JULY 4: HOTDOGS AND HAMBURGERS

Day 63 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the local newspapers are running out of newsworthy stories.  Today, Kalapana.  According to The Express from the UK, this latest activity has created 555 acres of new land.  Latest from the USGS.

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America is now 242 years old.  We were an experiment at the beginning, and have re-entered that stage of development with Donald Trump.  But more importantly, what are the top nine items consumed on July 4, Independence Day?

• Hot Dogs
• Hamburgers
• Chicken Wings
• Potato Salad
• Cupcakes
• Ribs
• Baked Beans
• Corn on the Cob
• Coleslaw

Why the above?  BBQing has become traditional and these items are relatively cheap.  Incidentally, the top dessert is said to be mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Here are a few interesting bits of info: 

• 150 million hot dogs are consumed in the USA the July 4th weekend, which this year is on a Wednesday, so who knows how many today.
• Of course, there will be the most nauseating competition on Planet Earth, Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (2017 champs, Miki Sudo and Joey Chestnut to the right) on New York's Coney Island.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 brought the King and Queen of England here.

• This year, Sudo and Chestnut again prevailed, but the counting process failed, for I saw Joe eat 64 hotdogs, but it turned out they had missed a plate, and he was given credit for a new world record of 74.  I can barely eat one.  This was the 102nd year for the men's competition.
• Best hot dog in America?  Portillo's Hot Dogs, Northlake, Illinois.  You can only very barely see the dog:

• But Gayot says Crif Dogs from New York;

• The best from each state?  Hawaii?  Hula Dog in Haleiwa.

• Some like hamburgers:
• Five Guys make the best burgers, but they're not available in the West.  However, Hawaii is special, and there are now three Five Guys in Honolulu;  Pearlridge Center, Town Center Mililani and Ka Makana Alii Kapolei.

• Whataburger rules in the South and Southwest.
• White Castle is the oldest (1921) fast food burger chain, and also is not found in the West.
• President Obama took Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington, Virginia.
• The top three in Honolulu are Teddy's Bigger Burgers, Chubbie's Burgers and Honolulu Burger Co.

15 Craigside usually has all the above, but this time, New York Steak.  However, no hot dog nor hamburger nor chicken wings nor baked beans nor coleslaw.  Fortunately for me, I have been invited to the annual July 4th luncheon of Betsy and Harvey Lee, and they will have all those, and more.  So, for a $1.50 take-out fee, I will order what 15 Craigside has to offer for their lunch, have them refrigerate the meal and I'll pick it up after my Wednesday night table dinner.

What will I do with this combination.  Not sure, but a couple of days ago I took back to my room for free a container of French Onion Soup, and here is what I did for lunch yesterday:

• Fried some Miyazaki Wagyu Beef Fat, tossed in two pieces of garlic bread (from a previous spaghetti meal), took them out for later re-entry, and added slices of Shiitake Mushrooms.  Poured in the 15 Craigside soup and, as I did not have any sherry wine, a jigger of scotch, brought it to a boil, and topped with those earlier pieces of bread, provolone cheese and American cheese.

• Used the pizza setting in a toaster oven:

Had a superb lunch on my lanai with a glass of Stanford University, Collector's Reserve, Vinum Cellars 2005 Cardinal Cuvee:

This is the night to watch TV for A Capital Fourth at 8PM (EDT, 7:30PM Hawaii time on TV) on PBS with Jimmy Buffet, the Beach Boys, Temptations and a lot more, with fireworks soon after 9PM.  The New York Macy's version on NBC begins with Kelly Clarkson, Ricky Martin and Keith Urban at 8PM (EDT, 7PM Hawaii time on Spectrum 1008), with fireworks at 9:25.  In Boston from 8-10:30, when the fireworks start, will be the Boston Pops, honoring Leonard Bernstein with Rita Moreno.  The complication here is that, in Hawaii, Spectrum 1118 (or 118, Bloomberg) will cover everything live from 2PM.

