Weekend Whats

Weekend Edition

What to Rock: Anyone who tells you rock is dead doesn't listen to Royal Blood. The dynamic duo is back with a new album, a hint of disco added to their sound, and a must listen. Check out Typhoons. This is the rock band that old school rockers love.

What to Book: I got an advance copy of The End of the Golden Gate, a collection of essays from writers on loving and (sometimes) leaving San Francisco. It's an excellent book and it couldn't be more timely. It features 25 acclaimed writers taking on the Bay Area-dweller's eternal conflict: Should I stay or should I go? (To paraphrase the Clash: If I go, there will be trouble, And if I stay it will cost me double.)

What to Carb: Unlike most Americans, I didn't rediscover carbs during the pandemic. I have remained true to pasta. And I'm pretty sure I just started boiling the best pasta brand I've tried. It's called Mancini, and my pot runneth over.

What to Promote: The promise of life not doing it for you? How about a donut? Free beer, pot and doughnuts. Savings bonds. A chance to win an all-terrain vehicle. Places around the U.S. are offering incentives to try to energize the nation's slowing vaccination drive and get Americans to roll up their sleeves. These relatively small corporate promotion efforts have been accompanied by more serious and far-reaching attempts by officials in cities such as Detroit, where they're offering $50 to people who give others a ride to vaccination sites. Chicago is sending specially equipped buses into neighborhoods to deliver vaccines. Public health officials say the efforts are crucial to reach people who haven't been immunized yet.

What to Spend: Counting the coronavirus stimulus plan approved earlier this year, President Biden has now proposed more than $5 trillion in new spending initiatives over the next decade—far more than Clinton or Obama ever offered—to be partially paid for by tax increases on corporations and affluent families. On cultural and social issues, Democrats are likewise pursuing a much more ambitious lineup than Clinton or Obama did. Should be an interesting 2022 election year. The Thing is lurking.

What to Read: John Grisham has spent the past 30 years churning out legal thrillers and courtroom dramas. His next act: A basketball novel.

 "Sooley" (available now) tells the story of 17-year-old Samuel Sooleymon, who leaves his family behind in a Sudanese refugee camp to chase his dreams of playing college basketball.

This is book No. 46 for Grisham, who hasn't gone a year without publishing a book since first releasing "The Firm" in 1991. Wild.

On the Rink Rats Book List.

What to Eat: Live in the Claremont, California area, crave a Chicago Dog or Wisconsin Brat, perhaps a Labatt Blue to wash it down? Well, “Windy C’s” 353 W. Bonita Avenue in Claremont is your place.

It is nice to visit a restaurant again (after fourteen months). The menu is decent Chicago Dogs, chili dogs, brats, onion rings and the usual. All worth a try. The service, not so good. The owner never smiles (must be a Chicago Bear fan) and no thank you for coming or giving them some business. Clean up the consumer relations and this place is a go.

Finally, after a year and a half: Rink Rats rating from 1 to 10 with 10 being Hoot Owl like: We give “Windy C’s” a six. Good food, ambiance is like visiting Mar-a-Lago with a “I love Joe” hat.

 

BOOK EM’ DANNO - Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump's personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani's electronic devices. Rudy Giuliani's Apartment Searched in Federal Investigation. Hmm. This is odd. Rudy never struck me as a guy who might be up to something unsavory.

 

FEEL GOOD FRIDAY - There was a time I needed a helping hand. They gave us an opportunity to get back on our feet. So it is my job to give back." Steelers Draft Pick Najee Harris Hosts Draft Party at Homeless Shelter Where He Used to Live.

Number of Americans fully vaccinated tops 100 million.

CVS to offer in-store mental health counseling.

Arab towns offer food, drink to Meron survivors; hundreds give blood in Tel Aviv.

Number of children held in Border Patrol facilities drops 84% since peak last month.

Crazy odds: Minneapolis mom gives birth to three kids, each two years apart, all on the same day. (I'm guessing the dad's birthday is exactly nine months before this date.)

 

PANDEMIC UPDATE - More Brazilians have died from the virus in the first four months of this year than in all of 2020, with the death toll having jumped from 300,000 to 400,000 in the past five weeks alone. Brazil's COVID-19 Deaths Top 400,000 Amid Fears Of Worsening Crisis.

As cases in India surge faster than anywhere in the world, Indians struggle to care for their family members who have COVID and mourn lost loved ones." Photos Show How Dire The Coronavirus Surge In India Is. (The numbers in India are likely being undercounted, but when you look at the disasters in India and Brazil, keep in mind that America had worse numbers under a president who called the virus a hoax.)

HEAD FOR THE LINKS - Watching the Masters on television usually makes golfers itchy to get on the course themselves. That may be especially true this year. The pandemic created a boom in golf participation, with about a half a million more players hitting the links last year as a safe escape from the drudgery of lockdown. But what happens when things get back to normal?

The industry has a lot of ideas for how to capitalize on the game's revival over the past year. Maybe golf becomes less formal and more social. Maybe it loosens the rules or even shortens the game by creating courses with fewer than 18, or even nine, holes.  We also talk to outgoing USGA chief executive Mike Davis about the biggest issues facing the game, such as how to make golf courses sustainable both financially and environmentally.

Golf is also angling for new ways to engage you on and off the course. All sorts of new tech is available that generates data to help you analyze—or, more likely, overanalyze—every aspect of your own game. We test-drove AI apps that aim to teach you to swing the club better, and found some workouts that will help you prepare physically for your round.

If you're at home, new technology is being rolled out to personalize the viewing experience, enabling fans to follow any player they choose through all four rounds of a tournament if they like. And then there's the gambling. The game used to scold players for wagering. Now the PGA Tour is aiming to capitalize on the legalization of sports betting that has swept across the U.S.

 

CENSUS - The U.S. population over the last decade grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau said.

With immigration leveling off and a birthrate on the decline, the nation may be entering an era of substantially lower growth, demographers said.

The total population was 331,449,281 in 2020, up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade. The South and the West drew Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold-weather states in the East and the Midwest. The newly released data also underscores America's slowed growth and aging population, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

Stagnating population growth, in small part due to the pandemic, means the U.S. should take "a serious look at our immigration policy going forward," he said.

Utah was the fastest-growing state. Three states lost populations, with West Virginia's population declining at the fastest rate.

The Census Bureau data is used to reapportion seats in Congress, based on new state population counts. Six states gained congressional seats: Colorado, Florida, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Texas gained two seats (ugh). California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and West Virginia lost seats.

MARKET WEEK - The average used vehicle is now worth $17,609, but trade-ins are becoming very difficult.

Normally, dealers buy an old vehicle at a discount to what it's worth and hope to sell it at a profit.

Now, they need to worry that the whole market will crash from its current frothy highs.

Three huge shortages as we come out of the pandemic: (1) Microchips; causing havoc in the automobile industry. (2) Ketchup packets; home takeout dining over the pandemic has made the supply of ketchup packets exceptionally low. (3)  Toilet paper; early in the pandemic, toilet paper inexplicably became the hottest product in America overnight. Some stores went weeks without TP on the shelves. Eventually, the situation sorted itself out.

But now, toilet paper is on the brink of becoming scarce again.

The culprit this time is the shortage of shipping containers. Wood pulp is used to make bath tissue, but the lack of containers means there could soon be supply issues, according to Suzano SA, the biggest producer of wood pulp.

