Category: General

On Aug 25, it was 100 years to the day since Congress had passed legislation that brought the National Parks Service into being.   All is not well in paradise, though.  There are money troubles. From the Washington Post : The natural beauty of the parks is unquestioned, but the human touches that make them accessible aren’t all pretty. The system faces a $12 billion maintenance shortfall that has left such entities as bridges and restrooms in disrepair. Yellowstone’s backlog alone is $603 million with crumbling roads, buildings and wastewater systems. Congress has declined to provide funding needed for fixes that have lingered for more than a decade.

P.S. Check out this cute sleeping bear that the NPS tweeted out. I want to go to sleep just like that.

With another recent birthday under the belt, I thought I’d check out this article in the New York Times, offering 15 ways to be a better person.  I think my favorites in this list are : ‘wear comfortable underwear’, ‘drink coffee’, ‘make sure you are the boss of your electronic devices’ and ‘be generous to those who have helped you’.

The New York Times has published amazing – and shocking pictures in an article about the historic levels of flooding in Louisiana around the city of Baton Rouge.  These floods were produced by a rainstorm with no name, that brought 20 inches and more some areas, in a few days, since last Friday.  It’s the biggest natural disaster in the USA since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  The flooding would have been a big national story, were it not for the day and night coverage of the Rio Olympics and the unusually wild campaigns President in the November election.  (82 days to go).

I am so thrilled to finally have some pots with beautiful greenery in them, set up at the back of my house on the patio.  I had help – a lot of help! – from a landscaper friend in setting it up.  We are having warm weather (90 °F/ 32 °C), and no rain, so I have to keep the pots watered !

I wondered what distance in the Olympic swimming pool for 0.01 seconds of time would come to. Well, let’s see. Swimmers go at it at about 5 miles per hour.  There are 1,600 meters in a mile.  So 5 miles/ hour x1,600 m/ mile /(3,600 sec/hour)*0.01 sec = 0.0022 m. That’s 22 mm, or just about one inch.  I hope the swimming pool contractor built the pool as a perfect rectangle.  One lane that is an inch longer than another, can make the difference between gold and silver!

But never mind the hundredth of a second for swimming. Here’s German cyclist Kristina Vogel edging out James of Great Britain by .. looks like 4 thousands of a second, for the gold.  Whoah.

Those of us that watch a lot of cable news here in the States (me) were ‘treated’ to another week of incendiary remarks made by Donald Trump on the campaign trail.  It was not enough to insult the mother of a fallen soldier (side note : Trump dodged the draft five times during the Viet Nam War).  Let’s troll for even more attention by calling on gun-owners to ‘maybe do something, I don’t know (shrug shoulders)’ about Hillary Clinton getting elected, and appointing Supreme Court judges we do not like.

Hmm, and what else?  Yes.  We will say President Obama founded ISIS, and Hillary co-founded it.  And double-down on it the next day, say I meant it ‘literally*’, and then walk it back on Friday as ‘sarcasm’.

*Literally means : exactly, precisely, actually, really, truly.

I love the flags that the NBC’s computer-enhanced video shows in the swimlanes at swim events. (It disappears as soon as the swimmers plunge into the pool at the start).

As for the flags that are raised behind the medals podium, I see there is a little flap about the Chinese flag.  The one that they have at the Games is not quite accurate.  The four little stars are not tilted towards the big one.

The massive Soberanos wildfire here in the mountains south of Monterey Bay was in day 19 on Tuesday and only 50% contained. The fire was caused by someone who lit an illegal campfire near a waterfall off the Soberanes Canyon Trail in Garrapata State Park).   It now covers almost 60,000 acres (93 square miles) over rugged, inaccessible terrain.

I see the Christ The Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro is considered one of the ‘new’ Severn Wonders of the World. (So who decided which wonderful things the seven ‘Wonders’ are?  The ‘New Seven Wonders of the World was an initiative that started in 2000 as a project for the new millennium, to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. The New7Wonders Foundation – based in Zurich, Switzerland – announced the winners announced on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon.   They claim more than 100 million votes were cast through internet or by telephone, but critics say not enough controls were in place and that the survey was therefore ‘unscientific’).

I watched most of the opening ceremony on Friday night (brought to us tape-delayed and stuffed with commercials by NBC here in the USA).  It was not Beijing 2008 or London 2012, but still a great show.

And I actually like watching the ‘delegations’ of athletes with their flags from of all of the world coming into the stadium.

The Weather Channel reminded its readers in a tweet that the 2016 ‘Summer’ Olympic Games is technically being held in winter. (It’s winter in the southern hemisphere, of course).  Rio de Janeiro is about as far south of the equator, compared to the distance  Miami is to the north of the equator.

