Wherever you go, there you are

Bigfoot about to start helping me dig a french drain

Mudcat fires a high fastball next, for a called strike. Then he throws a low fastball–and in a split second you can see why everybody loves Mantle. One instant he’s just standing there like any other yokel, but the next instant his body coils and explodes, and even through the TV you can hear the sweetest kind of bat-crack as the ball gets golfed to Kingdom Come.

I had a dream that you were two towns from me — I got to sleep, and spent the whole night running.

What a fine thing it all is!

Peppers growing next to the warm south side of the house, basking in the evening sun. A hat that fits. Perspective, changing over time, and some changes of mind. Dill — the plant, that is: best thing EVER in potato salad. Planning, plotting. The smell of freshly cut cedar. Houseplants. Reading in the afternoon sun, out on the patio.

I was sleeping, my eyes were dark ’til you woke me and told me that opening is just the start…. it was. Now I see you, til kingdom come, you’re the one I want to see me for all the stupid shit I’ve done

Taking things slowly, and then watching it come together perfectly. Biking for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles through forest trails, the warm breeze alternately washing over or pushing me along. The debates over this, over that. A memory of something bittersweet at an unexpected moment.

Cecil Fielder acknowledges a weight of 261,” Bill James once wrote, “leaving unanswered the question of what he might weigh if he put his other foot on the scale.”

Friends who surprise me. A check that I’ll frame! A strange envelope, with a rare treasure inside, awaiting me at the end of a long day. Feeling like I might belong, for the first time in a long, long time.

A hitchhiker told me I don’t talk a lot. It made me feel fine, made me quiet.

Helping my sister, or replacing that busted transmission? Why not both? It’s only credit, and I’ll pay it back. Seeing the sun truly setting at 9:00 PM beyond the distant sea, two minutes from my front door: priceless.

There’s a whole lot right with this world.

Yeah, What She Said

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind–

(I love you, Emily!)

Double Duty

I’ve been a busy fellow.  Obviously, right?  I’m still trying to think of an appropriate metaphor for blogging, but right now the best that I can do is High School Reunion.  Wrap your mind around that.

In other news, I made salsa tonight.  I’m a strong believer in local produce and plastic-free purchases, so my farmers’ market makes a lot of money off of me.  Today, I decided that I wanted burritos.  What would be a burrito without salsa?

What salsa looks like, when it's raw

Yup, there we go, folks.  The stock.  The fundamentals.  The base.

But the mango, and the avocado, and the onion can’t join in at first.  And we have to peel the seeds from the peppers or else this thing will be a fire that can’t be contained.

So there’s some chopping involved.  Ah, look at all those seeds!  Note the hazmat material, too.

I’d show you the rest, but apparently wordpress is a total bitchass.  Dear wordpress peeps: you really suck.  Not kinda.  No, you suck.  You’re bad people.  There, I said it.

Hi Daisy.  I know you’re reading this.

Listen! Get Ready to Drop Dead!

True to form for the fucking recording industry, sanctioned videos are prohibited, so go here.

I had visions, I was in them
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
The rottenness and evil in me

Fingertips have memories
I can’t forget the curves of your body
And when I feel a bit naughty
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes
(but no one ever does)

I’m not sick but I’m not well
And I’m so hot cause I’m in hell

Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don’t even own a tv

Put me in the hospital for nerves
And then they had to commit me
You told them all I was crazy
They cut off my legs now I’m an amputee, goddamn you

I’m not sick but I’m not well
And I’m so hot cause i’m in hell
I’m not sick but I’m not well
And it’s a sin to live so well

I wanna publish zines
And rage against machines
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn’t hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I’d like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind

Paranoia paranoia
Everybody’s coming to get me
Just say you never met me
Im running under ground with the moles
(Diggin big holes)

Hear the voices in my head
I swear to god it sounds like they’re snoring
But if you’re bored then you’re boring
The agony and the irony, they’re killing me

I’m not sick but I’m not well
And I’m so hot cause I’m in hell
I’m not sick but I’m not well
And it’s a sin to live so well

It’s Quiet in Here. Too Quiet.

Sun’s up, uh huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren’t half as frightening as they were before
But I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Walls windows trees, waves coming through
You be in me and I’ll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet
Or down in the valley where the river used to be
I got my mind on eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I’m wondering where the lions are…
I’m wondering where the lions are…

Huge orange flying boat rises off a lake
Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take
Pointing a finger at eternity
I’m sitting in the middle of this ecstasy

Young men marching, helmets shining in the sun,
Polished as precise like the brain behind the gun
(Should be!) they got me thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I’m wondering where the lions are…
I’m wondering where the lions are…

Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay
One of these days we’re going to sail away,
going to sail into eternity
some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I’m wondering where the lions are…
I’m wondering where the lions are…

P.S.
As a totally unrelated aside, I think that “Lyin’ Eyes” by
the Eagles is probably the saddest song ever written,
and I’ve thought that for many years. Let us all weep and
moan together. (No, it doesn’t cost you $1500 to say what
you think.)

GOP, Requiescam in Pacem

Copied and pasted wholesale from John Cole, because there is really nothing more to add:

And just so we are clear, until shown otherwise, what I remember is the following:

2001, time of mild economic downturn but with a large budget surplus projected as far as the eyes can see, and Democrats stated the tax cuts are bad policy and should not be adopted.

2009, during two wars, a financial disaster, an economic crisis and massive unemployment and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and the Republicans and Limbaugh are rooting for Obama to fail so they can regain some political power.

