Saturday, March 27, 2021

The View from the Hermitage, Day 377

Today will be less pandemic, more free association. I got back to going through the detritus of our packing the house up last summer, and got a little distracted when I might have been news-farming. I think I mentioned that CSPAN was starting coverage of the 2024 Presidential race. Mike Pompeo, crony of XPot, is leading off giving several speeches--where else--in Iowa. Of course, POTUS said during his first press conference that he planned to run for re-election, so there you go. The race is on!

Epic is a subscription platform for kids; with kids at home during the pandemic, there are currently 50 million kids subscribed. From their choices, the folks at Epic have come up with an interesting list of which things kids prefer to others. For instance, kids prefer owls to chickens but chickens to hedgehogs, and they hunt for unicorns twice as often as they hunt for mermaids. They prefer owls over koalas and worms over kangaroos (sorry, Land Down Under). Ferocious beasts have a good following as do grumpy-faced boatfish. Volcanoes are better than tsunamis but tsunamis are better than earthquakes. Kids also seem to think that the Titanic is better than cowboys, pizza is better than cake, and science is better than art. Those three things being said, "poop" tops all six of those. 

Last I heard, one of the world's largest container ships (it's almost 400 meters long, 59 meters wide, and can carry 20,000 containers) is still suck in the Suez Canal. Dredgers have so far removed 20,000 tons of sand and clay from around the bow. The people charged with fixing the situation were hoping that today's high tide might help, but I don't think it has. A Dutch company is bringing in a land crane. The plan is to remove 600 containers from the bow of the ship to reduce its weight. I have not heard where they plan to put those 600 containers. 

The asteroid Apophis, that has been feared in terms of its getting up close and personal with Earth, won't hit Earth for at least another 100 years according to NASA. Whew! That was close!

I did take a few notes on coronavirus-related matters, but to what end? I'm going to stick with the lighter side and wonder where wombats sit in Epic's animal rankings or how will they get a gantry crane in place beside that giant ship. And if they do get a large enough crane there, will they line up 600 semi trucks to move the containers so as to avoid stacking 600 containers up on the shore?

Dinner tonight is steak cooked on a hot rock. It's been too long since we've done that.

2 comments:

Janet said...

Does the fact that I prefer hedgehogs to chickens mean I'm not a child? :-D

Caroline M said...

In the absence of inspiration we had breakfast for dinner. I did not run down the street waving my herbed skillet potatoes even though they were (1) that good and (2) from potatoes that I had canned. My restraint was less to do with the stay at home order and more about not being "that" neighbour.