There is a La Mancha in Spain, but there is no real Man of La Mancha. This all began with Miguel de Cervantes. Was born in Spain in 1547  (?, maybe ) and passed away in 1616 at the age of 68. Considered to be the greatest Spanish writer, best known for what is said to be the first modern novel,  Don Quixote , perhaps even the best book of all time.  As translated by Edith Grossman, widely regarded as one of funniest and most tragic  books ever written. Cervantes spent most of his life in relative poverty and obscurity. At the age of 22, moved to Rome, where he worked for the household of a cardinal. Enlisted in the Spanish Navy infantry a year later, 1570, and got severely wounded, losing use of his left arm and hand. There are no portraits of him, but this one to the right is generally used. In 1575 was captured by Barbary pirates, and ransomed to Madrid five years later. First significant novel, published in 1585, was  La Galatea . Don Quixote  was publis...

This blog site is into my 18th year.  Thought I'd glance at how many partly written articles were in storage and  spent yesterday discarding many of them.  There were around 450.  After a hundred or so I gave up, and still have around 350 drafts.  However, one was the basis for my posting today. I was born and grew up in Honolulu, but did not spend any school time at the University of Hawaii until August of 1972, when I was hired by the College of Engineering as an assistant professor.  So it's been 53 years since I first came to the main Manoa Campus. I originally taught Fortran IV Programming and a couple of other computer courses.  This is the textbook I used.  I knew the co-authors, Paul Murrill and Cecil Smith.  Murrill went on to become president of LSU. After a couple of years, I joined the Civil Engineering Department.  Environmental Engineering and Technology & Society were two courses where I had more than a hundred student...

 Two years ago, the  BBC said Japan was the future,  but it's now stuck in the past.  I agree. Among the detractions is ownership of real estate.  You buy a home, and after paying off your mortgage in, say, 40 years, it is worth almost nothing. Japan recently had the third-largest economy, is a peaceful and prosperous country with the longest life expectancy in the world, the lowest murder rate, little political conflict, a powerful passport, and the sublime Shinkansen, the world's best high-speed rail network.  Actually, about GDP and the economy, Germany has slipped past Japan into #3, with India in the next few months easing by Japan. When the author of this article, Rupert Wingield-Hayes, first arrived in Tokyo in 1993, a third of a century ago, he was effusive about the country being exquisitely clean and orderly.  Actually still is. But he noted that Hong Kong was an assault on senses and Taipei had horrible air pollution. He could have said...