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Bootlace fatalities: so you think you know how to tie your shoes?
Last year, while hiking, I had a bootlace snag on a speed hook on the other boot, and went down. It was like a low tackle: your feet stop moving, and your weight is still moving forward. A while before, an acquaintance had inexplicably fallen to his death while working on a roof - wearing workboots. I had a theory, looked online - and found Professor Shoelace: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/. Fatalities are regular. But though the good professor records them, he doesn't offer the solution: which is to switch to a one-sided bow, looped only on the outside - my new practice. (You should consider it - may save your life.)
However, he does explain the sad normalcy of bastard bows - slipped granny knots, where the slipped reef knot is the ideal. It lies flatter, and is more secure. I had spent my life tying slipped grannies, and had to carefully rehearse the amended procedure. I fear that the daughter who had so much trouble with bows coming undone was a victim of my misguided tuition.
Spawn and winnow: Eric Drexler at my party, 1977
It was a Transvestite Housewarming Party, put on by me and two room-mates for our new off-campus digs - fascinated as we carved our foam breasts. His girlfriend - Margaret Minsky, if memory serves - stole the show, in knee-high boots and a black leather bikini, carrying a bull-whip. Not actually obeying the premise, but no-one complained. At the party, he was still all about the L5 Society. He swerved to nanotechnology later that year. Smalley became fascinated, then trashed him, en route to a Nobel - while naming Fullerenes after another wild visionary, who thought cities could float in the sky; and really won it only for a fairly obvious generalization of Kekule's 1865 snake-dream vision. The compulsion to imagine must be honoured, and the compulsion to winnow must as well. Let neither become arrogant; their synergy is intelligence.
I realized I was still somewhat baffled about the thermodynamics of bear spray, and what the pretty graphs really measured, called in Gemini for backup, and... wow. If you read that post more than an hour ago, it's worth another look.
My new mantra: "Look past the screen of mirage villains,
to see comrade victims of deception."
Rewiring my mind, to keep the urgency while hearing the still sad music of humanity.