25 years ago today, my perspective on "25 years ago" would have
landed me back in 01969, when I was in kindergarten. I don't
have any day-specific memories of 20 December 01969.
That has changed. 20 December 01994 turned out to be a very
good day.
M-->
18 December 02019* (Happy birthday yesterday!): An Irreverent
Thought** On The Rush Toward "Every Student A Coder"
Despite my background in computer programming
(7 languages, at last count), I am deeply skeptical of certain
corners of the educational establishment and their rush to embrace
"coding", nebulously defined if at all, as some sort of goal
toward which all students should be working. And that's
leaving out the notion that serious coding without a decent
foundation in algebra is nigh on impossible.***
Except...there's one place where more universal programming
experience could make daily life easier for all of us. If
programming were more universal, we might have more widespread
knowledge of the "exclusive or", written "xor", which is to say "A
or B, but not both". (Standard CS use of "or" means
"A and/or B", however redundant that might seem to some.)
And this would mean that we could rewrite some road signs as "Move
over xor slow down for stopped vehicles."
Because far too many drivers interpret "or" in that setting to be
the inclusive or, and do both. Most of the time, that is at
once unnecessary and frustrating.
I should note here that Illinois seems to have chosen "and" in
that setting. Fair enough if presented that way in advance,
if no less annoying.
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*--"Answer The Phone Like Buddy The Elf Day" has
come 'round again. What's your favorite color?
**--Like I have other kinds.
***--I feel similarly about the mad rush to statistics in some
high schools as an alternative to algebra, but that's a rant for
another day.
10 December 02019 (Happy birthday [L. = L]
yesterday!): ACME-16/AVMX-10--Another 10 Gestures, Or "I've been
at this for a decade? How did that happen?"
That asked, it's been a good year for finding holiday
comedy--about 50% of the mix this year, depending on how one
counts #8. So we'll start out with something else entirely.
1. Christmas
Night In Harlem, Raymond Scott Quintette. The
conductor/arranger of scads of cartoon music (check out "Powerhouse")
shifts his band toward the holidays. This is another
Christmas instrumental, so it's a matter of looking carefully for
where the holiday influence has been assembled. You may find
it necessary simply to trust the title.
2. Elf's
Lament, Barenaked Ladies. It's time for something
upbeat, and to clear the 11-month wait on the list for this
tune. As I've mentioned before, a lot of Christmas hymns
sound more like funeral marches than anything remotely
celebratory. The winter holidays are supposed to be at least
a little bit enjoyable. Of course, the point of this tune is
that the elves regard the holiday runup as somewhat less than
enjoyable, which is a perspective worth thinking about in a
hypothetical world where elves exist.
If it makes life easier for some elves, "naughty" sounds that much
more appealing.
3. Christmas
Eve Eve, Paul and Storm. Another song extolling
Christmas Adam and thus pushing the envelope on the duration of
the holiday season. (Where was this last year when I was
putting together a run of songs about the days leading right up to
Christmas?) The opening line of this song is "Today we sing
the praises of December 23rd", which one can only hope means that
there are 365 other songs out there in a similar vein.
Okay, so that's among the longer of shots. (Right down there
with the hope that Lou Gramm's 01987 song "Midnight Blue" was part
1 of a 64-part salute to Crayola crayons.) That said, I like
the fact that this song steals some of Good King Wenceslas'
too-long-held thunder by also noting that 26 December is the feast
of Stephen.
4. Santa
Claus' Party, Les Baxter. Here's one of the
customary throwback pieces. The much-derided-around-here
chorales might do well to sing this a bit more and "Sleigh Ride" a
bit less.
"Flying Saucer" by Dickie
Goodman was soon followed by "Santa and the Satellite".
"Monster Mash" by Bobby
"Boris" Pickett led to "Monster's Holiday" (as heard on AVMX-9).
The Royal Guardsmen followed
up "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" with "Snoopy's Christmas" (AVMX-2).
In short:
Novelty records from the 01950s and 01960s
frequently begat holiday-themed sequels.
So it is with this one. I haven't had any luck finding "An
Alley-Oop Christmas", or "Holidays At Camp Granada" (Allan
Sherman's "12 Days of Christmas" [AVMX-3] and "Christmas '65"
don't count here because they don't share the setting of "Hello
Muddah, Hello Faddah".), but it's not for lack of trying.
My dream here is that someone finds a reel of recording tape in
a closet somewhere on which Brian Hyland recorded "Itsy Bitsy
Teeny Weeny Velvet Fur-Lined Red Bikini".
One can wish--although, off on a tangent, we find that that
phrasing violates an odd
little grammar rule regarding the order of adjectives that
all English speakers apparently know, more or less by
osmosis. Here it is, from Mental Floss:
The correct order, according to this rule, would move "red" up
the list, and wouldn't scan as nicely (itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny
red velvet fur-lined bikini). But if that's the only
reason why that song doesn't exist, I'm prepared to grant a
waiver.
By the way, I submit that anyone talking about a lovely little
old rectangular green French silver whittling knife will sound
like a maniac regardless of the order of the adjectives.
Seriously, I am, in general, loath to consider products of American
Idol for inclusion here, which is why it's taken a few
years since this one's release to make it to AVMX.
