Saturday Morning With The Wall Street Journal -- January 7, 2017

I love Saturday mornings, especially when My Wife is out in California and the first question of the day is not, "Well, what are your plans for today?"

I don't make plans any more. And especially not on Saturdays. I'm retired. I'm on standby (or "on call") 24/7 to take care of Sophia (our 2.5 y/o granddaughter; she is my BFF).

I don't even have a "bucket list." A bucket list is a to-do list for obsessive-compulsive retirees, and to-do lists are joined at the hip to "work."

Today, I had to stay in bed (where it was warm) until the inside temperature got above 50 degrees (I don't turn the heat on at night); I assumed it was 24 degrees outside when I woke up, only to be surprised to find that it was 15 degrees. So, finally at 11:00 a.m. I got out of bed, brought in The Wall Street Journal, made myself home-made waffles and one slice of store-bought bacon (no butchering allowed in the apartment complex), and then enjoyed coffee, the Journal, and now some archiving.

The coffee: I doubt many outside the deep south are familiar with "Family Owned Community Coffee." All I  know is it's "imported, roasted, packed and distributed by Community Coffee Company, Baton Rouge, LA." The standard ground coffee foil container, 12 ounces, is bright red and sits next to all the other big-name coffee brands at some grocery stores here in Texas. It's generally priced about a dollar cheaper than the others. I generally buy it and freeze it when it goes on sale for $3.99 / 12-oz package which seems to be every three to six months, vs the $8.99-plus that one can pay for Starbucks.

On January 5, 2017, I wrote:

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Not too many days ago I suggested the sectors that would do well in the market under Trump. Today, in The Wall Street Journal: defense firms cash in amid soaring demand for munitions.

One of my themes on the blog is what sectors will do well (for investors) in the coming year and where/how President Trump can act without Senate interference. I don't recall if the latter is already posted or if I've kept it in draft status until I can beef it up a bit.

But getting back to defense, the link above was to an on-line story a couple of days ago. Today, it is on page B4, of the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal: "For missile makers, US demand surges." The makers of precision-guided missiles and bombs are running to keep up with demand as the US military bombards Islamic State from the air. Companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems....

The article is a full half-page.

Trump is the sort of guy that understands precision-guided missiles and bombs. I'm not sure his predecessor did. Trump sees things through the eyes of a pragmatist and realist; Obama sees through the eyes of one who felt the apology tour should never end. My hunch is that ROE (rules for engagement) will change under a pragmatist and a realist.

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The inside temperature is now a toasty 69 degrees; the heat is off. The pasta is boiling on the stove. I've had my coffee, waffles, and bacon. The Venetian blinds are open, and a dusting of snow from yesterday remains on the ground. The bright sunlight and light snow reminds me a bit of our days in England many decades ago, or Germany.

To the "Review" and "Off Duty" sections of The Wall Street Journal. 

I mentioned, I think it was yesterday, that I no longer drink martinis. I spent six months to a year trying to figure out martinis and once I had, I lost interest. I suppose I will go back to them some day but not any time soon. So it was quite coincidental to see a huge graphic of Mulholland Gin in the middle of page D4 accompanying an article by Ms Ottessa Moshfegh, "Love (And Gin) in a Thirsty Landscape."

For a romantic, it's a nice read. I enjoyed it. It brought back great memories. It's a three-quarter page essay and despite the emphasis on gin, Ottessa actually writes very little about Mulholland Gin, but she supplies some nice recipes along the way. The essay, it appears, was written for a number of reasons, perhaps mostly to plug her new book that will be coming out January 17, 2017.

[Later, 2:06 p.m. Central Time: I was curious about the Mulholland Gin. It turns out that it may be a new offering. Just yesterday, of all things, January 6, 2017, this over at the "bevindustry" site:

As part of its debut, Mulholland Distilling introduced Mulholland New World Gin in Los Angeles and Whole Foods Market stores in Southern California. Distilled six times from 100 percent non-GMO corn, the gluten-free gin begins with a bright cucumber and juniper on the nose, the company says. On the tongue, an intense burst of lime is followed by a mix of lavender florals, which are rounded out with juniper and notes of citrus and vanilla. The 48 percent alcohol-by-volume gin is packaged in 750-ml glass bottles that have a suggested retail price of $26.99.

Yes, here it is, from November 9, 2016:

Mulholland Distilling has launched new American Whiskey, Vodka and New World Gin in Los Angeles, with plans for larger distribution in the near future.

Perhaps that was mentioned by Ottessa, but I did not see that, but what a clever advertisement. I wonder if she was paid for the 3/4 page ad? LOL.]

And then just below that a recipe for spaghetti squash carbonara. Considering I have spaghetti boiling al dente on the stove, this was timely. I will do carbonara but probably not squash.

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By the way, if you haven't seen this video, it is worth watching. It was spontaneous, and it has gone viral.

It should be noted that the woman at the beginning of the video, who identifies herself as a student at the law school, was a "plant." In fact, she was a 30-year-old agitator who tried to stir things up at the conference, and to say the least, she accomplished that, but not the way she intended.


I was reminded of this video when I read the article "A Prison Without A Roof," by Bartle Bull, a review of The House of the Dead, by Daniel Beer. This is the story of the Russian exile system that was the greatest sustained machine of evil in human history. Most convicts first spent a year shuffling eastward in rags and irons along the 6,000 miles of the Great Siberian Post Road.

And, yes, the dots connect between this book and the embedded video.

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There is a review of a biography of Wilson Pickett on page C5, which was good, but it was made all the better because some time ago a reader of the blog introduced me to Fame Studios, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and suggested a DVD which is now one of my favorite DVDs. Wilson Pickett, it turns out, recorded at Muscle Shoals, among other recording studies.

Mustang Sally, Wilson Pickett

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On page C6 in a story about a lost city in the Honduras, the writer mentions that one-half of the expedition team contracted the world's second-deadliest parasitic disease. I was curious. What is the world's second-deadliest parasitic disease? Malaria, of course, is first. (Though, some would argue, socialism.)

Answer: mucocutaneous leishmaniasis.

From wiki:

Leishmaniasis  is a disease caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania and spread by the bite of certain types of sandflies.

Protozoa. Wow, if you really want to get confused about something, try figuring out protozoa.

Part of the problem is the history of biology, how things have changed over time, how names have changed, how the classification system of living things has changed. And it has happened within my lifetime which makes it even more difficult to keep up.

The Cell: A Visual Tour of the Building Block of Life, Jack Challoner, c. 2015, has been a great help. From my notes from the book, "Famous Protists," I included Plasmodium (malaria); Toxoplasma gondii (toxoplasmosis); Cryptosporidium parvum (cryptosporidiosis); but, I failed to mention Leishmania (leishmaniasis) -- but that was technically not my fault. It was not mentioned by Challoner.

It is amazing how "awful" these protozoan parasites are. They are members of the "Apicomplexa" phylum. Wiki says:

The Apicomplexa (also called Apicomplexia) are a large phylum of parasitic alveolates. Most of them possess a unique form of organelle that comprises a type of plastid called an apicoplast, and an apical complex structure. The organelle is an adaptation that the apicomplexan applies in penetration of a host cell.

But to finish on a pleasant note, Christopher Kimball reviews Eight Flavors, Sarah Lohman, a book about .... yes, food. Eight flavors to be exact: black pepper; vanilla; soy sauce; chili; and, I guess the reviewer ran out of room because the other four flavors were not mentioned, unless they were mentioned in passing while mentioning the others.

The pasta is complete, the house is getting cold again (need to turn on the heat), and time to check the football schedule.