Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, a Conan O'Brien segment from last year with Louis CK about how much we take for granted:
Via How We Drive, a Fairfax, Va., man gets off with a warning after helping a gaggle of geese cross a highway:
When Jozsef Vamosi stopped to help a gaggle of geese cross the Fairfax County Parkway, he found himself ticketed for jaywalking. On June 18, Mr. Vamosi sighted three large geese and eight smaller ones attempting to cross four lanes of fast-moving traffic. In a move reminiscent of the children's classic "Make Way for Ducklings," he pulled over, got out of his car and waved the geese across, standing in the path of traffic and shouting "Move, move, move." The geese made it across unscathed, but Mr. Vamosi attracted the attention of a Fairfax police officer, who repeatedly ordered him out of the road and concluded by handing him a ticket.
District Court Judge Thomas E. Gallahue acknowledged that it was difficult to figure out the right thing to do in such a situation. ... Judge Gallahue said he would dismiss the case as long as Mr. Vamosi remained on good behavior for the next six months. He wisely noted that "I think we have to be careful when we do a thing we think is for the greater good that the consequence isn't more dangerous." And it's worth recalling that before Mr. and Mrs. Mallard completed their dangerous (if fictional) journey with little Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack, Officer Michael had arranged for the cooperation of the police department.
Some already know my feelings about Canada geese—"Kitchen Sink" category indeed—so I might have just shooed them back whence they came, but I woulnd't want to see them get run over. Still: it's kind of cute.
(By way of explanation why I'm being wery wery qwiet today.)
Actually, I'm hunting financial accounting (Duke) and bugs (client). Like this one, which shows one of the perils of refactoring. See if you can spot my stupidity:
Original code
private void OldMethod
{
bool canChangeThing =
(
_isCompany |
_isClient &
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
);
if (canChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
Refactored code
private bool CanChangeThing
{
get
{
return (
_isCompany |
_isClient &
!(null == _thing) &&
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
);
}
}
private void OldMethod
{
if (CanChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
Fixed bug
private bool CanChangeThing
{
get
{
return (
_isCompany |
(_isClient &
!(null == _thing) &&
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
)
);
}
}
private void OldMethod
{
if (CanChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
The sound you hear is me hitting my head on my desk until it stops hurting.
I did some landing practice yesterday morning: four at Waukegan and one at Chicago Executive. A quick review of my Google Earth track shows that my turns to final are getting much more consistent (within 350 m now) and my final approaches are right down the center line. I still need to work on squaring my turn from crosswind to downwind; I'm turning too early which makes the downwind leg slightly oblique. (By the time I'm abeam the numbers, though, I'm where I should be—about 1400 m from the touchdown point.)
It helped that yesterday's weather was glorious: clear, light winds, cool air, and unlimited visibility:
A Wisconsin jury has convicted a couple of murder after they allowed their 11-year-old daughter to die right in front of them:
Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn't walk, talk, eat or speak. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, testified Thursday that he believed God would heal his daughter and he never expected her to die. God promises in the Bible to heal, he said.
"If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumann testified. "I am not believing what he said he would do."
No, if you go to the doctor, you're saving your daughter's life. Or put another way, Proverbs 16:18.
Seriously: praying is fine, especially if it makes the supplicant or sick person feel better. I believe this even though I think prayer acts through a placebo effect (when it works at all, which is usually no more often than random chance). Praying for someone's recovery at her hospital bed is positively admirable, as it combines a demonstrated placebo effect with actual medical care.
What is not acceptable, what is actually kind of depraved, what I hope outrages my Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends as much as it does me, is to have a prayer group stand around watching your own child die in agony on the floor of your house.
I find it odd that Wisconsin Public Radio's report used the word "unrepentant." I'm absolutely sure he fully repents his sins within his understanding of his religion. He just doesn't think letting his daughter die horribly while he and his friends watched qualifies. Fortunately for the last glowing embers of the Enlightenment, the people of Wisconsin think it does.
Leave it to Krugman:
The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can't cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.
...[W]hat it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.
That's it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn't understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.
The article he's reacting to is also worth reading.
Yesterday around sunset I found myself driving down Halsted St., just west of the Loop. Here's the Sears Willis Tower and Presidential Towers:
Usually I hate July weather in Chicago. Not this year. We ended up with the coolest July in my lifetime (at Midway), and also one of the driest, making for an unusually pleasant month:
Chicago's 69.4-degree average July temperature at O'Hare International Airport was the coolest of the past 17 years. But at Midway Airport, the month's 71-degree average temperature was the site's coolest in 42 years. Estimates based on the month's temperatures suggest the need for air conditioning was 30 percent below the long-term average.
The month's lack of rainfall was impressive -- and a huge change from the wet spring that kept farmers out of their fields. Only 1.53 inches of rain was measured here in July, less than half the 3.51 inches considered normal.
One symptom of this: O'Hare recorded only one day in which the temperature hit 30°C, and Midway only two, while here at Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Headquarters the lake's proximity kept it even cooler than that.
But this doesn't mean it was ever cold, either. Just pleasant. I sure will miss it this week: the forecast calls for warmer, wetter weather until the middle of the month.
The Freakonomics blog interviews author Christopher Steiner about his book $20 Per Gallon:
[At $8 per gallon, predicted in 2019,] our restaurant world won't be terribly different from what we’re used to now. We'll always have Chinese food — or at least the Americanized version of it (batter it, fry it, smother it in sweet and tangy sauce). The tricky part of the question concerns foods like sushi. When gas is $8 per gallon, sushi will still be hanging around. Things get interesting, however, at $18 per gallon.
By the time gas has reached $18 [predicted in 2029-2039], most people will live in places where density dictates that schools be grouped closer together, putting them within an easy walk or a brief bike ride.
Q: What are some things you suggest people enjoy now before they’re gone?
A: Eat sushi. Drive the trans-Canadian highway (in summer). Go to Australia. Go see Tokyo and take notes — life will be more like that and less like, say, Omaha, in the future.
I wish I had time to read this book. Maybe if I get all my Duke reading done before next week. As if.
The Cubs' win against Houston yesterday started early. Here's the scoreboard after Kosuke Fukudome's two-run double in the 3rd, right before Ryan Theriot got to first on a throwing error:
The inning started with back-to-back solo home runs by Jake Fox and Milton Bradley, and ended with Derek Lee striking out and Fukodome, in one of the stupidest base-running moves I've seen in a long time, running on the dropped third strike and getting caught sealing home.
Final score, Cubs 12, Astros 3:
Notice the thickening clouds. Since this was the rain-postponed May 15th game, rain would have been ironic. Instead it just rained on my cousin a couple hours later as he walked home.
Other notable moments: plate umpire C.B. Bucknor got hit in the face twice in the second inning, but stayed in the game. And immediately after the game, both teams announced changes affecting the day's starting pitchers: Cubs starter Kevin Hart got traded, and Astros starter Russ Ortiz got released.