A baby tapir. Wikipedia : A tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout.
So I see the US stock market jumped up today at the unexpected announcement from the Fed that there will be ‘no taper’. (The Federal Reserve Bank will continue to buy assets to stimulate the economy, and not scale down their efforts for now). But the giddiness might not last long. Seems that the Tea Party- controlled Republicans are planning to shut down the US government to ‘defund’ Obama-care. (What does defund even mean? And psst. That’s not going to happen, Republicans – defunding the President’s signature legislation that has already gone before the Supreme Court, and was upheld). And then what? Another debt ceiling fight? The stock market will definitely not like that.
In summer, I have to watch for spider webs as I walk from my back door to the garage. This one was in the main walkway between the garage and the shrubs six feet away.
The world champ for spinning webs is Darwin’s bark spider, discovered only in 2009 in Madagascar in the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in 2009. From Wikipedia : ‘Its silk is the toughest biological material ever studied, over ten times tougher than a similarly-sized piece of Kevlar. The web of Darwin’s bark spider is remarkable in that it is not only the longest spanning web ever observed, but is among the largest orb webs ever seen, at an area of up to 2.8 square metres (30 sq ft). Nephila komaci, discovered in 2009, and some other Nephila species also make webs that can exceed 1 m (3 ft 3 in) across’.
Check out this large spiral orb web from my backyard. It’s about one ft in diameter. Spiders also spin tangled webs (cobwebs), funnel webs, tubular webs around trees and sheet webs on the ground.
Here’s a question from the Flu I.Q. test from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. And the answer is .. ? (It is true).
I know it’s still ‘officially’ summer but I went out on Friday and got my flu shot anyway. It looks as if it’s an uphill battle for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to convince people to get a flu shot. I guess people are too busy, or think they don’t need it. And then there are conspiracy theorists out there that say it’s just a money-making scheme from the drug companies.
Denver has its own ‘World Trade Center’ here in downtown. World Trade Center I is 99 m (325 ft) tall and was completed in 1979 at 1625 Broadway. World Trade Center II right next to it was completed in 1980.This is the spectacular Denver Gas & Electric Building on 15th Street, that celebrated its 100th birthday in 2010. I will have to bring my big camera and take more pictures of the grand old building all lit up at night.
I am still catching up as quickly as I can with all the team members and all the work that had been completed so far on the project, so that I can make a contribution.
There were no special announcements in remembrance of the 9.11 events 12 years ago here at the office, but I am sure it was on everyone’s mind. It is a day in the USA that is going to be very hard to forget, for a very long time.
Stills from CBS’s nightly newscast tonight. This looks like a scene from the holocaust.Damascus and Aleppo are among the world’s longest inhabited cities.
So now that it seems certain that the ‘red line’ has been crossed by the Syrian government (using chemical weapons against civilians) .. what should the US government do? The UK has indicated that they are out. Secretary of State John Kerry made a passionate case for action today, but President Obama’s response was much more measured. ‘No boots on the ground’, no open-ended commitment. It’s ironical that Syria is smack-bang next door to Iraq, where the USA has burnt through all its credibility with the 10-year war there, the start of which turned up zero weapons of mass destruction. (Which was held up as the main justification for the Iraq war by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell). And how sad that a brutal civil war that has now killed more than 100,000 people, rages in a country with two of the oldest inhabited cities in the world : Damascus and Aleppo.
Here’s a map of the military forces ‘available’ to strike Syria. Check out the submarines : ‘Location Unknown’. (Map from Yahoo News, by Gordon Donovan).
Google’s home page tribute to the 50th anniversary of MLK’s speech on the Washington mall.
Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the ‘I have a dream’ speech by civil rights leader Martin Luther King (August 28, 1963). a panel of more than 130 scholars got together in 1999 to rate the best speeches of the 20th century and King’s speech ranked No. 1. Dr King was assassinated 4½ years later, on April 4, 1968 .. but he did see the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson : a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women.
