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Words Fail Me. Well, Hardly.
So there I was this morning, laughing uproariously at a YouTube video of a sheep having fun on a trampoline:
And noodling around looking for other amusing animal videos because I don’t want to go out and put on any more house siding today….
I ran across the Australian news site. (Not sure how I got there; you know how it is on the Internet. Probably had something to do with looking at sheep which somehow led to …. Australia.)
Anyhoo, there was a link which looked interesting, so I clicked on it and up came this article: Coronavirus: WHO backflips on virus stance by condemning lockdowns.
It’s pretty dispositive:
Dr. David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus.
He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.
“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.
And:
“We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.
“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”
Dr Nabarro’s main criticism of lockdowns involved the global impact, explaining how poorer economies that had been indirectly affected.
“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” he said.
“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”
Glory be.
While not quite bereft of words, I can only think of two things to say:
- What happens to all those poor souls who’ve been cancelled and suspended from Facebook or Twitter for spreading “unsubstantiated information” and “misinformation,” by contradicting the diktats of the WHO, because, you know, science, now that science is catching up with the reality the rest of us live in every day?
- It’s my fond fever dream that this will play to Donald Trump’s political advantage, and that he’ll find a way to get some mileage out of it. But for any number of reasons, I’m not optimistic that will actually happen.
So I think I’ll go back to planning my trampoline installation. I’m already halfway there:
* I wonder if I can get a grant from the NIH, and sell it as “performance art?”
Published in Humor
Navy. Submariner. Plausible.
Thanks for the fact check, and the insight. Your comment makes me glad that, having been rooting around the Internet for amusing sheep videos, I only ended up at an Australian news site, and not … umm … somewhere else.
My own most recent sheep story happened the day before yesterday, and involved the little girl in the photo at the end of my post. She was born on February 1 as the first of a set of twins, and by the time her mother had dropped the second one, she’d forgotten about little PNit, who was on her way out when I found her on the barn floor. Set up the Pack ‘n Play in the living room, and off we went.
Well, I wasn’t sure for a few weeks, but she thrived. And now she’s outside, weighs about 60lbs and is doing very well. She’s still quite sure she belongs in the house, though, and it’s her life’s work to figure out how to get back in, even if it means going up and down stairs to do so (something sheep usually aren’t terribly good at).
So sue me, I used to let her into the bedroom to visit Mr. She when he was so unwell, because it amused both of them. She was joyful to see him, and he was enchanted to have a lamb in the bedroom. So perhaps her insistence on getting back into the house is
partlylargely my own fault.Two days ago, there I was, siding the house, and I needed to come inside and shut off the breaker to the NE outdoor circuit so I could take the back porch light off the side of the house and prep for siding (I’ve known registered electricians who like to work “hot,” but I’m not down with magical and invisible pulses that might kill me if I do something
stupidwrong, so I’m very careful.)As I came inside, I kicked off my shoes on the concrete pad in front of the driveway door (those rubber gardening “clog” things). I swear I was inside only about 30 seconds, long enough to find the right breaker and flip it.)
I emerged from the house to find that PNit had escaped the fence and was standing on that same concrete pad, very sure that I was going to admit her to the house where, in her imagination, she rightfully belongs.
She’d got her two back hooves in one of my shoes, and she was peeing, happily and freely, straight into the other one.
It’s only because she loves her Mum, right?
Here she is, sitting in Mr. She’s favorite chair, only a few hours after she was born. I do love this little girl:
Now if only someone can bang some sense into the rules as to what constitutes “exposure”, and why in hell once “exposed” everyone has to quarantine for 14 bloody days.
We lost 3/4 of September and 1/4 of October because of this rape of actual science and common sense.
Sheep thrills.
Ouch.
A sheep shot. Wouldn’t ewe know it?
I say not ba-a-a-ad.
Ora pro ovis.
@she I have a shed attached to the back of my house that we use as a laundry room. It is badly in need of siding and some other repairs as well. I am not sure whether to tear it down and start over or just to side it and do some repairs. Since you have tackled a siding project apparently single-handed, do you have any advice as to materials, methods, etc.?
You might consider going with a redneck motif…
Unfortunately, I am wondering whether this might not actually be an improvement.
