Green

Best wishes to the Irish everywhere.

Here’s a reminder of the need for preparedness in a certain area that seems to have been tamed, headline from nypost.com: “Four people on terror watchlist arrested at southern US border since October.” And here’s an encouraging one from the same source: “US air travel rises to highest levels yet since pandemic hit.”`

From an article at NYP by Suzy Weiss, reworked by yours truly: Last week there was news of art works available exclusively online to the buyer, dubbed NFT — non-fungible token. The price was millions. Now one can buy a virtual home. Mars House, a futuristic-looking pad designed by Toronto-based digital artist Krista Kim, features sweeping views, modern see-through furniture and even an infinity pool. “I see it as a weekend home, like a villa,” said Kim. “It’s perfect for a couple.” It sold for 30 Ethereum tokens, the equivalent of $59,752.84 in real-world money. Here’s one of the rooms and the creator. Too bad she doesn’t come with the place:

Also from NYP, article by Brian Flood, Fox News: “The Washington Post made a massive correction Monday to a January report… admitted multiple quotes attributed to Trump based on an anonymous source were inaccurate.” Gee, what a surprise.

Headline from newsmax.com: “Biden Tells Migrants: ‘Don’t Come.’” He should have said it on his first day in office.

From foxnews.com, the most amusing headline of the day: “Trump-obsessed CNN losing viewers since he left office.”

From an article at FN by Chuck DeVore, edited by yt: “According to the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom in North America index, the five freest states are Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia; the bottom five are New York, West Virginia, Alaska, California and Vermont.” The criteria is migration to and from.

RIP consummate actor Yaphet Kotto, 81. Born in Harlem in 1939, he was an ubiquitous presence on the big and small screen, his career spanning 1964–2014. I’m surprised there are only 93 titles under his name at IMDb. Maybe it seemed more because he was in so many works I enjoyed. In 1976 he received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Idi Amin in Raid on Entebbe. He even got to do Shakespeare, playing Othello in 1980. Here are five of his movies I enjoyed: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), 5 Card Stud (1968), Across 110th Street (1972), Alien (1979) and The Running Man (1987). He probably will be remembered most for his 122 episode run on Homicide: Life on the Street. He also wrote three scripts for the show. He co-wrote and directed the 1972 film The Limit. Here’s a quote attributed to him about his reaction to seeing On the Waterfront (1954): “I was so blown away after that day — it was Brando’s performance that made me leave the streets to become an actor.” Well done, sir. Thank you.

Conditions at the floating book shop were infinitely better than yesterday but I still retreated to the car a few times to warm up. My thanks to the kind folks who donated, swapped and bought books. Most of the trade was in Russian. Here’s what sold in English: Dinotopia, The World Beneath by James Gurney and Michael Brett-Surman, a book on finding a career in Law; News of the World by Paulette Giles; a Hardy Boys adventure; The Pigman by Paul Zindel; and my own Billionths of a Lifetime, which is now in the black.

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