However, as I'm known to like the color red, and have been
strongly in favor of new songs coming into the Christmas canon,
it seems right to recognize this attempt and move it off the
waiting list. It's not like it's burning up the airwaves
or the I'net with repeated play or a string of remakes.
Moreover, there's nothing out there that captures the element of
"risk" in the winter holidays nearly as well as this one
does. And that's important.
7. Waffle
House Christmas, Bill Anderson. Back to the
pattern in #5: There may be no "Pac-Man Christmas" in part
because Buckner & Garcia were busy producing the Waffle
House Christmas album from which this is taken.* This
album also includes what I consider to be a misguided WH-centric
version of "The 12 Days of Christmas", to wit: Waffles are
assigned the #2 slot on the countdown ("2 waffles baking"),
which is just wrong.
#1, as in "And a waffle with butter and
syrup"? That would work.
#5, to take advantage of the buildup to that
slot and the increased emphasis when sung, like "5 gol-den
waffles!"? Sure.
"Waffle" is in the name of the franchise, and so
deserves to be right up front or at the point of highest
emphasis in the list. That, and "A bowl of delicious hot
grits" is a massive letdown in position 1.
Back to the recording studio, folks.
8. Secret
Santa, Ana Gasteyer & Maya Rudolph. New in
02019 is this post-Saturday Night Live
collaboration. Clever wordplay, plus, as a bonus, one
cannot fail to be impressed with Sugar and Booze as an
album title.
9. That's
What's Wrong With Christmas, Bill Engvall. Country
(ish), blues, comedy, and Christmas. It seems like it
might be challenging to hit the quadruple intersection of all 4
of those musical sets (region ABCD in the diagram below).
And yet Engvall has done it. I'd hazard a guess
that that section of the Venn diagram is not crowded, but
this song shows that it's not empty, either.
10. Cathedral
Bells Are Ringing, Frank Mills. As we opened
with an instrumental piece, so too do we close that way.
(This is the 8th holiday instrumental in the AVMX collection so
far.) The man behind "Music Box Dancer"** turns toward the
winter holidays. This one doesn't bury the holiday
connection quite so deep as in #1. Just in case you don't
go in for thinking too much about holiday music.
For me, that ship*** sailed long ago. And so we reach song
#100.
Io Saturnalia!
M-->
*--There's a Pac-Man Christmas album,. but it's a
kids' record and shows no signs of B&G's participation.
**--Fun fact: Mills' tune "Peter Piper" (the
B-side of my copy of MBD) was the theme song for my comedy radio
show at WJJX-AM in Ann Arbor, the Late Night Laugh Attack.
Which was renamed the Tuesday Night Laugh Attack when the
semester and my air shift changed.
***--Possibly three ships, it being
Christmastime.
7 December 02019: A Moment Of False (Comfort and) Joy
While out at lunch today with Laurie and the Albion College math
team, I noticed that the piped-in music was the songs of the
season.
A touch early for my tastes, but not out of bounds in any
meaningful sense.
Things got good when we heard, in quick succession, "`Zat You,
Santa Claus?", "It's A Marshmallow World", and "The Man With The
Bag", all AVMX entries not commonly played in public. Plus
"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer", which is ineligible for AVMX
consideration due to not being obscure. That said, it was
nice to hear comedy among holiday tunes. An excellent
soundtrack for an excellent meal.
As the universe giveth, so too does it take away...Also in that
mix was a non-canon version* of "The Little Drummer Boy", which
knocked me out of the Challenge
far too early this year. May the rest of you fare better.
M-->
*--I don't know who the artist was, but it was
neither the Harry Simeone Chorale nor Bing Crosby with David
Bowie, the two acts who comprise the LDB canon.
1 December 02019 (Happy birthday!): Make
That 2232
While traveling the byways around Madison, WI last Wednesday, I
frequently saw this message on the overhead boards:
You Are Not A Turkey
Don't Drive Basted
"Basted" as a synonym for "drunk"?
I'd not heard that one before. And I have a 01982 book,
Words, by Paul Dickson, which has a 50-page chapter
including 2231 synonyms for "soused", to quote the chapter
title--but not that.
So the count goes up by 1, even as I still wait to hear my
favorite such synonym, "Got his snowsuit on and heading north"
in the wild.
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21 November 02019 (24 years later): Today's News That Has Nothing
to Do With Politics
On some level, this is because rectangles can't exist on a
positively curved surface* like Earth. On a better level, it
seems that Colorado has--wait for it--697 sides.**
That makes it a (deep breath) hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.
Back in the day, this word is something that would have meant a lot
to me. That hasn't changed a lot, although I'm less sure about
the "enneacontakai" part. Seems like "nonadeca" would work
just as well.
Some creative cartographer should put out a copyright
trap map in which Colorado has 700 sides, which would be a
less silly-looking name (heptahectagon).
M-->
*--Quadrilaterals on a sphere must have angle sum greater than 360
degrees, hence no rectangles.
**--Wyoming's not much better.
15 November 02019 (Happy birthday!): Prologue To ACME-16/AVMX-10
As we move along the runup to this year's list
of undeservedly underplayed holiday music, I have found that
there's a limit to how much time I can listen to online or
satellite radio* in November, hoping for inspiration among the
array of pointless remakes and the genuinely not obscure.
