Month: July 2015

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Friday/ it’s a goblin shark

It’s Shark Week on Discovery Channel here in the USA .. and here is a goblin shark gobbling up a fish.  These stills are from the Discovery website, here. This creature is a living fossil – in that it is the only one remaining from a family of sharks with a lineage dating back 125 million years.  Its specialized jaws can snap forward to capture prey.  The elongated flattened snout is covered with ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’ that enable it to sense minute electric fields, as little as a 10 millionth of a volt.

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Thursday/ getting around like a tourist

I could tell the tourist season is in full swing when in 3 minutes I spotted the Emerald City Trolley, the Duck and the monorail during my visit to downtown on Wednesday.  Tourists that go up in the Space Needle report that there is a haziness in the air looking north, and even looking south to Mt Rainier.  Much of the haziness is actually smoke from wildfires from way across the border in British Columbia, Canada!

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The Emerald City trolley does several tours. The cheapest deal is a one day hop-on, hop-off Scenic Downtown Tour pass that goes for $29.
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And here’s the Duck from Ride-the-Duck tours (cost $29).   And look! the venerable monorail train from the Space Needle is just arriving at Westlake Center.  
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The Ride-the-Duck tour route.
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Wednesday/ glitch hunt

7-9-2015 9-28-07 AMWednesday was a rough day for big technology in the United States.   First, a computer problem in United Airlines’s reservation system caused the FAA to impose what is known as a ground stop at 8:26 a.m. ET.  The stop only lasted about two hours, but this impacted 4,900 flights worldwide.   Then at 11.32 am ET the New York Stock Exchange went out for 3 ½ hours.   While this was unnerving, these days there are some 11 other exchanges that could still be used for trading, though.  Finally, Microsoft announced it was laying off 7,800 jobs as its mobile phone unit and Nokia acquisition continue to struggle.  Far, far away in Finland, the head of web communications in the Prime Minister’s Office, Pekka Pekkala minced no words about the impact of these layoffs on the city of Salo (pop.54,000).

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Tuesday/ sweating in Seattle

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My air conditioner, as ‘installed’ in my bedroom. (It is a temporary installation).

It was the warmest June ever here in Seattle with eight days at 85°F (30°C) or higher in June. On Sunday, east of the Cascade Mountains, the mercury hit 113°F (45°C) in Walla Walla in central Washington State. Yikes!

I usually manage to cool down my bedroom during Seattle ACwarm summer evenings by opening the window for a few hours .. but that strategy has not worked these last few weeks. So it was a relief to get my hands on a used portable conditioner, and now I can cool down the bedroom nicely before bedtime.

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Monday/ is that a gun in your pocket?

.. or are you just looking to get shot?  The New York Police Dept sent out a tweet discouraging people from buying this cell phone case.   I looked it up – it was on sale on the web site http://www.japantrendshop.com/ but they pulled the item from the catalog. (Smart thing to do).   Go for the ‘Samurai Umbrella’ instead, also on offer on the website.

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Sunday/ the Space Needle panocam

Check out the cool Space Needle ‘panocam’ at this link.  If it is night time, one can always click on the ‘Best Views’ links on the panel on the right to see recorded views from previous days.   This one below shows a cruise ship at one of the two terminals here.  In 2015, Seattle will host 192 cruise ships and more than 895,000 passengers. (I still have to take my obligatory cruise up to Alaska!  Yes!).

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Saturday/ 4th of July

We celebrated Independence Day on Saturday here in the United States.   Here is a picture of the fireworks over Seattle’s Lake Union.  The colors of the fireworks were mostly red, white and blue (of course).

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Fireworks on Saturday night over Seattle’s Lake Union. (Source : http://lakeunionbeat.com/)

 

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Friday/ protonic blue metallic

This gleaming low-slung machine that I spotted here on Republican St and 15th Ave may look as if it is about to vroom across the intersection – but it actually made no sound as it accelerated forward and turned left.

It is BMW’s plug-in hybrid sports car made from carbon fiber and aluminum, the i8.  Tesla owners can rightfully point out their cars are completely electric .. but it’s a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison.  The i8 is shaped like a supercar. I see a reviewer reports that the seats are so low that you ‘roll’ out of it after nudging the butterfly doors up and away from you.

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The BMW i8 is a plug-in hybrid sports car made from carbon fiber and aluminum. You’re going to need to part with at least $135k to buy this machine.  BMW calls the color ‘protonic blue metallic’.

 

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Thursday/ falling off a cliff

Check out these charts of the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s composite index. As of the end of the day Friday in China, the index is down 27% from its June 12 peak, wiping out some $2.4 trillion of value.  Individual investors* account for about 80 percent of trading on mainland Chinese exchanges.

*Investor or trader or speculator? I’d say one would you have stay in the market for oh, one year, to be called an investor.

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Where will it stop?  A one year view of the Shanghai Stock Exchange composite index shows how far it has gone up in one year (150%). But even with a 27% loss from its recent high there is still lots of room to fall.
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Twin peaks? This chart shows the massive 460% commodities-driven boom in 2006-2007 which fell back to earth with the index going sideways for 6 years before the recent run-up to 5,000.
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Wednesday/ will the Grexit happen?

Will the Grexit happen?  (Greece exiting from the Eurozone and going back to the drachma, and forge ahead on its own).  Greece owes its creditors way more than it can pay, even after several years of painful austerity that has crimped its economy by 25%, and left half of young people unemployed.   On Tuesday night it defaulted on a key payment to the International Monetary Fund, becoming the first developed nation to ever default on its international obligations.

So now there is a referendum on Sunday, which makes no sense in a way.  As the New York Times says : Imagine the fate of your country hangs on a yes-or-no question. The question is drafted in cryptic, bureaucratic language and asks you to decide on an economic program that no longer exists. Leaders in neighboring countries are begging you to vote yes. Your government is begging you to vote no.  

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A graphic from CNN.com showing what might happen after the referendum.
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Tuesday/ the Venus and Jupiter conjunction

There was a smattering of stargazers and their telescopes out at Volunteer Park on Tuesday night when I walked by there.    I soon found out the excitement was over the two brightest planets in the night sky – Venus and Jupiter – that were to appear very close together in the night sky.   They only appear to do so, though, because of their locations in the night sky. At the time of the conjunction, Venus was 49 million miles from Earth while Jupiter was more than 10 times farther, 564 million miles. Check out this video from NASA.   As time goes by, the planets appear closer together.