I joke, but this is the best country in the world, ever.  Here, Kate Smith, 80 years ago.  You did not click on God Bless America?  This is Independence Day, and that was once the most popular song on this day.  Except that the younger generation feels God Bless the USA and Born in the U.S.A. are more representative.  It all depends on where you live.  This remains an odd country, for the favorite in that tiny finger to the east is Pink Houses.

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DO YOU HAVE AN IQ OF 145?

Day 62 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the cone formed by fissure #8, now up to 180 feet and growing, is almost as tall as the 10-story Aloha Tower at 184 feet.

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Every so often Quora sends me an interesting query.  Yesterday it was:

     What does an IQ of 145 mean?

0.  An IQ of 145 means you are smarter than 99.9% of the population.

1.  You are relatively isolated.

      Nah, I'm not.

2.  Many people seem to be missing something, and the rest disagree with you.  

      Sounds like me.

3.  Things most people are passionate about (football, basketball, rock) will seem meaningless to you.

      I'm quite passionate about supporting my college schools:  Stanford, LSU, Hawaii, and music ranging from baroque to golden oldies.

4.  Eventually you will accumulate a small number of friends who are as smart as you.

      Mostly true.

5.  You find it very difficult to cooperate with people, form teams, or stay in voluntary organizations for more than about a year.

      My whole professional life was built around forming teams and cooperating with others.  In my late retirement I decided I've cooperated enough and now I do what I want mostly for myself.

6.  Your net worth is on average a little higher than your social peers, but highly volatile, and you are probably not rich.

     Mostly true, but my financial status has generally been stable.

7.  You have brilliant ideas, often not worked out correctly, and peer reviewers don't understand them.

      This is the story of my life.  Absolutely me.  Blue Revolution, Hydrogen Economy, Fusion Energy, OTEC, World Peace, Rainbow Colored Pearls, Hawaiian Onsen....everything I champion has not quite made it.

8.  By the time you get old you have figured most of this out, but your energy level is declining, and even if you could do it over, you realize that most people are so trapped in cultural trends and fads that they don't truly interest you.

      Yes, this, too, is me.

9.  Conditions are much less favorable to high IQ individuals now than they were 50 years ago.

      Not really.

SO DO I HAVE A 145 IQ?  PROBABLY NOT.

According to specialists:

IQ                  % of Population  Interpretation

above 130               2.1               Very gifted
121-130                  6.4               Gifted
110-120                15.7               Above average
  90-110                51.6               Average
  80-89                  15.7               Below average
  70-79                    6.4               Impaired
below 70                2.0                Even worse

Or your college major:

Hey, I have a PhD in biochemical engineering, so that must place me between 132 and 145.  Donald Trump is said to have an IQ of 156:

There is a plethora of articles on this subject, and Snopes doubts the 156 IQ of Trump.

However, BuzzFuse has Donald Trump at 165, with Thomas Jefferson at 190, James Madison 180, John Adams 175, Abraham Lincoln 175....John Kennedy 155....Bill Clinton 150....Barack Obama 145...George Washington 140....Richard Nixon 135....Gerald Ford 130....George W. Bush 125....Ronald Reagan 125....

ScienceTrends reports:

The person with the highest IQ ever recorded is William James Sidis (left) with a score between 250 and 300.  Went to Harvard at 11, became a teacher and died penniless at the age of 46. The list continues as follows with the highest possible IQ:

• Terence Tao (click on that and watch a clip of this genius mathematician, IQ score between 225 and 230)
• age 43 today
• scored 760 on the math SAT at age of nine
• youngest full professor at UCLA ever

• Marilyn Vos Savant (IQ score of 228)
• age 61
• once listed by Guinness as smartest person
• solved the Monty Hall problem in 1990
• Christopher Hirata (IQ score of 225)

• Kim Ung-Yong (IQ score of 210)
• photo looks really old, but he is only 56 today
• solved differential equations at age 5
• studied nuclear physics at the University of Colorado at the age of 8
• spent a decade with NASA
• currently is on the faculty of Shinhan University in South Korea

• Edith Stern (IQ score over 200)

