Fonts

 Earl Wajenberg recommends her video about algorithms as well.

Her voice is a bit like bskings.

Firefly Blinks

Reposted from 2007

We have used the analogy of firefly blinks at our house for many years now…

Fireflies blink in simple patterns to identify to each other who is of the “same kind” for mating. This figures prominently in one of the Madeline L’Engle books, I think Arm of the Starfish, when one (human) character tries to trick another into believing she is of the same kind as him, on the same side in the spiritual battle. His sister uses the firefly image to warn him that the girl is not as she seems. Because we have made choice-of-wife a large topic in our family since the boys were small, the question of whether a girl has the right number of firefly blinks has been confined to romantic caution. I think the analogy applies more generally for the tribes, however. People get a sense of how many blinks you have.

The best story we have of this is (of course) Benjamin’s. Years ago he was quite taken with a girl at youth group, and to understand each other better, they agreed to read what had been the other’s favorite book as a child. This must have been Benjamin’s idea, as subsequent discussion revealed that she was not a girl who would ordinarily give, uh, testimony about herself via literary means. Ben chose Watership Down, which he had not so much read as repeatedly absorbed into his personality as a child. (Tangent: now that he is a filmmaker, if they ever remake the movie, Ben’s is the only opinion you will ever need whether you should see it.)

Ben may have suspected something was up, which is why he arranged this game to begin with. The girl asked him to read A Dog Named Kitty. This is not only from the hackneyed genre of noble-canine-croaks, it is a stunningly bad example. The dog does not die in the penultimate chapter, when he successfully fights off a wild something to save a defenseless something. The dog dies pointlessly by accident in the last chapter when a piece of pipeline falls off a truck on him. (Those darn oil companies!).

Cute as she was, the girl clearly did not have the right number of firefly blinks, which Ben reluctantly accepted. John-Adrian observed her lose her temper and hold a grudge over something small a few years later and was grateful the relationship with his brother had gone no deeper. She was not only the wrong subspecies, but a difficult person to boot.

I think the younger boys, who came here from Romania as teenagers, give off very mixed firefly blinks. Good thing they’re handsome, with very sexy accents.

Full Circle

A cartoon from 35 years ago has stuck in my head. I knew I liked it, and suspected that as I aged, I would agree with it more. An old man sits in a beach chair next to his wife, scowling out to sea. "I've come full circle. Things are what they seem."

Reality Is Coming

"Reality Is Coming" is the ESPN headline about what a lot of WNBA stars are saying about Caitlin Clark coming into the league. I dunno, I think women's college basketball is kinda real. It's about as real as the pro version. The WNBA doesn't earn its money in the usual sense - the league is supported by $ from the men's side. I suppose you could say that the women's league has to exist for PR purposes, and if you are willing to perform that entertainment function you are earning the money.

Is it catty to notice that none of them arrived at their WNBA jobs already hated by the women already there, as Caitlin is about to experience? 

This whole concept of The Real World is one I have objected to for fifty years, at least. My in-laws objected to the new priest because he hadn't been out in The Real World but was telling the parish how to live. Well, he'd been running a Korean orphanage. Doesn't that count as some kind of reality? I worked at a psychiatric hospital, my salary paid by taxpayers.  Was that the real world?
 

As I wrote almost 20 years ago...

Those guys in the military, who supposedly need to be told what to do and have trouble adjusting to the real world, or teachers and professors who spend their days with the young, or at-home moms who don’t get out much – I guess that’s not the real world either. If you work off-shifts and sleep when other people are up, or spend most of your day at a computer screen, how real is that? If you trade commodities but never see any actual oil or wheat, then you are clearly not connected to the “real” world. Ministers, retirees, entertainers and athletes, wealthy people, those on welfare – pretty much everyone, I guess.

When people use the phrase "real world" in that way, they seem to mean something like "Until you have faced the difficulties I have faced, you haven't seen the real world." We have convenient definitions.

Too Many Features

Update:  I got the clock to not only go to the correct time, but set at the correct time this morning.  Tentatively, all is good. 

I am trying to reset the clock on the car. It is complicated, and you have to scroll through many other choices.  These choices include entering Grandma's Birthday, or your Anniversary, but when I finally get to the clock (Daylight Saving or Not, 12h or 24 hr clock) and change it and set it, it doesn't stay set.  It is likely something simple once you already know how to do it.  That's what directions in the manual are now for - not to tell you how to do something, but remind you when you already know. I used to see this at work when we were being trained on new software.  The directions are not the directions, they are reminders of the real directions, which don't actually exist in written form anywhere.  It's the equivalent of the old "You can't miss it" when people used to give directions.

I just want to set the clock.  Or with the phone, I just want to make a call or check the time and date. It's similar to going in and trying to just buy a cup of coffee.  I just want coffee, milk and a little sugar.  I can put up with half-and-half or cream, and a full sugar or no sugar if that's what you've got. Flexible. Just give me a cup of coffee.

