Another Reminder That The Will Of The People Is Not Reflected In The Laws

Our youngest daughter has just endured another lesson in, Having to do things nobody wants to do and nobody thinks you should have to and yet it is THE LAW.

She took driver's ed over her Christmas break.

Just to clarify, I think most parents would send their kids to driver's ed, even if they didn't have to. In fact, this blogger did that: Due to an older brother that crashed every car my folks owned, I was not permitted to drive till 18--which is when I no longer needed their permission to take driver's ed. It was also the point where it no longer was a pre-requisite for getting your licence. I felt like it would be a good idea and signed up anyway.

The quality of the instruction is notoriously poor. From the stories our daughter told us--the instructor shouldn't be allowed to drive, much less to instruct future drivers. The quality is poor because the customers are guaranteed: You cannot choose not to buy the service.

Around here, few make the logical leap: If it wasn't required, the instruction would be much better. As a result, most kids (mostly due to concerned parents--concern for their automobiles, if not their precious urchins) would still take the courses. But, but, some might not take the classes! Great! So instead of 90% of kids getting great instruction and 10% no instruction, we get 100% getting worthless instruction. For the Win!

End Of Year Sprint

I am just trying to keep up with last year's output and need two posts, today:

Some dad-jokes:

Yeast of Eden--for a bakery

Lumbar Liquidators--for a massage therapy studio.

A Quote Worth Unpacking

The below is from, When Harry Met Barry: The BBC Obama Interview
in the NYT.

“The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn’t lead to a Balkanization of society and allows ways of finding common ground.”

"...how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views..."

Obama uses the word "allow" twice in this sentence and it is telling: Freedom of speech is a fundamental right which is recognized (not granted) by the Constitution. You do not allow a person to live or be secure in their possessions either. But thank you for your benevolence in allowing us peons to engage in freedom expression Mr. former President!

"...but doesn’t lead to a Balkanization of society and allows ways of finding common ground."

Here, the "allows" is used in almost an opposite way from the first two. There are ways of finding common ground for those who desire this, so the "allows" seems almost menacing. You will be made to find common ground. The common ground you will be made to find is the common ground we (your superiors) have chosen in advance. The use and apparent opposition to Balkanization, is almost too precious. The United States became more divided under Obama's tenure, if it was not on purpose then it does not reflect well on Mr. Obama.

Injury PR

On one hand, I could say that a plan I hatched over a year ago has finally payed off. But I can't help but think that the trigger for it all was a chance injury.

Let's back-up a bit. I did not exercise regularly in my 30's, I tried running a few times but the result was always the same: I would run for a week or two, injure myself and then be out of commission for 6 months. Finally, in 2001 I had enough! I had gained a lot of weight and needed to either buy larger clothes or make running stick. I deliberately held myself to modest pace and distance and took a good 3 years to gently ramp up the effort. In the end, I got good enough to run some marathons in 2008,9,10 and 11 but I had chronic pain in my left Achilles tendon. I could run, but I might limp the next day. In 2012, I decided to take-up weight training. I got a barbell and 300 lbs of weight and did the one exercise I could do with no other equipment--the clean and jerk (this is the lift you see in Olympic competition).

Good C & J video

I slowly ramped-up until I peaked at 158 lbs, which I did exactly once. I tweaked my back reaching under a bush for a basketball. Now, I couldn't really lift much in the C & J, but I wanted to keep training. Also, I felt like I had reached a dead-end in the C & J. It is a very technical maneuver and so it is really hard to stress your muscles to their limit, at least not consistently. So, I built a squat rack and decided to alternate power lifting workouts (shoulder press, squat and dead lift) with Clean & Jerk. I could protect my back, since the moves are slow and deliberate, and continue to build strength. In the long run, this should lead to new personal records (PR) in the C & J.

That's the theory. In practice, I got back to making 155 every once in a while, even as my power lifting numbers steadily climbed.

