Summer Shirts

I was sooo excited to go walking on a beautiful sunny day; took great care of my
face and head with sunscreen and a scarf. Noticed THIS when I washed later. It's
summer shirts for me...

Philosophy, eh!?

Lyse takes it:

                                            
                                                            *     *     *

A little respect, folks; if it wasn't for Charles Sanders Peirce - a philosopher - we would
all be communicating by carrier pigeon instead of computers. And that would  messy!! 👀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

                                                           *     *     *

 

Chinese Cardinals

Live  and learn: been playing on-line scrabble!

https://chine.in/mandarin/vocabulaire/index.php?id=1336

All about It!

I read about it in a Québec City paper: Foxconn, the Taiwan-based company that
makes Apple phones, is investing in the US. 10 billion $ US for a plant in Wisconsin
that will make flat screens, and thus create 3000 jobs. (In the riding of Republican
House Leader Paul Ryan). How about that!

http://www.msn.com/fr-ca/actualites/monde/foxconn-va-investir-10-milliards-aux-usa/ar-AAoSPLU?li=AAgh0dy

Shoulder Update

I remember it well, my fall from last winter. It occurred on December 9, and wasn't a regular
fall but a fall in a snow storm. I've fallen quit a bit over the years, from learning to bicycle
and skate as a child, to loosing traction on ice as an adult, and have always bounced back. My last fall on a hip took years to completely stop hurting, but it has!!

Thinking back, this fall was different in one respect: it happened fast and I fell heavily, like being pushed by the wind. It was a climate change fall, completely unexpected.

Well, it won't happen again; these days, I'm checking for precipitation and wind gusts
before I venture out... and I'm going winter boot browsing today, looking for threads.

Movement in all directions is back in my shoulder, and strength is okay; just the occasional
muscular twinge. And day by day, symmetry is coming back between my two shoulders.
Not about to forget, though. 👧

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/dr-smartphone-the-medical-profession-s-digital-revolution-a-1158548.html

Jerusalem

A visual explanation - from Le Monde - of current tensions
in Jerusalem.

It's a Thing!

I do this once in a while: I go shopping in a trendy place
like Montreal and come back home with things that are a
little odd in my local context. The latest:

They are insanely comfortable: spa shoes that don't skid on wet surfaces, with a
touch of warmth. What aesthetic niche do they belong in? Undeniably, there is a hint
of house slipper here. But hey, the pyjamas look is wearable, in all price ranges. Below,
Rihanna doing the whole thing.

They are from the Topshop boutique at The Bay! Honest!

Elephant

So all this investigating President Trump on ties to Russia - largely unavoidable
in a partisan system that thrives on blood sport - needs to be taken with a rain of salt.
Russia isn't Great Britain, but it is changing, and in ways that the rest of the planet
keeps nudging itself to adjust with. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump can be seen
as part and parcel of this phenomena.

It was a strange campaign, and as the election approached, numerous leaders
and foreign news outlets (including Canada) openly endorsed Mrs Clinton. America
could vote for Hillary, it was all good. Except for Russia, which rather liked Donald T.
Well, I live in Canada and didn't really appreciate my government meddling down South
(nor did I like the whole set-up: an obviously exhausted and possibly ill Mrs Clinton, vs
an untried quantity of an even older male candidate. WT actual F). All that aside, Donald
Trump does impress for his grip on sanity; he has taken a beating like no one else, except
for maybe Richard Nixon, who never fully realized what was being done to him.

If America survives the Trump presidency, and I kind of think it will, history will no
doubt take note of the grandiose, tsarist elements within it: not taking his salary, nor his
daughter's, but having family as advisors if not occasional stand-ins.  Having businesses
he owns profit as suppliers. Not to mention policies that advantage business and the rich.
He is pushing the Republican agenda, at a moment when no one else can. And seems well
attuned to actually befriending the current Russian leadership.

We thus arrive at the elephant in the room: post communist Russia. Which is both becoming
more liberal and open to business, and arming dangerously as a county  at the same time. Who
saw that one coming!? 'Smart people over there', as the Prez might say. And they are defending
those huge borders with supersonic planes and the threat of nuclear. Because they will not
tolerate any incursions from their European neighbors. Waddaya want them to do, join NATO?

