Zöe died the other day, peacefully, and at home. The vet thinks her pancreas gave out; there were indications of intestinal bleeding. I don’t know her exact age. According to what I was told when I adopted her she had to be almost 14 when she died, but I think she was a few years older. That’s a good age for a wire-hair fox terrier.

There are starting to be subtle shifts in what was a pack of three, now a pack of two. My mind has stopped saying “me and the dogs” and is beginning to think, “Bronco and me”. He, on the other hand, perhaps feeling forsaken, seems to be giving up his alpha role.

When we go for our evening walk now he trots calmly along on my left instead of taking a position in front, protecting his women. Zöe always walked behind the two of us. The neighbors joked that I had a “fast dog up front and a slow dog behind”. Little children would ask if they could "pet the doggies". When I explained “the little one is the mommy and the big one is the baby”, the kids sometimes didn’t understand why he was bigger than his mother. Bronco’s father must have been near the conformation limit for a Fox Terrier, although his siblings took after Zöe in size.

When I adopted Zöe she was a refugee from a puppy factory and was pregnant. I didn’t know that at the time. The night she whelped I was busy with a long-distance deal so I put her in the bathtub to do what she had to do. I heard an anguished yelp while I was telephoning. When I ended the conversation I checked on her. She was sitting in the bathtub, looking up at me, and the top of a little black head was just visible between her front legs. It was Bronco, first out. There were five puppies, two males, three females. It was her last litter so I am pleased that she was allowed to keep one of them.

It came time to chose who we would keep and I let Zöe take one back to her dog box. It was Bronco. Later, when he was five months old and a raging adolescent, I would have given him to you if you had said “Gee, I like that dog”. And I would have thrown in $600 to seal the deal. But he quickly became the light of my life.

Bronco is over ten years old now, getting to be an old man, and I’m grateful that Zöe was the first to go. I don’t know what she would have done without him if he had disappeared before her. She idolized Bronco. She cleaned his face every single day of his life. Even during the last days, when she was so weak, she would manage to give his whiskers a wash and a brush-up.

It is my first time in a while even attempting to node on e2 and it's a day log. My message box type thing is overflowing into the streets. Typo Death Squad makes me remember what a horrible speller I am

I wonder why it's been so long since my last node, or any kind of writing for that matter. Is it the lack of stimulating input that is strangling my creativity? In spite of how I'd like to deny it out loud, video games cannot replace literature, and should not be taken in large doses

I begin to wonder why I started to type this day log, and suddenly I remember. School. My last log was about school, or rather completing it. It's been a year since then, and now I find myself going back for more very very soon. I myself am a little apprehensive to find out how my fellow noders fared in their pursuit of highly specialised higher education.

But in a year's time, much does change I've learned. Things and people whom I once took for granted are now gone and I find myself struggling to remember them for the legacy they left and not for the state they were in when they left me, us.

Perhaps I need new hobbies?

Dear Mom,

OK, so I THINK I understand a little bit about the subjunctive, because I have read this.

However, I would love to have your help in applying any knowledge you have on the subjunctive tense to Spanish. For example, under what circumstances should one use the subjunctive tense in Spanish? Are the circumstances the same as they are in English?

I have found myself spending quite a bit of time with this guy I met on my 3rd day here, José Romero Antonio de los Angeles [not his real name], (though you can call him 'José' for short). He and his best friend, Ana, have been far more instrumental in my improving my Spanish than the school has been. There's nothing WRONG with the school exactly, but it's just not a very good environment to learn a language, when it comes down to it. I´m going to get what I can from the school experience, but next time, I will not bother with formal study. I already have most of the basics in place, and the thing I need to improve is my vocabulary and to learn colloquialisms.

I´ve learned a tonne from being forced to speak in Spanish with José and Ana, and very little practical stuff from the school.

Which brings me back to the subjunctive thingy. I tried to get some tutoring on it from José and Ana, but they really don´t understand it so well themselves. They report that it is a rarely used tense, and they argued amongst themselves for a few minutes before delivering to me their verdict that it was not, in fact, important that I learn it. Nonetheless, I do wish to have it in my repertoire, and so I petition here your assistance.

Finally, on the subjective of subjunctivitis (haha, or, as they write here, ¨jaja¨), is there any relationship between the subjunctive and the imperative in Spanish? That is, does it make it easier to learn the subjunctive if you already know the imperative? Or vice versa? Any assistance you can render would be wonderful.

I fly tomorrow to Madrid. I'll check in again soon thereafter.

