The Markives
for 02006
18 December 02006: An Ingrate Speaks
Flush from being named Time magazine's Person of the Year*, I intend now to bite the hand that feeds me by tearing into their recent cover story on American education.
This mess masquerading as journalism commits a cardinal sin of the education reformistas in the second paragraph, and never really recovers:
Kids spend much of their day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers
lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed.
Whoever wrote this has clearly not been near a front-line education school recently. That sort of teaching is roundly and wrongly denigrated by all the recent advocates of education reform. The sin here: set up a straw man to attempt to justify your arguments. It doesn't matter whether you're telling the truth or not if it helps you sell your predetermined conclusion.
Because the fact of the matter (as I see it) is this: Kids need more of this traditional teaching and less touchy-feely-warm-and-fuzzy nonsense. This notion that "constructivist" education is what we should be striving for--that students learn best when they discover things for themselves and where the teacher isn't allowed to be an expert--should be laughed out of any discussion.
Here's another amusing and incorrect passage:
Kids need to learn how to leap across disciplines because that is how breakthroughs now come about. It's
interdisciplinary combinations--design and technology, mathematics and art--that produce YouTube and MySpace.
Leaving out the sheer nonsense of the notion that YouTube and MySpace are in any sense ultimate accomplishments, this misses the point. Interdisciplinary, as interpreted in many schools and programs, typically means "nondisciplinary"--that it's okay if students are not up to speed in traditional academic disciplines**, provided that they're being "interdisciplinary".
No, it isn't. You're in a position to do significant interdisciplinary work if, and only if, you're respectably grounded in the disciplines you're trying to integrate. Multidisciplinary, rather than nondisciplinary, if you will***.
There's also a push to make kids "conversant in different languages", which connects nicely to today's rant over in Monday Moanin' in a nice coincidence. While I am somewhat in support of this notion, once again, we seem to be sprinting before walking. I'm not averse to American students studying other languages, but it would be nice if they did a better job of mastering English first.
If my recent experience is any indicator, that's not happening.
This article also espouses a love of/lust for technology (first-graders using PowerPoint, for example--which is just wrong) that I find frightening. I agree that students need to learn how to access information electronically and how to recognize good and bad information. But to turn that into a screed that students don't need to know basic facts because they're readily Google-able is just another outgrowth of that warm-and-fuzzy stuff that I rail against, professionally, when I can. There are certain things that need to be memorized--multiplication tables come to mind immediately†--and it's not possible to focus on higher-order concepts (as some of these fuzzies would have us do) if the facts aren't in place first. Problem-solving is a useful skill. It doesn't exist in the absence of facts that can be brought to bear in the quest for a good solution.
The article attempts to address that by throwing in a paragraph or two trying to respect actual knowledge, but soon it's back to the lust for the new and untried and away from the principles that have survived the test of time. There's also the obligatory blather about "creativity" and how an obsession on reading and math in the light of the accountability of NCLB is stifling that. Let's be clear: Creativity is overrated. Excellence is underrated--frequently denigrated. And it's a lot easier to improvise the former, or to pick it up later in life. Lots of people study the arts and humanities, recreationally, in their adult lives.‡ Very few pick up a math book.
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*--Which was botched in the magazine printing process. Rather than throw a mirror-like substance on the cover, they should have just printed each subscriber's name in large letters on their copy. They did it many years ago when that sort of thing was a novelty--this would seem to be a better reason for doing so.
**--With rare exceptions, for example, attempts to combine mathematics and art invariably shortchange the mathematics.
***--To quote Rudolph Weingartner, former dean of Northwestern University's College of Arts and Sciences, who gave a talk on this subject in 01982. Said talk also included the immortal line "There is no B.S. in the College of Arts and Sciences.". He meant the degree, but the way he said it indicated that he relished the alternate interpretation. As do I.
†--The existence of powerful calculators designed for the elementary classroom does not eliminate the need for these facts to be on instant recall. Though I teach future elementary teachers with the TI-15 Explorer, I make that point abundantly clear every year.
‡--I, for example, am about to revisit a childhood obsession by reading a series of 22 biographies of US Presidents. (Why 22? Because that's all that have so far been written, as near as I can tell.)
7 December 02006: This Almost Never Happens...
...so it's
worth pointing it out when it does.
The Grammy Award nominees were announced today, and in the only category I care about, Best Comedy Recording, all five of the nominees are worthy.*
This is a category that took a rather serious hit with the advent of books on tape in the late 01980's/early 01990's, to the extent that one year, we were forced to believe that Andrew Dice Clay and Erma Bombeck had something in common as they faced off for the same award. Neither won--I believe that Peter Schickele was in the midst of his 4-year run then--but that's not the point. The fact of the matter is, since they let books-on-tape into the Grammys**, the comedy category has been diluted many years by something that's just massively out of place.*** When it morphed for a few years into "Best Spoken Comedy Album", the dilution was nearly complete (although George Carlin took home a couple of well-deserved statues for his books-on-tape). Fortunately, the field has recovered.
Well-played, Recording Academy.
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*--Bll
Engvall, Ron White, Jeff Foxworthy & Larry The Cable Guy [that's one
nominee]; Lewis Black;
George Carlin;
"Weird Al" Yankovic; and
Ron White flying solo.
**--I have no immediate objection to that--but they should have a separate
category. Better yet, do as has been done now and use the "Best Spoken
Word Recording" category.
***--Although Jon Stewart's win in
02004 for a recorded version of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Presents...America: A Citizen's Guide To Democracy Inaction wasn't a
disgrace and shouldn't have embarrassed anyone.
4 December 02006: A Thanksgiving Photo Op Perhaps Best Passed By
This just in from Monica 2:
At the sight of this picture, I can imagine John saying to Patrick, Kate and Emily: "Your relatives. Not mine."
Sarah will just have to live with it, though.
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3 December 02006: Two Words: Western Carolina
As much as I think it would be better for college football if Florida was selected to play Ohio State in the BCS title game, that FCD (formerly known as D I-AA) opponent is why Florida is not worthy of a shot at the championship. In the event of a tie or near-tie between championship game aspirants, the one that scheduled an opponent from a lower division must step aside. It was true with Auburn a couple of years ago; it remains true today.
Why would it nonetheless be better? Because then we'd have a Michigan-Southern California Rose Bowl, which, in addition to probably outshining the title matchup, would go a long way toward reversing the slide toward irrelevance that the BCS system has inflicted on every bowl game other than #1 vs. #2.
In the midst of last night's University of Florida love-in
college football wrapup show on
ESPN2,
one of the analysts (Kirk Herbstreit, I believe) exhorted poll voters who would
boost Florida over Michigan just because they didn't want to see a Michigan-Ohio
State rematch in Glendale, Arizona not to vote.
Excellent advice. Advice that won't be followed--not that that's news (The Markives, 22 March 02006). Certainly not by everyone. And if the immediate reactions on the I'net are anything to go by, not by many.
Now if we could figure out a way to exclude the boys from northern Indiana from the BCS lineup this year, things would be that much better. One solution would be to drop the rule that limits each conference to a maximum of two bids. Wisconsin at 11-1 is a far more worthy candidate than ND at 10-2. The BCS standings--and common sense--reflect this.
Since that's not possible, and since I'm pitching ideas that won't happen, here's one more way to deal with this South Bend intrusion: Arrange the BCS lineup so that they face Boise State. A good thrashing by a team from Idaho might be just the thing to point up how ND doesn't belong with college football's elite this season. Unfortunately, conference tie-ins won't allow that.
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1 December 02006: Third Annual Christmas Music Entry*
I hope that the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is enjoying their status as "Unofficial Movie Trailer Musicians Of Christmas", and cashing nice royalty checks. "A Mad Russian's Christmas" appears in the trailers for Santa Claus 3, Deck the Halls, and Unaccompanied Minors--and that's just this year. The song had multiple appearances last year as well.
I was planning to let WNIC off the hook this year, but then while typing the above paragraph, I got an email from them announcing their latest bad idea: the "kids only" Christmas request show. Every Sunday, evidently.
Blecch.
My sympathy goes out to the people answering the phones and to Kevin O'Neill, who has to play the tunes. There is, I'm sure, some small consolation in that "Do You Hear What I Hear" and its ilk (The Markives, 2 December 02004) won't be too common on that request line, but the man's ears are likely to start bleeding from the many times he'll be enduring "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas".
Which I like. When heard occasionally.
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*--Henceforth "ACME-3".
28 November 02006 (Happy 22nd!): Civilization IV And Its Discontents*
(Preamble: I began writing this entry on 10 September, ran aground, and was inspired to finish it by the recent release of Civilization Chronicles--the computer game equivalent of a musical box set, of all of the mainstream Civilization games.)
Dan mentioned, on his July trip to Michigan, that he is less-than-impressed with Sid Meier's Civilization IV and, indeed, still prefers to play Civ III. That got me thinking, for several months, about the various incarnations of the Civilization franchise and where the really good game elements are living.
The reality, at least to me, is this: While Civilization has certainly moved forward in its decade-plus of life, not every modification has improved the game. Let me begin by declaring my biases:
1. Multiplayer options neither impress nor affect me. I understand the appeal of a multiplayer game, but it's not something I personally play.
2. I tend to adopt a Swiss strategy** when playing games in the Civ series--to wit: Stay out of any wars or foreign entanglements as far as is possible, and push for scientific or diplomatic victory. Accordingly, anything that diminishes the value of that scheme relative to the "kill 'em all" strategy will meet with a bit of my wrath.
3. While I appreciate good graphics, they are no substitute for a sound game. In particular, I don't need to see close-up views of battles--though I don't turn away from the screen.
Taking the games in order: In the original Civ, one interesting feature was that, if you captured an enemy's capital city, the empire would be split† into loyalists and rebels, with a new civilization rising up from several of the old cities. That was kind of an exciting development, but it's not been retained down the line. I suppose there are game design issues related to the defense of the capital here. Nonetheless, I miss it.
Moving to Civilization II: The advisors' portrayal by live actors was a serious investment in bytes with this game and should have continued throughout the series. An Elvis impersonator is about the right degree of seriousness for the morale advisor of an intercontinental empire. Additionally, a military adviser saying "Let's go bonk some heads!" is at once amusing and surprisingly reflective of the current political and military situation.
I understand, at some level, why the Partisan unit didn't last past C2. From the point of view of realism, there was something not quite right there--but since it was one of the improvements I thought up while playing the original game***, I'm somewhat attached to it. Alien Crossfire improved on this idea by turning the alien "partisans" into colony pods--there's an idea in there, I'm sure of it.
The Wonder movies in C2 were excellent--more excellent that what passes for their return in C4. I'm not even sure if Mondrianesque scaffolding was available when the Pyramids were built.
The Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire project gave some attention to the future of civilization, but there's no denying that that pair was a different game--not just a tale of what happened to the spacecraft at the end of Civ. A better take on the next millennium was charted by Civilization: Call To Power--which is more or less neglected by many serious aficionados (and tragically omitted from Civilization Chronicles). Say what you will about the curious legal backstory that led to that game, but in it we saw serious treatment of cities in space and under the sea, for example, and the Sensorium may not now exist, but it's an interesting take on what might be. Someone at Activision was thinking about the future, and no one has picked that up and run with it in any serious way.
To Civilization III, where the list of good new ideas is long. One major one is the inclusion of cultural conversion of enemy cities--this is a serious advantage for the Swiss strategy. It's been nicely enhanced in C4 to include warnings of cities that are about to change hands, although I think the "a city that's been captured militarily will never revolt back to its original owner" rule is a bit heavy-handed. Something to think about for C5.