• age 66 today
• math calculations at the age of one
• 128 U.S. patents
• Christopher Michael Langan (IQ score between 190 and 210)

• Garry Kasparov (right, IQ score of 194)
• Philip Emeagwali (IQ score of 190)

• Judit Polgar (IQ score of 170)
• 41 years old
• Hungarian chess grandmaster, considered strongest female player of all time, defeating even Garry Kasparov
• she retired from chess in 2014
• father believed that geniuses are made, not born, and personally trained his daughters.
• Albert Einstein (IQ score between 160 and 190)
• Stephen Hawking (IQ score of 160)

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Hurricane Fabio in the East Pacific is at 110 MPH and will strengthen into a Category 3, then slowly weaken before getting close to Hawaii.
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SO WHAT WILL BE MY NEXT BOOK?

Day 61 of the Lower Puna Eruption and the flow continues.  Before this activity, the area got 10 tiny earthquakes/day.  Now something like 600/day, and some not so small.  Today, read about life in Volcano village.   Here are some frequently asked questions, with responses from the USGS.

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I was interested in who visits this site from around the world, and here is the latest tally as of an hour ago of the ten top countries that have the most links, followed by a few others:

COUNTRY       LAST VISIT

USA                 12 seconds ago 

UK                    7 hours ago

Canada            4 hours ago

Germany          9 hours ago

India                 23 hours ago

France             June 16, 2018

Australia          11 hours ago

 plus some other countries

Japan               9 hours ago

Italy                  12 hours ago

Thailand           9 hours ago

Indonesia         23 hours ago

Malaysia           19 hour ago

Chile                 5 hours ago

European Un.   13 hours ago

Russia              9 hours ago

Switzerland      10 hours ago

New Zealand   10 hours ago

Chile                22 hours ago

Slovenia           56 minutes ago

Tanzania          11 hours ago

Samoa             11 hours ago

   

Thus, this blog site is in daily contact with a good part of the world.  221 entities (Antarctica, for example, is counted as a domain) have visited SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY.

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I've been involved with a series of books since the mid-1970's.  First came Solar Wind Handbook for Hawaii, co-authored by Waqidi Falicoff (who was then in the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii) and George Koide (who was in the Engineering School on the Hilo Campus of the UH).  If you go to Amazon, you can actually buy a used copy of this book for $20.09.

Then, one of my classes I taught in Technology & Society was so progressive, that they actually crafted a book that was published through funds from the National Science Foundation.  That was the best group of students I ever had.  Seventy of them in the mid-seventies, and they also got funded by county governments to present our case on Energy Self Sufficiency for the State of Hawaii to high school classes throughout the state.  Fifteen years later I co-authored a paper for Energy published by Elsevier entitled A Case Study of Renewable Energy for Hawaii.

Next in the later 90's was Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, a textbook published by Wiley, co-authored with Andrew Trenka, for the UNESCO Energy Engineering Learning Programme. You can buy a new copy from Amazon today for $177.30.

IN 2003 came another UNESCO effort entitled:

Energy from the Sea:  the Potential and realities of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

This publication was based on a lecture I provided to UNESCO in Paris.

Then, after I retired, I used my campus office to write three books, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, and SIMPLE SOLUTION ESSAYS:

Here is the Star Advertiser's best sellers list for May of ...guess what year?

I've been serializing a first draft of Pearl's Ashes, with the Introduction appearing on 28 December 2016.    I'm now up to Chapter 25, La Mer, and there are only a very few chapters left.  This will never become a hardback because photos are very, very expensive to publish.  But there will be an e-book.

