Coronavirus and Corona Beer

Last Tuesday, the GoogleTrends Twitter account noted that worldwide search interest for "coronavirus symptoms” increased by 1,050% compared to the week before. It also listed the top five related searches during the previous 24 hours, which included things like "how to prevent coronavirus" and "how does coronavirus spread."

But another popular Google search illustrates that we're also surrounded by very, very confused people.

There has also been a spike in searches for "corona beer virus," because apparently people are under the impression that coronavirus, also known as nCoV, has something to do with Corona brand beer. The searches have been prevalent in North America (but not in Mexico, where the beer is produced) and western Europe as well as in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and New Zealand.

It's disappointing that this needs to be written, but the only thing that Corona beer and nCoV have in common is the origin of their names. In Latin, corōna meant 'crown,' and modern languages continue to reflect that; 'corona' still translates to crown in modern Catalan, Spanish, and Italian, among others.

Coronaviruses were named because of the crown-like spikes on its surface, and anyone who has ever peeled the label off a bottle of Corona Light has noticed the crown that sits on top of its "La Cerveza Mas Fina" slogan. The drinkable Corona predates the virus, though: Corona was first brewed in 1925, while human coronaviruses were not identified until 1965.

From Vice News (edited)

Mexico's presidential plane (audio)

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Amtrack apolizes for its mistake (audio)

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Is Queen Elizabeth similar to Alex Ferguson?

The parallels between  a royal family and a football team are not exact—footballers tend to be more disciplined and better trained than royals—but monarchs and football managers are both in charge of small groups of unusual individuals who are constantly in the public eye. Missteps by one mean disaster for all. So it is not surprising that similarities are emerging between the Queen and English football’s most successful manager, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson.

Both royal and football teams have to be refreshed to keep the fans happy, and Ferguson and Windsor have both shown this ability. But new hires do not always work out, and great managers have to be willing to sacrifice talented individuals in the interests of the team. Just as Ferguson sacked Beckham when his ego and his endorsements got in the way of his football, so the Queen has dealt ruthlessly with Harry and Meghan. They wanted to be able to stay half in the family, doing some royal work while exploiting their titles for their private interest; and, as the most popular of the royals, they might reasonably have expected Windsor to give in to their demands. Instead, they have been put on the transfer list, and will lose their royal titles. Like Beckham, they will be relegated to North America.

Although Windsor, with 68 years in the job, has surpassed Ferguson, his 27 in post made him the longest-serving manager at the top of British football. Windsor has taken the title of Britain’s longest reigning monarch of all time. Their organisations have benefited from the degree of stability both managers’ long reigns have conferred. 

Monarchies, like football clubs, outlive their incumbents. Since Ferguson stepped down, United has struggled. Manager after manager has failed in his shadow. Windsor’s many fans must hope the similarities do not extend that far.

From The Economist (edited)

Missing Klimt's portrait found

PIACENZA, Italy (AP) — Art experts have confirmed that a painting discovered hidden inside an Italian art gallery’s walls last month is Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady,” which was stolen from the gallery nearly 23 years ago.

The authentication of the painting announced Friday solved one of the art world’s  mysteries - where did the missing work end up? - but left several questions unanswered, including who took it and whether it ever left the museum’s property.

A gardener at the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in the northern city of Piacenza who was clearing away ivy noticed a small panel door on a wall outside and opened it. Inside the space, he found a plastic bag containing a painting that appeared to be the missing masterpiece.

“It’s with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” Piacenza Prosecutor Ornella Chicca told reporters on Friday.

“Portrait of a Lady” depicts a young woman sensually glancing over her shoulder against a green background. Klimt finished the painting in 1917, the year before he died. The Ricci Oddi gallery acquired it in 1925 and reported it missing in February 1997.

Since the gardener’s discovery on Dec. 10, the canvas was kept in a vault of a local branch of Italy’s central bank while experts used infrared radiation and other non-invasive techniques to determine if it was the original “Portrait of a Lady.”

Experts said the painting was in remarkably good condition. One of the few signs of damage was a scratch near the edge of the canvas that may have resulted “from a clumsy effort to remove the portrait from its frame,” said Anna Selleri, an art restorer from the National Gallery in Bologna.

“Portrait of a Lady” was officially listed as missing on Feb. 22, 1997 but might have been snatched from a gallery wall a few days earlier, during the exhibit preparation work.

