Observations

This weekend we had the opportunity to watch the annual closing ceremony of a Portland dance academy. Our friends’ daughter is part of that school along with way over one hundred children and also some adults that take classes there. Some of the older kids – high school juniors and high school seniors – perform […]

The way companies deal with phone inquiries has become a differentiation claimed in advertising. The ads mostly distinguish automated answering systems versus real people taking the call. I do believe that this is an area of application where artificial intelligence will eventually gain traction in the future since the scope of the activities and their

Attached to an article about the very recent protests at Columbia university was a short video depicting scenes of the demonstration including the police engaging the protesters after announcing the event was not legal. While there was not too much detail to be discerned from the tussle between the police and the protesters – the

Last night I got hung up on a game show on TV – it was called “The wall”. I had never seen it before and was curious as to its schema. In essence it is a trivia show with a contraption like a pin ball machine, except the user cannot influence the trajectory of the

Over the last week I listened to the audiobook “The expendables” by the economist Jeff Rubin. This book offers analysis and insights into the history of free trade and its impact on local economies. It triggers a lot of thoughts, and I will try to capture mine at a later point in time. One particular

The action of the German government to designate the party AFD (Alternative for Germany) an extreme right-wing organization triggered a broad range of domestic and international responses. Officials from the US also chimed in. Our vice president JD Vance posted on X that day: “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has

In conjunction with a recent sports injury, I unearthed an old pair of crutches that we still had in storage from an incident many years ago that required walking assistance. They were in good shape with a small exception – here the hand grips had somewhat disintegrated over the long period of time since the

Reading several books in the field of psychology I noticed that authors regularly address their readership with notes highlighting the method of research and by doing so express their intent to interest readers from all walks of life here, including from a broad political spectrum. Most recently in a book the author demonstrated that his

On our balcony we can regularly observe little birds – turns out they are house finches. The male species have nicely colored red heads. Previously I saw them sitting on the railing hopping around and then taking off again. This time I was observing them from a different angle, and I noticed that they are

Most recently we visited our granddaughter – she is now two and a half months old. It is an ongoing wonder to see her grow in between our visits. This time our daughter put her on her belly, and we got to see how she can prop up and already hold up her head.  She