and speech. His wait a minute remark came here. The talkies arrived! He became the highest paid entertainer during this period and at the age of 35 had a theater named after him.
The matter of entertaining in blackface was controversial, but you had to appreciate what was common and accepted then. He actually was known to fight for civil rights, and is generally respected by the black community. At the age of 56 he also was the first performer to perform for soldiers during World War II before the USO formed, paying his own transportation.
Life was not all that rosy for him, as his youthful period was difficult and he later had four marriages, one to Ruby Keeler. He lost a lung and suffered from malaria from his WWII and Korean War tours. All of his material was also destroyed in that Universal Studios fire in 2008.
Few know that at the age of 60 he wrote the song Anniversary Song lyrics specifically for the 1946 The Jolson Story, which starred Larry Parks as him, though he provided the voice. Rotten Tomatoes reviewers bestowed a 100% rating for the film, and it won three Oscars. Saul Chaplin adapted The Waves of the Danube Waltz by Iosif Ivanovici, written in 1880. Four years later he reprised his WWII role, and he became the first front liner to entertain in Korea, 42 shows in 16 days, again at his own expense. He returned, exhausted, signed on to the movie Stars and Stripes for Ever, and died of a heart attack at the age of 64. He has THREE stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his face on a 29-cent stamp and a New York street named after him. At his funeral:
Celebrities paid tribute: Bob Hope, speaking from Korea via short wave radio, said the world had lost "not only a great entertainer, but also a great citizen." Larry Parks said that the world had "lost not only its greatest entertainer, but a great American as well. He was a casualty of the [Korean] war." Scripps-Howard newspapers drew a pair of white gloves on a black background. The caption read, "The Song Is Ended."[89]
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