Friday 29 Jun 01
What I'll be doing
The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed - the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to the papers of others. But with this excuse you journey to new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form new and interesting relationships with them; exhange gossip and confidences (for your well-worn stories are fresh to them, and vice versa); eat, drink and make merry in their company every evening; and yet, at the end of it all, return home with an enhanced reputation for seriousness of mind.
(via kottke)
See you in a month.
While I'm away
All right, class, here's your assignment. While I'm away, you are to think of cool things for me to do with the other two domains I've purchased, cohenmacaulay.com and gorenstein.net. If those words don't mean anything to you, that's ok - I'm just looking for ideas. Drop yours in the Say Anything box, or drop me a line.
Housekeeping
Tidied up some things around here. Fixed the peeps page (though I'm still not completely happy with it), and repaired the most egregious of the HTML errors. There are still lots of inline elements containing block elements, whatever the hell that means, but I'm finding it hard to care right now.
John Bee Hooker
Yesterday was a banner day. One of those days where things get done. Not even just any old things, either, but those things that have been looming. Loom loom loom, I heard every time I got in my car, from the dry-cleaner stubs behind the visor. Loom loom loom, every time I turned on the stereo and heard the buzzing from the blown-out woofer. Loom loom loom, the empty suitcase. It's so quiet now.
Thursday 28 Jun 01
Bloggal leakage
I was accused recently of blogorrhea. Well, yes, that's fair. But see, here's the thing. I'm leaving town for a month. When I return, this place will have been idle for longer than it's been active. Imagine that you were building a house of cards, but you had to go see a broadway play in the middle. If you knew this in advance, would you rather come home to two pathetic cards propped against each other, or to a mighty edifice of kings and aces? I thought so.
Someone baffles
Someone writes:
Ka-ching goes the ice machine, spooling out string. Call it twice or flip a coin.
It's nice, in an Allen Ginsberg sort of way. The only drawback is that I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Luckily, the power of the web comes to my rescue.
Ka-ching-ching the machine of the ice goes and implies of the series of the characters. To indicate it or rimuoverli twice a present modernity.
All better, see?
Wednesday 27 Jun 01
Reviews and excuses
A couple of old-type notes. That's the end of the old material, I swear.
In rotation: Play, by Moby
Infectious. I listened to this four times as I drove home from Minnesota in the torrential rain. I've never heard anything like it. Moby sings hymns to early American music. Let us pray.
In rotation: The Chronic, by Dr. Dre
The only drawback to this devastatingly good record is that you'll find yourself saying things like "Bitches ain't nothing but tricks and hos" in inappropriate situations. The beats rumble and writhe behind Dre and Snoop's rhymes until even the silence between songs seems to thump. This is the stuff George Clinton might have done if he'd been born twenty years later.
Side note: Those two sites couldn't be more different, but they're both quite impressive in their own ways.
I've filled in a lot of space on this blog so far with reviews, and two questions occur. First, does anyone care what I think (and why should they?), and second, is there anything I don't like? To the second I say, well, why should I waste my time thinking about things I don't think are worthwhile? Even for the fun of bashing them? This actually ties in with the first question: if I were reading this piece-o-crap weblog (thank G I don't have to), the last thing I'd want to see is some idiot saying he thinks something is crap. I can get plenty of that other places. What I want from this bitch/freak is an idea of what he likes, to give me a context for deciding whether we're going to like the same things. So, mostly, like it or lump it.
Supporting characters rock!
Ralph or Jasper? Moe or Apu? Abe or Smithers? Back your pony at The Road to Springfield. They're already in Round Two, so step right up.
Shrinks need not apply
Some may scoff: you spent what on registering and hosting, etc., your own site? Today my response is Yeah, but that and a few cans of beer and I saved three hours of therapy.
Someone plaintive
Someone pensively pens:
why?
You're in luck. This is one of the questions now answered in my Frequently Questioned Answers. Write it down and keep it in a safe place.
