Spectacular photo from the Pacific coast of South Africa

I took this photo in 2012 during a work trip to Port Elizabeth on a Sunday side trip with my American host.  I have thought about this and other amazing sights along with the wonderful people I met while was there just about every day since.

Detroit Graffiti Art

Here are some examples of Detroit's world class graffiti artwork painted on buildings along Grand River near Canfield a couple miles from downtown.   In Detroit you can paint a whole building and people are like... Cool, do more!

And the taco truck of course..  

An easy to remember pattern for the digit sum of any multiple of 10.

If for whatever reason you ever need to know the sum of all the integers from 1 up any number at all, you can take the time to add them all up manually or figure out an easier way to arrive at the answer.  In the table below multiples of 10 are matched to the sum of all the numbers from 0 up to that multiple of 10.   Do you see the pattern?

   Multiple of 10         Sum of numbers from 0 up to X                      
          1                                      1
         10                                    55                                    
        100                                 5050                                  
       1000                              500500                              
      10000                            50005000                        
     100000                         5000050000                    
    1000000                      500000500000                  

This is a great example of why you need to think about a math problem before actually diving into the math.

If you were asked to add up all the numbers from 1+2+3+4 all the way to 10 you would likely either add it up in your head or maybe use a pen and paper and arrive at the answer 55.  That's easy enough, not too much thinking required, just plug and chug.

But the same problem is not so easy for adding up the numbers between 1 and 100.  Here is where the lazy and bright might figure out that to add up the numbers between 0 and 100 they could just add 0+100, 1+99, 2+98, 3+97, 4+96,.. etc,.. 49+51 and the answer would be 50 ways to add up to 100 with 50 in the middle leftover or 5,050.

So then the pattern is this, 50+50 is 100 and 5,050 is the sum of all the digits from 1 to 100. The same pattern predicts that the digit sum of 1,000 is 500,500.

This then leads to an easy way to calculate the sum of integers from 0 up the number itself.

The sum of all numbers from 1 to X = (X*X+X)/2

I hope you get to use that little math trick someday.

Billy Martin's signature on an old baseball.

Epic Facebook comment from someone I barely know.

Jose Valargowitzkowski  I never surrender to libs jim. And you still havent answered my question about what you are going to do to save the planet. Liberals never address the points of others, only call them fools. You should be better than that. Let me tell you about poverty and third world living. My wife is from the philippines. When we me her mother was living in a one room hovel partially destroyed by fire. Her most valued possession was a thermos bottle. Thanks to tge good fortune weve enjoyed we were able to build her a home. She has running water so she doesnt have to go to the village pump and lug buckets uphill, which aint easy for an 80 year old 90 pound woman. Sge has a refrigerator. She has a fan. She has a two burner propane stove so she doesnt gave to cook over open charcoal. 
She can actually live like a human being and enjoy the basics of life you take for granted. Now you tell her and 100 million other filioinos, 100 million vietnamese, 500 million central and south anericans, 1.2 billion chicoms, 1 billion indians and 2 billion africabs who are finally veginning to enjoy basic creature comforts they cant because earths temp may rise half a degree in a century. Tell them please. How dare you! While you sit in 70 degree air conditioned comfirt in summer and 75 degree heat in winter. Liberals are always touting how much they love the poor but advocate policies to keep them in crushing poverty. Abd dont spout off about alternative fuels. Thats a luxury anerican livs prattle about. Fossil fuels power the third world.so when you ezoerience that kind of poverty please write about it in your blog. Tell me how comfortabke it is to live in 95 degree 100 percent humidity all the freaking time. It is amazing how white western libs enjoy telling nonwhite asians, africans and latinos how to live from the comfort of their modern american homes. I dont give a damn if the worlds temp goes up by 10 degrees if it means poor folks enjoy a measure of decent living. To deny them this confort is unchristian, unamerican and wrong. Pardon the tyoes. u use one finger to type. But as a smart and enlightened liveral i trust you will get the message. Peace. Out

Dave Grohl Alley in Warren Ohio.

Not everyone knows that there is a place called Dave Grohl Alley in Warren Ohio.  I took these pictures earlier today.

Update: 2/21/2016 More pictures I've taken since then

And in nearby Howland this guy made an appearance last August while my wife and I were visiting her Aunt's family who live down the street. We had a brief chat, Dave is cool but you already knew that.

Don't blame us, We ASS-U-ME 'd it was Bipartisan.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi had this to say about the invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from John Boehner to address Congress. Reuters: Israeli official suggests Boehner misled Netanyahu on Congress speech

(Reuters) - A senior Israeli official suggested on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress on Iran next month was fully supported by the Democrats.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan.

The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with Democratic President Barack Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.

"It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides," Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday.

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been "misled" into believing Boehner's invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Really? What in the history of the last 6 years of American history would indicate to anyone with either basic cable or AM radio that there would be bipartisan support for anything at all involving John Boehner?   But surely they must have believed Boehner at his word because they didn't even check with the State Department. So much for Israeli Intelligence. The dog ate their homework.