The  James Webb Space Telescope  ( JWST ) had a successful launch on Christmas day.  This $10 billion system is on a 29-day journey to Lagrange Point 2, around a million miles away.  Note, that our Earth blocks the Sun's rays from the JWST.  We won't know if it will work until after it gets there, and first sight might not be received for three months.  In the meantime,  there appears to be no way to correct any mistake  as we did for the Hubble Telescope.  The JWST has six times the collecting size of Hubble's, and is 100 times more sensitive. The  Canary Island's La Palma Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption  which began this past September, finally ended after 85 days, the longest on record for this island: 3000 buildings destroyed. $1 billion of damage. I've always wanted to visit La Palma because I have featured it several times in this blog and one of my books as the future potential site to create a  mega-tsunami , a po...

Before I get into the topic of today, got to report that this morning's  Star Advertiser   headline showed: New infection record reached Hawaii confirmed 2205 new COVID-19 cases...but zero new deaths.   Also, our hospitalization peak of 448 is only at 84 today.  A bit worrisome is that 32 of them were fully vaccinated.   This will get worse because of the holiday season, but maybe not significantly so as the Omicron variant gains in taking over from Delta. We also now have 12,777 active cases, another record, as the pervious high was 11,500. Our seven-day average positivity is 11%, creeping up, but nowhere close to the  really badly hit states in this union . DC  109% Kansas 53% Vermont 52% New cases per million; Hawaii  1575 Puerto Rico  1947 Denmark  2448 New York  1869 Ireland  2081 UK  1571 Japan  2.5 Congressman Kai Kahele, who was vaccinated and boosted, reported that he tested positive.  However, he said t...

With all the precautions we are taking, plus the natural barrier of the Pacific Ocean,   Hawaii   has nevertheless been recently clobbered by COVID-19.  As of two days ago, it was speculated that maybe half of new cases were from the Omicron variant.  The infection rate could well continue to increase as this strain gains prominence.  Our football team pulled out of Hawaii Bowl on Friday and basketball team out of the Rainbow Classic yesterday because of pandemic protocols. Hawaii status: Our total case count surged past 100,000 yesterday, which means that 7% of people living here have contracted COVID-19. However, the USA percentage is 15.9%, more than double that of Hawaii. The World average is 3.6%.  Or, Hawaii has double the infection rate of the globe. We had 1828 new cases two days ago, our worst ever. 73.9% of people here have been fully vaccinated.  Not sure about what percent has been boosted. While immunity is not guaranteed about catching th...