The Markives for 02014
18 December 02014: Buddy The Elf--What's Your Favorite Color?
17 December 02014 (Happy birthday!): On Very Small Fractions
So the third (and final, until someone comes up
with a new way to milk Middle Earth for more money*)
Hobbit
film was released yesterday. Here's my question:
What fraction of people attending the movie
this opening week have not read
the book?
I like to use the words "homeopathic
fraction" to describe very small percentages, and I suspect
that this setting may be perfectly suited for that
description.
Perhaps if the numbers were broken down along the male/female
axis, we would have a different and tinier very small
proportion.
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*--This
looks promising.
10 December 02014:
ACME-11--Or, A Very Markives Christmas, Volume 5
One thing that hits me each year as I start
assembling this alternate playlist is "Where am I going to find
10 (ish) more overlooked holiday tunes that are actually
good
as I define the term?". It turns out that it's not much of
a chore, just a matter of paying attention and looking under a
metaphorical rock or two. There's a lot of good holiday
music away from what lands on ACATT radio, and it's a very minor
tragedy that the programmers at those stations don't expend the
effort to find it.
I do what I can. Enjoy this year's tunes.
1.
Hanukkah
In Santa Monica, Tom Lehrer. We start off the
02014 alternate holiday soundtrack with a
more-obscure-that-it-deserves-to-be tune from what might, in
mainstream America, be called an alternative holiday. The
committed wordplay that rhymes "Shavuos" with "East St. Louis"
here is criminally unrecognized.
2.
Fa La
La, Elizabeth Chan. Ms. Chan has taken on writing
Christmas songs as a full-time obsession, and claims to have
written over 300 original holiday tunes. It's nearly
axiomatic that at least one of those would be good, and so we
have here "Fa La La". There's an extended Hanukkah
reference in here as well, which provides a nice connection to
#1 and the rest of the late December holidays.
It's also nearly axiomatic that at least one of those songs
would be awful. "Vixen"
fits that bill, perhaps in the "so bad, it's almost good"
department. While clearly not safe for work or for small
children*, the sheer audacity of lines like "I want a map to
Santa's lap" is close to amusing.
3. Text Me Merry
Christmas, Straight No Chaser featuring Kristen Bell.
Here's what I said about this tune when I first discovered it
via a Beth Cochran Facebook post last month:
Excellent! This is far far better than
the Nth remake of "The Little Drummer Boy" or other Xmas
catastrophes of earlier generations.
I stand by every word of that comment.
Every.
Word.
4.
Christmas
In Nebraska, Mulberry Lane. Continuing the holiday
travelogue subseries (Caribbean, California, Las Vegas, Heaven,
Ground Zero[?]) here. I've never been to Nebraska, but I
respect home-state loyalty as much as most, and this sisters'
group named after the street where they grew up has recorded a
decent-enough argument for the Cornhusker State. There's
not a lot that's been written about Nebraska, so this should
make most short lists of the finest tunes referencing that chunk
of the Midwest.
Right behind
"I Look In
Your Face...And I See Omaha", of course.
5.
Alan
Parsons In A Winter Wonderland, Grandaddy. I
am a big fan of Alan Parsons' work, both as a producer and
engineer and as a performer with and without the Project.
Even without that predilection to enjoy something like this, I
think I'd've found this another Christmas comedy classic.
Why Parsons? It's not immediately clear from the
lyrics--but when the song doubles down on the title character
with the lines "In the meadow we can build a snowman/And pretend
that he is Alan Parsons", the song's true comedic genius is
revealed much more clearly. This could, of course, also
work with other semi-celebrities with four-syllable
names--Robert Mitchum, say, or perhaps Kathy Griffin.
The original "WW" (like "Jingle Bells", "It's A Marshmallow
World", and "Let It Snow", among others) isn't a Christmas tune,
nor does this parody mention 12/25 explicitly. However,
since I take an expansive view of December music, this works for
me. Well done, Grandaddy.
6
. I
Found The Brains Of Santa Claus, Jason and
the Strap-Tones. This one is finally appearing on one of
these lists after being the last song cut in 02012 (a little too
comedy-heavy that year, I thought) and 02013 (13 songs was
enough). Silly in a good way.
