Some Quotes and Rock is Dead

From Nancy deWolf Smith's article, "Somebody Out There Hates Us" in the March 11th 2011 Wall Street Journal:

"In Housewivesland, dogs are small; kids are rude and on heroin or some other path to perdition; and men tend come [sic] in only a few basic models: control freak, leech, loser—or payer of alimony."

"Rock is dead.  Long live Paper and Scissors!" I wrote this on the back of an envelope.  A web search showed that it is a popular slogan on T-shirts (the first I found on a web search was on Zazzle), infant onesies, and a live journal blog by"sarasaloser".

 

"Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace Prize winners combined."

A good witticism makes the rounds of the web.  

And here are some political quotes from the February 21, 2010 New York Times (yes, still behind in my reading):

"You can lead a man to Congress, but you cannot make him think." Milton Berle as quoted by Evan Bayh.

"Republicans lead in the wrong direction and Democrats are unable to lead in any direction at all." - Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican, but an independent at the time of the comment.

Krista Tippett paraphrasing part of a poem by Rilke, "the ephemeral nature of things is they're [sic] very fragrance." in an interview with Joanna Macy. (Transcript at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/wild-love-for-world/transcript.shtml) 

subpoena duces tecum –noun Law a writ directing a person court to bring some document described in the writ.

Garage sale copy: "Boy meets girl...girl moves in....boy and girl have way too much stuff."

"I've seen better film on my teeth." - Berzerkirsrage (a comment on IMDB to the film Devil's Double before the film was officially released).

"I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger....then it hit me." -JohnT Fitzgerald (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?127117-Biesemeyer-fence-versus-SS-T-Glide)

"You know, if talk was criminal, you'd lead a life of crime,
Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is working overtime.
~Your Mind Is On Vacation",  Mose Allison

Woody Guthrie once said, “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”

Voltaire on medicine: "The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." Maureen Dowd, NY Times 9/28/2011.

"Watched code never compiles." Maximilien on http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=4172152#xx4172152xx.

Mathematician's Survival Guide

"As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school." Cokie Roberts

I stumbled across a ink to the "Mathematician's Survival Guide" on xameuel.com.  What was odd was that the post was a "reprint, with permission from the author, of Professor Peter Casazza’s brilliant article, “A Mathematician’s Survival Guide”. The preprint can be read in PDF form at Dr. Casazza’s own website, here. Not to be confused with a book by the same name by Professor Steven Krantz (the two professors together co-edited a book which is slated to appear soon, from the MAA, titled “The Psychology of the Mathematician”, where the present paper will appear)."

Why not just post a link with an endorsement?  Mine not to reason why.  I enjoyed reading about  mathematicians perception of others perception of them.

I stumbled around xameuel.com and discovered a post about a graphing program named GrafEq, which, according to the blogger handles equations which cause Mathematica to choke.  Here are two examples:

The author reasoned that the checkerboard graph probably represents  is probably very tightly oscillating waves. Seeing these makes me want to get back to mathematics.

Facial Recognition An App for for Locating Bar Action

AI has finally hit it's stride with a real world application:  SceneTap's app fcial recognition software will determine male/female ratios at bars to give heterosexuals not yet at the bar the information they need to know to increase their chance of hooking up with someone of the opposite sex.  For homosexuals the app may serve a similar purpose.  If the gender ratio is skewed so far in their direction, the app might as a gay/lesbian bar discovery app.

The story has been covered in sources from Discover magazine to Government Computing News.

Love and Other Torts: DA Sues Old Pal She Says Slept With Her Husband

I submit the first line of a June 29th AP story quoted in NY Lawyer as a fine example of pithy writing:

SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) — The Johnston County district attorney is suing her children's godmother and is seeking damages, saying the woman had sex with the prosecutor's husband.

The last line of the article states that the DA is seeking damages in excess of $10,000 and punitive damages in excess of $10,000.

There it is: almost everything you'd want to know.  For myself, someone who likes to do the math, I'm interested in the number of times the couple had sex so I can calculate a real dollar figure for the cost of sin.  (Yes, the wages of sin are death, but I assumed that was the final balloon payment.  I'm want to calculate the installment payments.)

Paraphernalia

Written on 4/7/11 but only now being posted.  The original title was misspelled "Paraphenalia".

On the way to my car this evening I spotted a discarded Sprite bottle on the grass. Ever the conscientious recycler, I picked up the bottle and noticed two holes burned into the side and aluminum foil under the cap.

That's odd I thought. And then - oh rats! - drug paraphernalia. How depressing. Maybe it had been tossed over the fence by some kids from town. I hate to think our students have enough free time away from their studies that they can afford (in multiple senses of the word) to get stoned.

A quick search on the web for bongs found directions and pictures - all so much neater and professional looking than the one I picked up.

I envy people who have the time to get stoned. I'd use the time to make a start on all the books I want to read.


Oh, and yes, the bottle and aluminum foil have been recycled.  It was only afterwards that I realized how my civic deed could be misinterpreted as destroying evidence.

Oscar Levant and His Quotes

Bill Scheft's June 5th review of a new Joe DiMaggio biography, “Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil”, in the NY Times Bbook Review quoted Oscar Levant as saying that the slugger's failed marriage to Marilyn Monroe "proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes."

The quote was new to me.  I thought Levant's most famous quote was either “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin” or, my father's favorite, a quote about Heddy Lamarr, “Everyone knew that under her clothes she was naked.”  (Heddy Lamar, a stunning beautiful actress was infamous for running around au naturel in the 1933 film, Ecstasy.)

I took to the web to see if the quote was listed under Levant's name.   It wasn't.  What I did see once again that sites poach from each other and proofreading, if it exists is poor.  Both ThinkExist.com and BrainyQuote.com were missing the “m” from “my” in the quote, “I have no trouble with y[sic] enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night.” 


I'm glad I took the time to search, though.  I found a quote which becomes more true as you grow older: “It’s not what your are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” 

I think my father's fondness for Oscar Levant stemmed from hearing Levant generate his quotes on the fly and the tragedy of his later life.  Depending on the source Levant's stays in mental institutions were the results of dependence on prescription drugs, manic depression as bipolar disorder was known at the time, or a combination of the two.

Antinomian

One of the curses of having an academic bent is the need to know.  It doesn't rise to the level of obsession, but it is pervasive.  If I see a word I don't know, or worse, a word that I looked up previously and whose definition I am now unable to remember, I have to look it up.  

