Showing posts with label Ferry Building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ferry Building. Show all posts

Monday, March 15, 2021

New normal

News blues…

Covid news continues as countries grapple with vaccine procurement and/or vaccination schedules.
The biggest change in news coverage, though, is the absence of The Donald, aka the “sentient naartjie”. With Trump on the world stage, news – much of it mind-boggling – issued every minute of every day.
Now? Not so much. Today’s Trump news is all about investigations into his “business” practices, his presidency, his corruptions. And his golf games. 
Trump-free news. What a concept.
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Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
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Technology’s best use: reconstituted video shows San Francisco’s Market Street heading towards the Ferry Building a day before the 1906 earthquake.  (14:07 mins)
The Ferry Building has a new life now, as a tourist destination with fancy shops and fine dining  .

Healthy futures, anyone?

It's unavoidable: we must ban fossil fuels to save our planet. Here are ideas on how we do it …. 
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Photo essay: The biggest swarms of the insects in a generation that have devastated crops and grazing across Africa are now being turned into sustainable, high-protein animal fodder and fertilizer. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My childhood in rural South Africa tempered my view of “normality.” In apartheid South Africa, my ethnic and socio-economic culture provided many advantages, including running water (albeit then stored in tanks and dependent on sufficient rainfall) natural gas for cooking, and electricity (unless a thunderstorm knocked out the grid.).
My adulthood in urban California, however, accustomed me to a new normal: municipal water always on tap, ditto electricity and natural gas.
Even after a year in South Africa it is … odd… to check a schedule each day to learn when my teeny part of the world will be without electricity.
The upside? I can count on electrical current throbbing through electrical lines and into my dwelling at some point of my day. That’s not true for 11 percent of South Africans https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/11-of-sa-households-still-without-electricity-2013-11-14 .
If Eskom is to load shed, I’m happy that for the next couple of days at least, our power is off from 4am to 6:30am.
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Day light savings time begins in California.
In KZN, days get shorter while nights get longer:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 15: sunrise 5:58am; sunset 6:14pm.