Now...The juxtaposition between #6 and #7
constitutes approximately a 100% change in tone, but jarring
transitions are an essentially unavoidable component of
holiday radio as it's practiced in America these days.
7.
You Make
It Christmas, Betty Buckley. Here's a holiday
song,
01930's in tone,
01990's in pedigree, from
Remember WENN,
the TV show that I would argue started AMC's transition away
from its declared classic film niche. The channel was eventually
targeted by a lawsuit in New York (
The Markives, 9-10 August 02005)
challenging their commitment to truth in advertising, although
it was less
WENN and more the Three Stooges that
prompted that action. In addition, there are the tips o'
hats to other holidays that I so respect when picking tunes for
this series.
8. Jingle
My Bells, The Boy Least Likely To. Each
December since I've started this thing of alternate holiday
playlists, it seems as though I find at least one new-to-me
holiday tune right after I post the year's list, and
so it was in 02013 with this one. The artist and title
leave one suspecting that this should be a novelty song, but
that's not really the case.
9. Merry
Christmas You Suckers, Paddy Roberts. This
one, on the other hand, is pure comedy. Props, too, for
rhyming "splendid" with "distended". In a very real
sense, this strikes me as a somewhat more accurate version of
the Markives-derided
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", right down to the
line "It may be your last", which was originally part of
"Merry Little" and is cut from most recorded versions.
10. Forever Christmas,
Afterglow. Afterglow is a Utah-based band, and I
first heard this song while driving between Las Vegas and Zion
National Park last December--again, not too long after ACME-10
went live. I haven't heard it since (okay, I haven't
tried too hard), but it stuck with me as another worthy entry
here.
Io Saturnalia!
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*--Seriously. Use considerable caution if
clicking through.
8 December 02014: The Bowl Picture
I am, as a general rule, not too invested in
the big Central Michigan-Western Michigan college rivalry.
Yes, I have a degree from one of those schools, and I live with
someone with a degree from the other one, but my primary
collegiate rooting allegiances are for my other
almae matres,
and so this doesn't have much day-to-day effect.*
However...
Check out this year's
college
football bowl schedule. On line 4, we find the
Famous
Idaho Potato Bowl, in Boise, ID: Western Michigan vs. Air
Force. On line 9, the
Popeyes
Bahamas Bowl, in Nassau, Bahamas: Central Michigan vs.
Western Kentucky.
Boise vs. the Bahamas. Western may have won the Michigan
Compass-Point University championship with wins over Central and
Eastern, but I think this counts as a win for Mount Pleasant over
Kalamazoo.
Fire up, Chips. And--what the heck?--go Broncos.
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*--That having been said, the CMU ornament sits higher on
our primary Christmas tree than the WMU ornament.
26 November 02014: Some Irreverent Pre-T'giving Thoughts On
America
That would be the country where more and more
people think "fair trial" means "trial where I agree with the
verdict". That, however, is not my topic for today.
I gave up on signing online petitions a while back, in no small
part because I didn't ever hear of one making a difference
anywhere that mattered. However, I still get about 10
solicitations a week to add my name to a list of folks who confuse
a few mouse clicks with actual civic engagement.
The one that motivated this entry came about a week ago.
Background: My reaction to all of the (manufactured and real)
outrage about the backward spread of the winter holiday shopping
season into Thanksgiving* typically includes the line "It's not
like shopping on Thanksgiving is mandatory." It could be
argued (although no one ever has to me) that this is a different
issue for retail workers. Fair enough.
Then an appeal e-arrived, asking me to sign on to this petition:
"Staying open on Thanksgiving Day is unfair
to your workers and is unlikely to be profitable.
We urge you to close your doors on Thanksgiving and allow your
employees to spend the holiday with their families."
I am agnostic on the truth of the first sentence; there's
surely evidence for both sides of that assertion, and that's
not my point. It's the odd fetishization of "time with
families" in sentence #2 that I find rather silly at this time
of year. If some retail employees wish not to spend time
with their families, are they not being defended here?
Who's to say that someone might not appreciate logging time at
work over being with relatives?
Some families are highly overrated--and contrary to what some
may think, holidays aren't all about family.
And to my relatives who will (or won't) see me tomorrow: This
is not about you. Although I reserve the right to change
that if things go badly.
