Pre-Vacation Round-Up
On the way to the airport...
I was getting back into writing things for a while there, and then hit a stretch of a couple of weeks at work where I needed to be at my desk typing things, which comes out of more general writing time, so the post frequency really cratered. Such is the glamorous life of a blogger…
Anyway, we are headed out for a week in London, the first time taking SteelyKid and The Pip across the Atlantic. One of my goals for the trip is to decouple from the Internet a bit, so don’t expect much, but here’s some recent stuff and a few links to tide you over:
Me on Substack:
— The Biden Thing: That was cathartic.
— Strategic Targeting (and Un-Targeting): One of the perpetual problems of teaching people who come in at different levels.
— Annoying Problems Turned Ingenious Solutions: On “magic wavelengths” in ultra-precise atomic clocks.
— Deadpool and Its Discontents: Thoughts on some recent-ish movies, after going to the theater with the kids.
— Video Physics: Filter Drop: Last in the summer series of posts about high-speed video analysis of intro physics scenarios.
— The Problem of Ill-Defined Ideals: A recurring issue for me, particularly in discussions of education policy: It’s often not clear what the goal of some process should be.
Humblebrag Corner:
A few years back, I started making an effort to lose weight, a big piece of which was just tracking my actual weight daily, as a way to keep it front of mind. This led to a really rapid drop over the first year and a bit, then a state that sometimes seems like a slower decline, and other times seems like a plateau. Anyway, the end of the third year of this program is fast approaching (I started in early September 2021), and this past week was the first time the binned seven-day average of my weigh-ins has dropped below 260lbs (do your own metric conversions).
Just in time to head across the Pond and eat a whole bunch of meals in pubs…
Links Dump:
— The Campaign for Real Ales Pub Finder: An invaluable resource.
— #5: A Family Goal, by Charlie Page: An interesting reflection on a particular model of child-rearing, which I opened in the process of writing that education thing above, but couldn’t fit in. It resonates because I was also a kid who talked more to adults than other kids, and SteelyKid has some tendencies that way.
— Reds in the Family by Matthew Yglesias: A more reflective piece than usual for Matt, about shifting political views. A reminder that when he’s not just shitposting, he can be pretty good.
— This Sceptered Isle by Joshua Trevino: Opened this because I was reading a lot of stuff about travel to the UK, and man, this is bonkers.
— Roadtrip: A Square Deal in Binghamton by Ethan Zuckerman: Travel in the other direction, with Ethan visiting the city where my dad grew up. One of those “Square Deal” arches is not all that many blocks from my grandparents’ house. I left a long-ish comment about some of my own memories of the area.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Month:
This is from a photo hike up at Thacher Park, showing a woodpecker who was really remarkably intent on something in that tree and let me walk right up to the base of the trunk. Also, the paparazzi lens I bought for baseball games is good on wildlife, too.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Month:
I mean, come on, how could I not?
So, yeah, that’s some stuff. If you want to see what I write when we get back, here;s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
As far as "do your own metric conversion" goes: whenever I get into it with a smug soul making fun of the US for not "going metric," I ask them their weight.
"70 kilograms" (or whatever).
"Oh, you mean 685 newtons, right?"