It’s not redecorating the White House, demolishing the East Wing, turning the Washington Memorial pool American flag blue, or even building the Arch de Trump if that someday materializes. All of those deserve serious consideration though.
It’s shooting 70 in the Club Championship at Bedminister at age 80. For the uninitiated, very few golfers every shoot their age, maybe 1-2%. Let’s say you’re a 75 year old “stick” and catch fire on the greens at an easy and short local muni course and you shoot two over, 74. When I do that it will be free drinks for everyone.
To shoot 10 shots under your age is a staggering athletic accomplishment that in my book makes Trump the greatest President of all time, except for maybe Lincoln.
The most remarkable thing about his Championship winning performance is I’m sure he didn’t take any mulligans, never improved his lie, and putted everything out. How do I know? What has he ever lied about before?
The only logical move at this point is to resign the Presidency, join the Senior Tour, and whoop ass on the 50+ crowd. PLEASE.
The University of Chicago Law School for the win. It’s dean and new AI strategy more specifically which might be described as “both/and”. Becky Supiano explains in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“Its policies are meant to ensure that students learn how to use AI responsibly and how to think without depending on it. As newer AI models prove adept at many forms of legal work, it aims to prioritize distinctly human contributions.”
No AI in first year courses. Then a combo of hybrid courses and AI-specific ones. All the following excerpts are from Supiano’s interview with the law school’s Dean, Adam Chilton.
“The emphasis that we have is: How do we teach students to think both without AI and with AI? That second part is important.”
Chicago Law’s smart approach to assessing the first year AI ban and their curriculum more generally.
“We’ll have to see how faculty and students feel about it and how the quality of discussion is.
Our goal is to be willing to re-evaluate everything that we’re doing more thoughtfully. The technology and the students’ uses of it — and also the way the legal practice is evolving — seems to be changing very fast.”
More points for a smart writing add-on.
“I’ve heard many people say essays and research papers are done, we can’t do them anymore. We added, for our substantial research projects, an oral-exam component. That helps to at least preserve the possibility of still having meaningful writing assignments, because the students know they’re going to have to defend it. The skill of defending your arguments through oral exchanges is a skill that everybody needs, but certainly lawyers.”
Enlightened thinking about AI integration.
“We’ve adopted what we’re calling a layered approach. We’ll have some assignments that you do entirely without AI — some in class, some out of class — and other assignments where explicitly you’re told to use AI. You know: Here’s an AI work product. Mark it up.
Even in that first year of law school, it’s true that when you’re sitting in your torts class, you won’t be allowed to have Claude up to ask it questions in real time, but you still have another class where that’s integrated directly into the curriculum.”
What about assessing the new curriculum more broadly?
“The feedback I’ve gotten from employers has been universally and overwhelmingly positive. Employers are thinking they want to hire people — and maybe they’re going to hire fewer people or people that they want to have different skills — and they want to make sure those people learned something. And so what the employer worries about is that they might hire someone who just took an assignment, pasted it into Harvey, edited it for 30 minutes, and then passed it off as their own. And the lawyer is thinking, If that’s all you’re able to do, what’s your value add over what our clients could already do themselves?”
If I was applying to law schools, and yes I probably should because the world surely needs another lawyer of my caliber, I would have the University of Chicago at the top of my list. Also because I could see my favorite sissy, who lives in NW Indiana, any weekend I wanted.
Last weekend, I returned to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. A lot has changed in a third of the year.
Literally, one week after my last sad sack solo visit to Victoria, I went on a dinner date with Lara in Olympia. A week before that date, right before my solo sojourn to Vic, I complained while on a Saturday run with the Inner Circle that it was really a crying shame that I couldn’t leverage my bofo blog readership to maybe find a winning match. You know, put out a call to PressingPausers near and far . . . Knucklehead writer in search of . . .
Why couldn’t I do that? Because my daughters, one who visits here at least semi-regularly, were already very upset me with for having gone on another date well before they ever anticipated that happening. One said she felt abandoned by me. And that I broke her heart.
That’s a huge burden to bear.
We have three family therapy sessions lined up during August. We will repair and restart. We still love one another and the alternative is way too tough to ponder.
Back to the Inner Circle and my mid-March Olympia dinner date. A few hours after whining on that SatRun, I got a text from one of my running bros, who said his partner had a single girlfriend, and they thought we might hit it off. They provided Lara with a link to the humble blog, and against all odds, she liked what she read. Something about me seeming smart and funny. Score.
However, Lara said she (also) thought it was too early for me to start dating. When she told her friend she thought I should wait a year, her friend told her I wouldn’t be single in a year. I dunno, because humble blogging is such an obvy aphrodisiac?
Long story short, they were right, we did hit it off. Bigly. So bigly, Lara didn’t hesitate when I invited her to visit one of my fave places with me.
And so this visit couldn’t have been more different than the last. One contributing factor was idyllic weather. Sunny, not hot, just exquisite. We cruised the coast on the hotel bikes Friday night and Saturday morn. Serendipitously, Vic’s major summer art festival was happening, 50,000 peeps, including us, descending on Moss Street. 20k steps later, we were whipped.
A serious foodie, Lara really took to my ace hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Foo Asian Street Food. It was fun to introduce her to that and my other favorite spots in and around Vic. And I’m happy to report she takes way less bathroom counter space than I do, inadvertently making me feel High Maintenance by comparison.
Saturday, she made sure I took a little time to lift little weights. Sunday morning I went for a run along the coast. Afterwards, while caffeine loading in our room, she insisted I watch some of The Open Championship which she didn’t know existed a week earlier. She read outside while I pretended to be at Royal Birkdale, in Southport, England. Heavenly.
