Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 23, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Tuesday, the Cruelest Day: May 23, 2023, and National Taffy Day. Who wants to lose their fillings?

Source

It’s also World’s Crohn and Colitis Day, International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, and World Turtle Day. In honor of the latter, reader Divy, who works at a vet firm that takes care of exotic animals, and also collects reptiles, sends a picture of her Colombian Wood Turtles (Rhinoclemmys melanosterna):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the May 23 Wikipedia page.

Wine of the Day: To accompany my weekly T-bone (this time a bone-in strip steak), I had a Chianti Classico, something I rarely drink, as I haven’t found them to be good value for the money. This one, at $18, is right on the border. It’s quite good, but $18 is $18.

Chianti Classico (CC) is the premium version of the cheaper chianti that we used to drink as “classy” when we had less money. Both versions are made from the sangiovese grape, but the Classico version comes from a designated area. The Classico is much better, but be sure to look for the red rooster on the label.

This one, from Casaloste, is 8 years old, which is about prime drinking age for a CC.  It’s good, and, as others have noted, smells strongly of leather, as well as black cherries and oak. The latter comes from the tannins, which are still strong but mellowed after a day in the bottle.  I’d check out the CCs, but get this one only if you can find it in the $15-$18 price range.

Reviews of the 2015 are few but generally good, though not superb. Here are two:

94 points Wine Spectator

Outer quote mark A beauty, silky and packed with dark cherry, leather, iron and earth aromas and flavors. Harmonious and long, with a well-integrated structure and a mineral-tinged aftertaste. Inner quote mark

92 points Vinous

Outer quote mark The 2015 Chianti Classico is a bold, juicy wine. Black cherry, lavender and expressive spice provide much of its exotic, alluring personality. Lush and racy, but with vibrant fruit and tons of Sangiovese structure, the 2015 is a winner. Inner quote mark

Da Nooz:

*First, Bakhmut. Here it is:

*The Washington Post reports that, as we know, Ukraine has lost control of the city completely; but it doesn’t look quite over yet.

Ukrainian forces have been reduced to small footholds in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which despite its limited strategic importance has emerged as the war’s bloodiest battlefield. But they have made gains on the Russian flanks, in a move to encircle the city and extend the fight there, according to Ukrainian officials and military personnel in the field.

. . . Ukraine still holds slivers of the city, including the area around what has become a landmark of Ukraine’s last redoubt: a destroyed sculpture of a Soviet MiG fighter jet, according to multiple military personnel involved in defending the position, which Russian forces continue to contest.

. . .Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s eastern military commander who made a surprise visit to the front lines Sunday, acknowledged that Ukraine controls only a “small part” of Bakhmut. But he said the new aim is to surround the city in a “tactical encirclement,” echoing a statement posted to Telegram by Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar.

Word of this strategy to prolong the fight, regardless of who technically controls the city, emerged as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky painted a bleak picture of the state of the battle in response to questions posed during a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, for a Group of Seven summit meeting. His remarks raised questions about what a Ukrainian victory would look like, given the destruction of the city and the costs its defenders have already paid.
What does Ukraine have to gain by reclaiming a ghost town that’s mostly rubble? Destroying the Russians they surround, of course. But Bakhmut is a dead city; it sings with the choir invisible. Why is it so important? That brings us to the next news item:

*You might have asked yourself this question recently: “Why Bakhmut? It’s a question as old as war.” It’s not a particularly important or even a strategic Ukrainian city,

. .  Bakhmut became the focal point of some of the fiercest fighting of the war — the object of acute desire for Russia and of a tenacious defense by Ukraine. And now, the city of Bakhmut appears to have fallen to the Russians after 10 months, leaving thousands of soldiers wounded or killed, and a lingering question: How did a nondescript city the world had never heard of become the place where both sides decided to fight to the end, no matter the cost?

