Learning through trials?

Maybe not the best paradigm.

I'm a lousy photographer

My wife has a much better eye for composition. She's been trying to teach me the basics.

Beyond the basics: I like this man's take on the profession.

The new normal

Milk tastes slightly harsh--more so the less fat content it has.

BBQ meat tastes pretty much the same as before--slightly drier, perhaps. But BBQ sauces might just as well be ketchup; there's little taste to them.

Generic Cheerios are made differently than brand name ones. Ask me how I can tell. I'd read that generics were made by the same factories as the brand names, but perhaps not.

Fruits seem to have an aftertaste now (apples particularly). No, it isn't pesticides; we don't use any in our garden and the raspberries taste off too. Maybe I'm finally tasting the natural anti-bug flavors the plants use.

Diving

Is this the way to cure it in soccer?

Speaking of performative injuries, the intersection of South Baldwin and Williamson streets is blocked off by protestors who need space to "mourn." They've managed to get the last and penultimate Concerts on the Square canceled too. For "mourning."

Pillar

Revelation 3:12: "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name."

The three-fold naming caught my attention this morning. Jesus refers to his "new name"--presumably new to us, since we just have the human name of Savior. He sometimes refers to God the Father as "my God". So what is the relationship of the name of the new Jerusalem to the other two names?

The presence of the Holy Spirit, maybe?

Fuzziness

The videos that were posted immediately after the shooting were taken as proof that the Madison policeman murdered the man 5 of them were trying to arrest.

Perhaps my eyes are just not what they used to be, but I can't tell exactly what went on. It doesn't help that a car moves across the field of view for part of the time.

Madison police do not wear body-cams(*)

Madison police have a reputation for being more community-sensitive and better trained than most. It could be true; I haven't had enough interactions with police here and there to have any basis of comparison.

I don't care to render a judgment myself; not right now. I do not see what the accusers profess to see. Nor do I see evidence of innocence. I see blurriness. And therefore I harbor deep suspicions of those who claimed perfect clarity from the very beginning of the reporting. It is possible for someone to have lied even when what he says eventually proves correct. Consider Joseph McCarthy.

And I wonder who is having AI generate video recreations of the incident right now.

(*) Former mayor Soglin, famously known as The Red Mayor, wrote this:

Why Madison Police do not have body cameras:

Prior to 2016, real reason: cost of storage of data

Since 2017: stated reason, "Invasion of a citizens privacy."

Since 2017, real reasons:

1. It increases the city's liability not having information a body camera provides.

2. The police want it, therefore we say, "No."

Ice cream flavor

The chef liked to experiment, and decided that he had a good mix with miso and caramel ice cream.

I lingered over the taste a while, trying to figure out what sort of cuisine and palate this would fit with.

Not German or Cajun or "American Midwest."

Interesting, but once is plenty.

I'll pass on making it myself, and on this recipe too.

In the night

One of the former leaders of our men's Bible study is in memory care, with hospice helping and not long left.

In the middle of the other night the nurses heard music from somewhere, and finally traced it down to his room, where he was singing hymns.

In a different kind of prison, one with bars of sickness and of failing mind, he was, like Paul and Silas, still singing.

Trying to fill in some gaps in my knowledge

The language is largely opaque to me, but I sort of get a hint of what he's talking about. Charles Cornell tries to explain what makes the motion in music.

My ear isn't tuned for this yet, but when he goes through it I can start to hear what's going on.

I get the impression that the categories of major and minor are a bit blurry at the edges.

Challenges

Among hackers porting the video game Doom to a new platform is a famous challenge. Pretty much anything with a computer in it has been hacked to run Doom--or so it seems. Even the Husqvarna Robotic lawnmower and the Honeywell Prestige thermostat...

This one is a doozy, though. The game, and also an IBM PC empulator to run it in, were implemented in Cascading Style Sheets, a software used for formatting web pages. The implementation isn't small, and is excruciatingly slow (estimated 1/10000 frames per second, after about 4 months to get the system booted and ready).

It isn't remotely useful, and although I can see the attraction of the challenge I would not have attempted it myself. I wouldn't try to climb Everest, either. That may be wisdom or laziness, or perhaps both.

Heightened risk

The body has some built-in cancer fighting capabilities. These have some fairly high probability of destroying mutant cells--though not 100 percent, so if your lifestyle exposes you to lots of mutagens something is more likely to get past the defenses. And presumably these defenses get weaker with aging and other bad habits. Once something gets past, ouch.

How likely is it that more than one type of cancer (not metastasis of the same!) develops?

Estimates: 1 in 20 within 6 months; 1 in 5 lifetime.

Time for a little back-of-the-enveloping.

