Black Swan Sighted!

WARNING! BLACK SWAN SIGHTED

If you Google the term “black swan,” you’ll likely be overwhelmed with references to a movie starring Natalie Portman. But you must keep scrolling. Those of you who have taken a course in statistics are familiar with the term “black swan,” because one black swan is all you need to overturn (falsify) the hypothesis that all swans in nature are white. This notion that all swans are white cannot be proven because one cannot observe all swans. Black swans are...

Roots

ROOTS

In his parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1 ff.), Jesus explained to His audience the importance of roots in agronomy. Yet, this wasn’t a strictly practical scientific presentation but rather a spiritual one. Jesus saw a correlation between a healthy root system on a plant with a healthy spiritual life in a person. While Jesus knew much better than I what His point was, I wonder whether it might be possible to coax a bit more nuance from the parable,...

Send in the clowns

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

What an administration this will be!  In the past, most Democrat and Republican President-elects have chosen department heads on the basis of competency and experience.  Occasionally, department heads are chosen based primarily on ideology.  This President-elect is choosing them on the basis of idiocy in some instances. What a circus. Time to send in the clowns. Let’s see who we have.  We have Matthew Gaetz who, until yesterday when he resigned his seat in the House of Representatives, was facing Congressional ethic charges from...

HOUSE, SENATE SEEK UAP TRUTH

HOUSE, SENATE SEEK UAP TRUTH

IF YOU MISSED THE HEARING, YOU CAN SEE THE TAPED PROCEEDINGS HERE! Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) has announced a second round of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) hearings in the wanning days left in this session of Congress. The House of Representatives (and the Senate as well) will conduct separate hearings beginning this Wednesday. During these hearings, the House & Senate will seek the UAP truth. The exchange will be testy at times, because a number of people on the committee...

Genealogy Lonske Wenske Velten

GENEAOLOGY LONSKE WENSKE VELTEN

I am including genealogical documents (German genealogy) on the Lonske family (currently in Germany), the Wenske family (likely also in Germany) and the Velten family (in Germany and the U.S.). I am not an ancestry researcher but I do have what might be interesting and missing pieces of the puzzle to those that are. The large PDF file below traces my maternal ancestors back several generations. This is the Wenske family, but there are also references to my distant relatives...

I'm Not Voting

I’M NOT VOTING TUESDAY!

I am not voting on Tuesday. I had thought of voting for that Harris lady, but my husband told me that if I wanted to really be patriotic, then I should listen to what he says and bake him some cookies instead of wasting time going to vote.  He says that if 500,000 other women stayed home and did not vote on Tuesday—if they baked cookies for their husbands instead—then the country would be better off.  After all, the way to a patriot’s...

A Pox on Both Your Houses

A POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

Many, many years ago when I was the editorial advisor for my college’s student newspaper, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Perrineau.  He had just played Mercutio in Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Dane’s movie Romeo and Juliet.  Along with another actor from the movie whose name escapes me and with one of my students, we four gentlemen from Verona spent an hour talking.  We spoke in a spacious enclosed porch at a villa about the movie, acting in general, the imminent Hollywood strike...

S Little Time

SO LITTLE TIME

The holiday season is almost upon us.  Millions of Americans will be converging on airports around the country to fly home or to reach some other destination in time for Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or New Years (plus returning to their points of origin in time to resume work or classes the first week of January.)  Often, they are in a hurry, either to make a connecting flight or beat the rapidly approaching winter storm before the airport is socked in, or just to...

Steinbeck on human behavior

STEINBECK ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR

One of the three “giants” who influenced my life was John Steinbeck.  I was introduced to him in high school when we were assigned to read “Of Mice and Men,” but I was bitten by the bug and hungrily read every book he wrote (including “Travels with Charley: In Search of America“) over the next two years.  Every book, that is, but one. Somehow, his work “The Log from the Sea of Cortez” slipped through the cracks.  But before I go any further, let me explain...

A Night To Remember

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

There’s something about Madison Square Garden that draws attention.  I could not help but notice it several months ago when Deena and I were in NYC.  It is often the site of national political party conventions such as it was in 1976, 1980, 1992 and 2004, and it also serves as a sporting venue.  In 1971, the “Fight of the Century” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier was held in the Garden.  Today, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers keep the...

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