COMING ATTRACTIONS

Today is Dance Like a Chicken Day. 15 Craigside once had an annual holiday night of entertainment, and many were conned into dancing like a chicken. It was funny, but not the kind of thing I enjoy doing. So I found a way to avoid being involved. For the record:

This day was created by Swiss accordion player Werner Thomas, and the dance became popular at weddings in the USA. Watch this! Another version.
Hey, put formality aside and just have some good-natured fun. A more modern beat.

While there are nearly 8 billion humans on Planet Earth, we are outnumbered by 19 billion chickens.

There are 1.5 billion cattle, 1 billion sheep and 1 billion pigs.
Cruelly, we slaughter 50 billion of them/year. Poultry makes up a third of all the meat consumed worldwide.
Americans consume around 250 eggs/year/person.
Compared to half a century ago, the amount of all meats we have eaten/capita has tripled.

A few more noteworthy chicken facts:

While beef produce nearly 25 kgCOwEQ/200 kcal, chickens are at around 6.

So if you are a conscientious environmentalist, eat chicken...or pork, which is only around 4.
However, beans, insects wheat and nuts are closer to 1, with nuts the lowest.

Chickens have been domesticated for 8000 years.
Romans invented the omelet.
Why does Kauai have so many wild chickens?

These are fighting chickens set free by Hurricane Iniki in 1992.
Noticed a lot of feral fighting chickens all over West Loch Golf Course in Honolulu, so Oahu too now has what some say is a problem. If you look closely at a rooster, it has a dangerous appendage that can cause you harm.

There is a city in Alaska called Chicken.
Chickens were used to determine that birds came from dinosaurs.

Nice segue into another coming attraction, for on June 1 maybe the final Jurassic film will premiere in South Korea, entitled Jurassic World Dominion. There have been six of them.

Many of your favorite stars return, like Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt and Bryce Howard.
Of course, too, the Velociraptor, or Raptor.

In real life, the Raptor was about as large as a Turkey.
What you see on the screen is a synthesis of fossils found, but enlarged to being 6.5 feet tall and 180 pounds.

There is battle between a Giganotosaurus and a T. Rex.

They are about the same size, both being 20 feet tall, although the Giga is 17,600 pounds and T. Rex 15,000 pounds, but Giga moved much faster, 31 MPH vs 17 MPH. Yet, the bite power of T. Rex went as high as 64,000 Newtons, while the Giga was only at 6,000.
In real life, they missed each other by 10 million years

A Giganotosaurus fossil was only found around 30 years ago in Argentina, while the first T. Rex skeleton was discovered in 1902 in Montana.
A North African Spinosaurus was larger than both, weighing up to 46,000 pounds.

Long film of around 2.5 hours.

Changing subjects, the Eurovision Song Contest Finale will be streaming on Peacock at 2:55PM East Coast Daylight Savings Time. There will be 25 acts. How do you watch it if you don't have Peacock? Good luck. Ukraine's Kalush Orchestera-Stefania is expected to prevail, for an obvious reason.

If you live in South America and much of the North, you will be treated to nearly 1.5 hours of an extra large full moon turning a deep blood red. This all begins at 11:29 PM EDT on Sunday, May 15, into early Monday morning.

Last year Hawaii was the place to be. This year, the Moon will rise around 7:10PM, and the eclipse will be more than half finished, so we won't see red, but only a dark shadow that will last for an hour. But not to fret, for Hawaii will again be a good place to be on 8 November 2022.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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