It’s been a while since I have written anything about Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. I have been struggling to figure out what to talk about. Then the other day Kelly and I were talking, and it occurred to me that Donald Trump and Cersei Lannister actually have quite a bit in common.
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Follow my logic, if you will.
Over the last couple of days, we had our first nor’easter since we moved to Winthrop. The storm caused wind speeds here near the coast to pick up quite a bit, and as result there was a pretty heavy surf along the beaches here too.
Continue reading “Our nor’easter made the national news, and so did Kelly’s video of it”
While I have been in parades and candlelight vigils and such, I have never been in what could be called a political protest until this weekend. But I am glad I did it. In fact, it has given me a great deal of satisfaction, and has cheered me up somewhat from what has been for some time a generally dark mood. The crowd ended up being MUCH bigger than was originally anticipated. I think they were expecting maybe 90,000 people, but the totals were probably more like 150,000 to 175,000.
I would never have imagined that I would look back on the Presidency of George W. Bush with any type of nostalgia. And I certainly never imagined that I would live to see a Presidency that was not only worse than Bush’s, but is well on the way to topping the administration of James Buchanan as the absolute worst Presidency of all time.
I haven’t done a lot of posts lately, much less history posts. But today is an important anniversary, and will probably be the last major anniversary for this event in which there are still a number of people alive who remember it.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was one of those events that defined my grandparents’ generation, and virtually everyone could tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. And of course, President Roosevelt’s speech to Congress the following day is one of the most famous in American history.
Continue reading “Today is the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor”
Well. Where to begin.
Yes, 2016 has not been a great year for all sorts of reasons. In that sense. John Oliver is right (see below, and definitely not safe for work).
We can’t wait for it to be over either.
Yes, there have been some good things that happened this year. Kelly and I finally have a house of our own, and we love it. Just this past weekend we put up our Christmas tree for the first time in several years. I was smiling from ear to ear. I just couldn’t help myself. As silly as it might seem to some people, putting up the tree in our living room as we listened to Christmas music was one of the most serene and happy moments I have had in a long, long time. It meant the world to me.
Also, there was the addition of little Violet to our family a few weeks after we moved to Winthrop, and we love her very much. She is an absolutely sweet and affectionate little thing and we could not have hoped for a better addition to our little family. She has found all sorts of little places around the house to sleep, and one of my favorite things to do around the new house is to find the new places where she has decided to sit and/or nap.
We spent our Thanksgiving day in New Hampshire at my sister Liz’s house, after picking up my Aunt Donna from her place (also in NH now) and heading over to have Thanksgiving as a late lunch. And we had a pretty good time, all things considered. Luckily, we managed to avoid all discussions of politics.
So yes, while I can’t avoid discussing politics forever, I am going to put off talking about it for a little because I wanted to end this post on a positive note. While I have much to see about current events I will still try to put up some more pictures of the new place, as well as some pictures of all of our furry “kids” together. It is the season for that sort of thing.
Much love to all our family, friends and acquaintances.
-Geoff
Yes, historic. No, I am not being overly dramatic.
I have plenty to say, but as an introduction I want all of you to hear what Samantha Bee has to say because she puts it in its proper perspective and frankly, it’s something I think we all need to hear.
She’s right. As Kelly pointed out on our Twitter feed earlier today, a lot of people (particularly women) see this election in its proper context as (quite probably*) the first election of a woman to the office of President of the United States. And that is absolutely HUGE.
More to follow soon, I promise.
-Geoff
*Unless this turns into another too-close-to-call nail biter like 2000, we’ll probably know soon enough, won’t we?
Well, now that the consequences of the UK voting to leave the EU have had some time to sink in, it is both fascinating and disturbing to see just what a lot of people thought they were voting for. Much has been made of the reports that a lot of people in the UK were googling terms like “what is the EU?” the day after the vote. I am not sure whether or not that data is accurate, and apparently there are other people who feel the same way. Still, it does seem that a significant number of people in the UK are acting as if the “stay” or “leave” question was not based on the UK leaving the EU, but on whether or not non-white and/or non-British people should “stay” in the UK or “leave”. And in the minds of many of these people, that answer is pretty clear.
As a part-time first responder who is interested in emergency management, disaster recovery, and safety in general, I read pretty much everything related to those topics that I can get my hands on, including a lot of stuff about how people respond in a crisis. It’s fascinating stuff, and some really excellent books have been written about it, such as Amanda Ripley’s The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – And Why.
A side effect of this is that I have started paying attention to what I would call “unusual” deaths and accidents. People keep doing things that I would consider to be pretty damn unsafe, and it costs them. Recent examples are plenty. A man leaves the designated paths at Yellowstone, and falls into a spring that is so high-temperature and acidic that there is literally no body to recover. A young man accidentally shoots himself while taking a selfie with a pistol. A tourist in Australia goes swimming at 10 at night in an area clearly marked with signs warning about crocodiles and gets killed by a crocodile over 14 feet long. Or the guy in Georgia back in March who decided that it would be cool to pack an old lawnmower with 3 pounds of Tannerite and then shoot at it from only 40 feet away. He blew off his own leg, and the whole thing was caught on video.
And I realized that what all of these people had in common was this: a lack of fear. Specifically, a lack of what I would consider to be the healthy kind of fear.
I found another good video on YouTube about rogue waves, and this one actually talks at length about the dangers to offshore platforms and people on shore from rogue waves, using actual recent historical examples.
Continue reading “The science and history of rogue waves, part three”
So an obvious question being asked by fans of GoT/ASOIAF is this: since the sigil of the Targaryens is a dragon with three heads, and since Daenarys Targaryen has three dragons, who are those other two heads? In other words, who will be riding the other two dragons? She’s the last known Targaryen, after all, especially after the deaths of her brother Viserys and her great, great uncle, Maester Aemon.
Truthfully, most people already have a pretty good idea whose those two people will be. I feel something like 90 to 95% certain that I know who they are. So let’s talk about how, at least in terms of the TV show, we will discover that these two individuals are in fact the other two Targaryens.
Continue reading “Some GoT/ASOIAF theories on the other Targaryens”
The Books are Taking Over... 