Season's Greetings

12/22/2012

First Snow, Seattle / Photo by Anjali

Our children and grandchildren will be around. .
My best to all the friends who check in on this little site.
Happy holidays. Be well.
GV

Photo by Anjali

Ed Martin link

12/24/2012 05:56:37 am

Sunday, 23 December 2012
Mystery Package Found on Sunday Morning.

It is Sunday morning and a strange package was dropped off in our yard. I found it next to my plate on the table.
It is about 12 inches by 20 inches and somewhat difficult to handle compared with my I Pad, but it seems to serve a similar function. On the desktop there was a news story on Egypt, one on the Budget, and a picture of a story about an Avalanche. I pushed them repeatedly with my finger, but the stories never opened up. I tried to swipe them to another page—nothing happened.
What you seem to need to do is hold the whole thing up in the air and then move the pieces of paper with one hand while using the other hand to turn some pieces of paper over. They have words on both sides!
While I don’t think this thing will ever replace tablets, it is strangely engrossing and satisfying to while away time with a cup of Earl Grey tea.

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Posted By Ed Martin at 5:25 PM in Category:Inside Venice

Replies
24 Dec 2012
chuck malkerson
I also know about a device with which you can communicate with people without squinting at a little screen and stabbing your fingers onto little spots. You can actually talk to your fellow human being......hear them laugh.....hear them sigh.....and look out the window at the world around you as you converse......amazing.

24 Dec 2012
ed martin
Sounds wonderful. I discovered a little box in the attic that lets you play music without having to have a plug in your ear! Miracles never cease.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

George Vecsey

12/24/2012 09:46:59 am

Edi, sounds terrific. I found something at the doctor's offce -- compact, bright, great photos and interesting stories, called Newsweek. I'm going to see if I can order one. GV

Brian Savin

12/26/2012 12:18:22 am

This was great! A top ten thread of 2012! Now if it could only darn the hole in my Christmas socks!

bruce picken

12/27/2012 07:41:00 am

george,

hope your xmas was a good one.

we had 6-8" of snow here in my part the great white north. we call it boxing day up here as do the brits, aussies and kiwis....

first serious snow fall of the season.

hope your visit to the doctor's was a routine visit.

cheers,

bruce

bruce picken

12/27/2012 03:09:37 pm

I SEE matsui has retired. class act. he embodied everything valued in japanese culture.

George Vecsey

12/27/2012 11:56:15 pm

Bruce, mundane visit, thanks. I agree with you about Matsui. Derek jeter's statement today that Matsui was an idea teammate was correct. Matsui was a classic Yankee the day he arrived. He wasn't DiMaggio or Mantle, but he was Henrich and Bauer and O'Neill.
GV

Altenir Silva

12/31/2012 11:47:48 pm

Dear George,

For the New Year, I wish for you many 'Home Runs' of felicity!

Happy 2013!

Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

1/1/2013 05:25:17 am

Querido Altenir: Feliz Ano Novo.
George

Alan Rubin link

1/12/2013 07:09:57 am

Hi Everone,

Belated holiday wishes from the Holy Land. Jerusalem is an exiting and unique city on many levels, but there is a spirtuallity that cannot be adequately expressed. It transends all religions.

The Wall, Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are all meters apart. It was very humbling being were the three major religions originated. This feeling continued when we visited the birth places of John the Baptist and Saint Peter.

It seamed surreal that so much violence and hatred exists in the birthplace of so much good.

One an only hope and pray for better times, but it is beoming ever more difficult.

Mason link

2/28/2013 05:29:03 am

Very well written, I’m glad I stumbled onto this. My friend and I were just having a similar disussion the other day.

paper writing service link

4/22/2016 04:30:48 am

Thanks for a wonderful post. Really its looking awesome.

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

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