These days, stamps from Japan is one of my favorite searches on EBay.
I couldn’t resist this beautiful postcard and stamp from 1921 that was offered for just a few dollars.
50th Anniversary of the Establishment of Postal Service in Japan in 1871 Issued Apr. 20, 1921 Perf. 13 x 13½ | Uncoated paper | Engraved 164 A47 3 sen violet-brown Ministry of Communications Building, Tokyo ____________ Translation of the Japanese text on the postage stamp: At the top 貳拾五年紀念奉祝 (Nijūgo-nen Kinen Hōshuku) – “50th Year Commemorative Celebration” At the bottom 日本郵便 (Nihon Yūbin) – “Japan Post” 三銭 (San sen) – “3 Sen” (Sen is a sub-unit of the yen, used until 1953. Following World War II, the yen lost much of its pre-war value as Japan faced a debt crisis and hyperinflation) Bottom right: 大日本帝國政府印刷局製造 (Dai Nippon Teikoku Seifu Insatsu-kyoku Seizō) – “Manufactured by the Printing Bureau of the Government of the Empire of Japan” [Sources: stampworld.com, Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue 2017, Vol. 4, Chat GPT]
From capenature.co.za:
One of the Western Cape’s most mysterious mammals, the Boosmansbos long-tailed forest shrew (Myosorex longicaudatus boosmani), has made a reappearance, 46 years after it was last recorded!
The Boosmansbos long-tailed forest shrew (Myosorex longicaudatus boosmani) [Photo by Cliff Dorse, posted on capenature.co.za]Conservationists from CapeNature, Grootvadersbosch Conservancy and Helihack, together with volunteer biologists, were ecstatic at finding one of these tiny mammals on the edge of a pristine forest patch on CapeNature’s Boosmansbos Wilderness Area.
First described in 1979 by scientist Nico Dippenaar, the shrew was recognised as a unique subspecies, geographically isolated from its relatives by the Gouritz Valley. Its limited known range, combined with forest habitat loss and climate change, led to it being listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2016.
Nico Dippenaar, the scientist who first described the shrew in 1979 and recognised it as a unique subspecies, geographically isolated from its relatives by the Gouritz Valley. [Photo from capenature.co.za]Armed with Dippenaar’s habitat descriptions from his published account of the shrew, the team embarked on their fourth attempt in four years to find the shrew. Dippenaar, now retired, wished the group luck and fondly referred to the species as “a bit of a darling”. The survey took place from 3-6 May, with the shrew found on 4 May.
Previous attempts to catch the elusive shrew using standard rodent live traps had been unsuccessful, and it was hoped that a new method – pitfall traps – would be more rewarding. But getting all the necessary gear up to the remote wilderness area, with no vehicle access, was a challenge.
Fortunately for the team, Helihack came to the rescue. This initiative is focused on safeguarding the protected area from invasive alien pines, using helicopters to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. In partnership with CapeNature, Helihack has already made huge strides in addressing this threat to the World Heritage Site. The team were airlifted to a wilderness campsite and then hiked down to set 76 pitfall traps across various habitats.
Each trap was prepared with bedding, shelter, and the occasional earthworm. At first, the traps yielded nothing—but one of the final traps revealed a small mammal with a 6 cm tail, unmistakably the long-lost Boosmansbos long-tailed forest shrew. Weighing just 13.7 grams, it was measured, photographed, and released unharmed into its forest habitat.
Left to right: Dominique Coetzee and Makoma Mpekwane (CapeNature Conservation Officers, GVB), Dr Andrew Turner (CapeNature Restoration Ecologist), Dr Marienne de Villiers (CapeNature Faunal Ecologist), Cliff Dorse (biologist). [Photo from capenature.co.za]This remarkable discovery was made possible by a group of enthusiastic, motivated, and skilled partners working together to achieve a range of biodiversity goals—from conducting surveys to managing invasive alien plants—all in an effort to keep the superb Boosmansbos in a healthy state for all to enjoy. A genetic sample of the shrew will now be analysed to clarify its relationship to lower-altitude relatives, while further research is needed to better understand its life history, behavioural ecology, and the status of its only known population. Intensive surveys of other forest patches may yet reveal more about its distribution. But for now, it’s enough to celebrate that the special shrew of Boosmansbos is still alive and well!
