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Airships Are No Longer a Relic of the Past; You Could Ride in One by 2023

As concern over climate change and rising temperatures grows, the airline industry is taking heat (pun intended). Flying accounts for 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions; that’s lower than car travel and maritime shipping, but still a chunk worth acknowledging.

In some parts of the world people have started “flight-shaming,” that is, giving up air travel themselves and encouraging others to find alternative means of transport that are more climate-friendly. Sweden’s national flygskam campaign, which started in 2017, even led to a nine percent decrease in domestic air travel.

It’s possible to cut back on air travel, but given the globalized nature of business, the economy, and even families and friendships, we’re not going to stop needing a fast, relatively pain-free way to get across countries or around the globe; some things simply can’t be done over Zoom.

An unexpected potential solution is being floated (again, pun intended) by companies that believe people will be willing to trade a lot of time and money for a more planet-friendly way to travel: by airship.

What’s an Airship?

The term “airship” encompasses motorized craft that float due to being filled with a gas that’s lighter than air, like helium or hydrogen; blimps and zeppelins are the most common. Airships were used for bombings during World War I, and started carrying passengers in the late 1920s. In 1929 Germany’s Graf Zeppelin fully circled the globe, breaking the trip up into four legs and starting and ending in New Jersey; it took 22 days in total and carried 61 people. By the mid-1930s there were regular trans-Atlantic passenger flights.

Airships don’t need fuel to lift them off the ground, they just need it to propel them forward. Hydrogen was initially the lifting gas of choice, as it was cheap and abundant (and is lighter than helium). But the explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937 not only made the use of hydrogen all but defunct, it dismantled the passenger airship industry virtually overnight (interestingly, though, the Hindenburg wasn’t the deadliest airship disaster; it killed 36 people, but a crash 4 years prior killed 73 people).

Since then, airships have been relegated to use for large ads-in-the-sky, and before drones became commonplace they were used to take aerial photos at sporting events.

Comeback Kid

But passenger airships may soon be making a comeback, and more than one company is already banking on it. OceanSky Cruises—based, perhaps unsurprisingly, in Sweden—is currently taking reservations for expeditions to the North Pole in the 2023-2024 season. According to Digital Trends, a cabin for two is going for $65,000.

Carl-Oscar Lawaczeck, OceanSky Cruises’ CEO, points out several advantages airships have over planes; their environmental sustainability is just the beginning. “The possibilities are amazing when you compare airships with planes,” he said. “Everything is lighter and cheaper and easier and that gives a lot of possibilities.”

Airships have fewer moving parts, and they don’t need a runway to land on or take off from. They’re far more spacious and can carry larger and heavier loads.

If you cringe at the thought of 12 hours of stiff-backed, knee-crunched, parched-air flights, imagine something closer to a flying cruise ship: your own room, a bed, a restaurant and bar, maybe even a glass-floored observation room where you could see the landscape below drifting past in glorious detail.

Would all this make it worth the fact that 12 hours of travel would turn into 60? Airships travel at about one-fifth of the speed of planes; 20 knots versus 100. And nowadays the lifting gas of choice is helium, despite being expensive and scarce.

Join the Club

OceanSky is far from the only company pouring money into resurrecting the airship.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin also started an airship company. LTA (which stands for lighter than air!) Research and Exploration’s primary stated purpose is to build ultra-cheap craft to be used for humanitarian missions. The aforementioned lack of need for runways makes airships a promising and practical option for delivering supplies to remote, hard-to-reach locations.

To that end, Barry Prentice, who leads the Canadian company Buoyant Aircraft Systems International, hopes to use airships to transport pre-built structures for schools and housing to remote parts of Canada that lack good roads.

And earlier this year, French airship company Flying Whales (I mean, how can you not adore that name?) received $23 million in funding from the government of Quebec to build cargo-carrying Zeppelins.

