Skip to main content

In lighter news

Image
By
This afternoon I went on the longest run I've ever done in my life (as far as I can remember, anyway). An hour and a half, which by my calculations puts it at approximately ten miles nonstop (yeah, I'm a wuss, I know). It was also one of the easiest runs I've done--I put on some tunes (Daft Punk's Homework) and the miles melted away. For awhile there it felt like I was floating; my mind drifted off, and I sort of forgot what I was doing. That's a violent change from my usual experience with running, which is better called a slog: painful, boring, and high-impact.

On the way out for my run, I cross the bridge, but coming back into the village I usually take one of the side roads, which just crosses the riverbed. Because of the rain last night, it was still running, and fairly heavily at that. I didn't want to go around, so I took off my shoes and waded across. It was deeper than I thought, about knee-deep and fast in the middle (I'd revise my estimate of the earlier flood up to about 150 cfs). I was sorely tempted to dunk myself, but as I was carrying my ipod, I didn't think it was a good idea. Still, getting my feet wet triggered those old river neurons, and I felt high as a kite. I could get used to this running stuff.

So, long story short, I'm in a fantastic mood. To celebrate, here's one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite rock operas. Daft Punk's "Digital Love:"
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Setswana Grammar Manual

By
One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .
6 comments
Read more

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

By
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...
4 comments
Read more

Russiagate and the Left, Round II

By
Corey Robin has responded to my article arguing that the left should take the Trump-Russia story more seriously . I do appreciate that he considers me an ally, and I feel the same towards him. However I am not convinced. The points I want to make are somewhat disconnected, so I will just take them one at a time. What should be done? Robin complains that I don't give much attention to the question of how we should respond to Russian electoral espionage. As an initial matter, the question of whether a problem is an important one is logically distinct from what the response should be. There is a sizable vein of skepticism about Russiagate on the left, and the argument of the post was that skepticism was misplaced. Solutions can be worked out later. This point is rather similar to the centrist argument that you can't talk about Medicare for All unless you've got a fully costed-out bill detailing all the necessary taxes and regulation. However, I have advanced some pol...
4 comments
Read more