It's clear that I got sidetracked on my way to being an etymologist.  I try to note down where I saw the word and use the word if appropriate.  In this case, however,  I wrote "antinomian" on an envelope and only just got around to looking it up online:

antinomian   [ˌæntɪˈnəʊmɪən]

adj

(Christian Religious Writings / Theology) relating to the doctrine that by faith and the dispensation of grace a Christian is released from the obligation of adhering to any moral law.

I suspect that this applies to those who, secure in their faith, do ill to others with a clear conscience.  Suicide bombers would be the most obvious target, although it might have referred to extremists in the anti-abortion camp.

Dead Grandmothers and Deadlines

In a May 8, 2011 article, "Of Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers", behind the paywall of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas H. Benton the nom de plume of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, described his experiences with relatives dying before critical academic work was to be done.

When his own grandmother died just before a paper was to be turned in, he spent the night writing the paper and missed the funeral.  At that time it never occurred to him that there was any other choice.  The article was a thoughtful one, with the comments typically informed, containing useful tradecraft, e.g., sending a condolence note or requesting memory cards from the funeral home.

On the more humorous side, there is a classic 1990 essay, "The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society", by Mike Adams in The Connecticut Review correlating mortality statistics and exams.  (The link is to a PDF file.)  With appropriate graphs documenting the health hazards to grandmothers of students he reached several difficult to implement suggestions:

• Eliminate exams
• Allow only orphans to enroll at universities.  This of course would lead to a supply and financial problem for younger students,.  For those who delay college attendance out of concern for their grandparents, family responsibilities would be a complicating factor.  (Increasing the number of orphans has certain moral problems.) 
• Have students lie about their enrollment.  Again, another moral problem.

Stocks Fall After Japan Lifts Nuclear Crisis Levels

(This was originally written on April 12, 2011.0

Why would stocks fall?  The ever mysterious stock market reacting negatively on good news.  Oh wait! "Lifts" means "raise" not lift as in "removes a restriction.  Things are getting worse.  So bad times ahead for Japan means bad times ahead for all.  Combine this with the entrail reading discussions of P/E (or PE10 for the cognoscenti) and it looks like we're in for a dive. 

Quick!  Stock up on canned goods, bottled water, gun, ammo, and triple tax exempt bonds.

(I wanted to include the line "Dark at the end of the road for Bonnie and Clyde", but then I found that it might be one of those things we all know, but what we remember doesn't match with the facts.  The sentence doesn't exist in "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde".)

BRK-A

(This post was hanging around in drafts for about two months.  In the last trading week the stock has dropped to about $113,000.  See the post script.)

It's not everyday your stock can drop over 900 points before noon. I imagine some deep pockets repeating their mantra: "Warren isn't often wrong", but the recent business of what appears to be David Sokol's insider trading moves on Lubrizol should make the Capitalist's Woodstock, the annual Berkshire Hathaway stock holder's meeting interesting. 
Andrew Sorkin's article in today's NY Times has some questions he's ready to ask when the Oracle from Omaha opens the meeting to shareholder questions.  As an owner of BRK-B I should have a dog in this fight, but I'm content to watch the big boys duke it out.

I feel compelled to say that I got BRK-B before it split 50:1.  Watching the share price bounce around 100 points a day gave me the delusion that I was playing the capitalist game, although it was more likely that the capitalist game was playing me.  BRK-B was well down from it's $4+K price when I snapped it up. And how many shares did I get?  Well not very many, but having shares just to get the shareholder report and badge every year commands a modicum of respect when the topic of finance or investing comes up.  (Of course that modicum quickly disappears when I open my mouth and my ignorance is revealed.)

Years before, when what is now known as BRK-A was selling for ~$10K I considered buying a share with almost all my discretionary funds.  It would have been worth it, but then again, there are so many things I should have done.  (And so many I am grateful that I didn't.  Don't knock inertia.)

PS:  Warren Buffett's public inaction and statements masked the fact that he had turned over relevant information about insider trading to the SEC.  See for example corporate Compliance Insights'Was Warren Buffett’s Public Support of Sokol Appropriate?

Wave of the Future

I was rummaging through some old stuff and came across a post card for "The Wave of the Future" (WoF) poster from High Tech Times.  I got the poster years ago.  It's around somewhere, probably still in the mailing tube. 

The cost then was $25 + $4.50 for shipping and handling.  I was surprised that I was flush enough to put up that much money.  How much more could it cost now?  I figured, what with the web being the web I'd search for High Tech Times or the WoF and pick up another one. 

The first thing I stumbled upon was the Grafikdotcom_blog post "Wave of the Future" by the person who created the graphic.  The post contained the excruciating behind the scenes details of creating the pixelation effect by hand and the never before revealed information that the the Japanese calligraphy in the top left hand corner is the name of the design company: “Grafik”.

Never content to leave well enough alone, I found a post from 2007 "Wave of the Future is now the Past" which discussed Hokusai‘s original, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, as well as the WoF. At that time it seems that the WoF poser was no longer in print.

There was a link to an online poster gallery which advertised it for $99, but they were out of stock. A business opportunity or just tough luck?

I'm going to root around to see if I can find my copy.

How Badly Do You Want An iPad?

The headline says it all: "Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad". To quote ShanghaiDaily.com:

A 17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.

If not a hoax, it is more supporting evidence that teenage brains are not fully developed.

The story is much juicier because the hospital where the kidney was removed was not licensed for organ transplants, there was a broker who cannot be found, and "the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman."  I smell a TV special investigative report and a related CSI story on TV.  Expect this story to also surface with a vengeance when supporters of market forces in medicine point out how much more efficiently business deals with illness.

Some 45 years ago there would be reports of young men killing themselves after being forced to cut their hair. (It was the season of shaggy mops. Short hair in America meant the military or support for the war in Vietnam.)  So don't file this story under "Those Wacky Chinese Teenagers."

Wall Street Truth Laid Bare

There is a statistic in the May 23rd The Street article "War on Crime Revs Up on Wall Street",  by Peter Morici which in its simplicity points out the macro problem with Wall Street:

"In February 1998, the S&P 500 first closed higher than 1000. Since then, corporate profits are up about 210% percent, but equities have risen less than 35%. Corporate profits rose 6% annually, but investing in stocks paid a disappointing 2.3% a year"

 The article goes on to point out that the best and brightest are devoted to enhancing their own compensation rather than value for investors.  Would one expect more from the people attracted to finance?  This falls under the headline of No News News, but I'd never seen it so baldly stated.