However, it wasn’t as if the much more outdoorsy, active, fun, near perfect trip wasn’t without its crises. Foremost among them, we did not have time for a halibut burger. Even more sad, sometime this spring, the Courtyard Cafe stopped making fruit smoothies. To say I’m hurt they didn’t include me in the decision, is a huge understatement. Is it possible I am not the Hotel Grand Pacific VIP I think I am?
Why do constituents vote for such elderly incumbents? Full disclosure, I’m complicit and maybe I should reword the question to why did I recently vote for such elderly incumbents, Washington State’s current senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, 75 and 67 respectively?
Maybe the answer is there weren’t similarly appealing younger candidates from which to choose. Which, of course, begs the question, why not? Why aren’t young, socially conscious, vital candidates fairing better? Is it because a larger proportion of elderly people vote and they’re more likely to vote for their peers? I dunno.
But I do know it’s time for a constitutional amendment to add an upper age limit to the lower ones. I propose Congressional and Presidential candidates must be under age 70. The likelihood of that getting approved anytime soon is about the same as the U.S. Men’s National Team winning the 2030 World Cup.
Unexpectedly found this bitchin’ crystal gift inside a carefully wrapped package on the porch this morning.
As I explain here, I very quietly exited the Pacific Lutheran University stage. Largely because of baggage. In my head.
This was a classy gesture from an institution I’m indebted to.
It doesn’t compensate for the loss of knowing students and being known by them, but it’s a very nice affirmation of my efforts over a quarter of a century.
“At exactly 5 a.m., Kearns looked up at Mount Rainier and then took off for the 14,410-foot summit. . . . Three hours and fifty-three minutes later, he was back with a record.”
Simon Kearns with the new FKT, fastest known time, from the Paradise parking lot to the summit and back.
And that’s a wrap. What a week. Went even better than imagined. New roads and scenery, amazing weather, groovy new friends.
And everything, I mean everything, broke right for me. Water stops, food donations, local knowledge of the best routing, no flats or mechanicals, and on and on. Guardian angel(s)?
Exiting Fallbrook involved a lot of rollers, but I was feeling pretty good after the rest day, and we made quick work of them. As soon as things leveled out, a local legend was waiting for us with a suggested safer route. Which was cool. We weaved through backroads and neighborhoods until dropping onto a long nice bike path that took us all the way to Oceanside.
In Oceanside, we had to improvise because a thousand Oceanside 70.3 Half Ironperson athletes were smack dab in the middle of our planned route. So rude. Actually, as a lapsed triathlete who still follows the niche sport closely, it was really cool to catch glimpses of the leading men flying on their way to the finish.
In Oceanside, a former regular on this annual ride, a guy who sat out this year because of anticipated heat, prepared an amazing spread for us in a little park with the help of his wife. Ice cream, cookies, strawberry lemonade, and more. Amazing gesture.
After that, Skip and Chuck and I made like a 1988 Taco Bell commercial and made a run for the border skipping the Potato Shack where the bulk of the crew stopped to replenish and soak in the glorious coastline. Their pics prove they had even more fun than us.
There was an incident. I may have snapped at Skip. At one point, we were weaving through residential Del Mar one block from PCH (Pacific Coast Highway if you’re not quite as cool). I turned one intersection before Skip. Chuck was drifting a bit off the back and lost sight of me. Skip kinda barked at me that Chuck had lost me. I didn’t understand why he was so annoyed. I knew where Chuck was and rode through an alley to reconnect. We were separated for all of 60 seconds. Still, Skip was so damn tense. Riding bikes, in the sun, in one of the most beautiful spots in the world.
By the time we hit the base of Torrey Pines he was even more annoyed with the humble blogger because I was riding too far ahead. So I lost it, “Why are you so pissed at me and everything all the time?! I can wait at the top!” “Okay, go ahead and chase your KOM then.” Because I hit it I hard I had ample time at the top to plan an exquisite apology.
“Skip, I’m sorry,” I started. “Forget it,” he replied. Okay, avoid conflict much? What can you do except drag the world’s best apology into the trash can icon at the bottom right of the screen. You can’t force someone to listen and work through something if they refuse to.
Skip really knew the last 30 miles. Even owns a house in the middle of those miles that he rents out. So he pulled and pulled and pulled. Until Mission Bay. Then a gritty bike path. Then, nirvana, the Motel 6 where it all began. Whew, Skips rig was fully intact.
Thirty minutes later, we headed north. Nearly eleven hours later, we arrived at Chez Griffin in Sacramento. I showered and jumped in bed literally 5 minutes before I was going to turn into a pumpkin. The next morning started with banana pancakes and coffee. Bookending the trip at Chez Griffin is prob why the week broke like it did. They are amazing friends and the world’s best hosts.
Sunday was NorCal, Oregon, and home. Always amazed at how beautiful Northern California is. But don’t sleep on Oregon with the baby lambs, sheep, and llama farms.
To quote Casey Musgraves, “Oh, what a world.”
Postscript. Thanks to Dean for the zen picture. He went above and beyond to capture ZenRon.
Fallbrook Hotel. A no fun zone.Namaste.Don’t know the name. Lynn would be so disappointed. Again with the elite refueling.Wonder how I actually gained a few lbs?Blummenfelt lucky I was not shipped to the race start. :)My peeps in high school. Smallish waves.The young hellions were running the signs. Go figure, even though we have far less time to live, we opted for a preponderance of caution.Leaving SD we spotted Porsche getting my electric Cayenne dialed.
Pressing Pause 