Yes, Vladimir Putin does seem to want to hang in, despite all his riches. He works seven days a
week, it is said. That can't feel like a party every morning...Because there are extreme challenges
to this new Russia, and the leadership self-selects at this point.

Irony of it all, Britain now finds itself with a nuclear park both modernized and obsolete (with
respect to Russia, anyway). Makes one feel like going off on one's own to rethink it all...

                                                *     *     *

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/opinion/sunday/donald-trumps-plan-to-save-western-civilization.html

C. Evans

The BBC created a bit of a stir this week by divulging the salaries
of its highest paid employees. Top of the list, one Chris Evans. So,
to investigate, googled the name.

The prominent image for Chris Evans:

Nice looking chap, an actor. Going to Wikipedia, the Chris Evans I was looking for is actually
this person, and he works on radio. Paid 3.6 million $CD per year

The clincher(as stated in Wikipedia):

The audience grew as the breakfast format became more outrageous: humiliating assistant Holly Samos by repeatedly asking her about her sex life (Evans and Samos were reportedly in a relationship at periods through their time working together), and encouraging two female guests to perform a strip show on live radio.^[13] The show's highest listening figure reached 7.5 million.^[14]

^{😏You can't make that sort of thing up. I love Britain!} 

                                                           ^{*     *     *}

 

 

                                                    

Linkin P

I know that many people - many young people - are trying to come
to grips with the recent death of Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington.
A suicide - on the birthday of another suicide musician he had been friends with  -
might seem romantic. It isn't. Let me explain.

Personally, I had two runs at piano performance, one young, one as an adult when I was
more interested in improvisation and composition. Performance is demanding, very demanding
mentally. And performance stress is insane. In college, I became a reasonably good public
speaker and debater. Stage right never left me. It's only rock and roll, not classical. In point of
fact, this is worse.You have to remember every darn tune, at the drop; and the lyrics. Linkin
was about to go on tour with material from a new album. Talent, perhaps, but 90% hard
work like everything else, like for everyone else. It was all too much.

Because rock musicians are also cultural icons. Drugs and alcohol are part of the persona,
and can be used to un-stress, unwind. Big mistake. Drugs and alcohol make everything all
the more difficult.

RIP

                                                         *     *     *






                                              *     *     *
Chris Cornell was known as a Grunge artist. In this reprise of a Prince song, one gets
to hear his flirtation with atonality as well as appreciate his baritone voice. Very expressive.

Uppidy

Summer vacay weather has finally hit the Montreal area.
Below, what Sloppy Joes translate to. Seems a bit daunting with all
that ketchup, but à chacun...

The recipe calls for browning the onion for one minute before adding the meat
for 4 or 5, and the sauce for 10 to 12. The great difference with recipes from
uppidy gourmet sites is that in that case - the onions - are browned to the liking
of the cook, removed before the meat is added, and returned to the pot at the end.
Voilà!

source: MSN

Break with Qatar

source: Chronicles of Omar Saghi
            June 14, 2017

translation: doxa-louise

Qatar, the Other Break 

In the Persian Gulf, at the moment, the real alienation isn’t between Qatar and it neighbors. That breakdown will finally resolve, through negotiation or balance of power. The real break is elsewhere, and the froth of television news hides it for the moment. It is between states and their societies, and in reality a large abyss.

Officially, Saudi Arabia and its allies reproach Doha its support for terrorism. Under that banner, Riyadh and Cairo, the leading duo, bring together a large range of organizations, associations and parties, from the Muslim brothers to radical small groups. Even seen from Washington, such a massive condemnation might well appear overdone and blind to local realities. But in Cairo? There where the overwhelming majority of women are veiled, where the niqab wins everyday a victory in its claiming of space, where the Copts face a deaf hostility, if not worse? Cairo where cultural passage to Islam started in the the 1960s is now total? And Riyadh? There where the laws and media, popular mores and public education, official clercdom and dissident clercdom, all come together to impose a religious yoke never seen before on civil society?

