David > Recent Status Updates

Harold's started his walk and informed Maureen via phone of his planned destination.

I see no chance that I will "finish" this library book while I have it checked out, but it has already been a wonder to peruse it. It is not (IMO) a book to be read straight through, but one for wandering, for looking up old favorites or for checking on authors or books I've intended to read but have not...yet. It may be a book I want to purchase, someday, but for now a little browsing will be enough.

"Bridging the wonk gap" tries to describe how GOP candidates and lawmakers might get back toward substantive policy positions, after highlighting how far they've strayed from those ideals with marketing staff and messaging. Alas, the most recent election won't convince any of them they need to do anything differently as voters rewarded the "post policy" party with the presidency. 😢

"Governing by near death experience" covers R's shutdowns and threatened shutdowns of the federal government. Brutal.

"Life and death in the culture wars." Abortion and gun restrictions the big subjects here.

"We stand by the numbers," indeed. Here, making a strong case that Rs only care about deficits and the debt if a D is prez. Otherwise, it's "who cares?" Essentially "we can spend on whatever we want, but you can't have anything, even if it would make us money in the end."

This chapter does a good job of illustrating its thesis, "the cruelty is the point."

So many clueless moves. No research, no consumed briefings, no knowledge of anything that has gone before; just decide something based on what might make for a good photo? Hard to say what the real motivations were but that makes as much sense as any other explanation.

Now Guantanamo and terrorism get the treatment.

A disquieting book already. Barely 8 pages in we're already deducing a prisoner has been beaten to death by the visiting commandant, and that man's son has been cruelly tortured to the point of evidently making up incriminating stories to make the torture stop.

Climate change denial stories in the chapter about a middle finger to the world (in reference to the GOP's lack of seriousness on dealing with climate change generally and the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement specifically).

"Even if it worked, I would oppose it." A quote from presidential candidate Ben Carson about the ACA, and an apt title for this chapter of GOP efforts to undermine any and all attempts at improving health care legislation in the Obama and Trump (1st term) years.

Breathing, relaxation, emotions.

Hobbes and Leviathan.

Ch 3 on stretching.
Stretch before practice, not just performances. 13 stretches are shown and described.

Just finished Semplica Girls (which is what the confusing "SGs" were, obviously, listening to the audio book while doing some indoor biking).

The last part was a bit of a tangle, with the arguments about how to compute the relative widths of the indivisible lines, etc., to make the results turn out in a reasonable way!

Lots of background about religious quarrels in the 16th century and how they led to the founding of the Jesuits. They did study math, but really from the angle of math being a perfect (and presumably unchanging) body of knowledge, not something subject to change as a result of creative research.