Big Tech crushed earnings reports this week, and shows no sign of slowing down:

Facebook stock hit an all-time high Wednesday after reporting a whopping 48% revenue growth over the previous year.

Apple earnings blew past Wall Street estimates, as sales of the iPhone, Mac and iPad all came in far ahead of expectations.

Amazon eclipsed analyst expectations for both earnings and revenue on Thursday, as sales surged 44% year-over-year.

Microsoft crushed Wall Street expectations and posted its highest revenue growth since 2018.

Google's parent, Alphabet, reported a record profit last quarter. Its video arm, YouTube, brought in a whopping $6 billion in revenue last quarter — more than Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest combined.

Snapchat beat Wall Street expectations on subscriber growth, earnings and revenue, while also reporting that usage of its AR products hit an all-time high.

Recovery: Consumer and govt. spending fueled 6.4% GDP growth last quarter, the second-fastest pace for economic growth since 2003.

Control: China ordered 13 companies, including TikTok-owner ByteDance and Tencent, to follow much tighter regulation.

Crypto: Ether, the world’s second-largest digital currency, surged to a record high yesterday as Bitcoin's dominance declined.

IPO: UFC's parent company Endeavor saw its shares pop on its first day of trading (fun fact: Ari Gold from Entourage was based on Endeavor's CEO).

 

LA LA LAND - Californians hoping to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office have met the state's minimum number of valid signatures to push a recall election forward this fall.

County officials have verified 1,626,042 signatures, according to the California secretary of state's website. Recall backers needed at least 1,495,709 valid signatures to qualify, which represents 12% of the votes cast in the state's last gubernatorial election.

Newsom has already formed a political offensive to fight the recall, saying the effort is a partisan attempt by Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump to wrest power from his majority-Democratic state.

 

100 DAYS - President Biden spent his first 100 days trying to engineer the end of the coronavirus and the start of a job boom. The next 100 are more audacious and risky: Try to re-engineer the very fundamentals of America — inequality, voting rights and government's role in directing economic growth.

So look for Biden to court Republicans, but not yield to them, as he pushes a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, to be followed by $1.5 trillion for his American Families Plan — including child care, paid family leave, universal pre-K and free community college.

It's the unspoken Biden formula: Talk like a rosy bipartisan; act like a ruthless partisan.

The Biden next-100-day agenda is more activist than most expected. But, three data-backed trends have encouraged his team to push the envelope:

(1). His poll numbers are strong.

(2). The economy is growing — and many think it's poised for an historic boom. In Biden's address to Congress on Wednesday night, look for him to point to the recovery as a vindication of his strategy so far.

(3). Corporations are cutting off, or cutting down, money to the GOP, which has been forced to find other sources of cash. And CEOs are taking public stands that sound a lot more like Biden than Trump.

 

OUCH - For the film industry, which was already fighting to hold its place at the center of American culture, the Nielsen ratings for Sunday night’s 93rd Academy Awards came as a body blow: About 9.85 million people watched the telecast, a 58 percent plunge from last year’s record low.

Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen released on Monday. Nielsen’s final numbers are expected on Tuesday and will include out-of-home viewing and some streaming statistics.

Many factors have been undercutting the ratings, starting with the delivery route. Old broadcast networks like ABC are no longer that relevant, especially to young people. (One awards show that is actually growing is the Game Awards, which celebrates the best video games of the year and is streamed on platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Twitter.)

Increasingly, the ceremonies are less about entertainment honors and more about civic issues and progressive politics, which inevitably annoys half the audience.

Like every Academy Awards show, this one brought out a variety of opinions from viewers and reviewers. It was a year when small films took the big awards, so it makes sense that the awards show was more intimate as well. Overall, I liked most of the changes and thought the show seemed more real and personal, which makes perfect sense following year that was all too real and personal. Among the highlights: Yuh-Jung Youn's acceptance speech for best supporting actress for her role as the grandmother in Minari. The moving speech by director Thomas Vinterberg who lost his daughter during the filming of the best International Feature Film, Denmark's Another Round. And, of course, Glenn Close dancing to Da Butt, which moved this exchange down to her second greatest television moment. Meanwhile, Frances McDormand howled like a wolf (which made my beagles howl back), and the show switched around the awards to present best actor last, to create an emotional Chadwick Boseman win, only to find that Anthony Hopkins won the award. He wasn't there, so Joaquin Phoenix had to accept on his behalf. But really, there's no better way to mark a return to normal than Joaquin Phoenix being weird.

 

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this weekend to Megan Granquist …famous long-distance runner, Dave Keon (81), Jerry Seinfeld (67), William Shatner (91), Kathryn Tappen (40), Julie Wright …famous educator, Robin Wright (55), Joe Zanetta …the Mayor of Palm Springs.

 

CHRONICLES OF HIGHER EDUCATION - The California State University System and University of California System will require vaccinations for all constituents at the start of the fall semester or upon the full approval of one or more vaccine, whichever occurs later.

More than 240,000 cases of Covid-19 have been linked to American colleges since January 1, and more than 660,000 cases have been reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

The American College Health Association is recommending that Covid-19 vaccinations be required for all on-campus students, and more than 180 colleges have set such a mandate.

PLAYOFFS - The Pittsburgh Penguins clinched a playoff berth for the 15th consecutive season, the longest active streak in the five major North American sports leagues.

Longest active playoff streaks:

🏒 NHL: Penguins (15)

⚽️ MLS: Sounders (12)

⚾️ MLB: Dodgers (8)

🏀 NBA: Raptors, Trail Blazers (7)

🏈 NFL: Chiefs (6)

Longest active playoff droughts:

⚾️ MLB: Mariners (19)

🏀 NBA: Kings (14)

🏈 NFL: Jets (10)

🏒 NHL: Sabres (9)

⚽️ MLS: Fire, Dynamo, Whitecaps (3)

 

DETROIT SPORTS – Depressing times in Deeeetroit:

As of today – April 30

Detroit Tigers (MLB) the worst record in the league (8-18)

Detroit Pistons (NBA) the second worst record in the league (19-44). Thank you, Houston (16-47),

Detroit Red Wings (NHL) eighth worst record in the league (17-26-9), though a better record than the two L.A. teams.

Michigan Wolverine Football – still Jim Harbaugh is coach.

Michigan State Athletics – still haunted by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.

Time to head to the Anchor Bar (450 W. Fort Street, Detroit) and yes, they are serving!

 

CONGRATS TO THE SAINTS – Let us not get too excited since there were only three teams out of twelve playing at the end of the season. The St. Lawrence men's hockey team won the ECAC Hockey title and the Whitelaw Cup (their seventh conference crown) with a pair of thrilling overtime victories in the conference playoffs, defeating Colgate 5-4 in the semifinals at Appleton Arena before toppling top-seeded Quinnipiac, 3-2, in the finals. The championship comes in Charles W. Appleton II Head Men's Hockey Coach Brent Brekke's second season at St. Lawrence.

Good job boys but do not get big heads over this one. BTW what happened to Clarkson?

 

 SWAMI’S WEEKEND TOP PICKS –

147th Kentucky Derby – Saturday 5/1, 6:57 PM (EDT), NBC:

1). Known Agenda: 6/1, Todd Pletcher, Iran Ortiz, Jr.