I think what broke this impasse was our trip to Italy. We walked a ton and stood in plenty of lines, but I only ran once in the week we were there. I had a couple of really good runs on the return but then the old injury came back, worse than before. I had to drastically scale back on running. This resulted in a little renaissance in strength. Cardio is great, but I think it is pretty well established that it runs counter to strength. Also, the thing about strength, is that it comes with increases in body weight. I was 140 lbs when I ran marathons a few year's ago and am now 163 lbs when not dieting and hardly get below 155 when I am trying to get light (I was 153 on July 4th, when I lifted 155 after running a two mile race). The upshot, is that with more body weight, there is more stress on joints and tendons from running. So, rather than healing my old injuries, as lifting originally did for me, it was now causing injuries.

Getting back to the point: I was stronger but not lifting more in the Clean & Jerk. It must therefore be a matter of technique. I decided to workshop my methods and in the last couple of weeks and a few bloody shins later--I have a nice improvement in how I lift. Last Tue was the first pay-off: I normally lift 115, 125, 135, 145, 150 and then attempt 155 with failed attempts really common from 145 onward. Then something clicked: 145, 145, 150, 155, what the hell? Why not? 160 and a new PR. The first PR in a year and a half!

It was with some trepidation that C & J day rolled-around yesterday: 115, easy. 125, barely made it, 135, same. 140, same. 145, something clicked again. 150, easy, 155 easy, 160 easy, What the hell? Why not 165. Yes! Easy and another PR. But not just another PR: This was bucket-list territory. When I started lifting 4 1/2 years ago, 165 was my semi-realistic goal. Any weight beyond that was pure fantasy.

Done and done. Hopefully not a one-off. But even if so, a PR is a PR and this is a good one for me.

Update: The injury is not done with me: I ran an easy 5-mile treadmill workout on Tue night (ironically enough, I watched The Punisher ep 1) during the run. I could hardly walk on Wed, which was the next C&J workout and so skipped it. Today at work, I did a C&J with no drops: 115, 125, 135, 140, 145, 150, 155, 155. I did not dare do more because I don't feel entirely at ease on the rubber-matted floor, also, my ankle still aches. A couple of weeks ago, this effort would have had me walking on clouds, now: Meh!

Update 2: Yesterday was the first C & J where my Achilles feels fine, though I dare not run. 115, 125, 135, 140, 145, 155, 160, then 3 failed attempts at 165. My form felt good at 160 but also, it felt like all I could do. I went back and did 155, 160: The last lift felt effortless, but I was tired and quit for the day. I feel like I have solidified 160 and maybe I will enter a period analogous to roughly a year where I regularly did 140 and very rarely made 145. I will be fine with that!

Why Now?

Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Matt Lauer, Al Franken, Charlie Rose and lots more. Most of these accusations are old: 1990's for Weinstein and 40 years old in the case of Moore and they were largely known, at least to insiders. So why is this all coming out now?

Here are three theories, which are not mutually exclusive:

1. A chaotic and unstable system will eventually fall. There was plenty of harassment happening and at the same time, there was universal acceptance of the norms against this kind of behavior. Ronan Farrow's dogged pursuit of the Weinstein story was the grain of sand which started an avalanche.

2. Hillary lost. Now that the Clintons are done as a political force in America, it is finally safe to attack this social ill. It would not do to make a big issue of this while the first He and his primary enabler were living in the White House.

3. I will call this the paranoia theory: Roy Moore was in trouble, so Trump has used the intelligence powers at his disposal as President, to leak damaging information on a bunch of Democrats. Now the only way they can kill off Moore, is by throwing a bunch of their own under the bus.

Added: Why was there such rampant harassment going on in the first place? Laziness. That's my theory. I don't know the percentages, but plenty of women make themselves very accessible to rich and powerful men. These men get used to a veritable all you can eat buffet and start to act like whatever they want is free for the taking. The one thing they would not take is NO!

