Outside the Beltway

Comments

1. EddieInCA says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 04:28

   Season 3 is officially wrapped!!!!

   I’m going to take a few weeks off. Kona, here I come.

   11
2. Kurtz says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 04:47

   @EddieInCA:

   Enjoy, Eddie. Put one in the air for me. If not, in lieu of that, take a sip for me. I don’t drink much but it’s the thought that counts.

   2
3. CSK says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 06:15

   @EddieInCA:
   Congratulations!

   3
4. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 06:24

   In hunt for Covid’s origin, new studies point away from lab leak theory

   Marc Van Ranst, a virologist who is helping to coordinate Belgium’s pandemic response, says: “Nature is the biggest bio-terrorist there is. It has shown time and time again that it doesn’t need a lot of help in creating a virus and making it jump between species.”

   The claim that Sars-CoV-2 was suspiciously well adapted to humans at the beginning of the pandemic also finds little support. It infects a wide range of species – including cats, dogs, mink, tigers and lions – and if anything has become better adapted to humans over the pandemic, in part through further alterations to the spike protein.

   This leaves the lab leak theory resting principally, for now, on unverified reports of three cases of respiratory illness among the WIV’s nearly 600 staff in November 2019, a winter month in Wuhan, and the fact that the institute took a database of viral genome sequences offline two months earlier – to protect it from hackers, they told WHO investigators.

   1
5. steve says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 07:46

   Just a reminder that Van Ranst, cited above, is still living in a safe house under police protection because of right wing extremists.

   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57358492

   Steve
6. Mister Bluster says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 10:04

   Today is the Summer Solstice. This is my High Holy Day. I am a Sun Worshiper.

   Sagan’s THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science as a Candle in the Dark is my Holy Book. The footnote on page 18 is the enabling scripture.

   Although it’s hard for me to see a more profound cosmic connection than the astonishing findings of modern nuclear astrophysics: except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up – the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains – were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff.

   This song is my Anthem.

   2
7. Jim Brown 32 says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 10:10

   @Mister Bluster: Happy Solstice!

   2
8. Mister Bluster says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 10:11

   Happy Father’s Day dad.
   Wilmer A. Brown
   1916-2001
   RIP

   7
9. Mister Bluster says:
   Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 10:14

   @Jim Brown 32:..Happy Solstice!…

   Peace, Love and Orange Sunshine!

   2
10. Jax says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 10:35

    @steve: BBC is reporting that the guy who was stalking Van Ranst has been found dead.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57542496

    1
11. CSK says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 11:20

    QAnoners are perturbed that Trump will be doing a speaking tour with Bill O’Reilly this coming December, because it suggests he won’t have been reinstated to the presidency by then:

    http://www.newsweek.com/qanon-trump-december-dates-bill-oreilley-president-1602328

    By the way, what’s become of Q? He hasn’t been heard from since December 2020.

    5
12. Joe says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 12:56

    @Mister Bluster:

    We are stardust
    We are golden
    And we’re caught in a devil’s bargain
    And we’ve got to get ourselves back the garden

    Happy Father’s Day to everyone who visits and contributes here!

    Congrats, EddieInCA!

    5
13. Mr. Prosser says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 13:43

    @Mister Bluster: Indeed, happy solstice even though, as you say the sunshine is orangish; around here from the smoke drifting east from the Pack Creek fire near Moab. I feel reassured because even if we’re not around there will be solstices for a few more billion years.
14. Mister Bluster says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 14:02

    @Mr. Prosser:..sunshine is orangish; around here from the smoke drifting east from the Pack Creek fire near Moab.

    Sorry about the fire. As you may know but for those that don’t the Orange Sunshine that I was thinking of was a hit of LSD that provided me with several facinating experiences in my drug days 50 years ago.

    The Orange Sunshine variety of LSD that was widely available in California through 1968 and 1969 was produced in the Sonoma County underground chemistry lab of Tim Scully and Nicholas Sand. It was shut down by the police, and Scully was arrested and prosecuted. This resulted in the first drug analogue trial, where Scully claimed that he and his partners did nothing illegal, because they were producing ALD-52, which was not an illicit drug. However, as the prosecution claimed, there were problems with such a rationale—ALD-52 was claimed to readily undergo hydrolysis to LSD, and secondly, the synthesis of ALD-52 required LSD. (The second point was based on the methods available in the scientific literature at the time). Scully was convicted and served time in prison.
    WikiP
15. Kathy says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 17:05

    @CSK:

    By the way, what’s become of Q? He hasn’t been heard from since December 2020.

    All indications are he’ll be back for season 2 of Picard.

    1
16. CSK says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 17:50

    @Kathy:
    Which one is Q?
17. Mr. Prosser says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 18:44

    @Mister Bluster: Oh myyy.
18. Mister Bluster says:
    Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 21:49

    A Florida man pulled out a gun on a Starbucks employee who turned out to be the local police chief’s daughter