ONLY 161 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

On the covid front, South Korea, with 161,355 new cases this week, and the USA, with 79,513, had 87% of all new cases in the world this week.  However, many countries have stopped reporting. The good news is that S. Korea's weekly death rated dropped 38% and the USA 58% this past week.

The USA led in most new deaths this past week with 171, Brazil #2 and S. Korea #3.  These three countries accounted for 73% of all world deaths.

Only 116 days to Christmas.  You can already buy a few gifts of topical moment.  One thing about Donald Trump is that you can purchase all kinds of stuff featuring him.  As for example:

     2.  The big seller, however, is his mug shot mug.  Soon after his booking, just on Saturday, August 26, sold more than $4 million worth.  Want one?  You have a choice from Amazon.com.  Only $17.

Joe Biden articles can also be bought.  Only $16 for his Cup O' Joe.

It gets cheaper with Rudy Giuliani.  Only $15.

This can go on and on, for even Sidney Powell has a series of them.  Must be best sellers because they are all currently unavailable from Amazon.

Hunter Biden wrote Beautiful Things.  Only $16.

Going to SALT Kakaako for lunch, so that might be my feature for tomorrow.  I grew up in Kakaako, and my elementary school, Pohukaina, was across the street from this relatively new dining area.

Hurricane Idalia came and went.  Lots of customers without power, lot of flooding, but, all in all, not as bad as feared.  Once Super Typhoon Saola nearing Hong Kong might also not cause much damage.  Now at 140 MPH and heading straight for this city, the projection is as shown below.  Amazing if this happens.

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DEATH BY ASTEROID CRASH?

A week ago I posted on Death by a Gamma Ray Burst?  This week, I focus on another space invader, a large asteroid.  PBS has had several documentaries on this topic:  The Asteroid and the Dinosaur and  Dinosaur Apocalypse.

The scientific term for the above is Impact Event.  The biggest Earth event might have been the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact:

• 
  This when our Moon was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago.
• Theia, the mythical Greek Titan, was the colliding body, mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon.
• The isotope ratios of lunar and terrestrial rock are identical.
• There are many theories, but one is that the Moon was formed by the tangential impact upon Earth of a body the size of Mars.
• Much of this giant-impact consensus emerged from a 1969 conference held at Kona, Hawaii.  Those who don't believe are called the agnostics.

But our solar system is today quite different, and planet-sized impact neighbors are no longer present.

• 2 billion years ago an asteroid called Vredefort, from 12.4 to 15.5 miles across, struck South Africa, leaving a crater of 100 miles diameter.  There was not much life on Earth then to cause any extinction problem.  Time has eroded the crater, but this is something from NASA.

• 
  Then that most famous of all impacts, the Chicxlub meteor, 6 to 9 miles across, hit the region near Mexican's Yucatan Peninsula, creating a crater of 112 miles diameter, killing off the dinosaurs.  It is estimated that the energy released was 50,000 times more than the magnitude 9.1 earthquake that his Sumatra in 2004.  Again, there is no impact evidence.  Much of this remains speculation.

Of course, there are smaller craters, such as the Ries Crater, where the town of Nordlingen is now within the inner ring in Germany.  The full impact crater has been eroded over the past 15 million years.  

The Pingualuit Crater, Quebec, Canada, is 2.1 miles in diameter.

Formed just 50,000 years ago in northern Arizona is the Barrington (Meteor) Crater, with a diameter of 0.8 miles.

There are 190 confirmed craters on Earth.  Note that Moon craters remain largely untouched by nature, and the estimate there is 30,000 of them.

Devastating asteroids rarely crash on Earth.  A major impact within the past 100,000 years is the Yilan Crater of 1.45 mile diameter found in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.  Crashed around 50,000 years ago, so possibly was witnessed by humans.

Researchers are discovering around 500 sizable space rocks over 460 feet across in our solar system neighborhood each year.  NASA last year successfully tested the first attempt to intentionally move an asteroid, the one to the left.

Plus the technology is not here to be 100% sure, so the B612 Foundation formed two decades ago to keep us safe from asteroids.  Ten years ago, one of the founders, Ed Lu, a former astronaut, gave a talk on the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus, and I had a chance to discuss with him how their fundraiser was developing.  While Project Blue Revolution is seeking $150 million to build and operate the Pacific International Ocean Station, B612 has a goal of $450 million.  They apparently failed, and are pursuing other options.  Blue Revolutionists Leighton Chong and Benny Ron with Lu.

So should you be worried about menacing asteroids?  Well, there appears to be no known threat for the next century, and the likelihood of a major impact in the next thousand years is exceedingly low.  But if you die via asteroid, this is how it will happen.  You can read that article.

