Saturday, September 17, 2011

Retreat News

We had an abundance of mathematicians amongst us this afternoon, at our Wanderers retreat. The topics overlapped in combinatorics, judging and scoring, also sizing. Nirel's Cuffkas need to come in optimum sizes for male and female wrists.

David has been working with men's pant sizes for some years now and has amassed a database of over 8000 measurements. True, this table contains more than its share of non-average sizes, and thereby hangs a tale.

Don was eligible for a special fishing license (free) given his age and over fifty years in Oregon. On almost the first day on his own with his new gear at Gary's dock, he managed to snag a twenty pound Chinook. Nirel is cooking up a big slab as I write this.

I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning remembering I'd left my bicycle, with the Food Not Bombs trailer, unlocked behind the Pauling House. I made myself roll out of bed and go retrieve the rig, which was fortunately still where I'd left it.

Carol and Tara both came to our potluck last night. I wrote something for the Wanderers list which I'll repost to Synergeo.

Philosophy of language:

Freshwater News, September 2011, Vol 29, No. 9, Oregon & SW Washington's boating news monthly, traces an interesting line in the water in: Old Boats, Homeless People: Poverty and Lawlessness on the Waterfront (pg. 18).

Some of these boat-dwellers, paying rent for moorage, living aboard yachts, don't consider themselves homeless. Their home is their boat. What gives the newspaper the right to judge who is homeless, might be a question in some letter to the editor. What would the Wittgensteinians say, about what it means to be homeless. Was Wittgenstein ever homeless?