RETURN OF THE GIANT CROCODILES

Back to back, there were recent reports of giant crocodiles being captured in Georgia (yes, that American State) and the Philippines.  Also, too, last year, a 15.4-foot saltwater crocodile (left) weighing in at 1300 pounds, was caught in Australia.  This roughly 60-year old will spend the rest of his life at a crocodile farm.

The Georgia "monster," though, was relatively puny at 13 feet and 700 pounds:

Unfortunately, this 50-year old was euthanized, due to injuries.

Two days ago, a large crocodile terrorizing Balabac in the Philippines was captured and trucked to a crocodile farm.  This one was 15.7 feet long and 1050 pounds, probably 50 years old, had killed a villager and injured others, while consuming countless dogs and goats.

If you look down the list of popular posts in the right column, you will come across--ABOUT THAT GIANT FILIPINO CROCODILE--a truly giant leviathan, captured in the Philippines eight years ago.  Lalong, 21 feet long and 2370 pounds, became a celebrity.  Unfortunately, he died 18 months later of pneumomia and cardiac arrest.  He was the largest crocodile ever caught.  You can visit his replica at the National Museum of Natural History in Manila.

How relatively insignificant were the Australian, Balabac and Georgia crocodiles?  Well:

• #10 on the list of largest is a 17.71 footer from Puento Noire beast from the Congo.  
• #2, Dominator (right), is alive, 20 feet long, and somewhere in the Adelaide River of Australia.

• #3 Gustave (right), a Nile Crocodile, is just under 20 feet, but growing, has killed 300 humans in the Ruzizi River of Lake Tanganyika, and has resisted capture attempts for two decades.  Watch this 55 minute National Geographic program entitled Capturing the Killer Croc.

• #5 Brutus, 18 feet 4 inches, is missing a leg, but still somewhere in that same Adelaide River, which is also home to whistling kites, bull sharks, speartooth sharks and largetooth sawfish.

• #6 and #7 are Yai and Utan, both around 18 feet long,  Utan (right), a saltwater-Siamese hybrid, is 55 years old and weighs in at 2000 pounds.   He can be seen at the Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm, twelve miles outside of Bangkok.  Yai, an  estuarine-Siamese hybrid, can be visited at the Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo in Bangkok. There are 100,000 other crocodiles at the farm. Yai was recently measured, and grew to 19 feet 8 inches, now considered to be largest in captivity. Below, Yai:

I'll be in Bangkok next month.  Might go see Yai.

-

In the Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Haleh is up to 109 MPH, and, being the sixth such storm, broke the all-time record for this region.  However, Haleh will not make any landfall:

-

THREADS: The Most Frightening Film I Have Ever Seen

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        282
          21     1170     6062        1031      953        225
          22       974     5349          823      918        144
          23       430     4247          495      846          72

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          26     1289     6341        1090    1017        194
          27     1143     6057          970    1065        126
          28     1105     5711          868    1019        115

          29       954     5305         904       944        238
          30       369     4182         398       960          47
          31       512     4226         619       818        121

Summary:  Looks like a definite decline.

About the state of vaccine development:

• Did you know that three (or is it 5??) have already been approved for early or limited use?
• China's Sinovac
• Russia's Gamaleya (has just started Phase 3, but has been released anyway)
• Kazakhstan's whatever, just into Phase 1, but...
• Russia's Vector Institute, only in  Phase 1/2, but...
• China's Sichuan University, only has just begun Phase 1, but...
• Nine are in Phase 3 trials.
• Fourteen are in Phase 2 and twenty-three in Phase 1.

Donald Trump will no doubt use the China/Russia strategy some time in October, with a cooperative FDA ready to approve.  They've already warned us this will be happening.

New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Michael Schmidt, just published Donald Trump v. The United States this morning.  He gained his Pulitzer for his reportage of the Mueller investigation.  A few more land mines surrounding Trump that could lead to conviction after he leaves office.

October should be interesting, indeed, for Mary Trump will no doubt release yet another taped statement to further embarrass the president.  Maybe even leak his tax returns to the press.