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*--Also known as the holiday meal where the customary main
dish is turkey and none of the traditional desserts involve
chocolate, and thus a culinary disaster.
25 November 02014: On The Tuesday Before Thanksgiving, A Serving
Of Reason
John Oliver got this one right. Not the bit about the
Detroit Lions, though.
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23 November 02014: The Fact That An Argument Is Self-Serving Does
Not Make It Wrong
...but those features coincide once again.
In the news over the past couple of days was
this
report that 44% of 102 FBS college football coaches
responding in a recent survey favor an 8-team playoff, rather than
the 4-team version that has yet to make its first appearance.
I strongly suspect that many of these coaches (and the 23% who
have favored expansion to other numbers greater than 4) have
clauses in their contracts paying them a hefty bonus if their team
qualifies for the playoffs. With that in mind, it would be
interesting to discount their votes by that amount and see what
numbers emerge.
This would be easy: If your playoff bonus is $x, then your vote
counts for 1/(x+1). I doubt that you'd get much above 10
total votes with that system.
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21 November 02014 (19 years later): On The Morning After^17 The
Night Before*
I'm kind of amused at the emergence of
Elizabeth Warren as a star on the national political scene and a
potentially viable candidate for the presidency in 02016.
She's an undistinguished first-term US Senator. Have we
learned nothing from the last 6 years?
The same thing applies on the Republican side of things, with Ted
Cruz. While it's only a very remote possibility that those
are the major parties' Presidential nominees two years hence, the
notion that at least one half of that matchup is desired in some
circles is at once amusing and alarming.
In theory, that is--I can't say as I'm up late at night worrying
about it.
I'm up late many nights, but there are other causes.
Mountain Dew--but not the new Doritos-flavored catastrophe--for
one.
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*--Apologies to Shelley B.
12 November 02014: Pre-ACME
WNIC* has flipped to all-Christmas, and
Sirius/XM has launched its first two holiday music channels, so
the mind is oft drifting toward Christmas music.
What caught my attention recently is this
New
York Times article about radio stations and why they
do this so early.
In a word: Money.
But that obvious point aside, there's more interesting data to be
mined from that article. The featured station, WEZW in New
Jersey, reports a holiday playlist of just under 300 songs.
Rounding up to 300, that means they can run through the entire
list in about 25 hours.
Surely there's more acceptable holiday music than that. In
reviewing the past four years (40 tracks) of my alternate holiday
mixes, I have identified exactly 4 Xmas songs that one might
reasonably expect to hear on the radio. Of course, that was
the point of that ongoing exercise, but it doesn't change the fact
that 300 songs is incredibly limiting. It's also not
insignificant that I program a lot more comedy than commercial or
satellite radio do, but even dropping the funny stuff, that's 4
out of 24.
One of the artists featured on Volume 5 (due out next month)
claims to have written over 300 original Xmas tunes. You
could program
nothing but her music (except for one
notorious tune, which is not suitable for wide airplay) and have
the same repeat frequency.
Once again, we see humanity aiming low and settling for very
little. In light of today's
landing
of a space probe on a comet, this is perhaps more depressing
than usual. As a species, we're capable of great things like
that, and yet we artificially restrain ourselves far too often.
In the spirit of expansion, here's a link to one of the tunes
coming up next month; the first Hanukkah song to be so included:
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*--Given their recent kindness toward the Brennan subclan of
Clan Bollman, I'll cut them some slack on that this year.
6 November 02014: Aftermath
One thought keeps surfacing in my mind after Tuesday night's
political developments. From Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of
Distant Earth:
"Moses--you like power but not
responsibility. I enjoy both."
(Hey, anybody can quote Stan Lee on the
interrelationship between responsibility and power.)
I hear a lot of serious-sounding chatter about what certain
factions are going to do with their newly-acquired power, but I
hear only mandatory lip service being paid to the idea of
responsible leadership. Nothing that's being said is
moving my optimism needle off the zero mark.
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2 November 02014: Overheard Saturday
One thing about working on the chain gang at a football game is
that you get the full uncensored sounds of the sideline.
This is, of course, often not for ears with delicate
sensitivities, as one might expect when emotion runs high and
human error (real or imagined) is inevitable.