Sea level
Yesterday's lunch conversation gravitated (that's funny, you'll see) toward the topic of sea level. What is it? Is it measured or defined? Is it different in Miami and in Tokyo? What does it mean in Lawrence? Does it make any sense to measure the height of Mt. Everest in terms of it? Our pockets full of questions and hungry for answers, we turn to google. There we learn of the existence of something called a geoid:
"The geoid is a theoretical surface, which grew out of the idea of measuring heights above sea-level. To a physicist the geoid is an equi-potential surface, meaning that it is a surface on which the gravitational potential energy has the same value everywhere. In more practical terms, it means that a ball-bearing placed on this surface won't roll in any direction, i.e. there is no downhill (or uphill); or alternatively, you can think of it as a surface on which a spirit level's bubble is always exactly centered, or as a surface which a plumb line always intersects perpendicularly."
This quote comes from a nifty discussion of recent re-estimates of the height of Everest.
Moving on, the AP Dictionary of Science and Technology tells us that sea level is
...the average elevation of the sea surface over a 19-year period. Also, MEAN SEA LEVEL.
Huh? What does sea level have to do with 19-year periods? Only one authority can answer this burning question: the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. The PSMSL was established in 1933, and is the global data bank for long term sea level change information from tide gauges. They have 1800 stations around the world. (They're also a part of the unfortunately acronymed Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Data Analysis Services.) Unfortunately, they don't tell us anything about the mysterious 19-year interval.
The best datasite I can find is at the Institut für Geophysik in Bochum. They talk lots more about geoids and alternative constructions. All kinds of numbers, but no 19s. Can someone tell us what 19 has to do with anything? Please? This is embarrassing.
Addendum: Here's the straight poop. Turns out the tides run on a 19-year cycle. Who knew? This site (run by the Geospatial Sciences Center) also has a much better explanation of the geoid, the ellipsoid, and MSL than any other place I've found. Enjoy!
Tuesday 26 Jun 01
Spargl Spargl Spargl!
People didn't believe me when I told them that Germans are batty for asparagus. Ha! (NYT link - hurry before it's archived)
Groovy
Two new toys for web junkies:
Memachine claims to be just another one of those personality quizzes. It's much, much more. This is what people should be doing with the web, not this weblog crap. (via usr/bin/girl)
At Q7A (one question, 7 answers), you can submit an answer to the question of the week. If you're lucky, yours will be chosen as one of the seven that are smiled upon. It's just starting up - go see the first question. This is what people should be doing with the web, not.... (can't remember where I found this)
Recently tangential abortive
Warning: This went a little farther than I thought it would. Read at your own...ah, screw it.
recently seen: Traffic
I expected to have nightmares. The look on the girl's face as the needle went into her foot. The pain in Benicio del Toro's face as he realized the precise level of shit he was in. The mental degradation of Frankie Flowers. (I feel like Bill Walton.) This film is difficult to escape. I knew some junkies at Reed, though for years I didn't know I knew them. (I still remember the day: Oh, that's why they wear turtlenecks in the summer.) I have sometimes wondered how their lives were different from mine, at the time. We were both twenty or so (he a little older), both living in Portland. We were college students, relatively privileged as these things go. He was a couple of years older, but had taken some time off, so was around my whole time there. We both looked good at the formal occasions. We moved in more or less the same circles....
Let me tell you about those circles for a second. First, always first, there was the pool room. My Reed career began there (the first night I was in town as a prospie), and it was the epicenter for everything that happened after. I wouldn't give up a second of anything that took place there for five years of life - even the things I can't remember, are precious to me. We were troglodytes, afraid of the sun; we couldn't breathe and couldn't see and sang along to "Natural Woman" (You make me feel...) There was always a game. You could always learn something. There are people I will probably never see again, but for whom I would do anything, because of time we spent in that room. There was always a game.
But then, as now, my days were dictated by my beverages. Nighttimes are for beer, and beer meant pool. Daytimes are for coffee. Coffee meant the su.
The Student Union, a drafty old barn whose glory grows in my mind with each year. Conversations about Heidegger and O-chem, Extra Fine Shredded Lettuce and who had the 7-layer. Plans for world domination, a shrine to toast. Earnestness. Tripping little kids as they blaze around, and bridge. bridge. I'm going to rattle off some names now that may not mean anything to you, but at one time they were something special; they were coolies. Alicia, who divorced her parents. Julie, who somebody said later had a crush on me and I kicked myself for a month. Morgan (smooth), Forrest (petulant), Ephraim (poker for a living), Matt and Bennett and John Foster (they terrified me). There was the big round table by the Paradox, the coffee shop in the su where you could buy three smokes for a quarter. It was where they had the Thursday-night poker games, where I would bring omelets for breakfast after my radio show. They were the coolies and I wanted to be one of them.