And then there was Jay MacDonald's February 14, 2011 "Punch Line to Foreclosure-Gate" article on Bankrate.com which described Florida Attorney General's office's PowerPoint presentation entitled: "Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases" (PDF).  The presentation was based on the AG's investigation of robosigning in the Sunshine State.

The presentation contains some interesting slides:

• examples of 6 different forged signatures for "Linda Green" (who had at least 14 different job titles), 
• 4 different signatures for Scott Anderson, 
• 3 different signatures each for Tywanna Thomas and Jessica Ohde who are variously identified as "Asst. Vice President" or "Asst. Secretary", 
• one document dated "9/9/9999", 
• several documents where the mortgage was assigned to "Bogus Assignee",
• stamped instead of signed signatures,
• bogus notaries (Notary stamps are good for 4 years, yet the examples showed expiration dates 5 years in the future), and
• excerpts of testimony from two people involved in robosigning.  (They say what we now know:  signatures were forged and nobody read the documents.)

It's worth a read.

Yaron Brook: Fwee Market Capitalism

Today's economic porn (The Daily Ticker with Aaron Task) included an interview Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute  I've found Ayn Rand good for a sad laugh.  Yes, if people were responsible and had the psychological orientation to meet her independent Objectivist model it might be worth supporting.

My personal belief is that, people being people doom Objectivism to the same fate as Communism: dustbin of history, fond illusion of idealistic youth, or something in between.  (Has anyone made an attempt to argue that Going Green may mean recycling/reusing the contents of the "dustbin of history"?)

That said I was very impressed (werry, werry impressed) that someone with a speech impediment could end up being the president of an organization. Yaron Brook's fire of conviction is subverted by taking like a baby.

Good News Means Bad Things

Osama Bin Ladin was killed yesterday. A symbolic victory, a boost to the aura of American prowess - not a single Navy SEAL killed- but given the distributed nature of al Qaeda, his death probably does little to reduce their threat.

As I drove to work  market reporters were reporting the favorable economic responses: the prices for gold and oil were down, but there was, of course, the contrarian warning: the US dollar, seen as the safest investment  will now find less eager buyers if the world is perceived as safer.  (Is it puckish to call the dollar a "gold standard"?)

It struck me as odd now, that I should unconsciously use the word "market" to mean financial doings rather than a green grocer. Perhaps I've unwittingly succumbed to a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Skater Dater, Music, and Lord Buckley

As I browsed around YouTube, I stumbled on a reference to Skaterdater, a short film about skateboarding made in 1965.

I'd thought it was charming when I saw it many years ago.  The two things I remembered about the soundtrack were the surf music and the fact that the film makers didn't need synchronized sound.  There is one point in the film where a funny noise is a lead into the next shot.

I was so taken with the soundtrack, surf music over the rumble of skateboards on asphalt, that I taped it off the theater speakers shortly after I saw it.  (It was a tiny theater and I knew the owners.) 

The link above will take you to the film on Google video so you can see it for yourself.

I checked the music credits: Mike Curb and Nick Venet, names which meant nothing to me until I looked up their bios.

Mike Curb, was a Republican Lt. Governor of California from 1978-1982 under the Democrat, Jerry Brown (II). He was involved in some political shenanigans: taking advantage of the law that put the Lt. Governor in charge when the governor is out of state, he tried to get several judges appointed while Brown was "out of California airspace." (The appointments were voided on Brown's return.)

Later, he was immensely successful in the musical business. Check out his bio.  I was impressed.  Especially so when he made news by calling on Belmont University to rehire a soccer coach who seems to have lost her position for being a lesbian.   here's a link to the story in on the Nashville Scene web site.

The other, Nick Venet, worked with recording luminaries from jazz, pop, and world music. Just reading the names Chet Baker,Stan Getz, Chico Hamilton ("Drumfusion"), Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan, and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross flooded my mind with treasured memories of afternoons just listening to jazz on turntables. (Where did I get the time? Where has it gone?)

He worked with Lord Buckley the great hip and tragic comedian. You couldn't be hip way back in the 50's and 60's without knowing who he was. The two pieces I treasured were "The Nazz", the story of Jesus, "Scrooge", the retelling of Dicken's "Christmas Carole" in a dark ghetto dialect. You can imagine Lord Buckley as a mix of Redd Foxx and Robin Williams topped with the sound effect from Bill Cosby's early records.

A casual mention of "The Nazz", "the carpenter kiddie", "beat up retarded sparrow", or saying "merry Christmas with you" or "What's the matter with you baby?" brought a knowing smile to the cognoscenti. You were home.

Perhaps his most enduring legacy was this bit of trivia from Wikipedia:

"Venet created the "Produced By" credit on singles and albums and started album liner notes for crediting individual performers, musicians, and engineers of pop and rock records. Venet is primarily known for signing the Beach Boys and producing their early material."

He worked with Ravi Shankar, Nat "King" Cole, and Peggy Lee and Kay Starr.  Just amazing.  Dead at 61 from Burkitt's lymphoma.

Throwbots

How cool would it be to have one of these?

They're throwable robots with cameras from Recon Scout. You heave one of these things in (they'll survive a 30' drop onto concrete) and control it with a joystick. Designed for the military and SWAT teams.  You can get yours for just $6-9K. Ideal for braking up jail fights.

For more information, there are videos on YouTube. (Search for "recon scout throwbot" because "recon scout" is also the name for a knife.) Although intended to reduce exposing soldiers and police to hostile fire, I can fantasize a household loaner business to scour a house on a periodic basis to check under couches for missing retainers, rings, and keys.

Because of it's light weight an officer can hold the throwbot in one hand and still keep a weapon in the other.   Most of us are fortunate not to need to consider features like these when making purchases.  Other design features make sense: the throwbot is turned on by pulling a pin rather than flipping a switch to make it easier to activate with gloves, Hazmat suits, etc. and very difficult for the other guys to inactivate it.  (Of course the expectation is that the other side won't have the appropriate pin or a controller to turn off or jam the device.)

I'll know how common these things become when they appear in CSI reruns.  (They may be a standard feature of cop shows, but I'm at a disadvantage here because I rarely watch TV.)

Brutal Knitting

Next winter may be the time to let your freak flag fly.

Tracy Widdess, the knitter, will accept commissions.  If you want to stand out in a crowd, these knits will guarantee it.

$6,400 Kohler Numi Toilet

I kid you not.

If I ever get a chance to teach an intro Computer Science class, this will certainly be an item they'll have to discuss when asked we discuss what constitutes a computer.  Just look at the controls:
I guess in time it will not seem odd, but a toilet with speakers and audio input? I would have written that the bathroom seems to be the only place you can get away from ..., but now there's advertising in restrooms and we've all overheard cell private conversation in public bathrooms.