Bob Woodward, who has written 18 national bestsellers beginning with All the Presidents Men in 1984, has his next Trump book ready for September 15.  No title yet, but after Fear in 2018, this one might be called Rage.  Woodward continues to be associate editor of the Washington Post, where he will have served half a century there next year.  Said our fearless leader:

It's just another bad book. He's had a lot of credibility problems.

Business Insider a year and a half ago described 22 new books published about Trump.  The more condemning ones have only come out since the pandemic.  It's not the books per se that are damning.  The coverage on news channels and word of mouth exchanges doom him.

So on to my topic of the day.  Wonder which streaming service dominates?  Netflix, you say? Yup, they have 193 million subscribers, more than the next three combined.  They began in 2007.  #2 is Amazon Prime (2006) with 75 million.  Newcomers arrived in 2019, #3 Disney+ with 60.5 million and #4 Apple (2019) with 47.6 million.   #5 is Hulu (2007) with 35.5 million.

So anyway, last night I thought I'd give Amazon Prime a look, and wanted to find something different, with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.  Stumbled into Threads a 1984 film which scored 100%:

Originally produced by the BBC, Threads is a shattering speculative tale the onset of World War III, and the horrors of the post-apocalyptic society that struggles for survival. The film takes place in the ruins of Sheffield, a British working class town.

Didn't look all that enticing.  Definitely low budget and somewhat grainy.  So I thought back to what I was doing in 1984.

• There was of course the 1949 George Orwell book, 1984, about life in Great Britain in that year after losing a war to a totalitarian entity, called Oceania, but, really, should have been called the Soviet Union.
• I had recently returned to the University of Hawaii and was in the midst of inventing the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research.

• The Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics because the USA had done the same to them in 1980 for interference in Afghanistan.
• Louisiana hosted a world's fair.

• President Ronald Reagan, just joking on a voice check, was errantly recorded to say:  My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russian forever.  We begin bombing in five minutes.
• Jeopardy! began with Alex Trebek.

In other words, nothing much happened that year.  But the setting was ripe for a real horror story:

• The year prior, President Reagan launched his Star Wars initiative to fend off a nuclear attack by the evil empire, known as the Soviet Union.  I still laugh about this, but this concept was fed to Reagan through Edward Teller by a small group of physicists who were friends of mine when I worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
• The Soviet hierarchy was in transition:  Yuri Andropov handing over the leadership to Konstantin Chernenko, who hung on only a year, to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.

• The Doomsday Clock in 1984 was ticked up to 3 minutes to midnight, the highest since 1953 when the Soviets exploded their Hydrogen Bomb.
• As an aside, can you believe that in 2017 the clock was brought to 23:57:30, the closest ever to doomsday for, guess what?  Donald Trump mouthed comments about nuclear war and disbelief in science about global warming!

Sure there have been scary films, like The Exorcist.  However, all of them were clearly made up and you went on with your life.  I certainly was affected by the 1959 On the Beach, which depicted the fallout from nuclear war.  I just recorded it and will soon re-live that experience.  But in this movie you were detached, for everything happened a continent away.

Threads catches you unaware.  While there is some build-up, the two by four blow to your temples suddenly happens.

Threads began in a British city where life is scruffy, mostly doing nothing important.  Now and then there were background sounds from radio and TV programs, starting with minor threats by the USA and Soviet Union about their concerns, building up to a local nuclear war between the two in Iran.  Then in swift order, without much warning, an atomic bomb explodes in Sheffield, one of no doubt thousands worldwide, leading to an actual nuclear winter, for it snowed in July.  Science predicts, if this ever happens, this will linger for a decade.  This was the frightening horror:  blood, vomit, starvation, rats, name it.  At first, rats ate humans.  Then, humans ate rats.  Like in those previous movies I just reviewed, Drunk Parents, Movie 43 and All Together Now...the abomination and inhumanity compound to hopelessness.  That is the point of Threads.  Avoid nuclear war at all costs.  You don't want to be in an apocalypse.  Survival is worse than death.  No one wins.

Threads achieved the highest BBC ratings that week.  It was repeated a year later on the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Ted Turner's TBS did the introduction  and led a panel discussion when first shown in the U.S. in 1985.  Then, PBS stations.  Went to Betamax in 1987.

