Old Boats

On one of my trips to the Caribbean, a WW 2 landing craft was used to ferry passengers from the ship to an island. It would bump on the sand, the ramp in the front would drop down, and we would all walk off. It was a weird experience. I kept thinking of Normandy.

It's Customary

They have a custom in Spain on New Year's Eve to eat 12 grapes in the last 12 seconds before midnight. It's called the 12 grapes of luck.. I was at a ball in Madrid one New Year's Eve and tried that. 12 seconds is not long enough.

Does anyone remember Sen-Sen?

Harrison Ford - Hans Duo

I read this in "Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, #13)"

 " If you take political candidates as a population example, then the United States is a third world country. Everyone grows up poor, drinking water is a luxury, shoes are rare, a square meal is cause for jubilant celebration."

A friend told me that when she was young she sang soprano. I told her I just sang loud.

This is how it all began….

 

 

 

Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to go fishing.

He called the royal weather forecaster and inquired as to the weather forecast for the next few hours. The weatherman assured him that there was no chance of rain in the coming days. So the king went fishing with his wife, the queen.

 

On the way he met a farmer on his donkey. Upon seeing the king the farmer said, “Your Majesty, you should return to the palace at once because in just a short time I expect a huge amount of rain to fall in this area”.  

 

The king was polite and considerate, he replied: “I hold the palace meteorologist in high regard. He is an extensively educated and experienced professional. And besides, I pay him very high wages. He gave me a very different forecast. I trust him and I will continue on my way.” So he continued on his way.  

 

However, a short time later a torrential rain fell from the sky. The King and Queen were totally soaked and their entourage chuckled upon seeing them in such a shameful condition.  

 

Furious, the king returned to the palace and gave the order to fire the professional. Then he summoned the farmer and offered him the prestigious and high paying role of royal forecaster.

 

The farmer said, “Your Majesty, I do not know anything about forecasting. I obtain my information from my donkey. If I see my donkey’s ears drooping, it means with certainty that it will rain.”  

 

So the king hired the donkey.

 

And thus began the practice of hiring dumb asses to work in the government and occupy its highest and most influential positions.  

 

And the practice is unbroken to this date...        

 

Did you know that chocolate bars get raptured?

Obituary column was the usual. Only nice people died.

In the winter, my mother used to hang clothes on the line. They became frozen solid. Easy to dance with, as long as you stayed outside.

You Can’t Write What You Wouldn’t Read for Pleasure

The most important thing is you can’t write what you wouldn’t read for pleasure. It’s a mistake to analyze the market thinking you can write whatever is hot. You can’t say you’re going to write romance when you don’t even like it. You need to write what you would read if you expect anybody else to read it.
 And you have to be driven. You have to have the three D’s: drive, discipline and desire. If you’re missing any one of those three, you can have all the talent in the world, but it’s going to be really hard to get anything done.

NORA ROBERTS

Scientists make a robot that can have babies

Everyone who thinks robots are going to take over the world might be about to get a lot more frightened: Scientists have created a machine that's able to have babies.
In an experiment designed to show how robots can learn and evolve, researchers in Cambridge and Zurich programmed a robot arm – or "mother" - with an algorithm to create a device made out of blocks containing motors – its "child".
The blocks are assembled into a structure by the robot arm and the motors are turned on. A camera detects how far the blocks are able to travel. The robot arm sees this, and then modifies the next "baby" to try and make it go further, learning from the mistakes and good traits of the last one.
This is all done without human intervention. The research was published in the journal PLOS One.
Luzius Brodbeck, one of the researchers from the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich, said the robots are normally programmed to do one just thing.
"Machines usually build the same thing and what it will do and it will do it over again. What we did here was use a genetic algorithm so each operation is different," Brodbeck told CNBC by phone.
The scientist said that the technology could be used in areas where robots need to carry out autonomous tasks; for example in remote locations and even in disaster response.
The experiment may seem like something out of a science fiction film and technologists have expressed concerns about the future of robotics.
Elon Musk and Bill Gates are just two figures concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Last month, a letter signed by figures including Musk and Stephen Hawking warned about the potential damage AI-controlled weapons could cause.
But Brodbeck said the fear about systems like his maybe be overblown.
"I think it makes sense to think about this, but I personally am not afraid that robots will take over the world," the scientist told CNBC.

Shingles Medicine...

...Saw an ad for that on TV. It said shingles can last as long as thirty days. I don't know where they got that idea. I got shingles back in Dec. 2004. The day of the big tsunami. It lasted until Easter. That was three months. It was on the left side of my stomach. To sleep at night, I laid my head on the dining room table. You just couldn't let anything touch those nerve endings. It still gives me a twinge now and then.

Books and Friends

Greenwood military family centre fraudster facing tax investigation

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/greenwood-military-family-centre-fraudster-facing-tax-investigation-1.3185883

Penguins have an organ which removes salt from water, allowing them to drink salt water.

Aluminum can be recycled over and over again without any loss to quality, and a recycled beer can could be back on the shelf in 60 days.

Review: Rites of Passage (To the Ends of the Earth, #1) by William Golding

"Rites of Passage," a book by William Golding, is a narrative, written in a journal, by a snobbish passenger. It takes place on an outdated warship on the way to Australia around 1812. The story deals with the behavior of the Officers and upper crust passengers, as well as some of the crew.
There are good references to the condition of the ship and the behavior of the characters.
Written in old English, I found it sometimes hard to read and found myself skipping paragraphs. Still, it was an interesting read, at times sad, which appears to be the main plot of the story. Interesting ending that I did not expect.

Cut the lawn yesterday. Rather than looking like crop circles my son would make, it now looks like it has small runways - for small aliens.

Writing Is An Act of Courage

I strongly believe that writing is an act of courage. It’s almost an act of physical courage. You get up and you have this great idea. Maybe you were hanging out with your friends—you guys were having beers and you were talking about something. You had this idea and they said, “Wow, that’s brilliant! Someone should go write it.” And you sit down to write it and almost always what was brilliant before, when you were sitting around talking, is somehow not so brilliant when you go to write. It’s as though you have a certain music in your head, and trying to get that music out on a page is absolute hell. And so you fail. If you’re doing it correctly, what happens is, the translation of what you hear in your head, what your idea is in your head, will almost always come out really badly on the page when you first write, okay? But what you have to do is you have to give yourself a day, go back, revise over and over and over again until you get something that is at least maybe 70 percent of what you wanted to do. You try to go from really bad to okay to acceptable. Then you know you’ve done your job. I never really get to that perfect thing that was in my head, so I always consider the entire process about failure. I think that’s the main reason why more people don’t write. It’s very depressing in that way.

TA-NEHISI COATES