Category: General

President Obama gave his State of the Union speech and I liked it a lot. Late Tuesday night the left-leaning New York Times already had an editorial out on line that opined ‘While many of the president’s proposals were familiar, and will probably be snuffed out by politics, his speech explained to a wide audience what could be achieved if there were even a minimal consensus in Washington’.   Some of the proposals were : background checks for all gun sales and banning assault rifles, raise the minimum wage to $9 from $7.25, withdraw 34,000 troops from Afghanistan by this time next year, universal public preschool in every state, a tax code that encourages manufacturing, immigration reform, and improvements in the the voting system (yes, that means especially you, State of Florida*).

*Voters spent up to 8 hours in line at the November elections.  Chris Matthews of MSNBC pointed out that he was in South Africa for the historic 1994 elections and that the longest

time South Africans spent in line anywhere in the country was 4 hours.

Senator Marco Rubio ‘The Republican Savior’ addressed the nation with his response to the President’s speech saying ‘More government isn’t going to help you get ahead.  It’s going to hold you back.  More government isn’t going to create more opportunities.  It’s going to limit them. And more government isn’t going to inspire new ideas, new businesses and new private sector jobs.  It’s going to create uncertainty.’

Sunday Feb 10 is the first day of the Lunar New Year 2013, the Year of the Snake. The snake represents wisdom, intelligence and self-control.

‘Winter Storm Nemo is now poised to become the latest example of a powerful, potentially historic, February storm’, says the Weather Channel.   I am located north of Pittsburgh, just outside the storm area but it’s going to come down heavily north and east of here.   The word ‘storm’ when snow is involved, is often the equivalent of Roberta Flack’s song ‘killing me softly with his song’ : soft fluffy white stuff that just keeps coming down, and eventually snarling up traffic, snapping tree limbs, damaging power lines, and all that.   And when I was working at a utility company in California, I learned that there was something called a ‘heat storm’ :  a term for an extended heat wave also has potential for widespread power outages due to increased use of air-conditioning.

We have a lot of documentation to complete for our Blueprint, and so we’re knuckling down and cranking out the documentation.  It is cold and snowy outside, but Salt Lake City taught me that there is still a long way down if you’re in the 20s (°F).   The Japanese TV channel in the hotel room reports that Ulaanbataar, the capital city in Mongolia, is sporting a withering temperature of -18 °F (-28 °C).

It’s Sunday afternoon in Seattle and I’m watching Superbowl XLVII.  The San Francisco 49ers are playing against the Baltimore Ravens.

I am following the current discussions to make reforms to the broken US Immigration laws with interest.  The 11 million illegal immigrants in the country will have to go ‘to the back of the line’, some people are fond of saying.   Well, probably so – but that line is very, very long.  Check out this chart that appeared in ‘Reason’ magazine in 2008 ..  Legal Immigration Chart.

‘All first-class stamps will soon be ‘Forever’ stamps*’ said the guy at the postal services store here on 15th Ave.   Yes, but will stamps be forever?  I suppose so.  We haven’t gotten rid of paper money – or of paper in the office yet, have we?  Congress is supposed to take up legislation this year to improve the dire straits the Postal Service finds itself in.

*Forever Stamps are first-class stamps issued by the United States Postal Service with no explicit postage noted. So stamps are valid ‘forever’ even if the first-class postage rate goes up in future years,

Discovery channel’s documentary about the successful attempt to videotape a giant squid deep in the ocean aired last night here in the USA.  It was quite an undertaking, as documented an this article on theverge.com (link below).  The article points out that that’s not all — there is evidence of a squid even bigger than the giant squid out there, called the colossal squid. Whoah.  How little we know about the deep sea.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/25/3912930/giant-squid-bait-patience-lots-cash-catch-a-monster

The snooze button is a standard feature on bedside alarms in the USA. (A big button on the top that stops the alarm and sets it to ring again at a short time later, most commonly nine minutes .. yes – nine, not ten, did you know that?).   I don’t use the snooze button, though.  When my iPhone alarm goes off at 5.15 am here in the hotel, I know : time’s UP. Got to jump out of bed now to make breakfast downstairs at 6.00 am!  Last week I actually proved that I can speed it up dramatically; was woken one morning at 6.00 am by my colleague’s phone call, and made it down by 6.15 am!  Of course, for that to happen there is no morning shower, no tidying up the room a bit – and certainly no ironing my shirt.

