I've decided to rename Mr. Biden to POTUS as a dig at Xpot. I don't expect that Xpot will know or care, but it suits me to do it this way. Speaking of Xpot, his time in office was a boon for The New York Times subscription-wise. I guess people developed a real taste for the fake news he said it ran. Digital-only subscriptions rose by 6.7 million during Xpot's time in office, compared with 3 million for The Washington Post and 2.46 million for The Wall Street Journal.
There won't be a glitzy new Budweiser Clydesdale ad during Sunday's Super Bowl, but Anheuser-Busch is running an ad that might moisten your eyes a wee bit. Parts might make you laugh or smile, while others might pull at your heartstrings. It's a good commercial considering the times in which it is airing.
The governor held a coronavirus briefing this morning, catching me by surprise. He says the covid-19 numbers are improving to the point that he wants all school divisions in the state to be offering some form of in-person instruction by March 15. He did concede that should things worsen, he is quite willing to revert to virtual only. He also called on school divisions to craft some sort of summer school that will help bring kids up to speed on what they should have learned last spring and this year. It will not be mandatory, though, which makes me wonder if they will suggest to some families that their kids attend or make it totally voluntary. I guess we'll see.
I watched the governor's briefing on Facebook with a comment feed open. A surprisingly large number of angry faces wafted up on the sidebar, but that often happens during the briefings. What really caught my eye were the comments posted while the governor was discussing vaccinations. A very large number of people noted that they were not going to get vaccinated because they were scared. A noticeable number of those posted that people had died, sometimes within minutes, after being vaccinated. I guess I'm not reading, watching, or listening to the same news sources these folks are.
The US recorded over 5,000 covid-19 deaths yesterday, but I'm happy (?) to say that the magnitude of the number was due to Indiana's inclusion of a backlog of around 1,500 previously unreported deaths. Don't get your hopes up, though. A newly released model predicts over 630,000 covid-19 deaths by June 1. I haven't seen an analogous number for the US, but the UK covid variant now accounts for 6 percent of cases in Germany.
And now a couple of non-covid comments. The Virginia House of Delegates yesterday voted to end capital punishment. The governor has already indicated that he will sign the bill, which makes us the first Southern state to end capital punishment. Weatherwise, we are about to experience a Siberian front that will take temperatures in the Upper Midwest down to the -30F to -50F range. In Tisdale,he tiny Saskatchewan town in which The Professor's brother lives, the high temperature Sunday is forecast to be -24F with a low of -31F. Yes, the -24F is the forecast high temperature. When The Professor comments that he is from Canada, he cites temperatures such as this as one of the reasons why.
2 comments:
If I had to live in Canada, BC would be my first choice. Particularly Victoria on Vancouver Island. Second choice would be whatever part of Ontario is south of Detroit. ;-) Definitely not the plains provinces north of North Dakota!
In those temperatures I would be staying home, not to protect the NHS and save lives but because going out would be brutal. One year we had a spell of -17c/1f and I remember it well because I didn't have the clothing or footwear for that. Nope, nope, nope. I'd rather have the never ending rain than snow because I don't have to shovel it.
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