My way in was bridge. It almost even worked. That'll have to wait for another ball game.
This started with a coolie that I wanted to talk about. I never got to it. Some other day.
Someone is cute
Someone writes:
I'm the cute one
I'm sure they are, but I just don't feel that way about them. Come to think of it, there's some chance that this is a tagline submission. As you can see, I have already moveed on to a new sentiment, but I will file this away for later use. Many thanks, gentle reader.
Seriously f**ked
The ratbastard is hanging it up for a while. Don's an interesting bastard and, as I've said before, I appreciate his work. Here's hoping he finds not-doing a weblog as satisfying as I found his doing it.
Someone's confused
Someone writes:
hm?
My thoughts exactly.
Someone functional
Someone writes:
functionality?
And they're absolutely correct. What I need around here is more functionality. Stuff should do stuff, is what I always say. With that (and other reader suggestions) in mind, and ever wary of horking design elements from other, better-written, better-designed, weblogs, I present to you more room. See if you can find it. Swing your elbows around and enjoy the ice cream.
Monday 25 Jun 01
Test
There's a Lyle Lovett line for this one: "You are a lonely, weak, pathetic man". Yes, it's true. This is wrong. I am a bad person. But I'm going out of town for a while (not yet, not yet, but soon), and I need some entertainment when I come home. Since I can't count on MeFi and I don't care for politics, I choose to get my kicks from referrer logs. So:
Pics of britney Spears naked
Sit back, relax, watch the idiots file in.
Moving thing
Gotta get these things out of my notes or they'll fester there till their only value is archaeological. So:
Recently seen: Memento
brilliant. brilliant gimmickry, to be sure, but still brilliant. As has been said, it should be seen with a friend for the conversation afterward. I still have no idea what happened, but I'm not cranky about it. I'll see it again. True detectives might pick up the copy of Esquire (March 2001) with the short story Memento Mori, by Jonathan Nolan (the brother of Christopher Nolan, the writer/director of Memento).
Old Review
Recently read: An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth, of course, wrote A Suitable Boy, which is one of the best investments of six weeks you'll ever make. His second novel (I think it's his second, though he has at least one volume of poetry as well) is less than that one, but this is no surprise. ASB was the whole of a subcontinent, a snapshot of India in its adolescence, fighting, loving, eating, believing, doubting. (Which one am I reviewing again? Oh yeah.) An Equal Music has one of the least appealing narrators I've ever seen, but by the time I realized that, Seth had me trusting him. I may never forgive him for that, though I must respect it. Ditto the descriptions of what it means to be a musician. When I was reading this, I was coming off reading The Wild Numbers. I almost wish that this were the novel about mathematicians - when I came away, I felt that I had some intimate knowledge of the internal lives of musicians, and an empathy for what that means. Whether I did or not is of course anyone's guess, but it's the kind of thing I would want for a novel about mathematics.
Terminology
Terminology to remember: lawnmower beer. A cloudless Kansas sky, cottonwood seeds blowing past, you've just finished 45 minutes of mowing the yard. You've got that sweaty feeling of accomplishment, plus the pride that comes with taking care of your home, just like a real grownup person. What you need now is beer-flavored water, ice cold. Lawnmower beer.
Flurry
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the end of lines
one for every station of the cross.
We have a new poet laureate, Billy Collins. Who? Somehow it seems to me that "Billy" isn't very laureate-y. Robert Frost was no "Bobby", was he? Hmrph.
Hack
Can you see Bill G. standing for this? Even Steve Wozniak got into the fun at last week's MacHack, where for 72 hours hackers showed their stuff. Nifty-slick. (/.'s server seems to be having periodic troubles - try again later.) (via linkwatcher)
A.I.
The New Yorker review of A.I. is pretty withering. (Note: They also give away the ending.) I'm disappointed, but not terribly surprised. It's the old protest-too-much story; the game that goes along with the movie was too intricate, too complex, too good for the movie to keep up. A.I. comes out this weekend, so I'll miss it for a while (why, you ask? can't tell you), but I'll see it eventually.
It's been said before (even by me), but it's worth saying again. The New Yorker site is awful. Bad. Worse than bad. Confusing layout, illogical organization, teeny tiny type. Bleh. Come on, guys - the magazine deserves better.
