Paul Luvera Journal

It was on a Sunday December 7th some sixty years ago in 1941 that the plans of Isoroku Yamamoto were put into action. Yamamoto had studied at Harvard in 1919 and graduated in 1921. He had already graduated from Japan’s Imperial navy academy in 1904 at only 20 years old. In 1926 he returned to the United States for another two years as a Japanese naval attache in Washington. By 1930 he had become an admiral and one fully familiar…

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I’ve discovered the answer to why the helicopter has been around. It appeared again yesterday morning and is doing a promotional video shoot of some kind for the area. That’s why it flies over this resort about 200′ feet off the ground rattling the dishes and terrifying the guests. But, it only happens in the morning and for a short time. Nevertheless, it gives one pause to consider pilot error and engine failure. Yesterday there was a wedding on the…

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Greetings from sunny Mexico. The sun is out and the temperature is in the 80’s. Sun screen required. We are in Cabo San Lucas at the Las Ventanas, a resort hotel on the ocean. Owned by the Rosewood hotel chain, this hotel is one of the better three luxury type resorts here. La Pamillia, which predates the other two, and Esperanza Resort all in Cabo. All three have their own unique benefits and charm, but we prefer this place, having…

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Have you read about the island of plastic debris weighing some 3 million tons and twice as large as the state of Texas floating in the ocean off the coast of California? It sounds like something from a horror movie, but it’s true. It’s called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" by the marine researchers who have been studying it for a decade. It has collected in what is known as the North Pacific Gyre because of the clockwise trade winds…

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Neil DeGrasse Tyson has written a book Death by Black Hole about the solar system. When astrophysicist’s describe the universe it is a rather other world conversation. Some of the things that have struck me as I listen to this book on tape, while commuting to work, include the fact that we are all star dust. We are star dust because all matter contain the elements of the what makes up the solar system and stars. The cosmic origin of…

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It is Monday October 29, 2007 in Phuket, Thailand and it should come as no surprise to those reading this Blog that it is raining. In fact, it has rained every day since our arrival here. The only variety has been the intensity of the rain. The rain here is not like our Northwest weather. Here, it comes down in enormous volumes of water that land with enough force to see it bounce back up and it is relentless rain….

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All of us know about the Nobel Peace Prize, but not all of us know why the prize exists. It’s a story I’ve always found fascinating. Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1833. His father, Immanuel Nobel, was an engineer who had invented modern plywood. He moved the family to St. Petersburg to make a new start with a company making torpedo’s after a bankruptcy in Sweden. Later, when the factory was left to Alfred’s brother, Alfred returned…

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Paul Terhorst has written an interesting article in International Living magazine in which he discusses what people have done with their riches. He discusses Henry Ford, who at forty years of age, located eleven investors to bankroll the Ford Motor Company with an original total $28,000 investment. One of them, a lawyer named John Wendell Anderson, wrote his physician father asking to borrow $5000 to invest in the company. Having secured the loan from his reluctant father he invested in…

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I’ve written before about this administration’s dishonest use of doublespeak in order to give information in a false manner.(See posts of 11/29/06 & 1/13/07) Their use of political framing, with the advice of Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, is best illustrated by the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner following our invasion of Iraq. Now General Petraeus has coined the word "ethnosectarian" instead of "civil war"to put the reality of civil war deaths in Iraq in a false light. The reality is…

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I have three artificial joints as a result of being a mediocre football player in high school and college. I carry around two total knee and one hip joint replacement. There are no airports in the world I can pass through security without setting off the alarm. That’s why I was impressed when I read in the Seattle PI that Dave Kopay, the former Husky football and pro football great, has had two hip joint replacements, and a knee and…

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