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Friday/ the US Supreme Court: about to take a hit

After another week of national gnashing of the teeth, pulling of the hair and a fake FBI investigation, Senate Republicans are on now the brink of putting Judge Kavanaugh on the US Supreme Court, to join Clarence Thomas.

Trump’s nominee is opposed by 47% of the citizenry (41% in favor), by thousands of law professors, by a church council representing 40 million, by the American Civil Liberties Union, by the President of the Bar Association, by his own Yale Law School, by retired Justice Stevens, and by Human Rights Watch. The nomination is in violation of Title 18 U.S. Code § 1001 & 1621. This is a democracy at work?

It’s official. [From the New York Times homepage, Saturday]. The consequences of this confirmation will likely reverberate a long time in American politics. Writes David Faris in The Week: ‘The combination of bad faith and procedural manipulation by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies during this process is unlikely to ever be forgotten by any Democrat currently breathing air as a sentient adult’.
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Thursday/ naming Seattle’s NHL team

It is almost a done deal, that Seattle will be granted a franchise for a team to join the National Hockey League (NHL).  The team actually playing is still two years away. The Key Arena stadium still has to be upgraded, and a team put together – and all that goes with it.

In the meantime, the Seattle Times is running an informal survey of its readers to determine a name and a moniker for the team. It’s now down to the final two: the Totems, or the Sockeyes – after eliminating names such as Seattle Freeze, Seattle Sasquatches and Seattle Emeralds.

A rendering of Key Arena’s inside after its proposed upgrade, for when the NHL comes to Seattle. (Courtesy of / Oak View Group)
Hmm, I don’t know about either of these two. I like Seattle Totems, but would that still be acceptable today, to appropriate Native culture into a nickname & mascot? Seattle Sockeyes sounds good, but man! that makes it a FISH for a mascot. Not the best. Can we not have a snarling Mountain Lion, or an Osprey or an Eagle or a Bear? [Graphic & Text by the Seattle Times]
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Wednesday/ got my ‘Presidential Alert’

‘No, Trump didn’t write it’, soothed CNN’s notification about the Presidential Alert. This ability was actually requested by Congress in 2006, and has been many years in the making.

Everyone in the United States with a smartphone got a ‘Presidential Alert’ this morning – a test by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  Man! Does that mean Trump can spam everyone with a stupid message from his phone? Mercifully, not. These messages are generated & sent from a special FEMA notebook computer, and by law, must be for true emergencies only.

One shudders to think what significant national crises would justify every American to be alerted. I can think of a few. Nuclear war (‘Hey everyone: Kim Jong-un & I are no longer in love, so just so you know, I sent him some ICBMs’). A meteor hit from outer space. A massive electromagnetic pulse from a sun flare (that may very well wipe out FEMA’s ability to send the alert altogether).

 

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Monday/ repairs after the rains

Light rain is finally starting to fall here in Seattle, after the driest summer on record. (Rainfall for May-August was 2.5″, compared to 7.0″ normally).

Here’s another one of my resident European garden spiders (Araneus diadematus), repairing its web today, from a little wind and rain damage.

Spider silk is more durable and elastic than even the strongest man-made fiber, Kevlar, which is used to fill bulletproof vests. Silk is mainly protein, but a single spider can produce as many as seven different silks from its spinnerets. The silks in the radial lines, and the spiral lines in this web are different, and the spider also dots the radial lines with sticky balls of silky goo. Watch out, flying insects.
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Sunday/ Vote ‘Em Out

So with September out the back door, it’s now only October between us and the important Nov 6. midterm elections here in the United States.

I see Beto O’Rourke (Democrat) had country music icon Willie Nelson (85) perform at one of his campaign rallies.  This is in deep-red Texas, to beat out sitting Senator Ted Cruz.  Nelson sang a ditty called Vote ‘Em Out.

Hopefully, scores of more young people have realized these last two years that they have to exercise their power at the ballot box.  In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 65 million votes and Donald Trump 62 million.  Another 100 million eligible voters in the country did not vote. Oy.

Headline & picture from a report on the news analysis site vox.com.
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Saturday/ wearing many layers of clothes

I am under the weather. Sometimes today I had to put on several layers of clothes to keep me warm out of bed, and to keep the chills under control.

‘That reminds me of the Friends episode with Joey wearing all Chandler’s clothes’, I thought.

