And so we celebrated the 28th solar orbit of our marriage; where by "we" I mean Shirley and me, but also our kids Jordan, Alex, and Meg, and our grandkid Ori.  A time of reminiscence.  A lot has happened during those orbits, and a lot has changed, but also the song remains the same.  The sound track was the Beach Boys, who were always nostalgic even when new.

Ottmar Liebert: Old Ideas.  "Perhaps the desire to change or become something else is a genetic selection… because, if everyone wanted to change it might create too much societal upheaval. If no one wanted change society would become stagnant."  Agree entirely. 

And it's an old idea: viz Progress Ratchets.

One of the joys of having blogged for 17 years now is checking to see what I was blogging about this time last year, and the year before that, and so on ... the old ideas spawn new ones.  I was sad this year that there was no Tour, and now I'm sad that I'm not sad that the Tour has ended, as I usually am at the end of July.  It's presently scheduled for Aug 29 - Sep 20, but that seems rather optimistic now and I'm betting it will not take place. 

Some of the things which have been and shall be delayed by the pandemic will just take place as usual, but later, but some will be quite changed by the delay, including athletic events where the athletes trained for peaking at a given time.  The effect on the Olympics of 202021 will be significant.

The Visual Capitalist outdo themselves: map of Pangea with modern-day borders.  You must most definitely click through and oogle. 

Did you know?  You can now boot a Win95 PC inside Minecraft and play Doom.  Ah, but can you play Minecraft on it? 

More Ottmar: "perhaps I should use the word timeless instead of old". 

A new video blog to watch: The Reassembler.  Great stuff; interesting, and narrated with great humor. 

So you can make square water.  Or perhaps more accurately, square pools of water.  You never know when that might come in handy. 

Am I the only one who immediately thought of yelling SQUARE WATER!  Yeah, I guess I was.

More old ideas: Scarlet, a previously unreleased 1974 Rolling Stones song that features Jimmy Page on guitar.  Not bad and age hasn't hurt it one bit. 

Ottmar again: "The idea of balancing two extremes is what makes a great piece of art, whether it is a painting or a piece of music…. or food. What are those extremes? They can be familiar and strange, comforting and arousing, sour and sweet. It’s all about the balance."