Case in point: During the third quarter of yesterday's Albion
game, one of the officials asked me if I though the visiting team
"[knew] any other words".
You can fill in the blank on their versatile* word of choice.
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*--It works as several parts of speech, although the primary use
yesterday was as an interjection and, in the gerund form, an
adjective.
29 October 02014: Overreacting, For The Fun Of It
(Caveat: It is certain that there will
be many changes in the four teams at the top of the College
Football Playoff poll before the games kick off in January*.
That having been said, some thoughts on the first week's
standings--which are likely to be very obsolete very fast--
follow.)
If yesterday's announcement of the College Football Playoff
standings is any indicator of the direction to be taken by the
selection committee, one unintended consequence of this new power
structure may well be the deterioration of big-time college
football to a purely regional sport, concentrated in the South but
largely ignored elsewhere in the country.
This is already the case with a lot of college sports: ice hockey
is almost entirely northern, water polo and volleyball have a
western bias, lacrosse and field hockey, though moving westward a
little**, are largely the domain of eastern schools, and baseball
has pretty much become the province of schools--to the south and
west--that can get outside in January without having to shovel the
basepaths. Will football be next? If the committee is
really serious about slotting three SEC teams into the top 4 at
this very early date, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of
college football's national reach***. Apparently the
assertion that conference championships will matter in the
selection process was just so much rhetorical Kool-Aid. At
least two of their top 4 won't even win their division, let alone
their conference.
Now is typically the time where SEC fans argue that you don't have
to be the best in your conference to be in the top 4 nationally,
and make reference to the fact that the NCAA basketball tournament
include conference non-winners. True--but there's no real
conceit that the basketball tournament has the best 68 teams in
the country. There would be no better way for this first
playoff to implode upon itself than if only one very small region
has any interest in the games. Especially if one or more
games is a rematch, and even more so if it's a rematch of a recent
game, as would be the case with the hypothetical
Mississippi-Mississippi State matchup.
I honestly suspect that this will work itself out over the next
few weeks, but it also seems to me that a lot of unnecessary
ranting§ (check the sporting press today; you'll find
it) could have been avoided if the rankings had been pushed back
even further. The basketball committees don't release early
versions of the March Madness brackets--this is a good thing
worthy of emulation.
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*--Indeed, since two of the teams face off this weekend, it
seems unlikely that this week's Top 4 will be next week's Top
4. But stranger things have happened.
**--This may or may not be because many college officials
believe--with some justification--that lacrosse players don't
need a lot of financial aid.
***--If this is prelude to the downsizing of D-I football
and the establishment of a meaningful professional minor league,
I'd not be against it.
§--Present work included.
2 October 02014: At The Start Of The Fourth
Quarter
Over the years, my email addresses have wound up in some unusual
places, which is no surprise. On September 30, as my own
personal commemoration of the end of the third quarter of 02014,
which many political operations saw fit to observe by sending out
fundraising email that grew increasingly more desperate as the day
ticked past, I unsubscribed from about 12 such solicitors.
In no small part, this is because my typical reaction to these
emails runs along the lines of "You're not doing anything to
advance [by my definition, of course] the state/country/planet
now. Why should I give you money?".
For some reason, this felt pretty good. Not having to endure
so much inbox clutter this morning was a nice side bonus.
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10 September 02014: Doubling Down On Christmas Creep
Seen a couple of nights ago on the Hallmark
Channel:
8 weeks until Countdown to Christmas
A countdown, to another countdown.
The mind reels, as if it ever stopped reeling.
I can appreciate that Hallmark has a greater stake in the
winter holidays than most other cable channels, but this is a
textbook example of "Where isn't the
joke?". I take some small measure of comfort in the fact
that it doesn't seem that radio stations are flipping to
all-Christmas just yet--although if there's a "Hallmark Radio"
on the FM band* affiliated with the greeting card folks, I
haven't looked into them.
(Full disclosure: I recently took my four past alternate
Christmas music playlists (from ACME's 7-10) and assembled a
flash drive with all 40 tunes in mp3 format, eventually also
to be burned to a CD. Aside from a pro forma
quality check, though, I haven't played any part of it
yet. Nor will I for quite some time. It was a
convenient time-killer and something I've been meaning to do
all year.)