. . . A war’s trajectory is unknowable. Combatants, political winds and military strategy have an equal say in the battles fought and the violence that follows. Bakhmut, a former Cossack outpost that was a salt-mining town at the war’s outset, happened to be where two armies collided. Pride, defiance and sheer stubbornness quickly gave the city outsize importance.

The reason, as with the cities mentioned below, then, is pride and circumstance:

Gettysburg was a rolling landscape of hills and fields typical of southern Pennsylvania, but it happened to be where three days of futile fighting dashed Robert E. Lee’s prospects of turning the Civil War in his favor. Iwo Jima was no more than a scab of an island in the Pacific, but the U.S. needed it for long-range bombers, and the struggle to control it became one of World War II’s most grueling battles.

. . . Military analysts, Western officials and the media argued about the “strategic significance” of Bakhmut for months, as if some military-style jargon might make it easier to stomach the loss of an entire city to an invading army. Russians could use their resources better, analysts said. Ukraine should retreat to better ground and continue their offensive elsewhere, they added.

. . . Mr. Zelensky turned Bakhmut into the war’s official focal point when he visited in December, appearing alongside his war-weary soldiers in what looked like a vacant factory near the front. The speed bump of a city, formerly named Artemivsk, was in the spotlight.

Bakhmut, with its once neatly trimmed walking paths and a quaint and well-known winery, was suddenly strategically significant, whether the generals and analysts agreed or not.

So it goes. . .

*Now here’s a weird story from the NYT:  the DEI director of Uber, Bo Young Lee, has been suspended for hosting a series of DEI events about white people titled “Don’t Call Me Karen,” aimed at “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience.” But Lee’s firing was not because this offended white people, no: it offended people of color.

Uber has placed its longtime head of diversity, equity and inclusion on leave after workers complained that an employee event she moderated, titled “Don’t Call Me Karen,” was insensitive to people of color.

. . .“We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session,” the email said. “While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”

Employees’ concerns centered on a pair of events, one last month and another last Wednesday, that were billed as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience” and hearing from white women who work at Uber, with a focus on “the ‘Karen’ persona.” They were intended to be an “open and honest conversation about race,” according to the invitation.

But workers instead felt that they were being lectured on the difficulties experienced by white women and why “Karen” was a derogatory term and that Ms. Lee was dismissive of their concerns, according to messages sent on Slack, a workplace messaging tool, that were viewed by The Times.
What I make of this is that “centering” the problems of white women, including using the derogatory name Karen, was offensive to people of color because white people shouldn’t be centered. They are, after all, the oppressors, and it’s okay to use a now-racist name like Karen, even though “Jemima” would be odious if used for black women.  And yep, reading on, that’s what you find:

. . . The term Karen has become slang for a white woman with a sense of entitlement who often complains to a manager and reports Black people and other racial minorities to the authorities. Employees felt the event organizers were minimizing racism and the harm white people can inflict on people of color by focusing on how “Karen” is a hurtful word, according to the messages and an employee who attended the events.

. . .Another employee took issue with the premise that the term Karen shouldn’t be used.

“I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities others that don’t look like them. Like why can’t bad behavior not be called out?” she wrote.

It’s hard to avoid the feeling that it’s okay to make racially derogatory statements when they refer to whites, and that under no circumstances should “difficult conversations” involve anything but people of color talking to their white oppressors in a monologue. In such ways does DEI become divisive.

*The Washington Post has a “centenarian story” that goes far beyond asking a very old person their secret of longevity. Instead, it’s the fascinating story of Charlie White, a doctor who lived to be 109. Do read it (click below, and I found the story archived here).

There is a list of Charlie’s wisdom, but it seems trite, and I won’t reproduce it here. Instead, I’ll give a couple of paragraphs from his friend, the author David Von Drehle.

In the end, Charlie defied the actuaries to become one of the last men standing — one of only five fellows from the original 100,000 expected to make it to 109. By the time he was done, he had lived nearly half the history of the United States.

