Family reunion

The father of a Central Florida woman died in 2013 and was cryogenically frozen and is stored at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. She's in love with her dog and would like to put the dog as well as herself into cryogenic freeze after their respective deaths so that in the event science catches up and can revive those who have died, that her father would not be lonely when he wakes up. The cost for keeping a human in that state is $28,000 while the cost for storing a pet is around $6,000.

The Institute claims to be the largest storage facility for full bodies frozen in a cryogenic state with 173 patients and 167 animals as of September 2018. 

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Monitor the conversations

Where did the growth come from?

I found this part of Cohen's statement interesting

When I say conman, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.

As I mentioned, I’m giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission. These are Exhibit 6.

The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared “Let him show his records” after calling President Obama “a terrible student.”

The sad fact is that I never heard Mr. Trump say anything in private that led me to believe he loved our nation or wanted to make it better. In fact, he did the opposite.

When telling me in 2008 that he was cutting employees’ salaries in half – including mine – he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving “someone like him” that much money back.

Talk about small

A baby boy in Japan weighed 9.45oz. at birth. He was so small he could fit into a pair of cupped hands. He was put in intensive care. After being there for five months, he was healthy enough to be released. He weighed about 7 pounds. He is believed to be the smallest boy in the world to be sent home healthy.

A different kind of hand

What does this tell you?

Born to play soccer

Olivia Moultrie is 13 and a soccer player - a professional soccer player. She just signed a representation deal with the Wasserman Media Group, a sports agency, and a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike. In doing so she gave up a scholarship offer to play college soccer at the University of North Carolina. She signed that contract when she was 11 years old.

She must be a fantastic player. She has long played with older girls on the United States youth national team and with boys’ clubs. She has met and trained with some of Europe's biggest clubs: Olympique Lyon and Paris St.-Germain in France, and Bayern Munich in Germany.

However, when she can actually play with the pros is up in the air as both FIFA and the US pro teams require a player to be at least 18.

Microfibers from your clothes wind up in the ocean

There are all sorts of wackos

Today's is acting principal at a Wisconsin middle school. Apparently, an 11 year-old girl and a friend sprayed perfume on themselves in the bathroom. The teacher, who is allergic to some perfumes, asked the class who had sprayed perfume on herself. When no one responded, the teacher call the acting principal, who proceeded to "push the girl out of the classroom and into a row of lockers, then lost his balance and fell on top of her." Her mother said that when the girl came home she was “crying and her lip was cracked, bleeding and she handed me three of her braids that were pulled out from her scalp.”

Banks and the new tax laws

The Hill reports: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) revealed that the nation’s 5,406 federally insured banks reeled in $236.7 billion in profits last year, according to the agency’s quarterly banking profile. 

Yearly profits increased increased $72. 4 billion from 2017, and the rise includes $28.8 billion more than banks would have kept under the previous tax regime. Bank profits in the fourth quarter of 2018 rose to $59 billion, an $8.1 billion increase from the same period in 2017.

Is China on the way out?

Some Chinese entrepreneurs think so. In a recent poll of 465 wealthy individuals only one-third said that they are very confident in the country’s economic prospects. Two years ago, nearly two-thirds said they were very confident. Those who have no confidence at all rose to 14 percent, more than double the level of 2018. Nearly half said they were considering migrating to a foreign country or had already started the process. Polls have been wrong before, but it does look as though a number of these wealthy types have left the country. One of them is the subject of a NY Times article. He says, "China’s economy is like a giant ship heading to the precipice. Without fundamental changes, it’s inevitable that the ship will be wrecked and the passengers will die. My friends, if you can leave, please make arrangements as early as possible.”

It seems to them that Beijing has become more interested in solidifying its control over people’s lives than promoting economic growth. Others think that China’s leadership has mismanaged the world’s second-largest economy, and they are losing confidence in the country’s future.

An exoskeleton can help

Could you match his efforts?

Insects are leaving us

Farmers are the victims of our trade dispute with China

From Reuters:
“The share of total U.S. agricultural exports to China in value terms is projected to be 6 percent, down sharply, with China falling from the top market in 2017 to fifth place,” USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson told the USDA annual forum in Washington.

He said the United States had exported 24 million metric tonnes of soybeans in the 2019 crop year, down 13.5 million metric tonnes from this time last year.

“Under the trade dispute, exports to China alone have plummeted by 22 million tonnes, or over 90 percent,” he said.

Johansson said sales of U.S. soybeans to the European Union, Egypt, Argentina, and others had risen, but that has “not been enough to make up for the lost exports to China.”

A few people who think they should be president

William Rivers Pitt has a lot to say about the status of a president, but I found the following laughable:

"On this Presidents’ Day, let us all take a moment to gaze in awe at the ever-expanding field of 2020 candidates, which now officially includes California Sen. Kamala Harris, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former New Jersey Rep. John Delaney, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and, of course, President Donald Trump.

