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First, the disclaimer:  I don’t know jack shit about tennis, the scoring system is as incomprehensible to me as Czech grammar, and I didn’t watch the match in question.

Nonetheless, those who know me know that ignorance of a topic is not likely to prevent me from having an opinion, and my opinion in this case is that Serena Williams behaved like a spoiled brat, and the audience wasn’t any better.  Both of them owe Naomi Osaka a big apology.
The start of the argument with the umpire, the way I understand it, was that he reprimanded her for cheating, i.e. getting hand signals from her coach.  He was right to call her on that, he caught them red-handed, and the coach has admitted it.  Now, here is where my lack of knowledge might make a slight difference.  I don’t know if getting hand signals from the sidelines is  a major offense or a minor offense.  In baseball and football I think it’s legal, in a spelling bee it would be a disqualification.
But, Serena apparently got pissed off about it, which is ridiculous.  If a cop pulls you over for failing to use your turn signal, you might think he’s being petty, but you know damn well it would be a mistake to say so.
Anyway, things escalated, with her calling him a liar and a thief (after he’d penalized her a point, and then a whole game.  I think that’s a lot, but whether a game is more or less than a set, I’m not sure.)
The line that really bothers me, though, is when she told him “You’ll never be on another of my courts as long as you live.”  Note, she said “my courts.”  She may be the top woman player in  the world, she may even be the best of all time as I’ve heard some people say, but she does not own the  whole sport.
After the game, which  Naomi Osaka (who I’d never heard of  before today) won, the crowd booed, which was not very nice to  Naomi Osaka.  She’d just won a major tournament, dramatically improved her world ranking, and deserved applause.

So, how did she react?  “I know the  audience wanted Serena to  win and I’m sorry it ended like this.”  She actually apologized.  For winning.
Naomi Osaka is a relative newcomer, just 20 years old.  I hope she has a long and illustrious career, and eventually gets the support from the fans that she deserved today.
Serena Williams can take a hike.

Impeachment is rare in American politics.  It’s only  been done to two presidents throughout American history.  Both of those were political hit jobs.  Neither one succeeded in removing their target, but it was real close with Andrew Johnson.  Nixon resigned when it was clear he was going to be impeached.   George W. Bush certainly should have been impeached but Nancy Pelosi, who is really a Republican mole in the Democratic Party, put the kibosh on that.  Harding might have been headed for impeachment, but he died.
Impeachment can happen for other offices as well.  Judges, for instance.  One of the possible grounds for impeachment is lying under oath (perjury).  That’s what they went after Clinton for and, even though he was not convicted, he actually was guilty.  I was happy to see him skate, because he was lying about getting a blowjob, which doesn’t seem relevant to his ability to do the job at all, but back then Republicans were really big on preaching morality.
And boy, have they caught Kavanaugh on some whoppers.  At least five times during these hearings he’s said things that were in direct to what had actually happened. (i.e. lied)  I don’t know if it will make a difference.  After all, whatever the theory, the reality is that impeachment happens when it’s politically expedient, and doesn’t when it’s not.
I hope, however, that what with Woodward’s book, and the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, that maybe the political winds have changed direction, and swing voters like Murkowski, and Collins, and McCaskill, and Heitkamp, and Manchin, will see the writing on the wall and understand that impeaching Kavanaugh (i.e. removing him from even the minor judgeship he now holds) is not only the right thing to do, but the politically expedient one as well.

Tomorrow is the 52nd anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek.  Tomorrow is also Bernie Sanders’ birthday.  Both of these are events which changed the world, in extremely positive ways.
Sunday evening is the beginning of Rosh haShanah, the Jewish New Year.  Rosh means head and Shanah is year, so head of the year.  It will be 5779 because the Jewish calendar goes a bit further back. Judaism was already  a religion that had been practiced for a very long time before Jesus Christ was born, which was not really such a big deal for the Jews, anyway.  It’s 5779 because, theoretically, it goes back to Adam and Eve.  So, anybody who takes Judaism literally is just as crazy as the fundamentalist Christians who say the world is only 5 or 6 thousand years old.
I was 12 in 1966, and we watched the pilot episode, and I was a fan right off the  bat.  Of course, I  was already a big fan of science fiction, reading everything I could find along those lines.  So, I was very excited about it.  The only sci-fi that had ever been on TV before that was Lost in Space, which was so bad it was considered a joke, even by the standards of the day, which did not include serious science fiction.  So, Star Trek was a big improvement.  And  when Star Trek, the Next Generation came out, it was a big improvement over the original.
There is a market out there.  There are people  who  love science fiction and, for the most part, they are people who are interested in science, in the future, in the possibilities of the human race.  It just took  network executives until 1966 to figure that out.
So, Happy  Birthday, Star Trek.  Happy Birthday, Senator Sanders.  And a very happy 5,779th birthday to the human race.  Shana Tova.