Rider Pick-Up Follies

A couple of weeks ago, I was leaving work and there was a black SUV in front of the building, with a driver in front of it holding a sign that said Batra. Somehow, I thought this was hilarious. It is like if Air Force 1 landed and the Secret Service limo driver was holding up a sign that said Trump. Batra, in case you do not know, is the CEO. So the driver is the only person around who does not know what he looks like.

Then yesterday, a group of three young people were leaving the building with suitcases. Right outside was a silver Rav4. A young lady in the group took out her phone and said, "we are looking for a silver Toyota Rav4". They looked at the car confusedly and finally realized that this was their ride.

Adventures In Italian Driving

Too many to list them all.

From what we had seen of Rome's driving, I had increasing dread as the day approached of us getting a rental car. On the other hand, full sized buses plied these roads and never seemed to crash into people, other cars or immovable objects. On the other, other hand: I have zero experience on these roads.

The first day was (or should have been) easy: It was Sunday morning--the most empty time for roads. Problems cropped up right away: I had to make a U-turn (it was a legal one). I turned too sharp and ended up in a trolley lane instead of the opposite car lane. I zoomed up to the next intersection and then got into the right lane. Boom! The Carabinieri were on my tail, lights flashing! I pulled-over with a sinking feeling of failure and they sped past me.



Plenty of other events: Waiting for a cattle crossing, being led down a glorified goat-path: "This can't possibly be the fastest way between Campodimele and Sorrento"! Followed by: "Why did Trixie wait till the road dead-ended before telling us to turn around"? I guess it should have been obvious, given her name. And finally: Why don't Italians have dead-end signs? If any place needs them it is Italy!

The Rim Of Vesuvius from another angle

Sorrento

Under The Volcano, Or In It

Good Luck and Bad Luck

This should have been an easy errand: Just get in the car and pick-up Jemma from school. I had just completed a barefoot run and didn't have time to shower before setting out. As it happens, I drive right past where the older daughter parks for cross country practice and I happened to notice that one of her rear-tires was low. After I got Jemma, I swung into the lot to take a closer look...sure enough, the tire was completely flat. The coach was briefing the girls on the workout they were about to do. Jemma wondered why I needed to talk to Dahlia or show my face or bare feet at all. I suggested that I couldn't get to the spare unless I could get ahold of the spare tire, locked inside of the car. So, I approached, got the daughter's attention and motioned her to come to me. It took about ten minutes to swap out the flat for the doughnut. It kind of hurt my bare foot to loosen the lug-nuts. Finished, I took the flat with me to see if I could fix it. I put a patch on the tire and decided to let it set-up while I took a shower. After the shower, the air seemed to be holding and so I set about swapping back the repaired tire. One of the lug nuts stuck and I had to sheer it off to complete the job. That is the bad luck part of all this. Thinking that the girl might want to avoid this car out of doubts about the reliability of the repair, I decided to take it and leave the car I came in for her. Good thing I did--the key would not turn! The jacking up and down of the car had put a lot of pressure on the wheel and you have to relieve this to unjam the ignition lock. It took all the strength I have to torque the wheel free--I would have been called to come and help, so this kind of worked out nicely

One Bible, Three, or Four Stories

The nice lady at the Motel check-in warned us that men might come around soon to change the bedside tables in our room. They didn't. Not that day at least. A relief too: We had driven two hours to Logan, flown 6 hours and driven another two hours to Eatonville, with all the attendant waits and hassles that come with air travel.

I made note of the handles on the, what looked like brand new, bedside tables, when I was casting about for a bottle opener. The room had a microwave, fridge and coffee maker, but no bottle opener. The curved underside of the drawer pull made a good field-expedient opener. And I made sure to be very careful, the pull was made of wood and I didn't want to damage it. The men probably already did this room and so the warning was not necessary.

The next day, we got back from the funeral and the bible was in the middle of the bed.

I suspected red-neckary or prudishness. When we checked in, the desk clerk asked how many rooms and then when the answer was "one", how many beds: Also, one. My wife wears a pretty traditional wedding ring but possibly all of that was overcome by her exotic looks.

