General, travel

What a Ninny

I feel like such a ninny this evening. Here I am rushing home to see the new Ken Burns The National Parks film, not even trying to get the picture of the sunrise from Fishing Bridge since the sun wasn’t going to be rising at Fishing Bridge – thanks to Arnica – and when I get home at 6:30, I found out I needn’t have rushed. See, I figured that Mystery comes on at 9 PM, so that 2-hour National Parks episode would have to start at 7. And I made it home with half an hour to spare. Then I find out that they aren’t showing Mystery tonight and that they were showing Burns’ film at 8, repeating at 10. I am such a ninny. Even if the sun wasn’t going to rise this morning, I may have been able to get some pictures of early morning in the Grand Canyon. But Arnica probably was going to bollix that too.

I hope to have some pictures of my vacation on-line shortly. I downloaded them to Elaine’s laptop and haven’t retrieved them yet. (What did you do on your vacation? I spent 5 days traipsing around in the caldera of the world’s largest active volcano! It’s really cool!)

General

Invasion!

We have been invaded. And they are quite annoying. as they are swarming in the house.

I am having some difficulty identifying the species. It may be a bombus frigidus, but the abdomen band coloring isn’t quite right. Mine is yellow, black, Orange,yellow, black. The thorax colors seem to match the picture. It has a black face and four wings. But the description says it is found at high elevations and we are only at 7200 feet.

Geek Stuff, General, Preparing for the worst

Yay!

Thank you!
World Community Grid is pleased to announce the completion of the first phase of the “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together” project. It took only two years to complete, even though the project was halted for 17 weeks due to the destruction of the University of Texas Medical Branch research facilities as a result of Hurricane Ike.

In total, members provided nearly 12,000 years of computer processing time to this project. Your computer run time contribution was 6 days of processing time to “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together”.

Completing this phase of the project is a significant contribution to the research of not only Dengue Fever but also Hepatitis C, West Nile, Yellow Fever and other diseases caused by the Flaviviridea family of viruses.
More details about the conclusion of Phase 1 and the upcoming Phase 2 may be viewed by visiting: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=26618
Economics, Politics, Preparing for the worst

Can we start here?

I keep hearing about people trying to shout down health care discussions- and most of the shouters don’t appear to understand what they are talking about. Can we start with this article by Paul Krugman and work from there?

A friend sent me  a link to HR3200 (all 1017 pages) and to a short 35 page summary of the bill (more of a short explanation of each section). Or is it fair to get into a complicated discussion with an informed base?

I don’t see anything on ‘death panels’ in the bill, but maybe I don’t know the right codewords to read it correctly – could:

A BILL To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

be the sinister code words we are looking for? What are those ‘other purposes’? Oh, they appear to be revising the tax code, providing credits for small businesses, and improving Medicare and Medicaid.

I think I found the sinister part that  is so disturbing the American Citizenry :

The bill would prevent foreign multinational corporations incorporated in tax haven countries from avoiding tax on income earned in the United States by routing their income through structures in which a United States subsidiary of the foreign multinational corporation makes a deductible payment to a country with which the United States has a tax treaty before ultimately repatriating these earning in the tax haven country. (from section 451 of the explanation)

Yes, this is decidedly sinister.

golf

Oh, the heartache

I watched Tom Watson make his penultimate putt on the 72nd hole of the British Open. If it goes in he wins and it is the Ultimate putt. Oh, the heartache.

I had been watching Tom play the previous day and as he sat there at the top of the leader board, the TV cameras captured his image and it was an image of joie de vivre. As some of the commentators remarked, he had spirit. And I saw it today, as well. Here was a man playing the game of his life and loving it. He knew he could win and he would win. But that penultimate putt veered away from the hole and ultimate putt put him into a playoff. You could see that the spirit had left him at that point and that he had conceded the playoff; he was just going through the motions. And when the cameras focused on his face during the playoff you could see that the spirit had been replaced by a dull heartache. It was such a vivid heartache I felt it myself.

Thanks, Tom, for a great tournament and I hope you make the ultimate putt next year at St Andrews.

fandom, travel

Making Plans

It is summer again and time to plan for Worldcon. This year it is in Montreal – Anticipation. I was in Montreal a few years ago and remember that there was an international fireworks competition over the summer, so I googled online and found the schedule. A more current schedule is here. They have a different country every Saturday. The Fireworks are at the old Expo Park site and you can get on a bridge and be eye level with them going off in front of you. It was impressive. The Con is August 6-10, and by the Schedule I see that the US is competing on the August 1st and South Africa is on August 8th.

So, I have planned a convoluted way to get to Montreal in time to see the US compete. I am flying into Albany Thursday evening, spend the night there and then take the train from Albany to Montreal – through the Adirondacks – and arrive in Montreal Friday Evening. And then return to Albany by train after the convention and fly back home the next day.  I just hope there are no hidden pitfalls in Albany to worry about.

Should have a few days to sightsee around Montreal before the fun begins. Now, is it worthwhile to rent a car and travel into the countryside for a day?

The Thoughts and Luminations of Jack Heneghan