WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT IN 2023?

Odd-numbered years tend to be transitional. No Olympics, no national elections in the U.S. From mostly Wikipedia:

January.

1: Croatia will adopt the euro and become the 20th member of the Eurozone. First new entry since Lithuania in 2015.
1: Luis Lula da Silva will be sworn in as President of Brazil.
3: Republicans take over House of Representative with either:

Kevin McCarthy as speaker with a bare majority vote.
Kevin McCarthy with only a plurality, which will make leadership an impossible task.
No speaker at the beginning.
Boy, are the Republicans screwed up.

5: funeral for Pope Benedict XVI.

February: First light of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Also known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Vera Rubin is an American astronomer. Will have the largest digital camera of any telescope.
February: Ukraine will host a UN-backed peace summit around the end of the month.
April: Voyager 2 will overtake Pioneer 10 as the second-farthest spacecraft from Earth. Voyager 1 is the furthest away.
May 6: Coronation of Charles III and Camilla as King and Queen of the UK.

May 9-13: Eurovision Song Contest from Liverpool. Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra singing Stephania won the past year.
May 19: G7 in Kyoto.
July 20 - August 20: Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand...USA is favored at +300, which means they only have a 25% of prevailing.

September 8 - October 28: Men's Rugby World Cup in France. The favorites keep changing, and France, South Africa, England and New Zealand currently vie for the top.
October - November 26: Cricket World Cup in India. Not many reading this blog will watch, but India is the favorite, although England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan are competitive. All past members of Great Britain.

October 14: annular solar eclipse. But limited to portions of the Americas, North America in the west and South America up north.
November 30 to December 12: United Arab Emirates will host COP28 in Dubai. More fossil fuel lobbyists attended the Egypt COP27 this year than any single national delegation. It worked. These same lobbyists are linked to the oil and national gas industry of the UAE, so doubts are abundant. However, having spent some time there in November, I have a strong sense that the UAE absolutely wants to take a major leadership role in the ultimate transition to a future society. An example is Masdar City.
Sometime this year, India is projected to surpass China as the most populous country.

On the entertainment front:

From TIME:

The 49 Most Anticipated Movies of 2023. Arghhh...another Mission Impossible, John Wick, Little Mermaid...
The 10 Best Korean Dramas of 2022 to Watch on Netflix.

Or, in general, everything coming to Netflix in 2023.
From Rotten Tomatoes, the 35 most anticipated movies of 2023.

Got an hour? Here on You Tube are trailers of the best upcoming films of 2023. Starts with the next John Wick.
Coming to Broadway:

Pictures from Home with Nathan Lane.

Bad Cinderalla, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Another Sweeney Todd, this time with Josh Groban.
Bob Fosse's Dancin'.

The return of Camelot.
Remember the movie? Life of Pi on the stage.
Loosely based on a Scorsese film, New York, New York, partly composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Jessica Chastain stars in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.
Summer, 1976 starring Laura Linney.

Using Britney Spears songs, Once Upon a One More Time.
Sure, this was coming for a long time...Back to the Future: The Musical.

Can you believe that this has never before played in New York? Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, after 70 years in London's West End. The enduring trap is that anyone can be the murderer.

You saw the movie with Gary Cooper 70 years ago, now, High Noon on Broadway.
Merrily We Roll Along with Daniel Radcliffe.

Oh, never before has there ever been two semi-final epics in the NCAA championship series. You can read the details elsewhere, but a very lucky Georgia plays a determined TCU in the final on January 9. This circus expands to 12 team in the 2024-25 season.

How best to start the year?

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

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