Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Carl Sagan had a crystal ball!

The passage comes from Sagan’s book Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, first published in 1995:
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Sound familiar? 

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Still here

I just realized that I have not posted since we returned from Tahoe.  I don't really have anything to say, except that the reality of Trump being sworn in in a couple of days is bumming me out.  Oh well, I do have the Warriors basketball team to cheer me up.  Don't give up on me.  I'll try to post more often.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Plenty of snow

Hello from Tahoe/Donner.  We got up here on Sunday and it started to snow that evening.  Then, it snowed all day Monday, all day Tuesday, and it's still snowing on Wednesday at at 5 pm as I write this.  So we're pretty much house bound.  Here are a couple of shots that I took at about noon today.  One is a view of a neighbor's house up the hill a bit, and the other is a view of our side deck.  Supposedly it will be finished snowing by tomorrow morning.  The snowshoeing should be excellent.



Monday, January 2, 2017

Sinatra could dance too!

Hey all.  We got up here to our Tahoe/Donner place at about noon yesterday.  The drive up was uneventful except for a stretch of pretty heavy fog.  Then, (per the forecast) it started snowing in the late afternoon and snowed all night.  As I look out the window now at around 9 am, I see that it is still snowing fairly hard with no let-up in sight.  Looks like some snowshoeing is going to be in order once the storm has passed.  I'll post some pictures later.

On the the main topic:  I was surfing the channels and ran across a showing of "That's Entertainment 2" and of course got hooked and ended up watching the entirety of what was left.  As part of that, I saw a number with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly from "Anchors Aweigh" wherein they sang a duet.  But what floored me was that about 1:40 into the number, they broke into a serious dance number with Frank coming amazingly close to dancing as expertly as Gene.  I never thought of Frank as a dancer, but he was terrific in this number. Fortunately, the whole thing is on YouTube.  You gotta check this out.  Leave a comment if you enjoyed it.