That limit is not far removed from zero. One can probably
see zero from where the line is drawn.
That being so, I've resorted to casting about on the I'net in
search of lists of overlooked, obscure, or other synonyms for
underappreciated, tunes. And that leads to a question: How
many of those lists can a song appear on before it is no longer an
"under the radar" song?
There are two songs that seem to show up a lot on these
cyberwanderings: "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues featuring
Kirsty McColl, and "Christmas In Hollis" by Run-DMC. As I am
not a terribly big fan of either song, there's no risk of them
appearing in AVMX-10 next month, but as there are no standards for
"underrecognized" (the term I tend to use to myself when pulling
these lists together), this pretty much has to be one of those "I
know it when I see it" kind of things.
For these tunes, I know it. I see it. And they're not
what I'm looking for.
And so the search continues.
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*--Terrestrial radio out near the home of The Markives hasn't made
the way-too-early leap yet.
14 November 02019 (Happy birthday tomorrow!): I'll Take
"Governors" for $2000, Alex
Alex Trebek: "As of today, the only living former governor of
Massachusetts who has not run for U.S. President."
Me: "Who is Jane Swift?"
Alex: "Correct!"
End scene.
There are a couple of amusing lower-level factoids here:
1. That list of Presidential candidates includes Michael Dukakis,
William Weld, Mitt Romney, and now Deval Patrick.
2. So far, none of them won.
3. Point #2 is unlikely to be any different come 4 November 02020.
Nonetheless, this caught my eye as something vaguely interesting.
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10 November 02019 (Happy anniversary!):
First A Dirty Thermostat, Now This
The list of things that can go wrong with a car that I never
considered went up by one yesterday, when I was told that my car
has 20 (a full complement, that) swollen lug nuts.
Swollen lug nuts. (It's worth repeating.)
Apparently this is a consequence of the triumph of form over
function--in an effort to make sure that the lug nuts look good,
they're susceptible to damage (of sorts) from water freezing and
thawing. Right now, mine are running just a touch on the
large side, which only matters for the moment if I get a flat tire
and then try to use the factory-issued lug wrench to take the tire
off.
The cure is, of course, to replace the nuts with something more
functional and less decorative. These are cheaper on Amazon
than at my local Ford dealer--as the technician was quick to tell
me--and if I procure 20 new nuts and bring them in at the time of
my next oil change, I can get them installed for free.
On the scale of car troubles, this comes in at "barely noticeable
unless I get a flat tire... and then I'll have bigger problems".
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4 November 02019: One Final Thought On The Time Change
I will say this: It's kind of nice that my perpetual
calendar and my primary hourglass didn't need to be adjusted for the
retreat from DST.
That made two timekeepers in my office that didn't require any
attention yesterday.
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2 November 02019: It's Time...Or Perhaps It Will Be In An Hour
While navigating in and around the clickbait
on the I'net commenting about the return to standard time
tomorrow, one suspects that the complaining has increased this
year over last.
Again.
What I find amusing this time around is the seemingly increasing
number of states vowing to take matters into their own hands and
opt out of DST, either by permanently giving up an hour and
staying ahead all year or by refusing to spring forward at some
point. There's no shortage of online petitions demanding
that something be done about this, but I find myself in the "there
are bigger problems to worry about" camp on this issue. That
plus I have yet to see an online petition accomplish anything
meaningful.
That said, the part of me that is known to fall in with the "I'd
like to see something bizarre happen" crowd is vaguely amused by
how the national time zone map might break up if this caught on
unevenly. It'd almost be like abandoning the progress made
way back when by establishing uniform national and worldwide time
zones. Driving across America might be an ongoing exercise
in not knowing what time it is. Airline schedules could get
rather messy in short order. Of course, many people would
not care about that, nor are the proponents of this kind of
patchwork-quilt approach to time thinking far beyond their own
narrow concerns.
One step forward in the spring, two (maybe more) steps back in the
fall. Welcome to America in 02019.
In a completely unrelated pop-culture contribution to a different
sort of clock changes, and in an effort to inject some levity into
this by laughing with something rather than at something else,
here's Allan Sherman:
That would be WDZH (unexpected) and WNIC
(expected), but it's odd that the news reached me from west of
Los Angeles. Admittedly, it's a redirect from the Free
Press, but I didn't see this when I checked in on freep.com this morning.
...before our minds turn to half-price candy
and ACATT radio, which starts tomorrow
via satellite*, and not long thereafter on terrestrial radio.
1. When did "Trunk or Treat" become such a big deal?
I know it's been going on on a small scale for quite some time
now, but it seems to have jumped massively this year.
Possibly this is a substitute for actual door-to-door
trick-or-treating?
Of course, if I were to drive somewhere and join in the fun, my
Halloween record suggests that no one would come to my car.
2. On another note: I told several people Tuesday evening that,
although my rooting algorithm directed me to root for Washington
over Houston in the World Series (Rule #2: If no California teams
are involved, root against the team from the warmer city.), I
couldn't really bring myself to cheer all that actively for either
team. My reasons were affirmed
by the Free Press this morning. Way too many former
Tigers pitchers on those two teams.
Ouch.
3. This I rather like:
Halloween combines the two things we fear
most in America today—kids actually leaving the house, and
food other than hummus and baby carrots being fed to them.