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*--KHMK in Billings, Montana appears to be
immune. WHMK appears not to be in prominent use.
6 September 02014: Ten Years Before The Blog
It's been ten years today since The Markives and Monday Moanin' launched online. And
quite a decade it has been.
Happy Tennial!
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15 August 02004 + 10: There's No #3
At the risk of sounding more pedantic than
usual,
here's
a link to a New York
Times article debunking that
"celebrities die in threes" idea.
Not that this will convince the true believers, but I don't think
Lauren Bacall had been declared officially dead before people were
on Facebook speculating about who #3 would be.
On a similar note, it's been pointed out that with Ms. Bacall's
passing, every icon mentioned in Madonna's
Vogue has now
passed away. There are still several people left who were
name-checked in Billy Joel's
We Didn't Start The Fire,
though. Many of the folks mentioned in both songs were gone
before the songs were released, of course, but Doris Day appears
in the first line (corresponding roughly to 01946) of
WDSTF,
and she's still with us.
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24 July 02014 (Happy birthday!*): On The Order Of The Universe
We live, for this week at least, in a country
where
"Weird Al"
Yankovic has the
#1
album.
Independent of what this says about the ongoing fragmentation of
the music market (which several people seem a little obsessed
over, as though this is some mistake that will be corrected when
"proper" music returns to the top--which could be as early as next
week), this sounds like something that might be hidden in the
background of 02015 in
Back to
the Future Part II, along with
Jaws 19,
"Washington prepares for Queen Diana's visit", "Surf Vietnam" and
other nuggets of an imagined future.
Truth proves itself to be stranger than fiction yet again.
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*--And, also, Happy
Drink Watermelon Day. I didn't know about this one
until yesterday.
17 July 02014: Street Legal In Utah Once More
While I was shuttling folks around Kansas City
at this year's AP Calculus Reading, a couple of my friends who
teach in Utah were quick to point out that the expanding top crack
in my windshield meant that my car would fail Utah's required
annual car inspection. It hadn't really bothered me, since
it was on the passenger side of the car and thus not typically in
my field of vision--until its most recent creep past the rear-view
mirror.
That problem has been fixed, with a new windshield. Oddly,
my car was in Utah in 02010 (before either of the
cracks). It seems like I should take it back there now,
since I won't be a target for the authorities.
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11 July 02014: Discovery
This being 7/11, it's a good day for a Slurpee.
Perhaps even a kosher Slurpee, such as I recently learned are
available in one of the 7-11's in Oak Park, MI. No doubt
about it, Citizenship in the Community can be a fascinating merit
badge with a treasure trove of discoveries.
Which led to a mind-bending question last week, to wit: What
makes a standard Slurpee non-kosher?
This would probably depend on the flavor, of course, but Coca-Cola
uses glycerine as a preservative, and glycerine is often derived
from animal fat or soybeans. The former source would seem to
be the sticking point. We also discussed the possibility of
gelatin as a dietary deal-breaker, but that's probably not a
Slurpee ingredient all that often.
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8 July 02014 (Happy birthday!): Checking Back In
After a very successful week in the woods with
Blue Troop, I am back among the groves of academia, with a new
administration starting to move in, and flying solo while Laura
enjoys her own groves up at
Interlochen.
We caught the
Capitol Steps
in concert there last weekend, which makes 5 cities we've seen
them perform in. The others are Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo,
Midland, and Washington, DC.
The book had a brief post-camp jump into the top 100,000 over on
Amazon; it's now back down around 500,000 or so. Not bad for
a math book.
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23 June 02014: Summer Data
While watching the USA-Portugal soccer match
yesterday, I was amused by the announcers' reference to the
landmark "first-ever water break" called during the game.
They were good enough to inform the viewers that this option kicks
in after 30 minutes of either half, when the temperature is 89.6°
or higher.
89.6, of course, is the Fahrenheit equivalent of 32°
Celsius. It was nice of the broadcast team to perform the
conversion for American audiences, and while that latter number
sounds a lot less absurdly precise, I was amused at the notion
that setting that standard required a meeting--perhaps more than
one--and considerable discussion. The merits of 32 over 33
must have been an interesting interchange. 34 probably never
had a chance.