(Late post).  I had to work on Monday (which was also Martin Luther King Day), but I did catch the highlights of President Obama’s Inauguration speech.

The mercury dropped to -22°C (-8 °F) this morning here in Ogden. Since mercury freezes only at -38°C (-36 °F), I guess the thermometers still work !  There is no snow in the forecast for the next week, but the stuff on the ground is certainly not going to melt any time soon.

These cool polyhedron light-fixtures were in Munich airport as I made my way to the gate, on Tuesday.  Very nice, I thought – and I wondered if they have a mathematical name.   It took a little bit of research, but it looks to me that the core is a rhombi-cuboctahedron (an Archimedean solid with 8 triangular and 18 square faces).  And then when you add the pointy star extensions onto the faces, it becomes a great stellated rhombi-cuboctahedron.  Yes!  (Admittedly all the extensions are not the same length, but hey, close enough).

I bought a few more feathered friends for my modest collection at department store Kaufhof Galeria in Munich.  The ostrich, the snowy owl, the falcon and the brown vulture (these are from manufacturer Schleich).   Can a serious collector ever have too many specimens in his/ her collection? (No.)

I got home in time Tue night to see the US House of Representatives vote on the Fiscal Cliff legislation.   As the graphic from the Wall Street Journal shows, there just had to be an increase in taxes after all the cuts since 1993.  Federal income tax rates will only go up for individuals with income over $400,000 (!) and families earning more than $450,000 .. but since the temporary 2% cut (for 2011 and 2012) in Social Security taxes was not extended, taxes go ‘up’ for almost everyone, anyway.  Next up: another Debt Ceiling fight – even though Pres. Obama says there will not be one?  And the estimated $600 billion of additional tax revenue (over the next 10 years) from the Fiscal Cliff legislation is still not nearly enough to address the annual deficits in the US government’s budget.  After the deficit had exceeded $1 trillion for each of the last four years (total debt now at $16 trillion), it could possibly drop below that in 2013.

I kicked 2012 out the door and welcomed  2013 with a pils (German pilsner beer) and dinner in the hotel restaurant – and called it good.  It’s only 11 pm but I have already heard and seen plenty of fireworks in the distance from the hotel room window. : )

Glückliches Neues Jahr !
Happy New Year !
Voorspoedige Nuwe Jaar !

That’s what we call the day after Christmas Day in South Africa, too (after the British). The origins of the name Boxing Day seem uncertain.  It is possibly derived from ‘Christmas box’ (present) and the cleaning up of debris, wrapping paper, and other remains of Christmas Day eating and drinking.  So the year we called 2012 is running out – and so is my time on this trip to South Africa.

The Mayan creation story holds that three unsuccessful worlds were created by the gods, each running for a cycle of 5,125 yrs (13 baktuns).  Man was created in the fourth world that started around 3113 BC, and the fourth cycle ends 2012.12.21.  (Today! Gasp!).  Actually, it’s just the start of a new cycle, say many Mayan scholars. So just as the world did not come to an end on 12.31.1999, it probably will not come to an end today (but as of this writing, it is still Dec 21 west of me, so we’re not completely out of the woods yet! ).

May I present her majesty ‘Queen Victoria’ (Vicky), the blue Burmese cat? She was an addition made some 11 months ago (as a kitten) to my brother’s household in Australia.   Queen Victoria treats her subjects with the disdain that they deserve : ).  She is currently accommodated in a cat hotel with assurances of the caretaker that she will be given special attention.

P.S. [Picture and information from Wikipedia] Queen Victoria’s reign of 63 years and seven months (1837 – 1901) is longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history, and known as the Victorian era.