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Spreading Disinformation?

Some folks are touting the virucidal action of plain old soap and water, “Soap and water kills viruses!” Yeh, but not unless agitated for up to SIX MINUTES (OK, depending on variables in the environment where they are found, from two to six minutes). (Yeh, the much ballyhooed paper on soap and water killing HIV doesn’t see that lil factoid make the press. Yeh, I read the paper.) Count on the finger of one hand how many folks you know who are going to spend two minutes, let alone six, vigorously washing their hands with soap and water. Is it less than one? (The key is the physical action slowly working to help the soap break down a secondary, minor component–lipids–of virus capsids, since virus capsids are primarily protein, unlike bacteria cell walls, which are heavily linked with lipids enabling killing of some bacteria easier by similar vigorous and time-consuming application of soap and water).

This is why THE key benefit of proper hand washing is washing microbial materials OFF and rinsing them away.

(BTW, that infamous paper demonstrating that HIV can be “inactivated” by soap and water showed even longer times to effectiveness when some variables were changed, and agitating the solutions was still key. That’s because physics and chemistry–fill in the blank. Go ahead. Look it up. *heh*)

Oh, BTW, I use the term “kill” above referring to viruses, but of course I do not mean “kill” since one either “deactivates” or “destroys” viruses, because (OK, admittedly some controversy/gray area) viruses are not really alive to begin with. so cannot be “killed.”

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Interesting, but. . .

Filed under “That’s Entertainment”. . . or not. *sigh*

Watching Episode 1 of “Gogol”–a Russian serial featuring a fantasy take on Nikolai Gogol (19th Century Russian author) as a paranormal investigator–via Amazon Prime Video: mixed bag.

The good/not-so-good: great atmosphere for a pseudo-Gothic 19th Century paranormal piece. Sets, locations, dark videographing, music, even costuming, props and etc. All excellent. All dialog in Russian: good (perfectly suits the atmosphere). Subtitles: OK, but with some problematic idiomatic translation issues (English idioms, not Russian. My familiarity with Russian is scant, depending on a brief flirtation with 19th Century Russian art songs ~ 50 years ago.) The English subtitles sometimes intrude in a jarring fashion.

Not good: Details that irk: “business” that conflicts Scene 1: guy hits another guy on head with ladle. Guy hit grabs OPPOSITE side of head and ladle strike sounds wrong, as well–little things like that; only visible wound on a dead body high on the chest–“above her breasts” is the line. Nevertheless, the investigator, after cracking open the body’s chest says “the aorta is severed.” From the location and size of the visible wound, the ascending aorta would be difficult to reach. Unlikely. (The ascending aorta is not large in any case, and is not found in the almost exact center of the chest where the wound was shown. In addition, after cracking the chest, the investigator was NOT looking anywhere NEAR the wound which was a bit above the pulmonary trunk, but much lower, where the throacic and abdominal aorta could be seen. Hence, I thought when the line was uttered, “Doesn’t EVERYONE find this odd?” *shrugs*)

More? “It was a dark and stormy night. . . ” *heh* OK, as to atmosphere, it worked. “You can ride a horse?” Urm, no he cannot. Runs into a windmill and falls off. Clouds blowing through the windmill blades, and. . . they do not move.

*sigh*

Sometimes it’s just the little things that throw one out of suspension of disbelief, you know?

But, though more interesting than usual TV fare, I don’t think I am interested enough to watch more than one episode (and I had to take a break from the irritating “little things” to write this, so I might well not finish Episode 1).

Most amusing line so far, “We got carried away by the local flavor.”

OK, fast forwarded through #2. Caught the gist and ditched a lot of less interesting stuff. Blacksmith picks lock on mystery trunk toward the end of the episode. Needs a pick and a torsion wrench (or another tool to provide tension) to do it with but only used a pick. Sad. As I have said, it’s the little things.

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No, my dear illiterate, self-enstupiated dummy

“Drug” is in no way, shape, fashion, or form a past tense of “drag.” (And don’t even THINK of using the tired “dialect” argument. Any dialect that uses “drug” as a past tense of “dragged” is for illiterate, self-enstupiated dummies.)

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Be Thankful for the Little Things

Thankful for the little things. Oh, example? I just got to roast a seller on Amazon for completely screwing up an order. Sent it to an address two states away (“Your order has been delivered!” to some anonymous door in a town beginning with a different letter, having five fewer letters, total in its name, with a zip code COMPLETELY different to mine). Had to jump through hoops JUST to find out the company had then retroactively canceled the order w/o even the courtesy of notifying me.