Later, my wife mentioned this to one of my aunts, the aunt came up with the idea that it was because of the funeral. There were lots of Pecchias around town and the family was very prominent in their time--before they all moved away.

The real answer was the bed side stands. These must be new, they had no handles on them yet--just two neat holes where the attachment screws will go. The men were through--they made sure to empty the drawer before replacing the stand--not through enough to put the Bible back into the bedside stand though.

A Miracle Of His Time

We all are to some extent: How many of us would not be alive today if it were not for fairly recent inventions? I had pneumonia as an infant and likely would have died if it were not for antibiotics. They wrecked my teeth, but I can smile about it now. Because I am alive! My three girls exist because of the inexplicable choice my wife made: Go to Brown or Washington State University for graduate school? We met, they exist: Yea random chance!

About 28 years ago, my dad had quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery due to angina and 90%+ blockage in his coronary arteries. It wasn't a close-call from a historical standpoint: Such treatments had been common for twenty years by then. Over thousands of years of Human history, this surgery did not exist--not for a peasant and equally not for the most powerful king or emperor. My dad was a middle class retired Air Guard pilot and in this part of Human history, cures were available.

He would not have died from this condition, at least not right away. The risk of sudden death would have forced an extreme limit on physical activity. As it was, he went on to live 28 more years and when he died, it was completely unrelated to his heart.

A mere 150 years ago, it could reasonably take a couple of weeks for a letter from Washington to reach me in Boston. In less time than that, I have found out about his passing, will have flown across the country for his memorial service and returned home.

We Are The Heroes (in the story we tell ourselves)

Did you ever notice that opposition to president Obama's agenda was invariably described as "obstruction" by leftists. How do they describe their opposition to president Trump's agenda? Resistance!

Living The Simulated Life

A couple of mornings ago, I was browsing social media and came across a video of a bicyclist being clipped by a car. The rider was okay and all were in full dudgeon to catch the driver and see him punished. An odd thing I noticed about the video is that the biker was within an arms-length of the center of what looked like a kind of highway. Not saying it is okay to run people over, but WTF is a cyclist doing out in the middle of a high speed roadway? He may have a right to do this (or may not) but getting hit by a car is predictable, inevitable and he might not be so lucky to walk away from the next instance. There will be a next instance if he habitually rides in the middle of a road.

That very day, I was driving to work in our Yukon XL and there is a place where I make a left turn, which is something of a hard-left, say 100 degrees rather than the usual 90. Making it worse is that this is a busy main road and right after that intersection, the continuing road curves to the right. You have to do the whole turn pretty fast and/or be prepared to stop suddenly if an oncoming car appears from around the corner. With my turn signal on and half-way through the turn, I saw something to my left out of the corner of my eye--a bicyclist! He was going about 25 mph and cut in front of me! I had hardly reached the brake and he had already gone past me into the main road. I suspect he had the timing down and figured there would be space between us since we were both turning left. Still, I don't cut through corners and this is a large vehicle, so I doubt he cleared me by even two feet. Since he was to my left, he could likely see down the main road better than I could and cars move fast through there, so he could easily have been flattened by an oncoming car.

A Perfect Moment

It was the perfect little moment:

Wimbledon quarterfinal 5th set with Murray v. Querrey. Understandably, given the venue, the crowd was on the side of the Scottish player. Querrey had just made another of his amazing points and the camera panned to the crowd. A lady was clapping, but most people were not. She stopped, looked around and put up her hands. She used no words, but could not have been more clear: What? We all know it was a terrific point.

It T'eggs All Types

4th Of July Physical Activity

It was with some trepidation that I signed up for the John Carson 2-miler this year: Groton was a disaster and I was not sure if I was permanently broken.

The race went well. I was dropped off at the start the perfect 30 minutes early. This was enough time to stroll around and then gradually warm up for 20 minutes. The day was hot, but not unbearably so and I was in a full sweat at the start. This is a good sign that you are properly warm for such a short race.