*--13 Xmas channels, plus one each for Hanukkah
and New Year's Eve. This whole enterprise is getting
bigger this year.
27 October 02019*: Anger Turned Inward
One can learn a lot by standing on a football
sideline in the rain for 3 hours. Who knew? Things I picked
up yesterday:
A player can draw a penalty for continuing to engage in play
after his helmet comes off. This is something I might
have guessed.
A common offsetting penalty might be called if an opponent
is involved in that continued engagement. This makes a
lot of sense, but I'd not seen it happen before yesterday,
when the game sort of appeared to shift from football to
wrestling.
It turns out that there are circumstances where the fans and
players will turn their anger from the officials and toward
the coaching staff. One of those unfolded yesterday when
the visiting team had only 10 (defensive) players on the field
as a play approached. The officials were yelling that
information at the coach. The players then took to
yelling toward the bench. No eleventh player emerged,
nor was a timeout called. After the play, the fans
picked up on what was going on and started taking some shots
at the coaches. In my limited experience, this change of
villain doesn't happen very often.
M-->
*--Yesterday, Michigan beat Notre Dame
45-14. (Really, of course, that's 6½-2, but never mind
that now.) It will be interesting to see what Sports
Illustrated decides is more cover-worthy this bi-week,
especially since it's possible that the World Series won't be
done in time for this week's deadline. Before its
current decline, SI had established a pretty good
pattern: ND wins over UM frequently made the cover; UM wins
almost never did.
2 October 02019: Scorekeeping
It was once said that "Newspapers are the first
draft of history". With the move of much journalism online,
this accurate adage may need a bit of adjustment. Herewith
is a preliminary report on my meager attempts to validate that
maxim.
In the runup to the 02016 Presidential election, I found myself
frequently musing on the divisive nature of domestic politics, and
by extension, life in the USA, here in the first quarter of the
21st century.
This, of course, is about as far from unique as one can get.
I then set out to keep track of this new version of normal, by
setting up an email folder and storing news-related emails that,
by portraying the increased incivility from all sides that seems
to have been ramped up since sometime in 02016, capture a record
of what we've been as a country since then. Since I receive
newsy email from a lot of sources, I tried to reflect the flood of
email fairly by only saving one email per affront.
But I never checked the folder to see how it was filling up.
Until today. There've been a lot of additions in the past
week, and so I took a look to see how much email is in that
particular archive. My guess, based on nothing, was "about
1100".
Nope. 1641 emails all together.
In a period of just under 3 years. Even with unavoidable
(but, it is hoped, minimal) duplication, that's a stunningly large
number.
Whether it's accurate, or whether it represents a momentary blip
in our history or a disturbing new normal, remain to be
seen. But I find the data oddly interesting.
M-->
18 September 02019: The Universe Still Has New Things
I have, in my time, seen a lot of football
games, both in person and on television. And while I
recognize that, especially at lower levels, one might see a bumpy
performance in a team's first game of the season, rustiness
doesn't account for something I saw in my employer's team's season
opener.
Four unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.
On the same play.
Two of them on the same player.
That was just the tip of the bad behavior iceberg, as there were
many unsportsmanlike conduct penalties called--though not always
accepted--on both sides of the ball. I was, as is my nature,
on the visitors' sideline, and there didn't seem to be much
reaction from the coaches. While I don't know what the
climate was on the other side, I was later told by one of the
players that there was "lots of running" at the following Monday's
practice.
We'll see if that had any effect this weekend.
M-->
30 August 02019: Back From The End Of The Road
Okay, I'm back. It's been a busy 5.5ish
weeks, which included a lot of travel and a server upgrade that
took this site down for a few days.
Observation: To a first approximation*, about 85% of the
tourist district of Key West, Florida can be summed up by the
following two icons:
To the left, we have mile marker 0 on US Route
1, the southern end of the line of a highway that runs up to
Fort Kent, Maine. I don't know if Fort Kent makes as big a
deal over its end of the road as Key West does, but I plan to get
up there sometime and check it out. The I'net seems to show
that there's a nice monument to the north.
Over on the right is the marker at the southernmost point in the
continental USA, at which one is closer to Havana, Cuba than to a
Wal-Mart. There's something about that comparison that I
find just...right. During the day, the line to take pictures
at this point was frequently quite long, on a par with the
lines at the "Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas" sign in Nevada.
One sees reproductions of these artifacts all over the primary
tourist district, as might well be fitting. Strangely,
though, when Laurie and I were looking for a Christmas tree
ornament to mark this trip, neither of these particularly struck
us as the right souvenir. I have a replica of the
southernmost marker on my desk, and we both went the Mile 0 way
with our customary pins, but somehow that just seemed like enough.
M-->
*--Being a little more inclined than many to dig beyond the
surface when traveling, I have a couple hundred photos of other
things.
22 July 02019: A Different Memo To The Internet
I was expecting to have to issue my typical "I
have no interest in what you were doing 50 years ago..." memo in
and around 20 July and the moon landing anniversary, but wound up
not doing so, for a couple of reasons:
1. That practice didn't seem as widespread or as self-centered as
it was the last couple of times. (Disclaimer: While I am
told that I watched the festivities live in 01969, I have no
memory of that, so I don't think that this is just a case of me
getting to play this time.)
