a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It was a beautiful sunny, blue-sky day (61° F/ 16°C), and I hopped onto the Bremerton ferry, to go check out the marina there, and the Navy Museum. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap.
I walked by a new condo development here on Capitol Hill this afternoon, and wondered what was there before. It turns out there was a stately 1901 home there with triangles and bay windows – which will now become boxes and rectangles.
Nuclear war? Trade war? Maybe just a trade war.
The State Dept stated just this morning that talks between the US and North Korea were ‘a long way off’. This evening, a delegation of South Korean envoys announced on the White House driveway that President Trump and Kim Jong-un will meet before the end of May. This will be the first time ever that a US President meet with North Korea since the Korean War Armistice of 1953. (Oh, and never mind that annual US-South Korea military exercises are to take place in April – and that U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun resigned just two weeks ago).
Why did the South Koreans announce the talks (and not the White House)?
Can Kim Jong-un be trusted?
What is even on the table?
Update Fri 3/9: By Friday night Press Secretary Sanders had walked back Trump’s commitment to meet with Kim Jong-un. (‘No meeting without concrete steps and action’). And then her walk-back was walked back by the White House – sort of.
Brett Stephens writes in the NYT that we do not know if Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn quit ‘out of horror of the president’s protectionist turn, or merely out of the pique of losing a policy argument’ (over the trade tariffs). What is certain, is that the Trump Administration is looking increasingly unstable and unable to retain key personnel.
The Republicans are finally getting worried that Trump’s economic and trade policies might make trouble. (They were not too worried about the tax cuts massively increasing the deficit). The House sent a letter today, signed by 107 representatives, asking Trump to refrain from implementing broad-based tariff measures that could trigger trade wars with Europe, China, and even Canada.
Will we be OK? It’s been 10 years since 2008’s global financial crisis. During a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ last week, Bill Gates was asked if, in the near future, the U.S. will have another crisis similar to 2008. ‘Yes’, he said, admitting that the question would be better directed at Warren Buffet. ‘It is hard to say when, but this is a certainty’.
Saarinen (1910-1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer, noted for his neo-futuristic style. I also learned that Saarinen was the architect of the Gateway Arch in St Louis.
Alright – as of now, there is no real use for these monster numbers, but modestly large primes are put to good use in computer encryption.
The Great Internet Prime Search foundation will award $150,000 for the discovery of the first prime number with 100 million digits, and $250,000 for the first prime with at least a billion digits. The search is on!
*Prime numbers are whole numbers that can be divided only by themselves, and by 1. The number 1 is not considered a prime, but then the primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and so on. Mersenne primes are named for the French monk that studied them some 350 years ago. They are written in the form 2n -1. (So 3 is the first Mersenne prime, since it can be expressed as 22 -1). Euclid’s proof shows that there are infinitely many regular primes. We do not know if that is the case for Mersenne primes.
The Wall Street Journal had a little report about Oscar enthusiasts that watch all 59 movies before the big night, driving many miles to art theatres for the foreign films or documentaries. (That’s not me!).
I still want to go see Darkest Hour with Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Winston Churchill in WW2, though, and also on my list: The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name and animated film winner Coco.
Nice to see Bladerunner 2049 winning in Visual Effects as well as Cinematography.
Someone noted on Twitter that none of the movies directed by women, won any Oscars: a disappointment.
Harvey Weinstein, and several other men in the Hollywood industry accused of sexual harassment, now persona non grata, were nowhere to be seen.
The movie is not not devoid of racism – in more than one scene, a white character finds out what it’s like to be in a world in which black people have wealth, technology and military might. (A world where white people are not allowed, in fact!). Overall, the movie has a great message, though: in the real world full of different nations and ethnicities, we are all our brother’s keeper.
It was another week of Trump chaos. (‘Never have we seen such chaos and corruption‘, opines Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post). As Alec Baldwin’s tweet says: we are hanging in there until we have the impeachment hearings, the resignation speech, and the farewell helicopter ride to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s long-time Communications Director (Hope Hicks) announced she is resigning, after admitting she tells ‘white lies’ for the President.
It’s been more than a year since Trump himself gave a press conference.
It now looks as if son-in-law Jared Kushner punished Qatar last April, by supporting a blockade against them, just weeks after they refused to invest in his private firm.
Do these people do anything at all for American citizens, for the country? Kushner never, ever says anything on the record, and does not speak to the press, or in public.
On Thursday, Trump announced* trade tariffs of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminum imports, out of the blue, defying the advice of economic advisor Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. ‘Trump starts trade war’, said all the major European and Asian newspapers this morning. Economists universally agree: trade wars are bad. *Still to be signed into law, some time next week.
As many observers note:
1. It’s unsettling to have a President with no impulse control.
2. These crises are all of Trump’s making. What will he do when a real one hits?
I saw ‘Black Panther’ (more about it later) in the IMAX theater here in the Pacific Science Center today.
The Pacific Science Center was designed by Minoru Yamasaki for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, and housed the United States Science Pavilion. It is located right by the city’s iconic Space Needle.
Yamasaki was born in Seattle in 1912, a second-generation immigrant. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1934, and became a very successful architect with his own firm in Seattle.
He was the architect of two prominent buildings in downtown Seattle: the IBM Building (1963) and Rainier Bank Tower (1977). His firm won the contract to design the St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in 1953, but the project ended in disaster. It was a big setback for his firm and for his reputation.