Sunday 24 Jun 01
Music
Emmylou Harris, not Tammy Wynette. Dang. That's a bad one.
In current rotation: The Doggfather by Snoop Doggy Dogg, and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. It's hard to imagine two more different rap styles than Snoop and Chuck D. One's smooth, like buttah; his voice slides around the room and over the furniture (checking for the fine lay-deez) on its way to your ears. Chuck's rhymes make no pit stops, no wrong turns, just pure straight rage. PE is more demanding of the listener, but pays bigger dividends. Snoop is for kickin' the ride wit yo homeez from grad school.
Someone quickly
Mere moments ago, someone writes:
Yes, but you did *pay* for Opera...
I beg to differ. I spent some 90 minutes of my life downloading it - that is the only investment I have made in this joy on earth. There is one drawback, yes: the free version displays ads above the browser window. If they start annoying me, I'll pony up for the adless version, but so far they're hardly even background noise.
Clarify!
Townes Van Zandt deserves better than I gave him yesterday. I first heard Townes' songs on Lyle Lovett's album Step inside this house, which is a 2-cd set of Lyle doing songs by other Texas songwriters. Then I stumbled across him by watching Austin City Limits one night - they were having a tribute to Townes. Lyle, Steve Earle, Tammy Wynette, and a bunch more people were doing his songs. Just a big circle of people with guitars and love for this Texas troubadour. I had to have something by him. Rear View Mirror is great.
Arietta
This may be a little hard to believe, but the reason I don't have much to say today is that I've been surfing all day. But G, you say, isn't that the kind of thing that generally leads to a plethora of posts? Yes, I say (and you overuse the word "plethora" - please knock it off). But today the pure joy of surfing has been too much for me. And I blame it all on Opera. This is a magnificent browser, my new standard. Sure, it crashed my laptop once, but the speed? the logic? If I'm not careful I'll start raving in William-Gibson-type form about the geometry and logic of the datasphere. I feel it.
Saturday 23 Jun 01
inside joke
This will be funnier for some of you than others. (Admission: I only read the first two paragraphs.)
Fingers...stiffening
I just can't stop! It's so nice to be back up. Some things, in no particular order:
My local grocery has at least 9 different brands of popsicles, by our quick count. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to count these things carefully - sure, you don't want to count fudgesicles, but what about those sorbet-type things? Would the kind in tubes, not on sticks, have counted (we couldn't find any anyway)? Kord has recently lamented the dearth of popsicles in Portland OR. I don't mean to rub it in, dude, but neener neener neener. (And isn't the Good Humor site oddly cool?)
I need a new tagline. Actually, I don't know whether it's a tagline or what - I mean "Dogs love me 'cause I'm crazy sniffable". (It's up there, on your left.) I still like it, but I just did a google search for it, and it turns out every geek who's ever listened to the Beastie Boys uses it too. So I need your help. It's up to you, gentle readers - if I don't hear about a good tagline soon, I'm going over to taglinesgalore.com. Use the "Say anything!" box over there. Go on.
Listening to: Rear View Mirror by Townes Van Zandt.
personal note
She left this afternoon. It amazes me how good it was that she was here. Well, no, somehow that note of surprise shouldn't be there - I wasn't amazed that it was good, just amazed at my good fortune. Or something. (Rule number one: Know when to shut up. Rule number two: Now would be a good time.) It was good. Better. The best.
The real amazing part, though, is how quickly I go back to a bachelor existence. Sweatpants, yesterday's stained T-shirt (with new kiwi stains). No contacts. Numbly watching You've Got Mail (somebody kill me). I liked yesterday better.
90% of nothing
Some people should see this. As others have said, wow. (via planetfiction)
O fer cry-yi
They killed Buffy and I didn't sniffle. Why'd they have to kill Xena? Dude, she got her *head* cut off. It just ain't right.
zip-a-dee!
I've got a shiny new hosting service and the DNS issues are resolved (get it?). Now nothing can stand between you and the tastylicious tones of leuschke.org
We celebrate with links! Online Pregnancy Tests! Philosopher Action Figures! The best game on the web!
And, my all-time favorite website, An Atlas of Cyberspaces.
Nice to see you. Nice to be seen.
Friday 22 Jun 01
DNS Pfui
There's an even better chance you can't read this. Damn. Sorry.
