Superman

News blues…

Last week, while in the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Donald Trump floated an idea for the moment he faced the public after his discharge: rip open his dress shirt to reveal the Superman symbol beneath.

He “wanted to appear frail at first,” people with knowledge of the conversations told the New York Times. But underneath his dress shirt, Trump would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal by ripping open the top layer of his clothing. He ultimately opted not to go ahead with the stunt. It wasn’t immediately clear why.

He opted not to go ahead with the stunt? Huh. Could it be he’s not as crazy as a bedbug?
Nah! He’s crazy. 

Then again, how come 42 percent of those polled intend to vote for Trump?
Can 42 percent of America’s voting population be crazy too? 

Well, yes. See for yourself. (6:11 mins)

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The Lincoln Project Mocks Trump With Fake Retro Ad Pushing Covid Drug (2:27 mins)
The Fly Song  (1:27 mins)
Meidas Touch: Trump Devastation   (1:15 mins)
Same Old - Samuel L. Jackson  (0:59 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

As they have done for more than a billion years fungi are changing the way that life happens: eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behaviour, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms – as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants” – and provide a key to understanding our planet. Yet fungi have received only a small fraction of the attention they deserve. 

The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2m and 3.8m species of fungi on the Earth – as many as 10 times the estimated number of plant species – meaning that, at most, a mere 8% of all fungal species have been described. Of these, only 358 have had their conservation priority assessed on the IUCN red list of threatened species, compared with 76,000 species of animal and 44,000 species of plant. Fungi, in other words, represent a meagre 0.2% of our global conservation priorities.

Read Kew’s 2020 report State of the World’s Plants and Fungi,  the outcome of a collaboration between 210 researchers in 42 countries.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

And… it’s raining again. I’m grateful for two days of sunshine during which we painted and primped the exterior of the house. Now I must photograph it for the realtors’ marketing promotion.
After the push to reach this point, I intend to recognize and celebrate the new freedom afforded by Lockdown Alert Level 1: take a day off, perhaps drive somewhere – the beach? The Drakensberg? A local plant nursery?

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Life offers amazing diversity. For example, after mentioning the night time frog choir with a basso profondo section, I searched the term, “basso profondo.” Here’s what I found: Russian Basso Profondo: The Lowest Voices  (1:45 mins)
Amazing.