Check the first page of a draft version of the speech. The ‘I have a dream’ phrase was not even in the final prepared version of the speech. As he spoke, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out to King, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.”
Watch out for those summer colds! They are worse than ones that will get you in winter, says this picture panel is Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. I know, because I have had one this summer that lingered on for weeks. Blech !
Daniel Tammet is a savant, butnot quite the kind portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1998 film Rain Man : he can function socially and describe what he experiences as he performs mind-boggling feats. In 2004, he recited pi to 22,514 places (it took 5 hours 9 mins). He learned conversational Icelandic in one week. Check out an interview that Morley Safer did way back in 2007, here : CBS ’60 minutes’ interview. Daniel says he sees numbers as colors and shapes. His book ‘Thinking in Numbers’ has been published recently, and shown here on TV on Monday, and so I am going to buy it.
My older brother and I on a green clay court at the Miami Intercontinental hotel, circa 1990. It was our first trip to the USA and we were visiting my younger brother, who was playing on the professional tennis circuit (the ATP) at the time.
As a tennis player (ex-tennis player?, since I play so rarely these days), I found this article about little-known 35-year old tennis pro Michael Russell, that Businessweek calls ‘tennis’s #1 loser’, very interesting. His wife travels full-time with him in a supporting role (picks up his rackets from the stringer, buys groceries, sits in the stands when it’s almost empty). ‘The sport is basically about how well you can cope with losing’, says Michael. He can still chase down balls few other humans can, but at 5’8″ is at a disadvantage against tall, lean players. They mention a weekend trip to Richard Branson’s private island where rich guys pay to play with the pros, and say ‘it was awesome; the only thing is it kind of ruins everything else for you afterwards’. Tennis players don’t have to deal with concussions, but the game is rough on the joints. Michael has had his share of injuries : knee surgery, and has torn his rotator cuff (tendons in the shoulder joint).
So .. with the school year barely getting underway on Tuesday, a mentally ill 20-year old guy walks into an Atlanta area elementary school with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammo. Who knows what would have happened had a smart, savvy bookkeeper not been in the right place at the right time, and talked him right out of it until the SWAT team came. In a separate incident that defies comprehension for its pure evil, three Oklahoma teens were rounded up for assassinating an Australian student/ baseball player that was out jogging, in cold blood. They were ‘bored’, said one. Some Australians say they should boycott the USA altogether and not set foot here – and who can blame them?
John Oliver from the Daily Show poked fun at Elon Musk’s Hyperloop tonight (the futuristic proposal of a tube for 800 mph/ 30 mins of travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles). ‘It’s a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table’, says Mr Musk. He is criticizing the current high speed rail plans as ‘too expensive and too slow’ but says he cannot take on the Hyperloop right now. He has his hands full with building rockets and Teslas.
California is finally starting to build out a high speed rail system. Initial funding was already approved by voters in 2008, and in 2012 the Obama adminstration gave the project the green light and put it on a fast track. The projected time from San Francisco to Los Angeles? 3 hrs 38 mins for the 432 miles at speeds of up to 164 mph. (The train stops at many stations). Source : Wikipedia ‘California High-Speed Rail’. Here is John Oliver of the Daily Show tonight calling the Hyperloop the ‘Track to the Future’ (a reference to the 1985 time travel film with Michael J. Fox, ‘Back to the Future’)
My block here on Capital Hill had its annual Block Party today. We block off the street and socialize for a few hours with each other. It was well attended, and of course I shocked some people on the block when I told them I have been living in my house for 11 years. (Well .. I travel a lot, and I use the back entrance, I say every time). So it was nice to make new acquaintances and renew old ones. I learned that the husband of a couple on the corner is from Australia. He survived adjusting to the Seattle weather, and they still travel to Australia regularly. He noted that Qantas hands out pyjamas to their first class and business class passengers .. which prompted me to search for it online. (It’s gray with a black Qantas kangeroo on). And I found a report from the Australian Herald Sun about a couple in first class that held up a Qantas A380 flight from Los Angeles : there were no extra-large pyjamas available for them. They got off the airplane and went out on a flight the following day. The pyjamas are designed by Akira Isogawa, one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary fashion designers. Got to have ’em!
