de Blasio's Last Days

Is it too late? 

Can Mayor-elect Adams and the New York City Police Department save NYC?

P.S. The New York Post's headline writers will miss the outgoing mayor. Sort of . . . 

 

DUMBO

When I'm Sixty Four

Omicron Surge

Christmas at St. Patrick's Cathedral

Dash for Cash

In our Smash and Grab era, what could go wrong with the Sioux City Stampede hockey team's event to provide cash to teachers for school supplies?

The Sioux City Stampede hockey team apologized for Dash for Cash: "Although our intent was to provide a positive and fun experience for teachers, we can see how it appears to be degrading and insulting towards the participating teachers and the teaching profession as a whole."

Next year they'll give Sioux Falls hockey fans the teachers' event they really want – Fight for Cash.

Vaccines & Abortion

War!

80 years ago . . .

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

A Winter of Old Age

Art and poem by Harry Seymour.

Deck's all but empty

There's a chill in the air

As dancing clouds above

Float ghostly images

To nature's blues

No longer here

Those hibernating souls

With haunting voices

Of shivering warmth

Stir thoughts of fate

Irreverisbly linked

To a winter of old age

There's no antidote

For the inevitable

Fallen leaves

Of composts on graves

With winter repasts

Delayed 'til spring

When Nature's birthplace

For the life cycle reprise

Is a living continuum

Where hope resides

And the fallen leaf

Never really dies.

Plaza Hotel's Thanksgiving Menu in 1899

The crow has no pity for its feathered friend. 

The prices are cents, not dollars.

 

Turkey NFT

Nuts

Veterans Day ~ November 11, 1963

Just two weeks later, JFK was buried here at Arlington National Cemetery.

Little Island

West 11th Street

Dow 36,000

21 years ahead of its time.

 

COP 26 ~ Same As It Ever Was

Crossing the Divide

Barry Blitt, The New Yorker magazine's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, satirizes Emanuel Leutze's iconic 1851 painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware, on this week's cover.

Blitt says, "I guess having all hell break loose is inspiring to political cartoonists, but I can't help feeling that all hell's been breaking loose pretty much all the time for a while now."

Perhaps it's time for Blitt to draw inspiration from Let's Go Brandon.

Facebook Takes on the Metaverse!

Facebook is planning to rebrand the company to dominate the metaverse!

According to Wikipedia, "The word "Metaverse" is made up of the the prefix "meta" and the stem "verse" (a back-formation from "universe"); the term is typically used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the Internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe. The metaverse in a broader sense may not only refer to virtual worlds, but the Internet as a whole, including the entire spectrum of augmented reality."

May I suggest Faceborg?

Billionaires in Space

How much carbon do Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX rockets release?

Martha's Vineyard Harvest Festival

No Filter?

After performing the 1969 song Brown Sugar 1,136 times in concert, second only to Jumpin' Jack Flash, The Rolling Stones removed the song from the setlist of their current No Filter Tour following complaints about its lyrics about slavery. 

Red Light, Green Light

Whiplash. 

One month it's the sunny, everyman optimism of Ted Lasso; the next it's the murderous class warfare of the Squid Game.

Such is entertainment – and life – in 2021.

Malice's Restaurant

It took me a moment to get Finger Sandwiches. 😏 

Covid Deaths ~ Then and Now

Remember how The New York Times memorialized (and politicized) America's Covid deaths on the front page during the election year?

According to Worldometers, the death total is nearing 720,000, nearly twice the number since President Biden took office just 8 months ago.

The Covid-19 Coronavirus doesn't care which party is in the White House.

Books

James Webb Space Telescope

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch on December 18, is the $10-billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. When deployed, the new infrared Webb telescope will operate from a vantage point and solar orbit of nearly one million miles from Earth, compared to Hubble's perch and Earth orbit of 340 miles.

Described as the world's largest telescope, it will be 100 times more powerful than Hubble, with the ability to "peer back in time over 13.5 billion years to see the first galaxies born after the Big Bang." 

At 21.4 feet, the Webb has the largest mirror of any telescope yet devised and will "see" in infrared light, enabling it so gather and assemble clearer data and images through dust and gases, as demonstrated by these visible and infrared light pictures of the Monkey Head Nebula recorded by Hubble.

It's going to be the show of shows.

Grand Slam at Fenway

An epic 452-foot, come-from-behind, and game-winning grand slam by Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton.

Over Fenway's Green Monster, the seats, the signs, and out to the streets of Boston below.  

Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Skyscape by Jeffrey Lovelace, shot at Death Valley in California's Mojave Desert, now on exhibit at the Royal Museum Greenwich.

Crime Wave

Moderna's Emergent Discovery Methodology

Harvard Business Review shines a light on the 10-year journey and "emergent discovery" business process that led to Moderna's mRNA technology and Covid-19 vaccine.