I imagine that the person on the other end of the conversation will ask if the other person is in a bathroom. It'll no longer be remarkable when the answer is in the affirmative.

What Do We Stand For?

An article mentioned a firm building their social networking system using Mason software, a name which was unfamiliar to me. A web search led me to George Mason University's web site and what you see below:

It reminded me of a joke from an old Pogo comic strip:  

Q: "What do we stand for?" 

A: "We don't stand for much."

Hacker vs. Hacker

There is a fascinating article in Business Week (I stumbled over it on Bloomberg BusinessWeek) about the cyber security firm, HBGary, being hacked by Anonymous, the anarchic cyber-guerrilla organization. The attack came after an official at HBGary boasting to the Financial Times that he would reveal the identities of the Anonymous's leaders in his presentation at the next RSA conference.

Steven Colbert put it this way: Anonymous is a hornet's nest. And [HBGary] said, 'I'm gonna stick my penis in that thing.'"

The real fun began when stolen documents were posted on line. The files revealed proposed campaigns to rival the dirty tricks of the Nixon era: infiltrate Anonymous to expose the leadership and a cyber-campaign of disinformation against WikiLeaks.  The corporate results were predictiable: clients disengaging and others making a point of distancing themselves from HBGary.

An interesting read for sure.

SteamPunk Star Wars & CG Society

TechRepublic had a link to images from CGSociety's Hardcore Modeling Challenge.  The image of Princess Leia seems destined for the men's magazines.

Stumbling around the CG Society web site showed just how stunning computer graphics has become.  The page for the challenge showed  a busty, no nonsense Leia.

I Get a Parking Space at 9:30 AM. How Depressing

A few years ago the faculty/staff parking lot on the west end of campus would be filled by 9:15.  I know.

There's a pattern to college parking.  Student athlete's and coaches park close to the stadium near the edge of campus while commuting students park as close as they can to the south campus academic buildings.  Residential students - lazy residential students - drive from north campus to south campus so they can walk less.  (The total time it takes them to walk to their car, drive about half a mile, and then walk to class is more than the time than it takes to walk to class from their dorm.)

Faculty generally try to park close to their offices, except those who try to park near their last class of the day. There are administrative parking spots which are occasionally occupied by students parking "just for a minute" while they try to dart in to a building to drop off a paper or pick up a form.   It's rumored that the campus police now have web cams watching these spots and get extra points for ticketing students parked in those spots because the fines are higher.

I use to get to the campus between 9:30 and 10 AM (and stayed to 11 PM) so parking close to the buildings where I worked was never an option during regular school days.  I didn't mind.  It was aerobic exercise and, when the weather wasn't inclement, a nice 5 minute walk.

Oh, so why depressing?  The available spaces mean that there are fewer employees as the University makes a concerted effort to cut expenses by cutting budget lines.  I always assume the worst.

Ask not for whom the spot is for.  Pretty soon it might not be me.

Gerund and Oxymoron

In the film History Boys, one of the teenage boys knowingly asks if a certain word was a gerund.  I knew it was a part of speech, but made a note to look it up.  Grammar Bytes provided the answer.  (Grammar Bytes' URL is chompchomp.com and, when I accessed it, displayed the head of a roaring gorilla.

So now, I've set a minor task for myself: to listen for gerunds.  All gerunds end in "ing", so, if I understand what I've read, it's a matter of distinguishing gerunds from present participles in which those same terms act as modifiers instead of nouns.

This reminded me of  a story from a student at Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  He said his English instructor asked his students to cringe each time they heard an oxymoron, e.g., bittersweet.  I decided to verify that I still knew what an oxymoron is.

A quick look in Wikipedia turned up a several oxymorons I hear frequently: "objective opinion", "original copy", and "definite possibility".  It is only having seen it pointed out that it strikes me how we/I accept statements without question.  (I perhaps less than most, but still, I stand guilty as charged.)

"Original copy" seems to be valid, especially now that documents are created on laser printers.  What is the difference between the first copy printed, and the second copy printed?  The original might be bits in memory which was never stored on disk.  Or it could be on disk.  If two copies are printed at the same time, is one the original and the other a copy?

The two which had obvious reference to computer science were "virtual reality" and "constant variable". The first case seems appropriate. In the second, computer scientists have created computer languages to resolve the ambiguity.

A variable name is created to let the computer program store information. In some languages (and in some cases some incarnations of the same language) the language has no way to tell the computer that the data should not be allowed to change, i.e., that the variable is a constant. In other languages it can be explicit, the term constant is part of the declaration or the data type, e.g., a tuple in Pythonare immutable. (I just learned this.)

Back on the Range

For the first time in a long time I cooked dinner.  I was going to be home before the significant other and it was going to be Swai.  (I'd normally subject the reader to a long digression about my family's involvement with food, the games we'd play in restaurants (switching seats after ordering to see how server's recorded the orders, showing our knowledge by asking for rare steaks, playing Guess the Temperature (of the fryer), etc.), but I'll make it short.

I sauteed onions and orange pepper in a little oil, then, when there appeared to be no liquid to keep the onions from browning, I added some white wine (salvaged from a department party) to poach the onions.  As the onions looked soft enough, as an unhelpful description as I could manage, I used more of the wine to rinse out a garlic-flavored pasta source jar into the pan.  I plopped the defrosted Swai on top (God bless portion control!), sprinkled some cutup yellow squash over the fish, and allowed everything to poach for a few minutes.

My brother who knows his stuff advised me that the wine wasn't even good enough to be used for cooking.  I'm sure he's correct, but the people who eat his food are laying out a minimum of $80/cover and know  the difference between world class and good. 

I was so out of practice that I didn't remember to cook the potatoes to be ready when the fish was ready.  I used the microwave to nuke some quartered red bliss potatoes.  

All in all, I can say with some assurance that, the meal was non-toxic (my highest rating).  Salad would have been nice, but there was  no salad stuff at hand.  Nobody complained.

The evidence that I am not destined to be a food photographer is shown below: 

 

Suze Rotolo: The Girl on the Cover of Freewheelin'

My main squeeze told me that Terry Gross had replayed an interview with Suzie Rotolo.  My heart sank.  "She's dead?"  "Yes."

At one point, just knowing who Suzie Rotolo was marked you as hip.