The list of as-yet-undeclared Hot Maybes includes former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown; former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; former New York Mayor and current billionaire Michael Bloomberg; Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam; former Vice President Joe Biden; California Rep. Eric Swalwell; former Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; Washington Gov. Jay Inslee; Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton; Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan; Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley; Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe; and probably the surviving cast members from Ben-Hur, I Am Spartacus and Gone With the Wind before all is said and done."

Agent Orange Lives

Arrested at 11

A sixth-grade student in Lakeland, Fla. refused to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance throughout the school year. A substitute teacher did not like that and had him, 11-years-old and black, arrested. The student told the teacher that he did not stand because he believes the pledge represents racism.

Fortunately,the state attorney will not prosecute the child. Interestingly, thousands of Florida students are arrested every year, probably because the state allows the police to arrest students of any age.

Fewer Banks, Less Competition

In the last twenty years 4,823 U.S. banks disappeared, some through mergers, some failed. We have gone from 10,220 to 5,397, a drop of 47%. Now, just nine banks hold 40% of domestic deposits. They also hold a heck of a lot of derivatives (remember these from the Great Recession?) and do a lot of trading among themselves. In 2016 the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) found that the Federal Reserve’s stress tests were failing to capture the predominant risk on Wall Street.The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund has only $100.2 billion as of September 30, 2018. Yet, just the none biggies hold over five trillion in insured deposits. Are you starting to worry yet?

Was I blind?

Yesterday the cover article in the NY Times Magazine was "The Secret History of Women in Coding." It was about the decline in the number of women programmers. There were a lot of them in the early days, but, at some point, the number dropped quite a bit. I began my career in the software programming field in 1961 and can attest to the fact that many women dropped out of the field in the '70s and '80s. I could never figure out why. The work was fascinating and challenging, did not require heavy lifting and paid well. Many of us felt that we were helping to change the world. The best programmers then were women. They moved up in the programming world at the same rate as men. I worked for women managers and, as a manager, hired many women. Several women built their own companies.

The article asserts that they dropped out because of sexual discrimination. I think the bulk of the departures occurred in large companies where they were developing programs to better the company’s business. In my experience, the departure rate was less in small companies and really less in companies that developed basic software, such as operating systems, languages, testing aids, etc.

Things are evening off

Today's NY Times is heavy

I don't mean intellectually, although it may be. I mean physically. It must weigh a couple of pounds. That's due to the fact that it includes T Magazine, a fashion magazine. It's 225 pages long. The revenue from this publication must be quite high. If the Times averaged $100,000 a page, you're looking at $22,500,000.

Removing the mountain can ruin lives

There is a technique of mining coal in Appalachia that has destroyed the water people need to live. The technique, known as mountaintop removal, blows the top off the mountains where coal is located so that the coal, buried deep below the surface, can be excavated. One study estimates that an area the size of the state of Delaware has been flattened by this type of coal mining, which was first practiced in the 1970s.

In one typical house in the area the taps have been worn down, the washing machine frequently stops working, and the bathroom and kitchen have been stained a deep, bloody orange by the pollutants - iron, sulfur, even arsenic - that have seeped into home's water supply. A glass of water from the kitchen tap soon has a strange smell and a sticky texture and within minutes begins to turn dark orange. A layer of black sediment soon sinks to the bottom of the glass. The owner of the house says, "This is what we have to live with. We don't bathe in the water and we don't cook with it. It stains our fingernails, our knuckles, and our clothes. It's really, really difficult living like this." They have to drive for more than an hour to stock up on bottled water to drink and cook with.

I don't see our names on this list

from Bloomberg via The Big Picture

Do women wear pants or skirts more often?

Does this theory still hold?

True statements from our President?

“In fact, I think I can say this, Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. . . . He said, ‘I have nominated you respectfully on behalf of Japan. I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.’ ”

"If you look at Idlib province in Syria, I stopped the slaughter of perhaps 3 million people,” he said, saying it was something that nobody talks about.

“When I asked President Xi, I said, ‘Do you have a drug problem?’ — ‘No, no, no.’ — I said, ‘You have 1.4 billion people, what do you mean, you don’t have a drug problem?’ — ‘No, we don’t have drug problem.’ — I said, ‘Why?’ — ‘Death penalty. We give death penalty to people that sell drugs.’ End of problem,” Trump said.
“What do we do? We set up blue ribbon commissions, lovely men and women. They sit around a table, they eat, they dine, and they waste a lot of time.”

Flying again

1 mother, 2 fathers

An advocate in the court

Millionaires want to be taxed more...

...at least in New York. Forty-eight of them wrote to the governor and legislator that the millionaires should pay more in state taxes. Some excerpts from their letter:

"We millionaires and multi-millionaires of New York can easily invest more in the Empire State, and lawmakers like you have a moral and a fiduciary duty to make sure we do so."