Given our current pandemic-dominated reality, it’s hard to imagine a future of seamless global travel of any kind, much less on an airship. But that future will, thankfully, arrive (though when is anyone’s guess). As calls for climate action get louder and the costs associated with airships drop—as the cost of any new technology tends to do with time—we may find ourselves going retro and being ferried across the globe by giant helium-filled balloons.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd

‘We’re watching this train wreck’: UMMC chief says governor should postpone school reopenings

UMMC Communications

Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, at a press conference at UMMC.

A top public health official said on Monday that Gov. Tate Reeves should postpone the return of public schools as Mississippi becomes one of the nation’s worst COVID-19 hotspots and the state’s hospital capacity dwindles.

Most public schools across the state plan to resume in-person activities this week. Reeves, who is the only state official with the authority to issue a blanket order to delay the start of school, is expected to announce a decision on the matter this week.

Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said in an interview with Mississippi Today on Monday that reopening schools would place further strain on the state’s hospitals, which are struggling to keep up with the skyrocketing number of coronavirus patients.

“Those of us in healthcare feel like we’re watching this train wreck happen, and somehow even many of our friends are blind to it,” Woodward said of the state’s recent explosion of COVID-19 cases in a phone interview. “I think most people, when they’re thinking about reopening school and the logistics of that, are starting to understand some of that stress and strain on our healthcare system.”

Woodward continued: “In my heart, I want us to get back to school. There are a lot of children who really need to be in school for a variety of reasons. However, I don’t think we’re at a point right now where it’s the right, best and safe thing to do.”

Mississippi currently has the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the country and the third-highest daily new case rate. COVID hospitalizations continue to rise, and the daily patient rolls nearly doubled in the past month. A recent report from George Washington University shows Mississippi is one of 11 states either at or nearing a shortage of ICU providers.

Reeves spent the weekend personally assessing reopening plans of the state’s 138 public school districts, which had to submit proposals to the state by Friday. The districts, thus far, have been given free rein to decide for themselves how and when to reopen, and most have opted to resume in-person instruction within the next week.

But last week, Reeves suggested he could delay the reopenings with a statewide mandate after reading the districts’ plans.

Reeves allowing Mississippi schools to reopen would send more than 465,000 students, more than 30,000 teachers and thousands of other school staffers back to the classrooms this months. Education advocates say already cash-strapped school districts can’t handle the demands of virus preparation and warn that students, teachers and staff will suffer. Health experts say allowing schools to reopen now will further strain the hospital system.

Woodward said that Reeves should delay the reopening of schools “until after Labor Day,” and that schools should be under strict mask mandates and have more testing capabilities when they do open.

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Reeves’ top coronavirus adviser, also said in a Friday video session with the Mississippi State Medical Association that schools shouldn’t reopen until September.

“I was off,” Dobbs said in the video. “I thought maybe it would be the right time to start in August — until about a little while ago… I think it’s a good idea to delay school. There’s nothing magic about August.”

In recent days, Reeves has publicly warned of the dangers associated with children not returning to the classroom. Many parents are worried about how they’ll keep their jobs or handle childcare if their kids don’t start school on time. Parents and teachers alike have expressed concern over students’ wellbeing if they miss school and in-person interaction in a rural state where many districts lack the ability to provide adequate distance learning.

“The reopening of schools in this environment is a major challenge. I understand that,” Reeves said in a press conference on Thursday. “But to those individuals in our state who say the public health of the spread of the risk of the coronavirus is the only risk at play when making a decision about our schools are ignoring so many other risks that exist out there.”

Reeves continued: “We know that we are not going to mitigate 100% of the risk on either side of this equation. What we must do is look for innovative ways to reach what we all believe is the right outcome. And the right outcome longterm for kids is that they are in an environment that is loving and produces and provides an educational opportunity.”

As he weighs the schools decision, Reeves is also drawing scorn for not issuing a statewide mask mandate, as most other states have done, and Mississippi’s COVID statistics continue to worsen. As of Monday, Mississippians in 37 of the state’s 82 counties — representing more than half of the state’s population — were required to wear masks in public because of an executive order from Reeves.

Several medical professionals and local politicians have questioned why Reeves has ordered mask mandates for individual counties that are already seeing spikes in cases rather than being more proactive with a statewide mandate and stopping the virus spread before it begins.