Logically, and even among serious observers, one cannot but smile at the homage vice is making to Qatary semi-virtue. And everything comes down to a case of state hypocrisy: Saudi Arabia and its allies do not believe a word of their accusations and are trying to confuse the issue with exaggeration. And this is where there is a danger of offering an incorrect analysis. No, Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, like the Emirates or Yemen, really are fighting against political Islam. They are fighting to destroy the political potency of Islam, to impose on it that socio-political contract now victorious in Egypt and perhaps, soon , Saudi Arabia: to you, society, culture, women and children, for you the intellectuals and editors, yours the entire urban space; for me, the State, the security apparatus, economic returns, the army and diplomatic alliances. Egypt entered this alliance with Sadat. Make peace with Israel and let the rage in mosques go on. Become a schoolbook ally of the United States and let rabid anti americanism prosper within. This is the spreading model for the East. The case against Qatar is not that they sympathize with radical Islam, but making politics out of it. What is being reproached is that minimum of linkage between civil society and the politics practiced by the Emirate. We want that to stop, we want the Emir of Qatar, like the King of Arabia or the Egyptian general, to completely cut off his politics from his society.

So this breakdown is only superficially between Qatar and its neighbors. It is more profoundly a quasi-final divorce between societies sinking into the most reactionary form of Islam coupled with political helplessness, and States cutting themselves off from all social control to better align themselves with Western powers. Thus it makes sense that, beyond Qatar, it is Iran one is aiming for, and perhaps tomorrow, Turkey. Because the politics of Iran (or Turkey) is not totally foreign to society in Iran ( or Turkey). It is this link, at the heart of all true democratization, that Ryadh wants to break.

Update Me

Around noon yesterday, I innocently clicked on restart
to allow update and went for a glass of water. SIX HOURS LATER
I had a new version of Windows 10 on my computer. On a Surface
tablet, anyway, this update is unstoppable (there's still battery
life even if on unplugs the computer)!

On the up side, I got to wash every window and curtain in the apartment
as I waited. The first 1% done lasts about an hour but things speed up
after that.

It's called the Creators update, Windows 1703. There are promises of a
much faster Edge browser (which essentially makes Bing look all
the more improvable) and something about being able to save one's open
windows in one place.

I was pretty awed by Paint 3D, though, and just started to look into it.
Let's see what we can do:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4014941/windows-10-remix-a-3d-model

Thank you; this is wonderful!

¯\(ツ)/¯

It's world emoji day! ...GG!

As one might guess, the idea of expressing emotion with internet communication
started in the US; by 1980, people were using punctuation marks.
The first emoji bank of symbols was actually the work of a Japanese
telephone company (2000) and contains symbols that are not related to emotion: it 
is vocabulary  for mobile communication. Interestingly, research shows negative
emoticons are rarely used (although I suspect negative abbreviations surely are).

for a discussion from France:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/2017/07/17/37002-20170717ARTFIG00037-pierre-halte-l-emoji-n-est-pas-un-appauvrissement-du-langage.php

Tomorrow

It's been a long day.Been working through the Node Voltage method
of circuit resolution, which comes down to measuring voltages with
respect to a reference node and thus simplifies calculations.
Turns out that it is this method which is used by online circuit
simulators such as SPICE, because it easily lends itself to coding.

So I tried for a long time to get a simulator to give me the results of the
Khan example (and never did get Circuit lab to do so). I did learn something,
though, and it is that the direction of the arrow on an ideal current source matters.

Tomorrow is another day...

Eh!?

And this little gem in this morning's Washington Post:

Le quatorze

VIVE LA RÉPUBLIQUE!

Libération called it an aesthetic crime: the military bravely powered through
a medley of Daft Punk hits - with timely displacements - to entertain. But the daily
also cited Groucho Marx to the effect that military music is to music what military
justice is to justice...


                                                          *     *     *

source: Figaro Madame

Grand Paris

The city of Paris is on track for a new expanded subway system
to gradually come online between 2020 and 2030. The idea originated
under President Sarkosy.

Brexit blah blah

The Brexit vote does seem to be having some effect on the UK economy.
Just browsing through the daily news, one finds that the 15% drop in
the value of the British pound with respect to the US dollar has made
for an equivalent rise in the consumer price for commodities traded in US dollars,
ie the much beloved coffee and chocolate...

 source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/why-brexit-is-already-pushing-up-the-cost-of-a-cup-of-coffee/

And where it hasn't, the effect shows up in the value of the retailer:

source: UK Times

Poor consumer - make no mistake - is in for it.

