#Coca Cola Cessna

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The Coca-Cola 1950 Cessna 195 Businessliner

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Sunday, June 11, 2023

Energy Drinks Are Surging. So Are Their Caffeine Levels. (NYT) It has been more than 25 years since Red Bull hit the market and introduced caffeinated energy drinks to the United States. While the company claimed its beverage would “give you wings,” it never said it was actually good for people. Yet as the energy drink market continues to grow rapidly, companies both new and old are trying to attract health-conscious customers with a wave of no-sugar, low-calorie drinks that claim to boost energy as well as replenish fluids with electrolytes and other ingredients. This new focus has helped the energy drink market grow, with sales in the United States surging to $19 billion from $12 billion over the past five years. But there are concerns that drinks being pitched as healthy are resulting in children and teenagers consuming caffeine in unhealthy amounts. A 12-ounce can of Prime Energy contains 200 milligrams of caffeine. That’s roughly equivalent to two Red Bulls, two cups of coffee or six cans of Coca-Cola. Some schools in Britain and Australia have already banned the beverages. In the United States, federal regulations say schools cannot sell or provide caffeinated drinks to elementary or middle school students, although many schools do not restrict what students can bring from home. “Not long after drinking them, the students showed up in the health office saying they didn’t feel good and that their hearts were racing,” said [one school nurse].

A Puzzle in Arizona’s Boom Towns: How to Keep Growing With Less Water (NYT) As the mayor of an old farming town bursting with new homes, factories and warehouses, Eric Orsborn spends his days thinking about water. The lifeblood for this growth is billions of gallons of water pumped from the ground, and his city, Buckeye, Ariz., is thirsty for more as builders push deeper into the desert fringes of Phoenix. But last week, Arizona announced it would limit some future home construction in Buckeye and other places because of a shortfall in groundwater. A new state study found groundwater supplies in the Phoenix area were about 4 percent short of what is needed for planned growth over the next 100 years. That may feel like a far-off horizon, but it is enough of a change to force the state to rethink its future in the near and long terms. Now, there are urgent questions about how Arizona should be using its increasingly precious water—for water-guzzling alfalfa and lettuce farms or thirsty new computer chip and battery factories and coffee-creamer manufacturing? For new sprawl or more development inside cities? Could the Phoenix suburbs keep up their frenzied pace of growth? Should they?

Four Colombian children found alive in jungle weeks after plane crash (Reuters) Four children from an Indigenous community in Colombia were found alive in the country’s south on Friday more than five weeks after the plane they were traveling in crashed in thick jungle, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said. The plane—a Cessna 206—was carrying seven people on a route between Araracuara, in Amazonas province, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure in the early hours of May 1. Three adults, including the pilot and the children’s mother Magdalena Mucutuy, died as a result of the crash and their bodies were found inside the plane. The four siblings, aged 13, 9, 4, as well as a now 12-month-old baby, survived the impact. Narcizo Mucutuy, the grandfather of the three girls and one boy, told reporters he was delighted at the news of their rescue.

Argentina inflation seen hitting 149% this year, up from previous poll (Reuters) Analysts polled by Argentina’s central bank forecast annual inflation this year at 149%, above the 126% expected in the previous poll, according to the monthly survey released on Friday. For May, the analysts polled expect prices to have risen 9% in the month. Argentina’s economy, strained by a historic drought that has worsened an ongoing currency crisis, is expected to shrink 3% in 2023 from 2022. Analysts see the weakened Argentine peso, currently officially valued at 245 pesos per dollar, ending this year at 408.68 pesos per dollar and 2024 at 917.54 pesos per dollar. Rising prices and tumbling foreign reserves pose a challenge for Argentina’s left-leaning government ahead of general elections in October.

Boris Johnson quits as UK lawmaker after being told he will be sanctioned for misleading Parliament (AP) Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson shocked Britain on Friday by quitting as a lawmaker after being told he will be sanctioned for misleading Parliament. Johnson resigned after receiving the results of an investigation by lawmakers into misleading statements he made to Parliament about “partygate,” a series of rule-breaking government parties during the COVID-19 pandemic. By quitting, he avoids a suspension that could have seen him ousted from his Commons seat by his constituents, leaving him free to run for Parliament again in the future.

