My life has been up and down, but mostly good.  In this blog I've actually said that my life has been in the 99.99th percentile.   But part of that is because, over the course of time,  Homo sapiens  have had 117 billion birth s.  As there are now only 8 billion of us, and life today surely must be a lot better than in the past, that already places me at a great advantage, and you too. I was born in  1940 , a dark period in history when Hitler was conquering Europe.  The #1 song in the USA was  I'll Never Smile Again , by Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers. But more than just that, after an acceptable youth growing up in Kakaako ( Honolulu ), not a slum, but definitely below average, I had a great final two years of high school and got accepted at Stanford University. Life was generally fine there.  I read today an entry in  Quora  entitled:   Is Caltech the most academically diffic...

SORRY, BUT MY POSTING ON THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ENERGY WAS MISTAKENLY NOT PUBLISHED YESTERDAY.  You can link to it HERE .  But about today, first a digression into Donald Trump, who is on such a roll.  Looks like sentencing on the New York conviction will be delayed until after he un-becomes president again, and the trials in Georgia are in trouble.   So why would he and Elon Musk want to close down the country ?  The bipartisan agreement announced yesterday to continue to fund the government was derailed by the two of them.  Maybe not such a big deal because all essential services will continue, and only the not-so important services will be stopped, like the closing of national parks.  I guess if they kept this up until the new Congress steps in on 3January2025, Democrats can't appoint any new judges, and stuff like that. I was sent the following this morning about Donald Trump.   https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3141422...