2. There's a bigger issue afoot, and so I have this message:
"Equal time for opposing points of view",
while it may be a noble principle, need not be extended to
fringe opinions unsupported by evidence. This includes but is certainly not limited to moon
landing denialists.
The full sentence I'm quoting above
includes something about responsible spokespersons for those
opposing points of view. Moon landing denialists fall
outside that label.
I found it vaguely infuriating how much time, pixels, and
bandwidth were invested over the last week or so on the
denialist point of view.
M-->
15 July 02019: Perhaps There's A Lot Of Pumping In Space, But
Color Me Skeptical
TBS is
currently running a between-shows bumper that shows a young girl
building a cardboard model of a rocket.
Okay.
At some point in the construction, she is seen computing something
on an old-school LED calculator made by Texas Instruments.
Nice.
Careful observation and pausing reveals that she's using a Goulds
Pumpulator, a specialized calculator manufactured by TI with
a custom ROM chip to facilitate industrial pumping calculations.
One cannot help but wonder why. Surely the production team
could have tracked down a TI-30, which looks pretty much the same,
was for a while the best-selling calculator of all time, and is
very inexpensive on the secondhand market. That would have
made more sense.
Not that I don't appreciate the Easter egg, of course.
M-->
8 July 02019 (Happy birthday!): Insight Into
A Mystery
One of my occasional issues with some of my summer activities is
spending a lot of time "standing in line, wearing a nametag, to
eat institutional food". I can't say that I was ever sure
what my problem with that was. There's the obvious issue of
food quality on that scale, but it always seemed like I was
missing something.
Last week, one of the reasons for that low-intensity rant
crystallized in my mind: Institutional food--whether it be at
Caesars Palace, the Kansas City Convention Center, D-A Scout
Ranch, or the cafeteria at my employer (to name 4 extremely
nonrandom examples)--is seldom served appropriately hot. The
only significant exception came out of the self-serve toasters at
breakfast in KC. The downside there was the risk that a hot
bagel would melt the plastic plate.
It's nice to have a moment of clarity now and then.
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25 June 02019 (Happy Leon Day!): New Horizons In Recreational
Linguistics
I am as interested in the quirks of the English language as
anyone I know, but even I had never heard of "capitonyms" before
yesterday*.
For those not logologically inclined and not tuned in to John
Oliver, a capitonym is a word that changes its meaning when
capitalized. Oliver's example was "sherpa", but others abound,
as a quick I'net search will show. Usually, this happens when
the capital form becomes a proper noun, as with "polish", "arabic",
and--in a nice bonus--"mark".
For I am, after all, not an obsolete German currency unit.
M-->
*--A trait that probably applies to most of
us. My HTML editor refuses to recognize either "capitonym"
or "capitonyms" as a word. I have set it straight. (I
also had to add uncapitalized forms of "arabic" and "sherpa" to my
computer's internal dictionary.)
23 June 02019: Adventures In Pointless Metrology
On the long list of my quirks, one very minor*
one is this: On the drive to Kansas City for AP Calculus grading,
my car stereo is "all comedy, all the time".**
I'm not sure why I originally went that route, but it's an
established thing now.
Now: My quest to build a complete collection of Allan Sherman's
recorded works on compact disk has reached a point very near its
conclusion and stretches over 11 disks. There's a little
duplication here and there (mostly among his later underreleased
works that have only surfaced since the Overweight Sensation
biography was released in 02013), but this is about as ideal a
merger of complete and efficient as I'm likely to get for
awhile***.
On this trip, I decided to run the series in order. It turns
out that the drive from Kalamazoo to KC was almost completely
filled by that playlist. When I got to the end of Disk
Eleven, I was within the KC city limits and only 9 minutes' drive
from my hotel. So, we have a new measurement standard
Q: How far is it from Kalamazoo to Kansas
City?
A: Approximately all of Allan Sherman's
recorded works.
Perhaps I should have driven faster here and there.
Of course, it helped that Des Moines, IA provided very little
challenge to the transiting driver this year. I usually hit
that stretch of I-80 when it's slowed way down for no apparent
reason, or because it's been raining hard. Des Moines does
not drain well.
M-->
*--"Minor"
because this one only ever affects me.
**--For no apparent reason, this restriction does not apply on
the drive home.
***--There's some unreleased material out there from
an unfinished concept album based on golf, Hallowed Be Thy
Game, that A.S. was working on at the time of his 01973
death. Someday, perhaps some of that will hit the retail
market, but I'm not expecting that to happen without some
unusual trigger.
I'm a resident of Michigan's 3rd Congressional
District (which looks like a gerrymander* in 8-bit graphics, in my
opinion), and so Justin Amash's recent commentary on the actions
of the current President mattered ever so slightly more than they
might have if I wasn't.
These comments suggested one plausible reaction:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The challenge here is that I'm not a fan of either of the
principals involved here, and moving forward on this basis would
require aligning myself, at least in part, with one politician
with values that repel me. That led me to another
catchphrase:
A pox on both their houses.
That feels better.
M-->
*--Less egregious than some, perhaps, but it's
difficult to justify why Battle Creek and Grand Rapids need to
be in the same district, yet Kalamazoo--which would be a better
geographic match for both of them--is in a different one.