In the Monday interview, Woodward reiterated that UMMC and most of the state’s largest hospitals don’t currently have the space or staffing to keep up with the state’s rising COVID hospitalizations.

“The thing I would emphasize is the fatigue of health care workers,” Woodward said. “They are frazzled, and they are worn out. There is no definite end in sight for the work they’re going to have to be doing. Now we know this pandemic is not going to go on for 10 years, but still you’re talking about months. For their stamina and their ability to continue to give everything they have, we need buy-in from the public with mask wearing and distancing. We need this to be taken seriously.”

The post ‘We’re watching this train wreck’: UMMC chief says governor should postpone school reopenings appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A tour of Mississippi: The Mississippi Sound

Color your way through Mississippi with me! Click below to download a coloring sheet of a shrimp boat on the Mississippi Sound. 

For all of my coloring sheets, click here.

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Despite FDA warnings, Mississippi lawmaker pushes hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment

Julien Behal, PA Wire

Drugs in a pharmacy.

An elected official is urging his constituents to sign a petition asking the governor to allow for the use of a controversial drug as a treatment for the coronavirus.

State Rep. Dana Criswell’s petition drive to get Gov. Tate Reeves to sign an order allowing the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 is unnecessary because there is nothing preventing the drug from being used in Mississippi.

“Most independent (pharmacists) are filling the hydroxychloroquine prescriptions now,” said Susan McCoy, executive director of the state Board of Pharmacists. “I have not had any calls reporting they are not. Some chains are not. That is a corporate decision.”

A spokesperson for the state Medical Licensure Board said it also is not prohibiting Mississippi doctors from writing prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine as long as the prescription can be justified — just like with any other drug.

It is not clear whether Reeves would have the authority to override existing laws – even in an emergency situation – to provide such an order. But apparently existing law currently does not prevent the drug from being prescribed.

Since April, McCoy said the web site for the Board of Pharmacy has simply said that “pharmacists should exercise caution dispensing these drugs in a community setting.” She added, in reality, the same rule should apply to all drugs.

“We have it on one web page,” she said. “I do not know if (Criswell) did not read it.”

The drug, which for years has been prescribed for lupus, other arthritis ailments and as a preventive for malaria, became controversial when President Donald Trump wholeheartedly endorsed it to treat the coronavirus. He even said he was taking it as a preventive at one point.

Based at least in part on Trump’s endorsement, the effectiveness of the drug has become a political issue.

Mississippi House

Rep. Dana Criswell, R-Olive Branch

“This treatment must be made available to the people of our state,” Criswell, the Olive Branch Republican, said. “Conservative Republicans have long demanded that government should not get between doctors and their patients. We hold the belief that government officials and bureaucrats should get out of the way and allow patient the “right to try” even experimental treatments.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rescinded its own emergency order approving the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. It has also cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat patients with COVID-19 because of numerous safety issues, “including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.” But, McCoy said, the FDA change does not mean the drug cannot be prescribed by physicians “off label,” for COVID-19.

The confusion, she said, is that some states have laws preventing their pharmacists from prescribing drugs off label. Mississippi does not, meaning it can be prescribed for a disease other than what it is approved for by the FDA. She said some chain drug stores prohibit their pharmacists from filling off label prescriptions.

“The jury is still out on this drug” as a treatment for the coronavirus, McCoy said. “What people don’t understand is that things change day to day. As things change, pharmacists still have to keep up with that.”

She said pharmacists should ensure the prescription is written to treat an individual patient, such as for a five to seven day regiment, and not for a prolonged period of time where it appeared the prescription was written to stockpile the drug. She added that the pharmacist should have a strong indication that the person receiving the prescription is being closely monitored by a physician.

Some studies have indicated that the drug can provide cardiac issues for some patients.

In his letter, Criswell said: “Please follow the lead of our president and bravely withstand the pressure of media and liberal politicians who prefer to see citizens die to gain political power. We beg you, stand for the people of Mississippi.”

