For those regulars of this blog site, I will get to our American Melody cruise on the Mississippi River.  But first, my topic of the day: the  Cicada . This is not a travel site.  No city/town has that name. Not about those swarming insects from 13- or 17-year broods.   Anyway, this happens not to be one of those springs when they emerge .  Although there will come a few stragglers, like this one shown.  Brood XXIII will strike in 2028.  In prime cicada years, you can more readily find chocolate chip cicada cookies. The Cicada I'm referring to today is the  new COVID variant . This will be an encore, for this variant first appeared in 2024. Cicada is nickname for BA.3.2, which first infected people in South Africa. Cicada is responsible for 30% of Europe's COVID ailments. More: Scientists say that Cicada carries   70 to 75 new mutations   in the spike protein, the portion that the human immune system recognizes and targets. That's m...

 Sunday has become a special day for me. I rest my body.  No exercising. Usually I stay at home to relax. This Super Bowl Sunday will not be much different, but I'll eat and drink more, maybe to excess. In past Super Bowls, I've sometimes hosted, many times gone to parties, and remember one Sunday when I missed the game.  This was in 2010 when I was in New Delhi, India. The following day,   my posting  said: Let's forget yesterday. I'm appalled that I said " India Sucks. "   Today, though, was not much different, but my attitude has re-adjusted and returned to my normal self. To begin, can you believe there are 82 HD channels, and at the time of the Super Bowl, there were 6 soccer matches, 2 rugby, 2 badminton, 1 tennis, 1 golf, 1 auto racing, 3 cricket and, on ESPN, a SEC gymnastics competition. NO SUPER BOWL in Delhi. Anyway, I couldn't have caught all of it as at 6:15AM I was picked up for my Taj Mahal encounter, the primary reason why I'm on this t...

Talking about largest snakes, last week one of my postings was entitled,  A COMING TRUMP DICTATORSHIP?   Someone e-mailed me this link of  Senator Chris Murphy's speech on the Senate floor, also sounding an alarm about President Trump's coordinated effort to dismantle democracy.   Watch it!  The Florida Museum reports that the Titanoboa is the largest snake that ever lived.  Perhaps up to 50 feet long 2500 pounds and 3 feet wide, was the largest predator on the planet after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  However, 23 million years ago came the  Megalodon .  Okay, a deviation, for this was not a snake. Several  films,  but there are so few remains, that there can only be estimates of size:  perhaps 47 feet to 80 feet long and at most, 200,000 pounds. However, this is about 10 times larger that an adult Great White Shark.  Here are two comparisons. Today, the  Green Anaconda  is the longest a...