What about a third space invader.  A more intelligent civilization with malice in mind?  Science fiction is filled with them, and the success of numerous films indicate that there is fear.  Frankly, I'm not worried, and will explain why in an upcoming posting.

Hurricane Idalia reached Category 4 strength, then slightly weakened to a Category 3 at 125 MPH, making landfall in Florida's Big Bend near Keaton Beach just before 8AM, almost exactly as predicted by the integrated computer model.  Idalia will remain at Category 1 hurricane strength through most of her movement over Florida.  While the eye will miss the population centers, there will be considerable damage from winds and floods.

The still dangerous Typhoon Saola in the West Pacific was a super typhoon, but is now down to 150 MPH and still headed for Hong Kong.  However, Saola's track will amazingly turn left away from this city, weaken, and head back east almost in parallel to the current line.  Never seen this type of activity in the Orient, with all those circular movements.

Also in the West Pacific is Tropical Storm Haikui, who today weakened to 50 MPH, then strengthened to 60 MPH, and will reach hurricane strength tomorrow.  The eye will head north of Zhejiang and should make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday.

Just thought I'd show another ocean cyclonic storm heading for Hawaii, being thankful that it never attained hurricane strength, and should further weaken into a remnant low, bringing some rain.  Now only at 40 MPH, Post-Tropical Cyclone Irwin seems headed on a path to take him north of the Hawaiian Islands.

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THE FUTURE OF FISSION NUCLEAR POWER

Tokyo Electric Power, operator of the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility, discharged 11,500 tons of untreated water into the Pacific Ocean.  That was way back on 5 April 2011, almost a month after that Great Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Cataclysm.  That chart is NOAA's accounting of where this radioactive fluid went two years later.

Wikipedia reported on the most recent discharge of radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant:

Discharge of radioactive water of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean began on 24 August 2023, following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster triggered by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 in Japan. Due to the massive tsunami that disabled the cooling systems at the nuclear plant, three reactors experienced meltdowns, leaving behind melted fuel debris. Water used subsequently to cool the debris became contaminated with radioactive nuclides.^[3] The majority of these radioactive materials resulted in immediate atmospheric leaks, with 80% eventually depositing into the ocean and nearby rivers.^[4]

Leakage to groundwater had persisted since the disaster and was only first admitted by the nuclear plant in 2013.^[5] Since then, the contaminated water has been treated using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) to eliminate most radionuclides,^[3][6] except tritium with a half-life of 12.32 years and carbon-14 with a half-life exceeding 5,000 years.^[7][8]

In 2021, the Japanese cabinet approved the dumping of ALPS-treated water, which after diluted has tritium and carbon-14 levels reportedly meeting safety standards, into the ocean over a course of 30 years.^[9] The move of discharging radioactive water of the nuclear plant into the ocean faces concerns and criticism from other countries and international organisations.

On this nostalgic Tuesday, I thus look back at those days more than a dozen years ago, for I landed in Tokyo the day after all that happened.  Read my ordeal, which continued on for another month.  Effectively, I described my blog efforts as THE CHICKEN AND CHICKEN LITTLE SCHOOL OF REPORTAGE. 

Almost seven months later, which takes me into October of 2011, I found myself re-living that terrible saga, that is, flying from Bangkok to Tokyo and commented on Fukushima:

  -  The Fukushima (Lucky Isle in Japanese) danger zone is 25 times smaller than Chernobyl's, but the prefecture where these nuclear powerplants are located had a population of 2 million and was half the land size of Belgium.

  -  Japan is excruciating as to how the radioactive debris will be treated and disposed.

  -  No matter how you spin it, Fukushima Prefecture:

      -  will for a long, long time be stigmatized by the fact anyone from this location might have radiation (jobs, marriage, whatever),

      -  agriculture and tourism will probably never recover,

      -  many will never be able to return home in their lifetime,

  -  I'll not try to explain it here, but click on "why Fukushima is more dangerous than Hiroshima and Nagasaki" to appreciate the dark implications of nuclear fission powerplants.

That was my Huffington Post article entitled:

Why Worry About Fukushima When Hiroshima and Nagasaki Are Safe?

You would have thought that fission nuclear power would then just go away, especially now with the fact that they cost more than renewable energy to produce a kilowatt of electricity.  The exact opposite is occurring:

• 440 nuclear plants in 32 countries plus Taiwan that provide 390,000 megawatts, or around 10% of the world's electricity.
• 60 reactors are today in construction in 15 countries.
• 100 new nuclear power reactors are on order or planned, with 300 more being proposed.
• The International Energy Agency sees an installed nuclear capacity growth of OVER 43% from 2020 to 2050, reaching a capacity of 590,000 MW.  Most of this new capacity will be in China and India.
• However, the IEA estimates that these nuclear power plants will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 13% in 2050. 
• At the current rate of lifetime extensions, future operating lifetime of fission nuclear powerplants is being increased to 60 years of life.

