Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- December 23, 2019

Boeing: stock surges; CEO resigns; 737 MAX debacle and then the Boeing Starliner fails to reach correct orbit, due to inaccurate setting of a clock; Starliner will be the shuttle between Florida and the International Space Station;

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Quick, fill in the blank: " ______________________ (the country) has the world's strongest manufacturing sector, based on indexes of manufacturing activity.  Link here -- WSJ, December 22, 2019. A free one-year subscription to "themilliondollarway" to the first three readers who get the answer correct without going to the link.

This country is reporting the highest manufacturing performance of all countries tracked by data firm IHS Markit. See chart at the link. This country is ranked #1, followed by Colombia, Brazil, Myanmar, and then the United States, #5. Rounding out the top ten: China, France, Canada, Philippines, and India. Germany is at the bottom of the list, #29 of 30, behind Russia at #28. Japan is #20. Quite an interesting list. Countries ranked #19 and above are expanding; those below are contracting (Japan, UK, Indonesia, Mexico, and most of western Europe). 

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The Book Page

The book the last couple of weeks, The Vikings: A History, Robert Ferguson. I had read it before; this was the second reading, and I'll probably read it again before the end of 2020. A great book.

This week I'm going to re-read Barnet Schecter's The Battle For New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution, c. 2002. Notes from my first reading are here. I read it to get a better feeling of the geography -- particularly the waterways -- of the New York / New Jersey area.

Last night for some reason I was looking at the map of the Chesapeake Bay / Delaware Bay area. We lived for several years in Hampton Roads. One of my many regrets: I never really explored this area as much as I wish I had. It was hard to explore on land; too built up. The best way to explore the area would be by boat, I assume. But I was never a sailor. LOL.

Interestingly, I will be getting a book for Christmas, The Anarchy: The East India Company, William Dalrymple, c. 2019, which coincidentally will add a small bit of the backstory to the "tea party" and the beginning of the Revolutionary War.