The first half-mile is a s-show, with lots of little kids placing themselves in the front of the 2,000 runner pack and able to maintain the pace for 200-300 yards and then stopping when they get tired. I was at 3:33 at the end of the first half-mile and happy with the pace even though it was three seconds slower than my goal of being under 14:00 overall. Between the crowded field and the generally uphill trend, these three seconds would be made back up.

The end of the first mile was right at 7:00. So I made up the three seconds, now to power my way in to the end! I finished in 13:47 for a solidly negative split. Not my best time, but better than last year and in the sixes. I was 10th out of 103 in my age/gender group.

I grabbed a water ate a wedge of watermelon, had a chat with Adam and Zach--who finished about a minute ahead of me and jogged home on the bike path, while munching on Lay's Potato Chips.

Cooled down and hydrated at home, showered, ate a bagel (that we picked up in the same plaza as the start of the race) and then got the potato salad made. Finally, with a heavy heart, I went to the basement to do my lifting: Tuesday is a lifting day, but not normally a running day, let alone a race day!

I decided I would be happy with 135 lbs in the clean and jerk. 115 lbs easy, 125 lbs equally easy, 135 lbs easy--success for the day, 145 lbs easy. 150 lbs, got tangled in the bar and dropped the weight, fine, try again. Made it easily. Okay, should I try the rare (made once this year) 155? Yes, try! D'Oh! Did not extend far enough and the bar was too far out in front of me to get fully under it. Try again. Effortless! If you get your weight and timing perfect, it makes a huge difference. I put it over my head and called it a day.

It was a day which would later feature hamburgers, bbq spareribs, potato salad and fireworks. So a very good day.

Two Hoes

That's what I would have called it. Norman Rockwell called it The Girls Back Home.

Square!

Update: Two Heaux

Swift Would Have Understood

When I was a kid and read Gulliver's Travels, there was a part where the Lilliputians tailor a suit for Gulliver by measuring his thumb and multiplying by various amounts to figure out all the dimensions. At the time, I thought "Brilliant"! Later, it was obvious that Swift was making a joke--one which was lost (well, I had an inkling at the time) on my 12-year old self. Nowadays, adults take this kind of logic seriously. Really!

Take the central dogma of climate change: Man is increasing CO2 levels->Increased temperature->Specific (always detrimental) changes in climate->The One-And-Only Solution->Make tiny decreases in the rate at which we increase our CO2 output*. The base stealing goes on in the latter claims: The first couple of things are certain (one can quibble about the degree) but the final bits range from speculative to almost certainly untrue. We can use the scientific method to measure CO2 and temperature changes. Models about what changes in temperature would do to climate are theoretically possible, but I would not put any faith in them until they have established a track-record of predictive accuracy. A prescription for a course to take, falls almost completely outside of Science. There is an infinite set of possible solutions, the application of science and engineering can be used to evaluate their merrits, but one will notice that none of this has happened! It (reducing CO2 emissions) was landed on as if it was the one and only possible solution.

*Really! The vaunted Paris Accords call for cuts in the output of industrialized nations, while 3rd world countries actually increase their CO2 output. Even if every country made a massive cut of 50%, we would still be adding to the total amount in the atmosphere! If there is already too much there, how is adding more any kind of solution?

The Little Running App That Could

I've used a few. But they all die. First, they lose the ability to create a post to Facebook. This is understandable since Facebook constantly changes how they interact with apps and the apps are mostly done by a hobbyist, who just wanted to try out a new skill but has moved on and can't be bothered to maintain the site. Next goes the post to Twitter and the ability to log a run on Facebook. All that remains is the site itself, which starts to error-out and not let you post to it, or it renders your 5.5 mile 8:21 pace into 100,329,285.10007 miles at who cares what pace? Strangely, they will still let you download all the past runs.

I've been using RunningAHEAD for a bit over 5 years now and well, you can only post at the site and it no longer makes Facebook posts or Tweets, though it does update the sidebar on this blog (upper left corner, see?). But it works! 8,004 miles of posts. The average pace is 7:59/mile. It will soon be over 8:00 since I rarely do sub-8 workouts any more.