Then, of course, I spent ten days last month developing Six Hours to Seattle (posts in reverse chronological order):

• FIVE HOURS TO LOS ANGELES?
• ALASKA: Earthquakes, Auroras and Cabbages
• THE BEST OF ANCHORAGE
• NOT DOING MUCH IN ANCHORAGE
• SIX HOURS TO ANCHORAGE: The Longest Night?
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Space Needle and Chihuly Gl...
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Victoria
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Seattle is Hot
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Life on the Waterfront
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hilo and Seattle Okay
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Journey Begins
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Speculative Science
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Mega Tsunamis
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hint of What is to Come

I'm glad I took that trip because Seattle is no longer a target city.  Neither is Anchorage.  Perhaps I'll return to Five Hours to Los Angeles, my original title.  However the benefit of that trip was that the plot of a mega-tsunami generated by Hilo falling into the ocean has been augmented by a triggering of a mega-earthquake at the Cascadia Subduction Zone, followed by just the right amount of jiggling for the San Andreas to fall into the Pacific Ocean, leading to a mega-tsunami headed for Tokyo.  However, that combination is so preposterous that I have placed this effort into a state of gestation to evolve into something more reasonable.  Unless Steven Spielberg calls me for a movie script abstract.

That leaves a novel (I'm through with engineering-type books) on the Blue Revolution, or The Venus Syndrome, a worst case scenario for global warming.  Here is what this publication might look like, from The Huffington Post.  As the mega-tsunami or global warming subjects are too, too apocalyptic, I'm now leaning in the direction of the Blue Revolution, for here, the theme will focus on sustainable development for Humanity in harmony with the natural marine environment.  So to answer the question posed above?  I don't know.

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In the East Pacific, Hurricane Fabio will weaken over time and not threaten Hawaii.  In the Orient, Tropical Storm Prapiroon will entirely miss South Korea and bring some rain to Japan.

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JURASSIC PARK #5

Day 60 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the latest development is a potential governmental ban on future homes near dangerous rift zones on the Big Island.  Might as well add geothermal energy facilities, which could then totally eliminate a non-fossil/nuclear electricity option that is ranked #1 in least cost of production.  But I have a simple solution to that problem which I'll share in a later post.

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I should have published today's blog subject yesterday, for Showtime on channel 1633 in Spectrum Honolulu began showing at 7:30 this morning Jurassic Park (1993--Can you believe this was a quarter century ago?) followed at 9:45 by The Lost World:  Jurassic Park (1997), then at 12 noon, Jurassic Park III (2001). Anyway, there are now five in this series, Jurassic World (2015) and, Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom (2018), which I saw yesterday.  Tomatometer provides the following ratings, with box office revenues by The Numbers (in billions)

• Jurassic Park                                   92%   $1.038
• Jurassic World                                 71%   $1.619
• The Lost World - Jurassic Park      53%   $0.619
• Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom   51%   $0.815...so far
• Jurassic Park III                               50%   $0.181

This series all began with with Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, written in 1990, his third novel.  Remember the first?  The Andromeda Strain (1969).  Crichton's books sold over 200 million copies, with a dozen adapted into films.  

What a life:  Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, lectured at Cambridge, earned a medical degree from Harvard, worked for the Salk Institute, but never actually became a practicing doctor, for he decided to focus on becoming an author.  He was 6 feet 9 inches tall and died a decade ago at the age of 66.  He had two pseudonyms related to his height:  John Lange (his real first name was John, and lange in German is long) and Jeffrey Hudson, who was a dwarf in the court of Charles I.

Oh, JP#5?  Okay, about what the Tomatometer gave.  The next?  Jurassic World 3 for release on June 11, 2021, with executive producer Steven Spielberg, and again starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Of course you must know that she is the eldest daughter of Opie, more commonly known these days as director Ron Howard.  Except for the hair part, there is a resemblance.  Surely Chris and Bryce will finally find each other by this third film.

If you don't plan to see Jurassic Park 5, but might want to see #6, read this spoiler piece that summarizes what happened at the end of Fallen Kingdom and speculates on the next sequel.

Think Planet of the Apes (which was released in 1968 and got a good 89% RT rating--there were nine of them, and the latest, in 2017, entitled War for the Planet of the Apes, 93% RT rating).  

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There are three ocean storms, and the one that worries me, but only a little bit, for while Fabio is projected to attain Category 4 strength and head for the general direction of Hawaii, the waters around our state are cold enough that he will weaken before getting close:

In the West Pacific Tropical Storm Prapiroon will become a typhoon and threaten Cheju Island and Pusan:

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