2). Hot Rod Charlie: 8/1, Doug O’Neil, Flavin Prat

3). Sainthood: 50/1, Todd Pletcher, Corey Lanerie

4). Essential Quality, 2/1, Brad Cox, Luis Saez

SCIAC Game of the Week – Saturday 5/1, 11:00 AM (PDT), LVTV-3: It is okay now to play some baseball in the SCIAC (D-III). #2 Chapman University Argyros (2-1) vs. University of LA Verne Leopards (0-0). The Leopards led by Drew Reddick, Brandon Shiota, Tanner Siffert, Matthew Diaz, Sean Holt, Nicolas Skardutos, and Aaron Fong – all with outstanding business skills begin the 2021 season against nationally ranked Chapman University. Too bad we cannot take in the game at Ben Hines Field. The Swami likes La Verne to upset the Argyros, 6 – 5.

Season to Date (21-10)

 

Next Blog:  Who Cares?

 

Until Monday May 10, 2021 Adios.

Claremont, California

April 30, 2021

#XI-31-437

 

3,152 words, six-minute read

CARTOON OF THE WEEKEND – Mallard Fillmore

 

RINK RATS WEEKEND POLL – This first weekend of May, what is on the grill?

____ burgers

____ hot dogs and brats

____ fish

____ steak

____ veggies

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: “Climate change kills jobs. Clean energy saves and creates them. Climate deniers who say otherwise are as dumb as doo-doo.” – Jerry Brown

 

 

 

Rink Rats is a blog of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.

Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010

Our Eleventh Year.

www.rhasserinkrats.blogspot.com

 

March Madness MMXXI

 Weekend Edition

Take me out to the ball game, Take me out with the crowd ... April Fools. Yes, it's Baseball's opening day. And yes, stadiums are admitting limited numbers of fans to return to the stands in the first sign of sports normalcy we've had in a long time. But things aren't quite the same at the old ball game. Thursday night's Opening Day matchup between the New York Mets and Washington Nationals has been postponed because of a positive Covid-19 test. Suddenly, the line, "I don't care if I never get back" sounds as ominous as it did last season.

Speaking of March Madness, this reporter has two teams in the NCAA Basketball Final Four, but both lose in the semi-final in my bracket.

More madness, President Biden is being criticized by the right for using notes. Which I do when teaching, and President Reagan did. The Thing didn’t use notes and lied on average 21 x a day. I am for the notes.

LA CHARGERS BROKE? - The fate of an NFL team — and maybe Jeff Bezos’ potential future in the league — hangs on a family dispute.

Dea Spanos Berberian, sister of L.A. Chargers controlling owner Dean Spanos, filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday to force a sale of the team, saying there is no way it can pay off its debts. Berberian, Spanos, and two of their siblings each own 15% of the team, with another 36% in a family trust. The family has owned the team since 1984.

The petition mentions a potential new owner: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos is known to be interested in purchasing an NFL team and was linked to sale talks surrounding the Washington Football Team, a fact that the petition noted. The petition says that “the Chargers could be a perfect opportunity” for Bezos.

Berberian claims that the trust’s debts and expenses top $353 million, and that there is no plan for how it will pay the more than $22 million that it pledged to charities.

Spanos and the other two siblings with a stake in the team fired back with a letter on Thursday calling Berberian’s plan a “misguided personal agenda” and saying they were prepared to purchase her stake in the team if she no longer wanted it.

The team’s 2017 move from San Diego to L.A. came with substantial challenges. The team had to pay the NFL a $650 million relocation fee, share a stadium with the Rams, leave a fanbase it had developed over 56 years, and start fresh with a city that already had an NFL team.

COVID-19: Sure, the vaccines were created in record time and have proven wildly effective. But will they stand the test of time? So far, yes. "Pfizer says its vaccine is preventing 91% of coronavirus cases in the six months after people are immunized. And a separate study shows even people in their 80s and 90s are producing impressive levels of antibodies after receiving both doses of the vaccine."

WHO’S ON WORST? - There are many awards given out for poor performances. The Golden Mullet Award goes to the worst video game. The Golden Raspberry Award goes to the worst movie. The Ig Nobel Prize goes to the most questionable scientific achievement. There's even a Bad Sex in Fiction Award (which is only coveted less than the bad sex in non-fiction award). But like positive competitions, no one ever remembers who came in second place. While America may have had among the worst responses to Covid-19, it's not at all clear that we'll take the prize. Which world leader has the worst pandemic record? The competition is fierce. "It's hard to top the response of Nicaragua's near-eternal President Daniel Ortega and his wife, who responded to news of a pandemic by calling people into the streets for a festive parade they called 'Love in the Time of Covid-19' - a perversely fitting allusion to the work of Gabriel García Márquez, whose novels seamlessly blend fact and hallucination. The reckless move horrified human rights activists and scientists alike. Hard to top it is, but not impossible." But fear not. American exceptionalism isn't entirely dead. During the pandemic, we know we took the 2020 Foot in Mouth Award ("given every year to a famous person for a particularly baffling comment") many times over.

Still in the hunt for the title of worst Covid leader: Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is facing the biggest crisis of his presidency after the heads of the army, navy and air force all quit and the country recorded its highest daily Covid-19 death toll.

MOVIN’ ON UP - Inactivity is currently the world's fourth leading cause of death. It's a problem often confused and conflated with laziness and personal choice, but in reality the issue is geographic, systemic, and woven into the structure of modern living. Inactivity kills millions, but movement is the ‘miracle pill' that could save people and planet. Time for a walk.

OFFICE OURS - Some employees are permanently moving to remote work, and companies are puzzling over how to give them the same ability to participate as those who are physically present. There are even early discussions about using artificial intelligence to conjure up holographic representations of employees who are off site but could still take a seat at the table.

The hybrid office is here to stay. The shift could be more disruptive than the move to all-remote work. 

What I'm hearing from small businesses, medium-sized businesses and large business is that wherever possible right now, they're looking for ways to use technology more than in the past to run leaner, and to be more efficient.

FINANCE 101 – Teens call for more personal finance education to bridge the economic opportunity gap in America, reports CNBC. Understanding how to navigate the U.S. financial system is important and today’s teenagers see an opportunity gap – 61% believe people are paid less based on race, ethnicity and gender, and 69% said people have a harder time getting financial support to stat a business due to the same characteristics. 

ACCOUNTING 101 – FASB said the SEC has accepted the latest updates to the GAAP Taxonomy for filing financial statements in XBRL with the latest accounting standards and they’re available online now. The NHL, NWSL, and the UFC, all agree.  

FIX IT - What 7-Eleven did to fountain soda, President Biden wants to do to US infrastructure.

Yesterday, Biden laid out his Big Gulp idea: a $2.3 trillion plan to revamp the country’s roads, bridges, trains, schools, housing, electric grid, and lots more. 

Not sure if we mentioned this but the plan is large: The administration said it’d be the biggest federal investment program since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system of the late 1950s and the Space Race of the 1960s. 

The details 

Four-part plans like these are what bullet points were made for:

$620 billion for transportation projects such as transit, roads, airports, and more. That also includes $174 billion for electric vehicles. 

$650 billion to improve your life at home, like investments in high-speed broadband and the electric grid.

$580 billion for manufacturing, because we know how much the supply chain needs support.

$400 billion to caregiving efforts for the elderly and those with disabilities.

Given the size of the bill, the WH can’t just put its card down and Venmo everyone later. To help pay for it, Biden wants to bump up the corporate tax from 21% to 28% and close other tax loopholes.

