Tom Faranda's Folly

Eric Adams wins NYC Democrat primary race - or so the AP says

Well I hope so and we will see. At least Adams (ex policeman) supports the police. He's only up by 8,426 votes and Kathryn Garcia was a de Blasio aid. Just sayin'...

Adams, a former police captain, beat out a crowded field in New York’s first major race to use ranked-choice voting. If elected, Adams would become the city’s second black mayor. As Democrats outnumber Republicans by 7-to-1 in New York City, according to the AP, Adams will be the likely victor of the general election.

The results come two weeks after voting in the primary ended, on June 22. While early returns showed Adams in the lead, tens of thousands of absentee ballots had to be counted and rounds of tabulations has to be done under the ranked-choice system in which voters ranked up to five candidates for mayor in order of preference.

Candidates with too few votes to win were eliminated and ballots cast for them were redistributed to the other candidates based on voter preference until only two were left.

However, the new voting system was marred by an error made as votes were being counted on June 29, when elections officials inadvertently included 135,000 old test ballots in the count. The incorrect vote tallies were posted for several hours before officials acknowledged the error and took them down.

On Tuesday, Adams noted in a statement that “there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted” but said that “the results are clear: an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City.”

“Now we must focus on winning in November so that we can deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved, and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers,” he said.

 

Domestic terrorists!? Just confused dudes who don't know Massachusetts gun laws.

Interesting situation in Massachusetts a couple of days ago. What was this all about? the group is The individuals are members of Rise of the Moors, a group who identify as Moorish Americans. There is more here - went on YouTube to claim they ran because they were scared

"Explainer: What kind of surgery did Pope Francis have?"

This is from the Jesuit magazine America.

Doctors say the bowel problems that the 84-year-old pope was experiencing are very common in older people, although only about 10% to 20% of people with similar problems require surgery.

According to the Vatican, Pope Francis had the left part of his bowel removed in a three-hour operation Sunday at a Rome hospital. Officials said it was required because the pope’s bowel had narrowed.

Dr. Manish Chand, an associate professor of surgery at University College London who specializes in colorectal surgery, said the pope had likely been experiencing painful symptoms long before the bowel procedure. He was not involved in the pope's care.

Although minor symptoms can be treated with antibiotics, Chand said in some older people, the pain becomes so severe that removing part of the colon is the only way to fix it.

“That leads to scarring of the colon, which results in a narrowing part of the colon,” Chand said, explaining that prevents normal bowel movements. “There aren’t any drugs we can use to remedy the situation, so the only way to rid patients of the pain is by removing that narrowed portion of the bowel and join the two healthy ends of the bowel together.”

“This is a major operation, so as with any big operation, you want to make sure a patient’s heart and lungs are recovering and progressing the way they should after something like this,” said Dr. Walter Longo, chief of colon and rectal surgery at Yale University School of Medicine. Longo said the primary concern is ensuring that the two parts of the bowel that surgeons have stitched together remain attached.

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Chand said if there are no complications, he would expect the pope to experience an almost immediate improvement in his quality of life and be back to eating regularly within days.

Given the pope’s previous respiratory issues — he is missing part of his right lung after having it removed following a severe bout of pneumonia in his youth — Chand said doctors would need to monitor his breathing carefully.

“In the case of having previous problems with the lung, there is always a concern after the major abdominal surgery of the risk of getting a chest infection," Chand said. He said the pain might make it difficult for the pope to breathe deeply, preventing the lungs from expanding fully and getting rid of any fluid that could cause problems.

C Span polled historians asking them to rank Presidents - here are the results

July 4th at Farandaville

The afternoon started with a kind of flag-raising.

Back the Blue -

Then I did a quick (3.6 mile) solo hike/walk in the Hudson Gateway reserve. Quite hilly. No one else was there - didn't see a single person.

Here's the pond near one of the entrances - gross looking but the frogs must have loved it - they were croaking away.

Then Brigid and I had walk at Croton Landing towards the evening - here's nature lover herself

Brigid gave me the hat a couple of years ago.

So the tide was way in and we spotted this guy fishing. Croton people will know where this is in the Landing.

He must have gotten out there in that little rubber boat - and he seems to be wearing a mask!?

Life in Croton - pretty great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 4th - Back the Blue!

Yup -

But wait, there's more

Fourth of July tomorrow; here are some women veterans

My hunch is that none of these women are "Woke." Thanks to my friend Linda for sending me this.

 

 

Data Point: "What happens after you flush the toilet on a cruise ship?"

No doubt something we've all thought about/lost sleep over -

 

Great - another track world record - men's 400m hurdles, set at European Diamond League meet yesterday.

The Diamond League is a worldwide series - this meet in Oslo. The other name they are mentioning is his opponent in the coming Olympics, Rai Benjamin who went to Mt. Vernon high school and graduated the same year Tim did from Stepinac. So they would have competed in some of the same meets - of course not in the same events. 

Karsten Warholm blows away the competition in this race. Amazing.

 

Smithsonian Mag: "DNA Provides Window Into a 5,000-Year-Old South Asian Civilization"

This is a really fascinating article (to me anyway) about the spread of civilization into and out of the "Indus Valley Civilization." Unfortunately the Smithsonian does not provide a map, so I've taken the one on wikipedia and it is below the link.

This link  and the excerpt below it gives a flavor for the article.

However, the new analysis shows that the first farmers of the Fertile Crescent appear to have contributed little, genetically, to South Asian populations. “Yet similar practices of farming are present in South Asia by about 8,000 B.C. or so,” says Moorjani, a co-author on the wider population study of South and Central Asia. “As we are getting more ancient DNA, we can start to build a more detailed picture of how farming spread across the world. We’re learning, as with everything else, that things are very complex.”

If farming did spread from the Fertile Crescent to modern India, it likely spread via the exchange of ideas and knowledge—a cultural transfer rather than a significant migration of western Iranian farmers themselves. Alternatively, farming could have arisen independently in South Asia, as agricultural practices started to sprout up in many places across Eurasia during this time.

Ancient IVC ancestry holds other mysteries as well. This civilization was the largest source population for modern South Asians, and for Iron Age South Asians as well, but it lacks the Steppe pastoralist lineages common in later eras. “Just like in Europe, where Steppe pastoralist ancestry doesn’t arrive until the Bronze Age, this is also the case in South Asia,” Narasimhan says. “So this evidence provides information about the timing of arrival of this ancestry type, and their movement parallels the linguistic phylogeny of Indo-European languages, which today are spoken in places as far away as Ireland to New Delhi.”

Here's the map -

Feast Day today - St. Junipero Serra

The Franciscan missionary and defender of indigenous people of Mexico and California (Despite last year's toppling of his statue in California by know-nothings...). The reality was - he was protector of the indigenous population while most Spanish settlers exploited them. Here's a nice brief look at his life from Franciscan Media. Saint of the Day - Saint Junipero Serra

 

Bishop Barron a year ago discussing the attacks on St. Junipero Serra -