Posts from — December 2018

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends. I miss the latkes and jelly doughnuts my roommates received for the holiday at college. [Their grandmothers were afraid they wouldn’t celebrate or couldn’t get “real” food at that terrible Baptist university.] It was a great break.

One of the nice things about Hanukkah is that there are established “gifts”, so you don’t have to rack your brains about what to get: a card and gelt covers just about everyone.

General background at Wikipedia’s entry for Hanukkah and even more at Chabad’s Chanukah page.

[Note: on the Jewish calendar the day changes at sundown, not midnight.]

It’s the first Sunday of Advent and Why Now? is pleased to present the Fifty-second version of the Gävlebocken, The biggest Christmas Goat in the world [now on Twitter @Gavlebocken].

From Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Something in the comments from 2006:

Why build a giant goat of straw,
Which most of us would scarcely note?
Some, though, defy the very law,
To vandalize the Gävle Goat.

In some years, they used wayward cars;
In others, flaming arrows smote.
This year’s survives, although with scars…
A fact that gets some people’s goat.

A webcam and some watchful eyes,
A flame-retardant second coat,
Should save it… unless Dubya spies
The thing, and claims it’s his pet goat!

– SB the YSS

Today is the First Sunday of Advent which means you should have made your Christmas Pudding so it would have time to age, and the Gävlebocken is standing tall in Castle Square.

The BBC does this well: Obituary: George H W Bush and follows up with George H W Bush: The war years [the WWII years].

I have a great deal of respect for his service as a Naval aviator, and much of his service as the 41^st President.

It would be nice if someone told the Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that flags are at half staff for 30 days when a President dies.

The USGS provides all of the technical details of Friday’s quake:M 7.0 – 13km N of Anchorage, Alaska.

I grabbed the NBC News initial reporting and their follow-up: Depth of Alaska earthquake — and strong building codes — likely prevented more damage, saved lives.

In 1964 the strongest known earthquake to hit the United States, 9.2 on the Richter scale, was centered in Anchorage. As a result, smart people build for the reality of earthquakes. Even with all that preparation, they couldn’t save their roads and bridges from damage. This creates a problem for the rest of Alaska as the majority of things shipped to the state arrive in Anchorage and are then distributed by roads and rail which are now damaged.

That said, there are no reports of serious injury or deaths.

Technically the Atlantic hurricane season is over, but it started in May with Tropical Storm Alberto coming ashore on the Florida Gulf Coast East of me. There were 16 tropical systems: 1 depression, 7 tropical storms, and 8 hurricanes. Three storms came ashore on the northern Gulf Coast [TS Alberto, TS Gordon, and Cat 4 Hurricane Michael (155 mph)] while Hurricane Florence came ashore in the Carolinas as Cat 1 after peaking as a Cat 4, but caused massive damage with flooding rains.

Michael was the fourth strongest storm to make landfall in the US. [The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (185 mph), Hurricane Camille (175 mph), and Hurricane Andrew (165 mph)]

Further analysis from the National Hurricane Center, Dr Jeff Masters, and Accuweather.