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Sunday/ control blocks 🪟

The FedEx envelope that contained my shipment of stamps from South Africa was marked ‘Extremely Urgent’.
Well, it wasn’t really (extremely urgent), I thought, and it’s amazing that modern logistics can make land to my porch in a matter of days, that what I had bought online from a location 10,000 miles away.

These are called control blocks: blocks of four or six stamps in the corner of the sheet, with the sheet margins intact. If you are lucky, the margins contain the date the sheet was printed, and other details.

The downside is that these take up an enormous amount of space in an album that is made of them. For now, I am collecting only the blocks of the so-called definitive issues of stamps. Unlike commemorative stamps, which are issued for brief periods in limited quantities, definitives are usually issued in larger quantities and used over many years.

From 1961 to 2020, the South African Post Office issued eight definitive series of postal stamps.

Control blocks from—
South Africa’s Fifth Definitive Series (Succulents), issued 1988-93;
South Africa’s First Definitive Series (the ‘Pouring Gold’ 2c stamp), issued 1961-74;
South Africa’s Seventh Definitive Series (Colorful South Africa), issued 2000-’07.
Control blocks from—
South Africa’s Sixth Definitive Series (Threatened Fauna), issued 1993-96;
South Africa’s Seventh Definitive Series (Colorful South Africa), issued 2000-’07.
Control blocks from—
South Africa’s Second Definitive Series (Flowers, Birds & Fish), issued 1974-77;
South Africa’s First Definitive Series (the ‘Groot Constantia Wine Estate’ 2½c stamp), issued 1961-74.
Control blocks from—
South Africa’s Eighth Definitive Series (South African Beadwork), issued 2010-18;
South Africa’s Seventh Definitive Series (Colorful South Africa), issued 2000-’07;
South Africa’s Sixth Definitive Series (Threatened Fauna), issued 1993-96.
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Saturday 🌙

Here’s March, and a picture of the crescent moon with Venus in the early evening hours.

Shot at 6.38 pm (43 mins after sunset) from the back of my house with my iPhone 16 Pro’s telephoto lens (ISO 1250, 120 mm, f2.8, 3.5s shutter opening).
I reduced the original picture size by 50% and darkened the night sky a little by using an Adobe Photoshop filter, to make it look closer to what it does with the naked eye.
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Friday/ more sun 🌇

Happy Friday.
The false spring here in the city continued today with temperatures reaching 58°F (14°C).
Late in the afternoon, I spotted sunseekers lounging on the lawn at Volunteer Park.
Nearby, stargazers by the Black Sun sculpture were already setting up their telescopes to observe the planets.
I hope the clouds at sunset didn’t thwart their efforts.

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Thursday/ seven planets 🪐

Whenever planets are visible in the night sky, they always appear roughly along the same line. This path, known as the ecliptic, is the same one that the sun travels along during the day.

This happens because the planets orbit around the sun in the same plane. Dr. van Belle (director of science at Lowell Observatory in Arizona) likened the configuration to a vinyl record: The sun is in the center, and the grooves are the orbits of the planets around it.

Our point of view from Earth, then, is along one of those grooves, “looking out along the platter,” he said. This week, the planets are configured in such a way that all of them will be present in the sky at dusk from mostly anywhere on Earth.
-Katrina Muller writing for the New York Times

Also from the NYT article: “According to Gerard van Belle, director of science at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, an alignment of seven planets is neither mystical nor particularly rare. “On the scale of supermoon to death asteroid, this is more a supermoon sort of thing,” Dr. van Belle said. Still, the planetary parade, as the event is colloquially named, “makes for a very nice excuse to go outside at night, maybe with a glass of wine, and enjoy the night sky.”
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Monday/ a break in the bluster 🌬️

It was a blustery, rainy day here in the city (high 53°F/ 12°C), but there was a bit of quiet at 5 o’clock, which allowed me to go for a walk.

The pickleball courts at Pendleton Miller playfield on Capitol Hill were all soaked ..
.. but right next door some little leaguers were engaged in that team sport with the sticks with nets on. As I looked on, I could not for the life of me remember the name of the sport 😁.. thought about it as I walked, feeling my mind reach for it, only to have it slip away. I refused to look it up, got home and sat at the kitchen counter, and doodled a few words on paper: water polo .. hockey .. fuss ball .. foley .. polo .. lacrosse! got it 😚.
Lacrosse is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century.
The French Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf saw Huron tribesmen play the game during 1637 in present-day Ontario. He called it la crosse, “the stick” in French. The name seems to be originated from the French term for field hockey, le jeu de la crosse.
[Source: Wikipedia. The picture is titled ‘Ball Players’ and the artist is George Catlin]
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Sunday/ a new chancellor 🇩🇪

Sunday’s election, which came months ahead of schedule after the country’s governing coalition crumbled late last year, produced a few surprises and a lot of suspense. Late in the evening in Berlin, it was unclear if the next government would be another wobbly three-party affair, like the one that fell apart last fall, or a return to the more durable two-party governments that had led Germany for most of this century.
…
Among German voters, 65 percent are worried that Germany is helpless against President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to a poll released on Sunday afternoon.