Among Charlie’s things after he was gone, his family found a single sheet of notepaper, on which Charlie had boiled 109 years into an operating code of life. He filled the sheet front and back in flowing ballpoint pen, writing in definitive commands. Among them:

I’m leaving them out. Here’s from the author:

As I studied Charlie’s list, it seemed to me that each directive, by itself, was like a greeting card or a meme. Charlie’s takeaways from more than a century of living were things we already know, for we have heard them a thousand times.

But after a few years to think about it, I have arrived at a theory that a life well-led consists of two parts.

In the first, we are complexifiers. We take the simple world of childhood and discover its complications. We say, “yes — but …” and “maybe it’s not that easy.” Nothing is quite as it seems.

Then, if we live long enough, we might soften into the second stage and become simplifiers. For all the books on all the shelves of all the world’s libraries, life must in the end be lived as a series of discrete moments and individual decisions. What we face might be complicated, but what we do about it is simple.

Well, I’m not sure if that theory, which is his, qualifies as “wisdom,” but Charlie’s life was an interesting one. Ignore the bromides and read about a guy who began medical studies in 1925, before there were antibiotics, and went on to make several fundamental medical advances in the days of heart operations on medically cooled patients.

*It’s no secret that I’m no fan of Meghan and Prince Harry. Although they claim to crave privacy, and whine all the time, they continue to hawk their victimhood everywhere and, in fact, have made a huge pile of dosh on it. I’m not fan of the royals, either, but I wish these two entitled (and titled) privileged people would just shut up. No chance of that, I fear.

In a recent episode, South Park echoes my own sentiments;

I also discovered that the “Duke and Duchess of Sussex” have their own Instagram site, and there’s also a Meghan Markle Official site.  Some desire for privacy!

Here’s an advertisement from the Duchess’s site. OY!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sees the birds as red in beak and claw:

Hili: Nature is cruel.
A: That’s right, but what’s on your mind?
Hili: Sometimes it’s not even worth it to chase it.
In Polish:
Hili: Natura jest okrutna.
Ja: To prawda, ale co masz na myśli?
Hili: Czasami nawet nie warto jej gonić.

. . . and a photo of Szaron:

********************

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From David:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Masih. The Iranian authorities are really good at shooting out eyes:

I found this and it’s really hard to believe:

Via Malcolm, an amazing sculpture:

From Barry, an unusual bike ride:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, and entire family gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a quick dip:

Not colorized!

. . . and ferrets! Who could be mad?

34 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1430 – Joan of Arc is captured at the Siege of Compiègne by troops from the Burgundian faction.

    1498 – Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy.

    1618 – The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitates the Thirty Years’ War.

    1873 – The Canadian Parliament establishes the North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

    1911 – The New York Public Library is dedicated.

    1915 – World War I: Italy joins the Allies, fulfilling its part of the Treaty of London.

    1934 – American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

    1945 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel, commits suicide while in Allied custody.

    1948 – Thomas C. Wasson, the US Consul-General, is assassinated in Jerusalem, Israel.

    1949 – Cold War: The Western occupying powers approve the Basic Law and establish a new German state, the Federal Republic of Germany.

    1992 – Italy’s most prominent anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three body guards are killed by the Corleonesi clan with a half-ton bomb near Capaci, Sicily. His friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino will be assassinated less than two months later, making 1992 a turning point in the history of Italian Mafia prosecutions.

    1995 – The first version of the Java programming language is released.

    1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with roughly 75% voting yes.

    2002 – The “55 parties” clause of the Kyoto Protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland.

    2021 – Ryanair Flight 4978 is forced to land by Belarusian authorities to detain dissident journalist Roman Protasevich.

    Births:
    1617 – Elias Ashmole, English astrologer and politician (d. 1692). [One of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society. Throughout his life he was an avid collector of curiosities and other artefacts. He donated most of his collection, his antiquarian library, and priceless manuscripts to the University of Oxford to create the Ashmolean Museum.]

