No Time to Spare; Ursula K. Le Guin; 2017

I've been slowly reading through Le Guin's last few collections, reluctant to let them "go" in the sense that, once completed, there will be nothing new from her that I have left to read.

No Time to Spare is a fantastic title, but the subtitle Thinking About What Matters is somewhat curious because this is a collection of blog posts, and while they are more finely written than the typical internet fare, they are largely about seemingly inconsequential matters.

So is the subtitle a poor one?  Or after 80, are matters that seem inconsequential to the young (or even middle aged) quite important because there is no time to spare?

The post "Belief in Belief" struck me as important.  In essence, it points out the importance of choosing words carefully to improve communication; specifically, she looks at the oppositional "belief in God" versus "belief in science", and offers:

I don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution.  I accept it.  It isn't a matter of faith, but of evidence.

Wise words.

But troublesome for the choice of words in Bayesian statistics, which heavily uses "belief" to describe probabilities of material events, and not spiritual truths.  

Throat bobbing in the works of Sarah J. Maas

My family discovered the Throne of Glass series a few years ago, and convinced me to read the A Court of ... books in 2017.  Maas is not a critical darling, but she writes characters I want to read about, she manages an epic cast without losing control of any of the subplots, every book in a series advances the main plot, and she publishes regularly.

Sometime during the second book of that series, A Court of Mist and Fury, I noticed that in moments of extreme emotion, Maas would describe the character's physical reaction to the emotion as a throat bob.  For example, Rhys is reliving a painful memory here:

His throat bobbed.  I could tell it was rage, and pain, that kept him from telling me outright -- not mistrust.

This is a slightly unusual physical description, but cool and somewhat unique to Maas among the authors I've read.  After I started A Court of Wings and Ruin, I noticed that the number of throat bobs had skyrocketed.  Being a data guy, I naturally had to start keeping count in this spreadsheet.

After recording 15 throat bobs in the 669 pages of A Court of Wings and Ruin, I was hooked.  I needed a more complete analysis of throat bobs in Sarah J. Maas's oeuvre.  Earlier this year, I finally started and finished the Throne of Glass series, went back through A Court of Thorns and Roses to comb for the last few throat bobs, and build out a dashboard of visualizations.  The highlights include:



The number of throat bobs by book, ordered from the books with the most bobs to the fewest.  Note that:

• Throne of Glass itself is missing, because there were zero bobs in it.  
• Empire of Storms has more bobs per page than Kingdom of Ash, because it's a longer book.

The number of throat bobs by character, ordered from the characters with the most bobs to the fewest.  Note that Aelin's series has 8 books to Rhysand's 4.  I'm kindof shocked how high Gavriel and Yrene are on this list, though this may in part be because the bob rate accelerated around the time they became important characters.  (see the following charts)




The number of throat bobs by year of publication date.  The x-axis is wonky; that rightmost bar is 2018, but appears centered around the middle of 2017. (sigh)




The number of throat bobs by quarter and year of publication date.  This shows us where in the publication history those books with high bob counts are, plus the number of books published each year. 




The best for last, this is number of bobs by cumulative page count of Maas's oeuvre.  You can see that the rate starts slow, then picks up just before the 2,000th page, then kicks into high gear from roughly page 3,800-4,800.  Finally, after that, it slows down a bit, but the rate of throat bobs per page is still higher than it was before page 3,800.

Hopefully, this project will continue for many more years to come.

Green Up Day 2019

Great green up day.  Thanks to the BHS volunteers, we filled more than 25 bags along the 127 bike path and safely accessible roadside.  (This shot doesn't capture all the bags)

Note: posted on 5/4/26 and backdated to 5/4/19, when this was originally shared with friends on FB 

Database marketing fail

I recently received the following email, which is hilarious for a number of reasons:

• We did own a Jetta GL.  A 1996 Jetta GL.  I know it's worth nothing.
• Heritage Toyota should know that, because they rejected the Jetta GL as a trade-in back in 2011
• Since we eventually purchased our current vehicle from them, Heritage Toyota should know the make, model and year of our current vehicle

Heritage Toyota may very well just be sending spam emails using a purchased database of car owners and their last known vehicle, but they should really merge that database with their own internal database in order to send better targeted emails.

Saying goodbye to my beloved Outdoor Sportif jacket

In 1996, I went backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains with my future spouse.  Since I had no equipment, this entailed a trip to the local Army Surplus store to get long underwear, a backpack, and a jacket.  The jacket I found was an Outdoor Sportif with colors I loved:

... and it has served well as my rain jacket and winter shell for 22 years.  It has a single interior pocket, in which I usually put my car and house key:


In addition to the usual exterior pockets at the sides, it also has an exterior chest pocket in which I typically put phone, wallet, and sunglasses



The interesting thing about this pocket is that it's outside the zipper, so I can get at the contents without breaking my heat seal, but it's inside a set of velcro tabs that help to secure the contents of the pocket.




The main negative is that the hood tended to come off in any amount of wind, so it was not a great rain jacket.  Also, after many years of continuous winter use in cold climates, it was wearing down and I've been looking to replace it.  

During early searches, Burton's Hover and Swash came closest among retail jackets to what I was looking for, but the pockets (and colors) aren't quite right.  Then I looked into having a custom jacket made, and while the people I talked to did some excellent work, the pockets in the custom jackets were secured with velcro, and I really like zippers.  

Finally, this fall I discovered Fjällräven and their Keb jacket.  Even better, I got one of the orange/grey ones.  I'm missing the purple-y royal blue on the Sportif, but the Keb has pretty good features to compensate.