Russia to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus in July. (1440) Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement in a televised meeting with the Belarusian leader Friday. Belarus, a close ally of Russia, neighbors Ukraine to the north and shares an almost-700-mile border. Russian forces have used Belarus as a staging ground since the beginning of the war.

UN aid chief says Ukraine faces ‘hugely worse’ humanitarian situation after the dam rupture (AP) The humanitarian situation in Ukraine is “hugely worse” than before the Kakhovka dam collapsed, the U.N.’s top aid official warned Friday. Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths said an “extraordinary” 700,000 people are in need of drinking water and warned that the ravages of flooding in one of the world’s most important breadbaskets will almost inevitably lead to lower grain exports, higher food prices around the world, and less to eat for millions in need. “This is a viral problem,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But the truth is this is only the beginning of seeing the consequences of this act.”

As Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive, Definitions of ‘Success’ Vary (NYT) After months of anticipation, Ukraine’s forces—newly trained on complex warfare tactics and armed with billions of dollars in sophisticated Western weaponry—launched operations on multiple fronts in the past week in an effort to dislodge entrenched Russian military units, a counteroffensive that many officials in the United States and Europe say could be a turning point in the 15-month war. What remains unclear, though, is exactly what the United States, Europe and Ukraine view as a “successful” counteroffensive. Publicly, American and European officials are leaving any definition of success to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Privately, U.S. and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely. Throughout the war, the Ukrainian army, with deeply motivated troops, creative military operations and advanced Western weaponry, has outperformed Russia’s military. But the Ukrainians have also found it difficult to dislodge the Russians from their entrenched defensive positions in the last few months, with the front lines barely moving.

A Rising India Is Also, in One Remote Pocket, a Blood-Soaked War Zone (NYT) People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women—who are seen as less hotheaded than men—and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut—an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government—and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.”

The Pentagon Is Freaking Out About a Potential War With China (Politico) The war began in the early morning hours with a massive bombardment—China’s version of “shock and awe.” Chinese planes and rockets swiftly destroyed most of Taiwan’s navy and air force as the People’s Liberation army and navy mounted a massive amphibious assault across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait. Having taken seriously President Joe Biden’s pledge to defend the island, Beijing also struck pre-emptively at U.S. and allied air bases and ships in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. managed to even the odds for a time by deploying more sophisticated submarines as well as B-21 and B-2 stealth bombers to get inside China’s air defense zones, but Washington ran out of key munitions in a matter of days and saw its network access severed. The United States and its main ally, Japan, lost thousands of service members, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft. Taiwan’s economy was devastated. And as a protracted siege ensued, the U.S. was much slower to rebuild, taking years to replace ships as it reckoned with how shriveled its industrial base had become compared to China’s. The Chinese “just ran rings around us,” said former Joint Chiefs Vice Chair Gen. John Hyten in one after-action report. “They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it.”      Dozens of versions of the above war-game scenario have been enacted over the last few years, most recently in April by the House Select Committee on competition with China. And while the ultimate outcome in these exercises is not always clear—the U.S. does better in some than others—the cost is. In every exercise the U.S. uses up all its long-range air-to-surface missiles in a few days, with a substantial portion of its planes destroyed on the ground. In every exercise the U.S. is not engaged in an abstract push-button war from 30,000 feet up like the ones Americans have come to expect since the end of the Cold War, but a horrifically bloody one. And that’s assuming the U.S.-China war doesn’t go nuclear.

Saudi crown prince threatened ‘major’ economic pain on U.S. amid oil feud (Washington Post) Last fall, President Biden vowed to impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia for its decision to slash oil production amid high energy prices and fast-approaching elections in the United States. In public, the Saudi government defended its actions politely via diplomatic statements. But in private, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threatened to fundamentally alter the decades-old U.S.-Saudi relationship and impose significant economic costs on the United States if it retaliated against the oil cuts, according to a classified document obtained by The Washington Post. The crown prince claimed “he will not deal with the U.S. administration anymore,” the document says, promising “major economic consequences for Washington.” It is unclear whether the crown prince’s threat was conveyed directly to U.S. officials or intercepted through electronic eavesdropping, but his dramatic outburst reveals the tension at the heart of a relationship long premised on oil-for-security but rapidly evolving as China takes a growing interest in the Middle East and the United States assesses its own interests as the world’s largest oil producer.