But that’s not good enough for many Republicans, who slammed the bill as a “Trojan horse” for tax hikes.

Biden sees this plan as addressing two malarkies in particular: the climate crisis and the growing ambitions of autocratic China.

For the climate, the plan would be the most far-reaching federal investment to date in programs that would help curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Investments in semiconductor production and other cutting-edge research are intended to match China’s burgeoning tech muscles. 

Looking ahead…this is DC, after all, so gear up for a nasty legislative fight over the spring.

President Biden will introduce Part 2 of his economic spending proposal in the next few weeks, called the American Family Plan. This one will focus on “social infrastructure,” including childcare relief and aid to low-income Americans.

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this weekend to Alec Baldwin (63), Eddie Murphy (60).

SCIENCE 101 - Politicians, the public and scientists are increasingly paying attention to the danger solar storms pose for life on Earth and off of it.

Solar storms can wreak havoc on our modern, technology-dependent way of life.

The most extreme events can overload satellites, harm astronauts in space and bring down electrical grids around the world.

But even a quiet Sun can harm the electrical grid through normal wear and tear.

"It's not necessarily about catastrophic failure, but it just decreases the lifetime of the infrastructure, which costs money in the long run," says Alexa Halford, a solar scientist at NASA.

 The Sun has been particularly quiet over the last two decades. In that time, hundreds of new satellites have been launched to orbit, possibly presenting new challenges if the Sun's activity increases.

It's not clear exactly how a more active solar cycle might affect new satellites in orbit today, experts say, raising concerns about the risk of creating new space junk.

Not all companies readily share information about how their satellites are negatively impacted by space weather with the government, due to concerns about competition, giving forecasters and scientists incomplete or limited information to go on.

As NASA works to send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years, space weather prediction and protection will also need to take center stage for the space agency.

Radiation emitted by the Sun during solar storms could harm people outside of Earth's atmosphere, as they don't have the full protection of the planet's magnetic field.

NASA is expected to send a shelter to the Moon to protect astronauts in case of a solar storm, but it takes about 30 minutes to get the tent set up, so having some kind of early warning forecasting in place will be key for safety.

"If you're really serious about Artemis and the road to Mars, you need to be setting up a safety net on space weather in parallel, and you can't wait to the last minute," Scott McIntosh, deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said.

ON THIS DATE – This young man met for the first time his hockey idols. Left to right: Red Kelly, Terry Sawchuk, young man, Gordie Howe. The location: The Varsity Shop, Birmingham Michigan.

EASTER RECIPE - DEVILED EGGS

I used to get so mad when I would boil a dozen eggs and when it came time to remove the shells, they took half of the egg with it. Please tell me this has happened to you.

Fortunately, I finally figured out how to hard boil the perfect egg. Today I am sharing my exact, fool proof method to hard boiled eggs. What is an Easter without a deviled egg????

I am also sharing the Best Deviled Eggs Recipe which includes my secret ingredient!

There are theories all over the internet debating fresh eggs vs. older eggs, steaming eggs vs. boiling eggs, peeling hot vs. peeling cold eggs, starting eggs in cold water and bring to a boil, the list goes on and on.

After years and years of making deviled eggs, I have found a method that is pretty foolproof. 

PREP TIME

10 minutes

COOK TIME

12 minutes

TOTAL TIME

22 minutes

Ingredients

one dozen eggs

Start with a dozen eggs. It doesn’t matter if your eggs are fresh or older. Pull them out of the refrigerator and place on counter so that they will lose their chill;

Fill a large stock pot with water; Bring the water to a boil (I don’t add anything to the water, no salt, etc);

Once the water is boiling and the eggs have lost their chill, using a ladle, gently ladle the eggs, one at a time into the boiling water. Be careful not to crack the eggs. Eggs with cracks will spill their whites into the water, so inspect them for cracks prior to lowering into the boiling water; 

Do not cook more than a dozen eggs at a time. The water to egg ratio is important for cooking the egg through to doneness; I may have made this up, but it makes sense to me. The reason this method delivers easily peeled eggs is this; as the egg is lowered into the boiling water, the shock of the heat creates a quick membrane inside the shell. This membrane is what makes the egg easily peelable.

Boil eggs for approximately 12 minutes;

Turn heat off and drain eggs into a colander in the sink (I use a colander insert in my stock pot so that I just remove the colander from the pot);

Run cool water over the eggs to stop the cooking process;

Once eggs are cooled, easily peel them.

These really is the best deviled eggs recipe ever.

PREP TIME

20 minutes

TOTAL TIME

20 minutes

Ingredients

1 dozen hard boiled eggs

¾ cup Mayonnaise

1 TBL Yellow Mustard

½ cup Durkee Famous Sauce (this is the secret ingredient that makes these eggs so amazing!) If you can’t find Durkee Famous Sauce at your local market (mine no longer carries it), you can order it on Amazon! That’s where I get mine.

Hard boil one dozen eggs.

Once eggs are peeled, cut each egg in half lengthwise. Remove the egg yolks to a mixing bowl to mix with the other ingredients and place the egg whites onto the deviled egg platters. 

Start with the mayonnaise. This is the condiment which leads to the creamy texture of the deviled egg.

Add the yellow mustard and Durkee Famous Sauce to the bowl.

Using a hand blender or hand mixer, blend the eggs yolks, mayonnaise, mustard and Durkee Famous Sauce until smooth and lump free. The volume of the egg yolks will have increased substantially. 

I use my cake decorating kit to pipe the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites so that it looks pretty. Start by fitting the bag onto the tip. Place the tip end of the bag into a medium sized mason jar or glass. This keeps the bag standing upright and any filling leakage in the jar/glass. Use a spatula to spoon the egg filling into the decorating bag. Start by filling the egg in a circular motion, gently squeezing the bag until the egg is filled. When filled, stop gently squeezing the bag and lift the tip away from the egg, moving to the next egg white. You can just use a teaspoon and spoon it in if you prefer.

Fill all of the egg whites with the egg yolk mixture (you will probably have leftover egg yolk mixture, this is really good as a tea sandwich filling!)

In case you are wondering, I do not garnish my deviled eggs with paprika. Of course, you can if you like. I prefer to either serve mine plain, or garnish with crumbled bacon. Some serve deviled eggs with caviar or fish roe. Someday I might be grown up enough to like caviar, but today is not that day!

The term deviled egg comes from an 18th-century culinary term that used to describe  a highly seasoned dish. Over the years the term deviled has grown to include spicy, condiment-filled dishes, as well. This was exhausting…time for a beer with my eggs.

OPENING DAY DETROIT STYLE - For the first time since September 26, 2019, the Tigers will have fans in the stands for today's season opener. After months of preparation and collaboration with government and public health officials, the Tigers are thrilled to welcome fans back to Comerica Park. The stands are permitted to be filled at approximately 20 percent capacity (about 8,200 fans) to start the season.

Today's contest against the Indians marks the 121st Opening Day in Tigers history. The club enters action today with a 58-61-1 record the previous 120 openers. Detroit has won its season opener in seven of the last nine seasons. Since Comerica Park opened in 2000, the Tigers are 13-8 in home openers and have won 10 of their last 12.

Breaking News – Tigers won 3-2 over Cleveland. A two run first inning home run by Miguel Cabrera in the 32-degree snow flurries was the game difference.

