Elon Musk’s SpaceX team had a spectacularly successful Falcon rocket lift-off and recovery of two booster units today. (The middle booster failed to land on its drone ship target and was lost).
This rocket is called Falcon Heavy because it can lift nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lbs) into orbit*. Check out the photos that SpaceX had posted on Flickr, here.
*The massive Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, could deliver 137 tons into orbit. There was also a Russian rocket, the Energia, that made flights in 1987 and 1988 that could lift 100 tons into space.
Here’s the lift-off of the Falcon Heavy rocket (cost: $90m). Rockets are about 85% fuel by mass. This is essentially a Falcon 9 rocket with two additional boosters strapped onto it. This was just a test flight, and there is a Tesla Roadster inside the rocket, with a dummy dressed up in a space suit (‘Spaceman’) driving it. Right here about 5 million pounds of thrust is generated, equal to the combined thrust of some eighteen Boeing 747 aircraft.I smiled when the live-feed camera panned over the ‘fan boys’ with their happy faces, as they cheered the lift-off. I think this is at the launch center in Cape Canaveral in Florida. P.S. Where are all the fan-girls? We need you, too, to become engineers.
Well – it was a bit of a bloodbath today in the stock market with the Dow Jones down another 4.6%. Note to media: Why sensationalize it further by reporting the 1,175 points loss as the ‘biggest ever’ – technically true, but misleading? Percentage-wise it’s only the biggest drop since 2011 for the Dow.
Bloomberg reports that the robo-advisor websites from Betterment and Wealthfront crashed today. (Too much traffic). Ironically, robo-trading algorithms are suspected as the culprits for accelerating the 900 point loss to 1,600 points (6.2%*) in the afternoon, before the market recovered somewhat to the 1,175 points loss at the close.
*At 7% down for the S&P 500, the trading curb circuit-breakers would have halted trading for 15 minutes.
Hmm .. futures point to 2% more downside on the Dow Jones’s Tuesday opening (this as of 10 pm Eastern Time on Monday night).
The front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, on Monday morning,
Philadelphians are celebrating the the streets, after their Eagles defied expectations and best the New England Patriots 41-33 in Superbowl LVII.
Eagles quarterback Nick (‘Saint Nick’) Fowles started the season as back-up quarterback for his team. He replaced regular quarterback Carson Wentz in December when Wentz tore a knee ligament.
Fowles didn’t inspire a lot of confidence at first, but played brilliantly in the post-season playoffs, and ended up being voted Most Valuable Player. Wow.
Here is a collage of some of the highlights of the game. That’s Patriots quarterback Tom Brady top left, and Eagles QB Nick Foles to his right. The Patriots briefly took the lead in the fourth quarter, but then tight end game had a nail-biting finish, but then Zach Ertz got a touchdown, and the Eagles stopped Tom Brady from drawing even and forcing the game into overtime. [Picture stills from ESPN.com]
We spotted a Tesla Model 3 across the street while we were having a beer and a bite at Elysian Capitol Hill Brewery on Saturday night. It’s amazing how much smaller in size, just 11 inches in length can make a car look (185″ long vs. 196″ for the Model S). I liked the styling and the lines on the Model 3 a lot.
Check it out! (That’s me, standing in the rain). This brand new Tesla Model 3 is a dark metallic grey. Its owner ponied up at least $50k for it. Only about 1,500 of these cars were produced in the last quarter in 2017. Tesla hopes to get production volumes up to 5,000 Model 3s per week by June.
Well, the week ended with the US stock market sharply down, spooked (so the experts say) by fears of interest rate hikes by the Fed. The January jobs report had revealed that hourly wages jumped 2.9% year-over-year. There might be more pain ahead : the technicians say it’s about 5% further down, to get back to the S&P 500’s long-term trendline.
600 points these days only count for about 2.5% (of Dow 26,186). It’s sobering to look back at June 2016 and see the Dow was only at 18,000 then, before dropping 3.4% to 17,400. And 2008 had three days with over 7% drops on a depressed index in the mid 8000s. Yikes. [Table from CNBC.com]
It’s still a number of weeks before it is officially spring here in the northern hemisphere, but my potted plants at the back of my house are already flowering.