In other numbers, consider 407,224. That's how many AP
Calculus exams had to be scored this year last week. Where
they keep finding more and more students to take this test amazes
me.
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28 May 02014: Weekend Update
I spent some time this past weekend back at
Northwestern, at an
Integrated Science Program student-alumni networking event.
I was the only alumnus form the 01980's present, which led
eventually to the realization that I was the oldest person in the
room, in a reasonably large group of people, and by something of a
comfortable margin.
It's probably not the first time that's happened, but it's the
first time it's hit me that hard.
That having been said, it was an excellent event. It's nice
to spend time with people who think that high school and college
students should take challenging classes.
In other news:
Keith Olbermann strikes a blow for the true meaning of Memorial
Day here. I had been thinking earlier Monday that
something had been lost in recent years*, but I didn't figure that
too many people would be able to get away with pointing that out.
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*--Which, I suppose, is something that an old guy would
say.
10 May 02014 (T - 34): 3¢ Saved
As the countdown to Commencement, and thus the
start of college summer, enters its final hours here, I note
something amusing totally unrelated to that: For as long as I've
been teaching about money, I have found it necessary to make the
point with students that final answers involving American money*
should be rounded to two decimal places. (This is one place
where calculators aren't necessarily a good thing.)
Invariably, I will ask for the one place in common American living
where money is measured to 3 DP, and about 50% of the time, a
student will think of gas prices without my further prompting.
In my experience, that third place had always been a 9, at least
in America. Until last night. A late-night refueling
stop turned up a pump that was charging $3.756 per gallon. I
don't know why, but it was so unusual that I thought it worth
recording here. Over the fill-up, that saved me the $.03
mentioned in the title. I'll not be spending all of that
windfall in one place.
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*--This applies to other nationalities as well, of course,
but I don't have much need to teach about any currencies other
than the American dollar, Canadian dollar, and euro--and by the
time I get to the last two, I've already said my piece about two
decimal places.
7 May 02014 (T - 37): Looking Ahead
Around the world today, somewhere in the
general vicinity of 300,000 high school kids are taking one of the
[standard, non-alternate] AP Calculus exams.
Approximately 1-2% of them will find their work passing, however
briefly, across my temporary desk in Kansas City next month.
Coincidentally, my work out there starts one month from today.
Good luck, folks.
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4 May 02014 (T - 40): Dropping Like A Rock
I posted the cover art for the book over at
Facebook a while back, but in the interest of complete reach, here
it is again:
In further proof that Amazon's sales statistics don't mean much,
the book now ranks #2,952,797. I am hoping that that number
will improve once the book is actually, you know,
available
for sale.
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14 April 02014: Statistics In The Service Of...Something
The book's publication date is still set for June 13. (I
recently reviewed the back cover copy and sent along some
suggestions for the cover art.) If you check it out over at Amazon.com,
though, you will see that today it ranks #1,492,689 on their sales
chart.
Not bad, I suppose, for a book that doesn't really exist yet.
(A tip o' the visor to Steve from Allen Park, MI for alerting me
to this page.)
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13 April 02014 (Happy birthday!): Meaning of a Milestone
The Detroit Red Wings have made the NHL
playoffs again, for a 23rd straight season. This news* got
me thinking about the people on the planet who have never known a
world where the Wings missed the playoffs.
* The Gang of Eleven. An obvious choice, since the oldest
of my nephices is 16. On further reflection, though, it
occurred to me that Natalie has also never known a world where the
Tigers missed the MLB playoffs. Clearly, hers is a grand
existence.
* All of my current students. It helps that my
employer doesn't have a significant non-traditional student
population.
* Anyone not of legal drinking age in the USA. This
would apply even if the country wasn't wedded to its curious
non-constant notion of "age of maturity".
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*--It's not so much "news" anymore, of course. More
of a continued affirmation of the new normal.
4 April 02014: Catching Up With Life
A few updates:
1. Spring Break in Las Vegas with 6 college students went better
than I had any right to expect. Photos to follow.
2. The book continues to move forward. It went recently to a
proofreader, who discovered hundreds of errors--mostly involving
commas in big numbers or the proper length of a minus sign.
Easily enough fixed. Nonetheless, the text was described as
"stellar" from an editing perspective.
