Conquering Paradise It’s Monday morning and another great day in Paradise. Yesterday I started watching the 1992 movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise with Gerard Depardieu. I was prompted in that direction by a National Geographic article on a great new Mayan (more likely Toltec) artifact find in Chichen Itza in the middle of the Yucatán jungle. That reminded me of the Mel Gibson directed film Apocalypto about a manhunt by tribal people though the jungle.…
Keeping Busy Yesterday, Kim and I made the trip from our home to Ventura, which, for those not familiar with California geography, is 175 miles north of here on the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. I had ordered that new motorcycle seat for the new bike and I didn’t want to trust or suffer the over-burdened package delivery services since I had to both get my new seats and drop off my old seats…
Donut Holes I can tell that this quarantine has gone on too long or at least long enough. It’s been seven weeks by my count and any way you slice it, that’s a long time to be at home. The problem is, I can’t reasonably expect any sympathy for that since the entire world considers staying at home the least troubling of the three choices. The first choice is to be sick with COVID-19 and…
The Darkness Within This is no time for negativism. This is the time for us all to stay positive and optimistic that life will go on, that our species will persevere, and that the kindness of the human soul will prevail. When we saw Saudi Arabia rear up on its hind legs to push the oil production limits up at great expense to the price of their black crude, we were secretly encouraged. We all…
Handy Brad Now that we’ve moved in and mostly gotten our stuff placed and staged and generally winnowed down to manageable proportions, there are several small projects that need doing that seem either a bit beyond our capabilities and that we don’t want to bother brother-in-law Jeff to do. I would never undertake anything electronic in the house without first consulting Jeff, but I think it’s safe to say that he is perfectly content…
Fear and Greed The markets are all the talk of the town this week in this and every town. It is not about a a bunch of market participants going paranoid out of extreme forecasting anxiety. As I heard Rachel Maddow say this evening, the markets are merely acting as a window on the rather extreme impact that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is starting to have on the world economy. Let’s take a quick survey. We…
A Century in Provence I recently stumbled upon a story about Jeanne Calment, the French woman who dies in 1997 at the extremely ripe old age of 122 years. That makes her the longest living human by almost three years compared to 119-year-old Sarah Knauss of Hollywood Pennsylvania (she died in 1999). That means that Calment has held that record worldwide for twenty-three years. That’s quite an amazing accomplishment in an age when longevity is…
Staging the Next Stage We are blessed with several friends who seem to enjoy being of service to Kim, and by extension, to me. They like helping her pack, unpack, organize stuff, sort out her clothes and other stuff. For two weeks we had Oswaldo here and that was a pleasure. Every time I turned around he would be doing this or that quite tirelessly and with no complaints. I actually think he likes staying…
Battery Math Today I went to a battery fair here in Escondido. I was invited by Baker Electric, the premier electricians here in Southern California, who installed my solar system last year. They were joined in this extravaganza, replete with free donuts and mimosas and great swag (umbrellas, string backpacks and notebooks with pens) by the strong and mighty Tesla, the dominant maker of home batteries. Naturally, I had to drive to the fair in…
The Kids Are All Right There is a movie by that name starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. It’s about a same-sex couple (Bening and Moore) who have two children who were the product of each of them plus a common sperm donor (Ruffalo). It’s a fairly contrived story that might possibly exist in a few real life situations, but is unlikely to represent the issues faced by a broad swath of…