The colors are very welcome – and I even spotted a hummingbird hovering at the yellow mahonia.
Clockwise from the top right: Mahonia ‘Arthur Menzies ‘ with the yellow flowers, Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ (red flowers), Helleborus ‘Wester Flisk’ (white flowers) .. and this last one might be a Helleborus as well; I’m not sure. I will have to check with Tom that helps me with my garden!
Dexter at Newark Liberty Intnl Airport. Step 1: Tag your bag – after you have ditched your emotional support peacock.
Dexter the ’emotional support’ peacock was denied access on a United flight from New York to Los Angeles on Saturday, even though his owner paid for an extra seat for him. (I am sure everyone on the plane would have needed emotional support, with a screaming peacock in the cabin).
Maybe all of this was simply a ploy to entertain Dexter’s 5,000 followers on Instagram.
I have a new health insurance plan for 2018. It turned out my new plan does not cover a prescription drug that I use, and was looking to refill.
Now I know why prescription drug prices, is a top health care issue in the United States. Insurers and pharmacies can basically charge any price they want for prescription drugs. The drug I was looking to refill today, has been around a long, long time (more than 10 years). Its manufacturer sells billions of dollars of it every year. A generic version came out in 2016.
To illustrate:
Walgreens 90 day out-of-pocket, no insurance: $575. What?!
Walgreens w. GoodRx coupon 90 days, out-of-pocket $168.Better.
Costco w. GoodRx coupon 90 days, out-of-pocket $26. <Yes! I pick this one.
What is going on here? The vaunted free market at work? I say it is capitalism and healthcare-for-profit, both gone haywire. Bernie Sanders for President!
On-line commercial for prescription drug discount coupon website GoodRx. What the picture shows is absolutely true. Pharmacy B just miles away from Pharmacy A can sell the same drug for 3 or 4 times the price.
‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ – Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4.
It was revealed last week that President Trump had pushed to have special investigator Robert Mueller fired in June 2017. Trump only stopped short when White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign. Trump and his White House staff now deny all of this (Trump: ‘fake news’), or refuse to comment – of course. They all lie, from the President on down, all the time, basically.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. ‘State of the Union’ misspelled on the visitor’s gallery tickets.
Today FBI Deputy Director Andrew G. McCabe abruptly stepped down. His retirement in the next few months had been widely expected, but Trump attacked him and the FBI relentlessly over the last few months. Then there is the bizarre spectacle of the House Republicans (Trump stooge Devin Nunes chief among them), that join in attacking and undermining the FBI.
So I refuse to tune in Tuesday night to see Trump’s State of the Union speech. Something in the State of the Union is rotten, and he will surely not convince me otherwise.
Paul Rozenzweig writes in The Atlantic that the person to watch is Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney-General at the Dept of Justice. Mueller effectively reports to him, and plays by the rules. So Mueller will not charge Trump with anything, or indict him. Rosenstein will decide if Mueller’s report (after the Russia investigation) will even be made public! Some speculate that Trump’s end goal is really to get Rosenstein fired and replaced. (Rosenstein’s boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a Trump supporter and recused himself from the Russia investigation).
I had to take a nap this afternoon! I watched the Australian Open Men’s Final in the wee hours of Sunday morning, from 1 am to 4 am. It was totally worth it. Roger Federer won his 20th Grand Slam* championship, at 36, which is unheard of in modern men’s pro tennis. (Both numbers: the 36 and the 20).
*A Grand Slam tournament is one of the four big ones: Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon or US Open.
Some screen shots from the live feed. Clockwise from the top left: Chilic (say ‘Chill-itch’) pumped up after winning the second set | Australian movie star Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth and friend were in the crowd | Roger That, says a fan t-shirt (I want one) | A tearful Federer at the podium, after winning | Wife and No 1 supporter on the tour, Mirka – an ex-tennis professional herself, in the player guest box | Another tennis legend, Australian Rod Laver, taking a picture of the big TV screen. Laver won all four Grand Slam titles in 1962, and again in 1969 – a feat unmatched by anyone else in the history of the game.
