Upon RFK Jr.’s confirmation, William Dunham, a research associate in math at Bryn Mawr, in a letter to the Times today, imagined Trump’s choice to head a Math Department.
It would be a person who rose to fame by asserting that 2 + 2 = 7. Senate Republicans, putting aside any arithmetic qualms, would confirm the nominee in order to “shake things up.” When the new secretary of mathematics assumed office, there would be no more D.E.I. (Divisors, Equations, Isosceles triangles), and odd numbers would be forbidden because they were too “woke.”
[OC note: 2 + 2 = 4.]
In another letter, Suzy Szasz of Richmond, VA, writes:
By confirming RFK Jr., four Republican Senators who are doctors — John Barrasso of Wyoming, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Rand Paul of Kentucky — have violated a portion of the Hippocratic oath they swore as physicians: “I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm.”
Michael Weiden wrote this piece for tomorrow’s Met Diary:
Dear Diary:
My friend of 72 years and I stopped at a bodega at Broadway and 107th Street to buy lottery tickets. We don’t play unless the payout is astronomical.
It was 9 o’clock on this particular Saturday evening and we thought we were the only customers in the place. We asked the owner when the drawing would be announced. “Midnight,” he said.
My friend and I agreed that we would be asleep by then and would have to learn the results the next day.
At that moment, a man dressed entirely in black whom we hadn’t noticed standing in a back corner spoke up. “No one promises you tomorrow,” he said without looking up from the gardening magazine he was reading.
My friend and I, both 79, were all too familiar with this wisdom. We exchanged knowing glances with the bodega’s owner and politely thanked the man in black for his advice. He ignored us.
We went to my friend’s apartment, where we tried, and failed, to stay up till midnight.
We learned in the morning that we had unfortunately not won the lottery. On the other hand, we had our tomorrow.
This poem by Joyce Sutphen is called “Breakfast.” It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac.
My father taught me how to eat breakfast
those mornings when it was my turn to help
him milk the cows. I loved rising up from
the darkness and coming quietly down
the stairs while the others were still sleeping.
I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon
from the drawer, and slip into the pantry
where he was already eating spoonfuls
of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries
from our own strawberry fields forever.
Didn’t talk much—except to mention how
good the strawberries tasted or the way
those clouds hung over the hay barn roof.
Simple—that’s how we started up the day.
I posted my dull information about Nevada for the Dull Men’s Club (UK). I wondered what sort of non-splash it would make as an American note in the predominantly British club. Here’s what happened:
My post:
“U.S. trivia of interest to nobody: The state of Nevada has the highest percentage of federal land, i.e., land owned by the U.S. federal government, 80%. Alaska has four times as much acreage owned by the Feds, but percentage-wise it’s only 60% of the state.”
First of all, it got three “likes,” including one from Chris Bater, who is famous in the club for always posting “I don’t know” as his comment for almost everything. One person once suggested that he be banned and a large mass of members rose to his defense. It was beautiful and he was very moved by it.
Okay, and here are the dull comments it generated:
Adrian Thiemicke: Your first statement is correct. (I replied: Good to reach agreement!)
Shaun Gisby: That is indeed dull. Wasn’t Bonanza set in Nevada? Do maps still spontaneously combust there?
Neale Rumble: And?
To which Cathy Kelly Gibbs responded:
It’s a big deal for Nevada.
1) The federal government pays no property tax and in fact, charges fees to ranchers to graze on federal land.
2) The feds grip on Nevada land is one of the biggest reasons for exorbitant housing prices. This severely limits the supply to keep up with demand.
3) It undermines the self-determination of the state. Nevada has to beg to have land released for growth. In some instances, land parcels have been traded so BLM’s (Bureau of Land Management) overall holdings are not diminished.
While the OP may be correct on the percentages, the impact on Alaska is not as great as much of that area is not developable. The Federal government owns land in every state, as it should, for military bases, National Parks, and similar, but the disproportionate amount of Nevada land under federal ownership affects every Nevada citizen.
