Down and out semi poet who is down and out in the Low Country of South Carolina after living in Atlanta which is not to be confused with the south, the old south or the new south. Atlanta was a global metropolis with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. The low country, low because it is low, 8 feet above sea level, is not Podunk but once you get to Podunk, turn left. I try to chronicle a small part of all that through my daily haiku for you.
all the realm shall be in common when I am king, … as king I will be
Be brave, then, for your captain is brave and vows reformation.
There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny.
The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to drink small beer.
All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass.
And when I am king, as king I will be —
Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2 – Act 4, scene 2 by William Shakespeare.
Big Bill wrote that 1591.
Jack Cade’s rebellion against Henry VI took place in 1450.
On Thursday, either of those two guys who want to be President could use the same lines.
Promise bread and circuses or fire and destruction and base that promise on that it will happen when … when I am king, as king I will be —
About Mr. Cade, Wikipedia says, On 12 July, 1450, in a garden in which he had taken shelter, Cade was overtaken. In the skirmish, Cade was fatally wounded and died before reaching London for trial. As a warning to others, Cade’s body underwent a mock trial and was beheaded at Newgate. Cade’s body was dragged through the streets of London before being quartered. His limbs were sent throughout Kent to various cities and locations that were believed to have been strong supporters of the rebel uprising.
” ... So, for want of any other excitement, they have turned to another source of fun: opinion polls.
Has there ever been a campaign so dominated by them? For seven or eight years now, the most powerful polling companies have been developing so-called – and yes, I had to look this up – multilevel regression with poststratification (or MRP) surveys, which contact tens of thousands of voters, calculate results based on a range of granular demographic details, and result in findings that can be sifted constituency by constituency. The fact that YouGov used this method to unexpectedly predict 2017’s hung parliament has given it an air of quasi-scientific magic; now, the publication of one such poll after another is greeted in some quarters with a huge level of expectation.
The result is postmodern news that a certain kind of 20th-century social theorist would have loved. The Conservatives, the Telegraph screamed last week, are on track to “slump to just 53 seats”. The Labour party, it said, was predicted to win a mind-boggling 516. Here, it seemed, was full-blown Starmergeddon, and the advent of a one-party state. But no one had voted and nothing had actually happened. Nor, by definition, could anyone be certain that the predictions were in any way accurate. “‘We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning,” said Jean Baudrillard in his 1981 masterpiece Simulacra and Simulation. In this election, that distinction hardly seems to matter.
Let us boil that down.
Multilevel regression with poststratification surveys, based on a range of granular demographic details, and result in findings that can be sifted constituency by constituency has given it [polling] an air of quasi-scientific magic.
I like that.
Who knows what questions were asked and how they were asked and in what order where they asked.
Tell me what you want to hear and I will design a poll that produces results that back it up.
Mr. Harris closes his article with, “We should treat all those polls with deep scepticism; the best thing, in fact, may be to marvel at their arcane machinations, occasionally recognise their prescience, and laugh.”
I would laugh long and hard if polls in America didn’t make me want to cry long and hard.
But here is what I find so interesting.
When his wife lost the election in 2016, former President Bill Clinton mused that it was just like Brexit.
Unexpected.
The Brits went went did something totally stupid and did it in a totally stupid way.
Now it looks like the British electorate is trying to set things right.
his uniform fit better than everybody else’s uniform
“You would stay on the bench during batting practice simply to watch him — and just watching him walk, even that was special,” said Cleon Jones, who grew up in Alabama idolizing Mays and ended up sharing the outfield with him when the Giants traded Mays to the Mets in 1972.
“I’m telling you, even his uniform seemed to fit better than everybody else’s uniform,” Jones said. “The players held him with a reverence that felt almost spiritual.”
Not much to say but I think of Jim Harrison in his book The Road Home when his lead character meets Sioux Lakota warriors, veterans of the wars with Custer.
Mr. Harrison writes, ” … warriors with a lineage that owed nothing to the white man. We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them. To pity these men is to pity the gods.”
I also want to point out that Mr. Mays did not play in the Major Leagues until he was 20 years old.
Al Kaline and Robin Yount both started when there were 18.
I think of the record book with two more seasons added to it.
Mr. Streeter writes, “How great was he?
Six hundred sixty. That is how many home runs bolted off Mays’s bat during his career. When the Say Hey Kid retired at the end of the 1973 season, only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron had more.
Mays ended 23 major league seasons with a total of 3,293 hits and held a .301 lifetime batting average, eye-popping for a player with such power. Twenty-four times, he was named to the All-Star team. Twelve times, he won the Gold Glove Award. Ten times, he drove in more than 100 runs.
He was named the National League’s most valuable player twice. If it were not for a need to spread the award among players, some experts say, he could have been the M.V.P. seven more times.
Numbers and accolades tell only part of his story. For it was how Mays played — the way he bent the confines of baseball to his will with his smarts, his speed, his style and his power — that set him apart as the most deeply beloved of stars.”
Mr. Mays also missed a season due to having to fulfill his military service.
And it should be pointed out I guess that Jackie Robinson was rookie of the year, his first year, …when he was 28.
more sun in sunshine more time for the sun to shine tip toward the sun
It is the longest day of the year.
Where I live in the low country of South Carolina, the sun comes up at 6:17 a.m. and sets at 8:32 p.m.
Where I grew, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the sun comes up at 6:03 a.m. and sets at 9:25 p.m.
The day and the sunshine lasts longer up north.
Is there more sun in the day up there?
Why do the folks in Michigan get more time for the sun to shine?
I get it that we live on a sphere but I have always had a hard time getting my brain around those great circle routes based on the Mercator projector maps I grew up with.
I was taught the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
But I was also taught that the shortest trip between New York and London was by way of Greenland and Iceland.
Today is the longest day of year on this planet and its length depends on where you are.
Wikipedia says that the earth will start to tip at 4:50 p.m. EDT but I don’t know that I will feel it.
It’s not like the egg balancing trick on the equinox.
But it would be interesting to feel a shift the way the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise would would tip back and forth during an enemy attack.
SOLSTICE! … HANG ON!
If that would happen just be glad to not be one of those fellers wearing the red shirts that usually died in the first five minutes of the show.
But I digress.
It is easy to explain but not easy to determine, according to wikipedia which states: Unlike the equinox, the solstice time is not easy to determine. The changes in solar declination become smaller as the Sun gets closer to its maximum/minimum declination. The days before and after the solstice, the declination speed is less than 30 arcseconds per day which is less than 1⁄60 of the angular size of the Sun, or the equivalent to just 2 seconds of right ascension.
This difference is hardly detectable with indirect viewing based devices like sextant equipped with a vernier, and impossible with more traditional tools like a gnomon or an astrolabe. It is also hard to detect the changes in sunrise/sunset azimuth due to the atmospheric refraction changes. Those accuracy issues render it impossible to determine the solstice day based on observations made within the 3 (or even 5) days surrounding the solstice without the use of more complex tools.
You have to love the words:
solar declination maximum/minimum declination right ascension vernier atmospheric refraction astrolabe sunrise/sunset azimuth
And then the statement, impossible to determine without the use of more complex tools.
More complex?
More time for sun but can you pack more sun into sunshine?
I am sure you can’t.
But it sure seems brighter done here on the beach than anywhere else I have been.
No Haiku For You 