Another big improvement is the connection of trade to strategic or luxury resources. Unfortunately, this got tweaked badly in C4, where it's no longer possible to trade knowledge for resources. Since part of the Swiss strategy is to push for the lead in knowledge, this diminishes that advantage. Sid giveth, and Sid taketh away...
One thing that C3 got right and that wasn't promptly undone in C4 was the space race victory option. Specialized spacecraft parts make a lot of sense, and the end of the game arriving at launch rather than landing was the right way to go. That last 10 or so turns after launch in C2 were the very definition of dead time.
And another stroke for the Swiss in C3: the diplomatic option for victory through the United Nations. Anything that provides a nonviolent victory path will meet with my approval. It was nice to see C4 take some elements from Alpha Centauri and add other diplomatic voting options.
C4 probably did the right thing by making movement among railroads cost actual movement points, but the opportunity to upgrade to maglev trains or something similar was there, had been done in AC and CTP, and was left out. This was a step forward, to be sure, but not what it could have been.
On the other hand, the abolition of polluted squares (though not of pollution) in C4, and the concomitant elimination of the need for herds of workers tasked to do nothing else but clean up pollution, was a fine move. Speaking of workers, on the one hand, it's nice that they have so many other options in C4 for terrain improvement. However, their role is now so complicated that I usually assign about 1 to each city and let them auto-improve. Which may not have been the point of things like plantations and lumbermills.
In Civs 1,2, and 4, barbarians can capture and hold cities. In C3, they cannot. Advantage to all the non-III's.
Further commentary as it returns to the front of my mind.
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*--Apologies to Sigmund F.
**--While usually playing as the Canadians. I like the idea of Canada ruling the world.
***--Also engineers, archers, and airports--all of which also made it into C2.
†--Were I aiming for poetic language, I'd say "rent in twain". I'm not.
21 November 02006 (11 years later...): One Tiny Detail
I've recently developed a rather strong opinion on something that few people have ever cared about in recorded history*:
If you're running a TV show that has a countdown clock as a set design element**, someone in continuity
control should be making sure that it accurately depicts the passage of time through an episode.
I refer here to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which has in one character's office a large digital clock counting down the time until the next (live) episode airs. This was used to great effect in the second episode, when the end of the opening segment of the first post-meltdown show was followed by a look at the clock as it had recently reset.
As I watch the show, I find it amusing that they're not paying attention to the fact that the time jumps around as the clock shows up in the background of shots, thus denting, if not actually destroying (for the detail-obsessed) the continuity of the episode. Shooting TV shows out of sequence may be necessary and even desirable, but really, someone ought to be looking at this.
I feel the same way about the fact that last night's purported basketball game between Muncie State and Iowa A&M was still going on after midnight in the Central Time Zone (even in multiple overtimes), but it's just barely possible that those two schools*** were playing in something like the Maui Invitational or Top of the World Classic.
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*--Like that's a surprise.
**--I don't much care for the phrase "design element", but it fits here.
***--If they existed, of course. Which they don't.
15 November 02006: Image O' The Day
On several different levels, I rather like this:
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10 November 02006 (Happy 44th!): Two Out Of Three: Not Bad*
Phase 1: Louisville defeats West Virginia. Check--although this could have gone either way. I'd've just modified the other phases.
Phase 2: Rutgers defeats Louisville. Check.
Phase 3: If all goes well, West Virginia defeats Rutgers on 2 December. Alternately, Rutgers drops a game between now and then.**
Taken together, this kicks all of the Big East teams out of the ranks of the college football unbeatens and clears the deck for legitimate claimants to meet in the BCS title game. Which is what genuinely needs to happen. My antipathy toward the Big East as a football conference has been established here previously (The Markives, 22 November 02004), and it has surely not decreased since the recent realignments in D-IA have taken hold.
Until and unless the Big East develops some football stability and some reasonable top-to-bottom strength, it's laughable to suggest that even an unbeaten champion from that basketball conference should be in the title game. They could start by kicking Notre Dame out unless the boys from northern Indiana join the conference for football--since the Dome folks have announced a goal of 7 home games and one neutral-site game per year for the foreseeable future, that's simply not happening.
I wish Rutgers well, but not that well.
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*--Apologies (for correcting his grammar) and credit to Marvin Aday.
**--Phase 4: Profit.
6 November 02006: In A Fractious Political Year, This Takes The Cake
Anyone who's maintained normal consciousness and a minimal level of political awareness has surely taken note of the continued caustic level of the misrepresentations and shrill rants of this season's crop of campaign ads.
Taking the cake, without even breathing hard, is an ad airing in Hawaii* about a constitutional amendment proposal. It doesn't really matter what the issue is**; what makes the ad so outrageous is the following line:
"Please don't leave your ballot blank. A blank ballot counts as a 'no'."
I think I understand what they're getting at here--it's a simple rewording of the old "if you stay home on Election Day, it's the same as a vote for the winner" aphorism. But it's so wrong in so many ways***. I'd like to ask the sponsors of this ad if they really see no difference between leaving a question blank and voting "no" on it--when their desired response is "yes".
I'm quite sure I know what that response would be.
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*--Thanks, of course, to KQNG for streaming their signal (including this ad) over the I'net and into my office.
**--It has to do with abolishing a mandatory retirement age of 70 for judges.
***--Unless Hawaii has some unusual rules for counting blank ballots, and I don't think that they do.
29 October 02006 (Happy Standard Time!): Halloween Is For 6-Year-Olds
Take a look at the following picture* and make a note of the first word or phrase that comes into your head:
If it's "Mouse Trap", good. We can continue.
This is a photo taken at the Binder Park Zoo's annual "Zoo Boo" Halloween celebration, and is part of the carnival midway where kids are playing a beyond-life-size** version of that iconic board game***. The double-geared crank is mostly absent from the far left of the picture (trust me, it was there), and the diver has been replaced by something a little more reliable at shaking a pole, but everything else is more or less there.
But watching it got me to thinking. Who is this meant to impress/attract? I did a little digging and was pleased to find that MT the game is still being manufactured and sold, but my instinct is that parents are being drawn to this more than their Halloween-age children.
Which strikes me, on some level, as wrong. Just as wrong as the idiocy that is X-raying or other screening of Halloween candy. Let me jump to the end of the story for you, kids: They're not going to find anything out of order. Go ahead and eat.
And enjoy the holiday while it lasts. Because the Christmas music starts the next day.†
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*--Incidentally, that's Laurie dressed in black (dressed as a spider web, actually) in the background just left of center. Kendyl's right in front of her.
**--This is clearly too big to catch an actual mouse, hence "beyond".
***--Also present are giant versions of Operation and Yahtzee. Mouse Trap was definitely the main draw, though--chalk it up to being both new and an impressive feat of engineering.
†--I have
just cast a protest vote in the
WNIC "When Should We Start The [Massive Overplay of] Christmas Music?" poll.
I am, as I expected, in an extreme minority (0.37% so far). I find it
disturbing that over 25% of respondents so far have chosen "Start today! I
can't get enough!".
27 October 02006: This Coincidence Is Interesting
So on Wednesday, I put up a post (two down from here) about the current television season. Yesterday, there were two developments:
1. NBC either canceled Twenty Good Years or put it on hiatus (reports vary, even now) after the 8 November episode.
2. Fox announced that Happy Hour will return next Thursday, which, if it actually happens*, will hand the "First Show Canceled" title to Smith.
It's nice when the universe answers your questions. Once again, the Law of Truly Large Numbers makes an appearance.
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*--I'll believe it when it happens, although I probably won't be watching.
25 October 02006: An Interesting Coincidence...Or Not?
Would we have been subjected to so much idiocy coverage about
what Kenny Rogers may or may not have had on his hand during Game 2 of the World
Series if both of Fox's broadcasters weren't former Cardinals employees?
I'm just asking.
That issue aside, Fox's coverage of the Series has been an embarrassment. Or at least it should be to them. When Sparky Anderson and Alan Trammell appeared for the ceremonial first pitch Sunday night, we should not have been watching anything else. Not bizarre wannabe music videos, not the loudmouth triumvirate that is the Fox pregame team, nothing except what was going on down on the field.
Perhaps that trio will someday come to realize that the World Series is not about them. But not this year.
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25 October 02006: Double-Barreled Heresy
On the new television season: I stand in a minority when I say that I, so far, prefer Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to 30 Rock. I stand in an even smaller minority when I say that I prefer Twenty Good Years to both of those shows. It has the twin advantages of being funnier than 30 Rock, and not requiring the careful investment of time and mental energy that Studio 60 does.
Which is not to say that that latter energy isn't well-spent so far.
Heresy over. The race for the first cancellation of the new season has ended. Finding out who won will have to wait awhile. CBS yanked Smith after only three airings, and it won't be back. Prior to that, though, Fox (home of the quick hook) pulled Happy Hour after only two episodes, though they claim that it's merely "on hiatus" and will return.
I shall not stand on one foot waiting for that.
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15 October 02006: Talkin' Baseball*
When I took a vow at the start of the 02006 baseball season to read, so far as in my power it lay**, the Detroit Free Press coverage of every Detroit Tigers game this year, I had no idea that I'd still have fresh material in mid-October.
Not that I'm complaining. When the Tigers made it to the 01984 World Series, I was in college in Illinois, where the primary press coverage at the time was lamenting the Cubs' massive flameout in the NLCS. I caught some of the games on the radio, but it was a poor substitute for hometown playoff baseball.
A couple of "Where were you when...?" observations:
When the Tigers finished off the Yankees in the ALDS: I was watching the game from the sports book at the South Coast (soon to be the South Point) casino in Las Vegas, NV. The draw here was that while the Tigers were finishing their disassembly of the Yankees on one screen, the adjacent screen was showing the UM-MSU game. Dad tipped me off to this possibility on the way to the airport the day before--excellent call, and a great day for southeastern Michigan sports fans. I chose to believe that the applause for the Tigers' antics was grounded in pro-Detroit*** sentiment rather than betting interests. Sometimes willful disbelief can be a good thing.
When the Tigers eliminated the A's in 4 in the ALCS: Nothing as dramatic or complicated. I started out watching the first couple of innings in a bowling alley in and around a 6-year-old niece's birthday party and finished the game at home. Then it was a simple matter to transfer my attentions and loyalty over to the UM-Penn State game. Another good day in sports. (I shall pass over Northwestern's troubles and the unpleasantness that was Albion's homecoming game.)
By the way: I'm kind of rooting for St. Louis to take the NLCS over the Mets, although that's another matchup that my algorithm doesn't readily resolve. I fall back on the "somewhere I've been over somewhere I haven't been" clause, although it doesn't hurt that Patrick (if I remember correctly) played for a Cardinals team somewhere along the way.
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*--Credit to Terry Cashman.
**--There were a few weeks when I was out of the Freep's range--even allowing for I'net access. I read other accounts as best I could.
***--Or anti-New York. Works out about the same for me.
12-13 October 02006: News from The West
I saw the following vanity license plate in Las Vegas last weekend: 8HAGGIS.
Interesting bit of braggadocio. I mean, I have eaten haggis*--something not too many Americans can claim yet--but I never thought of broadcasting that little adventure on my car.
Here's something I'd like to hear from a pilot: "Welcome to [wherever the airplane has just landed]. You are not free to use cell phones, because none of you has anything interesting or important to say. If you feel that you must call someone to tell them that the plane has just landed, wait until you get into the terminal."
Independent of my known antipathy toward cell phones (which surely plays a small part in this wish), it's just flat-out annoying to have to overhear dozens of minor variations on "Guess where I am?" while finishing out a flight.
