Month: July 2021

Ugh. Must be MONDAY!!!

Have something to eat

You can't buy bagels with cream cheese. Are you crazy?!

Try some yoga

Due Today

So….

The owner of a seafood restaurant sends one of his sons undercover to his rival's restaurant. 

The dad tells him to get a job as a cook and figure out the recipe for his rival's famous clam chowder. 

The first day, the son comes home with a basic list of ingredients that the rival uses. They try making it, but it doesn't turn out the same. The dad sends him back. 

The second day, the son comes home having watched the rival chef prepare the chowder. They try again to make it, and it's close, but the consistency is off. 

"It's too watery!" said the dad. "It needs to be thicker!"

They try to figure out what they're doing wrong, and the son realizes that he was distracted for a minute while the chef did something. 

"He must have added a secret ingredient, one not on the list, while you looked away!" concludes the dad. 

He sends his son back for a third day, this time telling him not to take his eyes off the chef for a second. The son comes back the next day excited. 

"You'll never believe what I saw!" he says. "He did have a secret ingredient, it's a piece of paper!"

"A piece of paper?"

"Yeah, he keeps a stack of printed paper in the kitchen. It's a bunch of Wikipedia articles he's printed out, of various movies. When he makes the chowder, he tears out the synopsis of a movie from one of the articles and puts it in. It's the strangest thing, but that's the secret ingredient."

"Ah," says the dad, "the plot thickens."

Today is the birthday, in 1943, of Mick Jagger.

Posted by Tom

Northern Spy

I recently finished reading Northern Spy, the thriller by Flynn Berry. It’s not my usual genre, but I really enjoyed the book.

Despite the title, the book is not really about apples. Tessa Daly is a divorced mother of a six month old child living in a village in the suburbs of Belfast who works for the BBC producing a news program. It’s been a few years since the Good Friday agreement was signed but tensions are as high as ever and there are still the occasional skirmishes. Tessa is surprised one day watching a news program at work to see her sister, Marion taking part in an IRA robbery.

Tessa assumes at first, and so tells the police, that Marion has been forced to participate by the IRA. Soon, however, she is shocked to discover that Marion has been working with the IRA for seven years. Recently, however, Marion says that she has begun secretly working with MI5 and feeding them information to help set the stage for a peace agreement.

In an attempt to reduce bloodshed, however, Marion has deliberately sabotaged a bomb that was targeted by the IRA at a market and now she is under surveillance by both the IRA and MI5. So she asks Tessa to join her acting as a double agent and funneling information to her MI5 contact. Tessa is accepted by the IRA and asked to do increasingly dangerous tasks as she feels more and more trapped and worried for her family and her son.

If you like your thrillers with lots of car chases and explosions and suave secret agents, this is not for you. It is a page-turner, though as the tension builds and both Tessa and Marion are in increasing danger of getting caught and killed both by the IRA and the police.

Berry is a good writer and the book is an enjoyable read. The story flows nicely as the tension and uncertainty build. I enjoyed it and you should give it a shot.

Posted by Tom in Books, Literature

Bizet comes to Sarasota

Here’s a nice flashmob performance by the Sarasota Orchestra at the airport; a good way to start Saturday.

Posted by Tom in Music, opera

We are all in danger

At least 58 dead in Germany as heavy rains bring catastrophic flooding |  Germany | The Guardian

Scientists have been warning us for many years of the danger of climate change, but mostly they have been ignored. Many people think that global warming and climate change are something that are going to affect ‘other people’ – those who live on low-lying coasts, on islands, in developing countries and so on. Efforts to stop the rise in temperatures and sea levels and the modest changes they may require to how we live are too annoying and won’t have any effect on us anyway.

This year we’ve seen how shortsighted that viewpoint is. Unprecedented rainfalls and flooding in Western Europe and in China in recent months have killed hundreds and destroyed billions of dollars in property. Unprecedented heat waves in the American west have killed further hundreds, destroyed crops and wildlife and have led to raging wildfires and dangerous drought conditions.

Northwest Heat Wave By the Numbers: Dozens of Monthly and All-Time Record  Highs | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather Channel |  weather.com

All of these events are attributable to global warming/climate change. The warmer atmosphere holds more water and the heating of polar regions is causing a slow down in the jet streams leading to heavier rainstorms that move very slowly. The changes in the weather patterns also contribute to the development of ‘heat domes’ that concentrate heat for days.

Videos show horrific flooding in subways in China's Zhengzhou | Taiwan News  | 2021-07-21 19:05:00
Zhengzhou record rains wash out Apple, Nissan - Asia Times

These kinds of catastrophes can happen anywhere, none of us are safe. Sea levels are rising, the atmosphere is growing more unstable and the defenses we have built are, by and large, insufficient to deal with the threats. So, if you think the problem is far in the future and it will mostly affect other people, you are wrong. The threat of greater and more common disasters is here and you are as likely to experience it as much as anyone else.

So take action now…for your sake, for your children’s sake and for your grandchildren’s sake. The most important thing you can do is speak up. Politicians are not going to do something difficult unless their constituents demand it. Push for laws and policies that limit emission of carbon and other greenhouse gasses and punish polluters. You can find more suggestions HERE. But the important thing is to not bury your head in the sand and think this is going away. Climate change is coming and it’s coming for you. TAKE ACTION.

Hoover Dam reservoir hits record low, in sign of extreme western U.S.  drought | Reuters
Devastating Scenes After Deadly Floods in Germany, Belgium
Posted by Tom in climate change