I guess this is what it looks like when the shit hits the fan in a perfect storm.  It is a bizarre situation.  I  feel no sympathy at all for any of the players, and hope they destroy each other like a frenzied pack of mutant, zombie hyena, which is basically the spirit animal for the lot of them.
First came the news of Woodward’s book, in which it was revealed that damned near everybody who works in the White House thinks Trump is a raging moron, Trump’s lawyer asked that Trump not be interviewed by Mueller because he just lies all the damned time, can’t help himself, it’s kind of like a tourette’s thing with lying, he once berated Giuliani in front of multiple witnesses, comparing him to a little baby without a diaper, he once told a bunch of generals (angrily) that they weren’t killing enough people, and two aides (whose names were given)admitted to taking documents off his desk, so he wouldn’t sign them and cause WWIII or some other dumb shit.
Seriously, they take stuff away until he just forgets about it.  It’s as if Trump is your crazy old uncle who can’t be trusted with silverware, or garden tools.

Then came the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, which the New York Times claims they received before the release of Woodward’s book, but I wouldn’t  put it past the Times to fudge a detail like that and, in any event, it’s quite likely that a White House staffer would be aware of the book’s contents before the general public.

The anonymous author (Mike Pence seems to be the lead suspect) claims he also steals stuff off Trump’s desk.  Which is probably a good thing, even if done by a bad person, but I’m pretty sure it’s technically treason.  I don’t quite know how that works.
There’s a lot that’s unknown, because we are in uncharted territory here, but there are a few questions I’d like answers to.
If Gary Cohn and Rob Porter and Anonymous Op-Ed writer who I  suspect is Pence but could be anybody, really, thought that Trump was so mentally incompetent that they had to hide stuff to keep him from signing it, why didn’t they speak up before now?  Seriously, guys, we’ve got a delusional retard running the country and you didn’t say anything?
Would the anonymous op-ed writer have written the anonymous op-ed if they hadn’t been aware of Woodward’s book, and isn’t this a rather transparent effort to get him or herself (I think it’s Pence, but wouldn’t it be hysterical if it was Melania?) off the hook?
If it’s Pence, can he really be trusted with the presidency after such an egregious undermining of the presidency?
And, the most important question of all:  Isn’t this enough to begin impeachment proceedings, already?

Here’s my conspiracy theory re the Brazilian Museum Fire. (which is not getting near enough press, by the way.   This is one of the greatest losses to science since the Library of Alexandria got torched, or whatever it was happened to it, but compared to the shit show going on in Washington it’s just not grabbing the public’s attention)
First, when a building is consumed by flame like that, I automatically suspect arson.  I have a hard time believing that awesome conflagration was the result of a short circuit or, even less, one of those festival lantern things  landing on the roof.   Was the roof made of straw?
So, if it’s arson, there is the  question of motive, and that’s where it gets interesting.  Really, nobody had motive for destroying the whole museum.  Whatever the insurance payout is, it won’t be able to replace the collection.  So, I suspect there was one particular exhibit, out of the 20 million or so, that somebody really, really did not want to be seen.  Probably not any of the dinosaur fossils.  Lots of museums have those.  The Egyptian mummies?  Could’ve been a curse of some kind.
What could possibly be so sensitive that somebody would want to torch  a museum just to keep people from seeing it?
Maybe it was something to do with  the meteorite (which I think at least partially survived the fire) or perhaps something from an ancient human skeleton, or some relic from Machu Picchu, or the ancient Mayan Pyramids, but in one of the exhibits there was some proof that aliens visited the Earth  in the deep past.
I don’t claim to  understand extraterrestrial motivation, but I imagine if they are determined to remain here undetected, burning down a museum would be an easy thing for them to do.