Stuff from January, 2016
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on January, 2016.
Drafting Table
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on January, 2016.
I’m walking through the mall, with Ess riding in the Björn, and her little left hand is holding mine. I realize she’s been holding my hand for five minutes straight. Her whale spout pony tail on the top of her head swishes back and forth as she looks around.
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I’m lying on the kitchen floor when Ess walks over and, uncharacteristically, lies down next to me, resting her head in the crook of my elbow, and just stares into my eyes for thirty seconds. Satisfied with what she saw, or what she communicated, she gets up and toddles away.
Essie’s word for bug is “bugah” or I suppose “bug-ah” but those two sounds blend together so seamlessly, and she so rarely says it once, that you really get bugahbugahbugahbugah. So that’s anything small and colored dark. Most things requiring a pincer grip. “What’s that?” we ask. “Bugahbugah. BUGAHBUGAHBUGAH.” comes her reply.
We sing “Belly Breathe” to Essie and she sings it back to us.
A few entries in the English to Essie dictionary:
Scoop: bey-doup
Dante the Dragon: bee-lah
Pine nut: ma-guck
Ess demonstrates the last one for us in this video. The middle one is because the dragon chases Ess and says “blah” at her. I’m starting to understand why parents have such an easy time understanding their kids.
An excerpt from The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers:
The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting symptoms which we have noted in the modern intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited, partly because we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely by the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether this is true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training of the reason is the best possible way to make it true. Another cause for the disfavor into which Logic has fallen is the belief that it is entirely based upon universal assumptions that are either unprovable or tautological. This is not true. Not all universal propositions are of this kind. But even if they were, it would make no difference, since every syllogism whose major premise is in the form “All A is B” can be recast in hypothetical form. Logic is the art of arguing correctly: “If A, then B.” The method is not invalidated by the hypothetical nature of A. Indeed, the practical utility of Formal Logic today lies not so much in the establishment of positive conclusions as in the prompt detection and exposure of invalid inference.
I’m drinking wine and watching a 29 minute YouTube video about how to install a garage door opener. AND AM HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE. Adulthood is different and better than I expected. Harder. But better.
After hearing on the radio that the Powerball’s jackpot value had climbed to something like $900 million, we found $2 in the car and picked up a ticket when we were getting gas yesterday. We had no idea what the rules were, so imagine our surprise when we discovered that our four matched numbers were worth $100! What a return on investment. It also gave me insight into the twisted psychology of the lottery — there’s this impression that we were “just” one number away from the next prize up, when in reality you are 320 times less likely to match five numbers for one million dollars than the four numbers required to win the $100 we did. Best case scenario, the lottery makes you happy to have what you have.
If Essie doesn’t know or can’t say the word for something, it is always always ‘dahVEE’. “Can you say ‘refrigerator’?” we ask. Then, with utter confidence comes the response: dahVEE. “What’s that?” we query, pointing to something new. It’s a dahVEE. Obviously.