So, hence the roast. Made me smile. Still have to wait another week/week-and-a-half to get the item from a reputable company (Rockler–always good to do business with, and I wish I had searched there for the item first. Naturally. *heh*)

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Semi-Sorta Random Thought on the Passing Scene

In response to absolutely nothing, “ex nihilo,” as it were (from the vast, empty spaces between my ears) issues this random thought:

I believe the only proper gun regulations are self-regulations (with a tip o’ the tam, and an apology to Jeff Cooper):

1. Always treat ALL guns as loaded and ready to be discharged.
2. NEVER let the muzzle cover ANYTHING you are not prepared to destroy.
3. KEEP YOUR BOOGER HOOK OFF THE BANG SWITCH until you have acquired your target and are ready to fire.
4. Be ABSOLUTELY sure of your target and what lies beyond it.

If those four self-regulations are followed, and the Second Amendment were enforced with more than the *wink-wink-nudge-nudge* pseudo-acknowledgement now practiced (IOW, the current open, blatant, and oppressive disregard for “shall not be infringed”), then methinks the proper and ideal “gun regulations” would be in effect.

But maybe that’s just me. . .

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It Is Neither Pretty Nor Is It Art.

I have (more frequently than I care to think) heard folks argue that Psalm 100:1-2 (“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing.”) is a perfectly good excuse for execrable congregational singing: off-pitch, raucous, muddied rhythms and lyrics, and worse. Betcha most of those who use it as their excuse for their laziness and lack of care in approaching their worship expressions don’t use the KJV (the “noise” translation in Psalm 100:1) for other things. Other translations focus on joyful shouts and joyful songs. Painfully raucous croaks ain’t what springs readily to mind when I think of “joyful.” Maybe it’s just me, but off-key, or even atonal, grating, muddled, and altogether ugly sounds just do not comprise “singing,” IMO. (And no, “Their heart is in the right place” just doesn’t cut it. If their heart were “in the right place” they’d not submit “sacrifice[s] of praise” that were crap. Just sayin’.)

Of course, much of the problem may be simply because something approaching 90% of people nowadays apparently cannot hear and reproduce pitches with any degree of accuracy. Not my fault: theirs, for playing crap into their ears and pretending it is music, corrupting any possible embryonic musical ability they might have.

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Oh, Well. . . Not Today

Made a lot of good “man glitter” yesterday with ye olde Husky. Lil 16” bar and chain did an excellent job w/25” diameter logs on down to smaller limbs and even twiggy stuff, chewing away at the wood mess in the back yard. Was a pooped puppy by the time the saw ran out of gas. Actually, that’s been the way it works pretty regularly: both the saw and I run out of gas at about the same time. *heh*

Today has been a disappointment on the “man glitter” and cleanup gig because of freezing rain (and near-freezing rain that’s even more chilling in some ways) on top of the bit of ice and snow dusting the ground. Ground varies between icy and slip-slidin’-sloppy. Not gonna do that to my back and knees, so the back yard gets a pass today.

Instead, I toodled on outa town and got some material I’ll need next week to effect a safe setup of a burn bin and also use a lil timber jig to trim some of the larger logs down to manageable size. Need to pick up a couple of large tarps as well to erect a sort of awning over where I plan to store logs/trimmings and even a few early cut planks, getting them at least mostly out of the weather.

I hope that I can have a clear path from my back yard to the large logs still laying on the periphery of our property, so that moving them into a place where I can work on them will be possible. We’ll see if the weather will let me get that done.

Not the day I had planned, but I’ve still gotten a little good prep work in.

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Well, It’s No “Instalaunch” But. . .

A comment I made on another forum got a “thumbs up” from The Puppy Blender–Glenn Reynolds.

Oh, the comment?

I rarely read or hear any critique of Trump’s policies that cannot be summed up as “Orangeman bad! Therefore, this (and everything else he does/has done) is bad!” Classic ad hominem fallacy: dismissing something because of the character or personal circumstances of the person who does/utters it. Or simply because of personal rancor. Oh, I have read/heard rationalizations that purport to be arguments against his policy decisions that attempt to throw enough manure over the ad hominem nature of the fundamental argument being made, but I have read few cogent, sound arguments against most of the things he has done.

To be clear, I voted for neither of the distasteful candidates in 2016, and I find Trump in many ways to be distasteful still (not someone I would, by personal preference, select to join me for a cuppa joe and conversation), but in November, I’ll most likely vote for him, because his actual policies are at least mostly mainstream, and some of them have been better than those of recent presidents–some much better.