    1707 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist (d. 1778).

    1718 – William Hunter, Scottish-English anatomist and physician (d. 1783).

    1734 – Franz Mesmer, German physician and astrologer (d. 1815).

    1810 – Margaret Fuller, American journalist and critic (d. 1850).

    1855 – Isabella Ford, English author and activist (d. 1924). [The first woman to speak at a Labour Representation Committee (which became the British Labour Party) conference.]

    1910 – Scatman Crothers, American actor and comedian (d. 1986). [ “Everybody wants to be a cat…”]

    1910 – Artie Shaw, American clarinet player, composer, and bandleader (d. 2004).

    1917 – Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist (d. 2008). [Best known as the founder of modern chaos theory, a branch of mathematics focusing on the behaviour of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.]

    1933 – Joan Collins, English actress.

    1934 – Robert Moog, electronic engineer and inventor of the Moog synthesizer (d. 2005).

    1935 – Lasse Strömstedt, Swedish author (d. 2009).

    1950 – Martin McGuinness, Irish republican and Sinn Féin politician, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland (d. 2017).

    1951 – Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess player.

    I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once:
    1895 – Franz Ernst Neumann, German mineralogist, physicist, and mathematician (b. 1798).

    1906 – Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian director, playwright, and poet (b. 1828).

    1937 – John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company and Rockefeller University (b. 1839).

    2002 – Big Bill Neidjie, Australian activist and last speaker of the Gaagudju language (b. c. 1920).

    2015 – Alicia Nash, Salvadoran-American physicist and engineer (b. 1933).

    2015 – John Forbes Nash, Jr., American mathematician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1928). [Made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. His struggles with schizophrenia and his recovery became the basis for the film A Beautiful Mind, in which Nash was portrayed by Russell Crowe.]

    2017 – Roger Moore, English actor (b. 1927).

    2021 – Eric Carle, American children’s book designer, illustrator, and writer best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar (b. 1929).

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  2. Regarding Harry and Meghan, there was a brief hubbub last week after they claimed that they were pursued in their car by the paparazzi, à la Princess Diana, for two hours. People have raised what seem to be valid questions about the truthfulness of that claim (like it’s impossible, outside a movie, to speed through Manhattan for two hours). (One piece compared them to Jussie Smollett.) What is clear is that, when they left where they were, they stopped to talk to the press before getting in their car. They can’t not seek the attention.

    And regarding National Taffy Day, are we sure that’s for the candy, and not for Welshmen or thieves?

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    1. I think they are being found guilty of something they have never said.

      The Sussexes’ global press secretary, Ashley Hansen, said in a written statement: “The Duke and Duchess have never cited privacy as the reason for stepping back. This distorted narrative was intended to trap the couple into silence.

      “In fact, their statement announcing their decision to step back mentions nothing of privacy and reiterates their desire to continue their roles and public duties. Any suggestion otherwise speaks to a key point of this series.

      “They are choosing to share their story, on their terms, and yet the tabloid media has created an entirely untrue narrative that permeates press coverage and public opinion. The facts are right in front of them.”

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63922657

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      2. Their weaseley statement at the time, in combination with the complaints about Meghan’s treatment by the press, led me and many others to the wrong interpretation that they wanted to become private people with less public appearances, so they could raise their children in peace, and earn their own money to free themselves of the obligations that go with the Royal appanage. I distinctly remember thinking: Kudos, good for them!, when I read the statemet. But when I saw they called their “charity” (main purpose: earn them money!) Royal Sussex, it was clear that the wanted to have their cake (royal fame, money and titles) and eat it too (without the tedious duties that go with the privilege).

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  3. “Rhinoclemmys”

    I know “rhino” means nose, now what does “clemmys” mean? I looked on Wikipedia, did not see the etymology.

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    3. An “Etymology” section is a popular, but not required, part of most papers proposing a new taxonomic name.
      It’s also one of the commonest parts to be ignored by the digesting journalists.

