a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
We have a huge oil rig destined for drilling off the coast of Alaska docked here in Elliott Bay at Terminal 5 in the Port of Seattle. There were plenty of protesters in kayaks our in force today on the water around the rig (called kayaktivists). I want to run out tomorrow and go and take a close-up look of the intimidating drilling monster. Here is the article in the Seattle Times that I borrowed the pictures from.
Here are some silly cartoons from the The New Yorker magazine I flipped through while I was waiting for my check-up at the doctor’s office on Friday. (All three very true, actually). Chiller Theatre was a local TV channel in New York City in the ’60s and ’70s that showed classic horror movies.
I made it in from San Francisco, and I’m following the reporting of the Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia (8 fatalities; some 200 others injured) with special interest, since my trip to Portland on the train is so recent.
Check out the diagrams from the New York Times here. Not yet known : why was the train barreling around a sharp curve in the track at twice the speed limit?
One could be forgiven for not knowing the name of the city of Santa Clara even though it is in the center of Silicon Valley (there is also Cupertino, San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and others). Everyone knows San Francisco, of course .. and it looks like next year’s Superbowl 50 in the Bay Area will be a little bit like Superbowl 48 where the New York City stole the thunder of New Jersey (where the superbowl was actually played). In this case San Francisco will be hogging all the attention, leaving little of it to Santa Clara.
This Lamborghini Aventador was parked at the hotel entrance here in Walnut Creek today. Beverley Hills Lamborghini said the frame around the license plate. Assuming this is a 2014 or 2015 machine, it must have set its owner back some $430,000. That princely sum would be good for four top-of-the line Teslas, and then some.
I made it in to foggy SFO a little later than scheduled – as usual these last few weeks – and headed for our client’s Beale St building for meetings all day.
I had a nice view from the 23rd floor of the ambitious construction going on around First and Mission St in the Embarcadero district. The Transbay Tower is going to be the tallest building in the city in 2017, with the futuristic aluminum-skinned Transbay Transit Center right next to it. Here is a link to the TransBay Center Interactive Map.
There are reports of heavy downpours and tornadoes in the central parts of the USA this weekend – but here in the Pacific Northwest we are enjoying mild and tranquil weather.
Check out the pages from my Time-Life Science Library book that I bought for $7 from Amazon. I remember the book from when I was growing up, and I wanted it especially for the explanation of the effects of relativity, illustrated by a fantastical train called the Relativity Express and the doings of the evil Agent X. The Relativity Express will get you there in a flash : it travels at ¾ the speed of light !
It’s Thursday again, and at 1.30 pm sharp it was time for me to pack up for the drive to San Francisco International airport.
What’s a Jimmy lunch? Why, it’s a
lunchbox from the sandwich franchise Jimmy Johns. I would say my lunch made for a classic American lunch : a turkey sandwich (with a pickle), a bag of chips and a cookie. No soda pop for me, though. Too much sugar and therefore verboten.
Weekend’s over! .. it was back to the ‘salt mine’ for me on Monday.
I finally made it to SFO airport by 11.00 am on Monday morning, a little later than usual .. morning fog made for an air traffic control hold for our flight.
So .. our long weekend getaway came to an end, the way it always does. We had some time to spare between checking out at the hotel and leaving from Portland’s Union Station, so we walked over to the Pearl District nearby.
These pictures 
are from Saturday night. The neon rose is from a bike repair shop on the waterfront on the Willamette river.
Here are some pictures from Friday. We found lots to look at, and things to do, close to the hotel in downtown Portland. The weather was sunny and mild and we just went on a walkabout, stopping at different places.
Five of us are making a long weekend of it a going to Portland by train, and stay in a hotel in downtown Portland and walk around and just relax. The Amtrak Cascades train gets one there in just under 4 hours. Yes, one can drive down in slightly less time, but the train is relaxing and there is no traffic to deal with.
I guess I knew from previous spring blooms that the tree close to my house on the corner is a jacaranda tree, but I realized it again as I walked by it on Tue night. Man! Did you know that? Did you forget? I asked myself. Jacaranda trees are actually native to tropical and subtropical regions, found widely in Asia, and in Nepal .. and in South Africa as well. In fact, my home city for a few years in the 1990s in South Africa was Pretoria, which is popularly known there as ‘The Jacaranda City’. The jacaranda trees lined the street in front of my house there, and would produce carpets of purplish blossoms that had dropped onto the sidewalk.
The US
Supreme Court heard arguments today for and against same-sex marriage. Has the definition of marriage changed over the last thousand years? I would say it has. Should it change to allow gay couples to marry? Should one State recognize the marriage from out-of-State married visitors? (Since some States in the USA allow gay couples to marry and others absolutely do not). Here are some audio transcripts from the court, again courtesy of the New York Times. The justices’ ruling is due in June.
The death toll had climbed above 4,000 in the Nepal earthquake by Monday night. Several historic buildings in Katmandu were destroyed (pictures below, from the New York Times).
I wanted to see where Mt Everest was located relative to the earthquake. At least 18 people were killed when an avalanche from the earthquake hit the base camp. Check out the great maps from the on-line edition of the New York Times, in this article Extent of the damage Nepal earthquake.
I see it’s time for another Jurassic* Park movie this summer, the latest one set for release on June 12. I will have to go see it in the theater for the full effect !
P.S. These geological timescales are enormous in length. Humankind’s history goes back, oh, 5,000 years. The Jurassic Period was some 200–145 million years ago. During the Jurassic Period, the super-continent Pangaea started to drift apart.