Days and weeks underwater with no female companionship does strange things to a man. Which raises the question: how are the women serving on submarines changing?
Darn it, ewe beat me to it. That’s baaaaaaaad . . .
Wow. First of all, thanks for the question.
Whatever is needed, if you’re informed and determined, you can do it! What “other repairs” are needed? If the structure is sound and solid (that is, if it’s stable and you can imagine nailing into it, and hanging additional weight on it, then you might be able to re-side, although you might have to remove the existing siding (depending on what it is) first). If the whole thing is rickety and unstable, then it might be better to start over.
You should check local codes and make sure you won’t run afoul of them (or that if you think you might, that you at least have a reasonable and defensible excuse for why you thought they didn’t apply in your case).
Yes, I’ve re-sided the house almost entirely by myself. My house, though, is odd. When Mr. She and I built it in 1986, we used what were then called “stress-skin panels” but which are now called “structural insulated panels” or SIPs. We had some help to do the heavy lifting, and some of the contractors we employed weren’t forward-thinking or particularly interested in working with new technologies, so they, and we, made lots of mistakes.
Initially, we sided the house with board-and-batten rough-sawn cedar, because we wanted the house to look like a barn from the outside and to fit in with the local landscape. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that cedar is insect-resistant and rot-proof.
After we took the original cedar off (a move which inadvertently enabled the world’s worst mouse infestation, because we opened up an entry point which we didn’t spot at the time and which it took me about 18 months to find, so watch out for that), it took me quite a while to find a replacement siding. I investigated T-111, but didn’t like the horizontal bands every eight feet because it comes in 4×8 sheets (although I used it on the barn extension, and it might work fine on a small shed). I loved the “board and batten” look, so discounted aluminum and vinyl siding of the horizontal sort. I looked at Hardie plank fiber cement siding, but it was just too heavy. I considered the AirStone sorts of fake stone siding, but I don’t like most of them, and thought that if I did use them, it would only be at the foundation level. As it turned out, I didn’t use them at all.
Eventually I settled on Louisiana Pacific SmartSide. Think of a very dense and refined oriented strand board (OSB). Pretty heavy, but lighter than fiber cement. The first generation got a pretty bad rap, but newer iterations have received good reviews in terms of insect repellence and longevity.
Most of their installations are for their horizontal siding. However, they make “trim” boards in nominal lumber dimensions, up to 16 feet long. So you can get 1x12x16 boards which are imprinted with “grain” from molds taken from natural cedar boards.
I called LP, about seven years ago, and asked them if I could install their “trim” boards vertically as board and batten siding, and if the warranty would apply if I did. They said it would. So, off I went. Used the 1×12 as the boards, and 1×4 as the battens. Because they’re 16 feet long, there are very few joins (some of the gables on the house are about 24 feet high).
I wrapped with Tyvek, and on top of that put a layer of rainscreen (a roll product reminiscent of kitchen scrubber that goes behind the siding and allows any moisture that gets behind it to roll down and out underneath). Then I put up the boards and battens. They come pre-primed. I put one coat of paint on them before installing, and then, when I had them up and the nails in (used stainless-steel Maze nails), I put a second coat on.
It’s taken me seven years, start to finish, with many instances of “life happening while making other plans.”
The professionals among us will know that I violated many rules and did many things wrong. All I can say in my own defense, is that it seems to have worked, and that the first (East) side of the house I did in 2012-2013 is just fine.
That being said, if you’ve got electrical or plumbing issues, make sure you’re comfortable addressing and/or fixing them before going ahead, or seek professional help with those bits.
Here’s a photo of a bit of the house, the very last part, and that which I’m working on now. Hope to have the whole blasted thing done by the time winter closes in.
Hope this is helpful. The resources available on the Internet are incredible, so use them lavishly. You’re welcome to PM me if you’d like to chat further.
My own contribution in that regard is the rusting farm implements in the driveway…
Oh, and at ground level, I used a horizontal Azek PVC 5/4×6 board, so that there’s no contact between the SmartSide and the ground.
I like the look. I don’t think my shed is too bad structurally and I think that I can handle the plumbing/electric work. I will investigate the Smartside further. With winter coming on, now might be a good time to get my ducks in line. Thanks a million, @she.
Okay, you all asked for this!
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2v9uxz