Kudos to the Amish for tearing down the site of their recent school shooting in Pennsylvania and resisting the temptation to turn it into a memorial site, probably with the name of each victim emblazoned on something. That is a trend that should have stopped either right before or immediately after Maya Lin. Probably after--like so many things, it was a decent enough idea the first time, but this obsession with remembering large crowds by name has long passed the point of good taste and landed squarely in "annoying" territory.
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*--As have most of this site's readers--which says more about the (somewhat intentionally) limited audience of this e-space than it does about culinary adventures.
5 October 02006: This Things I Believe*
1. I was right about the whole checked baggage mess. (The Markives, 10 August 02006). Here's the proof. Since I'll be on two airplanes tomorrow, this is a matter of more than academic interest.
2. I am tired of all the wishful thinking for a Yankees-Mets Subway Series this year. Not enough to start rooting for California teams**, but an awful lot of sportswriters seem to have forgotten that there are 6 other teams in the MLB playoffs. (And given the depressed ratings the last time that happened, it's likely that the folks at Fox join me in hoping that this doesn't happen.)
3. More on the NCAA Football Bowl Division vs. Football Championship Division in Division I: After my last comment on this topic (14 November 02005), I heard a voice of reasoned dissent from Ron of Palm Beach Gardens, FL, who pointed out that a rule such as I was suggesting would be detrimental to up-and-coming schools, such as his own Florida Atlantic University, who were trying to elevate their programs.
A fair point. So I now have a revision:
If you're an FBD team, you can play one game without BCS penalty against any FCD team or new FBD member in its first 5 years,
provided that the other school is either within your home state or within 400 miles of your campus.
Note well: That's one game against any given team, not a multiple-game series. Only one game per season. And the other school has to be at least reasonably local. There's no reason other than greed for West Virginia to have hosted Eastern Washington this season. And though it pains me to say so, Northwestern got what it deserved against New Hampshire.
There probably ought to be a "3 games in 5 years" kind of cap on this abuse of the system, but I'll take one step at a time.
4. And, apropos of nothing: If the restaurant serves drinks in cups with plastic lids, you shouldn't be paying with a credit card. It's just something I've come to believe. No one should be paying a bank 18% interest for a Frosty.
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*--Apologies to Homer S.
**--That may change in the next round.
17 September 02006: A Call For A Cease-Fire
In the runup to the official, though frequently violated, start of the fall television season tomorrow and the aftermath of the recent Emmy Awards, I have come to a new conclusion:
It's time for TV critics to take a lesson from movie critics and just shut up
about how superior their opinions are to those of the general public.
Serious movie aficionados--you know the ones--have won their war. The Oscars seem, most of the time, to regard box-office popularity as a disqualifier for honors. TV critics need to get beyond their near-reflexive praise for anything original airing on HBO and their continual feigned outrage that anyone really watches shows like "Two and a Half Men"*** and stop bludgeoning all of us with their so-called superior wisdom.
They're welcome to go on thinking that way, of course, but it's time for them to stop yammering about it.
And until pay cable and broadcast television are operating on the same playing field as far as ratings pressure and content restrictions (or the lack thereof), it's highly illogical for them to be competing on the same terms for awards. Toward that end, the CableACE Awards could stand some revival these days. Although I'm sure the critics I'm going after here would have a field day, either babbling on and on about how the truly excellent programming* on cable stations is being relegated to a second-tier awards show or (more likely) denigrating the Emmys as an antiquated relic whose time has passed.
Which is not to say that I don't occasionally agree with their opinions--for example, I enjoyed "Arrested Development"**--but the current wave of euphoria surrounding "The Wire" is enough to make me wonder if these folks pay any attention to the notion that the majority of Americans have seen no episodes of that show.
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*--Some critics even liked "Lucky Louie"--although it would surely have been trashed had it been stripped down and aired on Fox.
**--Which is canceled out for them, I suspect, by the fact that I also liked "It's Like...You Know".
***--(Footnote added 20 September 02006--I know, I know...geeky) Leaving any general opinions of mine about "2.5 Men" off to one side, I think that, on some level, you've got to like a show that set an episode in a children's dance studio called "Les Petits Pétomanes". Look it up.
3 September 02006: Thoughts At Large #2
1. In a sign of the times, the Salvation Army store in Battle Creek, MI will not accept donated typewriters. I understand their logic, but this seems a little odd to me, particularly when you balance it against the other things on their list of "thanks, but no thanks" donations. (Which you can probably fill in on your own.)
Evidently the typewriter-collecting bug hasn't hit southern Michigan yet. While I am tempted by this hobby, I personally find that calculators are much more interesting and take up considerably less space--and the fact that second-hand stores will still accept and sell them is just an additional benefit.
2. We have a nominee in the "new word for 'anniversary'" department. Steve from Allen Park, MI suggests "memiversary". In his words, "It combines the elements of anniversary and, depending on what you have in mind, either memory or memorial".
I like the idea, although on balance, it might be better if our new word didn't rhyme with the old one. But with 9/11/6 only 8 days away, this will certainly serve, and I intend to start slipping it into conversation as casually as I now use "nephices".*
Back now to the holiday weekend.
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*--That quest, by the way, continues to advance. People may call me on it at first hearing, but upon explanation, many seem to agree that it's a good and necessary term. Several friends of mine now also use it.
24 August 02006: Thoughts At Large
1. With the approach of "1 year since Hurricane Katrina" and "5 years since September 11, 02001" now on the radar, it seems to me that we need another word for "anniversary" that minimizes the celebratory aspects of the word. Of course, the official dictionary definition doesn't include celebration, but something about "the first anniversary of Katrina" just sounds wrong to me.
Nominations are now open.
2. I was amused by the recent announcement from the Democratic Party that they're going to front-load the 02008 Presidential nominating cycle a bit by adding Nevada and South Carolina in and among the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Hawaii must not have been available.
Okay, so it's likely that they're serious when they say they want to open up January to a more diverse crowd of voters. I'll accept that. But that faint cheering you hear is coming from members of the press and the potential candidates, who can now book January trips to Las Vegas and Myrtle Beach rather than being confined to places like Des Moines and Manchester. Throw in the possibility that Iowa governor Tom Vilsack may be running, which would effectively take that state out of the really competitive list, and suddenly January 02008 is looking like a lot more fun for them.
I've been to all four of those states*, and I know which ones sound like the nicer places to be in January.
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*--I may well be the only one of my parents' kids or kid-equivalents who can make that claim.
10 August 02006: Another Bad Move For Your
Safety And Convenience
Just once---Just. Once.--I'd like to see the Department of Homeland Security being proactive rather than reactive, especially when their reaction has the net effect of inconveniencing everybody except the folks they're trying to catch.
Of course, I refer to the latest missive from DHS, that no liquids or gels other than baby formula and medicine may now be brought onto airplanes, because of the alleged plot yesterday to blow up airplanes with liquid explosives. The one small bit of good that might come out of this is a reduction in the size of many carry-on bags (The Markives, 22 March 02006), as people are forced to ditch their shampoo and other liquid toiletries--and possibly their entire carry-on bag as well.
On the other hand, this requires that much more faith in the ability of the airlines to handle checked baggage correctly--and if I am not mistaken, lack of faith in that area is one factor that's led to these Brobdingnagian carry-on bags. Yes, 'twill be a fun travel season this fall.
It would be really nice if DHS came up with a rule sometime before someone figured out a loophole. They did the same thing with the utterly ridiculous "remove your shoes before going through the screener" rule/suggestion. Hasn't caught a single would-be shoe bomber, I'd guess. This rule is supposed to be optional, although the folks in Newark, NJ wouldn't believe their own sign when I invoked it last month. As I pointed out, my shoes contained no metal. It was certainly their right to select me for additional screening, but the way they were handling that particular checkpoint has not led me to believe that whole "Due to an increase in airport security..." aphorism that precedes so many ridiculous airport announcements these days.
The whole thing with lighters and matches falls into this category as well. Why you can, at least at some airports, carry four packs of matches onboard, but not five, defies logic.* Not that that's a surprise coming from the US government these days.
Airport security has not increased. Airport security panicking still has its first and second derivatives positive. Paul Dickson, in his marvelous 01982 work Words: A Connoisseur's Collection of Old and New, Weird and Wonderful, Useful and Outlandish Words, coined the word "anthonize": to give the public what the public does not want. He cited the federal government as a prominent anthonizer--the Susan Anthony dollar coin** was the inspiration for the word--and it seems that they're still in that business.
I await the first round of complaints linking inefficient checked-baggage handling to resistance to this ridiculous rule.
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*--At Saint Maarten's airport, your checked luggage is inspected by hand in your presence, and all matches are supposed to be removed from there as well. No evidence that it's stopped anyone from their deeply-held plans to take matches off the island.
**--Apropos of nothing: I think a dollar coin is a good idea, but it's never going to catch on in this country until and unless they yank the dollar bill at the same time the coin goes into circulation. And there's no indication--even with the forthcoming series of dollar coins bearing pictures of deceased former US Presidents--that that will happen.
6 August 02006: I Was Stung By Fifteen Bees...How Was Your Weekend?
Part of the reason that Dan and I started this little corner o' the I'Net was to create a forum for communicating life's minutiae across space and time. Yesterday's apio-encounter certainly qualifies, but I have another, better motive for posting today. We'll get to that. Nonetheless, this cautionary tale might be useful to some reader somewhere down the line.
Background: I've been mowing my current lawn for just over 4 years now, with no real ill effects. I do sometimes think it would be funny-at-my-expense if I fell into the Kalamazoo River, mower in hand, while cutting a bit too close to the edge. Since, however, that is a fall well within my power to avoid, it has yet to happen.
Yesterday was a different matter. About halfway through the day's mow, I noticed an unusual stinging sensation around my lower legs. This was more intense than the usual feeling of twigs, clippings, and whatnot being blown against them. Upon close inspection, I discovered a number of bees attached to my person--it turned out on further inspection that I'd run over a ground hive about ten feet earlier.
Charming, indeed. I dealt with the problem at hand, and then retreated
indoors to let the centiswarm* quiet down. After a few minutes' recovery,
which included a quick survey of the damage and a count of about ten stings, I
set out to mow another part of the lawn. I was close to wrapping that up
when...yep. Another hive, rather far from the first, but still unknown to
me. Another set of unusual--but by this time unpleasantly
familiar--stinging feelings. Another round of frenzied swatting, this one
witnessed with great amusement by a pair of idiots Albion
citizens across the river. (In retrospect, I should have just jumped into
the river. 20/20, I know.)
Five more stings, and an end to my mowing for this weekend. I've been stung before, so I had no fear of discovering an allergy, but my last such event was 24ish years ago, so I'd forgotten how unpleasant even one can be. Multiply that up by 15, and--well, it was not a restful night.
On to more important things. Indeed, let's start over:
6 August 02006: One Of The Good Ones
Today would have been Grandpa's 100th birthday.
I might have let this pass without noticing it**, if not for the coincidence that today is a (much smaller) milestone for me as well. Back in 01999ish, I was reading the ever-so-technical guide to formatting doctoral dissertations put out by CMU's graduate school. As I marveled at the nit-picking and relished the notion of a confrontation with the enforcers over one of their completely silly and arbitrary rules, I found the section on how to format the optional dedication page properly. I figured I wouldn't need that.
Two years passed, and my dissertation defense was set for Monday, August 6, 02001. In light of that, it seemed entirely appropriate to dedicate my thesis to Grandpa's memory, defending as I was on his 95th birthday. I didn't go back and see if my formatting was up to par, though--and no one called me on it.
Would that he could have been around to know that. The dedication, not the format silliness.
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*--Approximately.
**--All right. With my memory, probably not.
25 July 02006: Of Spelling And St. Maarten
Before I launch into an e-travelogue on the quirky side of St. Maarten/ St. Martin, where we spent a most pleasant and very necessary week last week, I have one observation about the whole inanity currently gripping the Middle East:
Can we in the West come to some agreement on how "Hezbollah" is spelled?
