Life is Not Smooth. It is Filled with Kinks, Which Makes It a Marvelous Spectator Sport

Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight political numbers guru, who some of us were previously acquainted with because of his esoteric work with baseball statistics, explains today that he became interested in politics only a couple of years ago. Turns out he was supplementing his baseball numbers-crunching biz by playing poker online for money.

This online gaming came to the attention of Congressional bluenoses. They concocted a bill to stop it, which they velcroed to the bottom off an unrelated bill.

(F)ollowing the debate over the (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 ) was one of the primary motivators that got me into politics. It took a "dirty trick" -- attaching it to an unrelated conference report that couldn't possibly be voted down -- to get (it) to become law, although then again, this was undertaken partly in response to another "dirty trick", which was the process of anonymous holds that was preventing the bill from coming to a floor vote in the Senate (where it would probably have passed on its own merits). I found the whole process of watching the sausage getting made alarming -- but also utterly fascinating. Without poker -- and without that bill -- there probably wouldn't have been any FiveThirtyEight.

What did Hamlet say? By indirections we find directions out? If I hadn't taken an education class my junior year of college that involved observing an eighth grade classroom once a week and if I hadn't been afraid of eighth graders as a result, I would never have applied to grad school, which I did not to pursue a career but to avoid having to begin one for as long as I could.

And if E. hadn't missed supper that same year and asked me to drive to the Outpost Cafe to pick up a little something for her to eat -- and thus tipped the balance between hesitation and yearning with which I regarded her -- I might never have *claimed my reward* for fetching that meal (the reward being a date to go to the movies).

I'm not saying everything in life is contingent, just more than we think. I don't believe in destiny, you see, that soporific compounded of vanity and excuse.

I don't believe in luck either, but I know it when I see it.

Fender Benders Are Inevitable. Acknowledging That is the Beginning of Wisdom

Image by wili_hybrid via Flickr

And E. just bent some fenders. He was making a right turn. She was making a left turn. Since this was close to home, E. called me, and I came scampering, camera in hand.

I'll say one thing for E. The other driver got the worst of it; that is, his car did. Also, some plants were crushed where he pulled off the road.

E. was very calm in the aftermath. She was on the way to her acupuncturist. The other driver was a kid. I believe his Saturday was dented worse than his car, though he was also near his home, so his mom and dad came out, and everyone was nice because everyone was relieved.

Also, everyone was insured.

I am, as I sometimes am, reminded of a poem -- Hardy's "Convergence of the Twain." Can you guess the twain?

I

   In a solitude of the sea
   Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

   Steel chambers, late the pyres
   Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

   Over the mirrors meant
   To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

   Jewels in joy designed
   To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

   Dim moon-eyed fishes near
   Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .

VI

   Well: while was fashioning
   This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

   Prepared a sinister mate
   For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

VIII

   And as the smart ship grew
   In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

   Alien they seemed to be:
   No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

X

   Or sign that they were bent
   By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI

   Till the Spinner of the Years
   Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Well, in this case were are talking about a Chrysler product and, I
think, a Camry. Two households were jarred. That's all. And I go: whew.