On Sunday night in a post-election debate between leaders, Friedrich Merz (the likely new chancellor), quickly brought up the threat that Germany and Europe face because of the new U.S. administration.

“It has become clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this government, is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” he said. “I am very curious to see how we approach the NATO summit at the end of June — whether we are still talking about NATO in its current state or whether we need to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”
-Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley reporting from Berlin for the New York Times

Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union at party headquarters in Berlin on Sunday.
[Picture by Angelika Warmuth/ Reuters]
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Saturday/ a rainy weekend ☔

It’s a rainy weekend here in the city, with about 0.3 inches recorded as of 7 pm tonight. We may reach an inch or so by Monday morning.

Cybertruck spotting— one wrapped in dark gray, parked on 15th Avenue East here on Capitol Hill on Friday. 
“Does Elon Musk Still Care About Selling Cars?
Mr. Musk, one of President Trump’s main advisers, has not outlined a plan to reverse falling sales at the electric car company of which he is chief executive.
Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent.  .. Tesla sales fell 12 percent last year in California, which accounts for nearly one-third of the electric cars sold in the United States.”
– Jack Ewing writing for the New York Times
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Friday/ wildlife on stamps 🐘

Happy Friday.
These 1970s stamps arrived as part of a complimentary packet of world stamps from my supplier of stamp albums and pages.
I might still start a thematic collection and animals. It would have to be a specific animal— or kind of animal— to narrow it down to a few thousand stamps!

Mongolia – Small Fur Animals
Issued Sept 5, 1973
Perf. 12×11¼ |Photogravure |No Wmk
802 20₮ Multi-colored | European badger (Meles meles)
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]
Romania – Young Animals
Issued Mar. 10, 1972
Perf. 13½ |Design: Design: Nicolae Săftoiu |Engraving: Fabrica de Timbre, Bucharest |No Wmk
2995 35b Multi-colored | Red fox cubs (Vulpes vulpes)
The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the largest of the true foxes and one of the most widely distributed members of the order Carnivora, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere including most of North America, Europe and Asia, plus parts of North Africa.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]
Rwanda – Apes and Monkeys
Issued Mar. 20, 1978
Perf. 13½x13 |Design: Severin |No Wmk
921 20c Multi-colored | Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
The genus Pan consists of two extant species: the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]
Madagascar – Lemurs
Issued Oct. 9, 1973
Perf. 13 |Design: Jumelet |Engraved |No Wmk
747 5Fr Multi-colored | Greater dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus major)
The greater dwarf lemur, or the Geoffroy’s dwarf lemur, is a lemur that is widely distributed over the primary and secondary forests near the eastern coast of Madagascar.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]
North Korea – Frogs
Issued Jul. 10, 1974
Perf. 11 |No Wmk
1320 5ch Multi-colored | Oriental fire-bellied toad (Bombina orientalis)
The Oriental fire-bellied toad is a small semiaquatic frog species found in northeastern Asia, where they primarily dwell in slow-moving bodies of water and temperate forests.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]
Viet Nam – Wild Animals
Issued Mar. 20, 1976
Perf. 12 |Photogravure |No Wmk
808-815 A278 12xu Multi-colored | Masked palm civet (Paguma larvata)
The masked palm civet, also called the gem-faced civet or Himalayan palm civet, is a viverrid species native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.
[Sources: Scott 2009 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Wikipedia]
U.S.S.R. (now Russia and multiple independent states) – 50th Anniversary of Berezina River and Stolby Wildlife Reservations
Issued Aug. 25, 1975
Perf. 12 x12 |Lithography |No Wmk
4363 A2068 6k Multi-colored | Siberian marten (Martes zibellina)
The Siberian marten or sable (Martes zibellina) is a species of marten, a small omnivorous mammal primarily inhabiting the forest environments of Russia, from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, and northern Mongolia.
[Sources: Scott 2009 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Wikipedia]
Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)- African Animals in Dvůr Králové Zoo (now Safari Park Dvůr Králové)
Issued Nov 3, 1976
Perf. 11¾ x 11¼ |Design: J. Baláž |Engraved and Photogravure |No Wmk
2343 20h Multi-colored | African elephant (Loxodonta africana)
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]
North Viet Nam (now Viet Nam)- Native Birds
Issued Oct. 12, 1972
Perf. 12 |Photogravure |No Wmk
701 12xu Multi-colored | Red-wattled lapwing (Lobivanellus indicus)
The red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus indicus) is an Asian lapwing or large plover, a wader in the family Charadriidae.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]
Chad – Insects and Spiders
Issued May 6, 1972
Perf. 13 |Design: P. Lambert |Photogravure |No Wmk
526 4Fr Multi-colored | Spider: Argiope sector
Argiope sector is a species of orb weaver spider that is found in North Africa, the Middle East, Senegal, and Cape Verde.
[Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]
Hungary – Butterflies
Issued Nov. 11, 1974
Perf. 12½ |Designer: Eva Zombory |Photogravure |No Wmk
3019 80f Multi-colored | Butterfly: Parnassius apollo
[Sources: Stampworld.com, 2018 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]