While in/near the Caribbean, my primary news sources were CNN and the island's condensed version of the Miami Herald, both of whom spell the name of this fractious little bunch as I have done above. Then I returned home and began plowing through mail. The Economist seems to prefer "Hizbullah", and Time is going with "Hizballah".* Doubtless there are other variants out there. (Oddly, Microsoft FrontPage is only flagging the last two as spelling errors.)
The whole thing is redolent of an earlier controversy about the name of the leader of Libya, aptly summarized here. If nothing else, we as a hemisphere** need to take a hint from Mr. Adams, drop H's leaders an email, and ask them.
On to more pleasant thoughts. SXM (I'm going with the airport abbreviation here [which is widely used as a nickname throughout the island] to avoid the awkwardness of having to choose between the Dutch and French spellings or resorting to a messy hybrid. See #4 below.) has a number of amusing quirks that the travel books choose not to mention, but that were fun to discover and to live amidst.
1. SXM has a deep fondness for 80's rock music. Island 92, the radio station on the island, promotes itself as the home of "Rock, Blues, and Good Time Music". Nice. Their definition of at least the first and third of those terms seems very tightly focused on the 01980's. If you, like me, are a fan of such fare as "The Adventures of Nick and Sugar"***, this is a welcome unexpected development.
2. Service clubs are immense on SXM. Not only does the Lions Club welcome you to virtually every subdivision of the island, but Rotary International has found numerous places to display their Four-Way Test† ("of all we think, say, or do") along the roads--including in Burma Shave fashion along one stretch of road that we traveled frequently.
3. SXM has taken one good lesson from Monopoly. Parking is free almost everywhere on the island. Moreover, parking is allowed in some very creative places. Amazingly, that doesn't lead to too much parking congestion.
4. The University of St. Martin is located on the Dutch side but uses the French spelling. Odd. But in a good way. If they were consistent, it'd be "University of St. Maarten". If this is a quest for unity, then it's worthwhile.
5. A bar that's about 10 meters from the flight path of incoming airplanes and posts arrival times for maximum viewing excitement is a stroke of marketing genius. Photos to follow someday.
6. It's possible to find root beer on SXM. I located no local brands (though one grocery store stocked Faygo products), but Barq's was very occasionally available. Root beer can be very elusive, if not outright invisible, when traveling outside of the USA and Canada, so this was a pleasant discovery. A more pleasant discovery was Ting, a variation on Squirt with actual grapefruit juice as an ingredient.
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*--Sports Illustrated is so far silent on this crucial issue.
**--Northern or Western, or some set-theoretic merger of both.
***--If you clicked on that link, you discovered that it's not very useful. Here's another.
†--1. Is it the truth? 2. Is it fair to all concerned? 3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships? 4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Not a bad set of principles, actually.
29 June 02006 (Happy El Mediodia!): N = 1 Remains Bad Statistics
A few thoughts on the passing scene, two of three inspired by the observation that "one counterexample does not a trend defeat".
1. Some college baseball observers are claiming that the recent Oregon State victory in the College World Series means that the stranglehold of Southern teams on college baseball's biggest prize has been broken, and that a new era of parity is at hand.
No. This was a welcome development, make no mistake about it, but until the NCAA does something about its loose season restrictions in baseball, the deck will always be heavily stacked toward colleges who can get outside in January without having to plow the outfield.
Funnily enough, the article linked above destroys its own headline claim with its content, noting that only three Northern schools have reached the CWS since 02000, and that OSU's championship was the first for a Northern school since another OSU from Columbus took the prize in...01966.
Twice in 41 years isn't parity.
2. Entertainment reporters are, here and there, claiming that CBS' pickup of The New Adventures of Old Christine for the fall represents a breaking of the "Seinfeld curse", something they invented on a slow news day.
Wrong also, for two reasons. First, I don't think it counts when a midseason replacement show gets picked up for the fall. The show is half a season into whatever run it will have, not a full season.
Second, if half a season is enough to establish a show, then we've been down this path before, and with Julia Louis-Dreyfus again. Watching Ellie, a relatively run-of-the-mill sitcom from 02002-02003, aired 18 episodes (more than Adventures has so far shown) in a pair of partial seasons. It gave up its sole claim to distinctiveness in half-season #2 when it dropped its real-time gimmick and accompanying countdown clock. Not that that didn't improve the show.
The "Seinfeld curse" proponents seem to be missing the point that most prime-time TV shows aren't very good and don't last all that long. It's something called the Law of Truly Large Numbers, and they might want to look into it.
3. The NBA should give serious consideration to moving its annual draft telecast out of its New York City home. I've watched it off and on for the last few years, and the behavior of the New York fans in attendance is almost enough to make me rewrite my rooting algorithm to preference Knickerbockers'* opponents.
For one, their behavior is annoying. For two, the fact that the announcers feel a need to comment on it detracts from their prattling on uselessly about other things, some of them actually related to basketball. For three, why not let other cities' basketball-obsessed citizens an opportunity to be fools on cable television?
Here's an idea: If you win the NBA championship in year X, then you host the draft in year X+1. (Arena pre-commitments may preclude having the new champion host the draft right after they hoist the trophy, otherwise I'd prefer that.) Alternately, rotate the draft around as a prelude to the next season's All-Star Game, which would have meant last night's draft would have been in Las Vegas with no hometown fans to disrupt the proceedings.
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*--I kind of like using the full nickname. The commissioner should have done so last night.
17 June 02006: World Cup Algorithm
I caught the first half of the USA-Italy World Cup 1-1 tie today before following the second half online via USA Today. While I don't have a specific favorite in this tournament, or indeed in most truly international sporting events*, my interest today was obvious, and thus no version of my rooting algorithm (The Markives, 12 October 02004) was necessary. But for the World Cup, my preferences run in approximately the following order, divided by confederation.
1. Oceania. Largely because I think that this confederation isn't even getting the short end of the stick from FIFA. Look, if you're a confederation, then your champion, at least, should get automatic passage to the WC finals without having to play off against a down-the-list runner-up from somewhere else. Australia** deserved better this cycle. I am fully aware that Oceania is, by a good margin, the weakest of the six roughly continental confederations, and the home of more double-digit trouncings than anywhere else--possibly everywhere else combined. Doesn't matter. A confederation championship--especially in a world where several other confederations don't declare one--should get your ticket punched. I know that this, in practice in Oceania, means that the winner of the Australia-New Zealand game pretty much moves forward, but soccer isn't going to grow in the Pacific islands without good access to the finals. Better access than they enjoy now. Someday, when the Solomon Islands send an eleven to the World Cup finals, I'll be vindicated here--and I hope they won't have to survive a play-in matchup with the fifth-place South American team to do it.
2. CONCACAF. Because it's fun to say, for one thing. Because there's a certain amount of continental loyalty within me, for another. But someone should put a stop to the scam that Guyana and Surinam have got going. Last time I checked, those two countries were in South America, not North or Central America, nor yet the Caribbean. (Yes, they border the Caribbean. So does Venezuela, who would probably prefer to romp through CONCACAF rather than miss the finals coming through CONMEBOL.) As much as I favor historical accuracy, I like geographical accuracy more.
3. Africa. and 4. Asia. Most of the excitement in the last few World Cups has come from upsets from teams in Africa and Asia rising up unexpectedly, and certainly not from aging European powers.
5. South America (CONMEBOL). Although I tend to root by inverse order of size--Ecuador, yes. Brazil, not so much. It's less fun being a frontrunner.
6. Europe. Frankly, too many dull World Cup finalists and uninspired performances come from this semi-continent. And again, it takes no real imagination to pull for the dominant teams. One exception: I'll root for the Netherlands if the opportunity presents itself. I spent an unexpected enjoyable night in Amsterdam once, and the Schiphol Airport has been a source for several pieces of my calculator collection. Besides, it's hard to live in Holland, MI for two years and emerge neutral about things Dutch--and I certainly don't dislike the country.
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*--I don't have any particular attachment to the US soccer team, and I have something of a weakness for outcomes that will muck up the standings a bit--to me, it's boring when everything's decided in group play while games are still to be played. Thanks to Ghana and to one Italian player whose name is (to his regret) about to grow in recognition value, everything in Group E remains up for grabs.
**--The fact that Australia is switching to the Asia confederation for the 02010 World Cup at once proves my point and doesn't change my mind.
12 June 02006: Back From The Rockies
Okay, so I've now returned from my annual Colorado* sojourn to grade AP Calculus exams. By way of explanation of that little trek, here's an annotated collection of "Reasons Why I Grade AP Calculus Exams" pulled from this year's official T-shirt:
10. I don't get to grade enough at work.
--Absolutely true. 250,000 tests, multiplied by 6 questions per test, means about 1.5 million questions need to be graded during the 7 reading days. 750 people scarcely seems like enough to do all that.
9. Free erasers.
--And good ones, too--the white rubber kind that take everything pencil** off the page without, impressively enough, taking out the page. The "neutron bomb" of erasers, as I described them to my reading room.
8. "Will work for food" takes on a whole new meaning.
--Yep. 3 college cafeteria meals and two fairly lavish coffee breaks per day. I'm not sure why they think we need to eat so much.
7. 710 MATHEMATICIANS = 1 BIG PARTY
--Despite what one might think looking at that equation, it's dead-on accurate. There's considerable card and game playing going on in the evening hours--indeed, my Winter Camp exposure to Apples to Apples and Ticket to Ride was put to use for the first time since last December.
6. "Bubbling" at high altitudes improves hand-eye coordination.
--Again with the Scantrons. Fortunately, high altitudes no longer bother me--one sprint up the stairs carrying luggage was enough.
5. I discover that my students aren't the only ones making #$@& mistakes.
--No further comment required, although...When did multiplying by 6 become such a challenge?
4. When they say mountain view.......they mean it.
--Kentucky will be hard-pressed to match the view from the Colorado State campus.
3. AP English Literature would be too easy.
--No further comment.
2. My therapist wanted me to confront my worst nightmare, but the "Swim with the Great White Sharks" trip was already booked.
--This one's a bit of a reach/space filler. A "Top Nine" list without this one would have been a better product, as well as more in keeping with the nature of AP calculus, where problems are graded on a 0-9 scale.
1. After 6 years, I get a sticker.
--Traditionally, six years is the length of service of an AP reader***. At the closing stage show, those finishing Year Six (or Year Twelve) and heading into retirement from grading are publicly recognized and get a sticker of the CSU logo attached to their nametag holder. Due to some circumstances involving a promotion from Reader to Table Leader, I did not receive a sticker this year (even though it was my 6th), because I won't be retiring.
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*--Moving to Kentucky (Louisville) next year. No one has been able to put a positive spin on that other than that we'll be in a bigger facility, which is certainly needed.
**--Okay, and a bit of the blue ink on the Scantron sheets as well, but not enough to be a problem.
***--But there are lots of exceptions, which I won't go into here.
23 May 02006: Onward To A Third-Million*
Last night, at 11:05 PM, while traveling west on M-14 at the Vorhies Road overpass in Superior Township in eastern Washtenaw County, my odometer reset to all zeros, indicating 300,000 miles traveled in a little under 14 years.
5088 days, to be precise. Time for some arithmetic. Counting the 56.6 miles I had to drive to get from that point to my garage, I've driven my Escort an average** of 58.97 miles per day. Written like that, it seems like a lot of driving.
Reviewing some milestones:
• My car has been driven through 12 states and one Canadian province.
• I hit 100,000 miles in January 01997 (4.5 years, approximately) on Bellevue Highway*** in Walton Township (metro Olivet, MI).
