Damn — five weeks and still my knee is sore.

Around 2pm today the clouds were curiously regular: all about the same size and shape, and all with flat bottoms. My companion and I thought simultaneously: “They’re Magritte clouds.”

My wall-calendar shows holidays in various countries. For April 25 it says:

Anzac Day (AUS.)
Orthodox Good Friday
Festa della Liberazione (I)
S. Marco (cliccate)
Kyon Ho, Reformer of Korean Zen (1849 – 1912)

(Emphasis added.) Looks like the editor got some information from the Web.

The eminent geometer HSM (Donald) Coxeter of Toronto died a few days ago, aged 96 years. His book Regular Polytopes (1963) sits on my reference shelf. For you non-mathematical types, it was Coxeter who sent MC Escher an article on hyperbolic geometry, inspiring the famous Circle Limit woodcuts.

I’m now taking Wellbutrin @ four dollars a day. Full dose since Friday. Sleep slightly disturbed. My housemate says I’m less irritable.

I’ve had just one depressive episode since I started on half-dose (the previous Friday); normal average would be three or four, I think, in such a period. And it was an odd one. Typically they come on in the evening, and I obsess for an hour or three about my bleak future. Sunday morning, in a dream, I cried “It’s all so damn disappointing!” – and then woke up; and that was my theme of the next couple of hours: that I haven’t learned a fistful of languages, bedded any large number of exotic beauties, earned fame for my technical ingenuity, or even experienced microgravity.

[September; October]

A year ago I griped to you about hassle at the Federal Building. I also wrote to the home office of US Marshals, as well as to the three relevant legislators: ( . . more . . )

David T. Wright — You are the Enemy

Such training, and the militarization of police equipment and dress, have, I believe, encouraged cops to look upon themselves as an elite, apart from and above the rabble. That is reinforced by the official folklore about how dangerous police work is, and how cops “put their lives on the line” to protect us poor peasants. In fact, police work is far less hazardous than occupations such as mining, farming, and construction, along with many other mundane pursuits that aren’t celebrated in nine TV dramas every night.

. . .

The result of all this esprit de corps – this emphasis on police “otherness” – must inevitably be contempt toward the public. It’s only a small step from there to seeing regular people as the enemy. In fact, in plenty of places it looks as though that step has been taken.

Pity the Poor Soldier!