Happy Friday

Just a quick recap:

• Arctic ice hasn't varied much in size since 1989; earth stopped warming 17 years ago
• jobless rate plummets to 7.5%; March numbers okay; February numbers awesome (revised)
• 46 percent of energy jobs created in Q1 2013 filled by women
• USGS doubles the size of the Bakken, based on Three Forks potential
• market surges; oil up also
• Kentucky Derby this weekend with a long-shot, Frac Daddy in the line-up
• California may have a surplus (this, in fact, may be the biggest story of the day: California represents a huge segment of the American economy, and if California shows a turnaround, it portends good things for the entire economy; remember the recent story on those massive distribution centers going up in the California desert?)
• we're back to calling terrorists what they are: terrorists (though some resist)
• cool heads prevail; the red line that was crossed in Syria this past week, wasn't quite as red as first thought
• GM profit soars; share price halfway to breaking even for the American taxpayer
• earnings season: profits up; revenues down; great cost containment; sets stage for even better 2013/2014
• ObamaCare will be a "trainwreck" but at least we know it's coming, and some of us may be able to jump off (Congress has certainly jumped off; members of Congress are exempt from ObamaCare); when they say "trainwreck" I don't know if it's a derailment, or a collision; derailments are generally less severe
• it's incredibly sunny, bright, and temperate here in San Antonio; I love winter storms in south Texas -- more like a North Dakota June or July
• and, I have a free coffee waiting for me at Starbucks

Living the dream (I hate that phrase):

The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA, Donna Fargo

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A Letter to The Granddaughters

I'm in my Feynmann -- Oppenheimer -- Von Neumann -- Los Alamos stage of reading. I have six new books on the subject, and am currently reading three of them.

The song, "I'm the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" takes me back to the summer of 1972. I was doing research on the North Slope of Alaska. This song had just come out and was hitting number one by the time I was up in Prudhoe Bay. We did not have television that summer, and the only radio station was AFRN: Armed Forces Radio Network. [Little did I know that AFRN would be a big part of my life for the next 30 years of my life.] With 24-hour sunlight, I often worked throughout the night; it was always a treat to see the Midnight Sun. No, it isn't all that bright; but it is light. Kind of weird.

Our research team was made up of our research leader, and six research assistants: four guys and two gals. Four of the research assistants were typical Scandinavian lads and a lass. One of the women, was not Scandinavian, but I do not recall much about her (Italian?). But I do vividly remember the sixth member: long hair, tall, thin, quiet, and the computer expert. His job was to run the computer. All day long he sat on a high stool in front of this metal rectangular box that was about six feet tall and two feet wide/two feet deep. All day long he fed in a one-inch wide paper tape punched with holes about 4 mm in diameter. All day long he would feed in the paper tape, and flip toggle switches up and down. Did I say he would do that all day long? In hindsight, he resembled Bill Gates.

I regret to this day I did not spend some time with him, learning what he was doing, how it worked. I don't know where he came from; he certainly did not come from our college in Sioux Falls, SD. He may have been an extraterrestrial alien, or perhaps from California, but now I'm repeating myself. But the one or two times I tried talking to him, he was non-cummunicative; and he talked even less when I asked him to explain the contraption. Contempt comes to mind. No, I did not have contempt for him; the other way around. Smile. LOL.

Yeah, it's a happy Friday.

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What I learned today, from wiki:

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song. [Shocking Blue's "Venus" comes to mind.]

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.

"Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008.

The phenomenon is not limited to English, with examples cited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Hebrew song Háva Nagíla ("Let's Be Happy"), and in Bollywood movies.

A closely related category is soramimi—songs that produce unintended meanings when homophonically translated to another language.

The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn.

If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.