National Assembly
Nelligan
Canadian Parliament
Lac-Saint-Louis
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
US STATE ABBREVIATIONS
Gary Gulman is comedian that does a great bit with the very real problem of shortening the states to a two letter abbreviation. It's a postal norm that I still find terribly challenging.
Here he is on How the States Got Their Abbreviations.
Here is the list to make it clear:
State/District Postal Code
Alabama AL
Alaska AK
Arizona AZ
Arkansas AR
California CA
Colorado CO
Connecticut CT
Delaware DE
District of Columbia DC
Florida FL
Georgia GA
Hawaii HI
Idaho ID
Illinois IL
Indiana IN
Iowa IA
Kansas KS
Kentucky KY
Louisiana LA
Maine ME
Maryland MD
Massachusetts MA
Michigan MI
Minnesota MN
Mississippi MS
Missouri MO
Montana MT
Nebraska NE
Nevada NV
New Hampshire NH
New Jersey NJ
New Mexico NM
New York NY
North Carolina NC
North Dakota ND
Ohio OH
Oklahoma OK
Oregon OR
Pennsylvania PA
Rhode Island RI
South Carolina. SC
South Dakota SD
Tennessee TN
Texas TX
Utah UT
Vermont VT
Virginia VA
Washington WA
West Virginia WV
Wisconsin WI
Wyoming WY
Territory/Associate Abbreviation Postal Code
American Samoa AS
Guam GU
Marshall Islands MH
Micronesia FM
Northern Mariana Islands MP
Palau PW
Puerto Rico PR
Virgin Islands VI
It is notable that in 1967 the abbreviation for Nebraska changed from NB to NE to avoid confusion with New Brunswick!
TECUMSEH
Near my house, on the way to the nearest Costco, I cross a street called Tecumseh.
What I did not know was this is the name of a Shawnee chief and warrior, born in what is now Ohio. He was a folk hero, travelling widely and forming a Native American confederacy.
His younger brother Tenskwatawa became known as the Shawnee Prophet, who founded a religious movement that rejected European influence and valued their traditional lifestyle.
The two brothers would go on to establish Prophetstown, Indiana, a multi-tribal community, that would be destroyed by Americans in 1811.
In the War of 1812, Tecumseh joined with the British, helping capture Detroit. He participated with the British in the failed campaign against the Americans in Ohio and Indiana. When US Naval Forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, he retreated with the British into Upper Canada (a town near Windsor is named after him), and was killed at the Battle of the Thames on October 1813.
His death lead to the collapse of the conferacy, and the lands he fought to defend were ceded to the US government.
THE DROPOUT
It's a lot more functional for me to drop into a podcast wormhole, because I can listen to it incessantly while commuting, doing dishes, laundry, shovelling, exercising, cooking and cleaning. A similar binge of video makes my bum a little flatter and wider, so when I started to watch The Dropout on Disney, it was fortunate that only a few episodes existed in video, whereas the podcast series had 24 episodes that I have eaten up in the last week while staying relatively active and productive!
If you don't know the story, it's a gripping one. Another Stanford dropout becomes a billionaire, but this time it's a woman. Elizabeth Holmes was, for a few years, the youngest female billionaire, by founding and becoming CEO of a Silicon Valley company called Theranos (therapy and diagnose) based on a revolutionary idea that blood tests didn't need to from a traumatic needle in a vein, but from a small quantity of blood from a smaller puncture to the fingertip. Unfortunately for many, it was never a reality, and Elizabeth's trial is followed from the beginning to the verdict.
Attorney Jay Edelson says in the Verdict: January 5, 2022
"I think overall this is going to lead to a tremendous shakeup in Silicon Valley. We've had 20 plus years of Silicon Valley playing fast and loose with facts, and everyone kind of just agreed that it was okay, and it really isn't okay. It's not okay to steal a billion dollars ... It concerns me that Elizabeth Holmes was, at the time, the most prominent female startup, and the number of men who have gotten away with stuff that Elizabeth Holmes did, if not worse, it would fill (you know)journals. I do, just as someone who believes so much in consumer rights in not defrauding people, I am glad about this guilty verdict. It makes me uneasy that.. um, I don't want there to be one scapegoat here. I am not saying that she didn't do anything wrong. She deserves her sentence, but I think that there are a lot of other people, a lot of men, who have done similar things, and I hope that justice will done in other instances as well."
Silicon Valley investor and critic Roger McNamee Crime and Punishment: October 12, 2021, 23:43
"The thing about Elizabeth Homes that I look at, that gives me hope for humanity: you wouldn't have had to go back more than 5 years when it would have been impossible for a woman to raise that kind of money, even for a great idea. Men have been raising money for bad ideas for a really long time... that actually represents social progress."
