Thane Plambeck

Algorithmatic

Chris Ware's Raeburn Algorithmatic

CRAZIEST

Liz Dubelman

Dennis Oppenheim

Device to Root Out Evil

From the Stanford Daily, 28 September 2004, pg 1, "University censors Sculpture:"

[Oppenheim] joked that the title of the cancelled Stanford sculpture, Device to Root out Evil, which caused him trouble with the University, has grown ironically appropriate.

"It really did root out evil in a strange, circuitous way," Oppenheim mused. "The President [John Hennessy] and others have conservative views and are afraid of a work of art, and now we know about it. It really worked."

The Flapper

This paper airplane flaps its wings when thrown.

I found the design here. Yesterday, I messed up my first attempt at making it, but this afternoon Cole and Owen and I succeeded.

It works—it's best to throw it in a quiet place so that you can enjoy the soft sound of the flapping—something like the sound of several pigeons taking off from a ledge, high above you.

The design calls for a penny to be taped into the bulgy part at the bottom. The airplane hardly veers off to the side at all when it's thrown—Cole and I were practically playing catch with it.

Ten years as a card carrying member

Yes, ten years, not nine. I counted with my fingers.

Interstate 205

M.S. Carriers

Extreme Subtleties

From Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, I (1945):

106. Here is is difficult as it were to keep our heads up—to see that we must stick to the subjects of our every-day thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe extreme subtleties, which in turn we are after all unable to describe with the means at our disposal. We feel as if we had to repair a torn spider's web.

Forma Urbis Romae

From the Stanford Computer Science Newsletter on my desk:

And now, let us return to the continuing saga of Professor Marc Levoy and his Indiana Jones adventures trying to assemble that ancient map of Rome (see last year's newsletter). In March, Marc, his Ph.D. student David Koller, and Professor Jennifer Trimble (Marc's collaborator in the Classics department) traveled to Rome to present a sequence of talks at a conference devoted specifically to "New Discoveries Related to the Forma Urbis Romae." The conference was attended by every leading Italian-speaking Roman archaeologist in the world.

According to all reports, David's talk on "solving the puzzle" was the runaway hit of the day. Earlier talks had focused on one or another fragment of the map; for example, proposing a new placement for the fragment, re-interpreting the meaning of its incised architecture, etc. By contrast, David started his talk by throwing up a slide listing 50 proposed new matches. This drew audible gasps from the audience. He then marched through the list, spending less than a minute on each match. Such things are simply not done in that research community. The murmuring of the audience grew with each match. When he finished, there was loud and sustained applause, so much that David began blushing. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School in Rome was heard exclaiming, "Today changes everything; the study of this map will never be the same!"

Walking, red and pink

From the Westchester (New York) Magazine (October 2004), "The Eight Wonders of Westchester," p. 71:

The extraordinary 134-year-old Armour-Stiner Octagon House in Irvington: You can see the red-and-pink painted structure walking along the Croton Aqueduct; the house resembles nothing you've seen before.

[via: Ditto at the NPL]

WSJ Bushism of the Week

"Let me put it to you bluntly. In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your life."

wholesome fun

At caribou:

Many people never bother to change the default password on their Telecom answer phone service (it's the last four digits of the phone number): this simple fact has provided me with hours of wholesome fun. I once broke into the Presbyterian Support Services answer phone and re-recorded their message word-for-word, but with an oddly camp Polish accent. At the end of the message I sung a little song of my own devising. I spent a happy afternoon listening to the messages left by bemused parishioners; the vicar had re-recorded the message by the end of the day.

Exploding pants

Exploding pants betray meth suspect

"A flash of fire went through the car along with a red flare..."

Moon, or temporary clump?

Scientists cannot yet definitively say if the object is a moon or a temporary clump.