Murray Atkinson then replied to Cathy:
Burning Man is held on federal land in Nevada… it is a dry lake bed that can’t be used for anything else (except possibly mining). They are charged 10s of 1000s of dollars for the privilege.
But historically the federal gov had to ask states to hand over land they didn’t want as a way of reducing the federal tax burden needed to run federal stuff. There’s not enough water in Nevada for much of the land to be developed. And BLM land is great for camping on!
I was thrilled with having stirred up all of this dullness. So I tacked on this story:
For most of my life I was mispronouncing Nevada. Then we took a family trip out there and heard the natives pronounce it. Incorrect: Ne-vah-da. Correct: Nevada (middle A as in “atom” or “avid”). My daughter continued to pronounce it Ne-vah-da. I said, Caity — we just learned that the people who live here pronounce it Nevada (with the A as in atom). And she said, “I don’t live here.”
The puzzle today is by David P. Williams. Rex says this about him: I think this is the constructor who’s in the process of publishing 13 identically shaped themeless puzzles and then whenever he’s done … something will happen? It has something to do with “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. I do not care about any of this, I just want my Saturday puzzles to be good, but now that someone told me about it, I can’t unknow it, and now you know it. When I opened the grid, I was like “Oh, right, this guy, this grid again.”
Puzzle people talk about a puzzle’s “flow,” i.e., each segment blends into the next, for a whooshing effect, if you’re doing well. But today’s has five segments without much flow, i.e., like five separate little puzzles. And the one in the Great Northwest pounded the crap out of me. I just couldn’t break into it. There was an 8-letter answer for “Pirate’s lack, stereotypically,” and I was pretty sure it had to end with NC. All I could think of were eye patches, peg legs, parrots, hooks for arms, and funny ways of talking. Answer: VITAMINC. D’oh!
Here’s a joke about Jewish pirates. So two old Jewish pirates, both retired and in their 70’s run into each other in Miami Beach.
Abe! How are you?
Max! How’ve you been?
Not too bad; can’t complain.
But, what happened? — your hook for an arm? Your eye patch? You didn’t have those the last time I saw you.
Oh, yeah. Terrible. The hook I got when I was boarding a ship. I wasn’t careful and during the fight, one of the crewmembers lopped off my arm.
Terrible. And the eye?
Yeah, that was terrible too. I was just relaxing on the beach and this damn seagull pooped in my eye!
OK, but would that cause you to lose it?
Well, I had just gotten my hook. . . .
Two comments questioned why I made them Jewish, one noting this isn’t the Borscht Belt. I replied that it wasn’t a requirement, but it seemed funnier to me that way.
People are so sensitive these days.
At 31D, the clue was “What solving a Saturday Times crossword might earn you, informally.” Answer: NERD CRED. But I don’t think I agree with that. I think of nerds more in connection with engineering (Hi Sam!).
Remember CERTS, the breath mint? The clue was “Classic candy brand discontinued in 2018.” They were discontinued because they contain cottonseed oil which was prohibited in food products.
Rex was quite miffed: OK, yes, they were “two mints in one,” a “candy mint” (?) and a “breath mint,” but you cannot leave out the “breath mint” part, that’s definitive. CERTS are (uh, were) breath mints. They had Retsyn, the magical proprietary breath-freshening agent that (it turns out) contained partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, which (it turns out) was the tragically ironic cause of CERTS’ eventual discontinuation. Live by the Retsyn, die by the Retsyn. Anyway, CERTS were about Retsyn and Retsyn was about fresh breath. That was their whole deal: breath-freshening. Call things what they are for ****’s sake!
This was a tough Saturday-level clue/answer: Clue: “Disregard.” Answer: NONCHALANCE. What? Miriam Webster tells us “nonchalant” means: having an air of easy unconcern or indifference. Still, without the crosses that’s way over my head.
Owl Chatter is heading west on Monday: spending the week out in Michigan with Sam and little Harold (2 months old, kinehora). Should be able to report from there. We’ll see. (Sarah and Mo will be in Florida, visiting Mo’s great-grandmother and great-step-grandfather.)
Thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 