THIS WILL BE A BIG WEEK...for me, and maybe for the rest of humanity, too.  Why? To begin, the Houston Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies for the baseball World Series Championship.  For them, this was redemption, for their  previous triumph in 2017 turned out to be scandalous .   Astros manager Dusty Baker woke up yesterday morning as the one who had coached the most games, never having won a world series.  He did it yesterday at the age of 73.   I also did well in fantasy baseball this year. The  New York Marathon  this morning was won by two Kenyans, Sharon Lokedi and Evans Chebet.   There were around 50,000 runners.   This was 28-year old Lokedi's first marathon in her life.   Chebet earlier this year won the Boston Marathon.  Kenyan men have won all six major city marathons this year:  also Eliud Kipchoge in Tokyo and Berlin, Amos Kipruto in London and Benson Kipruto in Chicago. Chebet's time was 2 hours, 8 minutes and 41 seconds, but Swiss Marcel Hug won the wheelchai

Nothing much more to say today about our pandemic, I last week already reported on the slate of victories by Democrats, and the Ukraine War just drags on, so let me start by showing a graph from the  New York Times  this morning about murder rates in the USA. Seems that our national murder rate dropped from two decades ago, then picked up during the Trump administration, and is now declining again because of Joe Biden.  Well, the more cited reasons are a variety of repercussions from our pandemic.  There was also an uptick in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in 2020.  Not shown above is the simple fact that between the 1990's and 2014, crime in the U.S. fell by more than 50%!!!    The latest  Gallup poll on crime  showed one graph and a variety of tables. I report on crime, for, combined with gun rights, these related issues will impact on the mid-term elections.  That landmark funding package also inserted something about checking methane emissions at facilities.  While

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           17        1289     9736         2736       171       74           24         936   10206        3158       277       55           31         1115    12301         3950      458