• I hit 200,000 in October 02000 (8 1/3 years) on Michigan Avenue in Marengo Township (metro Marshall, MI).
Looks like the gap between hundred-thousands is rising a bit--I attribute that in part to no longer having any kind of regular commute to Mount Pleasant. Using a linear regression model, it looks like I'll log the 400,000th mile on or about November 16, 02010. And the 333,333.3-mile mark should be near September 20, 02007. Half a million? July 2, 02015ish.
It's not completely out of the question that I'll still be driving this car with its young engine on some of those dates, provided that the body holds up. If nothing else (barring disaster, of course) , I'll keep it on the road into 02008, which should make me one of the last Michigan drivers still sporting the blue-and-white license plate. Now that mine is an example of Dad's restorative art, it should be preserved as long as possible. The new Michigan plate (design TBA) will be rolled out as a routine replacement beginning in January 02007--the timing of my birthday means that I'll be toward the end of the replacement line.
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*--If we have "half-million" and "quarter-million", why not "third-million"?
**--That is, of course, the mean. The mode would probably be zero. No clue about the median.
***--"Highway", in rural Michigan, is a rather loosely-defined term. Bellevue Highway is a standard two-lane road; it just happens to have a 55 mph speed limit. I lived for three years on a nearby road called Miller Highway, which was about 1.5 unpaved lanes.
22 May 02006: And The Emile Goes To...
The Emile Awards (The Markives, 14 November 02004) for clunkiness in a TV series finale aren't an annual event. Indeed, I haven't had to award one since I started this online enterprise. The game is different this year. Our winner is Will and Grace, which not only gave us a universal artificial closure, but telegraphed* the ending in a way that future series will be hard-pressed to match.
Point 1: The whole Karen-and-Jack subplot could have been killed off at no cost to the episode. It did nothing to advance the primary storyline that had been put together over the course of the season. As an added bonus, we would have been spared some of the random insertion of guest stars.
Point 2: I guessed, ten minutes in, that the 2-year-olds were going to get together at the end of the show**. I point this out not because I have any special powers to predict things, but to illustrate how transparent the whole gimmick was. And when the audience has figured out where you're going to go, the show suffers as a result.
By contrast, we had the finale of That 70's Show earlier that same evening. Here the closure was universal (the end of the 01970's was a nice touch) without being artificial, and the two returning characters weren't hyped in the pre-show promotion. Had the name not already been burned off on a show that I and four other people watched, one could see this morphing into That 80's Show without any trouble.
And in some sense, that's a mark of a quality finale--the feeling that the show continues on in its alternate universe. W&G didn't make it by that measure.
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*--Now that Western Union is out of the telegram business, we may need a new term for this phenomenon.
**--By the way, no one moves into a college dorm with their underwear in a box.
15 May 02006: Keeping The Space Alive...
...with some random observations that may or may not hang together well.
1. Last night's finale of The West Wing, while sporting no new oddball sports matchups, was an excellent example of a "universal, but not artificial" closure. That having been said, it wouldn't surprise me to see a couple of made-for-TV movies about the next administration within the next two or three years--everything's set up rather nicely for that.
2. Major League Baseball's sporadic use of pink bats yesterday as a Mothers' Day/breast cancer awareness thing was certainly amusing. I'd bet considerable money that nothing similar will be done for Fathers' Day, which says more about the lobbying arms involved than anything else. (I'd like to be wrong, of course...but I don't see that happening.)
3. At some point in the relatively recent past (within the last 18 months, I think), printed television listings made the subtle shift from identifying programs as reruns to tagging new episodes with an "N". I'm not sure what the motive for this switch was; I suspect it's to avoid a flood of "R"s as the summer rerun season kicks in. I submit that the same sort of conclusion could be drawn from the dearth of "N"s that we shall now see. Which, of course, makes this whole thing that much more odd--which is why I bring it up here.
4. One bit of good that has come out of the Kentucky Derby is that "Barbaro" is a worthy name for a Triple Crown winner. In and among all of the Smarty Jones hype a couple of years ago was lost the point that "Smarty Jones" is no name for a Triple Crown horse--which was, to me, reason enough to root for him to fall short in the Belmont. Triple Crown winners have had names like War Admiral, Citation, Secretariat, Count Fleet, Seattle Slew...and so on*. Even Omaha was a name with some class. Immortals in horse racing should bear names that carry an air of greatness, not a playground taunt. Or, even worse, eighteen letters jammed together without spaces, just to fit in under the official limits for thoroughbred names. (I'm looking at you, Sweetnorthernsaint.)
Not that we're all that likely to see another Triple Crown won this year, of course.
5. And if you've missed it, the 02006 Oscars party page is finally up. No shots of the actual gathering, but a lot of promotional pictures.
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*--"Alydar" was a good name for a TC winner--unfortunately, he had to settle for being the first TC runner-up after finishing second in all three races in 01978. Fortunately, the horse who beat him was Affirmed--also a worthy name.
2 May 02006: This Seemed Like A Good Idea When Gas Was Going For $2.20 A Gallon
But first, a visit from Carnac the Magnificent: The envelope, please...
A dentist in Las Vegas, NV who's open on Saturdays and takes walk-ins; an urgent care center in Providence, RI; and a tire store open on Sunday in Terre Haute, IN.
<-------------rrriiiiiiipppp------------->
Name three things that Mark--> knows how to find from unintentional personal experience.
Okay, now let me explain. Last Thursday-Sunday, I put my newly-repaired Escort through something of an acid test by driving to and from a math conference in St. Louis, MO. The logic at the time I made this decision was simple: St. Louis is about at the outer edge of drivability from Michigan, I would have considerably more flexibility getting around while I was there than is usually the case at math conferences*, hotel expenses would be cheaper further from the conference site, and we were able to engineer a trip up to Jacksonville, IL for a reunion of the math/computer science department from a previous employer--three folks who hadn't all been together since 01996.
That went fine. And with a new engine, the days of 38.5 mpg and 400 miles on a tank of gas are returning, so the gas price inanity** we're in right now didn't bother me as much as it might have.
On the way back, just east of Effingham, IL*** on I-70, my right rear tire blew. Majestically, as it turned out--the inner wall was almost completely separated. (No other damage to me, to car, or to cargo.) Fortunately, the rain that dogged my return home was in the "off" position for the time it took me to change the tire.
There's really not a lot of commercial activity in that corner of America, so I limped at 45 mph on a temporary spare until I reached Indiana. At the welcome center just across the line, I asked where a nearby tire store might be. The state employee (whose name I didn't get, but who deserves thanks) noted that this would be difficult on a Sunday, but that there was a Sears Auto Center 7 miles up the road who might be able to help me.
He was right. They did. There were two tire stores along that same commercial strip who were closed on Sundays, which was not as annoying as it would have been had Sears not been open and able to assist me. (As some of you may know, my Escort takes an unusually-sized tire that many tire stores across Michigan don't keep in stock.)
Adding it all up, it was only about a two-hour delay. The odometer is now well over 298,000. This may have slightly less meaning now on the non-original engine, but the steering wheel, at least, has gone that far.
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*--That having been said, St. Louis appears to have excellent public transportation--but I didn't know that at the time.
**--Anybody else remember "jawbone OPEC"? Strange how that hasn't worked. Or maybe not so strange.
***--If their water tower is to be believed, Effingham (home to a branch of the extended Clan Bollman, incidentally) bills itself as "Crossroads of Opportunity". Nice slogan. Their logo appears to be a stylized aerial view of the freeways that converge in the area. Not as nice.
19 April 02006: A Look Back...Way Back
In the last 51 days...
1. Various members of Clan Bollman have trekked to the Caribbean, to Las Vegas and Death Valley, to San Francisco, to Myrtle Beach, and possibly to other places I don't know of just now.*
2. I've driven about 1500 miles within the state of Michigan.
3. Baseball season has started.
4. Way too much TV time and human energy has gone into previewing the NFL draft. (More so than in past years, it seems to me, but that isn't something I've researched.)
5. Sarah has lived her entire life.
And for all that time, my Escort has been under the care of Albion Ford. What started out as a broken head gasket escalated into a romp through the used-parts underground of the American auto repair world--the outcome of it all is that my car now has a new engine**, some tweaking in the brakes***, and an upgraded set of clutch disks. (The new engine was necessitated because--wonder of wonders--Ford no longer makes parts for a 14-year-old model. Imagine that. Also because the first used gasket they found was itself also defective. Nice that they discovered that before I did.)
You may be wondering why I'm enduring all of this and not just buying a new car. Good--nay, excellent--question. If I'd known about all of this remedial work at the start of this non-odyssey†, I might have made a different call--but it escalated very slowly.
That, and I've come to enjoy life without monthly car payments.
It's not like I've been without wheels these past 7 weeks, either. After the first week, they've provided me with a pair of loaner cars. The white Chevy Cobalt (weeks 2 and 3) turned out to be a money-loser‡, but the candy-apple red Mercury Sable (weeks 4-7) was a dealer car from the get-go, and thus not a major investment for them.
I'm not saying that this was complicated, but though my car was ready yesterday, I couldn't retrieve it before tonight because they needed the time to complete all of the paperwork. Should make for some fascinating reading.
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*--Putting all that down in one place makes us sound like a particularly well-traveled family.
**--With approximately 255,000 fewer miles on it. This is something of an unexpected advantage.
***--A secondary complaint when I originally took it in. I thought it was a problem in the circuitry controlling the brake light.
†--"Odyssey" implies some kind of travel, which doesn't seem right here.
‡--For AF, not for me. In part, at least, because it spent a week parked on a lawn in Allen Park.
15 April 02006: Photo Op
These just in from Sarah Central. (These are the best of the bunch; I've suppressed one or two less flattering shots.)
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14 April 02006: Sarah, Day Two
In which the phrase "true colors" acquires new meaning
This just in via email from Dan (11:56 AM EDT, for those who track such things):
Sarah has a touch of jaundice. They are keeping her in the nursery under UV lights until the condition clears. But I figure that, with the color of her skin and the shade of the blue lights, she’s starting out in this world the right way: truly Maize and Blue!
Can't argue with that. Photos coming later tonight--probably not of the maize and blue, though. (For which she will doubtless be grateful some day.)
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13 April 02006: The Scout
Sarah Watch Goes Live!
4:32 PM EDT: Wrapping up an eventful day...
I've gotten a little support and no immediate rejection for the "Nellie" nickname. If nothing else, it's a worthy successor to "Scout" (which has served us well, and to which we say goodbye) and has some nice family heritage trapped behind it. Of course, getting the parents to sign off on this might be tricky.
And now, with Sarah's arrival, Laurie and I finally have a nephice who shares one of our last names. It's amusing that it's taken so long for that to happen.
Welcome to the madness, Sarah.
11:42 AM EDT: I'm on the phone with Kristie Donohue, who's been calling me between 11 AM and 12 N at least 3 times a week for the past 3 weeks looking for updates on Scout/Sarah. Curiously, she hasn't asked for news yet--now that there's actual news, I find this amusing.
(11:53 update) Eleven minutes of job-related ranting and still no inquiry. My amusement level rises.
(12:01) One-way ranting continues. No question.
(12:05) Finally, the question: "They were gonna induce labor today, right?"
10:33 AM EDT: It's a girl! Sarah* McLaren Bollman, born sometime this morning. No numerical data yet, but mother and daughter are doing fine, and father is doing "okay". There is a long-standing family custom that anyone named "Sarah Bollman" is called "Nellie". No word yet on the fate of that tradition.
Now to post this over at the Winter Camp page.
8:17 AM EDT: So today's the day, foretold to us last week, that nephice #8 arrives. I'll be keeping FrontPage open all day today and posting news and information (and random thoughts) as it all trickles in. Stay tuned.
