Sorry for being a little late today.  I went to Shimazu Shave Ice and had a Ling Hing Mui flavored shave ice, topped with condensed cream...for $7. Looking at the  Worldometer  data of yesterday, Japan remains #1 with 230,555 new cases.  The USA is #2 at 99,061.  The pandemic epicenter has shifted from Europe to Asia/Oceania.  Ranking of major countries in terms of new cases/million population: #1  Japan  1831 #2  Australia  1733 #3  South Korea 1660 #4  New Zealand  1579 #6  Singapore  1335 #7  Taiwan  974 #8  Italy  909 #9  Austria  831 #10  Germany  783 The average for the U.S is 296 new cases/million. Most think global warming is our biggest problem.  Over-population is also way up there as a concern.  According to the  United Nations, the World will hit a population of 8 billion on November 15 .  The World reached 7 billion in 2011. Our global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, increasing at a rate of less than one percent growth rate/year. Fertility in two-thir

A week ago, for science Wednesday, I wrote about   THE WORST CATACLYSM EVER FOR PLANET EARTH .  Today, what was the worst event for Humanity? Here is one viewpoint, with the gray bar indicating how many people would have died today if projected to our current population: The second world war only comes in at #11, mostly because it was too recent. China seems to monopolize this list. Not taking current population as the base,  Wikipedia  says the Khans might have disposed of 80 million, and so did Mao and Deng.  But various Marxist-Leninist leaders did away with nearly 150 million. Adolf Hitler?  "Only" 25.5 million. The  Black Death  around 1350 might have killed up to 200 million. The world population then was 370 million. Doing the math, this means if the same percentage of people in the world died, the equivalent today would be 4.3 billion, which is more than half our current population. Genghis Khan killed the equivalent of fewer than 0.8 billion. There is some speculatio

Again, no Trump nor COVID-19, but I should comment on the Georgia Senate runoffs, with voting day being a week away on January 5.   About a third of the voters  have cast early ballots, similar to the general election.  Voters so far in Georgia   are 55 percent non-Hispanic white, 32 percent non-Hispanic Black and 13 percent of other races ( or of unknown race ) .   My early viewpoint was that both Republicans would win, and the betting odds then favored them.  Today, still the same, although there has been a small trend in the Democratic direction.  Still, the two Republicans ( with David Perdue even more so ) remain solid favorites in the -150 to +150 range, meaning 60% chance for the Republican candidate and 40% for Democrat candidate. Here are some of the latest odds from bookmakers across the globe, as betting on elections is not allowed within the United States at legal wagering outlets. There is an exception domestically for sites such as   PredictIt , which are exempted by the