This mileage is a fraction of the total since I took up running 15 years ago: First of all, it excludes the high mileage I was doing in the marathon era--I ran 5 between 2008 and 2011. The whole 15 years is probably something like 25k miles.

You Can't Leak Information You Don't Have

The press correctly, but deceptively report that Susan Rice did nothing illegal by asking for the names of American citizens whose identities had been redacted from intelligence reports. It is legal for her to make the request.

It is illegal for that information to be divulged to the public. We do not know if she did this or not, but here is the thing: She couldn't have done it if she didn't know the names in the first place.

We ought to be able to trust public officials, but part of the reason for that trust is that they need to be held accountable when they abuse that trust. Ms Rice remained in the Obama administration after going on all the Sunday political talk shows claiming a film was the cause of "protests" in Benghazi. Nobody was charged in the IRS abuse scandal--they persecuted Tea Party groups. Why should we trust people like Rice to have not leaked the names? She has given us no reason to trust her at all.

O. Henry (in reverse)

In O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi, a poor couple grapple with what to give each other for Christmas. Each has a prized possession, the wife has beautiful long hair, the man has a gold pocket watch. He pawns the watch to buy her decorative combs for her hair. She sells her hair to purchase a chain for the watch.

My mom was always hard of hearing but it got worse over the years. An obvious solution would have been for all of us to have learned sign language--she took some lessons, but nobody else did. Instead, she worked at lip reading and that plus the bit of hearing she had was enough to get by. Later, technology came along (cochlear implants) which enabled pretty normal hearing.

As fate would have it, an odd thing has happened. My dad is losing the power of speech--I am not sure the cause, but his voice is reduced to a whisper. Now, even a person with normal hearing has difficulty making out what he is saying. Sign language seems an obvious answer. If he had learned it 40 years ago, he would be pretty good at it by now. Bygones. Still, learn a few basic words and phrases like, "could you pass the X" or "I'm tired and going to bed" etc. and there will be a big incentive to expand vocabulary.

More Fun, More Fantastic

Winning At The Half

There is an obvious advantage to being ahead at the halftime mark. If the status quo stands, your team will win the game. This is not the whole story as anyone who saw the historic win by the New England Patriots over the Atalanta Falcons is well aware of.

The advantage the Patriots had was that while Lady Gaga was wowing the nation with her show, the Patriots were work-shopping and planning how to stop Atlanta's offense and how to defeat their defense. Atlanta could not and did not need to do this--what they had been doing was working and they had no way to know what changes (if any) the Pats had up their jerseys.

The Patriots had a big points deficit to overcome, but with a lot of luck as well as figuring out how to give Brady time to throw and figuring out how to stop Atlanta's formidable offense, they found a way to win.

Some of it was structural: The Pats offense was on the field a lot and the defenders who sacked and knocked down Brady just got tired out. It wasn't the plan, like Mohammad Ali's "rope-a-dope" but it had the same effects. And it's small things: So many game changing passes were missed in the first half, but not by much. In the second half, the passes were caught--including ones that seemed as if God was in the mix:

Believe It, Or Don't, The Choice Is Yours

You don't have to protest. You could just do what you expect your opponents to do: Learn to live with not getting your way.

Oh! But this is different! You see, I am obviously right and they are benighted and are closed-mind.

Yes, obviously. But just as obvious, is that there are still people who believe otherwise and since their beliefs are clearly wrong, it should be a snap to change their minds. Right?

Just a helpful hint and I do not mean to take sides, especially since I have no idea of what you are for or against, but I think complaining about the need to protest will not be persuasive to your opponents.

It Was Bloody Chaos

It sounded much worse than it actually was, or at least must have seemed so since our future nurse came running down-stairs to see what the medical emergency was all about.