I'll take that. One wonders what a non-stellar editing job
would entail, though.
I reviewed some promotional material from the publisher today, so
the march toward a 13 June release seems on target.
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2 March 02014: More Moanin'
As a service*, I note here that
Monday Moanin' has resumed publication
after a 6+-year hiatus. Check out Dan's ambitions for his
fiftieth orbit at that link.
One thing he needs to take into account: Starting 1 July 02014,
his "Big Ten" lists will need 14 entries.
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*--Calling it a "public service" wildly overstates the
reach of this site. Calling it a "private
service" sounds vaguely disreputable (Yes, I'm slipping into
Vegas mode. The countdown clock on my desk is at 7 days,
10+ hours.).
24 February 02014: Olympic Wrap-Up
Jif from Livonia, MI sent me an email about the
latest
judging kerfuffle surrounding figure skating, and how it
supports my ongoing rant that figure skating (and other judged
exhibitions) is not a sport.
To the complainer in the article, I have just one question:
It was figure skating. What did you think
was going to happen?
I mean, this could not possibly have come as a surprise,
right? In your time in this activity, surely you were aware
that the final decisions on winners and losers are made, not by
pitting athlete against athlete, time, or distance, but by a panel
of humans.
Humans, who as a species have never been all that great about
purely objective judgment. Humans, each with their own
interests, preferences, and concerns.
Later in the article, the skater being quoted says this:
"They need to get rid of the anonymous
judging."
Off by only one word, Ashley.
M-->
18 February 02014 (End of Kiloweek 1): Not
Quite Kicking and Screaming
I am by no means a technophobe (the two bookcases of
calculators in my office should confirm that), but I am certainly
not an early adopter.
I get there eventually, but it's usually the result of external
forces doing something to push me over the edge.
Case in point 1: I got my first CD player in 01995, well after
that medium was well-established. It was a 24-disk changer
that I won in a trivia contest. It still runs, as does the
record player I bought the year before.
Case in point 2: I didn't subscribe to cable TV until 01997, when
I moved to a place where over-the-air reception was iffy at
best. I did have cable once or twice before that when it was
included with apartment rent, but I didn't seek it out until the
second Clinton administration.
And now, case in point 3: I finally broke down and got a cell
phone last weekend.
Not because I need it on a day-to-day basis, but because I'll be
traveling to Las Vegas next month with a group of 6
Math 287 students,
and this is something of a security tool for tracking 21-year-olds
across that city. Future value will certainly be determined,
but the universe forced my hand here.
For the record, my number
is in the 269 area code, as I
vowed it would be many years ago (
The Markives, 13 September 02007--I held
out a lot longer than I thought I would back then.) I have
an area code to myself among Clan Bollman again. Proper
family distance has been sort of restored.
M-->
16 February 02014: Something New (Nice to
know that the universe still has those)
I have certainly heard of, but have never been subject to
"boil water" advisories. New on my list of experiences is
the "run your water 24/7" advisory currently in place at the home
of
The Markives.
Here's what's going on: In an effort to cut down on the number of
pipes breaking around town,
word
has come down from Albion City Hall that we should all be
running our water, in at least a pencil-thin stream, around the
clock for about a month.
We've had some freezing pipes on Linden Ave., but nothing
broken--yet--so this directive is more amusing than anything else,
inasmuch as it's no real inconvenience. There's an agreement
that water bills for the next quarter will be adjusted to account
for this request, so this is probably not so much a civic
boondoggle. It should be interesting, though, to see if this
edict remains in force later this week when we might catch a
glimpse of temperatures in the 50's.
Then the problem will be more along the lines of "What are we
going to do with all of this water from the snow that's going to
melt?". Stay tuned for the possible return of the Flood
Watch.
M-->
9 February 02014: Two Disconnected Thoughts
1. Once again, Internet: I have no real
interest in what you were doing 50 years ago on any given day,
including but not limited to this one.
2. Olympic coverage notes: I heard something on the coverage of
the opening ceremonies on Friday night that made we wish I'd been
taping the broadcast so I could quickly confirm what I thought I'd
heard. During the Parade of Nations*, right before the
British Virgin Islands team came on camera, Matt Lauer tried to
make some reference to the ongoing camera activity in the stadium,
and actually used the word "flashcubes" to describe what was going
off.