James Jamerson

I heard Paul McCartney claim that before Jamerson, bass playing was pretty rote and unexciting. bum bum BOM BOM bim bim bum bum: repeat indefinitely. Mc Cartney got stuck playing bass because his guitar was so cheap and the others refused anyway, to hear him tell it.  In those days any guitarist could pick up the bass and be serviceable. But when he heard Jamerson, it opened up a whole new world to him.

There's good history about Jamerson for the first nine minutes but just after that you will start hearing the Motown music he played on and will likely recognise the lines immediately.  "Oh, that was that guy? Oh yeah, I know that. It's a great bass line."

Thr Problem of Pain - Unedited Appendix

In the All About Jack podcast there is an interview about disability which includes the original appendix by Robert Havard, CS Lewis's and JRR Tolkien's personal physician and a member of the Inklings. In all current editions the appendix to The Problem of Pain, written in 1940, reflects Lewis's editing of Havard's essay. The original has recently been unearthed and received more attention. Of particular note is that just prior to the book coming out Mrs. Moore's brother visited at The Kilns while deteriorating mentally.  Lewis sat up with him often as he became more psychotic, until he eventually had to be confined. Those who have read Perelandra may recall Weston's speech at the end, as the demonic spirit is gradually taking him over, "My God, Ransom, it's awful. You don't understand. Right down under layers and layers. Buried alive. You try to connect things and can't.They take your head off...and you can't even look back on what life was like in the rind,because you know it never did mean anything even from the beginning...Oh Ransom, Ransom! We shall be killed! Killed and pulled back under the rind..." The man had dabbled in the occult all his days, and Lewis thought this deeply connected to his growing insanity.  It had a profound effect on him (something similar is described near the end of That Hideous Strength), so when he edited Havard's appendix he cut out a great deal about mental pain. I have read Lewis's description of the man losing his mind before him, and it sounded quite biological rather than spiritual to me.  But then, it would, having witnessed such things for decades.

I wish Lewis had left it alone and let Dr. Havard's experience speak for itself. I don't find Robert's description entirely without fault either. I recognise cases similar to the ones he describes, but I am aware of many which do not look like it at all. The are the observations of a man who has seen more than most people have and thought hard about it.  But there is much more than could be said. I will not comment further. These are the thoughts of a very decent man trained in medical observation about a century ago, who was about to be a doctor in the British Navy during WWII. He would be about the height of what men might expect to see under all manner of suffering at the time. I think they are interesting in themselves, and in understanding what pain does to the human personality.

Pain is a common and definite event which can easily be recognised. Although the sufferer may attempt to conceal, distort, or even exploit his pain, its real extent can be estimated with fair accuracy. But the observation of character or behaviour is less easy, less complete, and less exact, especially in the transient, if intimate, relation of doctor and patient. So an attempt to estimate the effect of pain upon general behavior must. it seems, be subject to large inaccuracies. In spite of this difficulty certain impressions gradually take form in the course of medical practice which are confirmed as experience grows. In the next few pages, an attempt is made to describe certain conclusions selected from a multitudinous and unmanageable mass of detail. A short attack of severe physical pain is overwhelming while it lasts. The sufferer is not usually loud in his complaints. 

There is intense and obvious distress.  there are the physical sign of pain, pallor, sweating, nausea, even vomiting, and a characteristic facial expression which cannot be concealed and seldom be imitated. The sufferer is not usually loud in his complaints. He will beg for relief but does not waste his breath on elaborating his troubles. His whole energy is devoted to fighting the enemy within him. It is unusual for him to lose self control and to become wild and irrational. It is rare for the severest physical pain to become in this sense unbearable. When short, severe, physical pain passes it leaves no obvious alteration in behaviour.  It may have been met with courage and recognition or with rebellion and despair.

In either case, the patients seems to be little altered by it when it is passed.  Long continued pain has more noticeable effects. It is exhausting and is a greater trial of patience. Yet it is often accepted with little or no complaint and great strength and resignation are developed. Pride is humbled or, at times, results in a determination to conceal suffering. Women with rheumatoid arthritis show a cheerfulness which is so characteristic that it can be compared to the spes phthisica of the consumptive: But these examples of behavior due more to a slight intoxication of the patient by the infection than to an increased strength of character. They are a sign of weakness, of diminished will to activity. They are not necessarily examples of an indomitable will surmounting the weakness of a diseased body. 

Some victims of chronic pain deteriorate. They become querulous and exploit their privileged position’ as invalids to practise domestic tyranny. But the wonder is that the failures are so few and the heroes so many; there is a challenge in physical pain which most can recognise and answer. 

On the other hand, a long illness, even without pain attached to it, exhausts the mind as well as the body. It produces weakness and fatigue. There is no vigor left to fight with. The invalid gives up the struggle and drifts helplessly and plaintively into a self-pitying despair. He will be found quietly weeping, yet when questioned is unable to explain why. Even so, some, in a similar physical state, will preserve their serenity and selflessness to the end. The spirit shines more clearly through the weakness of the body. To see it is a rare but moving experience. 

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “my tooth is aching” than to say “my heart is broken”. Yet if the cause is accepted and faced, the conflict will strengthen and purify the character and in time the pain will usually pass. Sometimes, however, it persists and the effect is devastating; if the cause is not faced or not recognised, it produces the dreary state of the chronic neurotic who is bane to himself and to all with whom he comes in contact. Some, however, by pure heroism overcome even chronic mental pain. They often produce brilliant work and strengthen, harden, and sharpen their characters till they become like tempered steel. 

