Pecchia: 5/1/22

Saturday, May 07, 2022

Wordle 118

Friday, May 06, 2022

Work Backwards And Then Move Forward Again

And see if your views change.

Political leaders will say, "I'm personally opposed to X, but I would not impose my views on others" and people will just say, "okay"!

If it was something like, I'm personally opposed to cheating on one's spouse, this kind of makes sense. It is a betrayal of one person by another but it's really between those two and there is no real role for government to intrude.

But then do something like rape: I'm personally opposed to rape, but what right do I have to tell a dude that he can't rape another dude? This is ridiculous! It's not a private matter when another person's rights are violated.

So, let's work backwards from the elephant in the room: So, you're personally opposed to abortion, why are you opposed to it? Here, you can expect hesitation--possibly, they really aren't opposed to abortion at all. It was just BS. If they really are opposed, they'll say, I am opposed to abortion because it involves taking an innocent life.

Now, let's work forward. You are in favor of laws against murder? Yes, of course. The definition of murder is the premeditated killing of one Human by another Human, right? Yes. Okay, then...

Wordle 117

Thursday, May 05, 2022

Another Childhood Memory, Shattered

This is Corbin Park, Spokane:

The houses around the park are pretty amazing and it's a fairly unknown gem to people unfamiliar with the city.

Located two miles north of downtown, Corbin Park is one of only five local historic districts in Spokane. The site was the city’s first fairgrounds with a central racetrack. In 1889 a plat of the Corbin Park Addition included the former racetrack as a park in the center of the residential district. Homes within the district include a variety of styles such as Queen Anne, Tudor Revival, American Foursquare, Arts & Crafts, and Bungalows. The vast majority date from 1900 to 1925, but there are both earlier and later examples ringing the park. In 1909, a formal park design was prepared by the Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects of Brookline, Massachusetts. Today, most of the park has been adapted for current use as a baseball diamond and playground areas.

When I was a little kid, our family and one or two other families we were friends with went to this park for a Summer picnic. If I recall correctly, we were located on the south end and toward the western side of that long straightaway.

I don't recall the details of how this subject came up, but I suppose that I (being curios and very garrulous) had commented that the park seemed an unusual shape. One of the dads informed me that the park had been a horse-racing track and was exactly one mile in circumference. Wow! I, being a kid of maybe 7 or 8, had a lot of experience with running, but never a set distance, it was always just random play, which involved running. The idea of running a whole mile, non-stop, fascinated me. I didn't have to worry about getting lost, since the park was a simple oval. I informed a parent that I intended to jog around the park and vaguely remember getting some push-back; "You're too young to run that far" to which I replied, "I can always walk if I get tired".

I ran the whole loop, non-stop. Over the course of the picnic, I would run it a bunch more times, sometimes recruiting others to join me. I think I ended up running the loop 9 times and bragged for years about running 9 miles. Well, as you can see above, the course is more like 0.8 miles.

On one hand, this is but another instance of an adult mis-informing me. But, had I been properly informed that the loop was some fraction of a mile, I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't have tried to run the whole way around without stopping.