Power Out

But with my cell

I can blog reasonably well. 

Risk of Rules

Low birth-weight newborns are at higher risk for mortality. The official cut-off for "very low birthweight" is 1,500 grams. If the kid is 1,501 grams, doctors are advised to do less for him than if he were 1,499 grams.

Which results in a paradox:

'Researchers have shown that infants born just above 1,500 grams are more likely to die in the first year of life than those born just below, despite the fact that, in theory, a higher weight should increase an infant’s odds of survival.... In essence, because doctors are not using enough discretion — not acknowledging that infants just above 1,500 grams may be nearly as vulnerable as those below — lives are lost.'

Of course, on top of everything else, 1,500 seems like a suspiciously round number.

When a number seems too round,
I question whether the rule is sound.

Invasive Species: Hippos

You can't really blame the hippos themselves. They didn't mount an invasion. They were imported. But now they have escaped and are on the loose in Colombia.

The importer is described in the article as a "drug baron". As opposed, I suppose, to a "drug czar," who in American lingo is a guy who launches war on drug barons.

"It's just like this crazy wildlife experiment that we're left with," says San Diego University ecologist Rebecca Lewison. "Gosh! I hope this goes well."

It's mentioned in the article, that hippos taste like pork.
So maybe all the Colombians should simply grab a fork.

Meditating on Meditation

The Atlantic has an article about people who are in recovery from... meditation. A lot of people don't like meditation because it bores them to tears. But the people in recovery are people who really liked it, at first, and then found they were obsessed with inner darkness. It takes a lot of forms, one of which is "life loses meaning":

'Everything he had found pleasurable before the retreat—hanging out with friends, playing music, drinking—all of that "turned to dirt," he says, "a plate of beautiful food turned to dirt."'

Why would this be? Could it have anything to do with unacknowledged religious content?

'She explains that the Theravadin Buddhist tradition influences how a large portion of Americans practice meditation, but in it, mindfulness is "about vipassana, a specific type of insight … into the three characteristics of experience." These are also known as the three marks of existence: anicca, or impermanence; dukkha, or dissatisfaction; and anatta, or no-self.'

If you deeply and truly disengage
from all the ache inside  you,
you can find yourself on an empty stage,
with no script left to guide you.

Update, found on Facebook:

Optimistically

They didn't promise me a shirt, because I was a late signer-upper. But I optimistically checked after the race - and they did have some left over.

It's called a Sprint, but it's a quirky set of distances: Swim 1/4 Mile, Bike 13.8 Miles, Run 3.7 Miles. I was on the move for 1 hour 44 minutes.

It was a long drive from my house to Winona Lake, Indiana. About 2 hours with no traffic. The bad news was that I left my house at 3:40 in the morning. The good news was that there was almost no traffic at that time of day.

As the sun came up in North Central Indiana...

Fog rolling over the farmland,
trucks rolling over the road,
triathlon waiting before me,
my brain in groggy mode.

Mr. McQueen's Fall

He takes a dive
but stays alive.

Seatless in Pritzker

Last week they put shiny new furniture in Pritzker Park.

"One obvious reason that many folks haven’t chosen to spend time in Pritzker in the past is that it lacked a proper place to sit. The addition of seating for 40 to 50 people, in the form of large tables with umbrellas, small two-tops, and red plastic lawn chairs, is sure to attract more downtown workers and visitors."

At the link, you can click through to some very nice pictures by John Greenfield. Here are some zoom-ins:




Anyway, this week the furniture is gone again. I am told that's because homeless people, who frequent the park, weaponized the furniture on Saturday night.

That is, they got in a big brawl and were tossing it at each other.

(Cue the old Elton John song, "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting".)

When furniture isn't nailed down
You never know when some clown
Will clobber someone's head
In the hope of leaving them dead.

The Two Hundred Year Old Tree?

That's the old oak tree - and the electric utility pole - that I wrote about a couple of days ago. I showed the tree to my wife and her guess was that the tree was 2 or 3 hundred years old.

I trust her judgment in botany
so I guess that tree is older than me
maybe by a factor of three.

Back from New Hampshire

I had a fun long weekend at the Atlas Summit in Manchester, NH.

New Hampshire, as everyone who has seen their license plates knows, is the "Live Free Or Die" state.

As a state motto, it was adopted only in 1945. But it has a history.

"The phrase comes from a toast written by General John Stark, New Hampshire's most famous soldier of the American Revolutionary War, on July 31, 1809."

I met a bunch of people involved in the Free State Project, which aims "to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas."