In recent days the president has retweeted claims of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine made by Houston, Texas, doctor Stella Immanuel who also has claimed, among other things, that certain medical problems are caused by people having sex in their dreams with witches and demons and that scientists are developing an anti-religion vaccine, according to a report by the Daily Beast.

The post Despite FDA warnings, Mississippi lawmaker pushes hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Marshall Ramsey: This Is Fine

Darned if you do, darned if you don’t. Sure, it is good for kids to be in school — socially and academically. And working parents don’t want their kids left home alone. HOWEVER, we just happen to be in the middle of a huge spike of cases with widespread community spread of the disease (which will be made worse by the kids being in school.) You also have to be concerned about staff members who are at risk from the virus.  So should Mississippi go ahead and start schools now or wait like some districts have done? I guess we will find out.

The post Marshall Ramsey: This Is Fine appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Will Gov. Tate Reeves make a decision on schools this week? Teachers and parents are waiting.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Gov. Tate Reeves walks out of the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, March 26, 2020, as he prepares to speak to media about the coronavirus during a press conference.

As students are set to return to classrooms later this week and Mississippi becomes one of the nation’s most dangerous COVID-19 hotspots, all eyes are turning toward Gov. Tate Reeves, who is expected to announce a decision this week about whether to allow schools to reopen.

Reeves’ aides say the governor spent the weekend personally assessing reopening plans of the state’s 138 public school districts, which had to submit proposals to the state by Friday. The districts, thus far, have been given free rein to decide for themselves how and when to reopen, and most have opted to resume in-person instruction within the next week.

But last week, Reeves suggested he could delay the reopenings with a statewide mandate after reading the districts’ plans — which he’s been doing while on an out-of-state trip.

“He’s with his family on the coast — avoiding crowds and poring over the school reopening plans,” Parker Briden, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff for external affairs, said in a text message on Saturday. “He brought a binder about a foot high with all of our school districts’ plans — 598 pages in total — to read through while spending a few secluded days with his girls before they return to school.”

Briden said the governor also spoke with Vice President Mike Pence this weekend about school reopening plans and the coronavirus relief package being negotiated in Washington. Asked to address why Reeves was out of the state while such a consequential decision looms, Briden added: “If you’d like to know what he has for dinner, I can report back once he is done!”

Mississippi currently has the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the country and the third-highest daily new case rate. COVID hospitalizations continue to rise, and the daily patient rolls nearly doubled in the past month. A recent report from George Washington University shows Mississippi is one of 11 states either at or nearing a shortage of ICU providers.

Reeves allowing Mississippi schools to reopen would send more than 465,000 students, more than 30,000 teachers and thousands of other school staffers back to the classrooms this months. Education advocates say already cash-strapped school districts can’t handle the demands of virus preparation and warn that students, teachers and staff will suffer. Health experts say allowing schools to reopen now will further strain the hospital system.

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs in a video session on Friday with the Mississippi State Medical Association said he believes in-person school reopening should wait, at least until September.

“I was off,” Dobbs said in the video. “I thought maybe it would be the right time to start in August — until about a little while ago… I think it’s a good idea to delay school. There’s nothing magic about August.”

The president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, the state’s teachers union, addressed a video to Reeves on Monday morning, pointedly asking him to delay the start of school until early September. 

“Gov. Reeves, I am a second grade teacher, a public school advocate and a mom,” Jones said in the video. “I am asking you to keep our students, our educators and our communities safe by keeping school buildings closed until after Labor Day… Please understand, regardless of the decision you make this week, schools will eventually close. Those closures can happen safely now, with a comprehensive plan in place, or it can happen when the first outbreak happens, or when the unthinkable happens and we lose a member of a school community.

“This is quite literally an issue of life or death, and the ripple effects of this decision will be felt far beyond the confines of a school building,” Jones said on Monday.

Dobbs said the Health Department is also going to “recommend universal masks in schools for all age groups” and said he believes classes should have no more than half their normal capacity of students.

Dobbs said he has has reviewed school reopening plan summaries and been dismayed by some.

