The United States is 241 years old .. and I am celebrating the 10-year anniversary of my citizenship this year.

Happy Fourth of July!

We went to a Queen* concert on Saturday night here in Seattle’s Key Arena.  Adam Lambert (he’s from Indianapolis) stands in for Freddie Mercury these days – not an easy task by any means, but he did just fine. If anything, he brings a little George Micheal ‘look’ and persona to the stage.  I really liked Lambert’s glamorous and glittering outfits!

*Of the four original band members, 60-somethings Brian May (lead guitar, vocals) and Roger Taylor (drums) remain.  In the original band, Freddie Mercury did lead vocals and piano, and John Deacon bass guitar.

As for the songs, of course the crowd-pleasers were there: We Will Rock You, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Under Pressure, as well as a few songs that I did not know.   My favorite song was actually the closing one, played at the end of the encore: God Save the Queen.  A lot of glitter from the rafters filled the arena, and that was the signal to go home.

Another week, and we’re halfway through 2017. Un-presidential President Trump started and continued his tirade of ugly tweets against two cable news anchors on Friday and into Saturday, drawing condemnation from across the political spectrum.  To top it off, he tweeted out a change in strategy for the Republican Senate’s disastrous draft healthcare bill.  (Trump: Repeal the Affordable Care Act now and replace it ‘later’). Senate leader Mitch McConnell was having none of it, noting ‘It’s not easy making America great again, is it?’.

Unexpected good news from Germany: the German parliament voted for marriage equality*, just five days after Chancellor Angela Merkel relaxed her party’s opposition to same-sex marriage. The law is expected to be on signed by September.         *Same-sex couples in Germany have been able to form civil unions since 2001. Opinion polls show that most Germans favor legalizing same-sex marriage.

The Total Eclipse of the Sun ‘forever’* stamps that I ordered, arrived today. I promptly put my fat finger on one to see if the thermochromic ink works as advertised.  It does, and the image of the moon reverts back to a ‘total eclipse’ (black blob) soon after one removes the source of heat.

*’Forever valid as standard postage, no matter how much the US Postal Service increase the rates (currently $0.49).  Well, OK, but not even our solar system’s sun is ‘forever’. At some fantastical point in time 5.5 billion years out, it will deplete its supply of hydrogen and helium and collapse into a white dwarf.

I bought some old South African coins a while ago, but I could not resist this 1983 set when I saw them on eBay (only $12).

These were the ones I grew up with, were my pocket money, and I will never forget the images on them.  In my first year in school a boy called Leon gave me a 20c coin out of the blue as a gift (to ‘buy’ my friendship?). My mom was shocked, of course, that I had accepted it, and I had to promptly return the coin to Leon. No can do, I had to tell him.

Another day in American politics under the Trump administration, and I would say, a particularly bad one.  This is not how democracy is supposed to work: for a few Republican senators to craft a major piece of legislation in secret – legislation that will take away the average citizen’s affordable or life-saving existing healthcare, basically to provide the rich with tax cuts, that they surely do not need.

From the New York Times: Senate Republicans, who for seven years have promised a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, took a major step on Thursday toward that goal, unveiling a bill to make deep cuts in Medicaid and end the law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.  The 142-page bill would create a new system of federal tax credits to help people buy health insurance, while offering states the ability to drop many of the benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, like maternity care, emergency services and mental health treatment.

So much for President Trump’s campaign promises to ‘take care of people’ and provide them with ‘terrific healthcare’, and that there will be no cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

From the New York Times: Australia’s Dark Vision of the World

I have known about the cryptocurrency* Bitcoin for a long time, with its shady reputation as a currency for ransomware payments and drug dealers.  (*A cryptocurrency is a digital currency, used on-line for payments, for which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency, and verify the transfer of funds, with all of this operating independently of a central bank.

But I see the tracking website coinmarketcap.com lists a hundred of these cryptocurrencies (whoah, is that 97 or 98 too many to be viable?).  Word is now (see NYT article) that Bitcoin is losing out to a currency called Eutherium. (An unfortunate reference to ‘ether’, meaning it is as volatile as ether? Are these virtual currency units the tulip bulbs of the 21st century? .. those tulip bulbs from the Dutch Golden Age that were bid up, up and up, and then collapsed dramatically in 1637.)

The NYT article says virtual currency fanatics are monitoring the value of Bitcoin and Eutherium and waiting for the two currencies to switch place at the top of the market cap listings, a moment that has been called ‘the flippening’.

Happy Father’s Day to all the great dads out there !