The International Olympics Committee and Team USA are informing corporations that the Olympic rings and the Twitter hashtags #teamusa and #Rio2016 are copyrighted and not to be used by corpprations. So on Monday night Stephen Colbert ‘introduced’ his new ‘tea’ called Musa Tea (grown on the ‘Musa Mountain’), and displayed the hashtag #TEAMUSA on the screen. Yes, the IOC Is a money making machine, but money (or the lack of spending it in the right places?) could not fix dangers such as the Zika virus, sewage in the swimming and sailing water (‘keep your mouth closed’ is the advice), uninhabitable Olympic housing and crime. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to the Olympics and hope it goes well.  The world needs it to go well.

Hillary Clinton accepted her nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency officially today.  The Democrats ran a great 2016 National Conference, packed with entertainment and party leaders in attendance.  They also rolled out the heavy artillery to make the case against Republican candidate Trump, and speaking out in support of Hillary Clinton.  On Wednesday night nobody less than New York American business magnate, politician, and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, Vice-President Joe Biden and President Obama himself, rallied the supporters in the arena in Philadelphia.  President Obama spoke heartfelt and eloquently about the American values of inclusion and diversity, and many other things.  ‘President of the United States’ was all the lettering on the big screen banner behind him, said.   No need to say more.  I am going to miss him as President, as I know many millions of my fellow Americans will, as well.

Meanwhile, back at the Republican National Committee offices tonight, chairman Reince Priebus fired off a tweet urging Republicans to contribute to Donald Trump’s campaign.

The responses were brutal.  Here is a sampling from Twitter, safe for printing in a newspaper.

@Reince I’d rather set fire to my own money than donate to Trump’s GOP.
@Reince It’s over. You’re done. #ripGOP
@joekarce @Reince Yeah that tea party thing worked out REAL well. *sarcasm* Trump is killing the GOP. #goodriddance
@joekarce @tmkrause @Reince at least HRC is not a draft-dodging Putin-loving traitor like Comrade Trumpsky! #SovietTrump #DonTheCon
@Reince Tax returns first.
@SWNID @Reince who cares… Geesh
@Reince Never again in my life. And I have sent y’all a lot. Hope your party dies, actually.
@Reince Hahahahahahahahahaha! (No.)
@Reince Sure. As soon as you nominate a Conservative. Or Republican. Or human being. #NeverTrumpOrHillary
@Reince no.
@Reince I’ll write a check if Trump releases his tax returns, promise.
@Reince No. The GOP is dead. You let Trump kill it.
@Lonestarmomcom @Reince Go get it from the rich guy that doesn’t pay his damn taxes Reince! Frig off!
If I donate, what assurances can you offer that my money won’t go into #DonaldTrump’s legal defense fund for his countless lawsuits? @Reince
@Reince you must be so proud.
@Reince congrats on personally murdering the GOP. Good job!

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show last night started with an homage (of sorts) to Hillary, in a psychedelic video short. Death, taxes and Hillary was the tagline .. but it is not such a sure thing at all that Hillary will be elected Madam President in November.  (It was a historic moment today at the Democratic National Convention when, for the first time, a woman was officially nominated for President).   Incredibly, candidate Trump got a little bump in his poll numbers despite a somewhat rag-tag Republican convention.   In some ‘battleground states’ they are even, say the polls.  

First Lady Michelle Obama hit a home run with her speech at the Convention tonight, many political observers just saying Wow!  The speech was heartfelt and personal, about her eight years in the White House (‘I wake up every morning in a house built by slaves’), how she and the President had to protect their daughters, and try to give them as normal a life as they could.  She also had praise for Hillary Clinton and for her tenacity in the face of opposition, and unmistakable criticism for Donald Trump : saying that the big issues cannot be boiled down to 140 characters (a reference to Trump’s Twitter messages).  She also said that since the president has the nuclear codes, the nation needs someone is steady, measured and well-informed.  Yes, let’s all agree about that !

It’s the Democrats’ turn for their convention this week, held in Philadelphia.  There are 57 fiberglass donkey statues around town, part of the host committee’s Donkeys Around Town program.  A donkey is the Democratic party’s symbol and there are 50 for the states, five for U.S. territories, one for Washington, D.C., and one for Democrats Abroad.

Here is a set of panels from Bloomberg Businessweek that outline the ‘state of the art’ of measure that one can take to be secure on-line.  There is a new Jason Bourne movie out, and I’m sure some of what’s described in here will feature in it. I guess if you are Edward Snowden, you have your audio jammer and bug scanner, you go all cash, run Tails (no Windows! or Mac OS!), wear sunglasses all the time in public.  Man! If you”re not paranoid before taking all these measures, they are sure to get you there. And does it help? As Joseph Heller of Catch-22 fame said: ‘Just because you’re paranoid, it does not mean that nobody is tracking you’.  Even so – I guess I will try to stop using wi-fi at the airport, change my passwords more often, and clear my browser cookies from time to time.