All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Pisa – meine 11 Tipps für eine bezaubernde Stadt

My tips for visiting Pisa: Tip 1) Lungarno – Riverwalk Tip 2) Santa Maria della Spina Tip 3) Porta Nova Tip 5) Jewish cemetery Tip 6) Piazza dei Miracoli Tip 7) Camposanto Monumentale Tip 8) Duomo Santa Maria Assunta Tip 9) Interior of the Duomo Tip 10) Baptistery Tip 11) Torre Pendente

Senioren um die Welt

Pisa ist eine der schönsten Städte der Toskana, aber das ist vielen Touristen nicht bekannt. Die meisten kommen, um den „Platz der Wunder“ und vor allem den Schiefen Turm zu sehen und danach direkt weiter nach Florenz oder in andere Städte und Gegenden der Toskana zu eilen. Pisa verdient jedoch mehr als die zwei oder drei Stunden, die meist der Stadt gewidmet werden. Der Torre Pendente ist nur eines von den vielen Schmuckstücken, die die Stadt zu bieten hat.

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Opinion | Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid? – The New York Times

If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small particles disperse more easily, as long as you avoid close, prolonged contact with others. We would have tried to make sure indoor spaces were well ventilated, with air filtered as necessary. Instead of blanket rules on gatherings, we would have targeted conditions that can produce superspreading events: people in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, especially if engaged over time in activities that increase aerosol production, like shouting and singing. We would have started using masks more quickly, and we would have paid more attention to their fit, too. And we would have been less obsessed with cleaning surfaces.

Our mitigations would have been much more effective, sparing us a great deal of suffering and anxiety.

Since the pandemic is far from over, with countries like India facing devastating surges, we need to understand both why this took so long to come about and what it will mean…

Epidemiological studies and examples kept pouring in, too, all of them showing that Covid-19 was spreading primarily indoors and clusters were concentrated in poorly ventilated spaces. And when outdoor transmission did occur, it was often when people were in prolonged close contact, talking or yelling, as with construction workers on the same site.

The disease was also greatly overdispersed, sometimes being not very contagious and other times dramatically so. Large-scale studies showed that more than 70 percent of infected people did not transmit to any other person, while as few as 5 percent may be responsible for 80 percent of transmissions through superspreading events. Despite databases documenting thousands of indoor superspreader incidents, I’m not aware of a single confirmed outdoor-only case of superspreading.

Why did it take so long to understand all this?

The skepticism about airborne transmission is at odds with the acceptance of droplet transmission. Dr. Marr and Joseph Allen, the director of the Healthy Buildings program and an associate professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told me that droplet transmission has never been directly demonstrated. Since Dr. Chapin, close-distance transmission has been seen as proof of droplets unless disproved through much effort, as was finally done for tuberculosis.

Another key problem is that, understandably, we find it harder to walk things back. It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation.

In a contemporary example of this attitude, the initial public health report on the Mount Vernon choir case said that it may have been caused by people “sitting close to one another, sharing snacks and stacking chairs at the end of the practice,” even though almost 90 percent of the people there developed symptoms of Covid-19. Shelly Miller, an aerosol expert at the University of Colorado Boulder, was so struck by the incident that she initiated a study with a team of scientists, documenting that the space was less full than usual, allowing for increased distance, that nobody reported touching anyone else, that hand sanitizer was used and that only three people who had arrived early arranged the chairs. There was no spatial pattern to the transmission, implicating airflows, and there was nobody within nine feet in front of the first known case, who had mild symptoms.

Galileo is said to have murmured, “And yet it moves,” after he was forced to recant his theory that the earth moved around the sun. Scientists who studied bioaerosols could only say, “And yet it floats.”

So much of what we have done throughout the pandemic — the excessive hygiene theater and the failure to integrate ventilation and filters into our basic advice — has greatly hampered our response.

Law of Change

Shayan's Sphere

Look the world with wondrous shades
Of things so placid yet some strange,
Oh, nothing in Sphere just die and fade
But fuse and blend for a law of change.

Flowers do blush just each new day
And leave behind their earthly grace,
Oh, a road does end with new, new ways
For life to taste some unknown phase.

And fall does change in glorious spring
And clouds forever merge with rain,
Oh, a tune just fades for tens to sing
The songs of love, of joys and pain.

And moments of sorrow change in bliss
And tears do fly with winds of thrill,
Oh, violence follows the roads of peace
With songs that cure and words that heal.

And sorrows of parting, moments of sigh
With love does blend, with bliss exchange,
Oh, nothing in Sphere just fade and die
But fuse and blend for a law of change.

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Chocolate Covered Reasons.