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  5. The implications of the nanobot manipulating the sperm are frightening — what happens to the race is to the swift and all that?

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    1. That suggests that you think that the physical capabilities of a sperm cell are related to the developed properties of the genomes they contain.
      Do you have evidence to support that belief? I know it is “popular”, but that is not the same as “supported by evidence”.
      There are plenty of things that can lead to poor sperm motility, some of which are genetic, but the environmental reasons (“poisoning” in various forms) are higher on the list than genetic ones, TTBOMK. That’s one of the reasons that poor sperm mobility is fairly strongly related to the donor’s age. And also why sperm banks try to recruit younger donors.

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  6. Anti-white racism has been normalized in PC circles of late. The New York Times hired a fanatical anti-white racist by the name of Sarah Jeong. Was her history of over-the-top racism a problem for the NYT? Apparently, not. It may have been why they hired her. Not to be outdone, Yale university allowed a talk titled ‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind’”. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.

    “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”

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  7. There were two girls named Karen in my 1962 kindergarten class. They graduated grade school with me and, from there, went to a junior high school different from me. They must be about 66-67 years old today. According to what I’m reading, their very names today are symbols of white oppression. Are you freaking kidding me!

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  8. Men in the anti-racism business need to see these events from the woman’s perspective. Women are different from men. They are taught that if they feel threatened, they are threatened, and they should involve the police early. They are also taught that men they don’t live with will not readily punch them in the face. Instigating a confrontation (and of course they always feel they were justified) therefore carries lower immediate risk of physical injury as long as the man is sane and not intoxicated. (Not a safe bet on the street or in the subway.)

    If a man feels vaguely threatened by another man, it’s considered unmanly to call the police. He must either withdraw gracefully (beta yields to alpha) or be prepared to fight (or shoot). Women believe they should be able to walk anywhere they please without fear of men. Men scoff at the idea, knowing that they (men) cannot go wherever they please unless they are prepared to fight other men. Since women can’t win fist fights with men, they are allowed to summon the state’s agents of violence when they feel threatened….even if the threatening behaviour followed a confrontation the woman instigated (for what seemed to her to be good reasons.)

    Women are conditioned to interpret as threatening, behaviour that men merely intend as a show of dominance, because that’s how rape happens. White bourgeois women, being less able to read the signals of random black men because they avoid social contact with them, will therefore feel threatened by the sudden appearance of a black man showing dominance and will call the police on them. To this point, no one is behaving objectively “badly”.

    Because the arrival of the police imposes a high risk on the black man that he will be shot or have his neck knelt on, goes the propaganda, it is recklessly racist behaviour for a woman to call the police on a black man she feels threatened by.

    The issue is clouded because some female police-callers have not been truthful or were in the wrong themselves, as in the confrontation in Central Park over the woman’s unleashed dog. Nonetheless I think women do expect to be immune to vigilantism by men who can physically beat them up. It’s probably a social foul for a man to accost a woman over local ordnance violations alone in a remote area of the park. The man might feel justified but the woman likely feels terrified.

    One of the injustices contained in the “Karen” slur is that it paints all women who call the police on threatening black men as racist liars.

    Reply

    1. “Women believe they should be able to walk anywhere they please without fear of men. Men scoff at the idea, knowing that they (men) cannot go wherever they please unless they are prepared to fight other men.”

      True, any man who is not aware of his position in space relative to other men, particularly if they are all young–and definitely if any are inebriated–is asking for trouble in many places.

      But, Leslie, did you perhaps have in mind those people who tend to plant themselves in the middle of the grocery store aisle oblivious to whether other people can pass, and who then walk with their carts down the middle of the car lane in the parking lot, oblivious of whether anyone can now drive?

      We are going to get pounced on for dealing in stereotypes, but I have counted these instances relative to the respective populations in attendance at some store, and amused myself with the results. (Science!) Of course, I did it while sitting in the car for an hour at a time while my wife shopped. Not that we are living a stereotype in some ways.

