Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Disentangling Religion from Public Life
Via Maud Newton, this is an excerpt of her excerpt from the introduction to the book Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, by D. Michael Lindsay, that I found interesting: Much of the twentieth century was spent disentangling religion from public life. Commerce and piety were once seen as […]
Is Pink Dainty or Butch?
Writing about a study purporting to support the notion that girls have an inherent preference for pink — making it the girl's color — Ben Goldacre wrote the following, which I wanted to save in my "It's Always Been That Way — Hasn't It?" file. But is colour preference cultural or genetic? Well. The “girls […]
You! Rocket Scientist! Move Away…
…from the dotted hole and no one gets hurt! Not long ago some creative googler arrived here, at this blog, by searching for these words: how do you get the rocket scientist to move away from the dotted hole One of the few things guaranteed to pique my interest and confuse me to atoms is […]
Performance & Performing
Our "Kiss Me, Kate" rehearsal Wednesday night# went pretty well, about where we should have been with two days to go and a few details to brush up. For me it was good because I finally remembered all my lines at all the right times, as well as lyrics and dance steps. All this was […]
In: All, Music & Art, Reflections
A Decade Without TV
I find that I get unusually irritated by admonitions that assume I'm not already doing what said admonition would like me to do. Such presumption! There's a road sign I curse routinely that says "Slow Down!" when I'm already going the speed limit. Back in the Carter days it was "Turn Down Your Thermostat!" (in […]
The Harvest Moon
For those of us who wonder why the "harvest moon" is called that, the kind folks at Space Weather (a NOAA project: Space Weather) give this brief explanation: HARVEST MOON: There's a full Moon tonight (Wed., Sept. 26) and it has a special name–the "Harvest Moon," the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox. In […]
Two More Bites of Pi
I can't help myself now. I've just read through another paper by some of the -algorithm people*, and they provide two fascinating equations from the history of computing . Although they have been used in practice, my purpose here is just to look at them in amazement. This first one is an odd and ungainly […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Why Pi?
As a little gloss to the previous entry on calculating π, I'm finally reading the entertaining and enlightening article "The Quest for Pi" and find this unique observation after asking why people persist in calculating π to billions of digits: Certainly there is no need for computing π to millions or billions of digits in […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
A Big Piece of Pi
How innocently it all begins, sometimes. For some reason a day or two ago I decided I would take a few google-moments and look into modern computational formulæ that are use to calculate the value of . What a loaded question that turned out to be! Before I'd reached a point to pause and write […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Symphonic Dogs
I've occasionally given my opinion about music that I like, or music that I think is great, or variants on those topics, but I don't think I've ever mentioned some of the music that I detest. This came to mind because the radio station I was listening to started playing one of the pieces I […]
One Nation, One Marriage
Fascinating. Arch anti-gay conservative fundamentalist James Dobson (of so-called "Focus on Family"), in announcing that he would not, could not support a Fred Thompson presidency, had this to say: "Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S.,…?" […]
Positive Procrastination
Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about procrastination, for some reason, perhaps from reviewing the long list of things I'd been wanting to get done recently, and I thought I'd write a few notes. This morning I woke up thinking about procrastination again, probably because I hadn't written about it yesterday. I am a world-class […]
Conversational Time Warp
Yesterday I saw something that, until I actually saw it, I hadn't realized was such an archaic, outdated, never-seen thing of the past: I saw a young person talking on a pay phone.
To Be Rich & To Spend
I was struck by Robert Reich's concise and ringing analysis in this paragraph of what it means to be rich: But with a recession looming, Democrats need to stop being the party of Herbert Hoover economics. And the Republican[s] need to understand tax cuts for the rich won't help because the rich don’t increase their […]
Our Labor Day Daytrip
When the weather is nice and we have a Monday holiday available, we like to take an excursion, heading out in some direction to explore some unfamiliar territory. This past Labor Day happened to have beautiful weather in our part of the country, so we set out north. Part of the excuse for the trip […]
Iowa, My Iowa
I went to college in Iowa, having grown up in Kansas. I enjoyed it then and I still have the fondest feelings for the state. It was a pleasant place to live, and a surprisingly progressive and educated state, where in my day all the farm boys went to college, studied classics, then went back […]
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
My Larry Craig Strategy
Throughout this whole debacle with Larry Craig and his wide stance, the main theme seems to be blinding hypocrisy on virtually everyone's part. The observation would seem to be correct that he didn't actually do anything criminal, although he confessed to a misdemeanor after being pressured and implicitly threatened with exposure. Was it entrapment? Well, […]
In: All, Current Events, Splenetics
My Italian Underwear
Okay, while I'm thinking about it, here's the story on my Italian underwear. "Upim" is the name of a department store with quite a few locations around Italy — at least Rome and north. It's a pleasant, upbeat, mid-range department store; Isaac and I liken it to Target here in our part of the US. […]
The Old & New Vietnam
How right — in so many ways he hadn't contemplated — the current commander-in-chief is to compare his pretty little war in Iraq with the tragic war in Vietnam. "For twenty years, first the French and then the United States, have been predicting victory in Vietnam. In 1961 and 1962, as well as 1966 and […]
Spamish Approbation
Still reading from my Baltimore Sun "Food & Drink Newsletter", I have enjoyed the first part of an article called "The Great Debate: Spam". I agree, naturally, with Mr. Schleicher, who writes to praise Spam; but my four regular readers will be aware already that I do what I can to advance the cause of […]