I tagged along for a test drive in a new Tesla Model Y today.
The cabin inside feels familiar to the old model Y’s, but it has a number of upgrades, of course. The inside is quieter, for starters, with double pane glass all around now. The console has been upgraded, with a second smaller screen for those in the back seats. (The same media— radio station, game, movie— plays on both the front and back screens, but the vents and air conditioning for the back can be adjusted separately on the second screen). Check out the lavender LED accent stripe that runs around the dashboard and windows. It can be set to any color, or to white, or turned off altogether). The materials used for the dashboard and inside are mostly not top-notch, but seems good enough. Everything fancy costs extra money, right?All right. Now we’re heading north on I-5, with the Full Self-Driving (FSD) (Supervised) engaged (the blue line on the console). The FSD is getting better and better and performed well at intersections. Things can still get complicated when trying to get the car to pick a parking space in a parking lot, or when a vague destination is given to the car, such as just to go to a large shopping mall. The drive mode stalk on the right of the steering wheel was taken out, and the console is now used to engage Park or Drive or Reverse. (The turn signal stalk is still there, on the left of the steering wheel.)Yes, you are very cute, Grease Monkey 🙊 .. but we are just going to wave back at you and drive on by. Our car does not use gas and oil – Yay!
I had lunch at the Washington Athletic Club in downtown today, and took these pictures.
The U.S. Bank Center building between 5th and 6th Avenue is 44 stories tall and opened in 1989. I had worked inside it on occasion— once upon a time, and years ago now. The American Eagle clothing store that used to be in the domed structure on the corner is long gone.There are still lots and lots of empty storefronts downtown. This used to be the Nike store in downtown Seattle (formerly NikeTown), on 6th Ave and Pike St. It closed down permanently in January 2023.A line of lavender taxi cabs at the entrance to the Sheraton Hotel. (So yes, they are still in business and have not been completely supplanted by Uber drivers).Here is where I had my lunch, on the second floor. It is open to Washington Athletic Club members only, and I was invited by a member of the club 🤗.Done with lunch and now I am snapping a few more pictures on the way to the Seattle Library. The Skinner building was built in 1926 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I love the detail on the frames above the entrance.A close-up view of Park Place building on 6th Avenue. It is a 21-story office tower built in the 1970s and fully renovated by international architect and tenant Gensler in 2012. Is this an example of brutalist architecture*? I wondered. *Brutalist architecture is a style known for its use of raw concrete, bold geometric forms, and functional design, often characterized by a rough, unadorned aesthetic.The Crowne Plaza Seattle-Downtown on 6th Ave is a 34-story hotel that was built in 1980 and renovated in 2019. That’s the Park Place building from the previous picture, in the reflection.Looks like Seattle International Film Festival 2025 is about to start. That first frame on the film negative below is from the 2023 romance/drama movie Past Lives. (I have seen it and I liked it a lot).Arrived at the Seattle Public Library‘s entrance on 5th Avenue, and I’m taking the obligatory shot (obligatory for me) of the diamond pattern of the outside frame.Done in the library and waiting for the G-line bus. In the reflection is the 1928 building of what is today the nine-story Executive Hotel Pacific.And here comes the G-line bus on Spring Street, to take me back up to Capitol Hill.
“It’s really not at all clear what it is we should do”
– Fed Chair Jay Powell explaining at a news conference this week why the Federal Reserve Board decided to keep interest rates steady (instead of cutting them)
We are 30 days into the 90 day-hold that was announced by Trump for the (ridiculous) reciprocal tariffs on April 9. Now he ‘might’ lower the rate from 145% to 80%.
And what were the tariffs before all of this insanity?
Average US tariffs on Chinese exports now stand at 124.1 percent. These tariffs are more than 40 times higher than before the US-China tariff war began in 2018 and are already 6 times higher than the average US tariff on China of 20.8 percent when the second Trump administration began on January 20, 2025.
[Source: Peterson Institute for International Economics]
VATICAN CITY — Habemus Papam! The world’s 1.4 billion Catholics have a new leader — Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the first American-born pope.
Prevost, 69, is originally from Chicago and has chosen the papal name Leo XIV. He was most recently the head of the dicastery responsible for the appointment of bishops and the archbishop emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru.