"The taxes we're talking about will not affect people's quality of life. They will not have any fewer private airplanes or boats because of this tax."

"Raising taxes on high-income New Yorkers like us in order to invest in our people and our communities is not just the right moral choice, it also happens to be in the long-term economic best interest of everyone, including millionaires like us."

One comparison

Electric cars on the rise

Another indication of our weak economy

The NY Fed reports that 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments. This is worse than the same situation during the wake of the financial crisis. There were over a million more “troubled borrowers” at the end of 2018 than there were in 2010.

Half male, half female

The cardinal above is both male and female. Its left side is the taupe shade of female cardinals; its right, the signature scarlet of males.

This is not the first time nor the first species where this has occurred. It has been reported among birds, reptiles, butterflies and crustaceans. The researchers are not totally sure that the bird is half and half without analyzing its genes with a blood test or necroscopy, but the split in plumage down the middle is characteristic of the rare event.

Farmers are in trouble

Bankruptcies in courts that cover the largest farm states in the country were nearly double in 2018 what they were in 2008, The Wall Street Journal reports. Farms in these states produce nearly half of all American farm sales. Revenues are down, especially with corn, hogs and soybeans. And competition from overseas has gotten worse. Dairy farmers are also in trouble; the retaliatory tariffs China and Mexico imposed on U.S. cheese and tariffs on pork have led to a record buildup of meat and caused prices of beef and chicken to plummet. The Wall Street Journal points to Trump’s trade war with countries like China and Mexico as a key driver in the rising rate of farm bankruptcies.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the median farm income was negative by $1,548 in 2018 while farm debt climbed to more than $400 billion, a rate not seen in the last four decades.

Visiting the neighbors

What the war in Yemen costs us

Aurora Borealis in Sweden

We need to act on global warming today.

Hotel Boeing

Another war we're losing

Test driving a new car

We keep dropping in these polls

There is something called the World Happiness Report. Last year it ranked us as the 14th happiest country in the world. This year we're down to #18. For several years, they have been ranking 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.

The leading countries had high-quality social interactions which can happen when you have safe, balanced and harmonious shared experiences.

Don't go to a hospital in Venezuela

Hard to believe

She has starred in a documentary about her life, fronted fashion campaigns, been the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, carried out design projects at the White House under every president from Truman to Clinton, aside from George H. W. Bush, launched lines of jewelry and ready-to-wear fashion, as well as a 2018 book, became the oldest person to have a Barbie doll created in her image. That's a heck of lot of accomplishments. And, now at the age of 97, she's  signing a major modeling contract, with global agency IMG.

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Where does fine perfume come from?

He doesn't want to be here

A Mumbai businessman, Raphael Samuel, plans to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. He believes that it's wrong to bring children into the world because they then have to put up with lifelong suffering. Ergo, we didn't ask to be born, so we should be paid for the rest of our lives to live.

His mother's response, "I must admire my son's temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault."

Riding the bus in Venezuela

Do you understand the rationale of this?

The person on the left is the mother of the person on the right, who has been recruited by the University of Pittsburgh football team. Apparently, this is not the first time such a photo has been taken. More and more parents are being photographed in a college team's football uniform. These photos happen more often as national signing day nears on Wednesday.

Exercising in DC

I wonder if the purpose of the State of the Union speech is to have our leaders do some exercise. Very often, the speech is filled with banalities and a repeat of what the president has been saying for a long time. Yet, the audience rises from their seats almost every other minute. They get some good exercise in their legs, arms and hands.

What is the real unemployment rate?

It's been seen at being around 4%, which is pretty good. However, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco points out that "This represents about 1.4 million additional individuals who are stuck in part-time jobs. These numbers imply that the level of involuntary part-time work is about 40% higher than would normally be expected at this point in the economic expansion.". Mass unemployment — the historic kind, with dole queues, unemployment benefits, and idle workers on street corners — has been replaced by low-paid, part-time, "gig economy" or "zero-hours" contract work.

Finger nails you've never seen before

Do we need an arms control treaty?

Stop wasting food

Marrying a dog

Well, not really. But she was able to get her story in the NY Times wedding section yesterday. "Lilly Smartelli, 55, of Phoenix, is dreaming about marrying her best friend, Bernie, who happens to be her dog. The reality is that she is dying from a form of pulmonary fibrosis, a respiratory disease. She donated a kidney 12 years ago to a childhood friend in Detroit and is still trying to save lives, while at the same time, keeping alive her own childhood dream: to know the joy of a wedding day.

But there will be no actual wedding day. She is pushing the idea of marrying a dog as a fund-raising event that will draw attention to organ-donor groups and animal welfare shelters that lack proper funding, “and still get to experience the thrill of having a wedding, even if it’s a fake wedding.” She is 'marrying' Bernie, a 9-year-old cocker spaniel-poodle mix.