comments encouraged..: 2016

this week i

have everything, for now.

learned options( error = browser ) to explore the local environment within a function at point of crash. options( error = NULL ) to turn off.

donated two thousand dollars across these four. i chose not tax deductible for the aclu because cheeto benito. then another $1,000 to friends.

started writing our first of three books.

12/8

this week i

tried to buy a forty cent baguette but the cashier gave it to me for free rather than break a twenty.

washed my clothes in the shower at the heights of stubbornness.

voted in the italian referendum against berlusconi's recommendation.

suis le blanc. what everybody calls me here.

read the first 100 pages of a deadly boring book.

doctors in steadily increasing numbers were already treating patients without symptoms

12/1

this week i

landed late night. early next morning, french-texted the numbers of every realtor signboard and telephone pole flyer.

found a two bedroom, five story walkup. to celebrate, ice cream with unfrozen, re-frozen outer chocolate shell.

moved in. those pied crows on the corrugated tin roof must have been roosters in a previous life, an involuntary alarm clock.

11/24

this week i

landed in cologne for the start of 11^4 carnival with ze germans.

met at the train station.

despair in the time and effort to learn nothing of value. anyway, your daughter can do anything.

reach impossible speeds.

11/17

this week i

published on the state of lack of health insurance and how things break out by race and ethnicity.

voted against the sentient caps lock button, here come an ugly four years..

..now a major motion picture.

ate favorite brunch.

spend one more week on this continent.

read the shadow of the sun.

you often see two (or more) people standing in the street and dissolving with laughter. it does not mean that they are telling each other jokes. they are simply saying hello

one day a group of children surrounded me. i had a single piece of candy, which i placed in my open palm. the children stood motionless, staring. finally, the oldest girl took the candy, bit it into pieces, and equitably distributed the bits

as if one were witnessing the birth of the world, that precise moment when the earth and sky already exist, as do water, plants, and wild animals, but not yet adam and eve

then, a military vehicle happened by. the soldiers saw the gathering, as well as the fish on the table, and stopped. they spoke for a moment among themselves, then backed up to the table, jumped down, and opened the tailgate. those of us who were standing nearby could see the corpse of a man lying on the truck bed. we saw the soldiers heave the fish onto the truck, throw the dead, barefoot man onto the table for us, and quickly drive away. and we heard their coarse, lunatic laughter

when i told a friend of mine..that i had been to rwanda, he asked: "and did you see the president?" "no," i answered. "so what did you go there for?" he exclaimed, astounded

one day i summoned my strength and set off on a walk from hut to hut. it was noon. in all the dwellings, on the earthen floors, on mats, on bunks, lay silent, inert people. their faces were bathed in sweat. the village was like a submarine at the bottom of the ocean: it was there, but it emitted no signals, soundless, motionless

the paradox of our world: if one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing, and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal (typically, a handful of corn) for a refugee in some camp, for example in sudan, is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in paris

11/10

this week i

published on the price and history of expensive drugs in the employer-sponsored insurance market.

landed in london on a clear day.

viewed the georgia o'keefe exhibit at the tate modern..

..one of the insane ones. nobody captured childhood's reality like bill watterson.

remember the homeless man who lived at the library of the university of toronto and just read all day. any of us could do it, naturally, but our fear of missing out keeps us preoccupied with the jobs and responsibilities that afford us avocado bread and other next season trends.

rewrote a dialogue by northerns in the deep south for southerners in the far north.

what am i gonna wear? what are ya gonna [club]? i dunno, he got, uh, he's got a lotta stuffed heads in his office. heads! what kina heads? i dunno. he's got a [moose], a bear, a coupla [seal]. woah, you gonna [club] a [seal]? i dunno. i suppose. i mean i'm a man's man, i could go [seal clubbin]. a sweet, innocent, harmless, [salmon]-eating, doe-eyed [baby seal]. hey lisa, i'm not gonna go out there just ta wimp out, ya know? i mean, the guy'll lose respect fah me. would you radder have dat? *door slam* whaddabout dese pants i got on, you think they're ok? oh! *door open* imagine you're a [seal]. you're [swimmin] along, you [need to breathe], you spot a little [hole in the ice], you put your lil [seal] lips [above] the cool clear water.. bam! a fuckin [club] rips off part a your head! ya brains are laying on the [snow] in little bloody pieces! now i asks ya. would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who [clubbed] you was wearing?

11/3

this week i

published our latest estimates of aca eligibility of the uninsured, of the size and makeup of the medicaid coverage gap created by the 2012 supreme court decision, and the state of health insurance coverage for american women.

found an honest to goodness bug in base r, fixed via distributed team effort.

started watching broad city. mumus get a bad rap.

rented a comfy place in stockholm, mostly working. seventy five, allright, allright.

toured the town.

trained to uppsala.

visited the vasa, sank thanks to swedish shipwrongs.

hung out at the hockey stadium.

walked around the open-air museum all day..

..drawn in 1649 without lifting the quill.

wonder about the tingling equivalent of when someone thinks about you while masturbating. just, still, in the ears?

..in japan, this would surely be pornographic.

find stark inequalities no further than the other side of the screen.

read a dismal book on behavioral economics. who cares.

imagine that four people share a meal and the bill comes to $100. now, if everyone at the table pays $25, every person would feel some pain of paying. in order to make this less abstract, let's assign "units" as a measure of pain. we'll assume that paying $25 translates into 10 units of pain for a total of 40 units of pain for the whole table when it comes time to split the bill. but what if one person pays the entire bill? since the pain of paying dos not increase linearly with the amount of payment, the person who is paying will feel 10 units of pain for the first $25 that he or she pays; maybe 7 units for the next $25; 5 units for the next $25; and 4 units for the last $25. the total of 26 units of pain lowers the amount of pain for the entire table by 14 units. the general point is this: we all love getting our meals for nothing, and as long as we can alternate payers, we can enjoy many FREE! dinners and derive greater overall benefit from our friendships in the process.

when the starbursts cost a cent apiece, the average number of candies per customer was 3.5, but when the price went down to zero, the average went down to 1.1 per customer

when the waitress came to bring us the check and take away the plate with the lone sushi, i asked her how often people leave a single piece at the end of the meal. "oh," she said, "i find one extra piece left almost every time. i think it is even more common than people finishing all their sushi."

if people actually get more satisfaction out of a product that has been hyped, has the marketer done anything worse than sell the sizzle along with the steak?

10/27