I was clearing the table after dinner and felt a tickle in my nose. I wiped it with a napkin and this quickly stimulated a bright red drop of blood to fall neatly to the floor. This was instantly noticed by our dog, who is accustomed to swooping in and devouring anything she sees falling to the floor. Mid pounce, I commanded her "un uha"! and that paused her for the moment. Then I squatted down to wipe up the blood spot. Henceforth, the blood started dripping at about one drop every 3 seconds. I was behind the curve--I could not get the floor clean before the next drop fell and I did not want our spaniel getting a taste for Human blood.

So I called out to my wife, in the adjacent kitchen, to bring me a paper towel. She showed up at the same time as the future RN who countermanded my wife's advice to tilt my head back. Her training was that one could choke or become sick from ingesting blood, though it seemed too little to cause any such harm. I did follow her advice, to be supportive and really the crisis was past, now that I could hold my nose with one towel and wipe the floor with the other.

Massachusetts Lowest "Gun Death" Rate

Our local NPR station reported this morning that we have the lowest gun death rate in the nation. Yeah!

Does that mean we have the lowest murder rate? Um, no. We are 6th best as of 2015 (latest data I could find) Here 1.9 murders/year/100,000 people.

That leaves suicide and accidents. Well, the suicide rate in MA is 8.3 suicides/year/100,000 people and while it is 4 times the murder rate, it is nonetheless the lowest in the nation, please see here.

They could have been more honest and simply said that Massachusetts has a lowish murder rate but mostly a very low suicide rate. I think that most people care more about murder and suicide than about how these acts are performed, so the obfuscation of "gun deaths" distracts from the real story.

Thoughts On ‘Chuck Norris vs. Communism’

This is not a movie review: You can find a good one here, or just google the title for several choices.

At the height of the cold war in Romania, mid 1980's, Western action films were voiced over into Romanian and shown to eager audiences willing to pay and take a risk. The interviews all show people who were greatly impressed and moved by Western society compared to their own: The freedom displayed as well as our opulence compared to what they had, made a big impression.

One ironic thing was that this was capitalism in practice: The people who arranged viewings, did so in their own apartments and had to acquire expensive (like the cost of a car) VHS machines. They charged guests to see films and hence recouped their investment as well as turned a profit.

The main thing that struck me was a kind of hope/despair dialectic: We are not such a beacon now. Does this mean we in the West have stagnated and are no longer in the vanguard of Human civilization? Or is it that the world is just more free now and so many more people are catching up to what we've had for so long?

Consider The Alternative

President elect Trump has come under some fair criticism for his New Year's Day tweet:

Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love!

The most common criticism I've seen is that Trump should refer to people who disagree with him as opponents or something less harsh than "enemies". Sure, okay. But you realize that the only likely alternative to Trump was Hillary Clinton, who famously said in response to an Anderson Cooper question:

You've all made a few people upset over your political careers. Which enemy are you most proud of?"

Hillary:

Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. Probably the Republicans.

Nice! 4 groups of Americans that oppose her agenda and one foreign enemy.

You Had One Job

Semi Day-Off activities

Roast coffee.

Go for a run--8.8 miles barefoot: First barefoot run of the year, still not under 8:00 but I'll get there, still have post vacation slows.

Ordered some green coffee beans--remembered we were all out when I got them out for the earlier roasting. Remembered that the vendor had a deal on shipping, so I will get 35 lbs delivered for $7.99.

Took Dahlia to the oral surgeon for a follow up on her root canal. This place is great! The waiting room looks like a nice home library/sitting room and she has little dogs that want to snuggle (and will fall asleap on you while you are being operated upon.

Made some ham and bean soup for dinner.

Took Jemma to dance lessons.

Logged into work and put in 2.5 hours.

NOTE: These items are not in order.

Chichen Itza

I did not leave my heart in Chichen Itza, others were not so lucky...

The standard understanding is that the Human sacrifice was done at the top of the pyramids, most was but some were killed and thrown into the cenote, which was their only source of water. Gee, I wonder if this is why they died out? This settlement was abandoned before the Spaniards arrived.

Christmas in Mexico

Forgotten Middle Child