Events

Donald Trump's speech is fundamentally different than other national politicians': Word choice isn’t the only way Trump differs from his presidential candidate contemporaries. Jennifer Sclafani, an associate professor at Georgetown University who studies the construction of political identity through language, said Trump is an enigma — the “anti-politician” when it comes to talking. According to Sclafani, Trump doesn’t often [use discourse markers]. Usually, she said, he starts his answers with “I.” But...

One more photo from Oregon. The coffee shop I stopped in Saturday morning, Looney Bean, has a fenced yard by the Deschutes River, and allows dogs. Like this one, who eventually let me throw her the ball:

The Treasury has dropped its plan to change the $10 note, and instead, has decided to put Harriet Tubman on the $20: The move [Treasury Secretary Jack] Lew is announcing Wednesday is intended as a way to thread the needle between women's groups who have been advocating for gender diversity on U.S. currency and fans of Hamilton, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the playwright and star of the hit Broadway musical about the nation's first Treasury secretary. Miranda lobbied Lew to keep Hamilton on the $10...

I'm just going to re-publish Bruce Schneier's post from this morning: GCHQ detected a potential pre-publication leak of a Harry Potter book, and alerted the publisher. Is this what British national intelligence is supposed to be doing? What, exactly, is the British equivalent of the NSA looking at?

Programmer Sean Hickey demonstrates the evolution of a software engineer.

Despite spending more time in my hotel room than intended, I did get around downtown Bend some, and I did drive to and from Portland Airport through the Mt. Hood National Forest. So I did manage a couple of photos. First, the coffee shop I would go to every day if I lived in Bend: Second, Mount Hood itself, viewed across the fields around Madras, Ore.: More when I sync up my phone.

Scroll down and you'll see that I did not achieve my goal of 25,000 steps on Saturday because (most likely) I ate contaminated kefta kebab on Friday night. My Fitbit did provide some interesting data, however, that underscores how disappointing the trip turned out to be. Sleep: I average 7 hours a night, generally. Friday night, more because I had absolutely no responsibilities than anything else, I slept in, getting 9:34 total. But then the sleep chart goes almost full-circle as the Fitbit recorded all...

It's great that I spent 21 of 44 hours in Bend asleep. Yeah, that's just special. It's a beautiful day both in Oregon and in Chicago today, which is why I'm even happier to be inside the PDX terminal. Still, the extra-special-fun symptoms I've experienced over the last two days seem to have subsided. I may attempt to eat solid food in a few minutes, which I haven't done since 9am yesterday. Can I get a do-over, please?

The good news is, I've gotten almost 12 hours of sleep in the last 18. The bad news is, of course, I'd rather be exploring Bend, not passed out in my hotel room clutching my stomach. It's not alcohol; I had precisely one beer with dinner and one glass of local wine after. And I went to sleep at my usual time (11pm CT/9pm PT). But when I woke up this morning, I felt a general malaise that became, after a bagel and coffee plus a one-hour walk around town, light-headedness, nausea, and unbelievable...

I'm in Bend, Ore., today, doing nothing of value (except blogging and photographing). I'll have a few photos tomorrow or Monday. My goal for the next several hours is to get 25,000 steps in this perfect weather. (I have sunscreen.)