Kevin Drum notes a WaPo poll that finds that roughly half of the people polled think that a candidate who received an endorsement from Obama would make them less likely for that candidate.

Roughly half!

Where I come from, we have a word for people who would find an endorsement from a Democratic President to be a negative: "Republicans".

In a shocking coincidence, they make up roughly half of all Americans.

Let the panic begin.

The Americans.

Spy v spy, in the 80s! So far, it's more fun than Homeland because I don't have to keep wondering why the CIA would employ a disobedient, bi-polar nut-case. The Russians would employ a deep-cover married couple? Sure! Plus, 80s music and clothes and interior decoration.

Says, "Hey, get this shit off me" !

Says, "Hey, have a penguin" !

The other 1%:

The music industry is a Superstar economy, that is to say a very small share of the total artists and works account for a disproportionately large share of all revenues. This is not a Pareto’s Law type 80/20 distribution but something much more dramatic: the top 1% account for 77% of all artist recorded music income (see figure).

March 7th, thanks to Reagan, is Frozen Food Day !

Seven months ago I had a recurrence of plantar fasciitis in my right foot. So, I stopped running. I tried stretching, not stretching, massage, wearing sneakers indoors, everything I could think of.

I bought a compression sock which squeezes the arch at night; it helped a lot, after the first night. The second morning, I woke up and my Achilles tendon started aching. Then it started burning. Then it turned into a blinding, searing, mind-bending pain that lasted two or three minutes. I assume it had cut off the circulation to my foot, and I was feeling all the blood returning and the nerves snapping back on.

Then I bought some orthopedic sandals to wear around the house. But I'm not used to wearing sandals that don't have a heel strap. So, that made walking in them kindof strange. So strange that I strained a muscle or tendon or something in my right big toe. So now I have to walk on the outside of my right foot because any pressure at all on the big toe hurts enough to take my breath away.

But, walking on the outside of my foot for a month has helped the plantar fasciitis!

Intelligent designer, my ass.

We moved to this little 5,000-person town, just over a year ago. We wanted to get out of the city, have some privacy, etc.. We didn't know much about the town, but we've learned to like it. It's tiny, quaint, with just enough stuff to keep us from having to drive 15 minutes to get most of our necessities. We live about 5 minutes from downtown.

Now, it turns out that some local real estate developers have bought essentially all the land between our house and the town, 7500 acres, and they have big plans for it. They want to make a city. They want to build twenty-two-thousand homes, mixed in with a handful of "corporate campuses". They anticipate sixty-thousand people. Again, there are 5,000 people in the town right now.

22,000 houses on 7,500 acres (minus room for roads, businesses, utilities, setbacks near the river and lake, etc.) makes for some small lots for this part of the area. We're on a bit more than two acres, and most of the people around us have at least that much. So, that would probably do good things to our property value, if we stuck around long enough. But, wow: that will completely change the area.

Update:
And if you want to move out to the coast, I just learned that the same company wants to develop 200 acres in the coastal little town that we like to visit. Sigh.

The Fake Name Generator can generate a list of fake people, from a wide range of countries. It's not just name, either. It gives you a username and password (to what?), an address, a telephone number, favorite color, blood type, height, weight, credit card info, employer and year,make and model of car. All fake. 3000 of them for free!

I have no idea what I'll do with my new fake people, but I like knowing that I know all about Ms. Rose P Almendarez of 395 Quilly Lane, Columbus OH:

Email: RosePAlmendarez@superrito.com
Username: 'Thonind28'
Password: 'zaDieC3iewo'
Phone: 614-476-2375
Mother's maiden name: May
Birthday; 6/2/1928
CC: Visa, 4556368279131115, 508, 8/2019
SSN: 285-22-8304
Color: Green
Job: Excavating operator
Car: 1999 Citroen C
Blood type: B+
Weight: 152.9
Height: 4' 11"

And yet it's creepy, even though it's fake. Uncanny.

The arithmoquine of "The arithmoquine of a is not a valid TNT theorem-number" is not a valid TNT theorem-number.

Oh yeah?

I've been through the chapters where Hofstadter brings everything together, multiple times now. And the concept here just refuses to click. I think I understand all the parts well enough - none of the preceding chapters give me any kind of conceptual trouble. But when he gets to the final steps of Gödel's proof, where he starts talking about number theory talking about number theory, where the above sentence gets created... it just doesn't crystallize. I get the typography of it all; I know what a 'quine' does; I know what all the words mean. But no light bulbs light up. The words sail on by...

Even when someone else explains it, I make it to the same spot and fail to experience any kind of Ah Ha! Maybe I shouldn't? Maybe Gödel's theorem isn't supposed to rock my world?

Whatever. I was never much good at this higher math stuff anyway.

Have you read this book? Did it click for you?