this week i

published among elderly & disabled americans with medicare, out-of-pocket medical expenses consumed more than a third of social security income
 
drew grey breasted mountain toucan triptych, yellow highlighter + the four-way pen next time.  for traffic light st pete, would yellow be purgatory?
 



met a couple dozen people in about as many days.  on tree-hugged cafe steps, gregory sported a v. cool jacket, wishes greetings to the r community




 

think "we've done more work & we're worse off for it" eating corn dishes prepared ways other than exploded.  also far tastier than kablammo potato 


read a history of religious ideas, volume 3: from muhammad to the age of reforms by mircea eliade, translated by hiltebeitel & apostolos-cappadona

 

 in his celebrated discussion with the imam of boukhara, genghis khan said to him: "the entire universe is the house of god, to what advantage is it to designate a particular place (for example, mecca) in order to go there?"

on the solarization of celestial gods, see eliade, patterns

their polycephalic representations of divinities and spirits

as augustine proclaims in his famous sermon: roma non pereat si romani non pereant!  in other words, it is the quality of men which assures the permanence of an institution, and not the inverse

"move not thy tongue with it to hasten it; ours it is to gather, and to recite it, so when we recite it, follow thou its recitation" (75:16-18).  in other words, all personal improvisation of the quran is prohibited

they accused the scholastics of having sacrificed religion to philosophy, and christ to aristotle

the procession of flagellants multiplied themselves in order to move god to pity

the kallikantzari, monsters who haunt greek villages during the twelve days (between christmas and epiphany) and who prolong the mythico-ritual scenario of the centaurs of classical antiquity

and they chew as much garlic as possible

autochthonous

 lutheranism has been "from its beginning the child of book printing": with the help of this vehicle, luther was able to transmit his message with force and precision from one end of europe to the other

the accused publically threw a copy of this bull into the fire, and published, one after another, four books which rank among the most brilliant and most important of his total work

june 1522, martin luther wrote: "i do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, even by the angels.  one who does not receive my doctrine cannot come to salvation"..his violent intolerance reflects the zeal of yahweh and the latter's jealousy with regard to humankind

when luther's theses were declared heretical, erasmus retorted that an error is not necessarily a heresy, and asked catholic theologians to respond to luther's interpretations rather than condemn them.  because he proclaimed the necessity of dialogue, erasmus was accused - first by luther, then by rome - of "neutralism," indeed of a lack of courage

above all, the shamanic type of tambourine 


8/28 

this week i

plucked abandoned weaver nest with mande on the river nile.  evolution missed wheels, what else?  the geckos view old world simians like us and whisper: how embarrassed they must be / that with their tails cannot sip tea  that crake does not swim.  do angels and demons fantasize about one another?  kingfisher divebomber, more hits than misses.  are making a mountain out of a molehill and making an ant out of an anthill antonyms?












 


yawn at these westminster dog & rocketry shows.  lmk robotics folks when you figure out a massage chair distinguishable from my cell's vibrate mode

set your tail on fire.  would we exchange temporary clemency for a drag?  for more cenacolo tobacco, see chernobyl episode one, treme episode nine

save the ropes & caviars
for my friends behind these bars
 
no thanks gov'ner, save your queen
twice sliced cake & guillotine
 
soul departure / last meal pack
mercy 'nough, my djarum black

 

read alice's adventures in wonderland and through the looking-glass by lewis carroll.  and so another talefull of tea

 

the poor little lizard, bill

 

  'i speak severely to my boy,
i beat him when he sneezes;
for he can thoroughly enjoy
the pepper when he pleases!'
 
chorus
'wow! wow! wow!'

 

and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone

 

'take some more tea,' the march hare said to alice, very earnestly.
'i've had nothing yet,' alice replied in an offended tone, 'so i can't take more.'
'you mean you can't take less,' said the hatter: 'it's very easy to take more than nothing'

 

alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in all her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches

 

you're nothing but a pack of cards

 

nurse!  do let's pretend that i'm a hungry hyæna, and you're a bone!

 

let me see, is this a chair?  why, it's got branches, i declare!