"The story of Moderna illuminates several salient aspects of the breakthrough process. First, breakthroughs emerge from the accumulation of numerous advances – some big and many small. There was no precise 'aha' moment then the mRNA breakthrough happened. In fact, there was no single mRNA breakthrough: The Moderna mRNA platform was built on a constellation of technologies, methods, techniques, and know-how that evolved over time. For instance, the team realized early on that because the immune system saw the injected mRNA as foreign and hostile, it attacked the molecules and shut down production of desired proteins. Solving this problem – which involved developing proprietary ways to package mRNA so that it could evade the immune systems and deliver it to the rights cells in the body – took years.

Second, breakthroughs do not require an initial focus on a specific problem or user need. Flagship's research started with speculation around a very broad use case: Could mRNA be used as a new drug modality? But there was no particular disease to be cured or user need to be addressed. Although Moderna is best known today for its Covid-19 vaccine, infectious-disease vaccines were not a major part of the company's early thinking; nor were cancer therapies or other types of vaccines, which now constitute another major thrust of the company. The search for practical applications coevolved with the deeper understanding of the technology.

Finally, breakthroughs originate with highly speculative, even seemingly unreasonable conjectures. The question 'What if messenger RNA could be a drug?' was purely hypothetical in 2010. (As late as the summer of 2020, many experts were skeptical that mRNA-based vaccines against Covid were feasible.) But that was the point. The sole purpose of the what-if question was to frame the exploration. It did not have to be right to be successful. In fact, many initial conjectures about mRNA were wrong, but other important insights were generated along the way. Although no one could predict where the exploration would lead, the process was neither random nor chaotic. The concept evolved and the solution emerged through a highly structured set of activities involving variance generation and selection pressure."

Never Forget

Food for Thought

Swinging Jenny

Rod Gilbert, Mr. Ranger ~ RIP

Getting older means many things, the inexorable yet often unexpected march of death among them.

Such was the feeling tonight when a friend texted to tell me our boyhood sports hero, Rod Gilbert, had died at 80. 

In 1968 I started playing Pee Wee hockey in Connecticut's Mid-Fairfield League. Soon after, my father got season tickets to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. I came to idolize Gilbert, a French Canadian right winger, who skated with elan and scored goals with a booming slap shot.

Gilbert, aka Mr. Ranger, holds the team records for most goals, points, and games played. He also won the most hearts as a player, and in retirement as the team's ambassador with younger players and fans. 

I met Gilbert for the first time in May 1979. On a whim, I drove to Montreal from Burlington, Vermont, hoping to get a ticket to game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Rangers and Montreal Canadiens. Outside the Forum looking for a scalper, a well-dressed French Canadian man with his family saw me and invited me to join them. Walking the aisles between periods, I came face to face with Rod Gilbert. I extended my hand, he shook it, and I told him about the many games I watched over the years at MSG, and how I idolized him as a Pee Wee player. Mr. Ranger took it all in stride, smiled, and thanked me. The Canadiens won the game and the Stanley Cup that night, their fourth in a row. 

20 years later, I hired Rod and John Davidson to host IBM personal computer retailers for dinner before a game and then in the seats behind the goal. The Rangers beat the New Jersey Devils that night. Rod and I cheered and high-fived after every Ranger goal. Such great memories. RIP.

Disasters

Man or nature, what a summer.

Insurrection

Mass Psychosis & Social Media

After Skool and Patreon teamed up on this new animated video about 21st century totalitarianism and fear-inducing social media. 

Wake up America, they're not talking about China, Russia or Iran.

Et tu, Cuomo?

47 years ago tomorrow.

 

Jo-ey Gal-lo, Jo-ey Gal-lo

How sweet it is!

Obama's Vineyard Birthday

Everyone knows our erstwhile President Obama likes to celebrate himself. The Barack Obama Presidential Center now under construction is but one case in point.

But few knew until this week that he had invited 450 of his closest friends along with another 250 staff, caterers, security, and the band Pearl Jam to celebrate his 60th birthday at his new 29-acre, $11.75 million estate on Edgartown Great Pond on Martha's Vineyard. And that's when things went south.

Vineyard health officials had reinstated a mask advisory the week before as Delta variant cases were climbing, and indoor gatherings came under new restrictions.

The Obamas took the heat for a couple of days as headlines grew more critical and then decided the PR fallout and local opprobrium were too much to risk. This morning, news reports said the Obamas have canceled the party while others said they scaled it back. No doubt many invitees are already on the Vineyard while others will fly in before the party on Saturday. Martha's Vineyard Airport will soon look like the Davos and Sun Valley conferences with parked rows of private jets, including climate czar John Kerry's Gulfstream G-IV.

No one wants to be a party pooper, but what message do the Obamas think a party of several hundred jet-setting One Percenters during the Covid-19 pandemic sends to island residents?

We know what Jimmy Cagney would say.

The Blockchain Barn

We recently shopped the "curated whimsy" of The Sparkle Barn in Wallingford, Vermont.  Who knew so many things sparkle?

Can The Blockchain Barn be far behind?