a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The clouds have cleared, and there is a nice view of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction* tonight in the Western night sky here tonight.
Hopefully the sky will be clear tomorrow night as well, when they will appear to be even closer.
*Conjunction means two astronomical objects appear close to each other in the sky, as seen from our view on Earth. Jupiter is still some 400 million miles away from Venus (on average 416 million miles away).
It was a rough week in the US stock market last week, and today went better.
Still, the uncertainty around inflation and a recession in 2023 is not going to be resolved for several more months.
Writes James McIntosh for the Wall Street Journal under a heading ‘Markets History 101: It’s Time to Buy Bonds‘:
Even after their big falls, stocks still look very expensive compared to bonds. The optimism that started this year has faded, but investors continue to bet that long-run inflation will come back under control and profit margins will stay high. And many remain wary of bonds, even as yields approach 4% on the 10-year Treasury and are above 5% on six-month bills.
The central lesson of financial history is that, over the long run, U.S. stocks beat bonds. But buying stocks when they are expensive—at 18 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, they have rarely been pricier outside the dot-com bubble and the post-pandemic boom—is a recipe for substandard returns.
There was an inch or so of snow on the ground this morning, but most of it had melted by the afternoon (42 °F /6 °C).
Here is a high-resolution scan of a little stamp, only 1 in. x 0.8 in.
It was on the envelope that had stamps in that I had bought from a seller in Canada.
Wars bring death and destruction, and this one seems to be far from over.
Check out cartoonist Martin Rawson’s depiction of the brutality that has been going on for a year now (published in The Guardian newspaper).
I ventured out of the house to get a little sun today, even though the high was barely above freezing (34°F/ 1°C).
These pictures are from Volunteer Park.
My neighborhood woke up to an inch of snow on the ground this morning.
Later on, it warmed up just enough (38°F/ 3°C) for the snow to melt.
There was fine hail on the deck at my house this morning, and a little more came down early in the evening.
There was no sun here— on this day that the Romans had named after the sun. There is going to be snow in the mountains tomorrow and Tuesday, and freezing cold towards the end of the week.
Carlos Alcaraz is back on the tennis court after a hiatus of three months (partly due to injuries). His No 1 ranking slipped to No 2 after he had to withdraw from the Australian Open in January.
He will take on Cameron Norrie (Great Britain) in the final of the Argentinian Open tomorrow.
Happy Friday.
Here’s a picture with a report from the Anchorage Police Dept. that was posted on Facebook earlier this week.
All right— how about a smattering of vintage stamps from the United States, courtesy of a seller in Houston, Texas?
Amazingly, he used a stamp from 1934 on the envelope!
(Pro tip: Click on the picture. It’s fun to look at stamps with a magnifying glass).
1970 (21 Nov.) 350th Anniversary of Landing of Pilgrim Fathers in America
#1416 837 6c Multicoloured
1934 (8 Oct.) National Parks Year
#748 245 10c Grey, Mount Le Conte, Great Smoky Mountains
2001 (3 Aug.) Pre-sorted First Class Card Coil Stamp. Self-adhesive gum. Imperf x p11½
#3991 2590 (15c) Multicoloured, Woody Wagon
1973 (28 Sept.) American Revolution Bicentennial. Colonial Communications.
#1484 903 8c Multicoloured, Drummer
[Source: Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue 2005, Part 22, United States]
Nikki Haley announced her bid for President for the 2024 election.
She was South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017, and appointed as US Ambassador to the United Nations by Trump and served there from Jan. 2017 through Dec. 2018.
Right now, she is the only official GOP candidate other than The Leader Of The Cult.
So after the big white spy balloon from China, three more mysterious unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan were shot down by U.S. military jets with missiles— on Friday, on Saturday and on Sunday.
Our government assures us there are no aliens involved.
Are they sure? 😉
The little harbingers of spring have started to appear here on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
Here’s a gorgeous sunset picture from photographer Mike Reid. (Sunset is now at 5.28 pm).
Those are the peaks of the Olympic Mountains, peeking out above the clouds.
The stamps I had bought from a seller in Great Britain arrived in the mail today.
I looked up the stamps on the envelope in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue. (It definitely seems like some stamp sellers have reams and reams of unused stamps from many years ago).
The black ink line across the stamps is the cancellation mark.
Aw. What’s up with that? I would like a proper cancellation mark showing the sending location and the date!
1991 Scientific Achievements
(5 Mar.) Phosphorised paper
1549 991 Gloster Whittle E28/39 Aircraft over East Anglia (50th Anniversary of First Flight of Sir Frank Whittle’s Jet Engine, 37p multicoloured
2006 ‘Smilers’ Occasions
(17 Oct.) Booklet stamps (2nd series) Self-adhesive. Two phosphor bands. Die-cut perf 15×14.
2675 1932 Balloons (Ivan Chermayeff), (1st) multicoloured
2001 Regional Issue Northern Ireland
(6 Mar.) Printed in lithography by Walsall, two phosphor bands. Perf 15×14 w. one elliptical hole in each side
NI190 N7 Aerial view of patchwork fields, (1st) black, new blue and greenish yellow
The widespread devastation and loss of life of Monday’s earthquake in Turkey is shocking to me. The map below shows where the North Anatolian Fault line and the East Anatolian fault line runs in Turkey.
It was the East Anatolian fault that ruptured— well-known to seismologists and government officials. The problem was that it had not caused a catastrophic earthquake in at least the last century. So building codes had not been enforced rigorously enough in many areas near the fault line.
The major earthquake and large aftershock in Turkey on Monday are two of more than 70 quakes of magnitude 6.5 or higher recorded in the region since 1900. Turkey’s two main fault zones — the East Anatolian and the North Anatolian — make it one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake at 4:17 a.m. local time, and the unusually large 7.5-magnitude aftershock nine hours later, both were in the East Anatolian Fault Zone. But there have been several extremely deadly quakes in the North Anatolian Fault Zones as well, including one in 1999 about 60 miles from Istanbul that killed about 17,000 people.