‘Keep your eye on the ball’. Federer working his magic. [Picture: Ben Solomon/ Tennis Australia].Cilic chasing down a ball. The ‘impossible’ Western Forehand grip that he has on his racquet, is used to put extreme topspin on the ball. I never really used this grip when I played tennis; my impression is that it only became widely popular after my generation of tennis players. [Picture: Ben Solomon/ Tennis Australia].It’s Federer’s 20th Grand Slam title, 6th Australian Open title. On Saturday, Caroline Wozniacki won her first Australian Open and first Grand Slam tournament. [Pictures: Tennis Australia]
The Seattle Times report that the Amazon biospheres are finally ready. They will open on Monday for Amazon workers to use. The spheres are not open to the public. (Aw). The dead-of-winter days are so deprived of sunlight in Seattle, that is probably beneficial to go into the spheres just to catch some extra light, even if it is artificial.
Graphic from the Seattle Times. (72 °F is 22°C, 55°F is 12°C).
BloombergBusinessweek calls the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities in billions of Intel & Apple computers all over the world, that became public early this January, ‘staggering security flaws’. (Intel is getting most of the flak. Ninety percent of the world’s computers, and 99% of servers, run on Intel chips).
So .. is there a somewhat straightforward explanation of these two types of attacks? And what is a poor sap such as me to do with his computers and devices (besides taking up a life in the woods and refrain from using them)?
It turns out almost all the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others) have worked together since June 2017 to create software patches so that hackers would not exploit the flaws. But fixing the problem for all platform and hardware combinations still has a long way to go.
As always, users should update their Linux, Windows, Apple MacOS or Apple iOS device operating systems, as soon as upgrades and fixes become available. Use proper passwords (and change them from time to time). Never click on links in suspicious e-mails (or: ‘don’t run someone else’s code on your machine’). Consider installing a Java script blocker such as uBlock Origin for browsers.
The problem is that the patches are causing PCs to freeze up or slow down, among other issues. Linux inventor Linus Torvalds called Intel out and says some of the proposed fixes are ‘complete and utter garbage’.
Highly simplified descriptions of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. They have even been given their own ‘logos’ by the teams that identified the flaws, and that are working on solutions for fixing it.
Trump’s arrival at the World Economic Forum in Davos caused a stir, but if I read reports correctly, he did not step on too many toes.
Per the NYT: He expressed regret for sharing anti-Muslim videos originally posted by an ultranationalist fringe group in Britain, but made no apology for calling African nations “sh**hole” countries.
The carry-bag on the left made the rounds at Davos. Its picture is from cartoonist Chappatte, and the bag is available at store.chappatte.com. I like the t-shirts from the website, as well (very ‘Davos’). The American Century t-shirt has a hamburger in there, the atom bomb, and (maybe?) a play on the money tree logo from investment funds management company American Century. The sausage in the next t-shirt is cervelas (also servelat or zervelat), a sausage produced in Switzerland, France and parts of Germany. Finally, a t-shirt that shows a future when snow may be rare, even at Davos.
There was a cute report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal about millions of Indian smartphone newbies. They just love to use WhatsApp to send sappy ‘Good Morning’ pictures to all their family and friends. And so after a year or so, many users would find their phone storage completely clogged up with ‘Good Morning’ pictures.
Google researchers half a world away, thought at first that there might be a problem with the Android operating system (making the phones freeze up). But when they found the cause was simply a phone filled to the brim with pictures, they posted an Android App that would search for, and clear out, these ‘Good Morning’ pictures by the thousand. Since December there were more than 10 million downloads of the app, and the problem is solved for now.
Left: The Wall Street Journal article shows a typical ‘Good Morning’ picture, popular in India. Right: May I offer my snappier, ‘philosoraptor’ meme picture instead?
There’s a new kid on the (Australian Open 2018 tennis) block: South Korean Hyeon Chung. Chung is 21 yrs old, and nicknamed ‘The Wall’ for his ability to return all incoming serves.
He reached the AO Men’s semi-final by beating American Tennys Sandgren on Wednesday (Australia time). In the previous round, he took out former World No 1 Novak Djokovic in a great match.
Chung and his new coach, South African Neville Godwin, will have to pull out all the stops for his next match, though : against World No 2 – and arguably the world’s greatest tennis player ever, Roger Federer.