– Senior Reporter Alexander Smith writing for NBC News
The new pope on the balcony in Vatican City. [Still image from NBC News]A 2018 tweet from Cardinal Cupich, archbishop of Chicago at the time, that was retweeted in 2018 by the new pope. At the time in 2018, Robert Prevost was bishop of Chiclayo, a city in Peru. He became an archbishop in January 2023, and a few months later pope Francis made him a cardinal.
I found these bearded irises on my walk tonight.
Similar-looking ones online are called ‘Stepping Out’, and that may be what this white-and-purple variety is called.
It felt like summer today.
The high was near the record for this day on the calendar:
78°F (26°C) today, and the record is 81°F (27°C) recorded on May 6, 1957.
There will be cooler weather again for the rest of the week.
I updated this page in my stamp album today.
I added a new line of ½ penny springbok stamps, from 1947.
Only a very finely calibrated ruler will show the ¼ mm size difference between the printed designs of the stamps issued in 1937 (18½x22½ mm), in August 1947 (18¼x22¼ mm) issue and in November 1947 (18×22 mm).
A quarter mm is only one one-hundredth of an inch!
The postal authorities tried to squeeze in a little more white space between the stamps in the 1947 printings, for the perforation machine.
I added in one more line with ½ penny springbok stamps, and pushed the red 1d Dromedaris* ones onto the next page.
*The “Drommedaris” was a Dutch ‘jaght’, a type of sailing vessel, built in 1645. It was operated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from 1645 to 1661. The Drommedaris played a significant role in the establishment of a halfway stop for VOC ships on the trade route between Europe and the East Indies. Ultimately, the Drommedaris’s voyages to Table Bay led to the establishment of a crucial trading post and settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, in what would become the Mother City— the city of Cape Town, South Africa.
Here’s a Hummer EV SUV that I found on the street tonight.
It made me look up the history of the Hummer, as well as a picture I had taken in Chicago of a Hummer stretch limousine.
Here it is (information gleaned from Wikipedia):
The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV; colloquial: Humvee) rolled into service in the US military in 1985, and saw widespread use in the Gulf War of 1991.
The Hummer H1 was released for the civilian market in 1992, followed by the Hummer H2 (2002-2009) and a Hummer H3 pickup truck (2005-2010). There was a Hummer HX open-air, off-road prototype concept car in 2008, and a prototype plug-in hybrid in 2009.
It was only in late 2021 that the GMC Hummer EV (badged as HEV) made its debut, though— a line of battery electric heavy-duty vehicles produced by General Motors, and sold under the GMC marque.
Here’s the GMC Hummer EV. There’s a HUMMER EV 2X (2 electric motors) and a 3X (3 electric motors) but I don’t know which one this is. I believe this color’s name is Tide Metallic. Look for H-U-M-M-E-R in the small headlights under the hood. Hard to say exactly what this beast cost its owner, but it must be close to $100k, or even more than that..Here’s a Hummer stretch limousine from 2005, in downtown Chicago, Illinois. A Hummer H2 was cut behind the cab, and the chassis was extended to create a passenger section for more than a dozen passengers. There is surely a mini-fridge inside as well, to chill a bottle of champagne, or two— right?
It was beautiful outside today (68°F/ 20°C).
I walked down to Capitol Hill library to return two books, where I found the latest issue of The Atlantic on the magazine rack, with some unsettling writing inside (see below).
In the upside-down place we find ourselves with the Trump administration, it’s almost a positive that his 42%-or-so approval rating after 100 days in office is the lowest of any modern US president.
P.S. The US stock market held up surprisingly well this week, and April’s jobs report showed a gain of 177,000 jobs, exceeding expectations. Unemployment remains steady at 4.2%, and average hourly earnings rose modestly.
Here are the headlines and taglines from inside: I Should Have Seen This Coming When I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, there were two types of people: those who cared earnestly about ideas, and those who wanted only to shock the left. The reactionary fringe has won. DAVID BROOKS —- The Hollow Men It takes a special talent to betray an entire worldview without missing a beat. GEORGE PACKER —- America’s Future Is Hungary MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished. ANNE APPLEBAUM —- Watching the Rise of a Dual State For most people, the courts will continue to operate as usual—until they don’t. AZIZ HUQ
Three of us went down to Cal Anderson Park at noon, to protest in support of workers’ rights, and those of immigrants. (A panoply of other protestations were depicted on the posters that people had made). We joined the march to downtown that started at 2 pm.