So who stole the painting? Chicca said police were studying some traces of organic material on the recovered canvas in hopes they might provide leads.

As for why and when the painting ended up behind a wall, journalist Anne-Marie O’Connor, the author of a book about the dramatic fortunes of Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer,” has an educated theory.

When “Portrait of a Lady” was taken, the value of Klimt’s paintings was “soaring,” O’Connor said in a phone interview from London.. Perhaps whoever took the painting stowed it behind the gallery’s walls while waiting for news to die down but the stolen work proved “too hot to handle.”

The Lady in Gold

O’Connor’s 2012 book “The Lady In Gold” chronicled the successful effort by a woman to gain back Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.”

That portrait was snatched from the Bloch-Bauer home in Vienna in 1941 by a Nazi officer. The woman, Bloch-Bauer’s niece, later sold the painting to cosmetics mogul Ronald Lauder in 2006 for $135 million.

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Article rom Associated Press (edited)

Harry and Meghan have reached a deal (audio)

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Reinventing mobile devices (video)

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Two sets of twins in one year

What's more improbable than winning the lottery? Having two sets of twins in one year. 

The odds? Approximately 1 in 250 pregnancies results in twins naturally. Having two sets of twins in the same year? Well, doctors say there are better chances of winning the lottery.

Alexzandria Wolliston, from West Palm Beach, welcomed her first set of boys in March. 

She had no intention of having more children at the time. Anyway, in May she learned about the second set. They were born on December 27, at 34 weeks old. One of the twins has just come home from the neonatal intensive care unit, where his brother remains, learning to eat on his own. Their mom hopes he'll be home later this week. 

It's so unlikely that doctors didn't even calculate the odds for her. 

"Oh yes," Wolliston said, "I feel like I hit the twin lottery." 

Although, given that Wolliston now has four little ones under a year and a three-year-old daughter, there will probably be some long nights in the future when she's not feeling so lucky. 

But the mom of five believes there may be something else at work here. Alexzandria recently learned both of her grandmothers lost twin boys at birth, which makes her believe that her four baby boys are a blessing from above.

"I always say that I feel like my grandmothers gave me their kids," she said. "I feel like they just sent them down for me."

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Article from Good Morning America (edited)

Giant ‘Harry Potter’ store to open in NYC

Warner Bros. will open the world’s first-ever Harry Potter flagship store in New York City in August 2020.

The upcoming store, to be located next to the Flatiron Building at 935 Broadway, will house the largest collection of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts products, from Hogwarts House robes to Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. Visitors will be able to explore a 2,000-square-meter store and three floors full of Wizarding World merchandise.

The store will offer an all-new range of Hogwarts House wands, designed exclusively for the New York store. More details are to yet to be announced, but the store will also feature a sidewalk cafe, food and beverages in-store and a service window on Broadway.

As a landmarked building, plans for the storefront and changes to the building exterior (including a “fiberglass dragon,” a “clock” and “six flagpoles, designed to look like wands”) must be approved by a community board meeting. A vote from the full Manhattan’s Community Board 5 Committee will take place this month.

Layla Law-Gisiko, chair of the committee, is against the storefront exterior design. "In my opinion, flagpoles are a big no-no. If Harry Potter can put a dragon, then Nike can put a shoe, then the bakery down the block could put a croissant, and then where do you stop?. Anyway, the whole committee will vote and decide".

Sarah Roots, SVP worldwide tours and retail, Warner Bros. said in a press release:

"This will be the largest dedicated Harry Potter store in the world and will become a must-visit fan destination where Harry Potter enthusiasts can engage with interactive experiences and numerous photo opportunities as they step into the magic."

"We are very excited to be opening in New York. It's the ideal city in which to launch with so many dedicated Wizarding World fans, a cutting-edge retail environment and a community that loves innovative experiences."

Preview of the 'Harry Potter' flagship store

WARNER BROS.

From Forbes (edited)

Women-Men ratio on USA payroll (audio)

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Vertical farming

Visitors to the Dubai Expo 2020, which opens in October, will be expecting great things, including gastronomic delights. But Dubai, being a desert country, imports most of its food. However, the salads and herbs used by the caterers will be grown in one of the world’s largest “vertical farms”, next to the Expo site.

