a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It was a beautiful late-summer day here in Seattle (78 °F/ 26 °C).
Friends and I attended a WNBA* women’s basketball game in the Key Arena by the Space Needle.
*Women’s National Basketball Association, founded in 1996. There are 12 teams that play in the league.
This brown woodpecker is called a ‘northern flicker’ (Colaptes auratus). It spent a little time foraging for insects on my front lawn this morning. (Yes, the poor lawn is yellowed out from the three dry months of summer, but it will slowly start to green up, now that the rain is returning).
Australia has had a turbulent week in politics, one that saw prime minister Malcolm Turnbull ousted on Friday. Scott Morrison was voted in by parliament as the country’s 30th prime minister.
Morrison’s political views are socially conservative (he abstained from the vote for legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year). I read in Wikipedia that Morrison is from the Liberal Party of Australia, ‘a major centre-right liberal conservative political party in Australia’ .. a description which I find confusing! Anyway: the centre-left party in Australian politics, is the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
*There was that famous midnight thumbs-down for the ‘Skinny Repeal’ of Obamacare. But the reason McCain gave, was that it was not done by ‘regular order’. Or it could have been motivated purely by revenge against Trump, for disparaging him as a war hero.
There are many more revealing details about his life in this article that Tim Dickinson wrote for Rolling Stone in 2008 when McCain ran against Obama.
I lucked out and caught the last day when these LEGO ‘Americana Roadshow’ models were on display at Bellevue Square mall, last Sunday.
I don’t think I aspire to build giant LEGO models like these .. but maybe that is just because I don’t have hundreds of thousands of bricks to work with!
The smoky, unhealthy air that had blanketed the city since Sunday night, finally cleared up today.
There was a sprinkle of rain this morning, but I watered the garden later on in the day, as well.
South African sports legend John van Reenen (71) passed away on Tuesday at his home in Calitzdorp, South Africa. (He suffered from diabetes). He studied art right here in Seattle at the University of Washington until 1971, and was a world-class discus thrower at the time. He wanted to attend the 1972 Olympic Games, but was barred as a South African citizen. South Africans were barred by the IOC from the Games from 1964 to 1992, due to the South African government’s apartheid policies.
At an event in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 1975, Van Reenen set a world record with a throw of 68.48 m. Discus throwers studied and imitated his technique, known for a long time as ‘the South African drill’. Perfecting a good technique is notoriously difficult – which may be why the world record of German Jürgen Schult of 74.08 m, set in 1986, still stands today. It is the oldest record in all of men’s track and field.
Whoah. There is now irrefutable evidence that Trump conspired to influence (read: steal) the election in November 2016. (And this does not even involve the Russians or the June 2016 Trump tower meeting).
Per sworn testimony in court today: Trump instructed his ‘fixer’ personal lawyer Michael Cohen to pay hush-money to two women in October of 2016, so that they would not reveal their sexual relationships with him. This was in the wake of the tape with the infamous Billy Bush ‘locker-room’ banter. Then Trump lied about it on Air Force One, saying that he doesn’t know anything about it. (Sidenote: Trump lies to everyone, and his supporters lie to themselves).
Meanwhile, over in Virginia, the jury found Paul Manafort guilty on 8 of 18 charges today. There are now five close Trump associates that have plead guilty or have been found guilty. (‘I hire the best people’). They are National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Campaign Aide George Papadopoulos, Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick Gates, and Personal Lawyer Cohen.
What should happen next, is that the Republican-controlled House and the Senate hold hearings, and then start impeachment proceedings.
I’m not holding my breath, though.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
– Lyrics from ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ (1977), by Electric Light Orchestra
The air quality for today (and expected for tomorrow), for the Puget Sound region, is pretty much the worst on record*. Winds from the north and from the east have carried vast plumes of smoke and PM2.5 particles from the raging wildfires in Canada and Eastern Washington, to the region.
*An air quality value of 218 is reported tonight in my neck of the woods, which is in the ‘Very Unhealthy’ category.
The way we write dates in America – Month/ Day/ Year – made all the dates this week palindromes (sort of). So one can write 8/19/18 as 81918 by dropping the slash characters.
Here’s the No 10 bus stop closest to my house, that I frequently take to go to downtown.
Oaxaca (say ‘wa-HAH-ka’) is in southwestern Mexico and best known for its Zapotec and Mixtec indigenous peoples and cultures.
Look for a Grumpy Cat helium balloon carried by the child in the bottom middle of the picture.
As it happens, helium was discovered 150 years ago to the day, on August 18, 1868, by the French astronomer, Jules Janssen, during a total solar eclipse. There is a strong case to be made that helium balloons be banned.
We have a limited helium supply in Earth’s crust; we cannot manufacture it, and we need it for superconductors and MRI scanners. So putting helium in balloons is a frivolous waste. Once helium ends up in the atmosphere, it is lost forever into space – it is too light to be contained in the atmosphere by gravity.
.. in the Manafort* case. They have been deliberating for two days, and will resume on Monday. Court-watchers say that if the deliberations drag on into Wednesday, there would be cause for concern.