A sneak peek out of my window onto the street below in front of my house. I spent a good two hours getting acquainted and re-acquainted with some neighbors on my block.
This is from a news clip that was carried on CNN, and also posted on Yahoo. Chinese state media in the city of Luohe in Henan tried to pass off a big hairy dog as a lion.
The African ‘lion’ in a zoo in Luohe in Henan province in China is really a Tibetan mastiff. The big dog gave the ploy away when it barked at on-lookers. Aw. (Yes, that mane looks a little too manicured and mono-colored!).Here is a different picture of a red Tibetan mastiff that I found on-line, all fluffed up. A beautiful dog, but man! how much food does it need every day? The Tibetan mastiff is one of several ‘giant breeds’ of dogs. Some others that come to mind are St. Bernards and Great Danes.
It was 10 years ago to the day on Wednesday that the Eastern Interconnection Blackout left 50 million people out of power for some 48 hours. A series of uncorrected problems in northern Ohio (tree limbs falling on power lines, operators not getting information quickly enough and not acting quickly enough) developed to a point that a cascading blackout of the entire eastern grid became inevitable. So what is an ‘interconnection’, and have we started to address some of the vulnerabilities in the grid? Interconnections are collections of electricity utilities that are electrically tied together during normal system conditions that operate at a synchronized frequency. These interconnections can in turn be tied to each other with High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power transmission lines, or with variable frequency transformers. The construction of the Tres Amigas Superstation was announced in 2009 and is about to be put into operation. The goal of tying together three major power grids is to increase the reliability of the national grid, and to make it easier to accommodate the transmission of renewable power from one region to another.
A diagram of the cascade sequence from the ‘Interim Report: Causes of the August 14th Blackout in the United States and Canada’, November 2003The Tres Amigas (‘Three Friends’) Superstation is located in Clovis, New Mexico.A rendering of the major elements of the Tres Amigas superstation.
Here is the news Coming to you every hour on the hour (Here is the news) The weather’s fine but there may be a meteor shower.. – From the song ‘Here is the news’ by Electric Light Orchestra (1982)
A shooting star! Quick, Snowy, make a wish! says Tintin. This is on the opening page of Herge’s Tintin book called ‘The Shooting Star’.
The Perseid Meteor Shower of 2013 (it comes around every year) is said to be more visible than usual with the moon out of the way. So late last night I did go outside and tried to see a ‘shooting star’ (a misnomer for a meteoroid), but with the trees and the clouds in the way I had no luck. I think it will help to have a powerful telescope as well !
Here is a spectacular picture of a Perseid meteor seen from the Mojave desert in California. (Twitter picture from Paul Dellegatto with credit to Wally Pacholka).
Dr Tung – really? What a fortunate coincidence if the doctor selling tongue cleaners has such a name : ). I found this nifty item on Amazon.
Earlier this week Yahoo’s Daily Shot recommended that we occasionally clean our tongues. Check out Ali Wentworth’s very funny clip with a dentist here. Alright, I’m sold, I thought. I’ll go find a tongue scraper to clean my tongue with. Well, it’s not so easy. My local Walgreens (drug store, or pharmacy as it is called outside the USA) sells two dozen different kind of toothbrushes but no devices for cleaning a tongue. So I will try another store or two before I resort to the giant on-line store of Amazon that has everything.
Eden of the East is a Japanese anime television series, which was shown on Fuji TV throughout Japan in 2009.Here is a street scene, I think this is in Tokyo. The backgrounds are very detailed and realistic. Yes, animated movies from American studios have plenty of detail in as well, but they never seem to play out in real cities. It’s always in imaginary made-up places.