Sure there will be future accidents and natural disasters, but what worries me most is terrorism.  With the capability of remote drone missiles, the danger has increased.  Worse, even one person working in such a facility could trigger another China Syndrome.

My African Blood Lily season is nearing an end, three weeks after it began.

Hurricane Idalia will be at least a Category 3 when she makes landfall over Florida tomorrow.  Earlier today, she was not even a hurricane.  At last check, she was up to 100MPH and strengthening.  The good news is that Idalia's eye will miss population centers.  The bad is that there will be the surge of wind-driven seawater and the threat of tornadoes.  Depends on your source, Idalia is a female name with origins in Greece, Italy and or Spain.

Then there is Super Typhoon Saola in the West Pacific.  Yesterday, "only" 105 MPH.  Now, 155 MPH.  The good news, though, is that the path of the eye will move safely between the Philippines and Taiwan, then just before reaching Hong Kong as a Category 2, there will be a turn to the left, a weakening and a projection towards Hainan as a tropical storm.

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MONDAY POTPOURRI

So what is happening today?  Nothing much of import:  National Bow Tie Day, National Cherry Turnover Day, National Red Wine Day, International Read Comics Day, National Thoughtful Day, National Bridge Remembrance Day and National Power Rangers Day.  All sanction by an organization called National Day Calendar. 

How does one get a national day?  Well, Hasbro/Saban jointly with NDC, just declared August 28 to be National Power Rangers Day.  Has thus been annually celebrated yearly since 2018.  So how do you celebrate this day?  Fans are encouraged to share memories and cosplay the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which premiered in 1993. 

But what is National Day Calendar?  It was created in 2013 by Marlo Anderson, the so-called Guru of Geek, from his perch as podcaster of the Tech Ranch.  Must have been popular, for a million people visited his site that first year, and 10 million are expected to ping-in this year.  He said this hobby has become a major distraction to normal business hours.

How can you add a national day?  Just register with the National Day Calendar website.  Anderson gets 18,000 applications/year, and has a committee that approves about 30/year.  So the odds are low.  His advice?  CELEBRATE EVERY DAY!  Click HERE on any day, and get the scoop of what day that is.  Sort of like April Fools Day everyday.

More seriously, about Godfather Trump and his co-conspirators, Judge Tanya Chutkan today set March 4, 2024 to be the trial date for his attempted January 6 coup.  This just happens to be the day before Super Tuesday.  Rachel Maddow will be be very prominent that Monday next year.  To quote NBC News:

Trump posted on Truth Social that he would appeal the trial date decision, saying it comes "smack in the middle of Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent’s campaign against him. Election Interference! " But orders setting trial dates are not appealable, according to NBC News legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg. The trial start date could still move due to other litigation in the case, however.

To give equal time to Biden, the New York Times reported this morning that one of his foci will be to reduce medical costs during the the upcoming presidential campaign.  Why?

The underlying reason for Biden’s push is that Americans pay more for medical care than the citizens of any other county. There are several causes, but many experts believe that the main factor is simply that the U.S. government doesn’t prevent drug companies, hospitals and insurers from charging high prices. An influential 2003 article in an academic journal made this argument bluntly in its headline: “It’s the prices, stupid.” These high prices translate into higher profits for health care companies.

Now on to ocean storms again.  There are two in the vicinity of the USA.  That fearsome one to the right in the Atlantic is Hurricane Franklin, now at 145 MPH.  However, he will move further east away from North America.

The more deadly one is Tropical Storm Idalia, to become a hurricane later today, and possibly strengthen into as high as a Category 3 when making landfall over Florida on Wednesday.

There are three active ocean storms in the West Pacific.  The one I've been watching, Typhoon Damrey, did attain hurricane strength yesterday, but has weakened to 50 MPH today, and is turning away from Japan.  The potentially bad one is Category 3 Typhoon Saola, which today re-strengthened up to 115 MPH.  The projection is for the eye to skirt south of Taiwan and weaken into a Category 2, then to a 1 before making perhaps a direct hit over Hong Kong as a tropical storm.  But you never know for sure at this point.

Right behind Saola is Tropical Storm Haikui, which is projected to strengthen into a typhoon on Wednesday, gaining strength into a Category 2 on Thursday, moving between Taiwan and Okinawa, then possibly heading in the general direction of Shanghai, making landfall over China this weekend.

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