The BUTHIDARS

Way back in 2014 I started this blog after deciding it was time to leave Facebook where I ran a similar site but with many more members. Sometimes what we start in one place doesn’t always translate well in another. I had to be prepared for that. When I started here I did so with the following explanation.

About The Buthidars

The Buthidars is a religion free Order where people of all ages, colours and creeds can come together as one all-inclusive group united towards seeing peace in the world.
You will hear ( from me ) about Hugs as I maintain you can’t hug with a weapon in your hands.
You will see the reason I think Hugs are important to us as people, ourselves and others.
You will I hope learn to understand why I ask people to leave religion at the door as they visit and if…

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Alphabet soup for the soul – “S”

Words from Walden

S is for Suffering

“Pain is certain, suffering is optional”

-Buddha-

The Buddha famously said ‘life is suffering’ and that is true if you believe it. It does not however, have to be that way. I believe pain is a bodily experience whereas suffering is a condition of the mind. There can be one without the other.

Henry Ford has been attributed with saying “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”.  It’s a choice and each individual gets to decide how to proceed. I believe the same goes for suffering. You can decide to suffer or not, it is up to you.

Let us use the example of having to receive a dozen stitches in your arm from a wound. The cut is deep and it hurts. There may be lots of blood around the cut and you may not be able to focus on anything…

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Four former Minneapolis police officers are indicted on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights. – The New York Times

Four former Minneapolis police officers were indicted on charges of violating the civil rights of George Floyd, a Black man whose killing last year led to months of demonstrations against police violence, the Justice Department announced on Friday.

The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury weeks after one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Mr. Floyd. The charges are another extraordinary censuring of law enforcement officials, who rarely face criminal charges for using deadly force.

The indictment charges Mr. Chauvin, 45, and other former Minneapolis Police Department officers Tou Thao, 35, J. Alexander Kueng, 27, and Thomas Lane, 38, with willfully depriving Mr. Floyd of his constitutional civil rights during his arrest.

The indictment alleges that by holding his left knee across Mr. Floyd’s neck and his right knee on his back and arm as he lay on the ground, handcuffed and unresisting, Mr. Chauvin used unconstitutional, unreasonable force that resulted in Mr. Floyd’s death.

Covid-19 Live Updates: W.H.O. Approves China’s Sinopharm Vaccine – The New York Times

The World Health Organization on Friday approved China’s Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, easing the way for poorer nations to get access to another much-needed shot to help end the pandemic.

The approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, the World Health Organization’s global initiative that is designed to promote equitable vaccine distribution around the world.

Pacific Paratrooper reboot…..

Pacific Paratrooper

Smitty reclining in fron, on the far right, with the HQ Company/187th Regiment/11th Airborne

Pacific Paratrooper will now only publish one post per week.

I first started this website to honor my father and his HQ Co./187th/11th Airborne Division and that is what we intend on doing once again. Smitty never said, “I did this” or “I did that,” it was always – “The11thdid IT!”

From the beginning, Everett A. Smith (AKA: Smitty), will be re-introduced, his entrance into WWII, the letters he wrote home and the world that surrounded them at the time.

The Farewell Salutes will continue, as will the Military Humor columns. If there is someone you wish to honor in the Salutes, don’t hesitate to give me similar information as you see for others.

1943 11th Airborne yearbook

As a member of the 11th Airborne Association (Member # 4511) myself, I am privy to…

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Akrobat der Divisionen

An acrobat who can move freely and easily on the stone rope.

On every rope and every kind of weird division.

Lignes invisibiles

Von einem Ende bis zum anderen,

an der Kreuzung der Brücke

würdest du auf der linken Seite sehen

wie die goldenen Locken von der Sonne,

über dem Wasser hängen…

in mehreren Sprüngen

ohne vorgegebenen Rhythmus.

Würdest du deinen Blick nach rechts drehen,

würdest du mehr Wasser sehen,

das durch einen Felsen geschickt in zwei Teile getrennt wird:

Licht und Dunkelheit.

Die dunkle Seite hält also ihr Wasser immer im Schatten,

die jede Bewegung abkühlen.

Alle Bewegungen wirken jetzt plastisch.

Kannst du dir vielleicht diesen kleinen Kopf vorstellen,

der mit seinem Verstand

alle optische Täuschungen unterstützt.

Fast sieht es so aus, als würde es auf einem akrobatischen Seil aus Stein laufen

und nicht mehr auf einer Brücke;

aber so sollte es auch sein.

Der Wind weht

der Körper über die Brücke, der sich bewegt.

Würdest du es jetzt von irgendwo weit oder nah beobachten,

mit aller Natürlichkeit, warf es sich auf…

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