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WILL WE ALL EVENTUALLY BE GOMBOC?

          From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):


        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732         1185       246       82
July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572
Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130
Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82
Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85
Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118
Dec    30      3880    14748       1224       299      465
Jan     14       4142    15512         1151        189       712              
Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398
          25       2414    10578        1582        119      144
Mar     2        1989      9490       1726       110      194
          31       1115      12301        3950       458       58
April   6         906     11787         4211        631       37
May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59 
         26         607     12348         2399     3842     101
June    1         287     10637        2346      3205      95
          30        249      8505        2127        991      383
July     7          251      8440         1595        817      411
          14          374       8721        1574        580      453    
         21           414       8638        1388        510      516
         27           339      9460        1320       640      370

Summary:

  • Yesterday Tokyo suffered its highest number of new cases ever with 2848.  How serious is this?
    • Tokyo:  203 cases/million
    • World:  75
    • India:  31
    • USA:  185
    • Hawaii:  116
    • California:  216
    • Louisiana:  1451
    • Brazil:  194
    • Thailand:  202
    • China:  0.005
  • What a terrible development, having among the highest number of new deaths/capita in the world.  Blame the government for delaying vaccinations and the people for their high reluctance.  Have you seen many of the outdoor Olympics events like cycling, where hordes line the streets, many of them capable of transmitting this disease?
  • High enough to cancel the Games?  Of course not.
  • Japan, with 5389 also suffered its worse number of new cases, ever.  Much of the same can be said for most of the countries in the Orient.
  • The USA had the most new cases in the world, with 61,581.  So we're back to leading the pack again.  Why?  Sure the Delta variance is one reason, but the continued resistance of too many about vaccinations is another.
  • Indonesia was #2 with 45,203 new cases.
  • However, while the U.S. "only" had 339 new deaths, Indonesia had 2,069, by far the most in the world.
  • The difference?  While the U.S. is just about at 50% regarding the fully-vaccinated, INDONESIA IS AT 7%!!!   Countries like Israel and Canada are approaching 60%.
  • As of two days ago there were 155 COVID-19 confirmed cases for everyone associated with the Tokyo Summer Olympics, but that included the 11,000+ athletes plus staff, workers and contractors.  The infection rate is much less than 1%.

Maybe there is more to Pablo Picasso than we think.  Researchers have found that everything from icebergs to rocks break apart into smaller cubes.  There could well be a universal rule of fragmentation.

This notion builds of the work of mathematician Gabor Domokos of Budapest University.  Back in 2006 he proved the existence of the gomboc, a gemstone-like shape that has only one stable balance point.  Seems that pebbles washing downriver and sand grains blowing in the wind also erode toward gombocish shapes.  From dolomite on the Harmashatarhegy in Budapest to supercomputer simulations of materials, they all formed this shape.  Here is Gabor holding a gomboc:

So what use is this information?  Hydrologists can predict fluid flow through rock cracks for oil extraction and geologists can now better predict the breaking off of cliff faces.  My interest is as a geothermal engineer to better design in-situ hot dry rock reservoirs for energy extraction, said to have enough potential to supply all the energy humanity needs for thousands of years.  Getting this to be cost effective is the problem.

This might be getting too philosophical, but Douglas Jerolmack, a University of Pennsylvania geophysicist, who is in this field, said their team took inspiration from Plato, who related each of the four classical elements--earth, air, fire and water--to a polyhedron.  Domokos goes further on in saying:  But in order to see the ideal, you have to use your mind.

The future of Man?


As Wednesday is science day, here is a test of Galileo's Hypothesis.  Worth your while to watch.  Only 2 minutes and 35 seconds long.

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