xkcd has Pluto nailed today:
And, What if the New Horizons Hits My Car? One of the best lines is:
How fast is 14 kilometers per second? Here’s my favorite comparison for putting that speed in perspective: If you were standing at one end of a football field and fired a gun toward the other end, right while New Horizons flew past you, the spacecraft would reach the far end zone before the bullet made it to the 10-yard line
If you aren’t following xkcd you have zero nerd credentials…
A fascinating interview with Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek Finance Minister, just before the latest agreement.
There was a moment when the President of the Eurogroup decided to move against us and effectively shut us out, and made it known that Greece was essentially on its way out of the Eurozone. … There is a convention that communiqués must be unanimous, and the President can’t just convene a meeting of the Eurozone and exclude a member state. And he said, “Oh I’m sure I can do that.” So I asked for a legal opinion. It created a bit of a kerfuffle. For about 5-10 minutes the meeting stopped, clerks, officials were talking to one another, on their phone, and eventually some official, some legal expert addressed me, and said the following words, that “Well, the Eurogroup does not exist in law, there is no treaty which has convened this group.”
So what we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. So no citizen ever knows what is said within. … These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.
That would seem to be good…
I’m a fan of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series. If you aren’t familiar with it, the premise is simple.
Jerry (a big car guy) gets some amazing car, picks up a comedian friend of his, they drive and chat, stop somewhere and get coffee and chat, and walk around and chat. Pretty simple. It being Jerry and another comedian, it’s often very funny. The Chris Rock episode is a favorite of mine.
One of his newer episodes has Trevor Noah (and a nice Ferrari) and they head to Dumbo and walk around my office neighborhood. So I enjoyed this one a little extra.
They walk along the water in Brooklyn Bridge Park (next to Jane’s Carousel) and admire the view. That is literally my “going for a walk to think” walk.
And yes, it’s a great view…
Yesterday my wife’s brother Victor came over with baby Journee. We hadn’t seen her in a while (she’s 16 months now) and she’s developing quite a personality.
Vic still smokes, so at one point he ducked out. When he comes back in he tells us he locked his keys in his car (getting something out of the car, put the keys on the seat, slam, oops, you know).
So Vic asks for a screwdriver and a coat hanger to try to break in. I go out with him. He’s getting pretty close but it’s a cheap coat hanger that isn’t strong, so I go back inside to get a different one while he keeps trying.
I come back out and there’s some random Middle Eastern guy next to Vic. We have a large Middle Eastern community so this isn’t alarming or anything. A bit odd perhaps, he seems to be offering moral support.
So I bend the stronger coat hanger and offer it to Vic but he’s been getting close with the first one so he keeps trying. The random dude says “you try the other window” which makes sense. I’ve never done this before, but there’s nothing complicated about it. He walks around the car with me and while I’m trying to hook the lock, he’s muttering something over and over in Arabic.
After a couple of minutes I loop it and the stronger hanger was the key. I pop the lock and we’re in. The man is delighted and makes me repeat the phrase he was saying. He was apparently asking for help from Allah and help was obviously granted since we got in.
And therefore we should convert to Islam.
He was really very nice and genuine, but the whole thing cracked me up…
Baby Journee:
A rare night when my daughters didn’t care if I played jazz. So I asked Alexa for a Dexter Gordon station.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I really enjoy the Amazon Echo…
Apparently he does…
Ticker Tape parade for the US Women’s Soccer team:
Congratulations @ussoccer_wnt Let us know if you want a ride up the canyon of heroes! #USWNT #ThreeStars #FDNY150 http://t.co/KoqHk5flVS—
(@FDNY) July 07, 2015
They are filming Gotham outside my office today. Random extras are emerging from our event space downstairs (a bunch of people dressed as cheerleaders).
And as usual, the Gotham police took all the good parking places…
The Yankees are leading the (weak)AL East and are tied for the 3rd best AL record overall.
They have no All-Star starters, one position player reserve and one reliever reserve.
The team is old and injured.
They are in first place how exactly?
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 