For a significant number of us Suzie was an icon of a celebrated time, when folk music, "protest music", was the cutting edge of hip.  It was Suzie who open Bob Dylan's eyes to radicalism and art.  She was the girl on Bob Dylan's arm on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

(In an interview on WNYC-FM Steve Earle said he spent a lot of time pointing German tourists in the right direction when they try to position themselves on 4th Street to look like Bob and Suzie.  Suzie herself said that she thought the picture made her look like a stuffed sausage.  She was bundled up because their flat was so cold.  Suzie thought Bob was under dressed to enhance his image.  But could it be that it was because he was from Minnesota?)

It would be hard to underestimate what she did for Bob Dylan or give her enough credit for just being herself.  The photo below is typical of an ordinary photo evocative of the time: legends of the scene with Dylan on the left, Suzie in the middle, and Dave van Ronk on the right. Now only Bob is left.

Pardon me as I blither on:

I first heard Cocaine Blues sung by Dave van Ronk and, in my mind, his version remains the definitive version with that great lyric:

"Cocaine's for horses/ and not for men/
They say it will kill me/ but won't say when/
Cocaine.  Run all around my brain."

It ranks right up there with  Willie Dixon's "If it wasn't for bad luck/I'd have no luck at all" and BB King's:

"Nobody loves me but my mother.
I said nobody loves me but my mother.
I say nobody loves me but my mother.
And she could be jiving too."

The Ex Outlet (Selling Your Ex's Stuff)

The concept of a web site to sell stuff associated with you ex seems obvious.  It's not clear that it is a viable business.  The stories of longing, betrayal, and remorse are nothing special, but might serve as object lessons for teens.

I was curious to see if the aggrieved parties were disposing of music, but music was not even a category.  Maybe the site's sample is too small, but I would expect that music plays as big a part in young people's lives as it did in mine.

I remember a women at a party looking through the host's record collection (it was many years ago) when she pulled one album from the shelf.  She stared at it for a couple of seconds, shook her head, before replacing it.  "I can't believe I slept with that guy." she said.  No one asked.

Maybe the exes took their music with them.  If the relationship was in the post physical media era there was nothing to leave behind except perhaps a docking station.

Adele and Steve

I found directions to Carol Nash's house while going through some 25-year old stuff.  I have no idea who she was.   I'm guessing she was one in a chain of associated friends in dogs: Oh, you're going to the Framingham show?  Would you mind taking something to give to Barbara who'll give it to Peggy at the Gorham show next month?  These would be scrapbooks, pedigree charts, etc.

Another something lost from memory.

On the other hand, an old ATT and bill had a phone number in Connecticut.  Probably Adele.  What the heck, I had just unearthed a cell phone with over a thousand hours.  Why not dial and see who answers?  When he recorded message said calls without caller ID were blocked I was pretty sure it was them.

And sure enough.  Steve answered.   We spent 28:35 catching up on 20 or so years of stuff.  Verizon made him an offer he couldn't refuse about 10 years ago.  Adele's story was less happy: she was forced out of her teaching position.  She's got a nice pension, but she loved teaching.  The adjustment's been rough.

Many years ago, when I first met met Adele she had a boyfriend who worked as a prison guard and seemed to spend most of his time on the second floor of her house talking on the CB.  In the first few years I knew her Adele had an anxious way of sucking her breath in through her teeth.  She said she was looking for a man who would keep her in chain link. 

Several years later day when I dropped a guy I never saw before came out to greet me.  "Hi, I'm Steve."  Seemed nice enough.  I didn't ask about the boyfriend.  Adele appeared a few minutes later.  (It would have been hard to sneak onto the property - they had, and still have a 3 dozen dog siren.)  She was smiling and for the first time I knew her seemed relaxed.

I said to myself, I don't know who Steve is, but he seems good for Adele.

About a year later I drove up and saw a change in the kennel.  As I related to a friend who met Adele when I met her, "Adele's found the man of her dreams."  It only took my friend a beat: "Chain link!"

Life was simpler then.

I've Got a Secret?

If you're looking for sensational revelations move along.

The other day someone told me about an incident which will put someone's career in jeopardy.  Almost nobody else knows.  Is it a secret?  What is a secret?  Is it a secret if it is just a matter of time before the whole world knows?  In the past "the whole world knowing" would certainly be hyperbole.  Now, anyone in the world of WikiLeaks, those interested enough to put a few choice terms in an Internet search engine can see your shame.

A campus security officer told the person who told me.  That implied that several layers of security already knew.  Legal probably got faxed a copy as soon as the complaint was signed.  By the time I heard it I'm sure Legal had briefed the President's office and PR had statements at the ready.

I, along with the person who told me, are morbidly interested bystanders in departmental dramas.  We have no input and won't be much affected by the outcome.  We are the bemused Greek chorus wondering how such bright, talented people can do such dumb things.

Will it be a scandal screaming from the headlines?  (Thinking in terms of headlines instead of making a buzz and going viral on the Internet marks my age.)  Perhaps, instead of a scandal, there will be a settlement. Not a cover up, but an agreement between parties, a monetary settlement, and another campus legend passed along in departmental small talk.

From one perspective the decision is clear: get rid of the malefactor.  (There's a pun for you.) From another angle, very good research notable publications and a sterling professional reputation with grants to match might compensate for a prickly personality.  The cynical view is that given the need for funds there will be some hesitation, but the school's reputation considered in light of its dependence on tuition will dictate a parting of the ways.  (The real cynical view is that there will be a new - and rare - job opening.)

A Quotes & a Stock Market Graph

That urgent push—"panic" is such an ugly word—to involve every single employee in acquiring and retaining customer also shows signs of driving down.
Kim S Nash, CIO, December 15, 2010, p34.

I thought this was an interesting graph.

The market's previous close was somewhat below 12,100.  The market is up 40 points.  Simple math says that something less than 12,100 + 40 should be something less than12,150, but look at the graph from finance.yahoo.com on February 8, 2011 about a little after 1 PM.

Ummm and then in the process of putting up this post I realized that I was looking at the previous day's graph.  Yahoo! hadn't  updated the image.  Is it odd that I expected the graph to be update without refreshing the screen myself?  It definitely was not odd that I would be so oblivious.  As I write (and finish my lunch in case anyone wonders if I'm slacking off at work), this is the current graph:

I'm guessing that the Dow text is updated continuously, but the graph isn't.  The 40 points shown in the first image represented the gain from the previous close near 12,160.

No mystery solved. 