*Paul Manafort (69), Trump’s ex-campaign manager. The jury is deciding his guilt or innocence on 18 tax and bank fraud charges, related to his consulting work for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.
The evidence presented against Manafort is very strong. His defence lawyers really did not have much to work with. So why did Manafort not make a plea deal with Special Investigator Robert Mueller? is the question. He very well might spend the rest of his life in jail.
President Trump could offer him a pardon (which would be pretty outrageous, to be sure).
Asked about it, Trump said ‘I don’t talk about that. I think it’s very sad what they’ve done to Paul Manafort’.
Below is the used LEGO Castle #6075 set from 1981 that I had bought from a Craigslist seller in Tacoma.
I had to fill in quite a few yellow brick pieces of my own. I bought it knowing there were no knight or horse minifigures. (Aw). The red drawbridge is also missing its pulley and rope, used to draw it close.
Fun as it was, to build this set, it’s really outdated. The modern medieval sets from LEGO use gray bricks and not yellow, roof tiles, and add in a lot more detail to the castle walls and roofs, and to the minifigure characters (see the picture of ‘Kingdom’s Joust’).
Oops! I realized today, my library books are overdue, better take them back. I hopped on the bus to the Seattle Central Library downtown. Mission accomplished as far as returning the books, I meandered through the treasure trove of magazine racks on the 6th floor. Hmm, here’s Weyerhaeuser World magazine. I worked there for four years, when I first came to the Seattle area, so let’s see what happened in 1969.
Check it out below: a report of a student protest at the University of Washington here in Seattle. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protested against American imperialism – in the time of the Vietnam war and all that, after all. This protest was specifically against Weyerhaeuser’s ‘exploitation of 12 million black South Africans’. I’m not sure if the workers deemed not to be paid fair wages, or if it was about their working conditions. It could have been both. For a long time in those years, wage earners in South Africa, especially in the mining industry, were treated very unfairly.
Anyway: the SDS splintered up and disbanded at the end of 1969, but was an important influence on student activist groups in the decades that followed. A new incarnation of SDS was founded in 2006. My advice to young people: protesting is fine and well, but the nature of the beast is : you really have to vote. Only 40% of eligible voters typically vote in midterm elections. For young people, it could be as low as half that again: 20%.
Trump’s ex-senior advisor Omarosa* must have struck a nerve, the way he viciously lashed out at her, in a tweet this morning. Who talks like this? Is this the way a President should talk? asked journalists of Press Secretary Huckabee-Sanders. Her answer was basically that Trump is an equal-opportunity insulter.
*Her full name is Omarose Manigault-Newman. She became famous on Trump’s Apprentice reality TV show. She was fired from the White House in December 2017. It turned out she has a recording of the firing, done by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room. She says she has other recorded conversations, as well. She has also just published a book called ‘Unhinged’ .. a reference to Trump, of course.
The popcorn movie ‘The Meg*’ is out on the circuit. Even though I have not seen it yet, it’s fun to check the movie’s trailer online, and the posters for it. The movie is a co-production with China, and features actress Li Bingbing alongside Jason Statham.
*Short for Carcharodon megalodon, a really, really big shark (60 ft/ 20m) that roamed the oceans until about 2.6 million years ago.
By Sunday evening the remains of the young man (Richard Russell, 29 years old), as well as the flight recorder, had been retrieved from the crash site.
The early take is that depression over financial troubles, was a major factor in the tragedy.
Here is one more picture from Volunteer Park on Friday, of the Conservatory building. The Victorian-style structure is said to be modeled loosely on The Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. It was one of the first buildings to be erected on the young City of Seattle’s Volunteer Park grounds, and completed in 1912.
The Space Needle’s five year, $100 million project is complete. The original structure is still very sound, and not a lot of structural work was needed.
Instead, new floor-to-ceiling glass panels were installed, staircases were widened, and on the observation deck, floor-to-sky structural glass was added. The erstwhile solid steel floor is now ten layers of glass, designed so that the top layer can be replaced, once it gets a little worn out and scratched.
P.S. A bizarre event started to unfold at 7.32 pm tonight at Sea-Tac airport. A suicidal 29-year old man (ground service agent) took off in an empty Bombardier Q-400 from Horizon Air (a turboprop plane that can carry 76 passengers). It scared the daylights out of everyone; two F-15 jets were scrambled from Oregon, and tried to get him to land. He died when he crashed the airplane on Ketron island in south Puget Sound, some 30 miles from the airport. Miraculously, no buildings were damaged, and no one else was hurt.
Vice President & Trump Pleaser Mike Pence talked about Trump’s proposed Space Force today. Trump wants the new proposed branch of the military (the 6th, after Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard) in operation by 2020. Um. It’s a moon shot alright.
1. The new Space Force would have to be authorized by Congress.
2. How about a Cyber Force first, to shore up our cybersecurity?
3. Where will the money come from? The United States is 20 big Apples (trillions) in debt, and will now add another every year (Trump tax cuts).
4. Impeachment proceedings may very well start in 2019.