17 May 02019 (Happy birthday!): A Few Short Subjects On
A Busy-ish Day
1. Celebrity Deathwatch Revisited: Tim Conway: 8 emails, a touch
behind Doris Day. In the undercard, we have I.M. Pei 3, Grumpy
Cat 1, which seems closer to the right level of relative emphasis*,
although I was not aware that I.M. was still alive.
2. The Big Bang Theory ended its run last night with an
excellent two-part finale that will not be winning an Emile Arturi
Award**. A long-running thread was tied up nicely, there was
no universal closure imposed on top of it, and so the clunkiness
that the Emile recognizes was not present. The fact that Raj
had very little to do in the second episode pretty much clinched
an Emile-free existence for TBBT.
One thing that I would have liked to see, though, is one final
Richard Feynman reference. When he was awarded the physics
Nobel in 01965, he disliked the immediate publicity so much that
he looked into refusing the award, backing off when he came to
understand that he'd just be drawing more attention to himself if
he did that. That would have been a natural tie-in to
Sheldon's reaction to winning, and an appropriate final mention of
a physics giant who was favorably mentioned several times.
Oh, and it would have been nice to have one more appearance from
Laurie Metcalf. Ah well.
3. I have never watched either Veep or Game of Thrones,
and so will not be evaluating them for the Emiles. Given the
current level of outrage among 500,000 or so GoT fans with nothing better to
do who have signed an online petition demanding a rewrite of
this last season, it's quite clear that awarding that show an
Emile (even if deserved) would just be piling on.
Someday, TV viewers may come to realize that they are product, not
customers--but do not stand on one foot waiting for this to
happen.
M-->
*--To be fair, the right level of emphasis for the
death of a cat would be zero, but one must make accommodations
for the 21st century.
**--Not winning an Emile is a good thing.
13 May 02019*: One Year Later...
A new "gang o' 23" family picture now graces the main page, and
possibly also the clickable link back to it at the bottom of this
page.
Kudos to Emily for making sure that Henry looked at the camera, thus
fixing one of the identified issues with last year's version.
M-->
*--Celebrity Deathwatch: Doris
Day--11 emails. Not a bad count.
9 May 02019: An Unexplored Market (Probably For Good Reason)
Steve from Allen Park, MI sent an email along,
with some thoughts on the overwriting issues I mentioned three
days back*. He cites an example of a game writer (as opposed
to a "gaming writer"--this matters here) who went into
self-publishing by buying a company, after a book of his was split
into two parts by the publisher. His next book ran nearly
600 pages.
I'm not sure I want to go that route.
On the other hand, there is YouTube video of a sequence of tests
as to whether or not that book can stop a bullet.
The primary takeaway seems to be that getting shot would be a bad
thing, but some small-arms fire sticks in the book.
Do not try this at home with either of my books.
But if you must, I'd suggest the hardcover version of MKL**.
The difference between "no chance" for a paperback and "very small
chance" for a hardcover volume is not zero, but it's probably close
enough not to matter for a 300-page (ish) book.
M-->
*--I cut 60 pages last night, so I'm on track
through 23 June, which covers my upcoming Las Vegas and Kansas
City sojourns. Of course, time spent in Las Vegas runs a
risk of discovering new material and taking the page count the
other way. Also, there are casinos in, around, and on the
road to KC.
**--BGM:NBN has not been published in hardcover (at least
that's what my royalty statements say), despite what some Amazon
sellers might have you believe.
8 May 02019, 12:10 PM EDT: "Prince Jughead" Is Too Easy A Joke
I am in no way wishing ill on any member of the British royal
family, let alone on 7 of them at once.
But "King Archie" just sounds incredibly cool.
M-->
6 May 02019 (Happy birthday yesterday!): A Lot Of Virtual
Ctrl+Z-ing Awaits
In my limited experience writing books for
publication, it's been my approach to write a lot of material
before submitting a formal proposal to a publisher. I get a
sense that this is not the way that writers typically operate.
In the case of my first book, I set myself the goal of writing
1000 words per day throughout the summer of 02012. This was
primarily an exercise to see if I could actually write something
worth submitting for publication. I didn't have a publisher
or any real action plan in mind until an advertisement for CRC
Press landed in my email box in August.
Publishing BGM:NBN didn't stop my research, and by the
time I spun off MKL as a separate project from my
continued writing, it was necessarily a bigger chunk of material
than a book proposal might include. Fair enough. I
then submitted a standard short proposal to a special series on
statistics, which was rejected for having equations.
Nonetheless, the reviewers were good enough to pass the proposal
on to my editor, and eventually it was accepted for
publication. I had a really good jump on the material when
we signed the contract, but ultimately there wasn't a self-imposed
daily writing requirement.
During 02018, I returned to the leftover material from BGM:NBN
and hoped to refine it into a more complete volume (or two).
My goal last summer was to write 10 pages per week, with a couple
of weeks off for things like summer camp and vacation.
Mission accomplished, and my continuing work over the fall meant
that I had 419 pages of content (including bibliography and index)
when we signed a deal to publish Mathematics of Casino
Carnival Games next year.