John Sebastian's Folk Music

The local public broadcasting station played John Sebastian's folk music retrospective.  I was surprised to see that the music continued to appeal to me and struct by the performer's enthusiasm.  Any false notes eluded me.  Were they really that enthusiastic about their music?  Does the performer's earnestness strike those who weren't there as hoky? The show reminded me that the dismissal of the 50's as bland, ignored the passion for justice that exploded in the 60's.

Folk music became "protest music" with singers using a classic form for what was perceived as a new purpose, but some of the songs which defined the era, , were a political campaign song (the Kingston Trio's "Charlie on the MTA"), a call for justice ("If I had a hammer"), and woody Gutherie's populist "This land is your land".

At the end of the show, many of the performers seen in their earlier incarnations were shown performing at a folk revival in Pittsburgh.  It was reassuring to see the force of the Chad Mitchell Trio's singing belied their age.  Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" with only slightly modified lyrics still carried it's old punch.   Jesse Colin Young's "Get Together" sounded as sweet as the first time I heard it and Roger McGuinn, back from Rio, still looks cool singing Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages", an anthem to angry youth, and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn".

It made me wonder if someone could write or, unbeknown to me, has written a contemporary song railing at Congress, the reactionary right, and others on my detestable s list wing echo chamber.

Death Wait on Hospira

The headline (on a January 21 AP story carried by Yahoo! Finance) read "US drug maker discontinues key death penalty drug". The story in brief was that Hospira Inc. decided to switch manufacture of sodium thiopental from North Carolina to Liscate, Italy, near Milan. Because Hospira could not guarantee Italian authorities that the anesthetic wouldn't be used in executions, the company halted production rather than risk being liable to Italian law.

Already in short supply and with batches of sodium thiopental set to expire in March, 2011 executions across the U.S. now have an additional problem besides pesky picketers.

Imagine executions being halted not by the will of the people, moral or legal qualms but a logistical problem.

I've wondered why people aren't executed by firing squad. Is it that today's criminals do not rise to the level of Joe Hill and Gary Gilmore? I would expect that some law and order/NRA/über-patriot types would be willing to organize flying execution squads, able, willing, and ready to be there to get the job done.

(A brief web check found that Utah, which executed Gilmore by firing squad, has gone the lethal injection route. And with one thing leading to another I learned that the gun Gilmore used to kill a shop clerk was for sale.  That in itself was interesting because the gun, which was evidence, had been stolen from a gun store and later returned to the owner.  The current owner turned down a $500,000 bid for the gun and had it up for auction at $1,000,000.

It brings to mind a story I saw (can't now remember if it was on TV or a film) where a fugitive in a story about the Old West raised money by turning himself in to collect the reward money.  Will Son of Sam laws prohibiting individuals from benefiting from their crimes now prohibit this?  What about people letting their relations turn them in to pay medical bills?  Commit an outrageous crime, call your main squeeze to reveal where you're hanging out, and indicate that it would be OK to reveal your location to the police, and wait patiently for the law to show up.)

Saturday Morning Flotsam

Listening to Car Talk on NPR this morning I picked up these:

Q: What is the difference between an airplane pilot and a pizza?
A: A pizza can feed a family of 4.

Syncro de Mayo - a coven for fans of Volkswagon vanagon.  They've got a site (http://www.syncro.org/SdM_2011.html) Yahoo group (http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/syncro-de-mayo/) and, of course, Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Syncro-de-Mayo/60934111908).

And while I'm at it, I was appalled and reassured to recognize that they repeated the Car Talk quiz about ancient Roman roads.  When I checked the website for "Today's Puzzler" all I found was a discussion of the previous puzzle, finding the quarter fill mark on a cylindrical gas tank without calculus.

The Apple Experience or You're Screwed

The big buzz in Apple Technologyland is the new pentalobe screw.  Apple has patented the screw which means that it should be illegal to import a screw driver which can turn the screw.  Hackers should be up to the challenge and I'm curious as to whether a classic jail house trick would be able to turn the screw.

The part of the story which may generate a law suit is statemetn that the original screws will be replaced with pentalobe screws if an Apple device is brought in for repair at an Apple store.

I found the story on The Consumerist and Computerworld.

McDonald's Texas Burger

I first saw this in the January 12, 2011 Marketplace section of the "Daily Diary of the American Dream" (Wall Street Journal) and again on WSJ's Japan Realtime. ("Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants.")

McDonald's will be introducing limited time burgers in Japan where, according to the article, the Japanese line up for anything with limited availability.  (Could I go to the land of the rising sun and say, "Hey girls, come and get it - I'm here for only a limited time."?  Sure I could, but it wouldn't get the desired results.)

Carnage and Culture, Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

Some years ago a coworkers described a TV show which tried to unravel a mystery of how Zulu warriors overwhelmed a British garrison.  All that stuck with me from his account was that there were sealed boxes of ammunition still left.

This came to mind as I read “Carnage and Culture, Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power”, a family-friendly compendium of carnage by Victor Davis Hanson.  Among the battles he discusses is Isandhlwana where 250 horsemen and 300 native foot soldiers were annihilated by the Zulu’s.  This was probably the same battle.

Hanson’s analysis is that the officer in charge underestimated the opposition to the extent that he violated standard military practice.  In short, the British forces were spread to far apart which, when they ran out of ammunition allowed them to be swarmed over by the Zulu. The British ran out of ammunition for several reasons:

1)   Bureaucratic stupidity – a quartermaster refused to dispense ammunition to one set of troops because the ammunition belonged to another troop.

2)   By not following standard practice, the troops were spread out - too far away from ammunition stores and separated enough to be enveloped by the Zulu.

To quote: “ It was as if their officers—like the Roman generals at Cannae – had done everything to ignore their intrinsic advantage of Western discipline and superior offensive power. “  There’s more of course, but Hanson points out that the next day, the same Zulu warriors were unable to best a hundred British soldiers at Rorke’s Drift where the troops followed standard military procedure.

What make’s it so striking (besides the blood and gore) is that the Boer’s had long before worked out the gold standard protocol for defense against Zulu attack:  a tightly defended area (encircled wagons, walls, stockades), readily available ammunition, and steady disciplined rifle fire.

The author maintains that the Zulu never developed anything other than their single envelopment strategy despite horrific losses against Europeans.  There was also the cultural difference, the author’s main thesis.  The Zulu’s fasted before battle, did not carry supplies, and did not seem to have much in the way of strategy other than to get as close as possible to their enemy by stealth and then swarm over and envelope them.  By the time the Zulu army got to Rorke’s Drift they had not eaten for 2 days.  They had never developed the idea of a siege.

