Boy Do I Look Beat

The Accenture Chicago Triathlon has a website where you can see any given person finishing the race. I typed in my name and up came a snippet of video.

If you're curious, it's here. I cross at 6:02:05 on the far left side, wearing bib 6062.

In the past, some races would charge you a pretty penny for a "customized video", with only a few snippets of you. I like this way better.

It's perfect for a consumer like me -
I'm glad to watch it for "free".
I know it's built into the overall price,
But I still think it's nice.

Control Theory

When my second youngest brother was about 9, he came to me with a math question.

In school he was doing problems like:

9 + _ = 15

Of course, you're supposed to fill in the blank spot with 6.

He came to me and asked if there was a solution to a problem like this:

_ + _ = 15

I was stunned. I told him, yes, there's a solution, and it's a line.

That was the beginning of teaching him analytic geometry, and some calculus, while he was still in elementary school. I couldn't actually get him interested in the solving algebraic manipulation problems. But he loved graphing the solutions to equations.

He went on to get a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering, specializing in control theory. Oh, and he wrote a textbook on that abstruse but practical topic.

I tutored my own children in math, too. I never got them interested in calculus while they were in elementary school. But my son is taking a professional path eerily similar to my brother - he's an aeronautical engineer publishing research in control theory.

I don't *think* my brother had that big an impact on my son.

What can this mean?
Is there a control theory gene?

Or does it seem
More likely I'm a carrier of the meme?

If Only They Were Just Running For Office

Glenn Reynolds links to a poll showing that the vast majority of Iraqi's don't like Al Qaeda. Who knew?

He suggests that mosque explosions
Haven't stirred up good emotions
Toward Al Qaeda in Iraq.

What a shock.

More Fire

I've worked up a new poetry collection. I haven't put it on Amazon yet. If you're interested, you can download the pdf ("pretty darn frustrating") format free.

Regular readers of this blog, be forewarned, some poems are from this very location. Others are available online somewhere or other.

But I like the look
And feel of a book.

Odd Coincidence

Choriam posted recently about Ted Hughes. He was married to Sylvia Plath who committed suicide. Then he married another poet who committed suicide.

Was it just a bad run of luck?
How did he happen to get stuck
With not one, but two brides
Who were future suicides?

Honoring a Founder

Spent the afternoon at a party honoring my wife for her role in founding - and helping run - Council Oak Montessori school, now in its 16th year.

The current issue of Chicago Magazine has a cover story entitled "The Best Elementary Schools," and Council Oak was listed among them.

The format of the afternoon was kind of a mix between a roast and a toast.

I gave a little talk about her, interspersed with rhyme, ending with this one:

Thank you, Marsha,
For working your butt off,
And helping this school
Make the cut-off.

Tracked from the Sky

I went running for the first time with a satellite GPS unit that told me how fast I was going and how far I had gone.

It's a Garmin Forerunner 201. I got it from Amazon for 109.99.

It took a little time at the start to establish the satellite link. Once I was running, it seemed to stay linked up - except when I was running under railroad viaducts. Of course, I was running mostly through Chicago neighborhoods - very flat, amid houses.

It had a few peculiarities. It doesn't really give you instantaneous speed. It gives you an average over a minute or so. So when you change speeds it takes a little while to really register.

It was fun to know
Just how fast, or rather... slow
My feet would go.

Not a Dry Run

Out for a run,
Caught in the rain,
Soaked through and through.

Water in my shoes
But I don't complain.
Sloshing is fun.

Summer's End

Ah, the days of Autumn.
I cannot say I sought them.
But since they're here, I'll take them,
And as leaves fall, I'll rake them.

SNAFU

First the Commerce department loses 1,100 computers, mostly from the Census Bureau.

Then there's John Mark Karr. He's the creep who claimed he killed Jon Benet. But he was also in trouble for having child porn on his computer. The cops confiscated his computer - a few years back - but now they can't find it.

There's a need for remedial lessons, given by tutors,
To explain ways to lessen this strange loss of lots of computers.

Have You Heard?

Hearing voices, often taken to be a sign of something wrong in the noggin, occurs in many people who seem to be fine.

