A Little of This and a Little of That.

I’m just about over a bout with long COVID and, based on my experience over the past couple of weeks, this is something to avoid if at all possible. Symptoms: low grade fever, persistent cough, difficulty sleeping, energy about 10 percent of normal. I can move around without much of a problem, but my normal walk has turned into a totter and I don’t dare start down a flight of steps without a banister to assist me.

A friend posted this (below) photo of Mauna Kea on Facebook. It was taken less than a week ago. What I find most attractive about this scene is how benign the mountain appears. The reality is, it’s 13,803 feet above sea level and, furthermore, it extends some 33,000 feet down to the Pacific Ocean floor, making it—from bottom to top—the tallest mountain in there world.

Finally, I cannot resist including this photo taken off the air on WECT-TV, a television station located in Wilmington, North Carolina. According to the photo’s headline–and, we must presume, the accompanying audio commentary– the train “swerved” in an effort to avoid hitting a truck that had stalled on the tracks.

Uh, sorry, but trains, whether passenger or freight, cannot and do not  “swerve”, since their direction is entirely controlled by the steel rails over which they travel.  Evidently, this train did indeed derail, but it must have been as the result of striking the truck that had become stuck on the tracks.

Meanwhile, journalism professors, railroad locomotive engineers (both passenger and freight), and anyone else familiar with the basic operation of a railroad, have all run screaming from the room.