Until I am shown otherwise, that is how I see things. What is happening right now is nuts, and there simply is no comparison. Show me the tapes. Show me the transcripts. Show me Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid standing in front of a camera saying “I want President Bush to fail” just like we have seen Mike Pence and the parade of other Republican leaders do in the past few days. Bring it on, and I don’t mean some random jackass on the internet or some crazy tenured prof at a community college somewhere. I will admit my memory was wrong, but I want to see it, because I don’t remember it. And then when you are done, you can show me the video tapes or transcripts of all the Democrats groveling and begging for forgiveness at the feet of Michael Moore (who, by the way, is fat) after dissing him.

*** Update ***

Also, when a real crisis happened on 9/11, I remember the Democrats rushing to do whatever Bush wanted. I remember hand-holding and singing on the Capitol Steps. I don’t remember them hoping Bush’s response would fail.

The GOP has been wrong about every major policy issue since Jesus was in diapers. Their only use is to act as an opposition party to the Democrats since opposition is always necessary, but with the level of crazy that they’ve accumulated since 2000 I would love to see nothing less than the entire party dissolve.

May the GOP in 2020 be as the Whigs, or the Federalists, and may that assclown Limbaugh lead them there with all the fanfare he can muster.

Find the Fallacy (answer)

The short answer: zero probability (a mathematical term) does not imply zero possibility (a vague, intuitive notion that we all have about the word “probability”).

The longer answer:

Mathematicians and scientists in general are very precise in their language, especially those who deal with probability, statistics (probability’s real-world application), or stochastics (what I do).  A mathematician would say, in response to my last post, that ‘2′ is “almost surely” not going to be picked in the random sample (usually abbreviated by “a.s.”, as in “the data indicate that mercury is a.s. the cause of the XXX problem”). What that means is: you can pretty much count on ‘2′ not being picked, but it might be.  Infinity is a long stretch, but Measure Theory tells us that every data point in an infinite stream is important.  That’s why we always hear scientists hemming and hawing about questions for which we just want an answer – they’re not unsure, they’re just careful.  It doesn’t mean that they’re not pretty certain of what they’re stating.

Which brings me to my subversive point of this exercise: if you hear a politician with only a bachelor’s degree in political science or a JD (juris doctor, the law degree) claim that “scientists are unsure of the the validity of {insert political stepchild here, be it climate change or evolution or whatever}”, just don’t listen to them.  They don’t have the training to understand what they’re commenting upon.  (Inhofe, I’m looking at you, sir.)  I guarantee you that every layman on earth, upon hearing that there is “zero probability” of something occuring, would agree that it is impossible.  (Crazy religious beliefs aside.)

We hire professionals and experts all the time, and we rely upon their advice.  We don’t turn to a bum on the street for investment advice – why should we listen to a politician for scientific interpretations?  Of course, just as with every human endeavor, there will always be a small minority of credentialed lunatics who object to the consensus – and good for them.  May they always be there.  Without them, we might still all be flat-earthers.  But trotting out a few professional skeptics to bolster a mistaken belief never works in the end… truth will out.

Saturday Night Music

Find The Fallacy

The number 2 does not exist.

The number 2 is the only even prime number, and there are a countably infinite number of primes.  Hence the probability that a randomly chosen prime number is ‘2′ is 1/infinity — so the probability that 2 will be chosen is zero.  Hence, it cannot exist.

The answer to follow.

My Stimulus Bill Wish

It’s very simple: that usable train service travel return to the United States.*  I happen to be lucky enough to live in a part of the USA where there even is train service — one two-car Amtrak a day south to Seattle in the morning, and another one late at night returning north — but it’s a sad, red-headed stepchild compared to anything in Europe.  Even the English, who suffered the sad misfortune of not having their major cities completely leveled by carpet bombing in World War II (like the Germans)** — even the English have a FAR better train system.

Here’s the deal.  I am willing to pay MORE for transportation if I can take a train from here to there, as compared to air travel.  Why?  Because it is so much more convenient, so much more comfortable, and so much nicer in every conceivable way.

I flew first class on United from Seattle recently, for a conference.  The astonishing thing about first class is that it’s just like train travel, only about ten times more expensive.  The seats are roomy; there is plenty of leg room; you are served a real meal with actual silverware (like in the dining car).  I take that back: train travel is nicer, because on a train you don’t have to go through security, you don’t have to arrive at the station 90 minutes before departure, you don’t bounce around from turbulence, you can use your cell phone, you can get up and walk around whenever you want, and on overnight trips you can actually sleep in a bed.  Yes, a bed.

The usual counter argument is that train travel takes too long, but that’s deceptive.  Yes, it takes longer, but at what cost?  Done right, there  is no reason I shouldn’t be able to take a train from Seattle to Denver in two days, which I would MUCH prefer to the current 8-9 hour misery fest that it takes now, via airplane.  If I could catch a train here at noon and be in Denver at noon 48 hours later, I would do that in a heartbeat over the alternative of getting up at 6:30am to catch a flight that ultimately gets me into DIA at 2:00pm, exhausted and beaten down.

Anyway, that’s my rant right now.  I’m filling out expense reports.

---

*(My second is that english speakers start using the subjunctive mood again, as in my opening sentence, but I fear that no amount of strategic spending will ever induce more people to read.)

**Given a clean slate upon which to start, Germany put a main station in their cities (the blessed Hauptbahnhof), from which U-Bahns reach out like a web throughout their cities.  Going from a home in Hamburg to one in Nürnberg, for example, is a quick (and safe) sequence of subway, main station, other main station, subway.   The poor English are left with the Tube and train stations peppering London; to get to your destination, you must know the train station from which you must depart, not to mention fearing for your life on the Tube.  (No offense intended, Crushed.)