For someone in the 70-74 range (averaging the sexes; men have higher rates), the population average for developing cancer is 2%: 1 in 50. That range includes 10 6-month periods, so estimate 0.2% chance per 6 month period, just from the normal incidences. The 1 in 20 cited above is 25 times bigger than normal.

Some of that may be due to the insults to the body from radiation or chemo, both as mutagens and as reducing the body's capacity to fight off mutants.

If I assume a 70-year-old, and if 13 years is the residual lifespan, and I use the same numbers as before, ignoring the rise in rate, then the expected lifetime risk is about .05, or 1 in 20. So having cancer increases the lifetime risk of a different cancer by about a factor of 4--better than the 25 above.

That seems consistent with a temporarily increased risk (e.g. chemo weakening the body) on top of a more generic increased risk.

Remember the rule: Where you see one problem, look for another.

Note to self

Do not plant raspberries and roses close (within about 20 feet) of each other.

Runners spread and removing stray raspberry canes from within the rose bush is tricky.

The contempt of the world

A nice turn of phrase: Eucherius lays the axe to the root of the tree, by shewing him the vanity, and the iniquity of riches and honours, the two grand inticements of popular spirits. And this he doth with such powerful and clear reasons, that to virtuous and peaceful minds he hath rendered them not only contemptible, but odious. Much more might have been spoken against them, but — seeing the age we live in hath made all his arguments demonstrations — he hath in my judgement spoken enough.

Lands without government

One of the reasons for recognizing nations is to have a single point of contact for coordinating things like war and peace, contract disputes, handing over (or not) alleged criminals for trials for crimes done elsewhere...

The whole point is to have that encapsulation--a single entity that manages the big picture relations between the people of different areas. It reduces complexity and confusion.

Without that, if you want to arrange for an end to armed conflict between your people and another "nation," you have to find representatives of all the groups and get each of them to agree to a cease-fire separately.

If you can deal with a single government, that government has the responsibility of enforcing the agreement on its internal groups.

But when there's no central authority for an area from which hostilities flow, what choices do you have?

Cut a deal with the groups that will deal, and accept that the rest will keep attacking you? That may not work if the holdouts have enough power to inflict serious harm.

Arrange for somebody else to conquer the holdouts, and then negotiate with you on their behalf--putting in a government you can deal with?

Invade the area yourself, and destroy the holdouts, and keep them suppressed? That might get the non-holdouts cheesed off at you too, and get you into a bigger problem.

Do punitive invasions where you tear into the holdouts and their temporary allies, and then leave? See above.

There are several places in the world where the nominal central government doesn't actually have effective control. One of them, insofar as control of military actions is concerned (and that probably extends into other fields as well), may well be Iran. That was their fall-back plan, anyway. I don't know who is talking to who about what, though I hope that secret (and no doubt face-saving) talks are underway about the uranium.

Interesting times

Gratitude

For the Fourth we went to the "biggest little parade" in Token Creek. They had about 17 "floats" and a street dance afterwards. The rain held off until the parade ended, but the dripped probably didn't damped spirits much. The Token Creek tradition is for water fights between the float riders and the spectators. And between spectators.

In the pre-game water fights, one family had equipped their youngsters with heart-shaped backpack water bladders connected to small squirters. I wish they'd had those when I was young. We made do with what few unbroken water pistols there were--the seams always cracked--and syringe bodies.

The littlest girl in the group—perhaps 5 years old—was short enough that she kept getting squirted in the face in the melee. She would wince, almost cry, grit her teeth, grin, and squirt back.

I took a brief hike down Portage to see the rest of the short parade route, find out how long were the food lines, and learn where the portajohns were. I saw nobody I knew, but I got more attention than I expected. After I rejoined the family I realized that I was pretty much the only man present with a button down shirt and long pants. Everybody else was dressed for a splash in the heat.

Before the parade began someone sang the Star Spangled Banner, of course, followed by a recording of "Proud to be an American."

I wondered, not for the first time, if that's the right framing. I'm proud of the ugly kludge bookcases I made so many decades ago. They fit the purpose and have for many family moves. They're something I did.

I'm grateful to be American. I'm grateful to be a man (and I trust my wife is grateful to be a woman). I'm proud to have helped in several experiments, and grateful for the chance. I'm grateful for our children.

As for the larger American project, I have not served in office or in the military, though I have done some teaching (and paid my taxes and looked for the least objectionable candidates and helped with a friend's unsuccessful campaign). I've tried to live and teach Christian values and the courtesies of the culture. I'm not sure those are enough to give me the right to be proud of my contribution. I suspect gratitude is safer for the soul.

The Fourth as seen by Neptunus

I wasn't introduced to his work until after he died. His meditations on the celebration.