End of Summer

Traditionally, and for good reason, Labor Day is the signal that summer is over. But the weather in Virginia doesn't know that, and here it is, the end of September, and the trees haven't turned yet.

The days are getting much shorter and although it is still mid to upper 70's, perfect weather, there is a hint of nostalgia. Took this pic last Friday at the end of the day.

Times are good.

Good advice

Wouldn't have it any other way.

Need to buy a vowel?

The Royals are playing in Cleveland. That part of Ohio has a substantial, honored Polish past. The new pitcher in the top of the 8th has a name that ends in -ski and has two z's and one y.

Wanna buy a vowel?

I want the Royals to play in the post season!!!

Chop his head off and hide it

My mother said she knew a man who was so tough (maybe resilient was the term) that in order to kill him, you would have to chop his head off and hide it.

Most successful entrepreneurs are like that.

They don't know that they are "legally dead." No vital signs? No problem.

My client in Phoenix saw his bills continue but his business screech to a dead stop in the "Great Recession." What did he do? Negotiated a deal to buy another company (basically with no money) that allowed him to survive and, as of now, thrive.

Most successful entrepreneurs have such doggedness that they won't admit defeat. They make more than one "90-degree turn" during their careers.

Not all of us have that talent, or that determination.

Blue Plate Special

We ate, cleaned up and are ready for TV before 6:00 pm.

Next will be the local buffet for the retiree special.

Don't tell Al Gore

This stuff was completely new to me…ummmm, like I knew about astrophysics?

http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/extrasolarplanets/ca_extrasolarplanets_starwobble.html

Clue: check the box of just Jupiter, then the boxes of Jupiter and Saturn. They try it at 365 days per second, then more and less.

 

Global warming – The barycenter, for those who are not up on their astrophysical lingo, is the center of mass of the solar system. And what many people don't realize is that the Earth and the other planets do not rotate around the sun. They rotate around the center of mass of the solar system. And the center of mass of the solar system keeps fluctuating in and out of the sun itself.

So part time, the sun is rotating around a center of mass which is out some little distance from the sun, and then part time it's rotating around a center of mass which is inside the sun, barely in the surface of the sun. And this causes disturbances in the sun, which are the proximate cause, apparently, of the variations in total solar irradiance. And this means that when the sun is in a certain situation, the solar maximum is normal, and this tends to last for about a century. And then when the solar maximum shifts, when the center of mass of the solar system is in a position where it appears before the solar maximum, then the amplitude of total solar irradiance collapses. And this is what we're getting now.

So we're going to get at least 20 years of cooler weather, quite apart from the fact that we have more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than ever before, and this is all a function of astrophysics. And we're totally gullible, because we let these idiots, these crony capitalists, present an issue in a frame that requires us to pay them a hell of a lot of money, which we don't have right now, obviously, to mitigate a problem that doesn't exist, or one which is outside of the control of anybody, because I don't think there's any proposal at all that's going to suggest that we send a rocket or a fleet of rockets to outer space and hope to destroy Saturn to keep it from appearing on some occasions on the other side of the sun from Jupiter.

And this is the engine which drives the fluctuations in solar irradiance. Of course, we don't know what the effect would be, having only three Jovian planets instead of four. Saturn is obviously big enough to have an effect, because it does.

It moves the center of mass of the universe outside the sun when it's opposite to – or inside the sun, when it's opposite to the rotations of Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The sun is 1,000 times more massive than Jupiter, but Jupiter's still in a position – it's like having your fat uncle sit on a teeter totter with you. You know, if he sits very close to the center of the teeter totter, and you're far away, even though you weigh much less than he does, you can balance the thing out. And that's how it works with the center of mass of the solar system and the sun. Jupiter is 1,000 times smaller, but it's way out there in space, so the center of gravity is rotating between an area near the surface of the sun, and an area outside the sun. And this creates a significant wobble in the sun as it keeps shifting its rotation.

Rise in Sea Levels - But more to the point, a very prominent Swedish geologist has made the argument that if the tides were really rising, the rotation of the Earth would necessarily slow, and there's no evidence of that. So any amount of rising in the tides has got to be microscopic, in the millimeters, if there is one. They measure these tide rises all over the world, and they're – approximately 30 percent of the areas where they do the measurements are where people live, there's subsidence in the – in the land. So it always seems like the tide is rising because the land is falling. This is certainly true in the Netherlands, which has been subsiding for as long as people lived there. I mean, that's why – you know the story of the thumb in the dike, and the whole – that's why there was less feudalism in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages, because it was very difficult to occupy an underwater area.

LESSONS

Viet Nam was roughly 100 years after the Civil War.

Russia's revamping of eastern Europe's borders and the unobstructed atrocities of Muslim terrorists in the Middle East is occurring about 100 years after the events that eventually led to World War One, the Great War.

My personal experience with military officers is that they have an understanding of these events. My experience with politicians? Not so much. Particularly the "Chicago brand" of politicians.

When will we start to learn some lessons?

MRSA

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MSRA)

Well, this explains a lot. The vet called today and she said one of the cultures on the material surgically removed from our dog, Baron, grew a bit of MRSA. As much as we paid for all this, it should have grown a synthetic gem stone.

Antibiotic resistant staph bacteria, MRSA, pronounced mersa. She thinks she got it all, the "fistula tract," but we need to be vigilant.

This stuff is found in people, it is contagious, usually associated with the skin but when it enters the system it can be fatal. It has developed resistance to the normal antibiotics, so really hard to treat and when we gave him the normal stuff for a month (over a month now), it was ineffective. Often called the super bug.

Fortunately, Baron is a healthy organism. Not over weight, regular exercise, lots of sleep (trust me on that one), and most importantly, showered with affection. Elements of a long and happy life. Seriously, a healthy immune system is essential for our resistance to MRSA, and we hope his is as good as we think it is. So far, so good.

Since our house appears to be the scene of a murder (I said it looks like somebody lost a knife fight), we need to be cautious because we have been exposed. Most of it has been cleaned up by now, but we will continue to do some cleaning. I can only speculate, but I will bet that when we let him swim in the lake, he poked himself with a stick or something and the bacteria entered into the wound.

If you don't know how attached we are to that 11-year old golden retriever, you haven't been paying attention. We had almost convinced ourselves that the sore that was not healing was hemangiosarcoma, a common cancer in goldens. In that case, we were looking at 60-72 days. Losing an adored pet is so hard, and we know he is getting older.

Ducked a bullet this time. This time...