Recent Acquisitions

I bought Gloria an iPod mini:

Cole wanted a book on knots:

I've liberated a shell that's been sitting on a dresser in our bedroom. Now it's in my office, instead. It's got a pattern on it that looks like output from a cellular automaton:

I don't know what type of shell it is. Do you? (answer in the comments, perhaps). I bought this book for myself:

Grid Rage

grid rage: The total frustration that comes from being unable to complete the New York Times Saturday (or Sunday) crossword puzzle. [Nominated by Gene Newman for "Buzzword of the Day"; definition via: a puzzlers.org mailing list]

Some good clues from yesterday's (Saturday) NYT, created by Brian Walden:

Hostile takeover symbol (10): PIRATEFLAG

It's not all fluff (11): MERINGUEPIE

Appropriate (5): COOPT [Gave me some grief]

Put out, in the old days (8): ETHERIZE [Good to know your TS Eliot]

Former carrier to Lima (8): AEROPERU [Not really such a great clue, and I hadn't heard of it, anyway, but once you've written that word down it has a way of echoing in the mind like an Incan wind chime: "aeroperu...aeroperu....aeroperu...aeroperu my apercu..."]

Cole (age 9) told me

Author Silverstein (4): SHEL

But I had already written that one in myself. Really. Cole also offered two six-letter solutions for #1 Across:

________ Desert

(SAHARA and MOJAVE), but I refused to write either in (we were waiting for his violin lesson). "Why?" he asked. "Because I don't know any of the other words in that corner, yet." He wasn't satsified, but I was right: the answer proved to be LIBYAN.

No rage today, but three pen colors and (part of Sunday) were required:

Mistakes requiring significant ink overlay scribbling:

13 Down: Father of Deimos (4): I wrote in MARS immediately, thinking of the moon of the planet. But the answer is ARES.

41 Down: Whodunit necessity (6): I wrote in CORPSE, fully satisified that it would be correct since it went well with PIXAR, just the left of it. But the answer was MOTIVE. Two words with second letter O and final E.

I've noticed in my webserver logs that my entries about crossword puzzles are bringing people to this web site who are searching for answers to older NYT puzzles (they get republished in other newspapers a few weeks later). For example, a good 100 of you have come by looking for the answer to Mrs Reed's creator.

Now, now, it is CHEATING to use the web to search for crossword puzzle answers, friends. You are not allowed to

1) use a pencil

2) ask your wife

3) pick up any book

4) touch a computer

How else can a good case of grid rage settle in?

Colby Wissel

A speedy guy I met last year, about this time of year, in Roger Mathiesen's office at Kearney High School, in Kearney, Nebraska. He was thinking of applying to Stanford. Looks like he is a Jayhawk, instead.

Some Silver Atrocity

Bits and googlelinks from Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1926-1950, edited by Dan H. Laurence:

"I never grieve," Shaw iterated in letters of condolence, "and I never forget."

Nice thought, nice use of "iterate," and nice quotation from that definition:

  Nor Eve to iterate Her former trespass feared.   

                       --Milton.

taoiseach*bouyant billions*wesleyan connexional school*robert donat*sir jacob epstein*pearson's magazine

Shaw writes to Ernest Thesiger, 24 July 1936:

My Dear Ernest: Let me explain about birthday presents. I am not insensible to the good feeling that prompts them; but I like them to be useful and friendly. Also they should be personal. A presentation into which the subscribers have been blackmailed is abhorrent to me. It results in some silver atrocity that I dont want—that no human being could ever possibly want (except to pawn)—and that I shall never see again. For instance, the Nobel Prize. Eight ounces of solid gold, with a stamp of less merit than a postmark. I havnt the slightest notion where it is; and its possession has never given me a moment's gratification.

moody and sankey (I thought of flanders and swann)*osteitis deformans*university of guelph

Uncertain, TX

map

Might not the pupil know more?

[more Los Caprichos]

Monster Houses and Albert Einstein

From the Palo Alto Weekly, 10 September 2004, "Proposed Subdivision Divides Neighbors"

Migdal vigorously defended the plans as completely conforming with Palo Alto standards.

"These are not 5,000-, 6,000-, or 7,000-square foot monster homes. This is below the average home in Palo Alto," Migdal said of the plan, which calls for homes of 2,650- to 2850-square feet. "They should not be called 'monster.' They are not monstrous."

One resident who supported Migdal said the city needed new development to attract intellectual capital to the area.

But another resident later retorted: "Albert Einstein's house in Princeton, NJ—it's not two story."