Anyone who has tried to access leuschke.org in the past day or two has noticed that the damn thing wasn't there. I have since dropped my hosting company like a hot rock and moved on. Here's hoping the trouble's over.
I present for your amusement and edification a question that I asked some time ago in a different forum. I now know the answer.
So here's the thing. S'pose for a moment that you've just opened an account with a new hosting company, say, Campanillo.net. They've got great prices, good plans, and when you email a question, you get back a response (from a guy named Javier) within a couple of hours. You're stoked.
Then you get a little note from Javier saying they're very excited about hosting your (shiny and new) web site, but would you mind waiting a few days so they can put your account on their (faster, beefier) new server? Sure, you say, no problem, love the fastness and the beefiness.
In the meantime, you've done the google searches that maybe you should have done before. You discover that Campanillo.net has precisely 7 employees (when you quiz Javier about it, he insists there are 8). You further discover that there exists a Web Entrepreneur named Javier Campanillo. His google hits are equally distributed between web-hosting companies and golf tournaments (he's apparently like a 5-handicap, whatever the hell that means).
Question: what do you do now? Are you jazzed about the interesting people you can (quasi-)meet on the web? Or are you worried you've given your Discover card number to some guy who has a server in his garage?
Thursday 21 Jun 01
DNS ACK!
There's a good chance you can't read this.
When my silly hosting company gets their act together, the first thing you should do is go goggle at how cool my friends are. (You'll have to search the page for "conversing" - permalinks haven't caught on with some people, apparently.) Kord thinks more clearly about difficult things than almost anyone I know. He could also use a job - anyone?
Wednesday 20 Jun 01
Wow
Herro. This is nDroid. It's just about the coolest web thing you'll see this week. Especially the boxing monkeys. (via ev)
License to respect
Today, one year and five days after moving to Lawrence, I acquired my KS driver's license. Just a quick shout-out to the lovely folks at the DMV for making the experience so painless. (I got a haircut for the occasion and, even including that, the whole operation took less than 90 minutes.)
I also want to take a second today to give electronic propers to the ratbastard. Mr. Bruns holds a special place in my heart. His was the first blog that I read habitually (plus, it led me to sapphireblue - rrowr), and I miss his regular updates. I suspect (with no supporting evidence) that he may be sick, and I wish him the best.
Someone old
Someone writes:
Dearest friends,
Are you looking for a way to change your life? Well, after years of searching for spiritual teachers and all knowing mentors, I have finally come across two separate individuals, each with his own web site, who absolutely embody their complex and insightful teachings. They free the rest of us, who are lucky enough to share in their vision, to discover ourselves in deeper and more profoundly cool ways. I gently urge you all to take this step and visit two sites that will change your lives forever.
www.supergreg.com
www.rubberburner.com
Much love,
Raman
My, my. So much to digest all at once. Raman, you should know, is an old friend from my days in Miami. He seems to have made some changes in his life since then. I am deeply honored that he chose to share these changes with me, and, after much thought, I have decided to embrace the teachings of his gurus. Peace out.
Tuesday 19 Jun 01
The Wild Numbers
review: The Wild Numbers, by Philibert Schogt. The cover blurb by Amit D. Aczel, author of Fermat's Last Theorem, enthuses, "I have never read a better fictional description of what it's like to work in pure math." Well, that may be so. I suppose I haven't either. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a very good description, though. The problem may be that a more accurate picture of a working mathematician would be like an accurate picture of a working accountant, only less interesting. A novel about a chess player would be pretty dull if he weren't straddling the fence of sanity, if he won some games and lost some and was fairly well established in the community and had a fulfilling home life, if he were like other people except that he happened to play chess. There's got to be something else. And, I guess, that's the way it goes. Schogt has written a decent book about people whose interior lives are, almost by definition, incomprehensible to many people, and that's a good thing. He has done a good job of inventing details that are close to the truth without stepping into contradictability. I may even send it to my mother in one more attempt to explain to her what I do. But please don't ask me to accept this book as a description of my life.
Someone talks good
Someone writes:
I would never send out nasty notes regarding grammar - it's evolution, man.
This is a none-too-subtle reference to my brilliant comments recently on metafilter. Thank you. I try hard to please my audience (both of you).
