INTERESTING STUFF – 30 September 2017
Saturday, 30 September 2017
HENRY LOWENSTERN ON FALLING
A week ago, I posted an important story about falling prevention. That prompted TGB reader, Henry Lowenstern to email this follow-up ditty titled, Vanishing Vanity:
I constantly think about forestalling
my ever present fear of falling,
but, am as yet too vain
to use a walker or a cane
and may some day end up crawling.
WHAT A REAL LEADER LOOKS AND SOUNDS LIKE
For two years, Americans – nay, the world - has been subjected to the vulgar, offensive, misleading, incomprehensible utterances and fairly constant lies from President Trump.
He can hardly open his mouth without revealing his ignorance, stupidity and lack of interest in anything but his own aggrandizement. The “leader of the free world.” Yeah. Sure.
On Thursday, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendant of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, in no uncertain terms, took on an incident of racial slurs at the institution in front of all 4,000 cadets. This is leadership. Take a look:
To reiterate General Silveria: “If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out.”
EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS TO TIME GOES BY
Several messages arrived from readers this week notifying me that their email blog posts were not arriving as usual. This is because they are subscribed through Feedburner which hiccups every now and then, throwing people out of the system.
Google owns the email distribution system, Feedburner. They stopped servicing it five or so years ago and it has been deteriorating every since. So from time to time, it stops working for some people.
When it was announced that Google was abandoning Feedburner those several years go, I contracted with a paid email and rss distribution service, Feedblitz. (Yes, the two names are confusing.)
So, if you are still subscribed via Feedburner and want to ensure email delivery of Time Goes By, go to the top right of any page here, fill in your email address under the header “Subscribe” and your delivery problems will be solved.
TWO NAKED GUYS WITH TOWELS
I'm pretty sure I've posted this before – a few years ago – but I can't find it and anyway, it's really funny. Thank Darlene Costner.
AN AMAZING GARDEN GROWN FROM RESCUED PLANTS
This is gorgeous, a 30-year labor of love. Here's what the YouTube page tells us:
”In Bishopville, South Carolina, Pearl Fryar is a local gardening legend. When he first moved to the small town in the 1980s, he was almost unable to build his house because neighbors feared that as an African American, he wouldn’t keep up his yard.
“Determined to dispel that stereotype, Fryar went on to win 'Yard of the Month' from the local garden club. Since then, he’s created a world-renowned topiary garden with more than 300 plants, most of which were rescued from the compost pile of a local nursery.”
GINORMOUS DATA CABLE
This week a gigantic, new trans-Atlantic data cable between the U.S. and Spain was finished. I mean huge: it can transmit 160 terabits of data per second which means, according to USA Today:
”To put that in perspective, when you break it down into the gigabytes we're familiar with, 160 terabits equals 20,000 GB of data. So, let's say you're downloading movies that are 2 GB in size, you could download 10,000 movies in one second.”
The cable was funded by Microsoft and Facebook. You can read much more about this cable named Marea (Spanish for wave) at USA Today, MIT Technology Review and Engadget among other sources.
THE DUBIOUS FRIENDS OF DONALD TRUMP – PART 3, THE BILLION DOLLAR FRAUD
Zembla is a Dutch public television program. The show has been tracking Donald Trumps questionable financial connections to Russia and other sources. The third installment of the series was released on YouTube this week titled: The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump – Part 3, The Billion Dollar Fraud.
You can watch it right here or at YouTube.
The first two installments, both published last May, can also be seen at YouTube:
The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: The Russians
The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: King of Diamonds
Read more about these documentaries at Alternet.
WHY DOUGHNUT BOXES ARE PINK
It's not so at my favorite doughnut shop where I live now, but pink doughnut boxes are pervasive in a lot of other places like New York City and Portland, Maine, where I lived before.
Here's the story about why so many are pink.
WOODPECKER TEACHERS SQUIRREL A LESSON
No explanation needed; just watch.
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” 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.