Thane Plambeck

Quality Prting

I took this one about 8 years ago. Anil suggested that I photograph it.

Gladding, McBean

I took this photo is almost 3 years ago. It's still one of my favorites.

link (feeling lucky)

ewolf writes on the NPL list

-snip-
In the February 17th, 2006 issue of "Entertainment Weekly", a blurb on p. 22 about director Werner Herzog contains the sentence:

Then on Jan. 26, Her[zog happened by Joaquin Phoenix's car wreck and pulled the actor from the v]ehicle.

The letters between the brackets represent a 61-letter pangrammatic window - a consecutive block which contains all letters of the alphabet...

...This breaks the current known record of 62 letters, discovered by Dan Tilque in an online music review and reported in a 2004 Word Ways article. In 2002, Mike Keith had reported a 64-letter window, breaking by 1 the long-time record of 65, discovered in 1907 by A. Cyril Pearson in Sarah Grand's 1897 "The Beth Book". This record stood for a supra-Maris-like 95 years until Keith's discovery. Computer search tools of ever-larger bodies of text will surely allow the record to be broken again, though the current example I found purely by chance (my brain usually scans subconsciously whenever I see a promising start like "Joaquin Phoenix").
-snip-

Elwyn Berlekamp in his office on Shattuck

[Photo #3 in this series of "not-so-high-quality photos of mathematicians in interesting places." I need to get in the habit of carrying a real digital camera around again, not just the cellphone. ]

David Gale in the amazing new MSRI auditorium

[ Note to self: buy his book ]

Persi Diaconis in the puzzle shed

At the orthodontist's

You wouldn't believe how I lost my retainer, a story collection by patients, mostly handwritten.

DESK HELPER: You don't want to be published in that.

COLE (examines book): I've broken one that way, by biting on it.

Moral of the first story—Do not wrap retainer in a napkin at a restaurant.

Many of the stories were written as apologies—"I'm sorry," was a common start.

Others read like disaster accounts—"It started like any other good day..."

I'm going to want to read it more carefully next time I'm in the office waiting for the kids.

Plane Plambeck

On a receipt for a gift certificate to greens restaurant:

[ More misspellings ]

Chuck Close

Originally uploaded by thane.

From the Chuck Close exhibition at SF MOMA. They almost kicked me out for taking this photo.

Plaskett almost becomes a millionaire

At chessbase.com, the British chess Grandmaster James Plaskett writes:

* * *

I first tried to get on to this show Who Want To Be A Millionaire (WWTBAM) in 1999. My first hit got me on, but I got the first two Fastest Finger First trials wrong, and the third FFF, which was "Starting at the fingertips, put these parts of the arm in the sequence", saw me, indeed, get Knuckle, Wrist, Elbow and Shoulder in sequence... but

1. a policeman did it faster, and

2. there was a fault with several of the consoles, including mine, and so my effort did not even register as one of the accurate ones...

* * *

link

Prison Break

From the Associated Press:

* * * *
CHICAGO (AP) -- Six inmates, including two who are charged with murder, escaped from the Cook County Jail during the night by taking advantage of short staffing, authorities said Sunday.

Two escapees were captured in suburban Oak Park, police said.

The inmates escaped around midnight from a special housing unit for inmates with disciplinary problems, where only one guard was on duty instead of two, said Cook County Sheriff's Department spokesman Bill Cunningham.

One inmate threw hot shower water on the guard and held him at bay with a homemade knife, then handcuffed the guard and put on his uniform, officials said.

That inmate opened doors to let six other inmates out. One immediately was caught, but the other six got over a barbed wire fence and onto the streets.

The jail break was the second since Friday. An inmate facing armed robbery charges broke out Friday by apparently slipping into a laundry truck, but he was arrested Saturday at a suburban motel, authorities said.

* * * *
[ Note to self—need to add that "short staffing" excuse and "X were captured" possibility to my prison break story generator. I think I already have "laundry truck" logic in there, somewhere. Must check. This story violates convention by not naming the escapees. ]

Best space photo ever taken

On May 19th, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars...

[This has to be the best space photo ever taken. ]

CLK Cabrio rides

slideshow

More #'s

Roy Leban writes:

* * * *
Not counting the hundreds of -miles, -villes, -Acres, -Forks, -[trees], and -Corners, here are the numerical place names that I know of (in the US only):

Six, WV
Nineteen, KY
Twentythree, AR
Twentysix, KY
Thirty, IA
Forty Four, AR
Forty Five, TN
Seventy Six, KY
Seventysix, MO
Eighty Four, PA
Eighty Eight, KY
Ninetyfour, CO
Ninety Six, SC
Hundred, WV
Million, KY

plus...

