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

Kin Ha Senote Jump

http://dpecchia.tumblr.com/post/155213288609/jump-into-cenote

The kids in the back of our rental car on the way to the cenote were asking what it is called. My wife spelled: it is K, I, N, splash, H, A. Splash, space whatever--definite splash place!

Vacation Week Time Use

I took this week off since my employer does not allow any carryover of PTO. In the unlikely event I suddenly become CEO, day 1, 8:00 AM, employees will be allowed to carry some amount of paid time off. I think one year's worth is reasonable. I know the accountants want to zero out every year, but screw them--99% of the company are not CPAs! I do not believe the HR BS that carryover encourages the use of PTO. I would take a lot more early Winter and Spring time off, but I haven't accumulated much by then and don't want to be in the hole.

Anyway to the point of this post: What have I been doing with my time?

Monday, it snowed and so I spent a fair amount of exertion shoveling the driveway. I had to go to the store since I make falafel for our dept party and needed fresh parsley. Later I went for a run, which was slow due to fatigue from shoveling and the presence of snow on the ground. I took Jemma to the orthodontist to have a look at her broken retainer. Later, time was taken up with attending Dahlia's induction into what she calls "the cult" of NHS. We are so proud, her first cult!

Home just in time to watch the Patriots play Monday Night Football! I only watched to the half because it was 23-3 and looked like a Pats blowout. Turns out the Ravens made a big, but ultimately failing comeback in the 2nd half. Too bad I missed it!

Tuesday, I made the Falafel and had to deal with our food processor dying--we have a smaller, older unit that could do the job in several batches. Also, made a large batch of pizelles, because I bring these to the party as well. I only had time to make a couple dozen before having to wrap the Yankee swap gift and go to the party.

The party ended and I had just enough time to get Jemma from School and take her to get a new retainer at the orthodontist. Then power lifting, followed by dinner.

Wednesday, I cooked up the rest of the pizille cookies and did some shopping for Christmas things to send. It was a fiasco. I was looking for candy to send to people and must have left my hat somewhere and I could not find it. Called today and I think they have it in the lost and found. Next, I went to the grocery for some rustic bread, which they had, but also I wanted some great and inexpensive bacon they had. They had the bacon but now it was normal price, so no point in stocking up. Also I wanted pomegranates--which they normally have, but did not have on this day. They had something called "pepino melon" which smelled intriguing, but they were half the size of a mango and priced at $5 each, so no. I got home in just enough time to go for my run--the day was warm enough for no shoes, or so I thought. I had to run a course I hadn't done in a while and there were some patches of ice to cross. All in all, it was a good run, 8.8 miles at a 7:44 pace. It was too late for lunch since the concert was soon. Later, the Winter concert, featuring Jemma on violin. (It should be up on the Chelmsford Telemedia youtube channel soon).

Thursday, I got the packages sent and did an easy clean and jerk workout. Made my 150 lbs easily but elected to stop there and not spoil it.

Movies Within a Sitcom

A repeating motif on Seinfeld was that the characters went out to the movies a lot. Sometimes they were real, such as Shindler's List or The English Patient. Often times, they were fake movies with titles which sounded real-ish.

Now that there is an internet, you may have realized that nothing you think of has not already been thought of by someone else. And obsessed about and posted onto the internet. So, yes. There is a genre of movie posters for fake movies from Seinfeld.

First: The Rochelle, Rochelle ones:



Other ones which even I, a Seinfeld fan, barely remember...

Dog Whistles and Mind-Reading

Everybody is a Carnak now.

Trump is an antisemite, racist, homophobe, sexist etc.

How do you know this? Let's set-aside that nobody (okay, no Human) can divine the content of another's soul. But still, how about some evidence?

It is all "dog whistles". So, his heart is judged by how well his enemies can interpret his words to suit their thesis?

Go ahead and Google: "Trump anti semitic dog whistle" for examples. They are perfect examples of seeing all kinds of meaning in random noise. Eg. Complete avoidence of them is what is technically called, "An impossibly high standard", which is another way of saying no standard at all.

Also, a one-way standard: Did Obama ever get criticized in an anti semitic context in the main stream media for having Al Sharpton over to the White House several dozens of times?

Kidding! Of course not.

Anyway, what is the point of a dog whistle if the dog can't hear it? These claims rely on such subtlety, do you really think some troglodyte from the back woods will hear it? The troglodyte may have access to the internet and find out that many of Trump's business associates are Jewish, his son in law too and that the PM of Israel likes Trump. If the kid is motivated by hatred for all things Jewish, I don't think Trump is going to get him fired-up.

But if it can only be heard by enemies, is it still a dog whistle? No. I think the term you are looking for is imaginary whistle.

Compassion

The temptation to gloat is strong: How many years has it been rubbed in our faces when our guy lost?

Let's not.

To those disappointed, sorry, we know how you feel. Lots of us felt that way a few months ago when Trump won the Republican nomination and 4 years before that too. We know how you feel because we've been there too.

