Booze or Pot safer than street drugs

Fentanyl is a super potent synthetic narcotic, about 80 times more potent than morphine.  Two milligrams can kill.  It is cheap.  Street drugs, good looking pills, are often souped up with fentanyl to make them hit harder.  Checks on street drugs show that 2 out of 5 contain a lethal dose of fentanyl.  Many of the current over dose deaths come from taking just one pill of a street drug. 

   If you are a parent, guardian, relative, or other person connected with the young, you want to make sure that the kids you talk to know that street drugs will kill them.  Encourage them to find a girl friend or boy friend instead of doing street drugs.  They will have more fun and live longer. 

   If the kid just has to take something, they will live longer drinking alcohol or smoking pot. 

   And have a word with the doctors.  According to the Wall St Journal, 70% of patients come away from a doctor’s appointment with a prescription for an opioid.  This is ridiculous.  And leads to opioid addiction.  After the prescription runs out, the kid will start buying street drugs until they kill him.  I cannot believe that 70% of patients need an opioid prescription.  I have lived a long life, and just once, after a very difficult tooth extraction, was I prescribed an opioid.  I would ask any doctor my kid was seeing how often he prescribed opioids.  The proper answer to this question is in 1% of cases.

Climate Scientists Encounter Computer Models' Limits.

 Front page headline in Monday's Wall St Journal.  I could have told them that 20 years ago.  I used to write computer models.  A computer model is just a computer program written to predict what will happen in the future.  If the model fails to give the answer the model writers want, they change the model code until they get the answer they like.  

This is not really science, not as Roger Bacon described science back in the high middle ages.  Science makes observations and preforms experiments.  The results are used to suggest or back up general theories.  When enough good scientists deem the theories true and the evidence sufficient, the theory becomes part of generally accepted science.   The models don't do experiments, and they tend to "correct" the observations they get fed.  I cannot call a model's results scientific.  They are more like science fiction. 

Newsies finally asking about that Nordsteam 2 pipeline to Russia

 Less that two weeks ago I posted a question here.  What gives the US a veto power over a Russian German project running under international waters (Baltic sea).  I never got an answer.  Just now I heard a TV newsie ask the same question.  Took the newsies almost two weeks to catch on.  The administration spokes weenie gave a baffle gab answer.  Clearly he did not know the answer.  Wanna bet the entire administration does not know the answer.  I believe the real answer is, "We Germans and Russians can build this pipeline.  We Germans don't want to offend the Americans by saying as much, so we don't say anything about it." 

What do masks do for Covid? Really?

 Any kind of mask will catch that cloud of muckiness’ from sneezing of coughing.  So the mask protects other people if you wear it.  Some fringe TV people have been claiming that you are infectious even after getting all your shots.  I don’t believe these people yet.  They never name the experimenter who gathered this alarming data, they never tell about the methodology.  So far the people spreading this rumor lack credibility. 

   Virus particles are small; you need an electronic microscope to see them.  That’s so small that the gaps in the weave of cloth look humungeous to a virus.  When you sneeze a virus particle out your nose, it is buried in a droplet of “water” (there is a ruder name for the stuff) which is plenty big enough to be caught be ordinary cloth.  After floating around in the air of the room, the “water” evaporates, leaving just the super small virus particle which can go thru a plain cloth mask.  Dunno about those blue paper throwaway masks.  The paper looks to have a much closer weave than cloth, I don’t know if it is enough closer to make a difference. 

   Then we have the “N95” masks.  The TV people say they will stop anything.  They don’t give test results.   I have never seen one.  I never heard of them before this Corona virus thing got started.  So I have no solid information to offer.

  But, wearing a mask protects people around you.  Cashiers, waitresses, cabbies, members of your congregation, and others will feel better if they see you wearing a mask.  I don’t believe that wearing a mask protects you, just others.  The “N95” masks might be better but I have never seen one.  You are on you own about their effectiveness.

How about a couple of squadrons of A10s??

 A10 is slow for a fighter but plenty fast enough for a tank buster.  I think a couple of squadrons of A10's could clean out a few hundred Russian tanks no sweat.  The A10's could fly from stateside to eastern Europe in a day.  Transports bringing mechanics, flight line crews, spare parts, ordinance, whatever would only be a day later.  

Then send a couple of squadrons of F16s and F35s to provide fighter escort again MIGs .  Send the F35s so we can see if they really work against MIGs.  Send the F16s in case the F35s don't work.  F16s can go up against anything that flies.  There was an air-to-air exercise a year or so ago where an F16 repeatedly beat an F35 in mock dog fights.  This was in Aviation Week.  

All this force could be in eastern Europe in time to deter or stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The newsies don't talk about this.  Few newsies have ever been on a flight line. 

Facebook now pushing global warming

 We must all have seen those Facebook add-ons/comments pushing Covid vaccinations.  Those get tacked onto any post that mentioned vaccines, natural immunity, or a anti vax attitude.  I just noticed a new add-on/comment "See how world temperature is changing".  Seems like the pro vax push is running down or some thing, maybe their software weenies are looking for something to do, so now they are pushing climate change, just for fun.

GETTR is up and running.

Big Pharma has ad money to burn

 Just on Fox News, they run ads for drugs a couple of times an hour.  They seldom mention the ailment the drug is supposed to help or cure. Or they mention something I have never heard of, in small print toward the end of the ad.  As a consumer how am I supposed to know which of these new hi tech miracle drugs might help me?  

Effective advertising.