Well, I survived  Barbenheimer , and was underwhelmed by   Barbie   and consumed by   Oppenheimer .  Sure,   B   got twice the box office revenues of   O , but that is because   B   is for children with grandparents, and   O   was R-rated, with actual nudity.  The two, combined, earned more than half a billion worldwide dollars in one weekend, and both were actually highly rated by reviewers. The bizarre attraction is that they are two films that are about as opposite as you can get, making it a once in a decade event.   About possible Oscars?  Let me start with  B : Margot Robbie was the star, and she in the past got two nominations, in 2018 for  I, Tonya  as Best Actress, and in 2020 as Best Supporting Actress for  Bombshell .  I don't think this kind of movie can be taken seriously, so she probably will miss the final cut of five actresses. Ryan Goslin, however, might slip into th...

The whole World had 289,936 covid cases this past week, and South Korea alone was responsible for 229,668 of them, or 79%.   The USA was #2 with 21,309, or 7%. Interestingly enough, of the 576 world deaths this past week, S. Korea had only 52 of them, or 9%.   Brazil had 171 covid deaths, or 30%, while the USA had 139 deaths, or 24%. There remains a range of questions and unknowns about our past pandemic.  One of them is, where did this all start?  Well, no doubt about the location being China, and almost surely Wuhan.  But where and how exactly?  The  New York Times  this week summarized the current state of knowledge: Was China initially hiding the truth?  Yes. The country was concerned, and ordered the original coronavirus samples be destroyed.  Maybe this was smart, but was "coverup" the reason? This Wuhan lab was known to purposefully create dangerous viruses to learn how to combat them before they emerged in the wild....

The American Energy Society regularly sends info on the full range of energy and minerals. Which countries are exporting Liquified Natural Gas?  The leading suppliers are Qatar, Australia and the USA. Qatar is really small, occupying only 4468 square miles.  The entire Big Island of Hawaii is 4028 square miles.  Australia is 664 times larger than Qatar, and the USA is 850 times bigger in land area.   A good rule of thumb is that LPG is 10% of natural gas and 3% of crude oil. Coal is the worst fossil fuel for global warming, right?  Yes, by far.  However, coal-generated eletricity is up 8% this year, and has doubled in the last 20 years.  India is the fastest growing market .  India now has more people than China. Wind energy turbines kill birds, right?  Yes. But cats 2000 times more birds than wind turbines. Vehicles kill 654 times more birds than wind turbines. Here is how the American Bird Conservancy responds. While this report is d...

Most tourists to Hawaii fly into Honolulu and spend most of the time in Waikiki, perhaps taking an around Oahu tour and a luau.  Some are more adventurous, flying to at least another island, which takes packing and moving about.  If you want to see all of Hawaii, the best way is to take Norwegian's Pride of America on a 7-day cruise that begins and ends on Saturday.  I've done this maybe half a dozen times, and enjoyed all of them, and have reservations to do this again on September 2.   That will be a grand nine-day period, for the Hawaii football team hosts Stanford on September 1 and women's volleyball welcomes the University of Southern California.  Then the following weekend, Hawaii plays Albany ( they have a football team?? ) at home, while the women's V-ball team has a tournament at The Stan with Liberty, UCLA and Pepperdine. About your coming adventure  (this article was written a year ago, so some ship facilities were closed...but not now ), f...