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Thursday/ the many states of matter ✨

Reporting from observer.com
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned the three states of matter that we know on Earth (solid, liquid, and gas) while talking about the quantum chip Majorana 1. There is a fourth one that is ubiquitous in the universe: plasma.

For a field that many have long considered decades away, quantum computing sure is getting a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley. Yesterday (Feb. 19), Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled a quantum chip known as Majorana 1, created with an entirely new state of matter that’s beyond solid, liquid and gas. “Most of us grew up learning there are three main types of matter that matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Today, that changed,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a post on X yesterday. “We believe this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years.”
…
Microsoft isn’t the only Big Tech company attempting to crack the quantum computing. Decades of research from companies like IBM, Intel and Google (GOOGL) has seemingly begun to pay off. Most recently, Google sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley when it unveiled a new quantum chip called Willow. In less than five minutes, the computer was able to perform a standard benchmark computation that would take today’s supercomputers 10 septillion years—a number that surpasses the age of the universe—to complete.

But not everyone is convinced that true breakthroughs are just around the corner. Tech leaders like Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang have raised red flags about the technology’s timeline. In January, Huang sent quantum stocks tumbling after declaring that “very useful quantum computers are still a few decades away.” Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg echoed these concerns a few days later while speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “My understanding is that’s still quite a ways off from being a very useful paradigm,” Zuckerberg said.
-Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writing on observer.com

Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter, following solid, liquid, and gas. It is an ionized gas where electrons are separated from the nuclei of atoms, creating a soup of positively and negatively charged particles.

Plasma is considered the most common state of matter in the universe, making up nearly all visible matter. 

The Sun’s corona, solar wind, magnetospheres of planets, comet tails, and interstellar gas clouds are all composed of plasma. 
[Source: Search Labs | AI Overview]

Scientists from Caltech have developed ‘a new type of matter,’ which they are calling polycatenated architected materials, or PAMs. This new matter doesn’t occur naturally, and uses chainmail-like design with entangled rings in place of fixed particles typically found in a crystalline structure.
[Source: Popular Mechanics, Feb. 4, 2025]

There are many other states of matter, some of which are listed below.
– Superconductive material
Superconductivity is when matter is in a state with no electrical resistance – that is, its electrical conductivity is greatly increased. A superconducting material has a critical temperature below which this change happens; this point is usually close to absolute zero.
– Bose-Einstein condensate
Bosons are a type of particle that include photons, gluons and the Higgs boson. When bosons are cooled to incredibly low temperatures at low density, they start to show quantum mechanical effects at large scales.
– Time crystals
An ordinary crystalline solid has its molecules arranged in repeating patterns in space. The molecules of a time crystal, however, follow a repeating pattern in time. The particles are in constant motion, following the same repetitive movements without losing any energy.
[Source: sciencefocus.com, Feb. 4, 2022]

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Wednesday/ got to have eggs 🥚

When you cook an egg, the heat that solidifies its whites and yolks kills pathogens like salmonella and bird flu. That’s why food safety officials recommend cooking eggs until both parts are firm.
…
Recent data on salmonella-infected eggs is hard to find. One widely cited study from 2000 suggested that one in every 20,000 eggs carries the bacteria. This might not sound like a lot, but given how many eggs Americans eat — about 250 per person on average in 2023 — that risk can add up.
– Caroline Hopkins Legaspi writing for the New York Times

I cannot find Certified Humane* eggs anywhere anymore, and I settled for these ones below from Whole Foods.

*Laying hens must be uncaged and have access to perches, nest boxes and dust-bathing areas.