PhotoS

We make a point of teaching the young - in the primary grades - about
photosynthesis. But these are difficulties involved.

Below, a lovely take on it by a botanist, which brings out how a tree is really
a solar captor, with acres of exposed surface. The light is faint, so it takes a lot of surface.
And the pores for gas exchange are really in the bottom. Conclusion:That's why trees
don't move, and we do.



                                                          *     *     *
The formula is a big deal, but stated this way, it misrepresents the situation. The oxygen
put back into circulation is not that from the C02, but actually from water molecules, which are
broken up.

That, to me, seems an important feature. Water is actually broken up and the oxygen released.
That is quite unique for the world of chemistry, which at the most extreme deals with acids, which
are proton donors in solution. It means that photosynthesis is an industry. Primordial.



                                                           *     *     *

And everyone dealing with photosynthesis gets caught up in the fact that the order in which
things happen is not a good narrative order. Let's get clear here:The light sensitive reactions
- triggered by a photon hit - produce energy and worker molecules form the thylakoids, and what
happens first is making sure the energy surface gets proper inputs. The Calvin Cycle is where the
CO2 gets used, and this happens in an entirely different place, in the viscous part of the plant cell.
And it sends back usable energy and worker products so the process can continue.

The sugar product, as our botanist points out, is how plants grow.

source: Khan Academy

                                                               *     *     *

And how did this process ever develop? From what we know, it is the emergence of fatty
membranes that were crucial to the formation of the first living cells. So that phospholipids will
have a star role in our process.

The Critic

Somebody has to do the work: there is an increasing body of Manga literature
being translated to French which is, without the guidance of critics, a bit difficult
to follow. Le Monde has put together an interactive questionnaire which spews out
some beginner suggestions for different combinations of answers.

So they asked my age, but - blessedly - none of that F or M stuff. And the last
question is what turns me off!! I was presented with three suggestions, here
is the first:

A historical novel, from 1905, near Russian territory. Read and learn. How
cool is that!

Feeding Time

Caught a snap of the moon at 4:40 this morning:

It is a favorite time for the birds in the area to feed.

Climate Question

Looks like Turkey is hesitating on climate accord as well.

Musings on Korea

While doing my household chores his morning, I stared to muse
about how a reunification of Korea might happen. I remembered back
to he reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin wall; I was taking
German language classes at the time, and everyone in the class seemed to
be sure this was going to happen, even when the teachers themselves - German
diplomats - were apprehensive. Why? Because the peoples involved wanted it.
The Wall was no longer tenable and  - in effect - it was stormed.

Flash forward to Korea today. Is it reasonable to expect North Koreans to demand
freedoms and storm the frontier to Seoul. Probably not. It is a very different situation.
Not North Koreans demanding modernity, but South Koreans demanding tranquility and the
countryside might be forces at work. South Korea is twice as populated at the idyllic North.
Osmosis - the border is a war zone - rather then diffusion.

Because diplomatically, this is a hard one. The Korean War was that last little detail
from World War II that never got settled. The United States led the UN coalition that
won the war against the North, but as a police action and no treaty was ever signed.
North Korea ia effectively still at war, but because alliances have changed, it has focused
on the US as the enemy, and has been going at it on a slow burn. Until now.

Russia and China are conveniently looking at their immediate interests: getting the US out
of the South. And refusing sanctions against the North, which is both humanitarian
and disingenious at the same time.

Is the North Korean regime holding a death grip on power? Hard to tell from here. But the
country was occupied by Japan for a long time, and going to a communist regime was
useful in that regard. This was done by Kim the grand father. The present regime
surely keeps the memory of all that as well.

Fourth 17

Cake (or pud)

I made a Canada Day cake last night; technically, a pud.  From

a web recipe. Used canned peaches for the fruit base, but do not omit sugar 

on the fruit. When eaten warm, it is a pie-cake in one experience. In one pan, 

it took longer than the 25 minutes in the recipe. I turned off the oven and had a 

bath before tucking into the pud.

HAPPY CANADA, everyone. 

Source: MSN