Zero, IA, MS, and MT

The following numerically-named places no longer exist:

Seven, TN
Forty, MS
Seventynine, MT

88 and 84

John McNeill points out that there's an Eighty Eight, Kentucky.

And here's a little page on the schools in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania.

96

I wonder if there are any other places whose names are natural numbers?

Pucker up

Lizzo (glamour shot / paintings) took a sexy photo of a tadpole:

She writes:

Yes, they're very kissy.

I took the pictures. We secreted the eggs out of Edgewood park and it's been fun to watch them grow. I feed them boiled lettuce (read about that in a cool nature book about frogs written in the 70's). I have them in a big vase. Pretty soon I'll release them back to the "wild."

Sentences often directed toward kids

1) "Don't piss me off."

2) "Are you trying to be nice? What you said didn't sound so nice to me."

3) "I don't know. Good question. If I had to guess, I would probably say A, for reason B. On the other hand, it might be that C, because of D. I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that question. We should Google it. It's so hard to remember to do that though."

4) "Your mother and I will confer on this issue."

5) "How was school? And no, you can't say 'Good.' Ha, ha—yes, I know, you said 'Good.' "

6) "Why don't you scamper over to X and do Y?" [ unexpected sideffect: kids that use the word "scamper" too much ]

7) "There are no kid coaches on this team."

8) "Do we have any kid coaches? No."

9) "Start trying to find your shoes. We are going to go."

10) "I am not your personal servant or slave."

11) "Be quiet, he is answering your question right now!"

12) "I won't do that until you practice violin."

13) "When I say, 'in your class,' that means, 'the same grade as you.' Yes, I know that you're thinking 'is that kid in my classroom,' but no, that's not what I mean, instead, I mean, "is that kid in the same grade as you.' OK?"

14) "Raisin toast?"

15) "Have you done your homework?"

16) "Get ready."

17) "Yes, that is a very great mystery. Why is it that a kid that doesn't want to get into the bath, once put into the bath, suddenly won't get out of the bath?"

18) "Your comments are interesting, but we are still going to do Z, nevertheless."

19) "That's a bunch of crap. Straighten up."

20) "You are tired and melting down. Go to bed."

Reading over this list, I sound like a real hard ass. Is this why everyone says our kids are so nice and well-behaved? We get this feedback from parents all the time, and I've always found it a bit puzzling—you mean that little stinker? You are so, so, wrong...

Misere play of G-A-R-D-N-E-R

I spent most of the day putting together this handout (PDF) for the upcoming "Gathering for Gardner" (G4G7) conference, next month. I spent about 45 minutes worrying that this thing wasn't going to work out the way I had planned. But I was just confused—the solution that I'd obtained out using Aaron Siegel's MisereSolver program worked after all.

[ Tomorrow—proofread! ]

Moments in Last Year at Marienbad when that weird character plays misere Nim against the other hotel guests

Last Year at Marienbad is a 1961 French movie directed by Alan Renais. It's mostly annoying to watch, but it has the benefit of having the game of Misere Nim played several times in the movie.

The starting position is always four heaps of cards (more often, matchsticks). The heaps have sizes 1, 3, 5, and 7. A move is to take some number of cards from one heap only, removing them from play (including the whole heap, if desired). Play ends when the last card is taken, and the player who takes that card loses the game. This starting position is a forced win for the second player to move (ie a P-position) in best play.

Last night, I suffered through the whole movie, keeping track of when Misere Nim is played.

#1) Elapsed time: 15:11 (roughly): Misere nim with cards. Best view of play in the movie. As always in the movie, the strange-looking guy who proposes that the game be played wins. He lets the other guest move first. The actor playing the Guest does a great job of looking disgruntled as he is forced to take the last card (and loses the game).

#2) Elapsed time: 20:56: Misere nim with matchsticks. "What if you play first?" The weird guy obliges, and makes a (losing) first move, but the guest makes an error and the weird guy wins again.

#3) Elapsed time: 37:00: Misere nim with matchsticks, set up for play only.

#4) Elapsed time: 1hr 13:00: Misere nim with matchsticks. This is the best part, with the highly amusing speculation on the part of the guests—"I think you should always take an odd number." "He's using the theory of logarithms." [In translation to English on my DVD, that is "It is a type of logarithmic series." "How does he always win?" This last scene is the best one for commentary by the guests.

I like this review of the movie at Amazon, by Jack Walter:

I am an avid fan of foreign, avant-garde, bizarre, challenging and/or enigmatic films, but this one is just plain agonizing to watch. The photography and the characters are beautiful, but I had to view this film in two sessions, both of them tormentingly slow. At first I thought it was some kind of variation on Sartre's "No Exit," but if it was, I was the one in the waiting room in Hell! This movie is pointless, vapid and pathetically pretentious. I hope God adds ninety-four minutes onto my life as a reward for sitting through Last Year at Marienbad!