Back of the Book

• Covid~19 cases in the whole world - 185,858,801 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the whole world - 4,014,591 on Friday.
• Covid~19 cases in the United States of America - 33,808,117 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the United States of America - 606,773 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the United States of America since our last program - 3,299, but the weekly average is about 1,650.
• Methuselah microbes - Bacteria from 100,000,000 year old sediments get active when fed!
• Latest UFO Information - Could it be disinformation aimed at other nation states?

We talked about the discovery of microbes living at a depth of about 75 meters in the sediment at the Pacific Gyre. Scientists calculate that the sediment they're in was deposited about 100,000,000 years ago. Conditions make it so that the microbes can't move up or down through the sediment, so it looks like they've been down there for a very long time. When brought up and fed they ate and reproduced. We talked about the implications for this microbial resilience with regard to live elsewhere in the universe. And one of those microbes is being talked about as the agent for terraforming the planet Mars.

We talked about Covid~19 making a resurgence in the parts of the country where people refuse to be vaccinated. Anti-vaxxers seem to be selecting themselves out of the population.

We talked about the concluded Pacifica bylaws referendum and said we hoped that all of our listener-members voted NO on it.

We talked about all of the politicians in Florida going on and on about "prayers" and asking people to pray regarding those caught in the collapse of the Champlain Tower South. This prayer stuff is all so phony.

We sent out some birthday greetings.

There is a Web page for this program.

R. Paul is on Twitter.

• Guests? Guests? We don't got no guests. We don't need no stinkin' guests! -

• Barracuda - Heart
• Yer Birthday - The Beatles
• Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty

• glib.com/.

• R. Paul is on Twitter.

• WBAI LSB Treasurer's Reports are here.

• If you want to do something to protect your privacy while using regular browsers, like Firefox, you can check out NOSCRIPT which gives you more control over what Web sites can learn about you.

• Search engines help us to find things on the World Wide Web. Most search engines exist not to help you find things but to allow the companies that provide the search service to data mine your searches and then sell your search history to clients so they can spam you. An alternative to getting your privacy compromised is to use the DuckDuckGo search engine.

• If you'd like to keep your browsing history private you can get yourself the Tor Browser. Using the DuckDuckGo search engine is automatic with the Tor Browser, and by accessing the DuckDuckGo search engine from the Tor Browser you are pretty much guaranteed that no one can trace searches back to you.

• Gnu Privacy Guard can help you to encrypt your data and preserve your privacy.

• For those who need some help getting started with Gnu Privacy Guard there is Gentle GPG which does a lot of the work for you.

• For the somewhat more advanced user who wants to protect his or her privacy there is the Tails OS. Tails is a live operating system that you can start on almost any computer from a USB flash drive or a DVD. It allows you to use any computer that will allow you to boot up off a USB flash drive or a DVD and it provides a lot of good security for your on-line activities. You can get the Tails OS here.