In actual insanity the picture is darker. The first sign of approaching insanity is often deterioration of character. In full developed insanity the character is completely hidden by the disease,which takes possession of the character so completely that the phrase "possessed of a devil" is graphically descriptive. In the whole realm of medicine there is nothing so terrible to contemplate as a man with chronic melancholia. To speak with him has all the effect of witnessing a high tragedy transferred from the stage to life. But most of the insane are not unhappy or, indeed, conscious of their condition. In either case, if they re- cover, they are surprisingly little changed. Often they remember nothing of their illness. It is impossible to form a a conception of what insanity means to the sufferers themselves. But to look after the instance is valuable discipline. It teaches gentleness and self-control. It induces a deep humility when it is recognised that reason itself is a gift which can be lost. The biological purpose of pain is to draw attention to something harmful so that it may be avoided. 

Frequently, as in physical or mental disease, human pain fails to achieve its biological purpose. It then becomes a grave disorder. But the adversity of pain provides an opportunity for the development of heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency.  Any view of life in which heroism ranks higher than comfort must see that the disorder of pain when faced is less harmful when the result is good.

Turn Down Day

I saw this band's name on the WKBR Good Guys Top 30 list before I had heard anyone say it.  I thought it was pronounced Krickle. 

Eclipse

So many describe the eclipse as an awe-inspiring experience that I just have to contemplate why. There is a focus on the silence, the anticipation, the sense of being in a special moment of time.  Even some nonmystical friends seem to have been affected.

Here's my suggestion. The birds stopped singing because they are programmed to only sing in specific modes of light.  Therefore it was oddly silent. That's it. Everything else you are imagining is significant because of primitive man or our relationship to the heavens or whatever is just stuff you are adding in on your own. It's just birds noticing that the lights have been turned off, and they don't sing at night.

Giving and Receiving

For the real good of every gift it is essential, first, that the giver be in the gift - as God always is, for he is love - and next, that the receiver know and receive the giver in the gift. Every gift of God is but a harbinger of his greatest and only sufficing gift - that of himself. No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best; therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find him, then in him we shall find all things.

George MacDonald The Word of Jesus On Prayer #92. 

That the giver be in the gift and next that the receiver know and receive the giver in the gift. We know this even in earthly gifts. There has been a slow but pronounced deterioration in this over my lifetime. Indeed, it was already not very good when I was young. It was wonderful when my mother took her father's banjo-mandolin, with which he had courted my grandmother, and had it refurbished to give to me one Christmas, when I was actively in a band that played some country and bluegrass material. The instrument never lived up to its promise (it was a terrible idea for a hybrid), and I did not live up to the gift. 35 years later I found a better owner and gave it to him. 

I had thought that the ideal was that one gave a gift that showed you understood the recipient, and that the recipient in turn saw what the connection was that it was you who gave it, and that you gave it to him. The personal, communal, and interactive nature of giving and receiving was part of the process. It owes something to Christian teaching of the New People.  Whether it also descends from the Norse admiration for leaders who were great givers of gifts I don't know, but the value at least describes similarly.

Now we seem to be driven to gift cards more and more, as it is unclear what the person would particularly like or need.  We fight against it in this family, but it is a rearguard action.

NPR

I've Been at NPR for 25 Years.  Here's How We Lost America's Trust. (via Grim) The author grants them more objectivity than I would have - up until a decade ago or even later - but I might concede the point given his position and his obvious good will. I have thought that their fondness for the liberal POV was deeply tied to their style of reporting by anecdote rather than examining both sides. NPR Economic Reporting. Also, when some listeners identify as conservative, I wonder how many of those are only classical music fans or fans of the intellectual game shows, or of "Car Talk." It can't be zero. Those don't count against the political bias of the news shows in quite the same way.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. 

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

Not the first time.

Old Sayings

They can make you feel bad in retrospect either way.  "Look before you leap," but also "He who hesitates is lost." Faint heart never won the fair" contrasts with "Give it up, dude.  She's just not that into you."

It all looks so wise in hindsight.  The chorus of Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler" - I have had people* assure me that this was an important lesson they learned in life, that they hadn't realised when they were younger. "You've got to know when to hold 'em...Know when to fold 'em..." Well sure, if you knew the answers in advance, the test is much easier, in cards or in anything else. What does that give you going forward? I suppose there is something to teaching the young folding your hand, walking away, and even running away can be respectable responses sometimes, because the young tend not to know that.  But they are going to learn that just from their biology slowing down, without any old sayings or songs.

It's just fun to sing, to be a little world-weary and pretend you have gained great wisdom. I do it all the time.

It's like listening to fans or even baseball managers bemoan "Well, with a few more timely hits we could really get something going here." Yep, that's right.  If your whole team could hit .400 with a little power in clutch situations, your won-lost record would probably improve. So how are you going to do that?

*Okay, people working the overnight shift, so maybe I should be applying a discount here.