Silhouette

You don't think this was staged or photoshopped, do you?

H/t: Shirk Report

Lunar Calendar

There appears to be one anomaly in the image above. Get ready! :)

Foggy Towers of San Francisco

It's been a while. Someone should do a study of the birth and death of personal blogs, to chronicle their lifespan.

Oh well, someone here in the Bay Area* has taken to publicizing interesting Instagrams. Here is one that I found particularly fascinating...a display of towers. I like the way that, to me, the Bay Bridge is the first set to be recognized, then a confirmation from the new East Span tower, and finally a tug of delight from Sutro Tower (ugly as she is) in the distance. All of this is presented on a bed of fog.

Enjoy:

*I know the rules. I went back to check. It's @SFGate that's publishing these Instagrams.

Dangerous occupation

It's important to teach your children to read, understand, and obey signs.

(Also, to learn when not to obey signs, but that's more complicated.)

:)

Chair with Robe

Just another picture

Balloon Boy

This is just a picture, offered here to soothe your spirit and quiet your nerves:

Mmmmmmmm...

Just a nice photograph

Dreadful Photography - Lower Lake

It's Late Summer again, and so it's Fire Season in California again.  We sigh, and carry on.

This year, @Twitter has been publishing pictures from CalFire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) all season, and they've gotten a new, and talented photographer on the payroll.

Hereunder, the shots I particularly admired of the destruction left by the Clayton Fire in the town of Lower Lake, south of Clearlake in Lake County:

Road congestion

"More money than brains" is a phrase often aptly applied in life. Our neighbor city of Lafayette has decided that a 3-way stop intersection at Olympic Boulevard and Pleasant Hill South will better serve its motorists as a roundabout. They must have hired a newly-minted traffic engineer whose professor came from England. My alternate solution:

 

So there!

Read It & Weep!

I really don't know what to say. But, please know that I do the weekly food shopping around here, and I'm very conscious of the prices.

These are from 1959, in the Washington D.C. area:

Gulp.

Optical Illusion

Once you see it, you can never again unsee it!

Give up?

Here's a strong hint:

Rail transit, then and now

I stumbled upon a transit map recently that showed rail transit in the Bay Area in 1937.  Think no Bay Bridge, trolleys, Key System, the Oakland mole, ferry boats. It was a pretty intricate system, and some of the rails led to places far outside the Bay Area.

Now this map, drawn in the style of today's BART map, is far too condensed for me to read carefully. It does reference a source and a date, however, that has piqued my interest. If I find out anything interesting to my piqueness, I'll post it here.

For now. . .

Hains Point, Washington D.C.

Here's an old aerial photograph of Southeast Washington D.C., featuring Hains Point and its (then)golf course in the center, and the National War College on the right. The Washington Monument is at the top.

The picture was taken in 1935, when I was a mere one year old. After World War II, when I was 11 years old, and my brother was about 9, our Dad, who was then teaching at the War College, would drop us both at the golf course to hack our way around for a few hours while he entertained the military students.

I fear I learned little about the finer points of golf, but I did find a few lost golf balls and enjoyed the nice river views.

Good times.

Smart Phone

This is the Radio Shack smart phone of 1991:

Effective, no doubt, but a bit pricey, and rather clumsy to tote around.

Visitor from Across the Pond

Welcome!

#30 goes for a long 3.

This man can do anything!

Oscar Awards on Sunday

Thanks to the U.K. Daily Mail, we have a puzzle:

Your task, should you accept it, is to find the gilded Oscar statue among all these C3PO's.

Good luck!

The Rich and the Poor

They both have always been with us. And they always will.

Gravitational Waves

(Smart Guy)

Extreme Multitasking

Now here's an ambitious driver hard at work. I'm guessing he's signed on with Uber and Lyft and has Waze running, but I have no possible thoughts about the other four screens.

Any guesses?
Ain't life wonderful?