‘Look at me! I’m Chandler. Could I BE wearing any more clothes?’ asks Joey. From a FRIENDS episode aired 9/26/1996.  Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, wears all Chandler’s clothes (Matthew Perry). Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank
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Friday/ feierabend

A little bit of Germany here in South Lake Union: ‘Feierabend’ opened in 2006.
Here’s the ‘trouble’: those big steins of beer. The restaurant website says while some menu items are traditional (pork shank on the right), others have been adjusted for the Northwestern palate. All 18 beers are imported from Germany, though.

I’m sure as soon as feierabend* had arrived on Friday in Washington DC, politicians & their staff rejoiced more than they usually do.

*Feierabend literally translates to ‘celebrate-the-evening’ (the end of the work day).

Meanwhile, the 185th Oktoberfest is in full swing in Munich, Germany.  I’d still like to make it out there one year – just not sure I could handle even just one of those one-liter steins filled with potent beer! It would be really embarrassing to keel over and fall off one’s chair while the umpa band plays.

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Thursday/ spare us your indignation

Kavanaugh in his emotional 50 minute opening address: ‘.. the Democrats will reap the whirlwind for decades to come’. Stephen Colbert (on the Late Show) to Kavanaugh (pointing with his finger at the camera): ‘Spare us your indignation, sir. This IS the whirlwind – and President Trump & the Republicans are responsible for it’.

There were fireworks and high drama at the Kavanaugh hearings today.

From the NYT Editorial Board: What a study in contrasts: Where Christine Blasey Ford was calm and dignified, Brett Kavanaugh was volatile and belligerent; where she was eager to respond fully to every questioner, and kept worrying whether she was being “helpful” enough, he was openly contemptuous of several senators; most important, where she was credible and unshakable at every point in her testimony, he was at some points evasive, and some of his answers strained credulity.

What I believe: Judge Kavanagh drank beer like a fish in high school & college, to the point that he blacked out.  Who knows how many times. Of course: he denied it; refused today to say how many beers are ‘too many’. He possibly assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, and forgot about it, or he now chooses to have forgotten about it.  He refuses to agree that the FBI (it’s standard procedure) should look into Ford’s claims. Ford is only one of three women accusing him of misconduct, and all want the FBI to investigate.  It does not add up for Kavanaugh.

Update Fri 9/28: There is going to be an FBI investigation into Ford’s claims, after all. They would have to work quickly: they only have one week.

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Wednesday/ America’s ‘Himpathy*’ reckoning

*Himpathy: the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy that powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior. Kate Manne uses the word in an opinion piece in the NYT.

Thursday morning, all eyes will be on the hearing of Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and (Supreme Court nominee) Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington DC.

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Tuesday/ no Aviation Gin for you (or me)

I see actor Ryan Reynolds’ gin has arrived in Seattle (Aviation Gin). It made me think of our gin of choice, for after-work cocktails, back when I worked in China: Bombay Sapphire. So I should give the Aviation Gin a try.

P.S. Alas, party-pooper researchers have published the results of a sweeping global study in the Lancet, that says that not even modest amounts of alcohol is good for one’s health. What is one to do?

Spotted here on 15th Ave, on Capitol Hill: a delivery truck with a poster of Reynolds, promoting his new gin. Described as an ‘American gin’, Aviation Gin is handcrafted in small 100-case batches by a small, dedicated team of master distillers in Portland, Oregon.
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Monday/ a spider, to frighten miss Muffet

‘Little miss Muffet sat on her tuffet,
eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider
who sat down beside her

and frightened miss Muffet away’.
— Nursery rhyme that first appeared in print in 1805, in a book titled Songs for the Nursery. Its origin is not known.

I found this European garden spider (Araneus diadematus) by my garage today. These spiders are orb-weavers and found throughout Europe and across North America.
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Sunday/ a nice start to Fall

It was a beautiful first day of fall here in Seattle, with puffy white clouds in a blue sky and mild temperatures (65 °F/ 18 °C).  I went down to South Lake Union for just a bit, and took the streetcar and No 8 bus back up to Capitol Hill.

I used the convex traffic mirror on the corner of Roy St and Westlake Ave N to take this ‘selfie’ of the South Lake Union streetcar. ‘South Lake Union to downtown Vancouver BC in about an hour’, says the Kenmore Air seaplane advertising painted on the streetcar. That’s not bad – much quicker than flying commercial out of Sea-Tac!
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Saturday/ cruise ships

Fall has started, and the cruise ship season is winding down. (The last sailing from Seattle is Oct 10). Friends of ours left on a cruise this afternoon from the Smith Cove cruise terminal. Bryan and I went there to wave them goodbye – but we could not get quite close enough to the pier!  We settled for views of the cruise ship departures from the Elliott Bay marina.

