Category: General

One could be forgiven for not knowing the name of the city of Santa Clara even though it is in the center of Silicon Valley (there is also Cupertino, San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and others).  Everyone knows San Francisco, of course .. and it looks like next year’s Superbowl 50 in the Bay Area will be a little bit like Superbowl 48 where the New York City stole the thunder of New Jersey (where the superbowl was actually played).  In this case San Francisco will be hogging all the attention, leaving little of it to Santa Clara.

This Lamborghini Aventador was parked at the hotel entrance here in Walnut Creek today.  Beverley Hills Lamborghini said the frame around the license plate.   Assuming this is a 2014 or 2015 machine, it must have set its owner back some $430,000.    That princely sum would be good for four top-of-the line Teslas, and then some.

Weekend’s over!  .. it was back to the ‘salt mine’ for me on Monday.

I finally made it to SFO airport by 11.00 am on Monday morning, a little later than usual  .. morning fog made for an air traffic control hold for our flight.

The US Supreme Court heard arguments today for and against same-sex marriage.  Has the definition of marriage changed over the last thousand years?  I would say it has. Should it change to allow gay couples to marry?  Should one State recognize the marriage from out-of-State married visitors? (Since some States in the USA allow gay couples to marry and others absolutely do not).  Here are some audio transcripts from the court, again courtesy of the New York Times.  The justices’ ruling is due in June.

The death toll had climbed above 4,000 in the Nepal earthquake by Monday night.  Several historic buildings in Katmandu were destroyed (pictures below, from the New York Times).

I wanted to see where Mt Everest was located relative to the earthquake.  At least 18 people were killed when an avalanche from the earthquake hit the base camp.  Check out the great maps from the on-line edition of the New York Times, in this article Extent of the damage Nepal earthquake.

I see it’s time for another Jurassic* Park movie this summer, the latest one set for release on June 12.   I will have to go see it in the theater for the full effect !

P.S. These geological timescales are enormous in length.  Humankind’s history goes back, oh, 5,000 years.  The Jurassic Period was some 200–145 million years ago.  During the Jurassic Period, the super-continent Pangaea started to drift apart.

I saw pictures of today’s Calbuco volcano eruption on TV, as I got home tonight .. so I had to check it out and see what other spectacular pictures I could find on line.   The volcano is more or less in the middle of Chile at an altitude of 6,000 ft (2,000 m) with a crater at the top that is some 1,500 ft (300 m) wide.

 

Yes, commercial from insurance company Geico has been around a long time – but this still picture from it is making the rounds here on our project.   It features a camel* that walks around the office asking cubicle workers ‘Guess what day it is?’.   Leslie – in the picture – does not even look up as she quietly says ‘It’s hump day’.   We like ‘hump day’ .. it means it’s almost Thursday, when we get to go home.  Yay!

*One-hump camels are called dromedaries, and two-hump camels are called Bactrian camels.  More than half of the world’s camel population is found in Somalia.

As soon as I arrive at San Francisco airport’s International Terminal on Monday mornings, I march over to Starbucks to get some coffee.

It helps to make me alert so that I can drive the rental car after my little early morning catnap on the airplane, is my thinking (and of course I like coffee in the morning, anyway).

I couldn’t resist these South African brass coins when I saw them on eBay, and so I bought them and found them in my mailbox on Thursday night.  I had them in my pocket as a young boy.  I remember the 1/2 cent coin with the two sparrows particularly well.   The 1 cent coin with the ossewa (ox wagon) was not as common.  These particular coins were not minted for long : only from 1961 to 1964, when they were replaced with a new series of coins.

 

There are still no signs posted at the hotel here in Walnut Creek urging patrons to conserve water, given the on-going extreme drought in California that has recently – for the first time in the Golden State’s history – prompted a 25% mandatory cut in household water consumption.   Still, I am very sure residents are aware of it with all the media coverage.   Here is a diagram published in the local newspaper on Monday, offering suggestions for curbing water consumption at home.  Check out the figures for landscaping and outdoor use.  Get rid of that lawn!  And don’t wash the car every other day!

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 presidential election only today, on Sunday (by publishing a video) ..  but this was known ahead of time, and was good enough to serve as pre-emptive fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit about it.  I think it is very funny. Husband ‘Bill Clinton’ makes a surprise appearance (of course). ‘Aren’t we such a fun, approachable dynasty?’ she asks at one point.  Check out the YouTube video here.

 

We watched ‘Interstellar’ on Saturday. It’s a 2014 science fiction-space travel movie that features Earth running out of food (think 1930s-type Dust Bowl scenes) and a group of scientists embarking on interstellar travel trying to save the human race.  The movie also features a giant wormhole.   Wormholes are fantastic science-fiction constructs, also called Einstein-Rosen bridges (postulated by Einstein and Rosen in 1935). Theoretically they allow accelerated travel from one point in the universe to another very many light years away.  There are many problems, though : even if wormholes exist for any measurable length of time, their dimensions are thought to be on the Planck scale (sub-atomic size) .. so by 35 orders of magnitude not large enough for humans and certainly not for large enough for spaceships.

I see Friday April 10 was National Siblings Day (not nearly as recognized as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, of course).  Still : three cheers to my three brothers!   Disney Studios tweeted a cute picture from the 1970 animated movie Aristocats, of the three kitten siblings in the movie.  (Psst .. search for Everybody Wants to Be a Cat on YouTube !).

 

‘Land of the fruit and nuts*, that’s California for you’, said a co-worker in his attempt at a little joke a long time ago.  So I remembered that as I bought this little chocolate bar at Wholefoods here in Walnut Creek (a town itself named after a nut) on Tuesday night.

*Fruit being an insult meant for gay people, and nuts one meant for hippies and crazy people.  So it’s pretty offensive! .. and I will not again let it slip by without saying so.

Happy Easter!  The sidewalk artwork is in front of my house.  (No, I am not the artist : the bunnies were drawn and by my neighbor’s daughters.  Looks like the one on the right is incomplete).

Yes, it was Easter on Friday but I had long had my bi-annual eye check-up scheduled at the ophthalmologist .. and so off I went.   It’s a longish affair, since the assistant does a preliminary check, and then she put drops in to dilate the iris of my eye (which takes awhile), so that they can better peek inside (with a very bright light!).

So afterwards my eyes were very sensitive to light, and I had to keep the afternoon sunlight from flooding into the kitchen and bounce off the countertop !   And so all of this gives me an excuse to post the limerick about relativity and a lady named Bright that has reportedly been around since 1923 –

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

 

Iran was in the news today with the announcement that a framework agreement about Iran’s nuclear program had been reached (details still to be worked out, due by June).  So I wanted to use Google Maps to check out the scenery in Tehran a little bit but alas – there is no detailed ‘Streetviews’ available.  The map is dotted with posted photographs, though. Check out the gorgeous pictures of professional photographer Omid Jafarnezhad, with this link here .. as well as these pictures of people in Iran in an article in the New York Times.

I’m legit for another year for motoring around with my trusty 1996 Toyota Camry : I just renewed the license plate tabs.  (It’s about $75).

Check out my mini-collection of old number plates. There is the WILLEM from Missouri the Show-me State, a regular plate from Texas the Lone Star State, and another ‘vanity plate’ from Washington the Evergreen State that says WILLSTL, short for Willem Seattle.