I voted for Johnson, so I expected to be disappointed no matter what. Hillary would have caused more pain than Trump, but not by much.

So, to those in pain. Try not to lash-out. Somebody had to lose, lots of good (yes, even people you don't agree with are good) people were bound to feel despondent on Wed. It happens to be you, it could have been them. Those feelings are valid, no matter which side is on the losing side.

We are all fellow Americans. We fight hard over real issues, but let's not forget that at the end of the day, we are partners in this nation.

Election Predictions

Liberals will find it the height of wit to post a picture of The Donald with the caption, "You're Fired!"

OR

Conservatives will post a picture of Obama with the caption: Dear Democrats, we understand how you feel right now. We felt exactly the same way 4 and 8 years ago."

The Running App That Could

I noticed yesterday that my web running ap RunningAHEAD has lasted at least 5 years now: I hit the following benchmarks: Total: 7,500.0 mi 996:16:42. (41 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes, 42 seconds)

I think this is the 2nd or 3rd app I have used and they all worked well, but one gets the feeling that it is sombody's hobby and eventually they let it go to seed. This one used to be accessable from Facebook and would create Tweets too. Now it just works, for which I am gratefull. It even has a mapping fuction and one can download the whole dbase and resurect it in Excel.

You can run through the calculations yourself, but the average pace is just under 8:00/mile, for the whole 7,500 miles of running. If I ran 24/7 it would take roughly 17 days to cross the USA, 3,100 miles (5,000 km). The whole 7,500 would take 41 and 1/2 days, which is really not a lot when one considers that this was over 1,825 days. About 1/44th of a day per day or 33 minutes per day.

I found the previous log, which doesn't work but still has all my old workouts and there is almost 5,000 km in that log. It covered a couple of years.

Burning Seed-Corn

Or just more effective training?

I will just back-up a bit to explain: I have in the past few years had a standard of 30 miles per week at an 8:00 min/mile pace or better. The thing is that I have been feeling run-down. Recently, I took a week off from work and tried running on alternate days. The off-days for running were on-days for weights. I do a power-lift routine and then two days later Clean and Jerk only. On that week, my runs were fast and pleasant. It was the first week since last spring in which I made my 4: 30 miles, sub-8, one barefoot run and one run over 10 miles.

So now what I am trying is to run Mon at work, Wed when I am off, and then Sat. It will not, at least not at first, add up to 30 miles though. For now it feels good. The question I have is whether or not this is making me a better runner.

Hypothesis 1: I am doing less running and will lose fitness.
Hypothesis 2: My training is less, but is of higher quality and so fitness will improve.

Time will tell.

SABO

getting lucky

At dining!

Last weekend, my wife and I spent a night in Manchester. We had driven by the queen city many times but never really explored the place.

We were on foot and looking for a place to dine. We found the Hanover Street Chop House, which looked good, but there was a 45 minute to 1 hour wait.

OR

We could sit at the bar--which also had a wait list, please check with the bartender.

Which we did.

And...we got a spot within about 30 seconds of being added to the list.

Plus...it was a corner spot, so we could converse easily.

And...it was close enough to the live piano player to hear the music, but not so close as to drown-out our talking.

Oh my God! The prices! Glad we didn't have the whole family with us!

Spared at the last moment: There was a bar-menu with smaller portions, which is all we really wanted and had much more reasonable pricing.

We shared a beet salad with goat cheese, nuts and dried cranberries. Vaishali had a fancy meatloaf with garlic mashed potatos and shoestring onions. I had some steamed hard shell clams and a petite fillet (rare) with fried oysters.

The food was great and we had just enough of it to be satisfied.

The evening could not have worked out better!

Patriotic

Brave Sir Knight, tell us of your crusade!

I voted for Hillary Clinton.

Surely there were great hardships on your journey to the polling place, tell us of them!

The polling place is at our local elementary school.

Prithee, Sir, were there fierce dragons guarding this place?

No. There was a bit of a line though.

In fairness: Both sides seem to have abundant Sir Knights!

Old & Very Wrong Predictions

But still very informative...

I was prompted by a Gary Johnson post in Facebook: Hillary and Trump could both come up short of 270 Electoral votes and throw the election to the House of Representatives. (Where Johnson could presumably be chosen)

I went looking to see what the law said on this topic. I should have just gone to the document itself, but willfully clicked on a link to an article from The Atlantic that seemed promising. Little did I expect that it would be from October 1980! (Yay for The Atlantic for getting those archive issues on-line!)

If Anderson wins only the thirty-nine electoral votes of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- three states in which Ronald Reagan's polls have shown Anderson leading -- Jimmy Carter could end up with 230 votes from the urban Northeast and part of the South, forty short of the 270 needed for a majority, and Reagan could take the rest -- including the West and Midwest -- for a total of 268 electoral votes, two votes short of the presidency.

In case you think Laurence H. Tribe and Thomas M. Rollins were just spinning a fancy...It sounds to me like they really thought this could happen.

