Meanderings On A Sunday Afternoon -- February 8, 2015

Recently I've been suggesting that Greece will leave the Eurozone. A reader sent me a link with Greenspan suggesting the same:

The former head of the US central bank, Alan Greenspan, has predicted that Greece will have to leave the eurozone.

He told the BBC he could not see who would be willing to put up more loans to bolster Greece's struggling economy. Greece wants to re-negotiate its bailout, but Mr Greenspan said "I don't think it will be resolved without Greece leaving the eurozone."

Earlier, UK Chancellor George Osborne said a Greek exit would cause "deep ructions" for Britain. 

I had a completely different view on the Greek/EU story back in 2012 when I wrote:

If Greece implodes [which it will if it leaves the EU], it will not simply be a change in regime. Greece will become a failed nation-state overnight. It will be Balkanized, not because that's what the Greeks want (unlike the Balkans) but because it will become "every man for himself." We may see the rise of Sparta and Athens once again. 

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I doubt I will see the movie, Fifty Shades Of Grey. I thought of this song when I thought of the movie or vice versa:

I Close My Eyes, Shivaree
When I hear that song it reminds me of Devil Doll but not sure which song, perhaps:

Bourbon In Your Eyes, Devil Doll

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The cover story in this week's issue of Time magazine: "What Starbucks Knows About America." For the full on-line article, one needs a subscription. Several story lines, of course, but the biggest story line is the fact it is on the cover story for Time. The CEO gets sales data from across the United States (and overseas?) four times/day. Howard Schultz seems bigger than life.

The cover story in this week's issue of Bloomberg Businessweek: Inside RadioShack's Collapse. I wonder if there was anyone my age, back in the late '70s, who needed a "computer" and didn't have a "Trash-80"? From the BBW article:

When the CB boom subsided, RadioShack faced pressure to find something to replace it. The company's answer -- and perhaps the high point in its history --was the TRS-80, one of the first mass-market personal computers.

Introduced in 1977, the TRS-80 looked like a swollen version of today's desktops, with about 16K of memory; a 12-inch square monitor with one shade of gray characters and no graphics, unless you counted artfully piled-up Xs; and a cassette player where you could save information while you waited for someone to invent the hard drive. The TRS-80 used software designed by a little-known startup named Microsoft. An early advertisement boasted that it could be used to manage personal finances, plan recipes, ro play backgammon.

I remember vividly where my TRS-80 sat: in the back bedroom of our tract house on 107 Spruce Drive, Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. And, yes, I used it to keep track of my investments. I think I had shares, maybe, in a half-dozen companies, most of which I probably still hold today. I used a cassette player to save the data. Looking back, I'm not so surprised I used it; I'm more surprised that it actually worked. Talk about jerry-rigging automation. I actually still have printouts from that set-up. I can't imagine what printer "worked" with the TRS-80 -- too long ago.

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No new books to really talk about. Our older granddaughter loves science and in particular, the periodic table. So, of course she has the Elements and the companion book, Molecules by Theodore Gray. Yesterday, I bought her a small monograph by Jack Challoner, c. 2014, published in London, The Elements. As usual, the Brits never disappoint. This will make a great companion piece to Theodore Gray's Elements.

For whatever reason -- it's hard to explain -- I'm back in my Beatles phase with regard to music. It started some months ago when I saw Rolling Stone's list of the top 100 albums of all time. I've talked about this before. I apologize. The Beatles have four of the top ten albums on the Rolling Stone's list, all of which I listened to over and over on our cross-country trip to Los Angeles and back. Bob Dylan had two albums in the top ten.

I didn't need it (that's for sure) but I couldn't resist a soft-cover Rolling Stonee Special Edition, The Beatles: The Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide. Sort of the Reader's Digest of the Beatle albums. Struggling over the decision to buy or not buy, I finally made the decision after reading a very short essay by Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac) about the Help album. It's hard to believe: Help did not break into the top 100 albums ranked by RS.

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The longer I am away from Boston, the more I miss it. (Perhaps not the snow and all the shoveling, but I really miss "everything" about Boston.) One of the things I most regret is not buying a "growler" at the Cape Ann Brewing Company in Gloucester along the North Shore. I was reminded of "growlers" recently when paging through a 2014 Imagine Publishing soft-cover titled All About History Book Of the Titanic. Our older granddaughter is fascinated with the Titanic and has even visited a museum of the Titanic -- somewhere on the east coast, in Massachusetts, I believe. Paging through the monograph, there was a reference to "growlers" -- smaller pieces of ice that have broken off an iceberg. Although wiki says otherwise, I like to think that "growlers" -- the jugs that beer come in -- derived their name from the icy growlers on the North Sea.

I also learned the difference between Race Point (Provincetown, Cape Cod) and Cape Race (Newfoundland) but maybe a story for a different time. 

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Notes to the Granddaughters

In our living area in our apartment in Grapevine, we have a work area for each of the two older granddaughters. As noted above, our older granddaughter loves the periodic table: