Feelings, nothing more than feelings…

“The sleep of reason begets monsters”– Goya

To begin with, I was fully vaccinated but my stepson was not vaccinated. So he got COVID, and I got it too. Presumably it was the delta variant, which took over the country last spring. I was in the hospital with pneumonia from September 13-21. Subsequently, I have recovered to the extent that I can walk a half mile in 35 minutes. That’s pretty good for a doddering feeble old man.

By the way, right after getting out of the hospital, I went in to get a booster vaccination (Pfizer.) It was six months after I completed the initial series of COVID vaccines. I presume that my immunity had waned sufficiently in six months for me to be unable to resist getting sick from a fairly heavy exposure.

I will not spend much time on the news that a new variant of concern, formally labeled Omicron, has arisen, primarily in South Africa. You can look it up. I’m done repeating the news about COVID, except to state that developments have met my most pessimistic projections.

Secondly, I read that the Solomon Islands has transferred their China recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic– in 2019. Now, as of November 24, there is rioting and Chinatown in Honaira (the capital of Solomon Islands) was almost completely burned down, except for one or two buildings that had the flag of Taiwan prominently displayed. I read this in the Washington Post, and so can you.

So, reading the Wikipedia entry for Solomon Islands, I discover that the Solomons are the site of the island of Guadalcanal, where a major 3-year battle was fought between the Japanese Empire and the United States of America (with British forces participating, and Australians as well.) The fighting resulted in the destruction of the former capital city, which was transferred to Honaira.

The Solomon Islands also outlaws homosexuality and has a major “gender-based violence” problem, reportedly the worst in the world. I don’t think the two situations in the previous sentence are coincidental. The gender-based violence problem primarily consists of men beating their wives, supposedly make them more obedient. This is partly because men buy their wives, making them think that they “own” them. This is clearly a violation of the Universal Rights of Man, also known as the basic human rights that we’re supposed to recognize.

Thirdly, this is not something that I wish to know. I would rather know about something sweet and substantial, like the announcement that we are going to not raise the Earth’s average surface temperature anymore because we are going to stop producing carbon dioxide and methane. Better for everyone. It’s a fantasy, but it’s a nice fantasy.

You can see that I have gotten out of the habit of writing blog entries. I will stop now. I promise to do better.

picture credit: Wikipedia