Super Weekend

The only reason to visit Minnesota in February is either for ice fishing or to watch the Philadelphia EAGLES win the Super Bowl. The weekend coincides with Groundhog Day. If you are partial to Bill Murray's Groundhog Day repeating and repeating you will probably root for the PATRIOTS i.e. Super Bowl repeaters. But if you embrace the authentic groundhog - Punxsutawney Phil from Pennsylvania, you must cheer for the EAGLES who, once again are the underdogs - and an underdog is a second cousin to a groundhog!
Hoping for a winner and catch a tailwind home.
tjs

Quote/Unquote

Quote of the week: On Donald J. Trump - "There's nothing there. No shame, no honor, no conscience, no knowledge, no curiosity, no decorum, no imagination, no wit, no grip and no nous." - Martin Amis, author and essayist. 1/30/18

Life - is like being in a restaurant on a first date with a woman you've long admired. But there is a waiting list and the names will be called in alphabetical order - and your name is Zarathustra.
- M. Frank (NYT)
tjs

Local Color

 They say all politics is/are local so political bribery can also be local - this time in Allentown, Pa. northwest of Phila. where the mayor is on trial for fraud, bribery and conspiracy. As criminals have nicknames they also have code words for the payoff - in this case it's "meatballs" as in "can I come over for some meatballs" - to sound convincing to the judge one miscreant said he kept Tupperware in his car to handle the leftovers. Last year in Maryland the code word was "lollipop". In Boston Whitey Bulger's boys would say "the balloon is rising" when a target made a move. And most people who say they have to see a man about a horse are not equestrians. Tony Soprano would be envious.
tjs

Five Rings

The Russian Olympic Committee has been banned from the 2018 Winter Games due to doping in the last events at Sochi, although an estimated 167 "clean" athletes can compete under a neutral flag.

North & South Korean hockey players will play together as a team and march under one flag. But the South athletes are not happy about this.

A sprinter from the 2016 games was exonerated from a doping charge explaining that the substance in his body was from the sinus medication taken by his girl friend and was the result of passionate kissing. The appeals court sided with the passionate "osculation" defense.

Due to time zone differences it appears most of our viewing will be in the evenings. The games leading off are "curling" - stay tuned.
tjs

Did You Know?

First there were wine bars and tasting rooms - now the "in" thing in Manhattan is a tasting room for beer devotees. And a beer sommelier is called a cicerone. (Sounds like a guy who played first base for the Yankees) A far cry from the growler craze. And women are leading the way with the NY Times headline reading "More Women are calling the Shots!"
- Are you planning any travel to Europe? When the Euro was designed with all countries participating, it was one Euro to one U.S. Dollar.
Gradually, "fluctuations" ensued and a year ago it cost you est $1.14 to buy one Euro. But to encourage exports our government has allowed our dollar to weaken so now it costs $1.24 to buy one Euro. The Paris bistros will eat your lunch rather than the other way around. Better to take that trip to Canada - their Loony dollar will only cost you US$.81 cents. And all those greenbacks that I have under the mattress were just diluted.
Boo Hiss!
tjs

Believe It or Not

Dateline - Frankfurt, Germany: further on Volkswagen's practice of deception on exhaust emissions it was revealed that they commissioned laboratory tests with an unusual experiment: Ten monkeys squatted in airtight chambers watching cartoons for entertainment as they inhaled fumes from a diesel Beetle. Except the scientists conducting the test were unaware of one critical fact: The Beetle provided by VW had been rigged to produce pollution levels less than would be experienced on the road. Nobody asked the monkeys' opinion of the cartoons. How to destroy a "brand"! See Enron, Wells Fargo, Weinstein, etc.
tjs

Fake News

Let Trump fly to Davos to frolic in the snow - we still have breaking news at home.
-Pope Francis chimed in on "fake news" - said it all began when "the serpent in the Garden of Eden hissed the first fake news to Eve and it all went downhill from there." Arguing that the crafty serpent's effective disinformation campaign to get Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge began the tragic history of human sin.
-Below the fold but also with a reference to "faking" is the article on the Saudi Arabia Camel Festival involving 30,000 camels - some to race but most in a beauty contest. It seems twelve camels were disqualified as their owners had injected their lips with "botox". Lips too droopy!
(Both items NYT 1/25/18)
TJS