Vertical farming involves growing plants in an enclosed environment. To save space, the plants are grown on non-soil substrates in stacked trays. Each tray is bathed in artificial light and fed with water and nutrients. The Dubai farm is a tie-up between CropOne, a Silicon Valley company, and Emirates Flight Catering. Besides supplying the Expo, it will grow 2,700kg of leafy greens a day for the inflight catering services at Dubai’s airport. The farm will use 99% less water than growing crops outdoors.

Advances in technology, especially in tuning light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to the colors that encourage plants to grow best, are making such operations more viable, and for a broader range of produce, including some fruit and vegetables. In 2020 Intelligent Growth Solutions, based near Dundee, Scotland, will start delivering an LED system for vertical farming that, it says, will cut energy costs in half.

Most vertical farms will be built in or near cities to supply local markets directly. Plenty, another American firm, has opened a highly automated farm near San Francisco to supply more than 100 grocery stores. Other farms will be smaller. Marks & Spencer, a British retailer, is installing vertical-farming units made by Infarm, a German firm, to grow fresh herbs directly in its supermarket aisles.

From The Economist (edited)

Harry and Meghan won’t play the game

The unofficial motto of the Queen Mother was simple: “Never complain, never explain.” It is a motto that Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, have comprehensively rejected. They have come to symbolize a new type of royal: unashamedly political, emotionally open, socially conscious.

Harry and Meghan have repeatedly shown their willingness to complain, and to explain. The 12-year-old boy once told to walk behind his mother’s coffin showing no emotion, has grown up into a man determined to talk about his mental-health struggles. Markle has been similarly honest about the difficult transition to royal wife and mother. “Not many people have asked if I’m okay,” she told a reporter for the British broadcaster ITV in October, fighting back tears.

Harry and Meghan have departed from royal protocol by laying the blame for this unhappiness squarely at the door of the media. The novelist Hilary Mantel once compared the royal family to pandas. There is one big difference, though: Zoos are nice to pandas. 

In October, when Meghan launched a lawsuit against a British newspaper for publishing a letter she wrote to her estranged father, Harry supported the move. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person,” he said in a statement. “I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

The couple has long complained of intrusive media coverage and accused some British media commentators of racism. They slammed the country's long-standing arrangements for royal media coverage and insisted that from now on they prefer to communicate directly with the public through social media. They launched a new website, SussexRoyal.com, with a section dedicated to the media and will work with “grassroots media organizations and young, up-and-coming journalists,” and “provide access to credible media outlets focused on objective news reporting.” In other words … Harry and Meghan to Royal Correspondents: Drop Dead.

Previously, no royal had ever taken on the press quite so directly, much though they might have wanted to. In 2005, Harry’s father, Prince Charles, was caught on a microphone complaining about the journalists at a photo-call on their family skiing trip. “I hate these people,” he said. The photo-call was the price of the media leaving the prince and his sons alone for the rest of their holiday. Similar quid pro quos are still in operation: limited, controlled media access in exchange for some peace.

Harry is unwilling to accept this bargain. When Archie was born, there was no announcement that Meghan had gone into labor, and no photoshoot on the hospital steps.  Harry has now gone further. Harry and Meghan are pursuing a media strategy closer to that of Hollywood A-listers than the grin-and-bear-it universalism associated with the ruling family.

The most noteworthy part of the statement was the couple’s wish to become “financially independent.” The rationale for press scrutiny of the royal family has always been: We pay for them, so we own them.

The evolution of the royal family has always reflected changes in British society, as every season of The Crown proves. In two generations, “The Firm” has gone from forbidding Princess Margaret to marry a divorcé to embracing one—Markle—into its fold without fuss. This latest move reveals another generational shift. Like many other Millennials, Prince Harry is more socially liberal than his elders and more willing to share his emotions on social media. (Also like many other Millennials, he was only able to afford a house thanks to money he got from his parents.) He represents the end of the stiff upper lip as the royals’ default mode, forcing Britons to confront the human cost of their obsession with the monarchy.

Harry has always been a royal rebel: smoking cannabis, partying in Las Vegas, admitting how close he came to a breakdown. With his wife by his side, he may now be making his most significant contribution to the royal family—by walking away from it.

From The Atlantic (edited)

Megxit (audio)

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex personal message and Royal Statement