Month: April 2018

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Monday/ Trump’s lawyer raided by the FBI

There President Trump was today, in the Cabinet Room with the press and TV cameras, flanked by his top military brass, and new National Security Advisor John Bolton. The media was invited to the start of discussions about what to do about the atrocities of the chemical attack on civilians in Syria over the weekend.

From today’s online New York Times. That’s VP Mike Pence on the left of Trump and new National Security Advisor John Bolton on the right. Bolton will probably advise Trump to bomb Syria. Bolton was a very controversial pick for NSA, with his role in promoting the Iraq War and a bluntness that makes him an extremely undiplomatic diplomat.

Instead, Trump launched into a four-minute rant about the news of the day: that his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, had his office, his home, and his Manhattan hotel room raided by the FBI.  ‘They broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys .. ‘ (um – the FBI had a search warrant); ‘It’s a disgraceful situation’ (disgraceful, yes); ‘it’s an attack against the country, really’ (you are not a king, President Trump, you are not ‘the country’, and you are not above the law).

On and on it went, as he took swipes at Special Investigator Robert S. Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and denounced the investigation again as a witch hunt by the Democrats. Is it November yet? – so we can vote all the Republicans out of the House and the Senate, and impeach Trump? For me it does not even matter anymore, what Mueller’s investigation finds.

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Sunday/ cherry blossoms

Spring is in full bloom here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the cherry blossoms are all out – here in the United States, and also in Japan and China.

Here is the University of Washington campus today, with some of its cherry trees and their blossoms ..
.. and I picked up this Camellia flower (I think it’s a Camellia) with its pink tints and flecks, on the sidewalk today. It still amazes me, the detail that smartphone cameras can capture these days.
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Rainy Saturday

It rained steadily this morning, but cleared up enough later so that I could make my way down to the Capitol Hill public library.  At the corner of Broadway and Thomas, I spotted this guy: big 3-0 balloons in one hand, and a cake box in the other. He was surely on his way to the party for the birthday boy or gal that was turning 30.  I remember how I had thought my life was over, when I turned 30. Well, live and learn. I now say: it’s not over until it is over.  

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Friday/ do not trust Facebook

Recent cover of German magazine Der Spiegel: ‘Die Falle Facebook’ – the Trap that is Facebook. Be careful. Do not be this guileless user, that just divulges everything/ clicks on everything/ believes everything, on Facebook.

I am not deleting my Facebook account, but they have lost my trust. Facebook will do almost anything for money. A sample: they enabled Russians to buy fake news ads (and pay in rubles) for the 2016 US Presidential election scandal, they enabled hate speechers to find target audiences on Facebook; allowed third parties to extract personal data, and then failed to follow up to make sure the data is deleted (the Cambridge Analytica scandal); scanned  images and links sent from Messenger.

So now I go in every other day into my Facebook settings, and I am systematically deleting anything that they can use to sell me stuff.  No more favorite movies or books, deleting my interests, do not enable just anyone to view my profile, do not enable face recognition in my photos, delete all connections to other apps. Sending money with Facebook? (yes, it can be done). Never.

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Thursday/ at the Masters

The Masters started in Augusta, Georgia, today. Gary Player (age 82) and Jack Niklaus (78) were on hand to perform tee shots for the ceremonial opening of the tournament.

Tiger Woods (42) is attempting a comeback, but had a rough start, finishing 7 shots behind Jordan Spieth, the talented 24-yr old Texan.

Check out South African Louis Oosthuizen’s putt on the 16th. He sank a 30-footer by standing with his back to the hole, and judging the sharp break on the putting green perfectly. Big smile and a little shrug of the shoulders afterwards.

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Wednesday/ chieftains and Kings

It was Wednesday, and so my friends and I went for a beer and a bite at one of our regular watering holes, The Chieftain.
Also: today marked the 50th anniversary of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Irish pub ‘The Chieftain’ on 12th Avenue. A chieftain is the leader of a people or a clan.
Dr Martin Luther King mural near 15th Ave and Madison. In 2005 King County (home to Seattle), was named after Dr King. From way back in 1852 up to 2005, King County was named for a different King: Alabama resident William Rufus King that was subsequently elected Vice President in 1853. Only 6 weeks after later, though, he passed away.
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Tuesday/ point and line puzzles

I scan through the Wall Street Journal almost every day, at the public library here in my neighborhood. The weekend edition has puzzles in, and the two puzzles below are from this last weekend.  (This is the link to the WSJ puzzle blog).

I think I know the solution to the ‘Maximizing Links’ problem .. but the Seven Points problem has me stumped .. but I’m working on it!

Update Fri 4/6: Well, the solutions have been published. I got the first one right: 9 links can be drawn. Trying to solve the ‘Seven Points’ problem was a humbling experience, and I got close, but no cigar.  I knew the solution had to involve equilateral several connected triangles, but I should have applied more rigor, and maybe used a compass to arrive at the solution (as shown in the figure with the circles, from Math Stack Exchange).  So depending on the way one looks at it, the solution is a regular pentagon, with two points carefully added to it, equidistant to three other points on the pentagon .. OR two diamonds pinned at a shared vertice (bottom left on the first diagram), and the other vertices a unit length apart.

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Monday/ all clear after the storm

It was a brisk 44°F/ 6 °C in the University District this morning at 10 am, where I was this morning.  The storm we had on Sunday night was gone. It brought down a little hail at my house, and a thunderbolt so loud, and so close, that it rattled the windows and the glasses up in my kitchen cabinet.

Here’s the colorful facade of the University of Washington’s new 6-storey ‘Comotion’ building at 4545 Roosevelt Way. It is a ‘startup incubation space’, one that enables collaboration with UW’s partners in industry. UW also invites in companies, even if they don’t yet have an explicit connection to the university.