That the odds of a House election seem high in 1980 is not just a function of Anderson's strong showing in the polls; those odds will remain high and grow higher as the political gaps left by our major parties continue to widen.

What was interesting, even though I have a faint recollection of seeing this before, is that the House does not choose the President by simple majority. It chooses by a majority of state delegations. So the California delegation gets one vote, the New Hampshire delegation one, etc. I am pleased to note that Republicans have a majority in 33 states, Democrats in 14 and it is evenly split in the remaining 3.

The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the
President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole
Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than
one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of
Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately
chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person
have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List
the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.
But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by
States, the Representation from each State having one Vote;
A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or
Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of
all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.

A final note: The election of 1980 had the final results of: Reagan 489 electoral votes, Carter 49 and Anderson zero.

I Do A Little Math

And realize that someone came up with the mysterious number, by doing a little math too.

From the 1960s onward, his romances often overshadowed his professional life. There were great loves (Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton) and many, many shorter trysts, from Cher to Madonna. He insists there is wild hyperbole in his reputation as a manslut and disputes the mathematics of the 12,775 women one of his biographers, Peter Biskind, has claimed for him. "Think about it, sleeping with 12,775 people," he says, not without a certain amount of glee. "That would mean not just that there were multiple people a day, but that there was no repetition."

From an AARP piece on Warren Beatty


12,775/365 = 35 Exactly 35! Someone probably figured that 35 is the number of years between when Beatty became "a man" at 18 and when he became a husband at 54. One different woman every. single. day. Yeah, not likely, but very likly that is where the number came from.

They Say It So Sincerely, It Must Be True

Until the smallest and easiest bit of logic or reason is applied.

1. I had a guy who insisted that softball hitters were much more skilled than baseball hitters. There was lots of theory about how there is less time to react and the ball has more curve etc. You can even google it: This guy wasn't the only clown to make the claim. But it all wilts under one question: If softball hitters are more skilled and they are mostly women, how come there isn't a single woman in the MLB? The pay is huge for players that can hit and there is no rule prohibiting women from playing.

2. This is an old one from my youth and so you may not be able to find anyone claming it now: Back then, people would often claim that guns will not work in space. The people who made the claim often felt that it was deep somehow: Futuristic Man will have no need for such primitive and backward things etc. I never understood the basis for even thinking they wouldn't work: The fuel and oxidiser are contained within the cartridge--chemical reactions don't need gravity.

Okay, (backing away slowly)...But why would I want to find Hillary likable?

To find Hillary Clinton likable, we must learn to view women complexly

The article is TL;DR but begins with a howler that does not encourage further reading:

Clinton is on one hand the most qualified human being to ever run for president of the United States,...

Without getting into the weeds of whether or not it is possible to like Hillary, let's just for the sake of argument say that it is possible and consider instead why one would want to go to the tremendous work of getting to like Herself.

1. If you are inclined to do this, doesn't this seem as if you are just looking for reasons to justify the vote you have already decided to cast?

2. If you currently dislike Hillary, what possible reason would you have to want to change your mind?

Advice for Caroline Siede, if you think Trump:

In fact, Donald Trump is the only candidate who is more disliked than Clinton. And he’s not only overtly racist, sexist, and Islamophobic, but also unfit and unprepared for office.

Why not follow your own advice and figure out how you have been conditioned by your life experience to hate a guy like Trump and overcome this bias--isn't this what you are asking of your readers? Or is she really focusing on case # 1?

Maybe we can just accept that the sum of our experiences give us each the ability to make judgments? Anyway the premise is weak enough: Find any interview with Dolly Parton and unless you are very unusual, you will agree that she is unrelentingly likable and is also a woman. So, societal conditioning notwithstanding, it is possible to be a woman and likable.

The article somehow reminds me of these lyrics:

Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from

While I'm On The Topic of Sunglasses...

I have quite a few pair. This is because, for whatever reason, it is now near impossible to find ones with glass lenses. This is a, Problem For Me™. I don't care how durable the makers claim their plastic lenses are, they are not, not in my hands. Within moments they are unusable nicked, faded, abraded and shot. I keep them around though. Driving on bright days or a day at the beach requires something, even if it is shabby.

Well, I bought a really good pair of Ray-Bans and a quick phone web search at the time of purchase led us to believe they are glass. It is really hard to tell until or unless they scratch, so until they do there is some doubt about the construction. The other day, I grabbed the good ones and soon noticed all kinds of problems with the lenses. I was full of recriminations at having paid so dearly for what ended up being useless trash. What I didn't notice for a while was that these were a crappy older pair. The kicker is that I've done this more than once! The frames are a lot alike but I know that both pair exist. Why isn't my first assumption that I grabbed the wrong pair, rather than that my fancy new ones are damage-prone plastic lensed sunglasses?

Hillary (Strangelove) Clinton

Madame President became Dr. Strangelove so gradually that hardly anyone noticed until too late...