The local  Star-Advertiser  today carried an article that headlined: Gold hits record $5,311 as dollar falls ahead of Fed decision First of all, the  Federal Reserve today held interest rates steady for the first time since July .  Fed Chair Jerome Powell ( will stay on as governor until the end of 2028 ) said that economic activity and business fixed investment have been expanding at a solid pace, while consumer spending has been resilient.   However, even though the housing market continues to show weakness, it has begun to show signs of recent life.   Mortgage rates have been at a three-year low. Yet, 6% for 30-year fixed is not exactly low. 15-year fixed is around 5%, also not so good. On the other hand, it was 7% last year. A good low interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage is anything below 4%. In January 2021, a record low of 2.65% was reached. This rate hovered between 3% and 4% in the 2010s. However, and this surprising to me, the hist...

Japan had the first bullet train more than 60 years ago.  It was 10October1964, when the opening ceremony was held in Tokyo in anticipation of Japan's first-ever Olympic Games, which began that day. The  Shinkansen,  meaning  new mainline , with a separate track, arrived when normal train traffic had reached the limit for carrying passengers and freight.   A train trip between Osaka and Tokyo dropped from 6 hours and 40 minutes to 4 hours, shortened to 3 hours and 10 minutes by 1964, and is now 2 hours and 30 minutes.  From the Shin-Osaka Station to the Shin-Yokohama Station only takes a little more than 2 hours. In 1964 the track was 320 miles long.  Today, it's up to 1484 miles.  The original itinerary incorporating Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka now carries 159 million passengers/year.  In this 6 decade period, more than 10 billion passengers have been safely handled.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT NOT ONE PASSENGER HAS YET BEEN KILLED IN A DERA...

  For one, Planet Earth is hot.    Europe had more heat deaths last year on record .   The tally was  61,000 deaths .  Will it be worse this year? A high-pressure system from north Africa called Cerberus could bring temperatures exceeding  113 F degrees  this weekend, particularly in the the Mediterranean region.  Sicily and Sardinia could reach the highest ever recorded here,  118.5 F !!! On July 9 Death Valley National Park's Furnace Creek Visitor Center hit  130 F (54.4 C),  beating the previous high set here in 2020.   In comparison, medium-rare steak has an internal temperature of 130-135 F. The hottest temperature ever, however, is contentious, for the 136.4 F (58 C) reading from Al Azizia in 1923 was officially decertified. Thus the current official world record is 134 F (56.7 C) set on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley. Yet, experts today insist that those early records are 100% bogus, and there seems to be s...