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*--According to the Institute for Naming Children Humanely, every notable Sarah has the final H. It's good to see that Dan and Anne have taken this first step toward ensuring their daughter's notability.
11 April 02006: Mad About This*
So, Nick at Nite has just picked up Mad About You and is running what they call a Mad Mad Mad Mad Marathon this week to launch it.
That's fine--in my opinion, the show was a good one, and it deserves to live on in syndication.
However, someone somewhere has done a really stupid thing--this trails back to the show's run in first-run syndication and its brief neglected run on Lifetime. In the opening credits of many (possibly not all) episodes, the World Trade Center towers have been erased from the New York City skyline.
And that's really annoying.
Look, the show ran from 01992-01999, and was set in the then-present.** At that point in spacetime, the WTC towers were still standing. If anyone is so fragile that seeing an image of the skyline as it was then (and I cannot stress that point enough), then they shouldn't be watching television. Something messier than that is going to get them.
I'm a big fan of historical accuracy, and I have no patience with distorting history--even in a matter as relatively trivial as this (and I understand its triviality)--for any cause, no matter how trendy it might be. I don't know the origins of this editing, but someone has overdosed on the sensitivity Kool-Aid.
Moving away from anger, but staying on the topic of distorted history: I've been amused, in a way not intended by the originators, by the ad campaign for the DVD release of Brokeback Mountain. The oh-so-clever juxtaposition of a "Best picture of the year" quote from a film critic with the commentary on its Academy Award wins--how could anyone fail to connect the dots and conclude that this was the best picture of 02005? (Never mind any mention of the specific Oscars it did win--evidently "Best Director" matters not at all.)
By paying attention at a fairly low level, that's how. Normal consciousness would be overqualified.
I'm not going to rake anyone over the coals for "sore loser" status--George Carlin, once again, had it right: Going down to defeat defiantly means that you cared about what you were fighting for.*** What amuses me here is the assumption that the viewing public hasn't heard any of the really loud complaining we've enjoyed from Brokeback Central over the past few months. Among my favorites from that arena were the claim that BbM "isn't a gay movie"**** and the ludicrous assertion that BbM is "the movie that everyone was talking about last year".
I have a thought experiment in mind to test the first assertion. Remake BbM, but change one of the two lead characters to a woman. Then, establish both of the leads in long-standing gay relationships and have them connect heterosexually in a manner completely analogous to what happened in BbM. I submit that there would be agitated screaming from a lot of the original movie's loudest supporters. I'm not completely sure that this proves my point, but it proves something.
The second claim (for which I cannot find a link right now) is flat-out wrong. The movie that everyone was talking about last year was, if I remember correctly, Star Wars, Episode III. It was shut out of the major Oscar categories, and they're not whining about it. Probably too busy counting their money.
Of course, as I've said before, the Oscars aren't a popularity contest. That doesn't mean they matter, though.
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*--Scout Watch: T - 48 or so hours.
**--There was an episode in the last season where Paul Buchman temporarily solved the Y2K bug problem--you can't get more 01999 than that. Unless you're Prince, I suppose.
***--From When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?. He was referring to President Gore.
****--Yeah, right. That doesn't make it a good or a bad movie, of course.
5 April 02006: Feedback And Obsession
As the Scout Watch enters yet another day, it's time to open the emailbag again. (Nice to see that the button up top works, by the way.)
Dan and Anne both point out that, in addition to the holidays mentioned below, our crew of nephices also has Burns Day covered among their birthdays. I presume that mail is delivered on that day in Scotland.
Ron makes an important point, which I shall quote here:
If Scout does not make it for the straight or the minor holidays, may I suggest that there are worse choices for a member of your family than the Opening Tee off day for the Masters, or any time during the Masters. One shining moment and all that you know. Gee, I probably listened too much during the NCAA tourney and now owe someone money for using that catchphrase.
Point well made.
And a bit more on The West Wing's basketball league: Over the last three episodes, they've admitted to franchises in Tampa (Note: Not "Tampa Bay", for which they deserve credit), Buffalo, Albany, Las Vegas, Tucson, Billings, Honolulu, and Louisville.
The notion that a pro sports league could be significant enough to gain mention on MSNBC and still have a team in Montana floors me. The closest reasonable candidate among existing leagues would be the Arena Football League. (The scores would be about right, too.) However, though they've been in such towns as Albany, Des Moines, and Grand Rapids in the past or present, the WWBL is still at least one cut below them--and I'm reasonably sure that AFL scores don't make MSNBC on a regular basis. Certainly not on Election Day, which is on a Tuesday--the league plays all its games on weekends.
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2 April 02006: While The Scout Watch Continues...
I note from here that this Wednesday (5 April), a straight to beat all straights will occur.
On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the
morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. This won't ever happen again.
I take some issue with the last statement: just wait 100 years. But the sentiment is nice.
And since Scout hasn't seen fit to appear yet, we here in the hometown of The Markives have been forced to shift our attention somewhat. Since our preferred birth date of 1 April didn't happen*, we are now hoping for his/her arrival to be at this time and date.
If that doesn't work, our next choice is April 13**--which is too far off to be reasonable. Especially to Scout's mom.
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*--We like the idea of nephice birthdays corresponding with minor holidays--"minor" here being defined as "holiday where mail is still delivered". We've got Cinco de Mayo and Friday the 13th covered so far. April Fool's Day would have been a suitable addition.
**--In the interest of spacing extended family birthdays exactly 6 months apart, where we have May 5/November 5 and May 17/November 17 matched up. April 13 matches October 13--and we see that the minor holiday birthdays do double duty.
22 March 02006: Of Fish And Owls, And Other Thoughts On Travel
So I'm back from a one-week sojourn to Las Vegas and Death Valley, which provided a lot of time to think about odd things while staring at the desert over my steering wheel.
1. I have, over the years, generally maintained a sort of bemused neutrality about the whole Hooters restaurant inanity.* It appears that their marketing strategy is working, at least to some acceptable level. I can't get too worked up about the opposition's whining--the world has bigger problems that need solving. I've never actually eaten at one, but that's more out of benign neglect than any interest in avoiding the place.
I am less neutral on the subject of sushi. In the words of The King of Queens' Doug Heffernan: "Raw fish is not as good as cooked cow." Amen.
Connecting these threads: I was encouraged and entertained by the discovery that the sushi restaurant at the new Hooters Casino in Las Vegas is called "The Bait Shoppe".
Perfect.
Red Forman may have been talking about something akin to coleslaw on That 70's Show when he said "This isn't food. This is what food eats," but his words are no less applicable to raw fish.
2. In an effort to generate more revenue for doing the same things, Northwest Airlines is apparently considering implementing a checked baggage fee--charging passengers more money if they're checking luggage.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I have no problem, in the abstract, with an airline charging for something that used to be free. It may backfire on them, but the right to make a decision and then live with the consequences is theirs.** What bugs me about this is that it's going to make the carry-on luggage problem even worse. We're already close to what Dennis Miller mentioned in his "Air Travel" rant, where someone tries to tape a twine handle onto a refrigerator carton and call it "carry-on" luggage. Some people are abusing the overhead luggage bins to a degree that should be more of an outrage than it is. Those "your luggage must fit in here to be carried on" bins near the gates represent #3 on the "directions most often ignored" list***.
Once again, I have a modest proposal to deal with that:
If your suitcase has wheels, it's not carry-on luggage. Check it.
If you can't carry it from the curb to the gate without it touching the floor, then it's too big for you to bring it on the plane with you. I'm willing to make an exception for flight crews, but only because I don't think they're taking baggage compartment space away from paying customers.
This should also apply to those industrial-sized strollers.
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*--Though I did enjoy the South Park "Raisins" parody.
**--And everyone's, though we often forget the "live with the consequences" part.
***--#2: "Close cover before striking." #1: "Keep foil wrapper to put gum in after use."
10 March 02006: Two Quick Links
Click on the picture for 13 or so minutes of unreleased Tom Lehrer gems.
You can click here to get it straight from the source. And in the interests of equal time for the rest of my personal denominator (Monday Moanin', 20 December 02004), here's a link to the audio files of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Volume 1, Chapter 22, on algebra, is a particular favorite of mine.
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6 March 02006: Viewer Mail, Volume 2
Letter Number One:
Steve from Allen Park, MI writes: Only the alleged sport of figure skating features a "night of champions" to showcase the sport. You don't see bobsledders all going up the hill for a victory lap. Even snowboarders are content with the medals as the end of their "sport".
Even better, the "Champions' Gala" (at least as aired on NBC) didn't include all or only medal winners. So 5th place angry gay man Johnny Weir (or however it's spelled) shows up...
Steve, I couldn't have said it better myself. I note that gymnastics commits the same crime in the Summer Olympics--proof of program, I would say.
On the other hand, I think a "running of the bulls" session of bobsledding could be kind of exciting.
Speaking of bobsledding...One major flaw I found in NBC's Olympic coverage was in the sliding sports. Due, I suppose, to the tape delay and to the fact that sliding sports may not be as telegenic as Olympic non-sports, all we really saw were the leaders and the Americans. The net result of all that was that the interchangeability of top bobsledders, lugers, and skeletoners (Is that a word? It is now.) was enhanced--and again, not in a good way. (CBC's coverage wasn't much different, incidentally.)
I'm not asking that crashes be shown, but I'd like to see more runs from the teams farther down the medal standings, if only so that we might appreciate the difference between what makes a good run and a mediocre run. When the differences in times among the best teams are measured in thousandths of a second, it would be good to have some truly average footage for comparison purposes. Let's see some sleds that have trouble sticking to the ideal line through the turns, for example.
And as long as I'm asking...That effect where skiers are superimposed on each other so that they appear to be on the slope at the same time, making direct comparisons possible, would seem to be a natural for bobsledding.
Thanks for writing.
Letter Number Two:
Ron from Palm Beach Gardens, FL writes [to both Mark--> and Dan, by the way]:
Gents: An article about a building that was based on a mathematical series. If I
remember correctly, Dan is a building guy, Mark is a Fibonacci guy. Enjoy.
http://tampatribune.com/MGB9BL06ZJE.html
I figured it
was a better way for you to share a conversation rather than arguing about beer,
alcoholic or not.
An excellent idea. Were it not for the fact that a lot of people claiming to connect the Fibonacci sequence to architecture are simply finding occurrences of the golden ratio (φ = (1 + √5)/2) that are merely coincidental--or, in some cases, flat-out wrong, I'd've read this immediately. Now that both of us have perused this, commentary may well be forthcoming. (And one of these days I'll get around to answering your other email.)
Thanks for writing.
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26 February 02006: Today's Olympic Thoughts #5
Something that's been getting occasional coverage during this Olympics is what gold medalists are doing on the medal stand, and whether or not they're singing along to their national anthems. With the caveat that some people (myself included) should not sing in public*, I'd like to see the National Anthem Project (The Markives, 22 March 02005) join forces with the US Olympic team, and get someone to sing the last verse of the anthem on the gold-medal platform. It would be even better if they tracked down a multiple-gold threat and arranged for that person to sing a different verse each time he/she won a medal, but the vagaries of athletic competition make that a somewhat trickier proposition.
This challenge is open-ended--Turin is wrapping up as I type this, but there's serious potential for this idea in Beijing. I recommend starting with the swimmers.
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*--Or, at least in my case, also in private.
22 February 02006: Today's Olympic Thoughts #4
This one is only tangentially related to the Olympics, but since I'm on a roll with the titles, I thought I'd keep a streak alive. On CBC's coverage of the Games, there is frequent commentary--and rightfully so--about the next Winter Olympics, to be held in Vancouver in 02010.
