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Happy Birthday to me!

 Judy made the family recipe birthday cake; triple layer with 7 minute frosting.  OMG! Not only that, but a plate of frosting cookies to go with it. We passed on putting seventy candles on it; we didn’t need the fire hazard.  Homemade spaghetti dinner, followed by a sugar rush.  Just what I wanted. In combined birthdays, Judy and I have now spent a total of one hundred birthdays together.  Can’t imagine a better birthday present than that, unless maybe a hundred one. Of course, since it’s my birthday, I get to do anything I want.  The weather is glorious, so we had morning coffee, sat in the sunshine for a while, then took a walk.  Pretty tame stuff.  What else can I do?  I told Judy maybe I wanted to do a somersault. She wouldn’t look at me. 
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This is fun

 I spent ten years at the Aspen Center for Physics, once a year lecturing Michael Turner on accounting and financial statements, helping him understand; the whole while reveling in the absurdity of me lecturing him.  Now I come across World Science University, and a chance to watch Michael in action in the area of *his* expertise.  Wow. You have to log in to see the lecture. http://www.worldscienceu.com/ You can watch any of the videos for free.  After a brief sign-up, you can click on Master Classes, All Master Classes, then click on Michael. It’s Michael Turner lecturing on Cosmology; specifically Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Inflation.  Now here is a guy who knows what he’s talking about.  He knows so much, he can explain it in English, and he even knows what he doesn’t know; the questions that remain unanswered, and the mysteries that don’t even have questions yet.  
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I’ve been watching the presidential debates

 There you have it.  I’m not proud of it, but I feel better now that it’s out there. So far I’ve learned three things: 

  1. Our election process is now a reality television game show about who can deliver the best applause line.

 

  1. I am consumed by terror about ISIS killing me and I can’t think of anything else.

 

  1. Our election is totally about who can kill ISIS the best.  Who is the leader that can deliver us from our terror?

 I still don’t have perspective on this, so I google causes of death per year and I get: Illicit drugs                  46,000Motor vehicles             35,000Gun violence                  33,000Alcohol                          29,000Cannabis                                  0Suicide                           41,000Tobacco                      556,000Aspirin                                450 Terrorism                               30 in the last ten years The most recent numbers I found were for 2013, so they’re somewhat dated, but not terribly.  The pace of terrorism is picking up.  Of course we need to do something about it.  But I just can’t understand why our hair is on fire.  Why is every other issue we face irrelevant compared to defeating people in another part of the world, when the rest of the people in that other part of the world can’t even come to any agreement to defeat them?  ISIS is a problem for us, but so are a lot of other things.  ISIS is a GIANT problem for the other people in the region.  Why aren’t they leading the attack?