The particular comment in question is a pointer to David Foster Wallace's article, Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage. (The link is via metascene, though I had heard about the article from Kord before that.) DFW's article is to our time as The Gallic Wars was to Caesar's: definitive, comprehensive, and a rollicking good read. Excerpt:
I suggest to you that having the "correct" subthoracic clothing for U.S. males be pants instead of skirts is arbitrary (lots of other cultures let men wear skirts), restrictive and unfair (U.S. females get to wear pants), based solely on archaic custom (I think it's got something to do with certain traditions about gender and leg position, the same reasons girls' bikes don't have a crossbar), and in certain ways not only incommodious but illogical (skirts are more comfortable than pants; pants ride up; pants are hot; pants can squish the genitals and reduce fertility; over time pants chafe and erode irregular sections of men's leg hair and give older men hideous half-denuded legs, etc. etc.). [...] Let us dream of or even in our spare time work toward an America where nobody lays any arbitrary sumptuary prescriptions on anyone else and we can all go around as comfortable and aerated and unchafed and unsquished and motile as we want.
Hip hip!
Someone nameless
Someone writes:
you mean to tell me I've been pronouncing your name incorrectly all these years??
This is a none-too-subtle reference to the fact that yes, they have been pronouncing my name wrong all these years. I actually gave this some thought when I started leuschke.org. Even though my name is pronounced "Lusky", it struck me that perhaps the domain name should be pronounced "Loyshkeh", as in the original German. I still may change my mind, so be sure to keep a little note by the bookmark for leuschke.org reminding yourself what the current pronunciation is.
Other Leuschkes:
Someononsense
Someone writes:
Dude, I barney'd my smokie treats...
This is a none-too-subtle reference to the fact that my family, as a whole, is nuttier than a Payday bar. There were twenty of us there, staying in what used to be a general's house at Fort Benjamin Harrison, just outside of Indianapolis. (In fact, it turned out to be in Lawrence, IN, which warmed the cockles of my heart. And, as an old friend (not Groucho Marx) used to say, there's nothing like hot cockles.)
We ate continuously.
Someone/absence
Someone writes:
anthing
This is a none-too-subtle reference to the fact that I let the entire weekend go by without doing anthing here at leuschke.org. Well, I have an excuse. I was attending my grandmother's eightieth birthday party in Indianapolis. (She, by the way, is a pistol.) Some more devoted bloggers than I might have kept up the torrent of posts that you've come to expect, but I respect you more than that.
I did, however, have several thoughts while I was gone, only some of which I forgot. Stay tuned for more nuggets of Midwestern wisdom (those will be easy to pick out, since they'll say "Grandma says..." in front of them).
Friday 15 Jun 01
Question
I've been keeping a link to sippey.com over there on the right even though it seems sippey is out of the log business. This is really a shame - some of my favorite all-time blog entries came from there. So with respect:
I need to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest with me. What are you waiting for?
Thursday 14 Jun 01
Someone
Someone writes:
It had begun as a joke, an unintended bit of silliness between them. He had given her the rock as a present after she had said there was nothing that she wanted for her birthday. The following Christmas she had wrapped it in a Tiffany's box and given it back to him. And so on, and so on, for the five years since then, the rock changing hands by ever more absurd and devious means on every conceivable occasion. Then he left and, as if the loser at Old Maid, she was stuck with the stone. So she devised this ritual of closure for herself, rowing out on the lake on a glorious June day to the very center of the green lake and, with little more than a sigh, dropped the rock overboard.
And as she rowed back to shore, Mia noticed with some curiosity the feeling that a weight had been lifted from her life.
Good gravy! I know what this is! It's a Mia sighting! How very exciting. Kind of pretty, too.
This particular missive came as I was listening to Walk Through The Bottomland, which bears a certain family resemblance to this Mia story (aside from being a damn good song).
D00d!
This totally rocks! If I was a chick, I'd totally be into that guy. (via plurp)
(And yes, before I get any nasty notes from Grammourpuss-ies, I should have used the subjunctive there. Go bug somebody else.)
Someone
In the course of my self-promotion, I promulgated the following puzzle:
Suppose you're in a canoe in a lake. Further, you've got a rock. It's quite a large rock (though not so large that the canoe sinks). You (being tired of holding the rock) pitch it overboard, where it sinks to the bottom of the lake.
Does the level of the lake rise or fall?
