a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It’s the end of Daylight Saving Time in the USA. At 2 am we’re all* setting our clocks here in the USA back by one hour. Yay! An extra hour for the party animals that hang out in the bars until 2 am – and an extra hour of snooze time for me on Sunday morning.
*Not Hawaii, Arizona— nor the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. They do not observe DST.
Scarf weather is definitely here! The high was only 44 °F/6°C today, with the winter’s first snow on the lawn this morning. Later in the day, big fluffy snowflakes sifted down, some of it sticking to the surface of the deck in my backyard.
I have a few German ‘Adventures of Tintin’ books in my collection, and I can start to read those with a better understanding as well.
The two bungling detectives (Schulze & Schultze in the German translation), first appeared in King Ottokar’s Scepter. Check out the table for their names in the other translations.
My only beef with the German translation is that the text is in ALL CAPS – which means YELLING in today’s rules for text formats. I would have much preferred it to be Mixed Case. Carlson Comics, please take note of that for the next update to the German translation!
| Language | The Detective Duo in Tintin's Adventures |
|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Uys and Buys |
| Dutch | Jansen and Janssen |
| English | Thomson and Thompson |
| French | Dupond and Dupont |
| German | Schulze and Schultze |
| Russian | Dyupon and Dyuponn (Дюпон and Дюпонн) |
| Spanish | Hernández and Fernández |
New York City suffered a terrorist attack by an Uzbek national (in the USA since 2010) on Tuesday that left 8 people dead and 11 injured.
Vox.xom reports this attack is one of several recent ones by Uzbeks: in Istanbul, St Petersburg, Stockholm and now New York City.
So left me look again where Uzbekistan is, I thought. Well, it’s one of the ‘Stans, about the size of California, pop. 29 million, native language Uzbek. It is doubly landlocked (two border crossings needed to get an ocean). The only other such country is tiny Lichtenstein. Economic prospects for young people are generally bleak, and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sure has a lot of work to do to make life better for its citizens. He did send a letter of condolence to President Trump today with a promise to assist in any way he can with the investigation into the attack.
Monday was ‘Black Monday’ in South Africa: a day of organized protest against the continued high murder rate of farmers in the country. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but it is impossible to see the frequent reports on the front pages of newspapers, and not to acknowledge that there is a problem.
I wish I knew what the solution is. It is an issue fraught with race relations, the recent history of white farmers in neighboring Zimbabwe, and one of broken promises from the South African government to provide better security and justice to citizens that produce the country’s food supply.
Well: ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort and associate Rick Gates were indicted today, on conspiracy, money laundering, foreign agent and false statement charges. They had to hand their passports in, and they are under house arrest. Manafort’s bail money was set at $10 million.
A third name made even bigger news: that of campaign staffer George Papadopoulos that had already plead guilty to lying to the FBI, about a meeting in London with a Russian contact to obtain ‘dirt’ about Hillary Clinton (her hacked e-mails). An ex-FBI agent said today the ‘significance of this evidence can almost not be overstated’.
I took advantage of the nice fall weather here (sunny, 60°F/ 15°C) before the next rain storm sweeps in, and went down to Seattle Art Museum (SAM) in downtown. I just checked out the artsy offerings in the museum store, and took a few pictures on the streets nearby.
News broke on Friday that special prosecutor Mueller’s first charges are to be made, as soon as Monday, in his investigation into the Trump campaign. The charges are still sealed, so the nature and the persons to be charged are not yet known. It would be a political earthquake if ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort or ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is indicted. Some observers point out that these first indictments may very well be for crimes by lesser players, to start ratcheting up the pressure on the bigger fish. From what I learned from newspapers and cable TV, there seems to be a wide range of possible crimes to go after, from money laundering to running afoul of foreign agent laws, to election campaign collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice.
It’s all a hoax! cries Trump and his supporters on Fox News. Fox News is a cable TV ‘news’ channel, that has hosted 19 fawning, sycophantic, soft-ball interviews with Trump so far this year. And ‘What about Hillary and her e-mails? And the uranium deal with the Russians? (This was in 2010!). And paying for the Steele dossier?’. Well, sorry. Hillary is not under investigation, and she is not President of the United States.
Halloween (Tuesday Oct 31) is almost here. The decorations are up, on homes and apartment buildings. I love these – visible from far away. ‘Man! is that what I think it is?’ I thought, and walked up to inspect them.