Was this Lake Placid in 01980? Did I miss a planetary
time-warp? I'm definitely in the archaic/retro photography
crowd, and even I haven't used a flashcube (or flashbar) since,
oh, probably the 01980's. What's more, I suspect that Matt
hasn't, either.
Someone on the NBC writing staff is either playing the merry
prankster or really dropped the ball. I kind of hope it's
the former.
M-->
*--Which should be the focus of the ceremonies and should
be televised uninterrupted.
3 February 02014: Motivation
The Super Bowl is now over, and the sporting press appears in
the large, by my reading, to be somewhat disappointed that the
weather in New Jersey wasn't awful, which would have amplified
their demands for "only warm-weather Super Bowls", as with the
writer who believes that the SB should be on permanent rotation
among Miami, New Orleans, and San Diego--and nowhere else.
What I said in 02005 still holds: If I could look forward to an
employer-paid trip to the game each year, I too would be
advocating like this in my own self-interest and claiming that it
was for the good of the game. While it is true that an
argument that is self-serving is not automatically wrong, this
time those features coincide.
I'm not riding the "cold weather is part of the game" argument;
I'm with the "move the game around the country and spread the
wealth" crowd. While it's unlikely that the average citizen
of Chicagoland will be able to get into a hypothetical Soldier
Field Super Bowl, that shouldn't keep them shut out of the side
attractions that come with the game, nor should that region be
denied some of the economic activity that the Bowl brings.
That having been said, college football absolutely blew it when
the new playoff system didn't incorporate campus sites for the
first-round games. There is a case where taking the
game to the fans should have been regarded as an imperative.
That and I don't like the home-weather advantage that frequently
accrues to southern and Pacific Coast teams.
One more thing: If the NFL doesn't do the sensible thing and drop
the Roman numerals after Super Bowl L in 2016, then Super Bowl LV
really ought to be scheduled for Las Vegas. Let's have some
alphabetic fun with this archaic custom.
M-->
20 January 02014: Sports And Life Intersect
So the stage is set for a Seattle-Denver Super
Bowl. Get ready for two weeks of people quipping, in a
manner that suggests that they think they're the first ones to
discover this*, that the teams represent the two states
where marijuana laws have recently been relaxed.
(Disclaimer: I was rooting for both Denver and Seattle: the
Seahawks because they were playing a team from California and the
Broncos because their opponent was from Boston, home of the
current World Series champion.**)
I've heard the tired attempts to propose a humorous new name for
the game--Smoke-a-Bowl, Doobie Bowl, and the like--I'm done with
that. From a legal perspective, though, I'm watching this
development closely. I have long held that the USA presents
50 dreadfully underused laboratories for experimenting with
changes to how we do things as a nation, and this action in
Colorado and soon in Washington bears watching as a test case for
the rest of the country. There are other ideas worth testing
like this to assess their suitability for the entire country; I'd
like to see more of that happen.
M-->
*--I make no such claim; I've been reading about this
possibility here and there for about a week.
**--It may be more accurate to say that I was rooting
against the 49ers and Patriots.
8 January 02014: On Fifty Trips Around The
Sun
One common response to the news that one has hit 50 years on this
Earth is "It beats the alternative".
I heard that several times last week, and I can't argue with it.
However...A wise man once said to me (paraphrasing): "One of the
downsides of getting old is that you spend a lot more time in
funeral homes."
I cannot argue that either, but in addition, it cannot escape my
thoughts that in the past decade or so, I've spent way too much
time at memorials or funerals for people who won't ever make it to
50. There are a few others who've crossed my path less
directly--mostly students--whom I could add to that list.
And that, more than anything else, is the dark thought that's been
clouding my brain as Orbit 51 has kicked off. I can argue as
convincingly as anyone that base 10 is a historical and biological
accident, and that if we as a species had evolved with six fingers
on each hand, I'd've just turned 42 (or 62 if we were an
eight-fingered animal)--but I can't escape the shadows of those
who have gone before me and got less time than I've had.
Actuarially, given the number of people I've met in my life, 9 in
10 years may be about the right number; I don't know for
sure. It still feels like 9 kicks in the face.
M-->
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