“A lot of them just say traditional school,” Dobbs said. “Believe it or not, ‘We’re just going back to school,’ which to me is wholly unacceptable. It’s crazy.”

“It’s impossible to imagine we are not going to pay the price for cramming kids into schools right now,” Dobbs said.

In recent days, Reeves has publicly warned of the dangers associated with children not returning to the classroom. Many parents are worried about how they’ll keep their jobs or handle childcare if their kids don’t start school on time. Parents and teachers alike have expressed concern over students’ wellbeing if they miss school and in-person interaction in a rural state where many districts lack the ability to provide adequate distance learning.

“The reopening of schools in this environment is a major challenge. I understand that,” Reeves said in a press conference on Thursday. “But to those individuals in our state who say the public health of the spread of the risk of the coronavirus is the only risk at play when making a decision about our schools are ignoring so many other risks that exist out there.”

Reeves continued: “We know that we are not going to mitigate 100% of the risk on either side of this equation. What we must do is look for innovative ways to reach what we all believe is the right outcome. And the right outcome longterm for kids is that they are in an environment that is loving and produces and provides an educational opportunity.”

As he weighs the schools decision, Reeves is also drawing scorn for not issuing a statewide mask mandate, as most other states have done, and Mississippi’s COVID statistics continue to worsen. As of Friday, Mississippians in 37 of the state’s 82 counties — representing more than half of the state’s population — were required to wear masks in public because of an executive order from Reeves.

Several medical professionals and local politicians have questioned why Reeves has ordered mask mandates for individual counties that are already seeing spikes in cases rather than being more proactive with a statewide mandate and stopping the virus spread before it begins.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is serving as the state’s acting governor as Reeves remains out of state — the typical process spelled out in state law.

The post Will Gov. Tate Reeves make a decision on schools this week? Teachers and parents are waiting. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mostly Sunny Tuesday Across North Mississippi

Good Tuesday Morning everyone! Temperatures are comfortable outdoors this morning and in the low 70s, under mostly clear skies. Almost everyone will stay dry & mostly sunny today, but there is a slight chance of a scattered shower/thunderstorm. Rain chances remain low for the entire work week, thanks to high pressure moving into the area. Temperatures will not be too oppressive today with a high near 87. North wind 5 to 10 mph. Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low around 66.

Faces of Tupelo: Melonie Kight

Today I went to I-Heart Media to meet Melonie Kight. She has a degree in commercial art and worked with U.S. Department of Agriculture. She got to help create the slides for the scientist as they studied bowevils. When she moved to Tupelo she was working with United Way. A volunteer with United Way was a manager at I-Heart media and offered her a sales position. The rest is history.

She loves meeting new people with her job and helping a clients business grow. When she meets with any client they do a Client Needs Assessment. This will help her to develop a marketing commercial specific to that customer. Her clients range from promoting events to promotions to advertising to digital sales. Her favorites are writing creative lifestyle commercials.

Melonie has learned in her years of media sales that the strangest thing can effect your economy. She has also learned that you may think you know what a business does until you sit down to interview them. She advises anyone looking to get into media sales to work hard and always be a good listener. You get out of the job what you put into it. But number 1 is to just have fun.

She believes that Tupelo is a small city with a big attitude. There are always things going on and things to do. In fact, she is involved with a-lot of the event committees including Friends of the Park and the 4th of July Committee. She would bet that people didn’t know that their I-Heart stations have stayed the same format throughout the years. She also loves when people learn that the stations they love are played here in Tupelo, MS. Their six stations include Wizard 106, KZ103, 92.5 The Beat, Big 99.3, WKMQ and The Alt 107.7. I-Heart radio is also the biggest podcaster in the country. That’s your trivia for the day.

Faces of Tupelo: Thomas Walker

This afternoon I met with Fire Chief Thomas Walker. Mr. Walker is from Iuka, MS but moved to Tupelo in 1998 to be an arson investigator for the Tishomingo Co Sheriff Department. He was an investigator for 6-7 years before being promoted to Fire Chief. Mr. Walker fell in love with the job of fire fighter at the age of 10. When he was old enough he became a volunteer and the rest is history.

