“Not dead yet”

Happy Saturday Morning – The last of our Peets coffee beans went through the grinder yesterday. Plenty for a while so no worry.

Post surgery, Marcia is still getting stronger by the day and is back to eating heartily. Since the weather has turned it’s now a daily walk around the building. She has also persevered by walking from our place to Adrianne and Tevita’s, worked with Adrianne potting flowers, and then walked home.

And I should add that there is a daily up and down 15 times on the first step in our hallway. If she keeps it up, she’ll soon be a member of my Zoom exercise class.

These days, being home is the norm. As part of that, Marcia and I – as mentioned last week – are watching a lot of sports. This week it was both women’s and men’s bicycling, especially the Tour de Flanders. Having done a fair bit of bicycle touring during my early years on rides such as Michigan’s DALMAC and Indiana’s Hilly Hundred, I am stunned with these racers standing on the pedals and managing slopes as steep as 20-degrees. Oh, did I mention that much of the Flander’s race is on cobblestone roadways?

Then track and field events are fun, especially the short fast races, High Jumps, and the Steeplechase events with hurdles and water jumps. Yup, great viewing.

But we have a winner! Marcia and I are totally hooked on an event held in the UK. These are the Pre-War Vintage Roadster automobile races. Track used is F1 style complete with corners, chicanes, and straight runs, even with a mandatory pit stop and driver change. Just watching these sputtering old machines rumble and roar, running on skinny tires and sliding through the turns – it’s LOVELY!.

Bitcoin – I should ‘fess up in that this is not really a dissertation (Rambling) about bitcoin, it’s more a lead-in to the wonderful cartoon below.

Having said that, last week I read that investigative journalist John Carreyrou, whose previous reporting led to the downfall of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, might have uncovered the person behind the search for the identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto (the name is believed to be a pseudonym).

Carreyrou spent 18 months digging through thousands of decades-old internet postings in search of Bitcoin’s creator and now suggests that – drum roll please – prominent Cypherpunk movement figure from the 1980s Adam Black as being the person behind Bitcoin.

Artemis II – With Marcia climbing in the ‘sack’ early on I had the opportunity to watch the return and splashdown of Artemis II. The whole event was pretty awesome.

I got a bit of a chuckle when the radio signal wasn’t cooperating and so the recovery ship couldn’t spot them. Awesome, travel for hundreds of thousands of miles without a hiccup to then be stymied when within the distance of a ‘stones’ throw. No worry, it all worked out.

A Perfect Quotation – Artemis II pilot Victor Glover responding to a reporter asking about skin color “I hope we push that one day…it’s about human history, humanity, NOT ‘black history,’ not ‘women’s history,’ but that it becomes human history!“

Sasse – Ben Sasse, age 54, University President, father of three, church involved, historian, taught at Yale, 2-term US Senator from Nebraska, stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer patient, partaker in a protocol at MD Anderson in Houston, and a prognosis of having three or four months of life; “Thanks for having me.”

This week in the New York Times I ran across a long-form interview between interviewer Ross Douthat and Ben Sasse which I couldn’t put down – I devoured it. Sasse, as a human being and as he showed during his time in the US Senate, presents as an absolute quality person. His views on life and death, politics and religion, marriage and children, and the passage throughout this fragile period we call ‘life’ are deep and insightful. All of this presented without being morbid.

As President of the University of Florida he set in motion a program, the Hamilton Center, which strives to again make Liberal Arts rigorous, useful, and an integral part of the academic experience.

Quotation from Ben Sasse reason for the Hamilton Center: ”We should be preparing the mind and the character for all of the various vocations and callings in life — and to be prepared for the first job, but also for the third job in an industry that doesn’t even exist yet and won’t for 15 or 20 years.
“So, we need a lot more rigor. We need a lot more both/and.”

Vaioleti – how time flies. In a month she’ll be graduating from Highschool and start preparations to begin studies at the University of Cincinnati. Meanwhile, her weekends are busy with her job at the Cincinnati Zoo.

In the meantime, since it’ll also be the end of her four years as a member of the Clark Montessori High school’s Steel Drum Band, the band with the seniors still part will be performing a final time this Sunday. Any readers who are local and are interested? The performance will be in Mt. Adam’s Eden Park at the Seasongood Pavilion which hosts outdoor concerts tomorrow – Sunday afternoon.

Life is AMAZING!

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

Last evening Artemis II returned safely with its crew of four. Question, with swings around the earth to then ‘slingshot’ past the moon, loop the moon a bit and return to earth. Question, which of the following are the miles flown NASA claims as being correct? One the correct.

1. 695,082 miles
2. 252,756 miles
3. 694,481 miles
4. 1,107,582 miles
5. 549,441 miles

Last week answer – #1