Update Fri 1/26: Chung had to throw in the towel and retire from his match against Federer, due to a blister on his foot.He was down 1-6 , 2-5.
Hyeon Chung from South Korea, in his quarter-final match against American Tennys Sandgren. [Photo: Ben Solomon/ Tennis Australia]Chung’s double-handed backhand. [Photo: Ben Solomon/ Tennis Australia]
The Amazon Go store here in downtown Seattle opened today to the public (required for entry: an Amazon account and a phone with the Amazon Go app). I still have to go and check it out.
The main store concept is that there are no check-out lines. There are hundreds of cameras in the ceiling, sensors on the shelves, and bluetooth beacons in the store, to track and update what is taken as the shopper goes through the store. As far as I can tell there are no physical carts that one pushes through the store (I don’t see any in pictures from inside the store). The shopper brings a carry bag/ shoulder bag to put items directly into. So this is smaller volume and higher-end grocery shopping than at say, one’s traditional grocery store.
Here’s the little tutorial from the Amazon Go app.And these are pictures I grabbed from Twitter, from local TV stations KOMO4 (top) and King5 (bottom). Ironically, the store with no check-out line, had a line to get in at the door this morning. Later on the line disappeared, though.
The red dot is Hing Hay Park, and the red frame is the International District.
There was a break in the rain today, and so I took the streetcar to the International District. I took a few pictures at Hing Hay Park, and browsed around in the Kinokuniya bookstore (Japanese).
By then another big band of rain clouds were passing over the city, though, and I got a little wet before I made it home.
Main Picture: This dragon mural is facing Hing Hay Park. I love dragons. Insets: Cement benches in the park have beautiful Western chess boards and Xiangqi (Chinese chess) boards built right into them. Chinese chess is played with 14 pieces for each player: two each of Advisor, Cannon, Chariot, Elephant(!), General, Horse, Soldier. Pieces are placed on the intersections of the lines and not inside the squares as in chess.
I went marching again today (here is 2017), joining friends in the Seattle’s Women’s March (protesting the Trump Administration).
We were not as plentiful as last year’s 100,000+ marchers; the crowd size estimated to have been around 40,000. It was cold and rainy, and the weather might have been a factor. Some 300,000 people packed the streets in Chicago, and 120,000 in New York City. And in Austin and Dallas, Texas, the crowds were larger than last year.
In a way, it’s fitting that under the Republicans, the government shut down – on the eve of the dysfunctional Trump administration’s one-year anniversary. Since I don’t work for the government or the military, the shutdown does not affect me in a big way. I do feel sorry for American kids on CHIP* and immigrant kids on DACA*, who are impacted. It’s disheartening that politics and governing are so broken in the United States Congress.
*CHIP: Children’s Health Insurance Program. DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive directive from the Obama administration that halted deportation of immigrant children brought to the USA by their parents. Trump rescinded DACA.
President Trump is in ‘excellent health*’, and mentally fit for office reported Dr. Ronny Jackson, presidential physician, on Tuesday. Trump aced the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, a brief, basic test used to detect mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. (Critics point out that Jackson is not a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, and mention other tests that could have been done).
*Trump is in fact borderline obese and has elevated cholesterol. He maintains a poor diet, has a stressful job, and gets very little exercise. Dr. Jackson did admit that Trump has to work on his diet.
Here is Forbes magazine, weighing in: We are invited accordingly to ask: ‘excellent’, compared to what? Even that tends to vary, but the customary answer would be: the prevailing norms of a given population or culture. The typical American, with a typical American diet and lifestyle, is at massively elevated risk for debilitating chronic disease relative to, say, the typical Blue Zone resident, or the atypical Americans who manage to take good care of themselves here in spite of it all. America overall is famous for spending more on disease care than peer nations around the world, while having far less health to show for it by the measures that matter most: years in life, life in years, and the bounty of both. Americans lag behind much of the developed world in longevity, and lag even further behind in vitality.
Here is the ‘Naming (the animals)’ panel from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test. Hey! I have all three in my animal collection, I thought. (Mine are African Lion, Black Rhinoceros and Bactrian Camel).
