Frogs and Ravens

Search String Update

I haven't done a search string post in a while. 

Here are my current top ten:
    
1.     functional depression
2.     ravens for sale
3.     frogs and ravens
4.     politics with a small p
5.     small p politics
6.     bibulus sempronius
7.     disadvantages of existentialism
8.     how many data points make a trend
9.     how to not be bitter
10.     pitchers of frogs

Other amusing one-off-ers:

NoNaShoStoWriMo

I've been intrigued by the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) concept for a while, but never managed to get up the energy to participate.  Partly it's the novel aspect of it - while writing isn't something that's especially hard for me, the vast, vast majority of my writing has been non-fiction.  The thought of coming up with something entirely out of my own head was freaky and daunting.  Then there's the page count - as someone who has written a book-length work (my dissertation and subsequent manuscript) I know how bloody much work it would be to meet the NaNoWriMo page count in a month - a month that includes Thanksgiving week and which corresponds with the most grading-heavy time of the semester.  Ugh, no.

Then a couple of my friends (Amanda, Jill) thought of the idea of doing something like it, only instead of writing a novel, we will write a short story, of about 7500 words.  If I'm organized, I'll post my progress here.  If I'm not, I'll post it at the end.  It will probably be crap, given my almost total noob experience writing fiction,* but hey.  Maybe it will be entertaining crap.  If nothing else, it will give me some practice in humility.

Running Geekery

My progress over the last month:

09/22 - 0.50 miles at 2.0 mph
09/28 - 0.64 miles at 2.6 mph
10/05 - 0.82 miles at 3.3 mph
10/10 - 1.06 miles at 4.2 mph
10/19 - 1.15 miles at 4.6 mph
10/22 - 1.55 miles at 4.6 mph

I tend to take each day on its own, the way one does with yoga practice, so it's interesting to look back and see the steady improvement.  I look forward to the day that I might be able to run a 5k.

In-Spiration

The ladybugs are swarming, spraying over the walls like a cascade of red BBs fired into the sun-warmed brick.  You're supposed to get a wish if they land on you; if so my bank of wishes is now fully credited.  What shall I spend them on?  Right now, replete with the colors of fall, I feel no need to do so.  Perhaps I shall pile them up in the bole of a tree, to draw on in the dark hours of winter.

The crisp chilliness of the last weeks has given way to a lazy warmth, but there's an edge to it.  It's clear that it is but a pause before the plunge, the swooping down into winter that the shedding trees ride, naked arms raised to the sky. 

I've been running in the mornings before class, and I feel the seasons shifting around me.  My feet crackle through drying leaves and skirt soft mud; my nose takes in the smell of decaying vegetation with the air.  It's a curious dusty rot, smelling of stale herbs from the back of the spice drawer, and not the dank mouldering of spring or late summer.  I feel the sun on the tops of my feet, on my shoulders, beaming onto my hair - while the chill breeze makes my nose run and my ears burn.  Squirrels are running too, browning walnuts clutched in their jaws, tails fluffing up in anticipation of snow.

On the VFF forums there is much preoccupation with the looming promise of cold wet feet for those who wish to run outdoors, out in the world.  I am hoping that I am able to take in that experience and learn to enjoy it; would not I understand snow more when it seeps into the edges of me, caresses my toes, depresses beneath my soles, while I run, puffing out visible air and blinking flakes from my lashes? 

Or perhaps I will turn myself into a hamster on a wheel, pounding on the unvarying surface of the treadmill while my feet long for the caress of gravel and tree roots.  Deadened with music in my ears, thumping bodies on either side of me, I will turn inward, a tree drawing in its sap to prepare for spring, a beetle crawling into a crack to wait out the white world of cold.

I breathe in the world, and the world surrounds me, lifting my feet; I pat the earth with every stride, and the earth strokes the soles of my feet in return.  It is work, but life is work, and I feel alive, swirling in the leaves of fall, a bright figure dashing through the air to return to my warm brick home. 

Fly, ladybirds, fly.

Playing in My VFFs

This is a post about shoes - very silly-looking shoes - but it is also a post about rediscovering joy.

To-Do Lists, and the Failure Thereof

I wish that to-do lists worked as well for me as they do for some people.  I love the concept described here, for example, and certainly I've been attempting to use the blog as a place to list some stuff.  My syllabi are also useful for keeping track of what I need to take care of.

Public Option Number Crunching

Today I received an email from one of my Senators telling me that he was not going to support the public option because the deficit was too large and spending money on health insurance reform was not as good a use of funds as directing money towards job creation.

This idea that health insurance is too expensive in a time of deficit is one that's popular among conservative politicians and pundits, so it's worth breaking this out.

This is 1.3 trillion dollars:

$1,300,000,000,000 

This is the high estimate of the cost of providing a public option for ten years.

$909,917,000,000 and rising.

This is the ongoing cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from 2001 onward.

This is 1903.1 billion dollars:

$1,903,100,000,000

This is the estimated cost of Bush's tax cuts from the years 2001-2010.

This is 41.5 billion dollars.

$41,500,000,000

This is the estimated cost of Bush's tax cuts for 2010 alone.

If we look at only one year of expenses, this is what we see:

Wars + ten years of tax cuts = $2,813,017,000,000 = $2.8 trillion dollars.

Cost of funding a public option for ten years = $1.3 trillion dollars.

Moreover, here is the deficit as of today:  $11,797,976,820,226, or $11.7 trillion dollars.

If we take the public option total across ten years, and divide it by ten, we get $0.13 trillion dollars a year.

So, enacting the public option would require expenditures equal to about 1.11% of the overall deficit for one year.

Yes, you read that correctly - that is equivalent to one point one one percent of the deficit.

Moreover, that is just for the public option, which is not the most cost-effective approach.

One report noted in 2005 that if we adopted a national single-payer plan,

This fiscal analysis of the impact of four scenarios for health care reform found that the single payer model would reduce costs by over $1.1 trillion over the next decade while providing comprehensive benefits to all Americans.

Tell me again about how health insurance reform is too expensive to fund?

Backlash

b says "bah" to the idea of a no-cats-on-the-internet day.

September's Come

The sky was spiky with droplets of cold rain, the light flat.  A strange clarity lay over everything; buildings that one passed by without a glance on other occasions stood out, weirdly arresting.  Despite the midday hour, all was hushed, quietly full. 

The locust beans were shifting from yellow to brown, hanging in heavy curls like tiger-striped bananas, and beneath them the ground was strewn with shed leaves.  The maples have begun to turn, slowly, ineluctably, one leaf at a time.  Orange-veined scouts lie on the sidewalks, testing the journey for their still-green siblings above.

At night a storm boomed in, harsh white lights alternating with deep bass rumbles.  The air is quiet and smells of heavy rain.  In the morning, I discover that one of the tomatoes has been eaten, despite the cage, and a stalk of corn has been despoiled.  The rest remain, along with the peppers, tooth-scarred eggplants, and the lone zucchini, growing ever fatter beneath its canopy of leaves. 

September To-Do List

• Process PNW photos
• Write Walbran article, upload, email Ken
• Email my brother
• Transfer lectures from ArtSTOR to PowerPoint
• Car tune-up, new tires
• Doctor appointments
• Dentist appointment
• Haircut?
• Purge junk, sell stuff on eBay
• Review Williams book for LibraryThing
• Arrange for measurements, order dress
• Reserve photographer
• Research DJs/bands
• Add CDs to iTunes library
• and...?