this week i


found our work cited by the new york times front page memorial day.  at 4:07, judy woodruff asks nancy pelosi to respond

grilled, melted gouda over baguettes, who knew you could microwave bacon.  embarrassed after calling chinese restaurant to hear my father had received, placed take-out in fridge without alerting anyone.  no spaghetti sauce at captain's market on macarthur near lock ten and swainson island.  lolade politely asked to take down the crucifix.  during my adolescent baseball years, teammates named my father's fake wood paneled minivan the roccomobile.  today someone spray-painted 3s into 8s on the speed limit signs all around town.  liz verified my math: vanilla cupcakes >= cupcakes




repaired the outdoors



read..


when the poor of oran take to the streets under the banner 'bread or air', their demonstrations are met with instant and brutal suppression.  camus is crying injustice

there were only 19 ventilators in his province..i think this pandemic is untreatable in balochistan



this model has four parameters: 13, the average number of contacts per person per day; 3 per cent, the probability that a contact will lead to transmission; 15 per cent, the rate at which people recover; and 10,000, the size of the population



even in the ordinary course of a court's business, it rarely has sufficient facts to make such refined calculations.  now, given the need to resolve these motions rapidly, a court almost never has enough information to make even informed speculations about such matters before being obliged to rule

for example, is a prisoner who is generally in good health but seeking release because he is seventy-five years old in greater or lesser danger from the coronavirus than a sixty-year-old prisoner who suffers from diabetes?  and if the former is at greater risk, does it follow that all seventy-five-year-old prisoners should be forthwith released, even if they have been convicted of very different crimes and have substantially different amounts of time left to serve on their sentences?
these are just a tiny fraction of the conundrums confronting judges in ruling on these pandemic-related motions for release.  what they have in common is that the judges must make a large number of speculations on a very limited factual basis, and they must make them fast.  it is a challenge, and one with potentially fatal consequences if a judge guesses wrong

that so many judges have had to rule on more-or-less identical problems of such immediate practical importance with only limited guidance from precedent is, to say the least, unusual


5/28

this week i

took a few photos of my father.  mr. henna tail made an appearance.  we on the american east coast never unlatch our front windows

wonder when the first politician will propose some humans need to die?  if the planet collapses all at once (we all run out of oxygen at the same moment), then sentient life goes quickly except for a few bubbles hidden under the earth.  the richest among us may soon build biospheres.  perhaps they're researching life on mars so humans understand the basics of a moon colony enough to build one here on our scorched earth

fully understand: when clicking around inside a telephone or computer application, fingerprints recorded and viewed

use schedule send after business hours if possible.  8am next business day please


read dubliners..


her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood

her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which made her look like a little perverse madonna

mr duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder.  a mediaeval doctor would have called him saturnine.  his face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of dublin streets.  on his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth.  his cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed.  he lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances.  he had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.  he never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel

"i haven't seen any committee," said mrs. kearney angrily
"my daughter has her contract.  she will get four pounds eight into her hand or a foot she won't put on that platform."
"i'm surprised at you, mrs. kearney," said mr. holohan.  "i never thought you would treat us this way."
"and what way did you treat me?" asked mrs. kearney.
her face was inundated with an angry colour and she looked as if she would attack someone with her hands.
"i'm asking for my rights," she said.
"you might have some sense of decency," said mr. holohan.
"might i, indeed?...and when i ask when my daughter is going to be paid i can't get a civil answer."
she tossed her head and assumed a haughty voice:
"you must speak to the secretary.  it's not my business.  i'm a great follow fol-the-diddle-i-do."

gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy.  he avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on her face.  but when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel his hand firmly pressed.  she looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled.  then, just as the chain was about to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear: "west briton!"



5/21

this week i

published our estimates of how many americans losing health insurance due to covid-19 job losses eligible for safety net programs.  npr summary

published on the distribution of hospital covid-19 provider relief.  nyt summary (last paragraph)  so can we stop saying "go viral" now?

write down ideas immediately after they occur.  speaking with family on the telephone one of the most intimate things someone can do with you

cooked some breakfast



5/14

this week i

discussed sun projectile launches with curtis.  the earth and other planets all circle our star, moving quickly relative to it.  launching a projectile directly at the sun requires countering the force of this planet's momentum with rocket fuel.  launching a projectile toward other planets, also circling the sun with similarly-directioned momentum, costs far less fuel.  the most fuel-efficient path to hit the sun with a projectile from earth involves exiting our solar system, then re-directing with (less) thrust after traveling enough distance for the force of the sun's gravity to weaken

learned she's a mother from jane.  apparently a her, adolescent squirrels spotted following up and down the nearby trees

wrap it up.  a may cascade of parental expression of disagreement with too darn hot

touch cook one minute.  google knows a growing share of everything that i have ever spoken or typed but i'll keep 'em guessing my favorite flavor


get nervous touching the system.  behaves the same till it does not

library(tibble)

x <- tibble( a = 1 )
y <- data.frame( a = 1 )

class( x[ , 'a' ] ) == class( y[ , 'a' ] )


identified neoclassical drawing style probably

sport my new facial bumper sticker, thanks donna.  rhinos no longer the only nasal-themed animal on the odd-toed ungulate branch of the tree of life


read..


butterfly-shaped mali

a single transparent, dark-blue bead whose chemical recipe was only known in east and south asia.  it had most likely reached djenne-jeno from china roughly within a hundred years of the start of china's second imperial dynasty, the han, in 206 bc.  mcintosh told me recently that it had probably arrived via a route that connected the region to the horn of africa, far to the east.  this meant that the western sahel, once imagined as a civilizational backwater before the emergence of mali's subsequent great empires, was far more connected to the wide world, far earlier, than anyone had thought possible

scholarly neglect



"the fuse is lit..we're just running around mapping where all the bombs are"

as one climate modeler once told me, "if we can't quantify something very well, we tend to ignore it"

thinking on long time scales while acting with furious urgency


5/7

this week i

met matthew and david late morning toward seneca creek.  two cars, one kayak, one canoe, bad dog refused to sit, we paddled to an island in the potomac.  ruffles repeated jumps over the fallen tree while we played riverball, throwing from boat risks capsize.  afterwards i ate a baguette alone


admitted broccoli tastes good.  we watched anime before lolade gifted me a shirt.  here's my chuck schumer


wonder whether all step-sibling pornography derivative of the brady bunch

guess they're not as smart as those other dinosaurs that know how to open a doorknob

cannot fight every battle


read how to by randall munroe

the reason "buried treasure" is such a well-known trope is that captain kidd's story helped inspire robert louis stevenson's novel treasure island, which almost single-handedly created the modern image of the pirate (pirates do a lot of things single-handedly)

the simplest way across a river is just to ford it - which effectively just means pretending it's not there, continuing to walk, and hoping for the best

we're all trapped together at the bottom of this atmosphere

snow - which is really just fancy ice


4/30
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