Last bit of November

It is the last bit of November, the word at the dinner table at the moment is Omicron variant. The theme this month is gun related court and a sick winter. 

 A new variant of Covid19 has emerged from South Africa, they are calling it the Omicron variant. We don't know very much about it, only that it spreads very fast and the spike protein is different so it may escape antibodies from our current vaccines. It is also winter so there is less UV light to destroy the virus particles. It is our first winter with the Delta Variant so it is very challenging at the moment. I don't know what is going to happen but I stay optimistic that it will be better than last year; I feel like there has been no normal for the last 2 years. To visit hospitality places, we need to book a 15 minute time slot, even if the venue is free entry and everything is done with caution and spacing out in mind. 

Windy day and night

Jacob, My son. 

It is winter now, we are coming to terms with the Delta Variant and the new more dangerous variant of Covid19 virus that has just recently emerged from South Africa. 

One thing I have learnt from the Pandemic is when everyone is sick and broke, the bad guys make a move. There has been several power coups around the world and a few that are about to happen. The virus is acting like a catalyst, speeding up events that were set to happen in the future. You could say that pandemics are like triggers of a chain reactions. I'm not saying it is always like that though. 

High profile Court

I'm not a young man and I am not old, you could call me a mature adult, somewhere between youth and middle age. I'm old enough and wise enough to know it is wrong to have an instant reaction to the outcome of a high profile court case. The most recent one is the Kyle Rittenhouse case. 

When I was young I saw people mocking the elderly lady for suing McDonald's for a million dollars because she burnt herself with coffee. Later in life I learned that she didn't Sue McDonald's for a million dollars, she sued for the cost of her skin graft surgery because the drink was over 90°c and it caused third degree burns . Regulations were in place to protect people from third degree burns and the thermostat on the coffee machine was broken so it was belching out hot coffee at close to boiling point. Anyway the judge wanted to teach McDonald's a lesson so he increased the compensation charge. You see how the outcome sounds different when you know all the facts. The same is true of the OJ Simpson case, we later found out that someone already was trying to kill his wife and the gloves used when the gun was fired was too small for OJ Simpson's hands and there was countless other facts that the jury saw that wasn't public at the time. 

Beluga Whale

Some years ago I learned that Killer whales are not whales, they are actually a giant dolphin species. I thought that same is true of Beluga whales because they look like dolphins; I was wrong. Beluga whales are whales. They grow about 5 meters long and weigh about one thousand KG. 

In my view they are the one animal that looks the most like they came out of a cartoon. They are small whales that looks like they jumped out of an animation. They are one of the few whales I know of that have swam up the river Thames and visited London city, that is not a joke, it really happened. I consider Killer whales and Beluga whales to be people, they are sentient and have complicated languages. 

Winter Thoughts

It is the end of Autumn and the start of Winter. Some significant events that stand out are HS2 and the Kyle Rittenhouse court case. 

Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty in court; Many people were criticizing the Judge and the court. The truth is the Verdict is decided by the jury not the judge. The Jury had access to all the facts so they had a better position to make a verdict than us. I saw a young man that was being condemned by the world and then spared by reasoning from the jury of a court, his breathing was that of the wind in a tree, restless and at peace, finally given relief, that huge axe of condemnation was shifted away. As more and more evidence emerged, ordinary people like myself saw that he was defending himself and trying to stop rioters from destroying his town  where he worked. He supported the protests but was concerned about rioters burning everything up. The prosecution found no evidence that he or his close family and friends were white supremacists, even when they took his phone and looked through his social media history. 

I am skeptical of the HS2 railway project in Britain. I think the £96 billion could be spent on the existing railways we already have and the trains they are building are already old technology. I would spend that money building a box around the train tracks that collects sunlight and wind energy. I would build the boxes on the railways with diesel powered trains first so they could be converted to electric trains at the same time. If they did it that way, they would be fixing three problems with the same project, we still have diesel powered trains, we need to be net zero CO2 emmiters by 2050 and our railways are too expensive to run so the commuters are paying too much. In my view, building another railway is not the answer. 

Waukesha Rampage

A few days ago, a guy called Darrell Brooks drove his car into a crowd of people killing about 5 at a Christmas parade. I think they just let the man out of prison. I'm not sure it is a reaction to the Rittenhouse acquittal. I think he had a lot of issues with society and the authorities. He seemed to hate Donald Trump a lot in rap songs that he wrote. 

Anyway, I respect all votes; I think all politicians are forced to lie to get elected because they are uncertain the cabinet would accept their proposals but they have to sound confident. I don't support any political group on this blog in this time period. I just listen. 

This whole planet is a mess, every community in the world is fragmented in some way and there is very little peace of mind for the people that live amongst them. It is only trade of goods and services that is keeping all the whole world from fighting itself. If God didn't give us reasoning to cooperate, we would have no peace at all. 

Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted

This week a young teenaged man called Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of homicide, he shot dead two men during a riot in his town. His defence was that he acted in self defence. The court room process was shown on television. I have questions myself, if it was self defence then why was he carrying a gun already? Why didn't he fire a warning shot first before he shot the two men?  The Rittenhouse debate will last a long time, perhaps as long as the OJ Simpson murder debate did. The world is grim but there is a lot to talk about at the dinner table. 

The other big topic to debate would be if Americans should ban guns. I'm in two minds about the issue; In Myanmar last spring there was a military coup, the military arrested the elected leader and took control of the country, if the same thing happened in the USA, the community would overpower the military because millions of armed Americans would attack the tyrant with their weapons. No tyrant would be able to stay in power in America because so many ordinary Americans have weapons. On the other hand, you have people shooting other people because they have a gun and they want to be the first to shoot and some people can't control their temper so they will shoot someone because of a spurt of anger. Guns make it too easy to kill I say. It is hard to tell what is right, I rarely have a strong opinion about anything. 

I think that most gun deaths in America are from suicide, if they didn't have guns they would kill themselves another way, perhaps from falling or something like that. I think humans are more likely to kill themselves than another person. There are more suicides in the world than homicides, I'm not sure it will stay that way though.