Want to know how the Super Bowl will turn out so you can spend your time concentrating on the commercials? Read on ...
The Baltimore Ravens will get off to a fast start. At the end of the first quarter they will be leading the San Francisco 49ers 13-3. San Francisco will score a touchdown midway through the second quarter, but the Ravens will counter with a TD in the closing seconds of the quarter to take a 20-10 halftime lead.
The 49ers will score at the start of the second half, but Baltimore again will show its resiliency by scoring a touchdown. It will be 28-17 at the start of the fourth quarter. San Francisco will close the gap to 28-24 with slightly under 10 minutes to play. Neither team will be productive for the next five minutes, then San Francisco will recover a Baltimore fumble, leading to a go-ahead touchdown with just under two minutes to play. The Ravens' next drive will stall on their own 35 yard line, forcing quarterback Joe Flacco to show his arm strength by heaving the ball more than 70 yards to the goal line as time expires. In a jump ball for either the winning touchdown reception or a successful pass defense, San Francisco will intercept, Flacco’s first interception of the post-season. Final score, San Francisco 31, Baltimore 28.
Knowing my devotion to Costco, Allison sent me several cute pictures of our grandchildren seated in a shopping cart at their local Costco (if you want to see for yourself, here’s a link: http://www.findingfinley.blogspot.com/).
The picture of the kids in the shopping cart reminded me of a play group friend's mother when Dan was very young. She brought her two kids to the supermarket. Her baby was about three months old, so she put her in her car seat inside the shopping cart and sat her three-year-old boy up front.
As they went through the store she would hand stuff to the toddler to put into the cart. All went well till they visited the canned goods aisle. It was like incoming missiles on the baby as the boy kept chucking cans over his shoulder onto his young sibling. When the mother finally realized why her baby was screaming, she freaked out and started running away from the cart. She eventually regained her composure, never again to make the mistake of putting the baby in the shopping cart basket area.
News came Saturday that a potentially crippling strike in ports along the Eastern Seaboard had been averted. Container ships would continue to be loaded and unloaded.
Not earth-shattering news to most, if not all, of you, but of interest to me because of a tour of a cargo ship I had arranged for a conference on supply chain logistics back in 2007. The Port of Oakland is not the most active on the West Coast, but it did provide a working backdrop for those on the tour.
Forget your memories of cargo ships and longshoremen’s activities from the Marlon Brando movie, On the Waterfront. Loading and unloading ships is a highly mechanized activity today. Cargo is shipped in containers, stacked high on deck and deep below deck.
We toured the APL (American President Lines) Thailand, built in 1995. The ship traversed the ocean between Asia and North America on a 35-day sequence that included a nine-and-a-half day voyage to Asia and a 10-day return trip. Ports of call included stops in Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Usually, each stop was less than 24 hours. The 276 meter x 40 meter APL Thailand, with gross tonnage of 64,502, had a 23-person crew which at the time included three women and two cadets from the Merchant Marine Academy.
As we watched from the bridge, containers would be hoisted and moved into place. It looked like a giant Jenga game was being played as containers were stacked tightly together, with everyone hoping nothing would be done to make the pile tilt over and crumble. The efficiency was mesmerizing. As captivating as any example of human and robotic efforts to maximize the use of every square inch possible while knowing that on the open ocean an incorrect consolidation of containers could impact the seaworthiness of the vessel.
Sunday’s NY Times carried a submission from Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton and the founder of the Princeton Election Consortium. It’s another warning about the evils of gerrymandering and how Republicans, for the most part, are trying to steal elections by altering the significance of the popular vote (Democrats, so far, have not been as open in their pursuit of hegemony).
I bring Wang’s opinion to your attention (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html?ref=opinion&_r=0) chiefly to get you to look back at the last map among the ones I posted last week that displayed the sliver of Democratic congressional districts, even in states where President Obama garnered enough votes to color them blue (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/republican-vote-rigging-electoral-college_n_2546010.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=012513&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief).
For sure there are progressives living in the rest of the country. But when you see the stark reality of the Democratic districts versus the enormous land mass of the Republican districts, as currently drawn up, one cannot fail to understand how divided our country truly is.