All Roads Lead To North Dakota -- Things I Would Never Know If I Did Not Blog -- May 10, 2020

Idle rambling/chatter in a reply to a reader who noted that US intelligence suggests that current Wuhan flu pandemic probably goes as far back as September/October, 2019.

"Beijing, we have a problem": Truly, truly interesting. That brings us well back to October, possibly September, 2019, when the Chinese noted they had a problem. Compared to swine flu, this coronavirus certainly has staying power, as a pandemic.

Swine flu / influenza and corona virus are in two completely different groups of RNA viruses.

I have no idea if the Baltimore classification is still used, but if so, there are seven "Baltimore classes" of virus based on their genetic constitution.

By the way, corona virus has an interesting connection to North Dakota:

Coronaviruses were first discovered in the 1930s when an acute respiratory infection of domesticated chickens was shown to be caused by infectious bronchitis virus (IBV). Arthur Schalk and M. C. Hawn described in 1931 a new respiratory infection of chickens in North Dakota.

I'm hoping that, like Sputnik and the Apollo space missions, the current pandemic encourages a lot of young Americans to "go into" biology, chemistry, medicine.

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The Apple Page

AirPods: "Growth Was Almost Like Wildfire": link here. 

The epiphany:

We had this incredible wireless product, the iPhone. And yet, what began to feel odd is when you saw somebody using wired headphones. Right then you thought, why would you attach the wire?

Apple recently reported its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2020, and Apple CEO Tim Cook proudly announced that a quarterly record for wearables had been set. In the first fiscal quarter of 2020, Cook had also announced that Apple's wearables category had set a new all-time revenue record. In addition, it was mentioned that Apple's wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 150 company.

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Pigs In Space

Sophia took this in good spirits. She knew that Corky was just goofing around and that she wouldn't really be shot out of the cannon. Btu Corky sure is a good sport.