THE SWAMI 2021 MLB PICKS –

American League Wild Card: White Sox, Blue Jays

Division Champs: Yankees, Twins, Astros

League Champs: Yankees

National League Wild Card: Mets, Padres

Division Champs: Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers

League Champs: Dodgers

World Series: Dodgers

MLB HAS AN IMAGE PROBLEM - MLB has the oldest fans among the major sports, with an average age of 57, according to a 2017 survey by Sports Business Journal. The average NBA, NHL, and NFL fans are 42, 49, and 50, respectively. 

First on the to-do list: quicken the pace of games. Baseball is bringing back two changes made for the 2020 season with that goal in mind. Doubleheader games will be seven innings, and extra innings will start with a runner on second base.

The league has also said it will crack down on pitchers using illegal substances to put more spin on the ball, perhaps seeking to stem strikeout rates, which have risen each year since 2005.

However, that is mere tinkering compared to the experimental rules that the minor leagues will use this year for a faster, more action-packed game. These include a pitch clock, limiting defensive shifts to allow for more hits, larger bases and limited pickoff attempts to encourage stolen base attempts, and an automated strike zone (yes, “robot umps”). 

The bigger issue may be cultural. While the NBA allows its players to show emotion and personality during games, players are regularly reprimanded for bat flips and other celebrations.

Fernando Tatis Jr., one of baseball’s most exciting players, was made to apologize for hitting a grand slam with a big lead late in one game last season.

There were positive signs last August: TV ratings were up amid a challenging year, boosted by younger demographics and female fans.

 

Next Blog:  Dear Rink Rats and Word of the Month

Until Monday April 12, 2021 Adios.

Claremont, California

April 1, 2021

#XI-30-436

3,198 words, six-minute read

 

CARTOON OF THE WEEKEND – Podcasts, The New Yorker

RINK RATS WEEKEND POLL – Where do you want to work after Covid?

____ Remote Full-time

____ 3+ days Remote

____ 2+ days Remote

____ 1 + days Remote

____ Office Full-time

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: “I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your daughter’s wedding day…And may your first child be a masculine child.” – Luca Brasi

Rink Rats is a blog of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.

Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010

Our Eleventh Year.

www.rhasserinkrats.blogspot.com

365 Days

 Happy St. Patrick’s Day – guess what I am doing today….

A year ago, on March 11, Rudy Gobert returned a positive COVID-19 test, triggering the sports shutdown of 2020.

The backdrop: During the week prior, the U.S. had surpassed 100 cases (March 2), the world had surpassed 100,000 (March 6) and sports leagues had closed their locker rooms to media members.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, and by the end of the night the NBA had suspended play indefinitely.

By March's end every major sporting event — including the Tokyo Olympics — had been either postponed or canceled, and nothing but uncertainty lay ahead.

April: The NFL and WNBA held virtual drafts, the XFL filed for bankruptcy, and Professional Bull Riding beat everyone to the punch with a 140-person bubble event.

May: Starved for sports, this was the month the faucet really turned back on. UFC and NASCAR resumed, "The Last Dance" entertained, and a charity golf event provided a welcome reprieve.

June: Athletes spoke out following George Floyd's death, NASCAR drivers stood in solidarity with Bubba Wallace, the PGA Tour returned in Texas and the NWSL Challenge Cup kicked off in Utah.

July: The NBA, WNBA, MLS and MLB all began or resumed their seasons, as we transitioned from the "No Sports Era" to the "No Fans Era."

August: The NHL returned with a Canadian "double-bubble," while Big Ten parents protested the postponement of fall sports. On Aug. 26, sports came to a halt, marking a monumental day in American history.

September: The NFL kicked off its season, the Stanley Cup champion Lightning kicked off Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg's epic run of success, and Naomi Osaka won her second U.S. Open.

October: The West Coast completed the October sweep, with the Lakers winning the NBA title, the Dodgers winning the World Series and the Storm winning the WNBA title.

November: Sports venues became polling centers, Dustin Johnson won a Masters unlike any other, and college hoops tipped off.

December: The NBA returned, and the Ravens and Steelers played on a Wednesday — the seventh and final day of the week to feature an NFL game in 2020.

January: Nick Saban and Alabama won another national title, the NHL returned, and the NCAA announced plans for an Indiana bubble.

February: Tom Brady won another battle with time, Tiger Woods crashed his car, and the Australian Open provided a glimpse of normalcy.

As we begin Year II of this pandemic a few thoughts and observations:

After a year of Zoom, Gloom, and Doom – a lot has changed. 520,000 plus of our fellow citizens are no longer with us, we have a new government, just as screwed up as the last. Our institutions still have leaders who have no clue what the word transparency means to strategy and management. 

I have saved more money but have not seen my Father in eighteen months. I have lost fifty pounds, one tooth, and two strokes off my golf handicap. 

I like cats more than a year ago, I dislike all the cable news operations, I enjoy reading a newspaper even more now than a year ago. I miss sitting at a bar, going to a movie, going to church, and visiting friends.

I trust students more than a year ago, and distrust those who make decisions that affect me, my family, and friends.

The most important figures of all: More than 118 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported worldwide, and more than 2.6 million deaths. Around 316 million vaccine doses have been administered so far.

In the U.S. alone, there have been more than 29 million cases, nearly 530,000 deaths and around 94 million doses administered.

The U.S. government is set to spend over $5 trillion on rescue programs.

President Donald Trump signed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act into law in late March 2020.

After Stimulus Round #1, Americans saved a record 33% of their disposable income in April 2020 (up from 8.2% in February). That was largely thanks to stimulus checks and boosted unemployment.

A follow-up bill worth $900 billion was enacted in December.

After Stimulus Round #2, personal income rose 10% in January, thanks to a fresh round of (smaller) checks. And consumer spending jumped more than 2%.

Congress approved a $1.9 trillion package this past week.

In addition to the fiscal stimulus, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and revved its money-printing powers to stabilize markets and support businesses. That nearly doubled its balance sheet, to more than $7.5 trillion.

The economic impact of the pandemic has been severe, most notably on the labor market: Despite recent gains, there are still 9.5 million fewer jobs in the U.S. than a year ago.

Over all, the economy has regained three-quarters of the sharp drop in output at the start of the pandemic, with forecasters expecting a full recovery later this year.

Rescue spending has blown out the deficit, which reached a record $3.1 trillion last fiscal year and is already running at more than $1 trillion five months into the current fiscal year.

All that spending has stoked fears about inflation, with a mountain of consumer savings bolstered by stimulus checks ready to be spent when businesses and travel reopens.

Expectations for a potential economic boom reflect the uneven impact of the pandemic, with some people and business prospering greatly and others seeing their incomes and revenue vanish overnight.

There were more than 600 big corporate bankruptcies last year, fewer than were recorded after the relatively milder 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P. Businesses already on the brink fell early on, like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and Hertz, while others managed to hold on thanks largely to the Fed keeping debt markets open and propping up asset prices.

Take the airlines. Despite a near standstill in travel, no major U.S. carrier went bankrupt. Three rounds of aid gave the airlines a cushion worth tens of billions of dollars, and they raised even more in the private markets.

