I discovered as I started to write the Newsletter that it was going to take a day or so to complete so perhaps tomorrow for publication. Definitely getting older as time flits by without my noticing it really. We went skiing yesterday about 4 km in total; it was a good run and just a little cold not too bad at minus 10 degrees celsius. It is doable at that temperature.
Continuing to work on Chromosome 8 and it has these interesting matches where it is either Blake or Pincombe without a good example in certain lengths and I am into another one of those lengths but today may solve it. I just haven't troubled myself to do so in the past as the phasing of Chromosome 8 is fairly straight forward but sometimes the matches do not lend themselves to the solution of which they are.
Lovely snow coming down today and we will move it likely a little later as not enough for them to come and do it. I continue to look forward to moving as there is too much work for me in this house and with the yard outside. I just have to make that decision but a couple of items conflict it somewhat and once resolved I will be able to move ahead with that.
Cleaning day three and it is the basement and the robot is already doing its job. I can hear it in the distance cleaning the rugs. Then just the dusting and the floor washing (which involves moving everything that has been cleaned onto the rugs) and the job is done except for returning everything to its proper place. Takes about two hours in total plus the 1.25 hours that the robot runs but I do not count that as I didn't do anything except set it up which counts as part of my morning exercise. An interesting way to clean and it is definitely the future as more and more people are busy working.
Although I continue to watch the news I am avoiding thinking about it at the moment. Minds greater than mine are busy contemplating exactly what our direction as a world is. The United Nations was a good plan in 1945 and probably needs some tweaking in order to protect all the countries of the world that were established at that time or at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union which was entirely their own fault as they attacked Afghanistan and went bankrupt in the course of that particular error on their part. The World Court also a good idea but is sometimes conflicted where minorities are concerned namely Israel - it doesn't look like a minority but in reality the Israeli people have to deal with anti-semitism which is a worldwide attitude on the part of some people and they are constantly in danger and the UN has done little to help them from the very beginning of the creation of the State of Israel which can be compared with the pouring of billions of dollars of support into Gaza where there is nothing to show for that expenditure (so a failure on the part of the United Nations in retrospect).
Whether a country is large or small should not really matter but we seem to be at this point in the history of the world where authoritarianism has raised its ugly head once again but democracies continue to be dominated by the people who live in them and we will just have to see how that flows. I had one interesting thought that Greenland which is Inuit primarily could become a 4th territory giving us then 14 distinct provinces/territories but they are their own people and protected by Denmark and NATO (but Canada is an interesting country in that different areas do have strong affinity to their countries of origin - for the First Nations Canada itself is their country of origin going back thousands of years and huge tracts of land in Canada do belong to the First Nations, for others it is their French heritage going back over 400 years with its settlements in the Maritimes and then Quebec in 1604, for still others (including myself) the British Isles is our country of origin going back slightly more than 400 years as they were on Baffin Island and in Newfoundland with fishing villages and hunting villages although did tend to return to the British Isles during the long harsh winters until 1598 with the first settlements on Baffin Island where the Inuit kindly received them). As a country our affinity as Canadians to countries of origin is part of our makeup and it could be that the Greenlanders would feel comfortable being part of Canada (no ideas on that as they love having their own country just like the Newfoundlanders did before they joined Confederation in 1949 but economically there was a benefit to Newfoundland at that time as we gave them Labrador plus other assistance). The Greenlanders have kindly permitted the United States to have a base on the island since the days of World War II but the people themselves continue to live the life that they have lived for thousands of years with their strong attachment to Denmark and also have a connection to the Inuit who live in Nunavut which is their closest neighbour and one of the Territories of Canada. An interesting thought that crossed through my mind but I do understand their desire to be an independent nation with ties to Denmark and part of NATO.
Tea drank and must do my solitaire puzzles as I wait for the Robot to complete its task.
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