Below is part of Jake Tapper’s commencement address at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.  (Dartmouth is an Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire.  Jake Tapper is the anchor of CNN weekday television news show ‘The Lead with Jake Tapper’).

So, what tangible advice do I have to share, having departed from this campus 26 years ago?  First, let me offer the quick and easy stuff. OK?

Always write thank-you notes.
Be a big tipper.
Always split Aces and Eights.
Floss.
Call your folks.
Invest in a good mattress.
Shine your shoes.
Don’t tweet, post, Instagram, or email anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on the front page of The New York Times.
Be nice to seniors.
Be nice to children.
Remember birthdays.
Never miss an opportunity to charge an electronic device.
Use two-step verification.
Shake it off. Shake it off.
Stretch before exercising.
Stretch after exercising.
Exercise.
Never play keno.
Never drink airplane coffee.
Never pay $200 for a pair of jeans.
Never wear jean shorts; and
No one has ever had fun on a paddleboat.

‘Once every decade a bridge comes along that is so large that it can only be described with words like colossal, gargantuan, mammoth and epic’, says the website highest bridges of the Chishi Bridge in the south of China.

(To be sure, there is the Millau Viaduct in the south of France, to compare to it. Since this Viaduct’s opening in 2004, it has been consistently ranked as one of the great engineering achievements of all time).

Also – check out this otherworldly animation on the New York Times with the four pillars rising from the valley floor up, up out of the mist like gigantic tuning forks.

The NYT article sounds a cautionary note, as well – be careful not to overspend on infrastructure that goes underused.

The snap ‘Brexit Election’ in Great Britain resulted in losses for Prime Minister Theresa May.  She lost the first outright majority that the Conservatives had had for 18 years in Parliament.  As for Brexit – since Article 50 has been triggered, there seems to be no turning back.  However, the start of the Brexit negotiations may now be delayed, or what could have been a ‘hard’ Brexit may now become a ‘soft’ Brexit.

The difference between ‘hard’ Brexit and ‘soft’ Brexit is as follows (from the Independent newspaper):
A hard Brexit arrangement would likely see the UK give up full access to the single market and full access of the customs union along with the EU.
The arrangement would prioritise giving Britain full control over its borders, making new trade deals and applying laws within its own territory.

A soft Brexit approach would leave the UK’s relationship with the EU as close as possible to the existing arrangements, and is preferred by many Remainers.
The UK would no longer be a member of the EU and would not have a seat on the European Council. It would lose its MEPs and its European Commissioner. But, it would keep unfettered access to the European single market.

Tuesday marked the 73rd anniversary of D-Day: the largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation that began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and that contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Wow.  With Bryan’s help (thanks Bryan!), I sold my 1996 Toyota Camry in less than 24 hrs after we had placed an ad for it on Craigslist.   Yes, it is an old car, but it had lots going for it: one owner, no accidents, ‘only’ 114,000 miles on the clock, clean inside.

I paid $18,895* for the Japanese driving machine in 1996.

*At 3% annual inflation the 1996 dollars come to about $35,000 in 2017, which is about what one would pay for an equivalent car (and hopefully with some great new technology).

And did I get a $35,000 new car?  Well, no.  I don’t spend nearly enough time driving a car to work, or in the city (with plenty of public transportation options), to justify that.  I ‘upgraded’ to a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid that I bought from a friend.   And let’s see what electric car options are out there, in a few years, is what I am thinking.

Cape Town finally got some rain on Saturday night, and there is much more on the way for Tuesday.   This is the start of the rainy season for the Western Cape, and sustained rainfall is very badly needed, so that the dams in the area can be replenished.   The city and surrounding area is dealing with the worst drought in living memory.

Here’s the New York Times’s notes of Saturday’s terror attacks in London, overlaid on a Google Map.  (Note to self: London Bridge is a different bridge from the Tower Bridge).   Should cities spend more money on security or their police force? I”m not sure if that will help a lot. The three assailants on Saturday were shot dead within 8 minutes of the start of the attacks.  It’s a very difficult problem to solve.

There was a tornado in the town of Three Hills, Canada (northeast of Calgary) on Friday. Here’s a guy that mowed his lawn in the middle of all this, ignoring pleas from his family to come inside. ‘The wind is moving in the other direction’, he told his wife.

Here is the YouTube link that shows the monster as it moves.  No one was hurt.

What a disgrace, and what a sad day for American leadership.

As Daniel Larison notes in his tweets: Trump reneges on international agreements that he cannot possibly improve on, while congratulating himself with his deal-making prowess.

My Memorial Day post is late, but I am posting it nonetheless.   (Memorial Day commemorates the soldiers that gave their lives in wars fought by the United States of America).