These eggs from Whole Foods were $6.49 for the dozen (of which one was in the frying pan already).
As of January 2025, eggs are significantly more expensive than last year, with the average price of a dozen eggs being around 53% higher compared to the previous year, reaching a price of $4.95 per dozen; this is largely due to ongoing bird flu outbreaks impacting egg production. {Source: Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
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Tuesday/ make AI do the work 🧠

Here’s a quick example of how to use an AI app such as Chat GPT make easy pickings of grunt work.
I wanted to know what the total cost of a long list of items for sale on a scrollable web page, would add up to.

This web store sells stamps, and I have everything I am considering to buy in my Watchlist.
Well, what does everything in my Watchlist add up to? I wondered. The web page does not provide a total number. (To illustrate, I just selected the first 6 items of the 40 on my Watchlist.)
Step 1: Highlight everything on the web page and paste it into a text editor. I used Notepad on Windows.
Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to look at the text, pick out the prices, and add them all up.
My instruction to ChatGPT at the top says:
“Find all the numbers in this block of text that have two decimal places and that are immediately preceded by the letter R*, and then add them up: ‘[and then I pasted the text from Notepad in here]
*The currency, it stands for South African Rand
Step 3: Do a quick check if the instruction was good enough for ChatGPT, and voila! There is the result.
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Monday/ Presidents’ Day 🥁

Here is a cartoon for Presidents’ Day*, from the Tuesday issue of South African newspaper Die Burger (“The Citizen”).

*Officially Washington’s Birthday at the federal governmental level, celebrated on the third Monday of February in the United States.

Peace negotiations are at an advanced stage .. and we are almost ready for Ukraine’s participation.
Side comment from the hippo: ‘The situation is on a needlepoint!’.
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Sunday/ a beer run 🍻

It’s very hit-and-miss to find my favorite beer (Beck’s non-alcoholic) at the grocery store, and so I ran out to Total Wine off 15th Ave West to pick up some.
As usual, I snapped pictures of some of the intriguing labels on the other beverages that were for sale.

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Saturday/ scanning for the sun 🌇

I celebrated the end of the deep-freeze weather here in the city by walking down to the Melrose Avenue overlook of Interstate 5 late this afternoon.
The high today was 44°F  (7 °C).

On Melrose Avenue, with Interstate 5 below.
On the left is South Lake Union with Seattle’s downtown behind it; look for the Space Needle in the middle; and then Queen Anne hill with its broadcast antennas on the right.
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Saturday/ all the proteas 🪷

Check them out— the lineup of proteas that adorned the third definitive issue of postage stamps in the Republic of South Africa.

The 6-pocket blank pages from Leuchtturm stamp album series allow me to select, arrange and annotate the stamps in almost any way.
Some philatelists prefer to use completely blank pages, and create individual slide-in pockets (mounts) for the stamps on the page, but for now, I think that is too much work for me.

 

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Friday/ proteas 🪷

Happy Friday and Happy belated Valentine’s Day (the day is done).

Here is what I am working on: a complete set of the 1977 Third Definitive Issue of South Africa. All the stamps in the series depict proteas*, and there will be a second and a third page as well.

*Protea is a genus of South African flowering plants, also called sugarbushes (Afrikaans: suikerbos). It is the type genus of the Proteaceae family.
About 92% of the species occur only in the Cape Floristic Region, a narrow belt of mountainous coastal land from Clanwilliam to Grahamstown, South Africa. [Wikipedia]

In 1977, the standard postage rate was all of 5c, and that is why there are four versions of the 5c stamp. The have different perforations, and were printed on different types of paper. I will explain all of it when I post the completed set!
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Thursday/ inflation ticks up 🎈

I’m catching up on yesterday’s US inflation report. The pundits say it’s now 50-50 that we get one interest rate cut by mid-2025.
(As of today, the federal funds rate is 4.33%. This is within the target range of 4.25% to 4.50% set by the Federal Reserve).

Reporters Alan Rappeport and Colby Smith write for the New York Times:
Inflation figures released on Wednesday showed that consumer prices ticked up unexpectedly, rising at an annual rate of 3.0 percent in January. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, jumped 3.3 percent on a yearly basis. Prices also rose 0.5 percent on a monthly basis.
…
As of January, a dozen eggs averaged $4.95, up from less than $3 several months ago. Egg prices are up nearly 53 percent over the last year. And that’s likely to worsen amid an outbreak of avian flu, which has led to an egg shortage as farmers cull their flocks to prevent the disease from spreading.

Headlines and graph by the New York Times.
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Wednesday/ clear and cold ☀️

There is one more cold morning in store for us— 25°F/ −4°C expected here in the city.
There might be rain and snow on Thursday afternoon.

Here’s 5.12 pm today, looking west from the intersection at 14th Avenue East and Thomas Street.
Sunset is now at 5.30 pm.