In praise of blue spruce

We have several spruce in our yard, and I'm always impressed each year when the blue spruce put out their new growth in that light-blue or teal-bluegreen color (not sure how to name the shade), which contrasts so nicely with other garden plants in terms of color (and texture).  The older needles in the proximal parts of the branches revert to a more conventional green; there probably is some survival advantage to the blue hue, but I don't know what it is.

In the winter the large spruce hold the snow beautifully:

"Wealth redistribution" justified

Via

Best-ever movie about the death of a parent

YouTube link.

This is NOT a time-lapse

YouTube link.

It's a normal moonset occurring, as always, during a sunrise (being watched by the people on a volcano in the Canary Islands).  As explained at APOD, the video was taken with a very long lens.

Whale autopsy

 
Behold the state of our oceans.

A whale has died in southern Thailand after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags, with rescuers failing to nurse the mammal back to health. The small male pilot whale was found barely alive in a canal near the border with Malaysia, the country’s department of marine and coastal resources said.

The whale vomited up five bags during the rescue attempt.

Funny and sad

Via

The size of U.S. households

From the DataIsBeautiful subreddit.

blindekuh

blindekuh restaurants in Basel and Zürich serve patrons in the dark.

blindekuh is one of the largest private-sector employers for people with impaired vision. In our restaurants and through our cultural activities, we create valuable jobs, foster dialogue between sighted people and those with visual impairments, and open up new perspectives for young and old alike.

blindekuh – the name means "Blind Man's Buff" in German – was founded in 1999 and was the first establishment of its kind in the world...

The blindekuh concept has been copied successfully several times. blindekuh Zurich, the world's first restaurant in the dark, opened its doors in September 1999. It was followed in April 2001 by the "Unsicht-Bar" in Cologne and in June 2002 by "Nocti Vagus" in Berlin. Another "Unsicht-Bar" opened in Berlin in September 2002, then came "Dans le Noir" in Paris in September 2004, "Taste of Darkness" in the Dialogue Museum in Frankfurt, and a further "Dans le Noir" in London. blindekuh Basel opened in February 2005. The "Unsicht-Bar" in Hamburg followed in September 2006, then "Dans le Noir" in Moscow just two months later. The concept has since spread outside Europe, and blindekuh is constantly receiving requests from around the world for support with launching similar projects...

The blindekuh enterprises are self-supporting, so they receive no state subsidies. The concept is labour-intensive, partly because operating in the dark makes certain processes more difficult and also because guests need more information and a higher level of service than in a conventional catering outlet. Employees benefit from good working conditions and wages above the market average. Our cultural events in the dark and our staff's high availability for the media, schools and other interested parties add to the concept's costs. For these reasons, blindekuh relies on donations.

The kindergarten school play has been cancelled

In April 2014, the Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, New York, sent a letter to the parents of its kindergartners, confirming rumors that the school would not be going ahead with its annual play.

Dear Kindergarten Parents and Guardians,

We hope this letter serves to help you better understand how the demands of the twenty-first century are changing schools.

The reason for eliminating the kindergarten show is simple. We are responsible for preparing children for college and careers with valuable lifelong skills and know that we can best do that by having them become strong readers, writers, coworkers, and problem solvers. Please do not fault us for making professional decisions that we know will never please everyone. But know that we are making these decisions with the interests of all children in mind.

These kids, the letter implied, could not spare two days from their regularly scheduled work.

Continued in the June issue of Harper's Magazine.

"Ultimate Monopoly" board

Apparently this is real, but was banned by the manufacturer for copyright reasons.  Discussed in a post at the Gaming subreddit.

U.S. fertility at a historic low

As reported by Vox:

American women are having so few babies these days that the fertility rate has hit a historic low, according to stunning provisional data just published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of births in the US dropped by 2 percent between 2016 and 2017, to 60.2 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, continuing a general downturn that started with the Great Recession of 2008. It’s the lowest the fertility rate has been in 30 years...

“To put this in perspective, the [total fertility rate] hovered above 3.0 in the early 20th century, declined to replacement levels of about 2.1 in the 1940s; reached a peak of 3.7 in the post-World War II baby boom; and then declined rapidly to relatively stable low levels in the 1970s,” researchers from Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and other universities wrote in a commentary about the new data in the Hill...

The teen birthrate has dropped by over 50% in the past decade:

There are various reasons for this, as Vox’s Sarah Kliff has explained, but one major one is we have better access to birth control. Women these days are just as likely to be sexually active as they were in the past, Kliff reported, but how they use contraceptives has changed: ..

 “It’s not ‘the sky is falling’ — but our country needs to adjust to the reduction in the fertility rate,” said John Rowe of Columbia. To do that, he laid out a few potential approaches. “One is keeping older people in the workforce longer. The second is technology — relying on animation, robots and [artificial intelligence] to boost productivity in the absence of workers. A third is increasing immigration. The [final] is boosting the fertility rate,” he summed up. Keeping older folks in the workforce is probably among the most attractive solutions, Rowe argued, since it keeps people’s minds and bodies engaged and the Social Security trust fund replenished. “But we need to start the processes now,” he added, “because the downturn in the fertility has been going on for several years. And it’s going to take two decades or so to get the policies in place and change employers attitudes.”

More data and commentary at the link.

Behold the evolution of the cradle

I spotted the above device in a local Target store last month and had to go online to figure out exactly what it was:

The 4moms® mamaRoo® infant seat bounces up and down and sways from side to side, just like parents do when comforting their baby. Select from five unique motions (car ride, kangaroo, wave, tree swing and rocka-a-bye) and five different speeds. Choose from four built-in sounds or connect it to any MP3 player.