Stocks whipsawed early on during the pandemic — and then largely climbed, raising increasingly pointed questions about whether the markets were divorced from economic reality. (Bonds have turned jittery for their own reasons.) The S&P 500 is up 42 percent from where it closed a year ago, while the Nasdaq is up 62 percent. The past year also saw some unexpected booms: SPACs became the hottest trend on Wall Street, since blank-check funds can be raised quickly and remotely. Nearly 500 SPACs have raised approximately $156 billion over the past year, according to SPAC Research.

Bitcoin went on a roller-coaster ride, though investors eventually latched onto it as a hedge against inflation — or just a speculative bet. Its price is up more than 600 percent from a year ago.

Retail traders became a formidable force, piling into the markets through apps like Robinhood and collaborating on internet forums like Reddit. They helped propel the rise of so-called meme stocks like GameStop: The video game store chain’s shares are up over 6,000 percent since last year, with wrenching day-to-day volatility.

So, I move forward to Year II, with a positive outlook but taking cautious steps into the future.

COLLEGE CHRONICLES - One year ago, the University of Washington took what seemed then like the extreme step of sending its students home. Ultimately, it canceled the rest of the in-person semester, a decision that ushered in a new pandemic reality for colleges across the country. Since then, the pandemic has left more than 500,000 Americans dead and put millions of people out of work. It has also upended the most minute parts of everyday college life.

 American adults with college degrees had a life expectancy three years longer than that of their peers without diplomas, according to a study by the University of Southern California and Princeton.

The pandemic has been enormously disruptive for all students. But for the more than one million international students enrolled in American colleges, it has been a vortex, flinging them to every part of the globe. Some, bound by academic obligations or blocked from returning home by travel restrictions, have remained in the United States, cut off from the support of family and longtime friends.

The challenges international students face is academic and financial, logistical and mental. Shifting visa policy has left students, both here and abroad, unsettled about their futures. Studying in a language other than their own, often — for those overseas — in the dead of night, compounds the challenges of remote learning.

New data show that undergraduate enrollment has dipped this term. After a federal advisory panel voted to revoke an accreditor's recognition, the agency's member colleges must make a tough choice. And one ed-tech company wants to help students avoid "performing poverty."

The spring term sees more enrollment losses.

New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, released on Thursday, provides an early look at enrollment in the spring semester, and reveals a trend that is now familiar in the wake of the pandemic: Fewer students are enrolled in college.

The preliminary data, which reflects enrollments as of February 11, show a 4.5-percent dip in undergraduate attendance this spring term, compared with the same period last year. Overall enrollment this term is down 2.9 percent.

Community colleges are still the most embattled sector of higher education, with a 9.5-percent decline in enrollment this spring, the same as last fall. There is a bright spot in graduate enrollment, which was up 4.3 percent this semester from the same time last year — despite a decline in international students — after seeing a 2.9 -percent increase last fall.

TAX SEASON BEGINS 2021 - The tax filing season opened on February 19, and with it comes a question different from other tax years: How will the stimulus payments and unemployment income affect taxes?

Because of the pandemic and the government’s relief program, millions of people received both types of payments — but they are treated differently for tax purposes.

The good news is that you don’t have to pay income tax on the stimulus checks, also known as economic impact payments.

The federal government issued two rounds of payments in 2020 — the first starting in early April and the second in late December. If you got the full amount in both rounds, and your income and family circumstances haven’t changed, you’re all set. You don’t need to include information about the payments on your 2020 tax return, the Internal Revenue Service says.

A refresher: The first payment was for up to $1,200 per person, plus $500 for each child. The second was up to $600 per person, plus $600 for each child.

Individuals with income of up to $75,000 ($112,500 for individuals filing as “head of household,” typically single parents) and married couples filing jointly with income up to $150,000 qualified to receive the full payment. People with higher incomes got smaller payments or nothing if their income exceeded certain caps.

If you were eligible for the payments but didn’t receive them for some reason — or didn’t receive the full amount — you can still get the money by claiming a “rebate recovery” credit on your 2020 tax return. You must file a return, even if you’re not otherwise required to do so, to claim the credit.

To determine the credit, filers complete a one-page worksheet (or walk through the steps on tax preparation software), then report the amount on their tax return. To do that, you’ll need to know the amount of any payments you received. You should have received a receipt — Notice 1444 for the first round and Notice 1444-B for the second round — detailing the payments.

Similarly, if you had a life change in 2020 — like the birth of a child, or if you are supporting yourself and are no longer claimed as a dependent on a parent’s tax return — you could be eligible for more cash by claiming the credit on your 2020 return.

If you didn’t receive the maximum credit and your income fell in 2020, it also makes sense to see if you qualify for the full credit. That’s because the stimulus payments were based on your tax information from 2018 or 2019, while the credit is calculated based on your 2020 income.

If you complete the worksheet and learn that your payments were higher than they should have been, don’t worry — you don’t have to return the extra money, the I.R.S. says.

Now for the (possibly) bad news. In addition to direct payments, government relief efforts included expanded unemployment benefits for people who lost their jobs in the pandemic.

Unlike stimulus payments, jobless benefits are taxed by the federal government as ordinary income, said Kelley Long, a consumer financial education advocate with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. (You won’t, however, pay Medicare and Social Security taxes on jobless benefits as you would with paycheck income.)

The extra taxes could come as a jolt to people who didn’t choose to have taxes deducted from their unemployment checks. You may end up with a smaller refund, or may even owe tax, Ms. Long said.

You should receive a form, 1099-G, detailing your unemployment income and any taxes that were withheld, which you enter on your tax return.

Ms. Long generally recommends that people getting unemployment benefits choose to have at least 10 percent withheld for taxes to avoid unwelcome surprises.

You’ll probably also owe state income taxes on the unemployment benefits, unless you live in one of the nine states that don’t have a state income tax or a few others that exempt jobless benefits, including California, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Wisconsin exempts jobless benefits for state residents but taxes benefits paid to nonresidents, according to the Tax Foundation.

Here are some questions and answers about income tax season:

I don’t remember getting a receipt for my stimulus checks. How can I confirm the amount I received?

If you didn’t get a notice or have misplaced it, check your bank statements to jog your memory. Or, the I.R.S. says, you can find the amounts using an online taxpayer account. If you don’t have one already, you’ll need to create one at IRS.gov/account. This requires you to enter information including an email address and your Social Security number and typically takes about 15 minutes, the I.R.S. says.

Could my stimulus payments affect my state taxes?

Stimulus payments aren’t taxable, but they could indirectly affect what you pay in state income taxes in a handful of states, where federal tax is deductible against state taxable income, according to the Tax Foundation. At least six states — Alabama, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and Oregon — allow deductions for federal income taxes paid.

Here’s an example, suggested by Garrett Watson, senior policy analyst at the foundation, of how a stimulus payment, taken as a recovery rebate credit, might affect tax liability in those states: An individual filer got a $1,000 stimulus payment in 2020 based on her 2019 income, but is actually eligible for the full $1,200 payment, based on her lower 2020 income.

The filer would claim the $200 difference as a credit on her federal 2020 tax return, on Line 30 of Form 1040. This would reduce her federal tax liability dollar for dollar, by $200. So if the filer had owed, say, $3,000 in federal taxes before the credit, she would then owe $2,800.

Absent the credit, she would have subtracted the full $3,000 from her taxable income on her state return, but instead can subtract just $2,800. That means a higher tax liability at the state level — but just on the $200 the filer claims on her federal return, Mr. Watson said.

Some states, like Missouri, have exempted the stimulus payments from having any impact on 2020 taxes, Mr. Watson said.