The crowd that marched was not huge— reportedly somewhat over 1,000 people— and the protesters spanned two to three blocks as they walked.
We stepped out of the march by the Seattle Convention Center to look at the crowd and the rest of the protest signs. The marchers went further on down Pike Street, and turned on First Avenue to reach the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of 2025, contracting by an annualized rate of 0.3 percent — a stark reversal after nearly three years of solid growth, as tariff-related uncertainty upended spending patterns and raised fears of an impending recession.
– Abha Bhattarai writing in the Washington Post
The new report on gross domestic product, released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Wednesday morning, showed the first deceleration of the U.S. economy since the pandemic-fueled supply chain woes of early 2022. [Graph and text from the Washington Post]This economic slowdown came primarily from a dramatic increase in imports — which count against GDP — as businesses rushed to purchase foreign goods ahead of President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs. The trade deficit — the difference between incoming and outgoing goods — is the widest it has ever been, which is expected to be a significant drag on economic growth. Sales of American-made goods to other countries help bolster GDP, while purchases of foreign-made products count against it. [Graph and text from the Washington Post]
The weather was cool today (55°F / 13°C), with a light rain— just enough to form pearly droplets on plants with large, waxy leaves.
I believe these are redwood sorrel (Oxalis oregana) leaves.
It made me look up the surface tension* of water again (see table below). Water has the highest surface tension of almost all common liquids. There is mercury of course, that blows all the competition away. On the low end, liquid helium stands alone with virtually no surface tension, and in a state of superfluidity it flows without friction or viscosity.
*Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects to float on a water surface without becoming even partly submerged. [Wikipedia]
Congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney and to the people of Canada with their election results.
Headlines from the Washington Post, with a pictures from Reuters.
P.S. There was this post on Truth Social (read: anti-truth, anti-social) from the President of the United States this morning. Illuminating. Hallucinating.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America.
No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER.
ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!
America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
I walked around downtown’s Third Avenue this afternoon, and took a few pictures of the new First Light 48-story condominium complex at the edge of Belltown neighborhood. I had no access to go inside, but just look up “First Light Seattle” for glamorous pictures of the pool deck, and views of Puget Sound and the Space Needle.
It has 459 units that range from studios ($650k and up) to 3-bed, 3-bath penthouses ($3m and up).
This is Virginia Street, with 3rd Avenue at the traffic light. The First Light condo tower has 48 stories. That cantilevered structure at the top is a deck with a swimming pool and a hot tub.Third Avenue is on the route for several buses; also the C-Line Rapid Ride. Great for the condo residents and their visitors to have bus stops right there, but one has to wonder how many will actually use it. There is an 8-level parking garage with 373 parking spaces below the tower!Looking up, standing on 3rd Avenue. The City of Seattle has made great strides at keeping the downtown streets tidy and clean. There actually were cleaners out and about today with their three-wheel bikes fitted with large baskets with brooms and cleaning supplies.The base floors of the building have these strands of cables fitted with disks of glass. The First Light website says designer John Hogan’s “veil” of strung glass disks by the office floors diffuse the bland looks outside (parking garages and brick walls), and at the same time increases the privacy inside.So yes: in the immediate vicinity of the First Light building (looking south down 3rd Avenue), the old parking garages and brick buildings do not offer a whole lot to look at.
I touched up my stamp album pages for Namibia today, and noticed that there is a mineral on the R5 stamp named after me*: Willemite.
*Actually, it is named after King William I of the Netherlands 😁.
Willemite is a silicate mineral (Zn2SiO4), discovered in 1829 in the Belgian Vieille-Montagne mine. Mineralogist Armand Lévy was shown samples by a student at the university where he was teaching, and he named it after William I. It is occasionally spelled villemite.
[From Wikpedia]
These stamps were issued in 1991 and 1992, and are still denominated in South African rand. The Namibian dollar (NAD) was introduced in 1993, replacing the country’s use of the South African rand (ZAR). South African rand is still widely accepted in Namibia, though.On Mar. 21, 1990, the territory called South West Africa became independent from South Africa, and a new country called Namibia was established. Here is the front page of the New York Times reporting on it.
