It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree. [1]
Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?
* * *
Happy Boxing Day, y’all.
Chill, dude. Not that kind of boxing.
Commonly celebrated in England, and countries with substantial ties to/former territories of the Brits (referred to as commonwealth nations [2] ), Boxing Day has many competing attributed origin stories. Some say it is a day set aside for giving alms to the poor…
…but more likely it has to do with the British economic class system – giving the servants one measly day off during the holiday season (they had to work on Christmas Day, preparing their masters’ employers feasts, etc., and could take home the leftovers and receive Christmas Boxes with giftts from their employers on the 26th).
* * *
Department Of Speaking Of The Brits
Sub-Department Of Visual Double Takes
Dateline: Saturday; 3 pm-ish, headed home after grocery shopping with MH. We took a scenic detour, and on a street a half mile or so from our ‘hood we passed a blue road sign on the right. In this state, blue street signs typically indicate a business or service or other facility, from a hospital or gas station to a winery or store or church or B & B….
The sign read ARISE CHURCH, with an arrow pointing to the right. But the words were in skinny capital letters, and at the speed we drove by moiself missed the I, and for a brief moment my mind registered the sign as indicating
ARSE
CHURCH
→
Moiself likes the idea of my city hosting a local chapter of The British Church of the Bum.
* * *
Department Of One More Thing To Be Happy About
That would be, the week between Christmas and New Year’s day.
Happy Twixmas, y’all.
The guidelines for Twixmas sound a lot like recovery from foot surgery.
* * *
Department Of Real Estate Obfuscate-Speak
They’re not calling them trailer parks anymore, or even manufactured home parks. It’s land lease communities.
The reason I have become familiar with this slight-of-tongue terminology is that I’m keeping up with the real estate market in the vicinity of where daughter Belle lives. [3] And while a well-built manufactured home can be attractive in that it’s another option in the overpriced real estate market, it comes with a financial gotcha in that, in the vast majority of the situations, you are buying the manufactured home only, yet paying the lease price for the site it sits on – a price that can be as high or even higher than the mortgage itself (double or triple, in many cases I’ve seen). You can be fooled into thinking that you are a solely a homeowner, when you are still, in a crucial way, a renter, accruing no equity in the property upon which your home sits. If the landlord raises that rent, you gotta pay it.
Here is how they try to sell you a scam a pro-land lease community site describes it ( my emphases ):
Land lease communities allow residents to own their homes while leasing the land, offering the best of both worlds: affordability and a community atmosphere. You can find land lease communities across the U.S., and they are especially appealing in areas where high land costs might make property ownership particularly expensive.|
By choosing a land lease community, residents can enjoy the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag.
( excerpt, Inspire Community, “What is a Land Lease” )
…the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag. That’s a new way to shovel it. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Lovely view of Brooklyn, for only $1300/month, for just the dirt under your feet.
* * *
Department Of News From The Recovery Front
Moiself’s exercise routine needs (temporary) modifications post-foot surgery. I found a variety of chair exercise videos online: [4] cardio, strength, even yoga. After trying them out I mostly don’t use them, and just modify my regular routines. But I tune into one chair cardio/weights online video to use as a warmup, because I have developed a certain fondness for the Shiny Happy, over enthusiastic exercise leader. It’s been six weeks, and so far, hearing her perky malapropisms never gets old: they include her pronouncing muscles as musk skulls, and enthusing about how chair workouts can still be vigorous, especially for those who have some “fiscal limitations.” [5]
What was (is?) that Reader’s Digest trope?
* * *
Department Of Working Your Brain During The Holiday Season
One of my favorite podcasts, People I Mostly Admire (aka PIMA) is being retired by its host. PIMA is/was hosted by economist and author [6] Steve Levitt. His PIMA interview with astrophysicist, author and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of my favorites, despite [7] the fact that, to moiself, Levitt seemed somewhat intimidated by interviewing a “real” scientist.
The most intriguing part of the interview for moiself was when Levitt and Tyson discussed hypothesis theory, something that both fascinates and frustrates me. The frustration comes from the fact that, IMO, the ignorance re and/or misinterpretations of the definitions of hypotheses and theories account for a great deal of the misunderstandings laypersons have about science. Non-scientists tend to think of theories and hypotheses in terms of how the words are used socially and culturally – they see those terms as more akin to opinions and hunches. Thus, to Biff The Non-Scientist Who Nevertheless Loves Ranting About Science, the theory of evolution carries about as much weight as does Biff’s Uncle Anus’s pontifications about why his neighbors decorate their lawn with statues of Nordic trolls and Japanese anime characters: “I have a theory about that….”
During the interview Levitt was self-critical re the fact that, as he sees it, his discipline – economics – is not “truly scientific” (despite there being a Nobel prize category for it 😉 ). By that he meant, economists use different data gathering methods than those working in the so-called hard sciences, and that there is a certain “stickiness” about working with/trying to explain that try to explain things that are often unquantifiable, such as human behavior.
Steve Levitt:
“…it’s not the scientific method, it’s a sensible method, in a data-driven world, you try to figure out what’s going on. To me what is so disturbing in economics is that everybody knows it’s completely fake, what we do. And no one talks about it, and everybody pretends to follow the scientific method, when in fact we’re doing nothing like it.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Let me first tighten up some of your vocabulary. If you have an idea about how something works, it’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis. [8]
A theory, in science, is an understanding of how things work that not only explains all that it has confronted but that makes *predictions* that have been shown to be accurate going forward. That’s a theory. Until you have experimental verification you have a hypothesis.
So, you put forth a hypothesis, some of the data don’t quite fit it, and you go back and readjust the hypothesis, that’s just fine. You readjust the hypothesis, and now it fits the data. I don’t have a problem with that. But don’t elevate it to a theory of human behavior until *that* hypothesis makes a prediction you then test.
I don’t care what you do with your hypothesis; I don’t care how much stitchery and remending you have to do to it – once you present it, and it accounts for the data you have available, that is the *beginning,* that’s not the end. Now, let’s test it. Can you make a prediction? Now we’re onto something. If, after you’ve retooled it, it makes more predictions than you’‘ve ever imagined, bada-bing, let’s call it a new economic theory.”
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [9]
* * *
May you exercise your brain musk skulls during the holidays;
May that same brain entertain you with visual double-takes;
|May you be able to form hypotheses about your theories;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago.
[2] e.g. Canada, Australia.
[3] She hopes to become a homeowner, within the next couple of years. A pipe dream, is how so many of her peers view the housing market.
[4] As in…wait for it…exercises that can be done while sitting on a chair and thus keeping weight of the affected foot.
[5] Which might impact you even more than your, ahem, physical limitations, as you cold only afford to watch her free tape, rather than join a gym?
[6] Levitt, with his fellow Steve (Steven Dubner) , is the author of the ground breaking ITAL Freakonomics books, and Dubner hosts the Freakonomics podcast.
[7] or maybe, partially due to?
[8] NdGT deserves a footnote, don’t you think?
[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
