Tue, 10 Mar 2026, 09:22 AM (-06:00)
I could talk to Carl about theoretical things. He would patiently listen as I went on about monoids and their relationship to simple iteration problems, standing with a smile on his face, nodding supportively as I waved my hands and got all excited at the whiteboard that was (conventiently?) hidden from the rest of the software team.
And we would talk about physics, which he studied in school and evidently missed.
One day I mumbled something under my breath about dark matter — how I thought it was a bit hokey. How in my (amateur!) opinion the term was not so much a theory of the universe as it exists but rather elegant hand-waving to explain something that no one knows quite how to explain. Like, oh … say … epicycles. Carl smiled and nodded politely, betraying no opinion on the matter one way or the other.
…
So today I’m reading this article interpreting Kuhn’s revolutions and paradigm shifts as applied to dark matter. And feast your eyes on this:
This is not a recipe for a scientific revolution, but for a thousand years of dark epicycles.
Huzzah!
Sun, 8 Mar 2026, 11:02 AM (-06:00)
The Apple blossoms on the two trees against the back fence have come and gone. The magenta of the Redbuds in bloom will soon fade, as their foliage is beginning to emerge. The Texas Mountain Laurels are loaded with purple blossoms hanging like grape clusters from the bending branches. The Texas Persimmons have also decided that it is time. The Cedar Elms are not far behind.
Another spring is upon us. Of the brutal summer that is sure to follow, the trees pay no mind. They pay no mind.
Sei still! Sei still! Sieh mich an! Leben ist nicht leicht, Leben ist nicht schwer. Das sind Kindergedanken. … Heimat ist nicht da oder dort. Heimat ist in dir innen, oder nirgends.
— Herman Hesse, Bäume
Be still. Be still. Look at me. Life is not easy. Life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. … Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or it is nowhere at all.
— Herman Hesse, Trees
Mon, 16 Feb 2026, 02:25 PM (-06:00)
First period is almost over. First period, that wonderful class with but a dozen plus students in it. Oh that wonderful time of day.
One of the students is standing with her back against the wall. She had been preparing to stand by the door to wait for the bell. But as she stood, she set her backpack down and backed up to the whiteboard that runs along the side of our classroom.
“My back hurts,” she announces. “My back huuuurts,” she repeats, when she hears no sympathetic reaction from the others.
But I feel her pain — literally.
“I feel so old,” she says. “I’m only sixteen, but I feel so old.”
Scratch that. I feel her pain — figuratively.
Sat, 7 Feb 2026, 02:48 PM (-06:00)
It sounded like wind at first — wind blowing thru the trees. But overhead the leaves and pine needles were not rustling.
The sound grew louder. Across the lake, the shore disappeared in a shrouded mist. And a wall of white blew across the water. Rain drops began to fall thru the canopy, making splash marks in the dirt. Everyone retreated into the cabin.
It was a slow, gentle rain providing time for the dry forest floor to soak it up. But the rain continued for fourteen days. With the ground saturated, water began to stream down the hill, erasing the splash marks, pushing piles of pine needles into clumps here and there with puddles of water behind.
Fourteen days is a long time for a rain. It is a long time to be cooped inside a cabin with only books and a pencil and some paper — certainly enough time to finish the books and use up all the paper with silly doodles. Fourteen days is plenty of time for everyone to look up hopefully at each respite, hopeful that the storm might finally be passing.
And so, on the morning of the fifteenth day, when the rain stopped and the sun came out, everyone’s hearts lifted.
…
Ok. And then what?
Mon, 26 Jan 2026, 09:17 AM (-06:00)
Is it melting? Or is it freezing?
Sun, 25 Jan 2026, 09:00 PM (-06:00)
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner a couple weeks ago,
We will arrest you. We will put handcuffs on you. We will close those cuffs. We will put you in a cell […] We will do everything in our power to convict you and we will make sure you serve your entire sentence because Donald Trump has no power whatsoever to pardon you. [ref: WHYY]
More like this, please.
Sun, 25 Jan 2026, 10:11 AM (-06:00)
David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
From Britannica:
terrorism: the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective
Mon, 19 Jan 2026, 03:45 PM (-06:00)
If you don’t have anything nice to say, perhaps you shouldn’t say anything. Nevertheless…
The arc of the moral universe might bend toward justice, but that arc is evidently quite long [MLK speech, Unitarian origins]. I once lived in times in which its bending was manifest, but times have changed.
Today plain spaces are made rough. The straight are made crooked. Valleys are filled, and hills and mountains raised [MLK speech, Isaiah 40:4-5 origins]. The twentieth century grows distant in the rear view mirror. The arc is bending the other way.
Wed, 7 Jan 2026, 08:56 PM (-06:00)
It’s not that I worked at NASA. It’s not that I was a software architect. It’s not even that I have been a teacher. The accomplishment of my life is my son, Ben. And now he and Sam are doing that themselves (despite his declarations years ago that he a “breeder” would not be).
Lila (5 pounds 10 ounces) arrived January 6. (What a riot!)
That makes me a grandfather. So just call me “Pop”.