From restaurants to water towers, unrest dents Senegal’s economy (Reuters) A KFC restaurant ransacked. Public transport torched. Glass-paneled stations for a multi-million dollar electric bus link shattered. A water plant vandalised. Senegal is taking stock of the damage after the jail sentencing of prominent opposition figure Ousmane Sonko sparked the worst civil unrest in decades that threatens to dent progress in one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. Sixteen people died and hundreds were injured. Rioters attacked banks, supermarkets and petrol stations. Small businesses were also hitAn attack on a state-owned water plant could create shortages in Dakar, where it hasn’t rained for eight months and where water cuts are common, an official said. Aside from the damage, a day of protests can slow economic output by the equivalent of up to around $33 million per day, the government estimates. Citizens rapidly feel the pinch in a country where over 95% of the work is informal.

[nrdynarwhal-blog]

After Reading _The Dog Stars_ by Peter Heller …

“[…] the thing is I can see a lot. Not like the back of the hand, too simple, but like book I have read and reread too many times to count, maybe like the bible for some folks of old. I would know. A sentence out of place. A gap. Two periods where there should be one. I know[,]” (7).  

Peter Heller’s novel exists in an apocalypse scenario that models a very realistic end to the human race. Set in America approximately seven years after the outbreak of a deadly flu epidemic, Heller’s characters are one of the last surviving people.  Following the flu and the collapse of modern medicine, a blood disease over-takes most of the surviving population.  Having been spared both, the main character Hig and his dog Jasper along with Bangley (an older possibly ex-military dooms-day prepper) live on a private airport.  Hig and Jasper fly out and patrol the area and gather supplies in an old Cessna while Bangley defends their compound.  This novel dwells in the sadness that lurks in the corners of the characters’ situation – Hig morns his wife and their unborn baby by hunting and fishing, Bangley focuses solely on survival.  Hig is a poet and a journalist so Heller creates the novel as if it were Hig’s notebook – logging the happenings with incomplete sentences and an intimate language that is reminiscent of story-telling.

This sadness in this novel hangs heavy as you read it – death and decay are always lingering. Hig often waxes about aging and decay – how the gasoline will become useless, Jasper losing his hearing and getting older, nature taking back the urban landscape.

Because Hig is a writer, Peter Heller uses colorful language and a lack of punctuation (commas and most other punctuation are few, instead Heller writes in short sentence fragments choosing only to use periods and question marks). This unique sentence structure is very interesting because we know that the main character used to be a writer and is now choosing to ignore the old ways and write in a new short hand. This breakdown of language points to a shift in the reason Hig is writing – before the epidemic he would write for enjoyment and now he is writing to chronicle their story.  This is also an example of how humanity can be lost in an apocalyptic situation.  Hig writes because he has a need to – this aspect of his humanity remains, but the reason (or the purpose) of his writing has changed and because of that, the mechanics of his writing have changed. Hig’s writing style reflects the way he and Bangley live. Everything they do is to further their survival – except that Hig does little things that make their lives better like flying three hours out to retrieve cases of Coca Cola and sharing vegetables with a Mennonite family stricken with the blood disease. (Bangley calls these trips “Recreating”).  These actions maintain Hig’s humanity and seem to act as a counter balance to all the killing Bangley has done to keep them safe.

The narrative is broken – the timeline often jumps to the days before the outbreak or to memories from the past nine years depending upon Hig’s mood and what is happening to them. This creates a fluidity to the novel. With each new situation, Hig recounts things as they happen then informs them with events from the early days after the outbreak.  (This type of thinking creates moments of historical materialism throughout the novel – blending the present into the past).

This ambiguity with the timeline is something that I am interested in incorporating into my thesis project. Heller uses this fluidity to immerse the reader in his narrative. Hig presents a constantly active narrative because this time line is so blurry – when the present is boring, Hig recounts something from the past.  My thesis works in a similar fashion.  It weaves my struggles with dyslexia from past and present with memories to create a written self-portrait where the zombies represent my dyslexia.

 Revisions after reading The Dog Stars:

* Blur the present into the past to create a fluid narrative