The voices in my head?
Don't tell them to be quiet.
They'll stop when I am dead.
Till then, they all run riot.

I don't always pay attention
To what they have to say.
I brush off their dissension
When I've settled on a way.

But frequently, I listen,
Because of what I've heard -
That precious bits of wisdom
Might show up in these words -

And I don't wanna miss 'em
When that finally occurs!

Talk Like A Pirate Day

When a pirate vessel docks,
So the men can shop for socks,
Their preference brings smiles:
Arrrghyles.

I believe I stole the pun from humblepie.

Making Tracks to the Axis of Evil

Don Parrish gave a fabulous account of his trip to North Korea. Very few outsiders ever get in, and Americans are the least welcome. It seems they see us as the Imperialist Power which is the source of all their problems. He went with four other people who are very experienced at traveling to the ends of the earth.

You want to visit North Korea?
Most likely they don't wanna see ya!

I have a friend who saw their capital,
Watched by a soldier who took no crapatall.

Tortured Thoughts

A. People who are tortured will usually admit to anything. Such confessions, on their own, are valueless.

B. However, a tortured person may also give you information that can be investigated and verified independently.

C. If the person is innocent, you will have imposed horrible suffering unjustly.

D. Torture is, to say the least, cruel and unusual.

President Bush is harping on point B.

In philosophical circles, point B comes up in the "ticking bomb" dilemma, in which many innocent lives will be lost unless the terrorist is tortured into revealing the location of the ticking bomb. This sort of thing happens constantly to Jack Bauer on "24".

Jack Bauer,
In "24" hours,
must always act with urgency.

Is it an error
To equate the war on terror
With an ethical emergency?

Perilous Papal Pronouncements

How will the Pope
Ever cope?

People of a different faith
Riot over what he saith.

Anyway, he was speaking, in passing, about the "sword verse" vs. the "no compulsion verse" in the Koran, and quoted from a medieval philosophical dialogue:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

He didn't actually say this was the truth. But he did quote it. And he didn't say he disagreed.

The Pope himself came down on the side of "no compulsion" in religion. That's reassuring, since the Church he heads has historically made use of the sword at times.

He also talked about Aquinas, Kant, the scientific worldview, and the proper sphere of rational inquiry. So you can see he covered a lot of ground. (Full text here.)

Now a Turkish government official is comparing him to Mussolini and Hitler.

If this comparison occurred in an online discussion, it might end the argument, since it fulfills Godwin's Law:

There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress.

But this was declared in Real Life, in Turkey, which the Pope plans to visit soon.

I fear that the Pope
May end his life
At the end of a rope
Or the point of a knife.

His safety would be a better bet
If he stuck to appearing on the net,
Thus avoiding any Turks
Who might have chosen to go berserk.

Holiday in Hell

Tomorrow night - Saturday 8 pm at my house - free - Don Parrish will talk about his 2005 trip to North Korea.

Very few Americans get to visit this last gasp Communist outpost which is now arming itself to the teeth.

Don Parrish has circled the globe many times. He has a background in engineering and international business negotiations. A careful student of geopolitcal history, Don can be counted on to provide deep and original insights.

Curious people cherish
Talks by Mr. Parrish.

A liberty lover
Who heads off to discover
What's really going on -
That's Don.

Food Wonderful Food

Hicks linked to this report.
It's progress of a sort:

Experts claims that for the first time ever, there are more overweight people than hungry people in the world.

But I distrust this statistic.

After all, what about people on diets? A lot of them are overweight AND hungry. How did they get counted?

Though you may be overweight,
Though you may be far from sickly,
An under-loaded plate
Produces hunger quickly.

After the Deluge

I've regained my lawn.
Lake Enright is gone.

Last Night

It rained hard enough to make
My yard into a lake.

Sadistic Prank

So a guy posts a fake ad on Craig's List. He claims to be a young woman with submissive and masochistic desires, looking for a guy to, um, treat her right. He posts a provocative picture.

The guy doing the prank gets more than a hundred personal replies, including photos - of faces and other things - and lots of real names - and even some real work emails.

Then the guy posts all these replies on the internet, and asks for help in finding out more about the guys who replied.

When replying with work emails,
Be wary of fake females!