Here it is 7:30 AM, I’m just sitting down to write, and there’s no other sound in the house. Kat and both kids are still asleep. Animals are all asleep except for Belvedere lying here on the bed watching me, wondering when he’s going to get breakfast. This is the tone set for the weekend. I think Tipper may have tentative plans with a friend but I’m not sure. She came in from school and crashed hard. G is, unsurprisingly, planning on getting some schoolwork done. He’s still a bit upset at how long it took them to get started. Kat will go to the salon and then head North for the weekend. I’m just here in case of an emergency.
It’s a chilly 57 degrees outside at the moment. Skies are clear. Not much different than 2:00 AM when the dogs decided they needed to go out. That’s really my own fault. Normally, I take the dogs out for the last time around 8-8:30 in the evening. That typically gets them through until 6:00 the next morning. I fell asleep shortly after 7:00 last night, though, which didn’t give them a chance to go out that last time. Thus, come 2:00, someone was needing to go pee quite badly. I slipped on my shoes and took them out only to be surprised by how cool it was. I’ll have a jacket on when I take them out again this morning.
Weekends like this are for reading and there’s plenty to read. Of course, dominating headlines this morning is the crash of an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is a story you’ll want to come back to off and on over the weekend as more details become known. All that’s certain at the moment is that the plane went into a flat spin before crashing inside a gated community, killing the 61 souls on board.
We’re also just finding out that a Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning at a Texas lake. Again, details are sketchy. An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they were called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there was “a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.” No cause of death has been given and CrossFit isn’t answering any questions.
Making Mars inhabitable seems to be a big issue this morning. The easy-to-digest version is on Reuters’ home page, but the more scientific version is in this week’s Science magazine. What it all boils down to is the possibility that soil samples from the planet can possibly be used to make rods that would warm the planet enough for it to terraform itself. Don’t hold your breath, though, Elon. Even in the best possible conditions, we’re still decades away from even thinking about putting people up there.
There’s an interesting feature in this morning’s New York Times that has cool graphics to go with it if you read it online. It seems that China has been building new villages and relocating people to live all along its Western border, including some disputed territories with India. This is interesting for a number of reasons. One, it feels an awful lot like it did when Israel first did the same thing along its West Bank border, and we see how disastrously that plan worked. Two, the previously uninhabited regions were uninhabited for a damn good reason. Villages in the Himalayas are subject to severe winters with roads impassible several months of the year. Other areas are too rocky for any type of agriculture to take place. China is digging in, though, saying that the towns are critical to the country’s defense. The article is worth the read.
Everything else this morning is war and politics and I’m not inclined to give any more oxygen to those situations when those who could do something constructive sit on their hands or make the situation worse.
I’m crossing my fingers for a nice, quiet weekend. We’ll see if that’s possible.
Here it is 7:30 AM, I’m just sitting down to write, and there’s no other sound in the house. Kat and both kids are still asleep. Animals are all asleep except for Belvedere lying here on the bed watching me, wondering when he’s going to get breakfast. This is the tone set for the weekend. I think Tipper may have tentative plans with a friend but I’m not sure. She came in from school and crashed hard. G is, unsurprisingly, planning on getting some schoolwork done. He’s still a bit upset at how long it took them to get started. Kat will go to the salon and then head North for the weekend. I’m just here in case of an emergency.
It’s a chilly 57 degrees outside at the moment. Skies are clear. Not much different than 2:00 AM when the dogs decided they needed to go out. That’s really my own fault. Normally, I take the dogs out for the last time around 8-8:30 in the evening. That typically gets them through until 6:00 the next morning. I fell asleep shortly after 7:00 last night, though, which didn’t give them a chance to go out that last time. Thus, come 2:00, someone was needing to go pee quite badly. I slipped on my shoes and took them out only to be surprised by how cool it was. I’ll have a jacket on when I take them out again this morning.
Weekends like this are for reading and there’s plenty to read. Of course, dominating headlines this morning is the crash of an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is a story you’ll want to come back to off and on over the weekend as more details become known. All that’s certain at the moment is that the plane went into a flat spin before crashing inside a gated community, killing the 61 souls on board.
We’re also just finding out that a Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning at a Texas lake. Again, details are sketchy. An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they were called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there was “a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.” No cause of death has been given and CrossFit isn’t answering any questions.
Boxer Imane Khelif won gold to cap an Olympics marked by scrutiny over her sex. After all the ridiculous fuss, it only seems fitting that she should walk away with the top prize. Sha’carri Richardson was able to finally capture her first gold as the anchor in the women’s 4×100 relay. But 60-year-old swimmer Jim Dreyer apparently gave up after two days trying to cross Lake Michigan. Actually, no one’s sure exactly what happened. Dreyer isn’t responding to questions and the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed he’s no longer in the water.
Making Mars inhabitable seems to be a big issue this morning. The easy-to-digest version is on Reuters’ home page, but the more scientific version is in this week’s Science magazine. What it all boils down to is the possibility that soil samples from the planet can possibly be used to make rods that would warm the planet enough for it to terraform itself. Don’t hold your breath, though, Elon. Even in the best possible conditions, we’re still decades away from even thinking about putting people up there.
There’s an interesting feature in this morning’s New York Times that has cool graphics to go with it if you read it online. It seems that China has been building new villages and relocating people to live all along its Western border, including some disputed territories with India. This is interesting for a number of reasons. One, it feels an awful lot like it did when Israel first did the same thing along its West Bank border, and we see how disastrously that plan worked. Two, the previously uninhabited regions were uninhabited for a damn good reason. Villages in the Himalayas are subject to severe winters with roads impassible several months of the year. Other areas are too rocky for any type of agriculture to take place. China is digging in, though, saying that the towns are critical to the country’s defense. The article is worth the read.
Everything else this morning is war and politics and I’m not inclined to give any more oxygen to those situations when those who could do something constructive sit on their hands or make the situation worse.
I’m crossing my fingers for a nice, quiet weekend. We’ll see if that’s possible.
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