Here's the funny part: MCCG is contracted at about 300
pages. While there's some flexibility on the final page
count, my goal for this summer will be to cut 10 pages per
week, in a sense undoing some of what I did last year. By
the end of the summer, the plan is that I should be down to 300,
which ought to set the stage for an autumn of refinement and some
additional research to fill in gaps or cover anything new and
mathematically interesting that comes along.
M-->
3 May 02019*: There When It Started
On one hand, you can't force traditions.
On the other, every great tradition was a new idea at some point.
Here at Albion, some of the powers that be are trying to start new
traditions related to the graduating class. I can't say as
I'm all that excited about what they have planned, but it's
interesting to see the beginning of a tradition.
If the "Last Walk Through Campus" as students (which needs a
better name--perhaps some alumni could buy the naming rights) is
still a thing a decade or so from now, I'll be able to say I was
nearby for the first one, which is not nothing.
If it flames out in supernova fashion after a year or two, having
been nearby this afternoon might still have some cachet.
It's sort of win-win from where I sit.
M-->
*--Celebrity Deathwatch--John Singleton: 7 emails. Peter
Mayhew: 6. One would think that Pete M., who passed away on
30 April, would have gotten more attention if he'd held off on
dying until tomorrow.
1 May 02019 (Hooray!): A Comparatively Uninspiring Summer Tour
College summer is, as I type this, less than 74
hours away, depending on how long the speakers go on
Saturday. Which causes the mind to turn, even more so, to my
plans for those sixteen weeks--which look kind of feeble, truth be
known.
Las Vegas. Kansas City. Cincinnati. Miami.
That reads more like half of a tier-2 sports league* than the
sites of an adventurous summer, but it's where I'll be spending
some significant chunks of time between 5 May and 26 August.
The biggest challenge might be stopping and starting the mail
again and again and again.
Only one of those is officially a vacation. The other three
are professional travel, although Laurie's going to come out and
join me for an extended weekend after one of the conferences.
This seems like an insignificant itinerary in large part because
most of my immediate colleagues are leaving the country for
extended periods of time before classes rev back up.
Someone, of course, needs to keep the lights on and justify the
air conditioning back in 49224.
28 April 02019: One More Comment On The Weather Of The First Third
Of 02019
In some parts, a rule of thumb regarding the
end of winter is "Don't put the snow shovel away until after Tax
Day,"--that is, 15 April. That's actually pretty reasonable
most of the time. Just not this year, except...
Here in the home of The
Markives, we note that city income taxes aren't due until
30 April--which is as good a reason as any not to get too bent out
of shape about yesterday's weather.
However...As much as I have a stake in really good weather for
Commencement, I admit that it would be entertaining to be outside
next Saturday afternoon and have snow fall on the assembled
graduates and their families.
M-->
11 April 02019 (Happy Fake Birthday!): Photo Op
There were so many copies of that black hole picture in my email
inbox yesterday that one might've thought a celebrity had died.
This is a much better reason for copious email. xkcd did it
best, in my opinion.
Just like the first photo of Pluto a couple years back, this one
will be in the textbooks for years to come, and we were there when
it first surfaced. It's kind of fun to be a witness to a good
version of history.
So Michigan State, 3-time conqueror of Michigan, is slated to play
Texas Tech, the most recent conqueror of Michigan, in the NCAA
semifinals this coming weekend.
I feel it safe to say that many U-M fans will be rooting for MSU to
avenge, on a very small state-loyal level, their loss. (This
could also be viewed as striking a blow for the Big Ten. Fair
enough.)
However, if the roles were swapped and Michigan was playing, say,
Duke in the Final Four, I don't think you'd see that level of
reverse support.
Make of that what you will. (For my own part, I'll root for
MSU any time they're not playing a team I care about more, which is
a short list.)
At the same time, I feel sure that headline writers in Lubbock, TX
are already crafting variations on "Texas Tech 2, State of Michigan
0". May those go unneeded.
M-->
17 March 02019: Happy Evacuation Day!
The Boston
version, not the New
York version (which is November 25).
Because if you're going to perform a little anthropological
shoplifting, 'tis better to steal from a city rather than an entire
country.
M-->
4 March 02019 (Happy birthweek!): Celebrity Deathwatch, Almost
Live
Tracking Luke Perry's* death via breaking news
email today was made more interesting by the fact that I was at my
desk during the deluge, and so could monitor the spread of the
news around the country.
At 12:59 PM EST, USA Today chimed in with the first
report. Over the next half hour, further reports came in
from Colorado Springs; NBC News; Houston; Omaha; Tulsa**;
Billings, MT; Elko, NV***; Orange County, CA; and Boston.
The New York Times checked in at the 31-minute mark,
bringing the total to 11, which is where it rests after an
hour. (Beyond that, is it really "breaking news"?
Discuss.)
Ted Lindsay, however, remains stuck on 0.
M-->
*--The actor, not the principal of the Battle Creek Area Mathematics and
Science Center, who's probably getting more attention than
he wants today.
**--Omaha and Tulsa are clearly run by the same
operation, as breaking news emails from those two cities often
arrive together.