I try to take out a DVD now and again at the 15th Ave video store close to my house .. while it is still there. It’s probably only a matter of time before it closes its doors due to all the streaming movies that are now available on line and on Netflix. Still, this store rents out movies that you would have to buy on Amazon to see. My latest pick was ‘Eden of the East’, a Japanese anime television series. This is not Disney fare, and don’t be misled by the ‘innocent’ wide-eyed faces on the cover of the Blu-ray box! There is violence, nudity, risqué humor, alcohol and tobacco use on display. The movie has an interesting plot : a mysterious Mr ‘Outside’ gives twelve young people almost unlimited power via a cell phone concierge, and the resources of a Power ball lottery winner (¥8 billion, some $US 100 million) to compete with each other and to try to address the general economic and social challenges Japan. (Exactly what constitutes a problem and what does not, is of course wide open to interpretation and political points of view. Here in the USA some Republicans now want to shut down the government because 30 million people can now get affordable health care. It is ‘ immoral’ and unacceptable that the government ‘meddled’ in the private health insurance industry with new laws). The movie also features 20,000 NEETs (young men with No Employment, Education or Training) and a hikikomori. This is a person, usually a young man, that refuses to leave the house and interact with society, preferring to play video games or program computers instead. Anyway : the plot thickens, stuff explodes, people die but then towards the end the plot falls apart a somewhat, and the conclusion of the whole complicated set-up was a little unsatisfying and a little too ‘easy’ and ‘simple’. But I really liked the art, the animation, and the issues that the movie raised as part of the plot.
Here is one of the agents using his super futuristic smart phone. Interesting that the phones are all of the ‘clam shell’ form. Smartphones no longer look like that! And the days are long gone since Japan was the land of uniquely advanced mobile phones with internet capabilities and lots of other features rarely seen elsewhere.
Here is what a Powerball lottery ticket in Washington State looks like. I don’t know what that 1 in 31.8 odds prize is, but it can’t be much ($100?)Here is how the odds stack up (against you). The table shows how many ‘white ball’ numbers should match the winning number. Of course, for the Grand Prize, all six numbers and the red ‘power ball’ must match !The Powerball web page. Not all states participate, but many do. Check out the ‘Current Estimated Jackpot’ at $425 million.
Whoah. The Powerball jackpot drawing of this Wednesday is up to a staggering $ 425 (Four-Hundred-and-Twenty-Five) million bucks. So have I bought a ticket? You betcha! Ok, I know I should not have, right? But I was curious to see what a ticket looks like. (And besides : previous times when jackpot fever had broken out here in the USA, I always seemed to be out of the country, or found myself in the wrong State, one that does not participate in the jackpot).
The odds of winning the Grand Prize is truly astronomical. Since the sun is about 92 million miles from earth, the odds of winning is similar to one mile against the distance from Earth to the sun and back.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 41 megapixel camera, outrageous and unheard of! Is it a camera with a phone on? Is it a phone with a camera on?
I know I cannot hold on to my aging iPhone 4 forever, but I’m going to hang in there a few months longer. There’s always the iPhone 5 (to be replaced by the 5s or iPhone 6 come November; no one knows for sure). The Android phone universe has the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. And Google has just demonstrated their upcoming Moto X phone, the product of their acquisition of handset maker Motorola. It seems to be a phone aimed at the masses – not a phone for geeks that want the latest Snapdragon processor and the sharpest display. What do I want in a phone? For me the camera specs are paramount. Soo .. should I spring for the Nokia Lumia 1020 with its monster 41-megapixel camera? A big drawback is that it’s a Windows 8 phone. (Interface probably OK, but still very few Windows 8 applications out there). Time will tell.
Google’s new Moto X phone has middle-of-the-pack hardware but some innovative voice command features.
Alright, I will have to ‘fess up. I went out to Antelope Island State Park on Wednesday, because I knew I will probably not be back in Salt Lake City for work for quite some time. We received word that the funding for our project had been cut. So Thursday was our last day at the site – at least until some time in 2014 at this point. So there is still hope that the project will be resurrected, but the work may be shifted to another site, and the current team members may no longer be available.
There was some cloud cover, and a few drops of rain fell as we arrived at Salt Lake City airport on Thursday to go home.