The adjustable seat reclines to any position for maximum comfort so baby can lie flat to rest or sit up for play. The mamaRoo is Bluetooth enabled so you can control the motion, sound, speed and volume from your compatible smart device!

Keep baby’s attention with the toy mobile which now includes interactive, reversible toy balls (mirror, rattle and crinkle toys).

I'll defer passing judgment;  I'm sure there's nothing that can go wrong and that it's secure from hacking.

A "trade war" in everything but name

As the EU announced retaliatory tariffs, a representative offered some diplomatic doublespeak:

The commissioner said that despite the EU's "rebalancing" action, the two sides were not in a trade war. "What we are in is a very difficult situation," Ms Malmstrom said.

The article continues:

Ms Malmstrom said the EU would challenge the move at the World Trade Organization (WTO) but that tariffs on US imports were necessary as "we cannot just take these tariffs and stay silent"...

UK International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said the 25% levy on steel was "patently absurd", adding: "It would be a great pity if we ended up in a tit-for-tat trade dispute with our closest allies." Gareth Stace, head of trade body UK Steel, said the tariffs were "no way to treat your friend" and called on the government to safeguard the industry's 31,000 jobs...

Opposition to the US tariffs was also voiced by prominent Republicans. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the most influential Republican in Congress, said the move "targets America's allies when we should be working with them to address the unfair trading practices of countries like China"...

Posted today because last night commentary by Mark Shields and David Brooks on the PBS Newshour addressed this topic quite frankly:

• David Brooks:
  Well, trade tariffs are almost always a bad idea, because it seems good, oh, let’s protect our industry. But the other side gets to do the same. And so you end up just hurting each other, which is — we’re now well down that spiral of hurting ourselves.
  
  But I think what strikes me is Donald Trump’s capacity or incapacity for relationship. Most of us, when we have a relationship, it’s built on trust, predictability, reciprocity. And we are friends with Canada. We are friends with Europe. We are friends with Mexico. And we ever — does he ever have a relationship built on trust, reciprocity and predictability?
  
  The exact opposite. And so we are treating our friends like enemies, which is bad for our relationships. It’s also just bad for our economy. And so he just has a mentality that sees the world as me and enemies. And sometimes that’s OK. If he wants to treat Iran and North Korea like an enemy, that’s fine.
  
  But when you’re dealing with your friends, your employees, the people around you, to treat everyone like an enemy is just ruinous. And I think this is not going to destroy the economy, but it’s just a bad way for America to be in the world.
  
  
• Mark Shields:
  Every president imposes his values upon the country at some point, either consciously or unconsciously, and sometimes permanently.
  
  And Donald Trump is a man without friends, whatever anybody says. Any biographer could not find a friend. He doesn’t understand the relationship like that of the United States and Canada. Canada has been at the United States’ side at every major conflict, at every major international agreement. It’s been there. And the idea of making Canada hostile, the object of the scorn, is just — is just unacceptable. It’s not how you treat your friends. That is not how you forge alliances. It is not how you sustain an alliance.
  
  And I can understand the feeling toward China; but China, if anything, has been a favorite. I mean, where did the president make his greatest effort, to save jobs in China for ZTE after our intelligence forces said it was a security risk to the United States in what they have been doing and trading with Iran, against the protocols?
  
  So, I mean, this is a — unpredictability may be very interesting in the real estate business. It’s, quite frankly, reckless and dangerous in international relations, especially with those allies.
  

There are all sorts of buried treasures...

From a story in the Guardian's "Experience" series:

The first time I dug up some vintage denim, I had no idea what it was worth. It just looked like some old rags, so instead of carefully uncovering it, I pulled on it and tore it to pieces. I’d actually been digging for antique whisky bottles, and what I didn’t know then was that those “rags” were likely worth thousands.

Out in the desert in California, Nevada and Arizona, there are abandoned silver mines like buried time capsules, virtually untouched, and you can find vintage bottles down there that are worth a lot to collectors. But as I searched for them, I kept coming across these scraps of denim, because jeans,
especially Levi’s, were worn by the silver miners in the late 1800s. When a miner got a new pair of work pants, he’d cut up the old ones and use them for lagging around pipes, so there were a lot of antique jeans buried out here...

I put a few of the denim items I’d dug up on eBay. A Japanese collector contacted me and came all the way out here to look at my collection in person. I sold him a jacket for $1,000. At the time, it seemed a good deal, but he told me not to talk to other people or tell them what I was doing; I realise now that he didn’t want me to find out how much these things were worth. I talked to other dealers and collectors, and found out he was selling the pieces back to Levi’s for its archives – he’d sell them a pair of jeans for upwards of $100,000...

A few years ago, my father-in-law dug up the holy grail: the oldest pair of Levi’s from 1873, the first year they were manufactured. They’re in really good condition – they look like a normal modern pair of jeans, really, only back then, they had a crotch rivet and no belt loops. I wish we could keep them for our personal archives, but recently I had an offer of about $100,000.

More at the link.

Addendum:  Back in 2008 I posted a photo of a pair of old jeans found in a California mine that sold for $36,000 on eBay.

Reposted from 2015 to add this report of a pair of old jeans that sold for "nearly $100,000."

They were purchased in 1893 by Solomon Warner, a storekeeper in the Arizona Territory. Warner was a colorful character who established one of the first stores selling American dry goods in Tucson and survived being shot by Apache Indians in 1870.

The denim was produced at a mill in New Hampshire, and the jeans were manufactured by Levi's in San Francisco. Unlike modern Levis, the jeans in those days had only a single back pocket. There were no belt loops because men used suspenders back then...

They'd been stored for decades in a trunk and were in pristine condition because Warner wore them only a few times before falling ill, Soules said.

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