Reviews - GEORGE VECSEY

How's This for a Biology Lesson? Photo by Anjali - VII

3/29/2015

Anjali was in biology class with her nice teacher. Somebody came in and told the students to look out the window, at a red-tailed hawk with the remains of a pigeon.

http://photographybyanjali.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=43010&Akey=M235PYD5

Photo by Anjali, from her classroom window

Janet Vecsey

3/29/2015 08:16:44 am

I just looked at Anjali's photography page. She is certainly talented. Could make a living that way.

George Vecsey

3/29/2015 03:21:38 pm

Janet, thanks. She used to see eagles in Seattle...now she is in NY and a hawk decides to have lunch right outside her classroom window. Didn't waste a second. See you soon, George

Thor A. Larsen

3/30/2015 11:45:57 am

I am so impressed with Anjali's photographs. Capturing the hawk so well meant quick and focused response. Her portfolio demonstrates considerable imagination, sensitivity to colors and compositions.What a wonderful aptitude and interest!

George Vecsey

3/30/2015 12:06:44 pm

You should have seen her quickie of the steamed carrots, round, like marbles, at lunch Sunday. She just sees stuff, whisks out her smartphone, clicks once and done.
the hawk outside class was bizarre for somebody who knows so much about birds.
see you soon,
GV

bruce

4/3/2015 03:34:13 am

George,

i'm doing my group read of your stuff. enjoy reading a bunch because one is over too quickly.

nice giving Anjali a forum to show her skill.

I've seen a red tailed hawk dismantle a mourning dove in mid air outside my window.

unfortunate for the victim but spektaklar--as your late lamented prezdent dubya might say.

hope your easter weekend is a good one.

bruce

George Vecsey

4/3/2015 10:30:01 am

Bruce, thanks again. There was a gorgeous piece of writing in the NYT magazine a few weeks, about falcons in urban settings of Dublin, soaring downward for an attempted kill. Link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/magazine/a-falcon-in-the-city.html?_r=0

bruce

4/3/2015 10:38:05 am

George,

thanks. I read it when it appeared.

we have tons of peregrine falcons in this area. they have been bringing them here for well over 20 years. in the roof atop the Sheraton hotel, Mohawk college where I used to work...also starting to see bald eagles.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

How's This for a Biology Lesson? Photo by Anjali - VII

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