About 90 Americans die every day due to opioid drug overdoses. Opioids are powerful painkiller drugs that attach to receptors in the brain. Once attached, they send signals to the brain which blocks pain, slows breathing, and has a general calming and anti-depressing effect.
President Trump finally declared it as a ‘public health emergency’ on Thursday (but not the national health emergency that it really is). A ‘public health emergency’ does not appropriate federal funds the way a ‘national emergency’ does.
Congress is not helping. Politicians are addicted to money from big pharma lobbyists, as comedian Trevor Noah noted on his Daily Show. (Leave it to comedians to tell us the truth). In 2015, the American Medical Association petitioned Congress to outlaw the running of commercials for prescription drugs on TV, to no avail. In one case that came to light, pharmacies in a West Virginia town with 400 residents, received 9 million opioid drug pills in one year. Did Congress pass a law that made it easier for the Drug Enforcement Agency to prosecute shady distributors of prescription drugs? Of course not: they made it harder.
I am working my way through a large set of German language lessons in duolingo. (It is a website and an app. I find the desktop/ website better to use, since it is easier to type in the answers to the lessons that way).
Every now and then, I get a German phrase that is remarkably easy to translate directly into my native Germanic language of Afrikaans, but impossible to translate directly into English. (And I love it – it’s what fascinates me about languages).
Here’s one :
German: Es ist mein Ernst.
Afrikaans : Dit is my erns.
English: It is my [Hmm. What word to use here? Cannot say ‘It is my serious/ It is my earnest’. Need a noun for some thing/ some issue that is taken seriously].
Pyeongchang is only 40 miles from the border with North Korea (capital: Pyongyang), and ticket sales have been slow.
Accommodation for tourists close to the sites is limited as well. On the bright side, fund raising and construction of the venues have met key milestones.
Here a great analysis of the multiple lies from Trump and the damage control that the White House staff had to engage in since last Monday. (Four American green berets were ambushed in Niger, Africa, on Oct 4, bringing to light that at least 800 American soldiers are there, something not even senior members of Congress were aware of. Some lawmakers have called for the 9/11 authorization from Congress – now 16 years on – for the US armed forces to go after terrorists across the globe, to be redefined and reauthorized).
American political commentator, professor, and author Robert Reich posted a thesis on Facebook and Twitter that says America actually has six political parties, and not just two. So to get any significant legislation done, the Senate and House leaders have to get a coalition of two or more of these ‘inside’ parties to agree. (For the record, I am an anti-establishment Democrat).
The Cape Pioneer Trek mountain bike competition ended on Saturday in the southern Cape in South Africa.
It is a very beautiful part of the country, and the riders go through trails in nature reserves. I have to believe they are safe from predators, but they still have to watch out for zebra, giraffes and antelopes.
Amazon is looking for a North American city for a second headquarters (HQ2), and Thursday was the last day for submissions. The company will reportedly spend $5 billion and bring 50,000 jobs to the winning city. Critics say it’s a race to the bottom (determine who will give up the most tax & other incentives), and that cities should be careful what they wish for (an Amazon HQ2 could bring increases in real estate prices, traffic problems).
Forbes magazine lists the top contenders as: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Pittsburgh and Toronto. We will have to be patient. The decision will only be made sometime in 2018!
Thursday marked the anniversary of the US Stock Market crash of 1987, called Black Monday. The Dow Jones Index fell by 22.6% in one day, a record decline that stands to this day. The impact was felt worldwide. ‘It is a sobering experience’ said my dad at the time. In South Africa, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Index would slump by 38% in the month that followed.
Under current rules, if the broader S&P 500 index falls more than 7.0% before 3:25 p.m. New York time, trading is paused for 15 minutes. If the decline continues once trading resumes, and it is still before 3:25 p.m., the market is again paused at 13% down. If the decline happens after 3:25 p.m, trading continues. But if the decline reaches 20%, trading is suspended for the session, regardless of the time of day. Still, said the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange today: the forces in the market driven by fear are very powerful, and even the circuit breakers may not prevent the market from going down significantly in a very short time.
We had windy and rainy weather today here in the Puget Sound: not too bad in the city (0.8″ rain at 10 pm), but elsewhere there were some power outages, as well as a few cancellations of ferry sailings (between Port Townsend and Coupeville).
Here’s a little collection of fall leaves, that I picked up in the street and just put in a flat bowl with water. It shows off the reds (anthocyanins) and oranges & yellows (carotenoids) in the leaves.