WORDLE
It seems ironic and slightly frustrating that the name of this popular online game of solitaire is six letters long, when it only calls for five. It's a lot easier to find a word six letters long, so each time I have to find with five, it is a challenge.
This game reminds me of the game mastermind, but it seems more fun and marvellous that I can shuffle through my unseen dictionary of my memory and find a solution with 6 attempts almost all of the time.
It's become a daily habit, and a monitor of my fatigue. When I find myself putting the yellow letters in the same place instead of moving it to any other spot, I know I need to check my fatigue, hydration, and nutrition.
If you haven't heard of it, you need to try it. Apparently it exists in other languages. Maybe I'll look for the french version next.
Thursday, March 10, 2022
LISA COOK
The study of economics in my life has largely been a post-secondary personal pursuit. My high school teacher gave me the impression that the financial system was increasingly unknowable following the uncoupling of currency and gold. Additionally, our investment into Air Canada (which was, to be fair, only a year long) was a failure, earning less on the sale then we had put it, which hurt in 1989 when a GI was returning 10%. Needless to say, I learn to save, and invest safely, which doesn't help me much in the current market.
Since then, I have moved from personal budgets to financial planning to investment. I am still learning, so a few years ago, when I happened on a podcast called Planet Money, I began to see that economist have a point of view on far more than money. From my personal viewpoint, they are some of the greatest modern philosophers in the world. They analyze date and come up with solutions. They have insight into almost every system out there, and that is very exciting and comforting!
One such economist has sparked even further interest in her extensive historical research. Her name is Lisa Cook, and her articles are worth reading.The podcast called Patent Racism that introduced her to me was on Planet Money was an analysis of black racism and the impact of black innovation. She found that people's general understanding of the history of black was lacking, and even had to provide that as the basis of her economic study and argument that lynching/violence kills innovation while it's killing victims. It's a pivotal note in history, and a modern day cautionary tale.
From her work, I was introduced to the lynching of Emmitt Till (and his remarkable mother, in Women of the Movement on Global), the devastation of the Tulsa Race massacre (imagine your neighbourhood razed to the ground), and the Tuskegee report on lynchings (a brutal short history here).
Racism and lack of diversity kills innovation, and both need to be avoided. The paper that started it all is titled: Violence and Economic Activity with its abstract.
Here is a talk she gave on Diversity and Innovation. Another on What Promotes Or Kills Innovation?
Here is the blueprint for the present proposed implementation for an Innovation Economy, called the Hamilton Project.
I look forward to follow and aspiring to more Lisa Cook ideas.
Logo of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal PeopleCLEANING UP MY PHOTOS
I have too many photos. Lots of people say it, but I really mean it! I have reached the limit of my computer's generous memory capacity with over 600 GB of photos.
I love most of the these photos, and now most of them are on computer. If they hadn't been, I would likely have a room full by now, so I am glad for the technology. Here's what I didn't realized, though, about the technology. My photos are replicating, like mice in the attic, and they need tending, more than a physical collecction does.
As I write, my photo app is being repaired. This is the second "library" of photos that I am doing, with yesterday's first main library now finished. There is one more after that, and then the plan is to import 2 of the older ones to the main one, and see what redundancies I can get rid of.
One of the problems of digital photos is that there is little urgency to edit, and then all of a sudden I have thousands of pictures that have multiples, either because my device reloaded twice and didn't notice, or I take a series of 5 photos of my teen each time in an attempt to get one decent photo without tongue sticking out or eyes rolling.
Here are some critical steps from apple support (the website is great, but the phone service even greater, and when they end they send links to the website that I should have found in the first place but didn't understand until they walked me through).
I am trying to avoid calling again, and more comfortable to look online for help if my notes fail me, but here is the number to book a followup just in case: 1-800-275-2273. Ask for photos/creative media.
It all starts with OPTION key then one-click photos. The system library default is called Photos Library. It took several hours yesterday to repair it, and today I am repairing Photos library A and probably iPhoto library. When I migrated photos following a robbery years ago, I restored from a hard drive and I think I missed the step of deleting after importing. I will not make that mistake again!
An important setup for any longer task, including upkeep of the latest operating system is to go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES, then ENERGY SAVER, then choosing: prevent your mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off, wake for network access, and Enable Power Nap.
When the libraries are repaired, I will OPTION PHOTOS and make sure in finder that I am in PHOTOS LIBRARY. I will go to FILE, then IMPORT PHOTOS LIBRARY A, then iPHOTO LIBRARY. Then I will laugh and cry and brutally edit the collection until I have only one copy of the photos I want to keep. Then I will say thank you and good-bye and delete forever 400 GB of data, and back up my SINGULAR photo library. Oh, happy day! I can feel the burden lifting from my shoulders already!
March seems like a good month to make a photo book. I have 23 years to catch up on!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)