But nothing much until 2018 when the film went on Blu-ray.  Then it began to be reviewed, where Rotten Tomatoes bestowed a rare 100%:

• Threads is a chilling hypothetical that achieves visceral horror with its matter-of-fact presentation of an apocalypse.
• No one ever forgets the experience of watching Threads. [...It] is arguably the most devastating piece of television ever produced. It’s perfectly crafted, totally human and so completely harrowing you’ll think that you’ll probably never want to watch it again.

With that, I warn you to avoid this film at all costs.  You will get nightmares.  On the other hand, when the Cold War ended, Humanity crossed a threshold that probably insured for long-term survival.  We could now be around for a few more million years, unless that asteroid comes, or a gamma-ray burst in our galaxy.  They happen, but all far, far away, as this map shows.

I've long felt that the next threat will be biological.  Sure, we now have this Pandemic, but that coronavirus will only become part of the seasonal flu next year.  Maybe an Andromeda Strain from space, or man-made virus that escapes.  Perhaps a World War III featuring bioweapons.

For the past two months now, my daily tally has shown HOW I NOW THINK I REALLY GOT INTO STANFORD as #1, and by a large margin.  This is one of the mysteries of this blog site.  I can't understand why some posting are popular.  In the past, the two which scored the highest had to do with BTS and Star Wars, and I think I know why.  Someone reads a posting and sends it to contacts.  That I can understand.  But why Stanford?

Entry	Pageviews
HOW I NOW THINK I REALLY GOT INTO STANFORD Nov 13, 2018, 2 comments	321
JAPANESE WAGYU BEEF IN HONOLULU Mar 2, 2016	16
FLATULENTLY FLAGRANT FAILURE Aug 28, 2020	12
ABOUT THAT GIANT FILIPINO CROCODILE Sep 8, 2011, 1 comment	12
HAWAII HAD A SERIOUS COCKROACH CRISIS Sep 12, 2016, 1 comment

Speaking of BTS, this Korean boy group also shone on the MTV show where Lady Gaga showed off her masks, as I reported yesterday.  Today they not only are #1 on Billboard, but their latest hit, Dynamite, reached an all-time high on views never seen before on You Tube.  Maybe because this is their first release in English.  Introduced on August 20, it's already approaching 300 million watches.  Then again, they've got a long way to go to pass Psy's Gangnam Style, which is in the neighborhood of 4 billion pings?  That was 8 years ago.

There are two ocean storms in the West Pacific.  Typhoon Maysak, with gusts of 122 MPH, once a Category 4, will brush by Nagasaki, then head for South Korea today.  Also of concern is Tropical Storm Haishen, which is expected to strengthen into a formidable typhoon later this week and make landfall over Japan on Sunday.

-

ABOUT THAT GIANT FILIPINO CROCODILE

The 21 foot, 2370 pound, crocodile, recently caught in a remote south Philippines village, might well now be the largest reptile in captivity.  It also has the highest biting force (5,000 pounds per square inch).  Named Lolong, he (females are smaller) is shown above right in new temporary quarters.   Interestingly enough, the job is only 10% completed because a larger one is also lurking the coastline in the region.

The previous #1 was 100 year old Cassius in Green Island, Australia, with a length of 18.5 feet.

 Then, there is Denver's Maniac, born in Australia, but only 16 feet long.

With the binomial name, Crocodylus porous, and more popularly as the saltwater crocodile, legends (almost always croc stories) abound about this beast:

  -  There is a report of a 33 footer shot in the Bay of Bengal in 1840.

  -  In 1823, a 27 foot crocodile killed on an island off Luzon, Philippines.

  -  Then, a 25 foot version  off Calcutta.

Trouble is, they kept the skulls, and subsequent analysis showed these were all between 20-21.7 feet.