They have adopted the porcupine as their mascot:



Less threatening than a venomous snake,
not much inclined to launch an attack,
but still it would be a silly mistake
to put your foot on its prickly back.

Crossbones

I've been watching the new John Malkovich show, Crossbones.

He plays Blackbeard, a pirate much to be feared. 

At a Lecture

...given by Jay Friedenberg, about epigrams. 

Terse is not worse. 

Appearances

If rather look spiffy than iffy. 

Etymology

Latin words for "pigs" & "spines", somehow turned into "porcupines".

The Hundred Year Old Tree

Walking home from the train, there were 4 cherry-picker type trucks from the electric company, 2 sets of 2, and they were working on brand new utility poles - with a lot of men at work.

I inquired and was informed that it was an effort to move an electric line so that it was no longer in touch with a hundred-year-old tree. I said it looked like a big job, and was told that it was also a lot of money.

I told the man that my preference might have been to just trim the tree.

He jokingly told me I was no longer allowed to live in the neighborhood.

The locals always get up in arms when the electric company wants to trim the tree branches near its lines.

You can hug a tree
all day
for free,
but you must pay
for electricity.

Walking Home

The shadow of a butterfly,
flew across the cement.
I did not bother to raise my eye.
With flutter I was content.

World Cup

I caught the last 20 minutes or so of the USA vs. Ghana game. Quite the nail-biter. Spoiler: we won.

Next up, Portugal. On the bright side, one of their better players got ejected from the game today, for a gratuitous head butt, and as an additional punishment he won't be able to play in Sunday's game with us.

I wouldn't say that our World Cup future is shining brightly,
but the outlook did improve slightly.

Press Behind Glass

The Sun-Times ran an interesting story today from a reporter complaining about the way contemporary politicians invite them to events, but then won't answer questions. The immediate focus was on a visit to Chicago by Hillary Clinton, followed by a flashback to a recent visit by Dick Cheney, followed by a full fingerpoint at our current president.

'We’re expected to show up, listen to whatever the official wants to say, then shut up and write about it.'

I suppose it's good that the press is complaining about it, but I don't think this level of complaining is very effective. She ends her article on a bitterly wistful note:

'So would a Hillary Clinton White House operate in the same way? Would love the chance to ask.'

Ask nice,
ask twice,
and someday she may let you ask...
thus letting you fulfill the journalist's task.

Generalizing

John McCaskey has an interesting, short, clear blog post up about scientific induction.

He begins by drawing a distinction between general statements and universal statements. "Paper burns" is a general truth, he says, but perhaps not a universal truth. You know, there is wet paper - that won't burn! And there are special varieties of flame-resistant paper, designed not to burn.

'“Paper burns” is a generalization that does not mean “All paper burns,” “Some paper burns,” “Most paper burns,” “All other things being equal, paper burns,” or even “Within a given context of knowledge, all paper burns.”'

I have a question here. I agree that "paper burns" doesn't mean exactly the same as "some paper burns" in everyday speech. But surely "paper burns" implies "some paper burns" at a bare minimum.

He goes on:

'“Generally” comes from the Latin “generis,” meaning “belonging to the kind.” What is generally true is true because the subject is the kind of thing it is. Balls roll and fire burns, because there is something about balls and paper that makes them roll and burn.'

That seems fair enough. He goes on to make the case that:

Scientific induction
involves definitional reconstruction.

So you throw whales out of "fish" -
because they're more mammal-ish.

(Once I tried to throw a whale.
Man, it was an epic fail.)

Peikoff on Enemy of the People

I listened to Peikoff's lecture on Ibsen's Enemy of the People, and I was very struck that he characterized Ibsen as a "Romantic Realist". That's the way Rand characterized her own literary tendencies. But there's a question in my mind about whether she saw Ibsen as a Romantic.

She manifestly thought highly of his abilities as a dramatist. She said something very positive about him in The Fountainhead, and she published a highly favorable article about him in her tightly-edited little magazine, the Objectivist. But in neither of those 2 cases was he characterized as a Romantic.

I think Ibsen's often seen as standing at a turning point, when Romanticism marched into Realism. He wrote verse plays early on, and then switched to prose plays about contemporary bourgeois characters. There's a lot of disagreement about how to classify him.

Nothing on stage is real.
The trick is just to simulate the feel
and pull them along for the ride
you helpfully provide.

Cables

I just found out that the audio cable, from my TV to my sound system, is optical fiber.

I've got it reconnected
but that was not expected.