Will the timing of my 2020 tax return affect the size of my check in the next round of stimulus payments?

It could. President Biden’s third round of stimulus payments of as much as $1,400, as part of his pandemic relief plan. 

The I.R.S. is likely to base the payments on either 2019 or 2020 income — whichever the government has available when the payments are issued, so people can get the money quickly.

Many people had significantly lower income in 2020 than in 2019 because of the pandemic, which argues for filing your 2020 return as soon as possible to maximize your stimulus payment. If you delay, your payment may be based on your higher 2019 income — which may mean a smaller payment.

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this weekend to Ursula Andress (85), Barbara Ball …famous Washington Insider, Michael Caine (88), Quincy Jones (88), Mike Love (80), Kurt Russell (70).

FOURTH QUARTER – Apple Computer (AAPL) (Transparency: Rink Rats is a shareholder) $111B in sales: It's the first time Apple has crossed the $100B mark for a single quarter. That's nearly 3X Facebook and Tesla's quarterly sales combined.

$28.8B in profit: Apple's mind-boggling quarterly profit is one of the largest in history for any company. Ever.

All eyes on iPhone (12)... iPhone sales consistently make up over half of Apple's total sales, but they fell in 2019 and 2020. Last quarter, sales for every single product category jumped by double-digit percentage points. And the star of the quarter was (finally) iPhone.

iPhone sales soared 18% to $66B, driven by the launch of iPhone 12 last fall. Apple's first 5G rectangle spurred a fresh wave of upgrades.

Apple made $10B more from iPhone sales last quarter than it did in the first quarter of 2020. That $10B extra = more than total Mac sales last quarter.

Honorable mentions: Services sales (think: App Store, Music) jumped 24% to nearly $16B, making it the 2nd highest-grossing category after iPhone.

iPhone = a profit today + a bonus profit tomorrow... Apple is the most valuable company on Earth, in part thanks to its self-serving ecosystem. Last quarter, iPhones accounted for 58% of Apple's total sales. But each iPhone anchors users into Club Apple's connected world. iPhone sales drive growth for other products, from AirPods to Apple Books. With the recent launch of the "Apple One" subscription, Apple might soon have us more locked in than ever.

AMAZON.COM – Amazon (Transparency: Rink Rats is a shareholder)  is committed to investing in their employees by:

Starting employees at $15 an hour.

Offering health benefits on day 1 for employees.

Investing $700 million to give them skills to help move into higher-paying jobs in their communities. Business School please take note.

This week Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced that in Q3 of this year, he will transition to executive chairman of the company's board. Amazon Web Services chief Andy Jassy will take the CEO spot. 

Bezos launched Amazon in 1994 and grew it from a humble online bookstore to a sprawling $1.7 trillion empire of which "the everything store" is just one part—Amazon is now a major player in cloud computing, tech products, streaming entertainment, and even physical retail with its purchase of Whole Foods and its cashierless stores. 

In a letter to employees, Bezos wrote, "The question I was asked most frequently [in the beginning] was, 'What's the internet?'"

As for Jassy, he's been at Amazon since 1997 and built AWS from a minor offshoot of Amazon's e-comm operations to a cloud computing leader. 

Oh and btw, Amazon had a record-smashing Q4

Sales topped $100 billion for the first time ever. The company has benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic perhaps more than any other, fueling a 38% spike in 2020 net sales compared to 2019.

But storm clouds are gathering:

The company is deploying its internal PR machine against a high-profile labor organizing effort in its Bessemer, AL, fulfillment center. 

And yesterday it agreed to pay $62 million to settle charges around its failure to pay some Amazon Flex drivers their full tips (Amazon Flex = a service that pays people to drive their own vehicles for Amazon delivery). 

Looking ahead...household-name tech founders, such as Larry Ellison and Bill Gates, often don't fully remove themselves from their companies when they scoot out of the CEO chair. Bezos wrote in his letter, "this is not about retiring," so it's an open question how involved he'll be after the transition.

SCIENCE 101 - When NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars February 18, a set of cameras captured the car-sized spacecraft's descent and landing on the Red Planet.

This is the first time this type of high-quality footage has been captured, giving an unprecedented view of Earth's neighbor.

Perseverance landed on Mars in much the same way as Curiosity landed on the Red Planet.

NASA made use of a supersonic parachute and a small rocket that slowed the rover's descent and used cables to softly lower it to the ground.

The rover landed in a crater thought to be one of the best places on Mars to hunt for signs of past life.

The cameras tasked with capturing the landing sent back about 30 gigabytes of footage to scientists on Earth.

“This video of Perseverance’s descent is the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a statement.

Perseverance also recorded the first sounds — including wind and mechanical whirring from the rover itself — from Mars not long after making it to the surface.

"I hope it [the microphone] does survive long enough so that we can hear those wheels crunch over the surface of the planet," Matt Wallace, Perseverance deputy project manager, said during a press conference Monday.

The video and audio captured from Mars are more than awe-inspiring.

Engineers will be able to pore over the landing video from Perseverance to tease out exactly how the system worked on the Red Planet to build even more robust systems in the future.

Future rovers might carry other microphones to Mars that can be used as diagnostic tools, alerting scientists back on Earth to any strange sounds that might indicate an issue with the spacecraft, Justin Maki, Perseverance imaging scientist, said during the press conference.

Rink Rats has obtained the first photos taken at the Perseverance landing site, interesting to say the least:

OSCARS - Netflix banked 35 Oscar nominations — one of the biggest single-studio hauls ever.

The streaming giant spent an unprecedented amount on content, while traditional studios suffered theater closures.

Netflix's original film "Mank" received 10 nominations, including awards for best picture and best director — more than any other film.

Its other big title, Aaron Sorkin's "The Trial of the Chicago 7,” picked up six nominations.

Amazon received 12 nominations, a record for the studio, for "Sound of Metal," "One Night in Miami" and "Borat: Subsequent Movie Film." 

A record nine actors of color were nominated for Oscars this year.

Steven Yeun (Troy, Michigan) became the first Asian American to pick up a Best Actor nomination.

The late Chadwick Boseman is a Best Actor nominee for "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom."

The big picture: Six Black actors are nominees this year, up from one last year.

Rink Rats Oscar picks in a few weeks, stay tuned.

MARKET WEEK – After a months-long back and forth in Congress, Stimulus Round #3 is (officially) here. The $1.9T bill landed on President Biden's desk on Thursday, when it was signed into law. It’s nearly as big as the first stimulus we got when Covid hit last March — and more than 2X as big as the 2009 financial crisis package. Some highlights:

$1.4K direct payments to Americans making up to $75K/year (and $150K for married couples). If you make over $75K but less than $80K, you'll get a smaller check. Deposits started hitting bank accounts this weekend.

$300 per week in extra unemployment benefits, extended through September 6. Also: boosted child tax credits of $3K/kid.

$360B in state and local government aid, $130B to help schools safely reopen, $120B+ for Covid-related aid, and $59B to small businesses.

Not included: A federal minimum wage increase.

Charge it to the room... The US govt has passed a ginormous $5.3T worth of stimulus during the pandemic — that's $43K per household. And that $$$ isn't coming out of taxes. It's adding to the $28T national debt, which is now larger than the entire US economy. Some fear that the huge cash infusion could lead to higher interest rates and soaring prices. But the Fed says it won't raise rates any time soon. And inflation has stayed (relatively) low for a decade.