These saltwater crocodiles are largely found in India/Australia/Southeast Asia/South Pacific:

The American Saltwater Crocodile (with lengths supposedly up to 23 feet) can be found:

The Nile crocodile can grow to 21 feet.  While these three crocs are of the same genus, they are different species, with the African ones found:

Oh, in case you really were interested,  the alligator (different genus) has a broader snout, tends to be grayish black in color and can only be naturally found in southeastern USA and parts of China. A monster in Louisiana was measured to be 19 feet 2 inches.  Alligators are less aggressive.  If you can see the teeth, it is a crocodile, and it generally is light tan:

For the record, there was a Super Croc in prehistoric times, Sarcosuchus, measuring 40 feet long and weighing 8 tons.  It ate dinosaurs.

While there might only be around a thousand crocodiles near the Philippines, up to 200,000 are speculated to reside around Australia.  A death or two each year is attributed to swimmer/fishermen confronting these crocodiles.  Animals as large as water buffalos can be consumed by one, and the predator subsequently might not eat for months.

During the Second World War, 400 Japanese soldiers might have been consumed by these crocodiles during the Battle of Ramree Island.  There is a horror film, Primeval, a "true" story of Gustav, a killer said to be of 20 foot length in Burundi, which means he was a Nile crocodile, for Burundi is in Africa.  Here are the top ten crocodile movies.  Heck, can't leave without Elton John and Crocodile Rock.  Now that this is getting ridiculous, see Bill Haley and his Comets with See You Later Alligator.  Click on Croc Blog to learn more.

-
The Dow Jones Industrials slipped 119 to 11,296, with other world markets almost all up.  Gold popped up $39/toz to $1860, while the WTI oil is at $89/barrel and Brent Spot at $115/barrel.

-

Hurricane Katia is not a threat and Tropical Storm Maria on a similar track as Irene, but will not attain hurricane status.  Tropical Storm Nate is looking ominous, and will attain Category 2 strength and make landfall anywhere from Tampico to Corpus Christi:

-

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

By now you know that Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary by double digits, an unimpressive "only" 11%.  The way the upcoming primaries are shaping up, Nikki Haley has no chance of overtaking Trump, and, as I detailed yesterday, the best hope for any kind of Republican victory is for Trump to embrace Haley as his vice-presidential running mate.  It was mostly a waste of time and effort for Democrats, but Joe Biden also won, easily, through a write-in campaign.

Last week Wednesday, I compared the two scientific journals most respected by researchers and academia.  From Quora:

But iLovePhD shows that #2 is not Science, but The New England Journal of Medicine, which is fine for the medical profession.  I thought the Journal of the American Medical Association would be higher rated, but it is only at #11.

Last week, FeedSpot listed its 45 Best Science Magazines.

• Science is #1.
• Scientific American #2.
• Discover Magazine #5.
• Popular Science Magazine #7.
• Popular Mechanics Magazine #16.
• National Geographic #29.
• Time Magazine #34.

So today, I will focus on the monthly Scientific American, a publication I have subscribed to now for several decades.

• I would describe this magazine as difficult for most.
• More than 150 Novel Prize winners have contributed articles.
• Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species in 1859, and had an article on this subject in this magazine. 

• The Wright Brothers published their experiments here in 1902.  Their first official flight was at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
• In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the USA!

• The very first issue:  August 28, 1845 Vol.1, No.1, when it was a weekly.  Turned monthly in 1921.
• In the early years, the emphasis was on what was going on at the U.S. Patent Office.

• 
  Reported was a buoying vessel in 1860 by Abraham Lincoln.
• There has always been a small amount of humor at the end of each issue.
• The magazine fell into decline after World War II, and was saved in 1948.
• There was some internationalization in 1905, but that was suspended until 1968 with the launching an Italian edition.  
• In 1979, became the first Western magazine published in China, experiencing turmoil.
• There are now 17 foreign-language editions.
• 
  Purchased by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany in 1986.
• In 2009 it notified collegiate libraries that the yearly subscription price would increase by nearly 500% for print and 50% for online access, bringing the annual cost up to $1500.
• 
  Has only had 9 editors-in-chief, so the average tenure has been 20 years.  Laura Helmuth assumed this role in 2020.

• 
  In 2020, the magazine endorsed Joe Biden for president, citing Donald Trump's rejection of science.  First time in history for them, and 1845 was 175 years ago.  Nature, that most prestigious UK journal, did, too.  Most of the most respected journals have also now done this, worried about Donald Trump.  