What I find odd and worthy of mention here is the occasional tendency of some announcers to refer to that year as "two-ten". Not "twenty-ten", nor "two thousand [and] ten", nor yet "2K10*". Two-ten.
I admit it's got a ring to it, and it's nicely compact. And I don't believe for a minute that people will be confusing 02010 with 00210, so there's a rant that will go unwritten. It just sounds strange.
On the other hand, we could just refer to the year as "San Antonio" for short, tapping into the area code system. We'd be out of luck in 02011, but then 02012 would be the year of New York City, then 02013 would be Los Angeles, and so on. There might be a real chance for some geographic education buried in this curiosity.
Further developments on this front as time passes and events warrant.
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*--That would be my first choice.
18 February 02006: Today's Olympic Thoughts #3
Continuing the snowboardcross saga: Something that may well have redeemed Jimmy Roberts in the eyes of sports fans (as opposed to Olympic fans--there is overlap, but not identity, between those sets) occurred toward the end of NBC's prime time coverage last night. During the aftermath of the Lindsey Jacobellis fiasco, both Roberts and Bob Costas (in a later interview with her) never relented in taking her to task for blowing the gold medal while showing off on the last-but-one jump.
Good--nay, excellent--on them.
Not that she didn't try to lie explain her way out of it,
babbling on and on about how she was just happy not to fall out of the medal
standings entirely, and how silver is a great color, and on and on. That I
expected. But Roberts pre-demolished that line of thought, complete with video of great
chokes throughout history*, and didn't let up. Those of us following the
Rockwood Olympic
Watch, which is where a lot of Roberts-bashing originates, over the years
were stunned--pleasantly so.
And then when Costas continued pressing that point in person--magnificent.
I learned the adage about counting chickens when I was about 7, from a volume of Aesop's fables. How sad that someone can make it to double digits without doing so.
The night's other--although not in anywhere near the same league--faux pas came somewhere amidst the snowboardcross coverage when someone referred to snowboarding as a "New Age sport".
"New Age"?
No.
"New Wave", maybe. But there's a difference--a big difference**.
My personal take on this is that the New Age fluffy mentality is anathema to
sports, and to competition in general. Maybe one of those weak things
where there's no scorekeeping and nobody--excuse me, everybody--wins
could be blamed on attributed to the New Age. That and
rhythmic gymnastics, but that's not a sport.
Someone who's risen to the level of covering the Olympics on television should know the difference. Either that or some editing wizard should have fixed the flub before the show finally aired.
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*--Leon Lett may be especially grateful for this little development.
**--"New age": Enya. "New wave": Blondie. The difference is stark and the choice clear.
17 February 02006: Today's Olympic Thoughts #2
"Snowboardcross" is an awful word.
Snowboardcross, despite that awfulness, is an excellent sport; probably the first legitimate sport to emerge from the inanity that is the X Games.
Now if figure skating would take a page from their book and put multiple competitors on the ice at once, with the last ones standing getting the medals...we might have a sport there.
Part of the inspiration for that last suggestion is the short-track speed skating relay event, which is great fun to watch (and probably much more fascinating in person). The order within the frenzy of that event is an excellent illustration of chaos theory that doesn't involve genetically-engineered dinosaurs, and thus quite welcome in my corner of the world. It might even be interesting with feathers and sequins.
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14 February 02006: Today's Olympic Thoughts
1. New Rule: If you didn't call it "Athinai" (or, more properly, "Aqinai") in 02004, you have no business calling it "Torino" now. For most Americans, "Torino" is a car.* The city is called "Turin" over here.
2. Attention CBC analysts: It's not necessary to inform us on every run of long-track speed-skating that the skater finishing on the inside lane has an advantage. Perhaps they don't catch the repetition when things are being taped, but it all comes together a little too closely when it actually airs--especially at the shorter distances like 500 meters.
3. Viewing tip: Figure skating and short-track speed skating are held at the same arena. So...when there's short-track, you can pop up the popcorn and be sure that you won't have your sports experience interrupted by gauzy tunes and gauzier clothes. For other days, check here for the schedule.
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*--And a fine one, too.
13 February 02006: Amateur Vexillology
One more riff on the Olympic opening ceremonies: I found it amusing/annoying that coverage of the Olympic rings mentioned the fiction that at least one of those 5 colors is in the flag of every country in the world. Since very early in my life, I knew that that was wrong, as a look at the flag of Qatar confirms. There's some confusion about what color the right side of their flag is, but it's either maroon (quite probably "Qatar maroon", which comes from a local dye, but is not an approved Crayola color) or brown, and neither of those colors has Olympic ring status. Latvia's flag became important for this kind of discussion starting in the early 01990's, and it being maroon and white, we have a similar issue. (They call it red, but officials indicate that it's "almost brown".)
A couple of other countries only get in by some stretching of colors. Somalia's flag, for example, is sky blue with a white star in the middle, not the royal blue that appears in the O-rings. Argentina has the same issues with blue. It's time to straighten some of this out, guided by the following principles:
1. We're going to stick with a white background, so white isn't a flag color that will count.
2. Any color tapped to represent a country on the rings will have to have a significant flag presence. Example: Brazil's flag has a bit of white on it, but even if we were considering a white ring, they should get better representation than that. For them, we'll need either green, yellow, or blue.
3. If you're not a country, we're under no obligation to consider your flag. This applies chiefly to American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. They may have Olympic teams, but that doesn't make them countries.
4. If you're not an IOC member or don't field Olympic teams, you don't count, although if your flag gets covered, we won't go out of our way to avoid you. Vatican City and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta top this list, although I suppose that Scotland and Wales would fall in also. Ditto for the Faeroe Islands, who may have their own World Cup soccer team, but aren't a country.
So what will the new rings look like? To start with, we will require the following three colors:
Red: For Canada, Poland, Indonesia, Monaco, Switzerland, ...and the list goes on.
Blue: Israel, Finland, Greece, ...and we'll let royal blue cover that family of colors, solving the Somalia problem.
Green: Libya's flag is a plain green banner*. Saudi Arabia's is green and white.
The key to what comes next is this: There are no national flags using only black and white.
At this point, it's worth taking a step back and seeing how many flags lie outside this trio of colors. Bhutan, for one. Vatican City is another, but I'm not going to go too far out of the way for them. Latvia and Qatar.
And that's about it. So we'll take two more colors:
Yellow: Covers Bhutan and VC. We could accomplish the same thing with black, but yellow nails down Cyprus a little better than green did.
Maroon: And Qatar and Latvia come into the fold. I don't buy into any theory that maroon is covered by the red ring. In the case of each of these countries, maroon was chosen rather than red for what was held at the time to be a good reason. On the other hand, a look at the flag site I've been over-linking will indicate that there's typically no strong attachment to a particular shade of blue.
That's all we need to do: change a single ring. This gives us a better color mix, and makes fireworks more easily achievable--no more will white flame have to stand in where black should be. Pyrotechnicians are urged to get a good formula for maroon fire to Beijing by 02008.
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*--Not unlike the flag at the end of Animal Farm. I'm just saying...
12 February 02006*: Olympic Openings
It's the first Olympics since the launch of The Markives, and also the first Games since Millennium Digital Media saw the light and started offering Windsor's CBET-TV on the Albion cable package. That being so, commentary on TV coverage of the Olympics seems called for.
First, though, a link to someone who's truly taking a bullet for us all. Brian Lundmark, creator of the online Rockwood comic strip, has a tradition of watching NBC's primetime coverage and breaking it down into "Events", "Ads", and "Fluff"** in his Rockwood Olympic Watch. Check it out, and stick around for the comics.
On Friday night, at 8:07 P.M. Eastern, NBC's Jim Lampley uttered an amazing combination of syllables: "We'll be going out to Stadio Olimpico in 40 minutes." for the opening ceremonies. He might as well have said "Stay tuned for 40 minutes of preproduced filler."
I didn't hear what came next, because I immediately switched over to CBC and vowed not to return to NBC if at all possible.*** If you're tape-delaying things, then there's no excuse for fluff.
I then enjoyed a much better version of the opening night, including uninterrupted coverage of the Parade of Nations (Much better this year than in the past due to the right-angle turn which kept delegations from marching over each other--Beijing, Vancouver, and London organizing committees should take note.). If someone could give an explanation why American pop music from the late 01970's and early 01980's was used to welcome the athletes, I'd really like to hear it. (It may just have been to tick off the French, I suppose.)
When Susan Sarandon assisted in carrying in the Olympic flag, it was a tragedy that neither network mentioned her role in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". For better, worse, or otherwise, that may well be the most enduring work she'll ever do. I understand that Barry Bostwick's calendar is clear in 02008.
However, no matter which network you watch, I trust you'll agree that putting Yoko Ono on the program was a bad idea. Why that's not axiomatic somewhere, I don't understand.
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*--Lincoln's Birthday, which probably deserves to be restored to full holiday status, but that's another one of those "matter[s] for another time" that I don't always get back to.
**--Which should, but doesn't officially, include figure skating.
***--This doesn't necessarily apply to NBC's cable stations, which may well be a useful resource for actual sports.
27 January 02006: Ethanol-Induced Commentary
The curious title* above is inspired by two recent developments:
1. Here in the hometown of The Markives, we've just inherited a dozen bottles of assorted intoxicating libations, which is far more than I've owned in my life put together.
2. The recent missive over in Monday Moanin' about nonalcoholic alternative beverages.
To the first: It's a impressive lineup of alcohol, which means I'm living in a home with a well-stocked bar for the first time since college. A lot of it is still sealed and extremely aged. While my personal suspicion is that the unopened bottle of Beaujolais Superieur 1961** is, at this point, better suited for mixing with salad oil and pouring over lettuce than for drinking, anyone who knows differently is invited to contact me.
To the second: To say that I found Dan's commentary amusing would be an understatement. In the words of a comedian whose name eludes me at the moment. "Why would anyone drink nonalcoholic beer***? Is there anyone who's saying 'I don't want to get drunk or anything, but I would like a really big gut.'? "
Which kind of defeats the weight-loss aim of this quest to abstain.
More seriously, I find it counterproductive that 8 of his eleven choices are mere imitators of alcoholic beverages (I assume that "bong water" is not some cutesy name for a "mocktail"--in itself too cutesy a name for my tastes, but never mind that now--and that its inclusion was meant humorously.†). If the purpose is to avoid CH3CH2OH, why not take advantage of some of the best that the alcohol-free beverage industry has to offer? If the purpose is simply to drop inches and pounds, then start drinking water.
And that kicks off my list of alcohol-free alternatives that our Southern relative seems to have missed or ignored. No real recommendation is implied any way.
1. Ice water--I personally put away about a gallon of this a day, much of which can be chalked up to the facts that I talk for at least part of my living (frequently in a rather dusty‡ environment) and that I'm one of the few mathematicians who doesn't drink coffee. When our new science complex was in the design stages, we made sure that it included a water line into our new lounge so that an icemaker could be installed. Excellent call. If you want to throw in a lemon slice, you have #10 from the original list, translated from the Russian.
2. Root beer--An obvious one to anyone who's seen the decor in the Red Room. Virgil's if you're drinking only one; Stewart's if more than one--but there are a lot of good brands out there for extended drinking. Avoid, however, diet root beer, which is a crime against nature and should be a sin against humanity.
3. Lemonade--The advantages of lemonade are multiple: It's pretty widely available when dining out. It allows one to avoid both carbonation and alcohol, should that be your wish. And there's enough variation from place to place that it's something of an adventure to drink.
4. Gatorade--While on the one hand, they've taken "line extension" way off a cliff, they still make the original flavor, and it's tough to beat (especially over ice after mowing the lawn, although that's probably not the way they intend it be drunk). On the other hand, I find it disappointing that so few, even on the I'net, remember carbonated Gatorade (mid- to late-01970's). That was tasty stuff.