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      1. I can’t say I’ve encountered that behaviour often enough to remark on it, Doug. So no, I wasn’t thinking of them. But I’m really thinking of higher-stakes situations where one party is genuinely afraid, not just annoyed.

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  9. I don’t know if I trust a lot of the tweets coming from America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy, esp. when it comes to misspellings on signs. So many seem like really easy Photoshop manipulations (seriously, changing that SCHOOL to SCOHOL with an image editing tool would take a few minutes.) I seriously can’t believe that someone would misspell SCHOOL like that unless they were doing it on purpose. I mean, each letter is stenciled and must take some time to set-up and paint. Am I really supposed to believe that someone accidentally spelled SCOHOL on the street like that? Sorry, I don’t believe it.

    But yes, the irony is funny, just not realistic.

    Reply

    1. I don’t know whether the picture is legitimate, but I have heard “school” pronounced as two syllables and sounding similar to that spelling. It would be interesting to know where the picture might have been taken.

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          1. Wow! Thanks for those examples. I guess I overestimated my fellow humans. That’s a rarity for me. 🙂

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        2. To amplify – which makes the mistake rather different, and considerably more understandable.

          A town clerk told local media that the error occurred because the letter stencils come in three groups: “SC”, “HO” and “OL”. The letters in “HO” look the same upside down as they do right-side up, so the painter didn’t notice when he had them backwards.

          I wouldn’t be surprised if the first “viral upload” of this post has a picture with a worried looking painter on the phone (to his Boss) in the background.
          But yeah, it’s a “measure twice, cut once” class of error. Which is a glass house no stone thrower has ever inhabited.

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      2. Yeah, I’ve never actually been to the site. Maybe they provide more information like where it was taken, etc.

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    2. I can see it happening if the workers got preoccupied with the minutiae of the task and lost track of the big picture. Down there kneeling in the crosswalk they don’t see the whole word and it might be upside down. Some guy hands another guy a stencil, he tacks it down and another guy paints it. This a common cognitive error in aviation and medicine: losing situational awareness. In favour of it being real is that if the H and the O were just swapped around digitally, the perspective of the two letters would be wrong, although I’m willing to be told that would be easy to do with image manipulation to make it look right, just change the vanishing point.

      Anyway, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might have been faked—bad me!—so thanks for the heads up.

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      1. That sounds quite plausible – better than my supposition that the sign writer was working under the influence of alCOHOL.

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      2. Yeah, that’s a feasible explanation, and after seeing Chetiya’s examples above, you’re probably right!

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    3. See my post further down the thread.

      I mean, each letter is stenciled and must take some time to set-up and paint.

      The norm in Britain is to use melt-on “plastic” paints, not “dry by evaporation”, and to apply them with chalk, masking tape and a hot version of the sports-field groundsman’s bucket-on-a-wheel machine rather than stencils. But still, it takes considerable time to set up the markings, then apply the “magma”.
      Thinking about it, if they tried using stencils, they’d spend a lot of time peeling frozen “paint” off the stencil, which would severely impact their time-savings. That may be different for places that use “cold drying” paints.
      I’ve also seen footage of “ink jet” machines for printing this sort of thing. But that’s probably for bulk-painting 10 miles of about-to-be-opened new road, not 3m of patch-up in a busy road.

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  10. The picture with the shoes & the dog. The wording is wrong. It should say “We think”, not “We feel”. You don’t feel that kind of thing. Those are thoughts, not feelings. Still, it’s a funny meme.

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  11. From Barry, an unusual bike ride:

    Not that I’m ever likely to go to Florida to need the information, but does anyone know what the typical “sprint endurance” of an alligator is? That is, how far can they run, before they run out of energy and flop to the ground?
    Should I ensure I travel Florida with a companion who is a slower runner than me. (Does everyone know the joke about Attenborough, the cameraman, the lion and the running shoes?)

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