Let me scan through the January 2024 issue.

• Shi En Kim:  Heads or Tails?  50-50, right?  Wrong.  In 2007 Persi Diaconis of Stanford University predicted that a coin flip is biased by the circumstances, and the result is usually 51% vs 49%.  Crazy, right?  Wrong.  More thorough experiments showed the difference was closer to 50.8% to 49.2%.  I could try to more scientifically explain why, but if you are so interested, go look it up yourself.

• Riley Black:  Prehistoric dinosaurs and other animals were all grayish-tannish, right?  Wrong.  Many were downright colorful.  Research is just beginning, but the following could well be proven some day.

• Lori Youmshajekian:  The James Webb Space Telescope captured this image of how stars form.  Only a few thousands years old, stars take millions of years to form.  You need to read the details to better understand what exactly in happening here, but each color shows something significant.

At a distance of 545 light years from us in the constellation of Boötes is a dwarf star around 85% the mass of our Sun.  

• Circling is a giant exoplanet called TOI-1853b in a 1.24 day orbit.
• Has a radius about the size of Neptune, 3.5 times larger than Earth, but a mass 75 times our globe.  The density is that of steel. 

In the vicinity of Boötes constellation is something called the Boötes Void, known as the Great Nothing, a spherical region of space which contains nothing.  

• Well, what's the big deal about that?

• 
  For one, this globe of space is 330 million light-years in diameter.  So what?
• If you shine a light from one end of our Milky Way Galaxy, it would take 100,000 years to cross to the other side.  You know how long that is?  
• 10,000 years ago, we discovered agriculture.  
• You need to live ten times longer to reach 100,000 years.  
• 330 million light years is 3300 times longer than 100,000 years.
• Or, the size of this space void has a diameter 3300 times larger than our Milky Way Galaxy.

To be clear, a cosmic void does not have nothing.  Some learn better by watching video.  Here is one.

• The emptiest still contains more than 15% of the average density of our Universe.
• Voids are believed to have been formed by baryon acoustic oscillations in the Big Bang...whatever that means.

• 
  Why they are important:
• 90% of outer space is composed of cosmic voids.
• The answer to what is dark energy will be solved here.
• And if you don't know what dark energy is, you are in good company.  No one does.  There is a sense that dark energy is 70% of the total energy in the Universe.  And don't ask about Dark Matter.  But below is the unknown reality.

• I was trying to avoid this, but will include one Scientific American article, by Michael Lemonick on How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything.

I could go on an on, but other foci include:

• The case against taking supplements, like for Vitamin D.
• The matter of depression, and how prevention is the best solution.

• 
  The LGBTQ+ alphabet is increasing as the world liberalizes.  There is also asexuality, or not interested in sex.  While you might have seen polls indicating that only 1% of us are asexual, chances are that this figure is much higher, as this 1.7% finding, with 86% being female.
• Next, something to do with the einstein tile, which means in German, one stone, having nothing to do with Albert.  Various 13-sided tiles seemed likely.  Apparently, the perfect einstein tile has been found, and it looks relatively simple.

• 
  Thoughts on why cats are perfect, let NASA dream with adequate budget, avoiding the Martingale betting strategy, considering the Kelly criterion, a poem on Baby Crocodile and a graph of the cells in your body by size, following Zipf's Law.  Did you know that an egg cell is the largest cell in the body, while sperms are the smallest, about the same size as red blood cells.  We all have around 25 billion red blood corpuscles.

• 
  Finally, a science agenda on climate reparations, what we learned from acid rain and stepping off the BMI Scale, that is, this age-old index is being discarded for a more thorough body analysis not yet developed to be given a name.

An ending note of sorts about a science publication many of us grew up with, Popular Science.  Wonder why you don't see it on the magazine rack anymore?  First published in 1872, after 150 years, they went electronic, and stopped printing physical copies in 2023.  Their digital issue costs $5.99/issue and $49.99/year.

One final bit of news.  the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists yesterday kept their Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, but warned that humanity is as close as ever to destruction for five reasons:  the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, Russia's withdrawal from any arms agreement, the record-breaking heat of 2023 and the threat of artificial intelligence.

-