I’ll spare you a book review, (see below) but to say that in the section on Cortes and the Aztecs, repeated the theme: the Aztec’s idea of war seems to have been to capture sacrificial victims.  If they managed to knock down a Spaniard or one of the native forces allied against them, the captive was bound and dragged to the rear for later sacrifice rather than dispatched on the spot.  The idea of killing your enemy on the battlefield was quite literally a foreign notion.  The Aztec's horrific losses didn't seem to change their strategies.  It didn't hurt the Spanish conquest that their weaponry was centuries ahead of that of the Aztecs.

There are plenty of reviews of the book including one by Newt Gingrich, he of the "Contract On America" fame, on Amazon.

It only struck me later that the book is about battles, not wars and it is a history.  I have yet to read the section about the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.  While the Viet Cong may have been defeated as a strategic move the Tet Offensive accomplished two things: it shocked the American public ("I thought we were winning") and it removed the Viet Cong as a potential home-grown adversary to the inevitable victory.  This last is reminiscent of the Soviet Army halting their advance through Poland in July of 1945 to give the German army time to decimate the Polish partisans, effectively removing a source of opposition to their seizure of post-war power.

Battles are not wars.  Guerrilla warfare is a different situation.  I noted that there was no mention of Napoleon's Iberian campaign, arguably the first modern example of guerrilla warfare. Mathematical models in the 1960's predicted that guerrillas were more likely to lose because even though the probability of success in each engagement was large, the large number of actions reduced the probability of overall success was low.  I've always been cautious about accepting mathematical models as predictors of human behavior.  We're just too squirrelly. 

Current events (Afghanistan, Somalia, your suggestion here) with an opposition where death/martyrdom is interpreted as success suggest that if nation states have progressed beyond confrontation warfare (Hello, Iran?) in favor of letting proxies do their fighting (Hezbollah for Iran and Syria), battles will be few and far between.  What armies will be facing a continuing series of attacks.  With more advanced technology (remote controlled bombs) I would expect the balance of a war of attrition to shift in the favor of insurgents. 

An Interesting Watch

For reasons known only to those beaming thoughts into my brain I've been interested in watches.  (Note to self: double the thickness of my aluminum foil cap.)

This hasn't transformed into a watch collection.  (Full disclosure: a number of years ago I was about to bid on a vintage Breitling on eBay, but I couldn't find anyone who might wear it.  My father was happy with his Armitron.   Clients have given my brother expensive watches, but he doesn't usually wear, fearing that he'd lose them.  "The Rolex is nice," he said, "but it's too heavy."  He usually wears a plastic watch because he finds it's less trouble than checking his cell phone.)

Nevertheless, when I see an interesting watch I take note.  And here it is, a watch from Ziiiro. The leading edge of the outer ring indicates the minutes. The inner ring shows the hours.

They're girls!

Just recently I got an old 27" Sony TV for free on Craig's List to replace the much smaller TV fried by our local power company. I hoped that having the TV might interest my mother, giving her something to do other than nodding off over the papers.

I didn't realize how big and heavy it was, but with help from my brother we got it into the house. Getting the TV hooked up to cable required getting a new cable box because that too was fried in the power surges.

With the TV finally connected to cable a friend turned it on to see if something would interest my 92-year old mother. Flipping through the channels they found a broadcast of a local high school basketball game. My mother's eyesight has been getting worse, but after a short while she exclaimed, "They're girls!" Title IX made manifest.

My friend reported that my mother watched the whole rest of the game, switching away only during half-time and occasional breaks.

Counting Problems in the Pool

Yesterday was my first day back in the school's pool after the Holiday break. I usually swim a pair of laps in one style, then a pair of laps in another, etc. About half way through my usual routine I realized that I had not completed a pair of laps, but - brain cramp - started on the next style.

It reminded me of a joke from either Mad magazine or the National Lampoon which attributed the longevity of certain isolated villagers to their inability to count correctly.

Search around for a graphic for counting on my fingers I came across this:

Gas With Class

A number of years ago I remember reading about a group of guys at a party in Silicon Valley trying to guess the make of an exotic sports car.  None of them got it.  The car was either a Ferrari or Lamborghini.

This perplexed me because, living near some very wealthy neighborhoods, I get to see some expensive cars through the windshield of my 22 year old Honda Civic.  I would have expected that the guys in Silicon Valley would have seen more than their share of expensive cars.  Perhaps they do, but they don't remember or try to match the image with a label.

All this as a preface to say, hey, guess what pulled up next to me as I was getting gas (click the picture for a larger image):
I don't know if there are boasting rights associated with gettng gas the same place as a guy with a Lamborghini, but if there are I'd like them.  (The guy didn't take offense at being photographed. I appreciate that. A lot of people are bothered by photographed in public.)

I Get Dumped On

Or more accurately, a tree service offered 6 yards of wood chips fr free on Craig's List.  It turned out to be more chopped up pine boughs than chips.

I was concerned that Scott, guy with the truck, would arrive at the house, not see me, decide it was a hoax, and take off.  I was truly surprised to see that he'd backed his dump truck into the back yard and was dropping his load.  It wasn't as easy as it sounds: it had rained the night before and frozen so that the chips and pieces of branches at the bottom were frozen so they had to be scraped from the truck bed.  Also, being that he had an older truck the bed didn't angle as steeply as newer trucks so Scott had to leap with a rake to pull the stuff closest to the cab.  

I had a good time standing on the mounds as the pine scent rose about me.  It's been a long time since I've been in pines.  I asked them to keep me in mind the next time they had a load of chips.

Reading History in Barrons

I'm a little behind in my reading:  I just finished reading "Numbers Game" by Johnathan R. Laing from the September 13, 2004 edition of Barrons.  In the article he dissects the numbers at SPX, pointing out the artful accounting behind SPX's financial statements.

My general sense from the article was that the company boosted their numbers by overvaluing the "goodwill" of acquired companies, moved poorly performing businesses into "non-continuing operations", and other fancy financial footwork.  While the numbers were on the balance sheets, the ramifications would elude myself and most people in the stock market.

I'm hesitant to use the term "investors" as I think most people in the market have only a general idea of how businesses work.  Money rolls in and get spent.  We know that, but how does that relate to the price of the stocks we purchased.  "Investing" may be no more than trusting others by purchasing funds.  As Howard, my broker, likes to point out, people don't buy stocks, they buy stories.