He advises anyone looking to pursue this career to take 2 years of community college out of HS. Sign up for public service and public safety classes. Also get your EMT license. Apply for any and all departments. Don’t be picky but get your foot in the door. You have to start somewhere. He says that Columbia Southern has firefighting degrees that you can get online.

The Tupelo Fire Departments motto is “We Help People.” This is what Mr. Walker loves about his job. He knows that firefighters see people on their worst day. It is their job to help them get through this day. Part of the departments core training is teaching value and compassion to be that shoulder someone needs. Mr. Walker says that “God is in complete control and we are here to play a small part.”

Mr. Walker loves Tupelo for their opportunities and the people. His children have grown up here and excelled in school and sports. He says that when you live in Tupelo that there is no denying the Tupelo Spirit. It will inspire you all the time.

He loves his team and loves how hard they work. They work in 24 hour shifts and are constantly working on maintenance, cleaning hoses, training or running calls. Once their daily duties are done, then they can rest. I have seen in their down time they came a pretty mean grill. There are a total of 7 fire houses in Tupelo and they are all full of heroes.

Faces of Tupelo: Matt Laubhan

Matt Laubhan is from central Kansas. He never thought he would be living in Tupelo, MS, but as he said, “Sometimes God intervenes.” He and his wife Emily both work in the news and were able to move together to the same station.

Matt loves that they were able to move to a safe and vibrant town such as Tupelo, MS. He says that is a rarity in the TV business, but says he has really enjoyed raising his family here.

Ironically, even though he grew up in Kansas, he said he was scared of tornados. (I mean, they had the most famous tornado from the Wizard of Oz!) But luckily, what started as fear turned into curiosity and respect.

He loves that his job allows him to save people lives by keeping them up to date with the weather and upcoming storms. He very much understands that people can’t always predict the weather; that is up to science and God. But the science part allows him to predict the weather in ways that we previously weren’t able to.

He has also learned throughout this job that humility is important. “About the time you think you’ve got it all figured out, God sends a curveball, reminding you how little you really do know.”

The reason for this photo location is that this was part of the path of 2014 tornado. Matt had an amazing part in that story of keeping the city informed of the tornado’s path. I will let him tell that story because it was quite remarkable:

“We moved here in April 2011. My first day on air was April 14, 2011. On April 27, 2011, less than 2 weeks later, the largest tornado outbreak in US history occurred, including an E-F5 tornado in Smithville, an E-F5 tornado in Philadelphia, and an E-F5 tornado in Hackleburg/Phil Campbell, Alabama. There is no question in my mind that outbreak was the reason why God picked us up and moved us here. Because of the absolutely massive nature of the 2011 outbreak, people often lump the Tupelo tornado in with the outbreak.

The Tupelo E-F3 tornado occurred on April 28, 2014, three years and one day later. Both outbreaks were obvious a week before and myself and our meteorologists were screaming from the rafters that bad tornadoes were possible.

When the tornado hit, some of the tornado sirens did not sound. It was clearly visible from our tower cam, and we did street by street coverage of it as it moved through the city. It cut off power throughout town including at the TV station and severed our downstream internet connection for hours, leaving us blind for an hour. It knocked out DIRECTV, Dish, and cable, yet thankfully we continued to broadcast from our over the air transmitter, and folks could watch us online because of our amazing support staff.

No one died in the Tupelo tornado, although one woman did hydroplane during the storm. It has taken parts in the city years to recover. Unfortunately others died in tornadoes that occurred in Winston County later that day.

It was not the largest or strongest tornado in Tupelo history — those descriptions go to the 1936 tornado, which is one of the deadliest on record — but the lack of fatalities was truly God’s grace, and a testament to the people of Tupelo taking the warnings seriously.”

I will leave you with this last piece of advice from Matt : “If you ask the Lord and he is willing, only you can kill your dream before it begins. People can tell you that you can’t do it, and people can shame you for it, but it’s your dream, and no one will live it and make it fly like you can.”