The Fallen Yokozuna

Reminded me of Rockem Sockem Robots:

86 43

I just bought six of these buttons for $1 apiece at brainbuttons. But now, just after completing the purchase, I can't find them again on the web site. Weird. So if you want one, let me know. I'll send it to you.

They sure beat the mostly boring Kerry buttons I've been seeing around town.

[ Note added later: Go to the brainbuttons site, and click the "Newest" link on the bottom of the screen. The 8643 button came up then for me. ]

Here are some thoughts on possible 86 etymologies. Some more details can be found here.

Unnecessary Roughness—Too Many Men on the Field—Illegal Procedure

Another note added later: I found a blog that carries the tag 86-43-04 inside the title of each its pages. Last month it had some interesting documents on Bush's mysterious 1972-3 National Guard "Service."

The Kakutanis

I didn't know that Michiko Kakutani is Shizuo Kakutani's daughter.

Shizuo just died.

20 laps vs 5 miles

First googling

Looks like it's about .03 miles short. How far is that?

Second googling

The chess seance

Another quotation from Alexander Cockburn's 1974 book, "Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death:"

Most parents will have noticed the curious phenomenon of a child apparently repeating an unpleasant experience—such as a visit to the dentist. Is the child's manipulation of the imaginary drill merely a mimicry, a fairly meaningless adaptation of excess energy to a recent experience? [...]

Now, the game of chess has much to do with repetition—repetition with variation certainly. Yet the player will repeat, and repeat again certain moves; he will replay throughout his life certain gambits and strategies; in his own form of exile from reality he will repeat certain rituals that may have the same fundamental significance as the child's toying with the imaginary drill. The chess pieces represent a mime of the Oedipal situation, and the player is forced to confront this mime every time he looks at the board. The player may be receding in time from a traumatic event, yet in the game he plays each day, that event enjoys a symbolic repetition or metaphoric existence in the battle of the pieces. The player is exiled from his childhood as the years go by; he is exiled from ordinary reality during his chess seance; yet that exile allows him to play out the dramas of his early life, otherwise repressed.