Our friends are on the Ruby Princess on the left (built 2008 for $400m; capacity 3,600 passengers). She was setting sail for San Diego. On the right is the MS Eurodam (built 2007; capacity 2,100 passengers). She was setting sail for Alaska.
Here is the Ruby Princess shortly after she had set sail at 4 pm. She is heading north towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to get into the Pacific Ocean.
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Friday/ where the iPhones are

Checking out the newest iPhone Xs in the store. The phone is about as wide, and a half-inch longer, than my iPhone 6s, which is acceptable. The enormous Xs Max is too big for me.

I finally went down to University Village mall to go check out Apple’s new store (and new iPhones*). There used to be a perfectly fine Apple store inside the mall, but I guess it was just not cool enough, and so they built a new stand-alone store, just steps away from where the old one was.

*I should probably upgrade my 2015 iPhone 6s at some point soon! The new camera lenses on the iPhone Xs, and the bezel-to-bezel OLED screen would be very welcome.

The style of Apple’s new store in University Village is minimalist with large glass panels and 14-ft high ceilings inside. (I took the picture in panorama mode; the roof is flat with a straight edge).
Work tables and seating near the large screen form the center focus point of the store. The large screen is used for art, and for product displays (of course), but also for coding classes for kids. (Picture by Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)
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Thursday/ flashbacks to 1991

I had not yet settled in the USA in 1991, but I knew about the testimony of Anita Hill in the hearings for then-nominee for Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas. Well, it’s happening again.  Christine Blasey Ford is accusing Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexually assaulting her as a teenager.

There is a difference, though: this time around the President of the United States is a known harasser (or worse) of women .. and since late 2017, the #MeToo movement has forced many powerful men to face up to the consequences of their abuse of women.

So we’ll see what happens. There may – or may not – be hearings next week. Like most Democrats I am an Absolutely Not-No Way-No How ‘NO‘ on Kavanaugh*- but I don’t get to vote on it.

*He’s been caught lying to the Senate, even before all of the latest allegations, and he’s a hard-line conservative. He also is of the opinion that a sitting President cannot be subpoenaed, nor indicted. No wonder Trump wants him to join the Supreme Court.

That’s Kavanaugh on the right. On the left is Ed Whelan, president of the think tank Ethics & Public Policy Center and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who spent much of the week hinting that he could disprove Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations that Kavanaugh had drunkenly assaulted her at a party when the two were teenagers. By Friday Whelan had retracted his story and apologized. [From Yahoo News]
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Wednesday/ Building Cure’s progress

Here’s what the completed building will look like. [Source: Aedas, Flad & Associates]
I walked by the construction site of the ‘Building Cure’ today.

It’s here in downtown Seattle near Denny Way. It is the new building for Seattle Children’s Research Institute to expand into. The Institute’s scientists develop cures and therapies for childhood diseases such as cancers, sickle cell anemia and type 1 diabetes.

The Institute has grown from just 40 employees in 2006 to more than 1,500 today.

The 13 floors are done, and now the glass and steel cladding (aluminum?) goes on.  Those round pillars stand at angles to each other to form the facets of the building’s sides. I hope the construction was not too much of a nightmare.
Colorful artwork on an electrical box on the pavement, by the existing Seattle Children’s Research Institute building.
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Tuesday/ the 2 hour marathon: almost there

Kipchoge took off a whopping 1 min 18 s from compatriot Dennis Kimetto’s 2014 record. [Graph: NRC Handelsblad]
The Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge (33) set a new world record in the Berlin marathon on Sunday. Roger Robinson writes in Runner’s World that he is now, without question, the greatest marathoner of all time. He won every one of the last nine marathons that he had competed in.

‘How long will this time stand?’ asks the headline. Eliud Kipchoge shortly after winning the Berlin marathon in a world record time of 2:01:39. [Picture: NRC Handelsblad]
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Monday/ Cape Town has water – for now

Cape Town’s dam levels hit the 70% mark on Monday for the first time since 2015. The severe water restrictions that had been in place, have been relaxed, albeit just by a little*.   The rainy season is coming to an end in September, and a long dry summer lies ahead.

*The City is asking residents to use no more than 70 liters (18.5 US gal) per person per day, up from a 50-liter (13 US gal) limit.

Cape Town metro area dam levels the last 5 years, in September. The picture is of the Theewaterskloof Dam, gloriously at full capacity in Sept. 2014. It is currently 52% full, up from barely 12% before the 2018 winter rains had come. [Picture credit: Twitter post from Cirrus@OrionnebulaAE].