WHAT JOHN KASICH TOLD ELDERS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

The Ohio governor is not the mild-mannered moderate the media has been promoting since his surge into a second-place win in New Hampshire last Tuesday. Clare Malone, writing at fivethirtyeight.com is representative:

"With the ascendance of Trump, the Republican Party is facing a simmering anger in its electorate, and as it turns out, Kasich is connecting fairly well with those who aren’t full-on raging but are more civilly disagreeing with the state of the nation."

What the pundits and reporters who see Kasich as mellow-yellow to Trump's red-faced rage are not telling you is what Brad Wright of the National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) stopped by here to let us know in the comments last Tuesday:

"...John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio...has said to seniors in New Hampshire that they 'will have to get over it,' when it comes to his plan to cut Social Security benefits. "Everyone who thinks this guy is pragmatic should keep this in mind," wrote Wright.

Aside from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has now dropped out of the race, Kasich is the hardest hard-liner in the Republican campaign field.

It's hard for me to spit this out but among the Republican candidates remaining in the primary race, only Donald Trump has said unequivocally that he opposes both raising the retirement age and any cuts to Social Security.

THE BALLAD OF THE MALHEUR PATRIOTS

After six long weeks, the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon came to a close this week. My friend Jim Stone sent this song which I think puts the perfect button on what was a confused, stupid and hateful protest.

Listen for the wonderful line at about 1:15 - "stormin' a building surrounded by ducks."

BORED ENGINEERS

This video has racked up nearly 51 million views on YouTube so some of you may have seen it. I hadn't and I thank Darlene Costner for sending it.

As you watch, it gets sillier and sillier and funnier and funnier and “bored engineers” is a perfect label. I'd say stoned and drunk too except it took some meticulous thought and carry-through to get this right.

HIDING BANK ACCOUNTS FROM SPOUSES

According to a survey by CreditCards.com reported in Fortune magazine, an estimated 13 million people in the U.S. have bank accounts they keep secret from their significant others.

”...19% admitted to spending more than $500 without telling their significant others, but men are almost twice as likely to have done so. Twenty-four percent of men said they had spent over $500 without telling their partners, compared to just 14% of women.

“...seniors felt the most strongly about complete disclosure when it came to spending money. Almost a quarter of those over 65 years old—24%—said their partner should spend only $25 or less without telling them, the highest percentage among all age groups.”

You can read more and see how other age groups responded at Fortune magazine.

LAST WEEK TONIGHT – THE SERIES RETURNS TOMORROW

After a long hiatus, John Oliver's HBO program, Last Week Tonight returns in a week, on Sunday 14 February. Here is the new season show promo:

As in the past, I will post Oliver's essays here in Interesting Stuff on Saturdays.

STATE OF THE STATES 2015

Last week, Gallup Analytics released its annual State of the States report with hard numbers covering data on political trends, the economy, religion and well-being all sortable by individual topic and state.

Here's a glance at the Nation map on the topic of Obama approval:

And here is the same map for my state, Oregon:

Of course, all the maps and information are interactive at the Gallup Analytics website and all of it is easy-to-use, clear and informative. You can do it all here.

3D DRAWINGS OF STEFAN PABST

The 3D drawings I've featured in the past have been chalk on streets and buildings. These are on paper and are at least as equally amazing. In this video, artist Stefan Pabst shows how he does it:

Thank Darlene again for this one and you can see many more Pabst videos at his YouTube page.

PENGUINS – LOTS OF WONDERFUL PENGUINS

In celebration of Penguin Awareness Day which was 20 January, Bored Panda posted an excellent collection of penguin photographs.

Peter Tibbles who writes the Sunday Elder Music column let me know about this and he says penguins are way cuter than kittens. Here are a couple of examples:

You can see all the rest of the terrific photos at Bored Panda.

FOR CROSSWORD PUZZLE MAVENS

For many, many years I worked The New York Times crossword puzzle every day and came to know many of its quirks and secrets. I've long since given that up but I know many TGB readers do these word puzzles.

Last week, The Times published an interesting story about how their puzzle clues have changed – mostly simplified – over the years.

”Since the 1990s, puzzlers were occasionally asked to recognize “Burkina ____” but over the last few years, they were given additional help, “Burkina ____ (African land)” and “Burkina ____ (Niger neighbor)” (the answer is “Faso”).

There have been a lot of shifts among languages over the years too:

“'Dit' used to be clued as French for 'said'; since 1974 it refers almost exclusively to telegraphy. 'Hora' shifted from Latin (hour) to Spanish (hour) to Hebrew (dance). Uber (a car service) is no longer clued as a German preposition (over or above).”

There is a whole lot more of interesting information here about how the clues have changed over the years since The Times crossword puzzle first appeared 74 years ago.

DONALD TRUMP MEETS THE HONEYMONERS

Even though today's Interesting Stuff list is already longer than it should be, this is too good to leave out. As with Malheur above, Jim Stone found this one. The YouTube page explains it is

"a fan-made parody imagining if Mr. Trump was running for the 1952 Presidential Election."

And well done it is. Enjoy.

Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.

You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the at the top of any Time Goes By page to send them. I'm sorry that I won't have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog IF you include the name of the blog and its URL.