***--Ditto Billings and Elko.
12 February 02019 (Happy Abe and Chuck's birthday!): AAFter The
Fact
I watched some of the Alliance of American Football's
debut weekend. While I've read a lot about the plans for the
AAF to be a "developmental league" for the NFL down the line, and
I think that such a league--diminishing the NFL's reliance on the
NCAA to provide free player development--would be a good idea, I
cannot escape the fact that my mind keeps playing with how to add
the AAF teams to the NFL, one to each division.
6 of the 8 teams are located in non-NFL cities. Since the
AAF is somewhat weather-sensitive, there are no locations that
could easily transition to the NFL's North divisions, but the two
teams that share NFL cities (Arizona and Atlanta) conveniently
have the worst nicknames*, which could be changed when the teams
are moved north. Shift one to St. Louis and the other to
London, thus launching the oft-talked-about overseas experiment
without having to vacate a market.
Then we could have the following divisional assignments:
Birmingham -> NFC South. Good regional
rivalries with Atlanta, Carolina, New Orleans, and Tampa Bay.
London -> AFC North, although I just know
that people are going to want London in a division with one of the
New York teams.
Memphis -> AFC South, as an in-state rival
for Tennessee.
Orlando -> AFC East, in the same division as
Miami. (Down the line, there should be some realignment [the
East divisions are both kind of a mess], but we'll wait until the
AAF is fully competitive.)
Salt Lake -> NFC West, more or less by
default. Fortunately, they fit geographically out there.
San Antonio -> NFC East. It's a
geographical anomaly, but they're in the same division with
Dallas, which softens the blow. Someday we can fix that.
San Diego -> AFC West. Send the LA
Chargers back down the Pacific coast once a year.
St. Louis -> NFC North. Probably the
closest fit to Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, and Minnesota. I
would listen to arguments for other close-by cities, but I'm not
sure what they'd be. Maybe Omaha? Maybe not Des
Moines?** This is another argument for realignment--move
Indianapolis to the NFC North, where it's a better fit, and then
there's an opening in the AFC South. Were I not inclined to
stay out of Canada--the informal NFL/CFL non-aggression pact
should be honored--I'd offer up Toronto here.
M-->
*--Although...On further review, and local color
aside, I'm not sure that "San Diego Fleet" works all that
well. A problem with collective nouns as singular
nicknames is that there's often no good way to refer to a single
team member. I mean, I'm pretty sure I heard an announcer
refer to the Fleet as the "Boats" on Saturday. Points for
trying, I suppose, but there's something very wrong about that.
**--There might be a case for a second team in Chicago.
That could be interesting.
3 February 02019, 01:00:01 PM EST: Yes, It
Was Cold Outside Last Week*. That's Not News.
As the term "polar vortex" slides into deserved obscurity for a
spell, our thoughts turn elsewhere. My default sports
rooting algorithm calls for me to root for New England over Los
Angeles in today's Super Bowl. (Rule #1: Root against the
team from California.)
While this is not the most pleasant of prospects, being as I am
not a huge fan of dynasties unless they're teams I care about,
there would be an extra bonus to the Patriots winning today: If
the Rams win, we're in for at least 6 months of whining from New
Orleans Saints fans.
Unless NE wins on a bad call by the officials--and then we'll be
in for 6 months of gloating from The Big Easy on top of the
braggadocio from the Northeast. Of course, if LA wins on
another blown call...well, the notion of all the Louisiana and
Massachusetts complaining is just too much to think about.
Pulling it all together makes it hard to pick a side if one is
thinking long-term.
M-->
*--Although there's been a small bright spot in
the subzero temperatures: My laptop has a malfunctioning cooling
fan which would cost more to repair than a new computer would
run. For a few days last week, our primary living room
functioned as a highly adequate heat sink for it.
28 January 02019: Up For Air
So winter weather has arrived in full force or
something close to it, and in and among the school closings and
other disruptions to daily life that we endure in a typical
Midwestern January, we hear about people "stocking up on bread and
milk" in anticipation of...something.
What they're not anticipating is a power failure, which strikes me
as suboptimal planning. All that stockpiled milk could meet
an inglorious end when the electricity goes off, as sometimes
happens in these conditions.
Better to stock up on less perishable supplies, I should
think. Tostitos and root beer, perhaps. Room
temperature root beer may usually be a bad idea, but if the
weather's this bad, there's frequently lots of natural ice to be
had.
M-->
2 January 02019 (Happy New Year!): One Step Forward, One Step
Back
The good stuff first: Here's how xkcd
welcomed the new year:
This I like. Very much.
On the other hand, my 31 December email included two news
updates (Quad Cities, IA/IL and Orange County, CA) telling of
something called "Noon Year's Eve". This appears to be a
celebration intended for small children that transposes the new
year from midnight to noon, so that...well, I don't know what
the point of this is.
If a child is old enough to grasp the point of a new year, s/he
is old enough to try to stay up until midnight. Many, of
course, will not succeed.
This strikes me as a solution to a problem that never really
existed. That having been said, this problem contains its
own solution. If this odd little excuse for a party were
to be linked to the local time when 50% of the world is in the
next year (which covers 1030 AM-130 PM on 31 December in the
continental USA), I could get behind it. Otherwise, no.
Click the photo to return to the
Bollman family main page.
The
opinions
expressed in this page/section are strictly those of the
page's author. The contents of this page have not been
reviewed or approved by Albion College.
The Markives for 02019