I've not liked the food here so much, honestly. They eat tiny portions of mediocre food, and it seems that the majority of their daily calories come from olive oil. And they LOVE tuna! And I'm not talkin' 'bout fresh, line-caught tuna. I'm talkin' regular, Chicken of the Sea, canned tuna filets. It's the most popular fish/meat here, besides "jamón serrano", which is just a very very old ham that was smoked and salted several years before (maybe 10 years ago?), sliced thin, and then doused with, of course, olive oil, served atop stale bread, and christened a "tapa".

OK, well, I'll look forward to talking to you soon - either by phone or email. Let me know if you want anything either from Málaga or Madrid, ¿ok?

Love,

ameriwire

I had some inspiration, connecting some popular "dots", but I came to the conclusion that my thoughts were bullshit, or require more than a mammalian brain to work out in detail without contradictions. I thought you might find it interesting, if not the line of thought then maybe the dots it connects. Since it's bullshit, it doesn't really merit a main WU.

How the universe could be created on the fly, or, what if God plays a game of Nomic ?

The game of Nomic is, or can be in some versions, like a MMORPG where everyone is a programmer/creator/wizard(c.f. Second Life). If the universe was a game of Nomic, at some point the rules would change; However, it would be difficult to make a rule without creating a conflict with the passage of time before. History still has to make sense. To solve this conflict, I propose that there is an algorithm to work backwards in time, so that the state of the nomic game at the time of the change becomes the starting point for the future and the point that the past leads to.

The study of Physics is studying how things work forward in time. Considering the complexity of quantum mechanics, it might be easier or at least not more difficult to work backwards than to predict the future.

For example, there was a science fiction story, which assumed that a paradigm change actually does change reality. Non-flatness of Earth is such a paradigm change. The diameter of Earth was first measured accurately by Eratosthenes of Alexandria, a scientist of ancient Greece. Before that, there was Aristotle, who considered the Earth to be a sphere, not flat. This was a paradigm change (Well, maybe not, since we have no records that say people believed in flatness from the time before). In our game of Nomic, or paradigm-shifting, the universe actually changes. However, it turns out that this is a contradiction, since like many Greek philosophers, Aristotle like ideal shapes and considered Earth and the other planets to be perfect spheres. Which is where the contradiction is, since Aristotle himself was a pimple on the perfect shape of Earth, and therefore if the Gods had followed to the letter Aristotles' concept(= new rule of Nomic) of a perfect sphere, we all would be flat circles on the surface of Earth.

A second reason why the idea is hard to handle is all these groups who would like to define history their way, like creationists. The history of paradigm-shifts would appear as a network, not as a straight path through history.

Also, you would have to find a way to discard evidence of a different past. This probably would require events that were very unlikely ("Someone created this evidence out of nowhere"). So the idea of having someone play Nomic with the Universe requires some intervention; you would have to change the state of the game ( a snapshot of the universe ) a bit to accomodate a new rule, and you would probably want a metric to measure that you didn't change it to much, and you would have to work out what not to change.

As an interesting side note, the (possibly changing) rules of the universe could be seen as a way of compressing the universe, while quantum events ("observations") represent the data fed to the compression algorithm. So the above paragraph means that if the "rules" of the universe are perfect, it can't be compressed better, so you cannot make "better" rules.

Does anyone recall which science fiction stories treat paradigm changes as real events ?

A quiet day today, this is really much more normal for us. Although we are an intensive care unit, we rarely have patients die. For this I am grateful.

Forgot to go to the bank so I treated myself to Milk Duds (only had change but they are only $.70) and hospital coffee for lunch. Yum, any excuse for Milk Duds.

The premature triplets went to the breast in a pair then mom finished with #3 by herself. God, that was cute. The three somewhat sick but full term babies in the NICU all breastfed well. The currently smallest preemie is still quite unstable but hope is there. Mom continues to pump and has a good supply. The 16 year old mom is getting in to breastfeed, which is great news ++. The mother of twins quit pumping but she has had problems/issues from the beginning and this may truly be the best thing.

Our colleague’s daughter (victim of an accidental gunshot wound) is still in very serious but stable condition and out of Shock Trauma.

Our staffing continues to be low with another LC out with her own injury but so far we have kept MCU covered. Elaine is back in town for her son’s wedding!!!

We almost lost a mother. Pregnancy can be dangerous. She seems to recovering. She may not lactate due to her extreme blood loss and possible Sheehan's syndrome. She breastfed her previous children.

Dear daughter is at the beach for the week and Mysterious George is out to dinner with his buddies. I’m enjoying a quiet night alone.

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