This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a visit to the Clamouse cave about an hour outside of Monpellier. Located on the side of a gorge cut by the River Heurault, the cave consists of a number of enormous interlocking chambers containing truly unbelievable geologic formations. Alien, stunning, totally unexpected, awe-inspiring. Click on the first picture to start a slideshow.
The pictures from yesterday, in a much more user-friendly gallery format. Click on the first picture to start the slideshow. Enjoy!
Trump on ABC News last night: “You never saw heads chopped off until a few years ago.” Tell that to Medusa: Or to John the Baptist: Or Louis XVI: What a moron.
As a moderate centrist who despises the loutishness, lies, disrespectfulness, and authoritarian bent of Donald Trump and his gang of incompetent megalomaniacs, I found myself of two minds about the widespread marches last weekend. Part of me cheered them, especially the one in Washington, D.C. following the inauguration: An enormous reminder that most Americans aren’t on board with the Trump program. But particularly with respect to the local marches here […]
We’re back from Paris, not particularly happy, moderately jetlagged. A nice flight somewhat ruined at the end by the failure of the jetway operator at SFO to come back from his break on time, resulting in us all standing on the plane after an 11-hour flight for an additional 30 minutes until a replacement jetway operator could be found (something that I could see happening at 2 a.m. but not […]
Paris, France I’m happy not to be in the United States this Inauguration Day. How did it come to pass that my country elected as its President a lout and a buffoon; someone with no understanding, appreciation, or respect for our history and institutions; a bluffer with the mindset of an adolescent male; a man with no executive or political experience; a sideshow barker, a small-minded Daddy’s Boy driven by […]
We love France, we really do. But there are aspects that are, shall we say, less robust than in the U.S. One of these is the quality of service personnel in non-retail contexts. (The service personnel in shops, stores, and restaurants, in contrast, are fabulous — almost always helpful and friendly and efficient.) The worst, in our experience, are banks, and we had yet another example the past two days. […]
We’d intended to stay in Les Saisies until Saturday, then drive to Lyon and take the TGV to Paris. That plan changed when the weather forecast called for up to three feet of snow and blustery winds for Friday and Saturday, due to a big storm associated with a cold front moving across Europe. About 5 p.m. on Thursday, the snow started falling, and by the time we were ready […]
I’ve come up on the year anniversary of having the photovoltaic system installed, so I downloaded my PG&E usage information (which is available on an hourly time-step) for the last year, and did some quick Python/Pandas analysis. Here’s a chart showing our average hourly use over that time period. It shows both the effect of the solar panels (the negative numbers during the middle of the day, when the PV […]
The recent reports that the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that the Russians not only interfered in the recent Presidential election, but interfered with the express purpose of getting Trump elected elicited this response from the Trump troops: These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s […]