Notes From A Bear's Journey

   Impossible, you say, beyond belief.  Yet to watch the shares of Beyond Meat , the maker of vegan meat alternatives, soar again yesterday it would appear that an expanding market just may exist for traditional meat eaters looking to cut back a bit and explore a few carnivorous alternatives.  Said a piece in Bloomberg: As of the close, the market cap of Beyond Meat is nearly $4.5 billion.  Meanwhile revenue for all of 2018 was less than $90 million.  Obviously the market is thinking purely in terms of TAM (total addressable market) figuring that if Beyond Meat can capture even a tiny slice of the overall market for meat, then it will justify these valuations.  The company's S-1 filing pegs the global meat industry at $1.4 trillion.  Of course, they're not going to have the space all to themselves.  They already have rivals, including the Impossible Burger (which many people seem to prefer on taste grounds) and incumbents looking to get in.  As Bloomberg's Lydia Mulvany, L

   CAUTION:  The following contains language that may prove offensive to some; much of it is court testimony and based on actual events but if reading about physical abuse and sex trafficking bothers you then caution is advised.    One hears it all the time, or at least one used to in my childhood days, an exasperated saying of frustration generally coming from a parent and transferred now to me.  A simple slip of the Phillips screwdriver and screw that falls into Alice's Wonderland of engines (in the days of actually working on one's own car) or a delicately glued part proving not as strongly-held as expected -- both will lead to that genteel curse of, "Oh for crying out loud."  I've never thought of that phrase in my adult life, one of those thousands of phrases that get passed down through the generations and of which many books are written (and soon forgotten...fathom that, as mentioned in the last post , sent into the deep six of the mind).  But then came

    Here's what I've been reading recently, a glimpse of what has been piling up (my magazines) and what has been needing a bit more of my attention (my yard).  But with nearly five days of steady rain, it's been a good time to catch up on eyeball time and to read a few books.  First off is Three Sheets to the Wind by Cynthia Barrett, a book of how nautical terms came to enter our everyday language.  At first, I thought that inside would be just a few dozen words (I could think of "shipshape" and the usual "port/starboard" terms); but here's one example from the book: When lost in coastal waters sailors shimmied up the ship's mast and released a crow from a cage.  The crow flew straight toward the nearest shore.  The lookout platform at the top of the mast was called the "crow's nest."  The expression "as the crow flies" implies the most direct route.   As it would turn out, the port/starboard terms were nowhere to be fou

   The other day my wife slipped on a stair, one of those unexpected things that just happen and that when it happens is something that usually puzzles you since you're so familiar with your home's layout or a place you've frequented; you turn and bump your knee in the car door or your shoulder hits the cabinet when you swing around, or you bonk your head on the shelf when you stand up.  Generally you briefly give that inanimate object a look as if searching for something else to blame but you know that it was simply you, and an accident, and that you were just careless and not paying attention.  The result is usually minor, an embarrassing moment to rub your shin or to scratch your head, but sometimes the result could be borderline catastrophic...a glance away while driving and a swerve into a railing, or in my wife's case a possible broken ankle; since she is only six weeks out from her hip surgery the doc was concerned that the pelvic bone socket which holds the new

Kitty O'Neil stunt 1979: LA Times photo    To just hear the term these days seems a bit dated, or perhaps sexist.  Honey, darling, sweetie, gal.  Or even the "alpha" title itself, one generally appropriated to a male as in wolf packs, the alpha male.  But consider such "strong" women as Donna Strickland , the Nobel Prize winner in physics (the first woman in 50 years to win the prize) and her puzzlement at the world's reaction; she told Bloomberg Businessweek : I was a little blown away by how much has been made about me being a woman in science.  I've heard from many, many women just thanking me for being a flag bearer.  I feel like it would be nicer to focus on what scientists could do for the world...When you go to Asia, they revere their scientists.  They're putting a tremendous amount of money into science.  North Americans in particular have to be careful about that.   Or there's the late Kitty O'Neil , 5-foot-2,  stuntwomen extra