5. Red Kool-Aid--Not that I have anything against other colors, but if it's Kool-Aid, you can't go wrong with a red flavor. Once again, though, we have a product line that's been expanded far beyond what's reasonable--I submit that we could have survived well as a culture without their "Slammin' Strawberry-Kiwi" flavor.
6. Milk--Nonalcoholic and certainly nutritious, despite what 21st-century food scolds would have us believe. A childhood spent drinking whole milk is another one of those things that, if the alarmists surrounding contemporary childhood are to be believed, should have killed us all in our youth. (Also on that list: riding bicycles without a helmet, riding in cars without being strapped into car seats to the point of suffocation, and using metal and inadequately-padded playground equipment.)
7. Mountain Dew--In its humble early days, this starred at Winter Camp IV as "Xanthine Drink". It needs no further defense or explanation from me, except...The folks at Pepsi missed an opportunity for a triple offense a few years back. While they shamelessly sold (and may or may not continue to sell) Diet Caffeine-Free MD, they really should have jumped on a brief (~01990-01991) pop bandwagon, eradicated all three things that MD is good for, and come out with Diet Crystal CF MD. Mountain Dew is excellent when you want to consume mass quantities of sugar, caffeine§, and artificial coloring. Not to mention orange juice, which is an ingredient in there somewhere. I can occasionally amaze a roomful of students when I mention that.
8. Grapefruit Juice--Or, as Dan would say, a "virgin greyhound". Best if unsweetened. Pink, red, or "white"--which is actually yellowish, of course.
9. Cherry Cola--Either a commercial brand or something made by mixing Grenadine or cherry syrup with fountain cola. If the latter, stir thoroughly before drinking. I made this mistake of omission once when a colleague offered to refill my glass at a pizzeria that made its CC with cherry Sno-cone syrup. She used about two inches of syrup, which didn't mix well with the lighter cola above¶...and the straw was at the bottom of the glass. Tasty, but certainly unexpected. After stirring, it was also quite tasty. Good with lemon or lime. My verdict is still out on Coca-Cola's new black cherry & vanilla Coke, but that also sounds good to me.
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*--Curious to anyone who really knows me and is expecting alcohol-inspired commentary on the state of the planet, that is.
**--There's an embedded ambigram, incidentally (although Arial/Helvetica isn't the best font for it).
***--I'm surprised that his list
of alcohol alternatives didn't include
Zing. I'm also surprised that
this Michigan school
district still has a policy on their books banning Zing (scroll down about
60%). This one
too (p. 21). And
this one (p.16), which leads me to think that there's some theft
sharing of words going on here. What are they drinking here in Michigan?
Clearly nothing off either of these lists.
†--If I'm wrong, I'd really rather not know.
‡--Chalk dust, of course. It's a riveting classroom moment when I eat a piece of chalk in class, which I do about once a year. The key to pulling that off is to have a lot of water close at hand. Chalk tastes...well, chalky. It's perfectly safe, though. Last year, word spread around campus pretty rapidly--I got some email from former students asking about the incident.
§--Although not in Canada, where caffeine evidently cannot, by law, be added to beverages containing fruit juice. Canada recently got around this when a variant called Energy was marketed as an energy drink. It seems the laws are different when applied to energy drinks.
¶--Thus inadvertently creating a two-layer alcohol-free pousse-café.
23 January 02006: Quick Comments
1. I am already tired of the Jerome-Bettis-coming-home-for-the-Super-Bowl-in-his-hometown hype. I had had enough of it by the Colts-Steelers game, and it's not gotten better. And looking at the front of today's Detroit News, it's only going to get worse. We're in for thirteen days of insufferable coverage of a big guy with a silly nickname.
My rooting algorithm doesn't readily distinguish between Seattle and Pittsburgh, but this settles it. In the words of Frasier Crane, from episode #1 of Frasier, go Seahawks.
2. In another head-scratcher, the West Wing basketball league (The Markives, 10 October 02005) has placed a team in Lake Tahoe, who took on Nashville in a game reported yesterday. (They also reported last night a score between Indianapolis and Boston, which is impossible with the current lineup of every major league.)
3. (Added 24 January) One thing that pleased me about the NFL conference championships was that Seattle coach Mike Holmgren was not doused in Gatorade (or ice water) by his team--and that the commentators pointed this out. While I don't for a minute believe that this is the beginning of the end of a really moronic tradition*, it's nice to see a blip in that particular data stream.
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*--Were I ever a football coach, I would make it very clear that anyone doing that to me would soon be off the team.
22 January 02006: An Auspicious Beginning For The UBC
In Friday's news was the announcement that 6 of Division I's 9* remaining independent basketball colleges have formed something called the United Basketball Conference. My initial reactions, following the realization that Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne, New Jersey Tech, North Dakota State, South Dakota State, Texas-Pan American, and Utah Valley State would have to stretch like Silly Putty to find anything in common (besides all of them having the letter "e" in their names, which by itself doesn't make for good athletic rivalries), were the following:
1. "United Basketball Conference" is only slightly better than "Conference USA" as a name for a sports league.
2. This conference will make the Mid-Continent Conference (The Markives, 26 February 02005) look like the Big Ten.
3. Once they qualify for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, we're going to see the tournament expand to 66 teams, probably with a play-in doubleheader in Dayton. After researching this matter yesterday, I found the NCAA requirement of a 13-year wait before automatic qualifier status kicks in (the Mountain West must have gotten some kind of waiver), so for a variety of reasons, this may never apply. I believe I'm right in theory, though--the NCAA wouldn't kick the sixth-place SEC team to the NIT just so NDSU can play in the big tournament. (Although an argument can be made that they should.)
Then I started reviewing yesterday's basketball scores, including North Dakota State 62, Wisconsin 55. Thus, in the first basketball weekend since the UBC announced its intentions, one of their own knocks off a Top-25 (#13) Big Ten school.
Nice start.
Upon further review and research, it looks as though the UBC is at best a stopgap measure to facilitate January/February schedules at the 6 schools involved. With only 6 members, they don't meet the NCAA minimum for automatic tournament berth consideration. More to the point, several of the schools seem to be biding their time until their D-I probationary period is over, at which time they hope to be more attractive to other conferences.
In the case of NDSU and SDSU, it's the Mid-Continent Conference--which kind of confirms some of my initial impressions. Looks like the UBC could spend its existence with a real revolving door policy--kind of a soft landing place for colleges working their way up to full D-I membership**. At the same time, the UBC has set up some kind of "travel partner" arrangement within its six schools, apparently to try and cut costs. Certainly pairing NJ Tech and IPFW on a regular basis doesn't make sense unless money is involved.
Nonetheless, I'll be watching this closely. Outside the Dakotas***, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, and Utah, I'll probably be the only one who isn't paid to do so.
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*--Of the remaining 3, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi joined the Southland Conference, Northern Colorado found a spot in the Big Sky, and Longwood (VA) decided that they couldn't afford to join this venture. In the words of Jeff Kolpack, who writes for The Forum in Fargo, ND, "That has to be a comforting thought for Longwood boosters: your school can’t afford the six-team UBC."
**--The Mid-Continent has played this role throughout its history, but I don't think they're quick to admit it.
***--As an aside here: I'm hoping that this brings some positive sports developments to the state of North Dakota. In addition to advocating professional sports in New Mexico (The Markives, 10 October 02005), I would like to see a major league team in North Dakota. Indeed, my life will reach one version of "complete" when the Albuquerque Atomics take on the Fargo Flamethrowers. Name your sport.
15 January 02006: Media-Related Thoughts
1. 02006 is going to start with a lot of mints being dropped into 2-liter pop bottles, thanks to Numb3rs last Friday (13 January). For the sake of cleaning crews and parents across America, I hope that these budding* applied mathematicians use club soda rather than Diet Coke. I find it interesting (but not at all surprising) that this activity is not part of the CBS/NCTM/Texas Instruments collaboration to provide lesson plans that are tied to these episodes.
2. More proof that figure skating is not a sport can be found here. Not that we needed it.
3. Speaking of figure skating...Fox's latest venture into reality television seems to be troubled from the get-go. I refer, of course, to Skating With Celebrities. This week's Entertainment Weekly summarized the problem with this idea better than I can: It's a problem when the skaters are more prominent than the so-called celebrities. My track record on predicting media success is sufficiently checkered that I'm not going to hazard a guess on the success or failure of this one. Truth be known, it's both reality TV and figure skating, which in my universe would be grounds for an unpleasant death, but in the mixed-up world that is 21st-century America, may be a formula for success.
4. Which brings me to a larger question: Where is the line between reality television and a game show? As I continue a firm commitment to not watching reality TV in the face of a lifelong enjoyment of game shows, that question occasionally rises to the surface. Sometimes the line is easily drawn--anything that is nominated for an Emmy in the "RTV" category, for example.
Sometimes it's trickier. The best example of this confusion is probably the late and not-terribly-lamented The Weakest Link. Part of the challenge there is that TWL premiered at the beginning of the RTV bulge and also during the brief resurgence of prime-time game shows.** For reasons that I can't completely identify, I tend to classify TWL as a game show, rather than a reality show. Admittedly, the voting-off procedure in the show tips the scale a bit toward the reality side of the coin, but facility with the questions being asked counted for something (at least until only three contestants remain, when being smart is, in theory, a big disadvantage***). That makes the difference for me--not that I watched the show often, but every once in awhile, it'll show up on GSN. It also rescues--for me--shows like Comedy Central's Distraction, which has made a somewhat-unexpected return. It's possible to succeed on Distraction without having to suffer every degradation that the show offers--to take an example from last week's episode, it you knew a lot about famous Mark's in history and could answer lots of questions correctly, you could have gotten by without clipping clothespins to your face.
On the other hand, when you made it through to the next round, you would still have to suffer through a tattooing.
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*--And not-so-budding. If I could find a way to tie the nucleation site phenomenon into any class I'm teaching this semester, you can be certain that I'd do that in class. The closest I can come is statistical mechanics...but for the first time since August 02004 (a total of 4 semesters, including summer school), I'm not teaching statistics this semester.
**--Speaking of which, I rather enjoyed the brief run of Deal or No Deal on NBC. If it continues to be successful when it returns, I'll surely be teaching about it. By the way, on the "Play At Home" site for DoND, my strategy is to pick case #17 and then start opening them in numerical order. I'd be a very boring contestant--but a very successful one, as I've closed a good deal each time. Knowledge of expected value can be a good thing.
***--So said a passage from a textbook I've been using that analyzes the game from a probabilistic point of view--which is another sign that this is a game show. Survivor and its ilk are remarkably unamenable to mathematical thinking. ("Unamenable" may not be a word, but should be.)
11 January 02006: Ceaseless Amazement
This really shouldn't surprise me, but I can't help but wonder why anyone still takes Pat Robertson seriously, and why people who do are allowed to vote and drive cars.
And then, after the recent idiocy from ol' MGR*, I was reminded of how close I came to falling, at least for a short time and by a tangled sort of proxy, under his thumb. In 01997, as I was being paid to leave a previous employer, I considered applying for a faculty position at William Tyndale College in metro Detroit. They were looking to start up a mathematics teacher education program and were making some noise about intercollegiate athletics (Former Lions coach Monte Clark was said to be advising them.)--these are both areas where I have some expertise that they may have found useful. WTC was bought out by Pat's educational arm, Regent University, in 02003, but this proved no magic bullet, and the college shut down on 31 December 02004.
It would have been an annoying ride, no doubt about that.
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*--His actual initials. No idea where "Pat" came from.
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