I did some web searching to see that John Blystone, the CEO in the article, left the company 3 months after the article came out.  His retirement package was somewhat less than the bonanza he might have been expecting.  How did the company fare?  I took a look at finance.yahoo.com.  The stock price about the time the article was written seemed to be falling from $60 to about $40.  Pretty sickening, but nothing compared to its plunge from ~120 to ~33 in October of 2008.  I have no idea what that means.  I expect that  there is plenty of material for financial writers and social writers.

 

 It would be an interesting exercise to have finance students write a paper explaining the article for those like me.

Little Drummer Boy and Tool Porn

I had to move some money at the bank today.  (Yes I could have done it online, but it gives me an excuse to get some exercise and maybe look at stuff in the shopping center.)  Instead of coming directly back home I decided to take the great circle route back home: walking through the the shopping center, drop by the library, and then home.  It might have been about a mile, all told.

It was at a sporting goods store at 1:17 PM this afternoon that I heard my first "Little Drummer Boy" of the season.  Garrison Keillor weaves the "Little Drummer Boy" into his Pre-Christmas skits on Prairie Home Companion as a malevolent force, causing plagues, havoc to air travel, nausea to music lovers, etc.  Hearing it reminds me again why I listen to public radio.

Yesterday I spotted an ad for a $59 table saw at Lowe's.  I had to go to the Lowe's site to determine the brand.  Tradesman?  What's sort of brand was a Tradesman?

I wasn't the only one.  A quick web search turned up "Tradesman Table saw, junk, or worth $60? on lumberjocks.com.  The considered opinion that it was better to save your money for a better quality saw.  If you were really strapped for cash go ahead, but be forewarned that the rip fence didn't align correctly.  (I wandered around the net looking at portable table saws, aftermarket rip fences, advice about blade alignment, etc.  One thing led to another. I strayed into mechanics tools, ratchets and things.  I kept reminding myself that I had purchased a set of screw drivers with interchangeable sockets and bits a few months before.  I'd even used them.)

Nevertheless, the ad stoked tool lust, was barely sated by ogling the tools in Sears.  I'd like to do building stuff with my hands. Uncertainty about impending changes in employment has me heading to the economic mattresses, cautious about buying anything.

For the time being I'll just look and struggle with the conflicting desire to stay employed and having all the time I want to do whatever I want to do.

Black Friday Ads: Norelco Sensotouch

Thumbing through a Bed Bath and Beyond circular I spotted -  what the bleep was it?  A shaver with design award ambitions.  Then the price hit me.  $279.99!!

The Norelco Sensotouch Ultra 3D Deluxe Edition Electric Razor (to give its full name) may be filling a niche far beyond my ken: Masters of the Universe who need another overpriced article in their bathroom cabinet.

OK, I admit to leading a sheltered existence.  Minimal TV and public radio stations have shielded me from a lot of the hucksterism.  I get to see ads in the NY Times and learn about products primarily through its business section so I missed the introduction this past July.

A quick search of the web turned up a lot of laudatory reviews, but nothing ecstatic enough to make me even consider shaving again.

Tattoo Shirts Who Knew?

One of our profs kindly consented to create a video describing how she uses Twitter to keep connected to and motivate students in her classes.  During the initial e-mail discussions as to where and when, she jokingly asked for makeup and hair stylists.  I said sure and, knowing that she had some tattoos, I said I'd throw in a free tattoo.

I was thinking more along the lines of press-on/washable tattoos.  But as with almost everything else these days I turned to the web and turned up bewild.com (http://www.bewild.com/fubotashtacl.html) with "full body tattoo shirts".  Who knew?

I would have lucked out: the Womans Geisha Dragon Full Body Tattoo Shirt had just been reduced from $89 to $52. 

Of course, now that she's made the video I need to come up with something.  Instead of ordering over the web, I'll see if I can find something in a novelty or 5 and 10 cent store if they still exist.

What do you get a woman who's already got 5 or 6 tattoos?  Is this the same existential question as the perennial problem of getting something for someone who has everything?  (The answer to that problem is easy:  steal something from them and give it back.  Works every time.  My family's problem was slightly different.  My father would say that all he wanted to be left alone so we had to think of something for someone who didn't want anything.)

There's a post script to this.  I made the video on my own time.  The director, without asking permission from the prof linked to it from her blog.  Not polite in my estimation.  When I asked the prof about it, however, she said, sure, wasn't the whole world about her anyway.  (I'm always the last to know.)

Bleeping Power Company!

In the last few days we've had power surges and outages.  The toll so far:
2 TVs,
2 phone answering machines,
3 cable boxes,
1 cable modem,
1 vacuum cleaner,
1 computer (I think it's the power supply),
2 surge protectors,
and about 8 incandescent bulbs.

It is a "Gaslight" experience.  I'm in drag playing Ingrid Bergman with the power company playing Charles Boyer's part trying to drive me mad.  To drive home how apt the analogy is, consider this: we're the only house in the neighborhood having this problem.

If my mother were hooked to some medical apparatus we'd have been in deep doo-doo.

The next time someone refers to the web infrastructure as a utility just like phone and power I'll feel compelled to say something snarky.

Hey, I'm Sick

Last Thursday afternoon I left my breakfast in the wastebasket in the Computer Science lab.  It's been a long time since I had anything other than a cold or flu so this was a remarkable experience.  Perhaps most remarkable was that while I was heaving there were two students in the lab, so engrossed in their programming that they didn't notice.  (Perhaps that is so old fashioned.  More typical these days would be students engrossed by their smart phone.)

I still feel a little rocky, having difficulty swallowing, tightness in my chest, and an occasionally congealed feeling in my stomach.

It's unlikely that whatever it is will kill me, but it does lead to idle musing about something which seemed dismissible but wasn't.  I think of a former director's husband who had an annoying pain in his shoulder/back which turned out to be the first symptom of the cancer which killed him.

"The closest thing I have to vacation is sleep."

I ran up my sleep deficit a few days ago: staying up until 3 in the morning to get several teaching labs ready for the students.  I had help: my main squeeze and a guy from the Systems group who saved me from myself.  Both stayed until 3 AM.  I was back to teach a class at 9:05 that morning, tasting the fruits of my labor (I taught in one of the labs I set up), put in a regular day, staggered home about 8 PM and into my sleepers before 10 PM.

Now, a few days later, I chanced across an article about entrepeneurs ("Some Business Skills to Go With the Passion", NY Times, F6, August 26, 2010) in which Ms Saudia Davis who started an environmentally friendly cleaning service is quoted: "The closest thing I have to vacation is sleep."

I understand the sentiment.