Willem's Planet

There was a wide-spread Google server outage this Monday morning, which wreaked havoc on my ability to do any work.  Our Google ‘cloud’ e-mail is accessed through the Chrome browser, as are several other mission critical applications : Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Hangouts.   On top of that my local internet service provider Comcast, experienced a brief outage as well.

Finally, as I turned the TV on during lunch to check on the stock market close, it was apparently time for the monthly test of the King County emergency broadcasting system. Well ! I thought.  At least I will know if that 9.0 earthquake- tsunami is coming for me during the next 15 minutes!

(All this information from TIME magazine’s March 07 cover story). ‘You can’t have a person driving a 2-ton death machine’ said Elon Musk at a conference last year.  The numbers are sobering : about 33,000 Americans die in auto accidents in a year, with an additional 2 million or so injured.  Some 94% of accidents are the fault of drivers.  The price tag for this mayhem comes to some $836 billion by one estimate.  Even if only 10% of vehicles can be converted to self-driving cars or trucks, the number of accidents could be reduced by 211,000 and 1,100 lives be saved every year.   But it will not be easy. Whole industries (such as the auto insurance industry) will be upended, and as TIME puts it :  even though there is no ‘right to drive’ enshrined in the US Constitution .. ‘in the throne room of the American psyche, a driver’s seat occupies center stage’.

Man. What an embarrassment the Republican ‘Presidential’ debate on Thursday night in Detroit, Michigan, was.  (Quotes added since hardly any presidential demeanor was on display. It was a schoolyard brawl.) Donald Trump called Marco Rubio ‘Little Marco’ and Ted Cruz ‘Lying Ted’. Forget ‘Mister’ or ‘Senator’. Forget waiting your turn to speak.  Just interrupt as soon as the other guy starts talking. And is this exchange for real? (yes, it is, verbatim): Trump to Rubio joking about his anatomy. “He referred to my hands,” said Trump. “If they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee.”    The nation averts its eyes and covers its ears.

The results for the ‘Super Tuesday’ elections are in. (Super Tuesday is called that since 11 states have their 2016 Presidential primary elections on this same day).   I love the maps of the USA that show the states that voted.   Here are the Republican Party’s results and the Democratic Party’s results on two maps (from the on-line edition of the New York Times). It’s looking more and more like it’s going to be Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton in the November general election.

It’s the 29th of Feb! .. a day that comes by only once in four years, but then again, it’s a completely arbitrary thing and a human invention, the leap year with its leap day.  Check out Amanda Foreman’s write-up in the weekend’s Wall Street Journal about the calendars and how Pope Gregory XIII’s calendar became the one that we have measured the days of the year by since 1582.

It’s spring here in California, that’s for sure!  Our project is in its final three weeks, and the remaining project team members have given up their office space in Walnut Creek and moved to San Ramon. It is an upgrade of sorts : the old building in Walnut Creek was built in the 1970s with outdated cubicles and all.  This building is more or less state-of-the-art; not Google or Facebook league, but still new with a ‘town square’ cafeteria space, ‘huddle rooms’ for quick meetings, and meeting rooms with built-in projectors and electrical outlets right there on the desktop (and not on the floor in a corner somehere).

Turn down the thermostat to 65 °F (18.3 °C) to fall asleep easier, and sleep better, says the science about sleep.  The body’s core temperature actually needs to drop by 2 or 3 °F to initiate sleep.  And what I suspect many of us in warmer climates know : the body tries to lose heat through the hand and feet, so stick one or two out from under the blanket if the room temperature is a little too high.

The Jeb Bush for the 2016 Republican nominee for President campaign is over : a spectacular failure of the very high expectations of all his donors that had amassed a $103 million campaign war chest just a year ago.  Earnest, thoughtful and modest, Jeb might well have been the best of the Bush presidents. If only he hadn’t been the third one, writes Matt Latimer on Politico.com, here.

Hey, I don’t agree with the man’s politics and policies, but now we are left with candidates such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.   As political observer Ezra Klein says here, we need to stop laughing at Trump (and take him seriously); he’s downright dangerous.  Or : never mind Trump.  Watch out for Ted Cruz, and do not vote for him.  See what Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, says about him, here.

On Saturday I took the street car down to Seattle’s Japan Town (it really occupies just a few city blocks, adjacent to the much larger Chinatown).  I ended up buying this 2008 poster called ‘Nihontown’.  It is from a local artist called Ken ‘Enfu’ Taya, and here is a full explanation of the mash-ups of American and Japanese icons that had been crammed into the poster, from his website.

Check out this cartoon tweeted by Jimmy Margulies.  This is what it is all about : Apple can help the FBI open San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone, which could lead to information to track down other terrorists. Apple has declined. Farook’s iPhone 5c was legally obtained by the FBI with a search warrant for Farook’s Lexus. The FBI is suing Apple, and Apple has vowed to appeal if it loses its case.  I think I side with Gabriel Malor’s point of view, here.