 

if he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet behind

 

and now, if e'er by chance i put
my fingers into glue,
or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
into a left-hand shoe,
or if i drop upon my toe
a very heavy weight,
i weep, for it reminds me so,
of that old man i used to know --
...
that summer evening, long ago,
a-sitting on a gate 

 

life, what is it but a dream?

 

8/21

this week i

etch a sketch momentary self-governance goals: if laptop closed, then ball & chain remains in airplane mode unless mobile data use premeditated.  new restaurant etiquette (per course) me: what are your two favorite choices? / waitstaff: [option one] and [option two] / me: [decide immediately]

what if you started spelling your name togna like bologna
i'm not immediately against this idea

 

saw birds of paradise just like mom used to paint, murchison falls n.p. with sowedi. if a giraffe's head is down, it is sick or dead. they sleep like gods
 



















adjust travel plans, discuss expertise, make an r with our hands
 

8/14

this week i

visited isaiah's school.  sunday dinner at ruth's house with custom armoire, we ate beans and okra and eggplant and polenta and watermelon and

do you like pineapple?
i love pineapple
great, today is your day
 



 
rest atop one of seven hills, a potential energy hoard.  butterfly benjamin button'd become . . . a caterpillar?  why're we wired to record the days?


find suggestion agreement, unclear on grammar syntactician.  humble captcha reminds despite our prosperity & wit, we've yet to replicate ourselves

organize discussions of professional expertise to make friends, zero failures so far.  christine (from arua) a few hours after our meal: am still satisfied
 
 
dream what mozart'd have done, electric bass & kit of drum. 'sadder huckabee in military kit and/or lula learned nought from the biden hubris family


yelled scram at a domino's pizza abroad then realized the futility of the moment. guh guh ghost in forty nine syllables, present tense death fascinates

pair an ear and spare a quid
for a séance or a kid
'fore four eyes flashed two lifes rid
coiled basket cobra hid
till i frisbee-tossed the lid
bede & me goodbyes bid
damndest thing i ever did

 

submitted a ltte

 

Official Statisticians Should Abandon Proprietary Software

The cost-cutting drive spearheaded by Josh Gruenbaum ("Procurement chief vows to continue supplier price squeeze", Report, July 22) would win plaudits from nearly all segments of society if accompanied by a review of open source technologies. Agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau and the broader Federal Statistical System deserve neverending praise for their global standard-setting commitment to publicly available, respondent-level datasets (often termed microdata). Major research initiatives like the Current Population Survey can be downloaded with ease, on an annual basis, dating back to the JFK era. Unfortunately, whether due to entrenched interests or perceived changeover costs, government choice of analysis software has not yet made commensurate strides.

During the final quarter of the twentieth century, only closed-source tools like SAS (previously known as the "Statistical Analysis System") were capable of digesting what was then considered big data and, lacking alternatives, quantitative offices within the federal workforce grew reliant on this expensive, subscription-based syntax. But SAS and its proprietary peers continue to dominate government-funded research efforts even as top-tier universities enter their third decade training graduates in computing languages built for this side of the millenium - I first encountered the free & open-licensed R project at JHSPH in 2007 and have not looked back.

I would encourage anyone skeptical of the maturity of the open source community to skim the "Official Statistics CRAN Task View" page and find there detailed explanations of advanced technologies freely available to all. To follow Mr. Gruenbaum's principle, I challenge closed-source enterprises to explain to a 15-year-old (or anyone else) why they deserve taxpayer dollars where superior tools can be had for nothing. I commend my many colleagues committed to reproducible research and transparent methods, and I ask federal agencies to similarly aim toward this forward-looking paradigm.

Anthony Damico
Washington D.C.


8/7

this week i

updated overviews of publicly-funded, privately-administered markets providing elderly & disabled americans: drugs, health insurancecost sharing

wish bookshelves held such a title tetrapods won the denovian and don't you forget it & other mosquito-squashing taunts to ease tropical acclimation

rocky road biked 70k, murchison bay to then from ssezibwa falls with mandela.  kids' calls mzungu! heard all the way, my masterclass in how to blasé




win friends expanding open source statistics community.  find first few then request referrals for the rest, ponzi schemes allowed when it's knowledge



7/31