Someone, perhaps in reference to this, writes:
Rocks are denser than water.
To this I say, well, um, yes. Besides being not quite true (pumice, anyone?), this is explicit in the puzzle (the darn thing sinks, after all). Better yet, this gives the solution. Excuse me for a moment while I put on my professor hat. There. Now, the way to think about this one is to take an extreme case. S'pose that the rock is much denser than water, maybe that it's marble-sized and weighs several tons. While it's in the boat, the rock displaces an amount of water equal to its weight. Once overboard, it displaces an amount of water equal to its volume. Since the former is much greater than the latter, the level of the lake falls.
(You know, I had "rises" there for about 6 hours. What a great instructor I must be, eh?)
As M has said, sometimes you've got to be the hat.
Wednesday 13 Jun 01
Genericity
A while back, I tried my hand at the Generic genre. Impetuous in my vanity, I failed to notice that my effort, the Generic Weblog, was already represented. So now I'm stuck with the thing, and I've got to put it here or it'll just take up bytes somewhere else.
Generic Blog Entry
Rambling about people you don't know doing things you don't understand/care about.
This is the coolest thing ever! It's the next AYBABTU (Note: replace with contemporary meme which has been driven into the ground by everyone, including, but not limited to, the New York Times and the hipper comics.) (via source)
I hate the A-list.
I wish I were A-list.
If that doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth, try this:
Generic Sports Movie
Hero has heart of gold and history of failure. Hero meets biggest failure yet. Circumstances change; Hero's star rises. Hero accomplishes feats of increasing difficulty, working toward The Big One. Hero is invincible. Hero's heart of gold tarnishes slightly. On eve of The Big One, circumstances change. Hero is doomed to failure. Hero looks Deep Within, discovers tarnish, removes it. Hero succeeds in The Big One and receives outpourings of adulation.
Chessed! (Chest?)
My shameless self-promotion has led me straight to the top, my friends. I have been honored with my very first mention in chesslog. He even liked my furry little friends, the beagles (hello down there, fellas!). The blog world is just chock-full of nice guys.
Flash! Aaa-aah!
This has been around for a while, but somehow cool flash thingies never seem to go out of style. This one's even up for a Webby this year, so ya'll put yer hands together now for the one, the only, Dancing Paul! He gets jiggy!
Xena rocks mah socks
I don't usually read salon, but lately the stuff on linkwatcher has been just terrific. In evidence, I present for you From A to Xena.
A is for ass-kicking, which Xena did mightily....
Plurped
Well, my blatant trolling for hits has paid off. If you're here, the odds are either (a) I know you (hi!), or (b) you came here from Plurp. If the latter, welcome, and be assured that here, at least, I only post things once (how embarrassing was that).
What a nice guy. Hope he figures out the lake thing.
Input
Someone writes:
yo mamma dresses you funny.
Well, yes, she did. I thought I had all the extant photographs. I humbly await the blackmail note.
Tuesday 12 Jun 01
Fun with Journals
My new Favorite Mathematics Journal: Papers submitted for publication and editorial correspondence should be addressed to somewhere over the rainbow. Authors receive only regret. Excessive alterations will be charged to the author.
World tour
mathowie is considering a MetaFilter US tour. (He's even got a catchy soundtrack.) We'd be happy to see him - can you pick out which dot is ours on the MeFi ZipCode map?
Computa Bitchez
Computa Bitchez A real man don't make his livin' wit' his ass parked in front of a computa all day, know what I'm sayin'? It one thing to use a computa to assist you in yo' day-to-day bidness, but when tha computa be yo' whole hustle, that shit be WACK. Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit. (from the onion, via geegaw.)
Monday 11 Jun 01
Hamming it up
I almost miss having summer jobs. They gave a structure to the days. Whatever else happened, you knew there would be ham
Encounters with Nature
Two beagles walked casually past my door, down the walk to the street, made a hard left at the sidewalk and crossed against the light. Oh, they stopped to pee in the yard. I felt strangely honored.
When I sat down with the paper, the baby bird looked up at me. A bluejay swung down from the tree above to sit on the fence, and sat there. Two squirrels stopped digging around the base of the walnut tree. We all looked at each other for a few seconds. I went inside. When I looked out later, neither bird was there. The squirrels were fighting in the branches.
Testing
testing popups
ta-da! so dere
