I had a scare on PayPal recently. I have just a few accounts that I consider very high value. PayPal is one of them. I
Category: Mind
I missed my run on Tuesday and spent the rest of the week trying to catch up against commonly accepted running advice. I wound up
The DataFrame apply() Function An example using Natural Language Tool Kit moby_raw: is text from nltk.collectionsThe first assignment of sentences results in a string list
Text Classification supervised learning: machines learn from past instances. training phase: information is gathered, and a model is built. inference phase: model is applied. unlabeled
this is a test Some text: \[ A_{2\times2} = \left[ {\begin{array}{cc} a_{11} & a_{12} \\ a_{21} & a_{22} \\ \end{array} } \right] \] some more

As mask mandates are canceled, my wife and I are wondering just what is the real risk out there. The per 100,000 rates on the CDC do not tell me much. I wanted to know how these numbers compared with the U.S. significant health death rates due to heart disease, cancer, injuries, strokes, etc.

3/7 I realized today that COVID and Ukraine are the defining moments for Gen Z as they grow into adults. Defining moments are always ones
Little thought gems from americancanary.org and my italicized replies.
Interesting exchange between Michael Barbaro and Dr. Anthony Fauci on The Daily, Jan. 31, 2022: Michael Barbaro: “Aren’t the covid cautious fighting their own war

Ok, so maybe it was a little tough getting out there yesterday. It was 17 F with a wind chill of 7 F. I was
For me, the transformation began at 49, when I started my quest for that first marathon. To some extent, it was a rebirth or a

Our daughter and son-in-law had a luncheon with us on the 25th. My wife and I are not Christians, so the holiday trappings have only
Some photos from our 2017 trip to Colorado. We flew into Albuquerque and planned to drive through Colorado from the south to Denver. Along the
Facebook is, of course, the most highly integrated. It exists primarily as an advertising platform but also allows its company to harvest extensive data about

Photos are moments in frozen moments in time. Old photos show us how transient, and eventually meaningless, life is. There comes a time when everyone
The December 15, 2021 issue of the New York Times ran an interesting article, “How Exercise Affects Metabolism and Weight Loss,” which reports on newly
Americans have a dangerously inflated view of their own health care system. Our politicians lie to us and leverage our reptilian tribal brains by telling
Today the U.S. surpassed 800,000 Covid related deaths. This was not surprising to me. What surprised me was that 600,000 of these deaths were among
Reuters reported on December 10 that of 43 of the cases of Omicron identified in the U.S., 34 of them were in fully vaccinated people,
Global warming is unabated. The fourth wave of COVID infections beginning in July 2021was completely discretionary: an epidemic of the un-vaxxed. It is still amazingly
2021 was not the best of years for me. During the 2020 lockdown, I flourished using the time off to work out and study data
We decided to memorialize the meals of Saturday, October 30, 2021, since it began with a breakfast that is unusual for us.

Breakfast this morning was a bit more elaborate. Whole whipped eggs with parmesan cheese and spinach. Hash browns made from fresh, whole potatoes. Morning Star
Christopher Columbus and I have history. In the mid-1970s, while sitting over lunch in a villa overlooking Santa Margherita, I remarked that Columbus had apparently
I see these arguments come from the Left and the Right, people with no advanced education and people with liberal arts or engineering degrees. The
One quarter remains.
Today at work I received an all-hands message asking for volunteers to staff a call center to contact Americans stranded in Afghanistan and provide them
Dopamine is evolution’s reward system for behaviors that increased the reproductive success of hunter-gatherers, long-distance hunting and gathering, eating high calories foods, and sex. Today we no longer persistence hunt, but regular exercisers enjoy the rewards of the long hunt.
Trump’s monumental ego, driven by proportional insecurity, prevents him from acknowledging that he was an incumbent president who lost to a rival he called “sleepy”.
I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to me to be too local, too provincial.
So Republicans were catatonic at the thought of paying the middle and lower classes $24,000 during this time of financial calamity for so many. They’ve
15% of Americans are certain they will not get vaccinated and 17% say that they probably will not.
If it existed before 1500, it’s probably not a highly processed food.
When JFK spoke the words “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” an entire nation understood.
It is painfully obvious to anyone with a background in evolutionary biology. In biology, the only thing that matters is reproduction. Given a population with
The cover of USA Today ran the following headline yesterday: “We are failing each other”. I have to say that I disagree. The responsibility for
There’s an unhappy photo on the Associated Press of what appears to be a CH-47 Chinook hovering over Kabul evacuating diplomats. It looks distressingly like
It really is beginning to look like there is light at the end of the tunnel…..barring a really virulent COVID variant.
I prefer to call it sitting or sitting meditation, stripped of cultural nuances. Its root is zazen or zen, sitting meditation in Japanese. But there
I’ve noticed two logical arguments that are repeatedly used by Trumpists, both flawed. To America’s discredit, they seem to be gaining more general use. In
After the rape of Capitol Hill by a Trumpian mob, I wonder if this is the act of hubris that I have long instinctively expected.
![By Richard Westall - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28397009](https://vause.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/1024px-Richard_Westall_-_Faust_and_Lilith-2-800x600.jpg)
I wrote a fair amount during the George W. and Obama administrations, particularly the former’s. Incensed by the stupidity of squandering the 2000 budget surplus
Incredibly naive? Or profoundly stupid?
Update to this article. The Economist distilled my thinking on 12/5/2020: Two factors tied to the pandemic help account for Taiwan’s relative success this year.
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Local control of schools is a failure. People have lost, if they ever had, any ability to think analytically. Being able to posit an alternative