This could turn a "Nike recovery" into a V-shaped recovery... Even without this stimulus, the economy has been healing. ~13M jobs have returned since April 2020 — but the pace of recovery has slowed. Last year, many expected recovery would take the shape of a Nike swoosh: sharp drop, slow rise. Now, economists predict a much faster recovery: this year, the US economy is expected to grow 6%, the fastest annual growth since 1983 — and 3M jobs are expected to be added. The US could finish 2021 with even higher growth than was projected pre-pandemic, thanks to Stimulus #3.

U.S. stocks were mixed last week as concerns about inflation impacted trading. Here’s a look at how sports-related stocks performed:

Up:

ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAC) gained 10.34%

Daktronics, Inc. (NASDAQ: DAKT) gained 5.15%

MSG Networks Inc. (NYSE: MSGN) gained 3.91%

Down:

Manchester United plc (NYSE: MANU) dropped 9.34%

Allied Esports Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ: AESE) dropped 9.09%

Peloton Interactive, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTON) dropped 5.18%

MARCH MADNESS SEMI-BUBBLE - Indianapolis will host 68 teams over 67 games. Five hotels and six arenas will accommodate thousands of traveling players, coaches, staff, and fans.

To understand how we got here, let’s go back to the Maui Invitational in November. Other tournaments, like The Battle 4 Atlantis, played this year as the “Bad Boy Mowers Crossover Classic” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the group of multi-team events at Bubbleville, all suffered cancelations. But the 2020 Maui Invitational in Asheville, North Carolina, proved that a COVID-free semi-bubble is possible.

“What they have to do for 68 teams, I only had to do for eight,” Tom Valdiserri, executive vice president of KemperLesnik and Maui Invitational tournament organizer, told FOS. “I think just the sheer detail and the communication to 68 schools is incredible.”

Add to that list a compressed time frame, and it’s easy to see how this March Madness might be the most complicated the NCAA has ever assembled.

Teams will arrive at one of five hotels in Indianapolis connected to the convention center. They will have tested negative seven consecutive times and traveled, masked and distanced, by bus or plane.

They’ll isolate and start daily PCR testing — and once they’ve been approved to leave quarantine, the dance begins.

Top seeds: Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan begin battle this weekend. We like a Gonzaga, Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois Final Four with Illinois winning it all. How about that Big Ten (14) fans.

Interesting in a little Bracketology? Check out the Rink Rats Bracket Challenge send an email to rick@rinkratshass.net if interested and we will send you the details. 

DRIVING THE WEEK - The U.S. is on pace to get the biggest migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border "in the last 20 years," said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

The European Medicines Agency said there is currently "no indication" that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is responsible for the small number of blood clots reported in patients in Europe. Go deeper.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) restored the voting rights of 69,000 former felons through executive action.

U.S. intelligence: Putin authorized influence operations to hurt Biden's candidacy.

Russian authorities are prepared to block Twitter in a month's time unless it removes upward of 3,000 posts of banned content.

The “Revenge Economy" could be next... For a year, sweats have replaced shopping sprees and screens have replaced travel — and Americans have socked away $1.5T in excess savings. After Stimulus #1, Americans saved a record 33% of their disposable income in April 2020. While the pandemic is still inflicting pain, things are looking up. Now that people feel more secure in their savings, we're seeing leading indicators of the revenge spending economy. With a fresh round of $1.4K checks going out, we can expect more revenge spending in April.

OUT AND ABOUT – Rats recently received an update from long time RR reader Peter Hewitt (St. Lawrence ’76). Huey sold their Lafayette, CA. home after 33 years and moved to Scottsdale, AZ. His life is now golf, keeping up with his kids, and planning a SLU football reunion this fall in Canton – hopefully, we can combine that with a hockey reunion. If so, better call the National Guard now and prepare for extra troops come this fall in Canton, New York.

Another long-time reader Hugh Lappe (St. Lawrence ’76) is in touch with this writer weekly. Hank made up the famous dead last duo in off-ice training way back in another century. The other member of that duo, yours truly. In fact, I am still last today when it comes to work out training.

ON THIS DATE – March 6, 2021 Lou Ottens, the Dutch inventor who pioneered the compact disc and invented the cassette tape — the medium of choice for millions of homemade mix tapes — has died at a care facility in the Netherlands. Ottens was 94.

Ottens joined Philips, the Dutch electronics conglomerate, after studying engineering at university where he and his team developed the world's first portable tape recorder, according to Philips. But he became frustrated with the bulky reel-to-reel system that needed manual winding and so invented the cassette in 1962.

By 1982, music studios stopped shipping 8-tracks to retailers and cars removed the 8-track recorder from car models. The compact cassette is the main reason why 8-tracks were faded out from the electronics industry.

Can any of my readers remember Jethro Tull and Marvin Gaye? I can hear the cassette tapes now.

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS – 

NBA Pick of the Week – Saturday 3/20, 3:00 PM (EDT), NBA TV: San Antonio Spurs (20-16) vs. Milwaukee Bucks (25-14). As always the Spurs are competitive under former Pomona College coach Gregg Popovich. They upset the Bucks in the Cream City: 110 - 105. (Season to date 3-6)

NHL Pick of the Week – Saturday 3/20, 7:00 PM (EDT), ESPN+: New York Rangers (11-12-4) vs. Washington Capitals (19-6-4). Rangers need to start winning some games or no playoff this year. Not this game, Caps win 5 - 2.   (Season to date 6-1)

NCAA College Hockey Pick of the Week – Thursday 3/18, 5:00 PM (EDT), ESPN+: The ECAC season, which already had only four teams in it, now has three.

Clarkson, on the eve of the league's postseason, has withdrawn and canceled the remainder of its season. The school released no further information beyond a brief "thank you" statement on the team's web site.

But according to multiple sources, most of the members of the hockey team attended a party last weekend, in violation of the school's COVID-19 protocols.

Quinnipiac, the No. 1 seed, will not receive a bye into the March 20 championship game. Instead of two semifinals on March 18, there will now be just one, with St. Lawrence hosting Colgate.

St. Lawrence is in the midst of quarantine itself, and recently canceled the final four games of its regular season, which were all scheduled to be against Clarkson. St. Lawrence is expected to be ready by March 18.

Appleton Arena for the semi-final Colgate Red Raiders (6-10-5) vs. St. Lawrence University Saints (4-8-3). Saints win on Minor Street, 4 -3. (Season to Date 6-2)

NCAA March Madness Pick of the Week – Thursday 3/18, 9:57 PM (EDT), TBS: #11 UCLA Bruins (13-6) vs. #11 Michigan State Spartans (9-11). Unusual match-up for a play in game, two old school hoop powers. We like Sparty to win 65 – 58.

Season to Date (19-10)

 

Next Blog:  Dear Rink Rats and Word of the Month

Until Monday March 22, 2021 Adios.

Claremont, California

March 17, 2021

#XI-29-435

5,426 words, ten-minute read

 

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – Sarah Kempa

RINK RATS POLL – How many cups of coffee do you drink each day?

___ None

___ One

___ Two

___ Three

___ Three +

 

QUOTE OF THE MONTH: “The best teachers are also leaders, and the best leaders are also teachers.” - Professor Thomas DeLong

Rink Rats is a blog of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.

Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010

Our Eleventh Year.

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