Archive for November, 2005
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
The first half of the manuscript of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was begun in 1876 and published in 1885, was discovered in 1990 'in an old steamer trunk stored in the attic of a Los Angeles house.' It includes a description of a camp meeting ...
Posted in Music | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
We finally attended the Chihuly in Kalamazoo exhibit at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Lots of good color and forms! I think I liked one of the putti the best. Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of the one I especially liked. Shown are some images from a movie of ...
Posted in Books, Literature, the Arts | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 28th, 2005
Tim Converse reports on recruiting trip to Michigan he made--that is, Michigan the University. He asked the audience trivia questions, including "how many trailing zeros in 100 factorial?"
I remember seeing 100! for the first time:
93,326,215,443,944,152,681,699,238,856,266,700,490,715,968,264,381,621,468,592,963,895,217,599,993,229,915,608,941,463,976,156,518,286,253,697,920,827,223,758,251,185,210,916,864,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
I wondered where all those (24) zeroes came from, but I never took the time ...
Posted in Science and Tech, Whim | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 26th, 2005
Tim Converse, on the Proper uses of bugzilla.
Posted in Science and Tech | Comments Off
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
O'Reilly is running a series on how alpha geeks got into programming; my friend Joyce Park is number 2 in the series. I knew Joyce back when she was just a beta geek :)
Posted in Personal and family | Comments Off
Monday, November 21st, 2005
Another nice monthly Sacred Harp singing, with several friends back we haven't seen for a while--Idy Kiser and Henry Schumann for example--and a return of Tom Malone, who moved to Michigan recently, plus some new singers. We sang a number of 'fast' tunes slowly tonight, such as Ballstown, which is ...
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Sunday, November 20th, 2005
Interesting article Why are American presidential election campaigns so variable when votes are so predictable? (pdf) by Andrew Gelman and Gary King. First, I didn't know that presidential elections were so predictable, but apparently they are (close races are predictably close, not-so-close races are predictably not-so-close) based on certain ...
Posted in Politics and News | Comments Off
Saturday, November 19th, 2005
Random thoughts and links in preparation for leading worship tomorrow:
Homily by a Fr. Jim Tucker: Si algo toca nuestro vivir, tiene que ser sometido al imperio del Rey Crucificado.
What does "Viva el Cristo Rey" show up on serveral Persian blogs? For example, this one.
Can one be politically somewhat leftist ...
Posted in Religion | Comments Off
Saturday, November 19th, 2005
Some recordings of Sacred Harp music at the "American Memory" project of the Library of Congress from the Fort Valley Folk Festival, recorded in the 30s:
Jubilee (Jubilee, 144)
Newman (Cooper Book 368b; Denson Newnan 321)
Great God, Attend (Ballstown, 217)
Glory Shone Around (Cooper Book 98)*
My Home Above (Cooper Book, 524)
I ...
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Saturday, November 19th, 2005
Listening to the wonderfully interesting Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, I came across a euphemism that's new to me (and, in fact, returns no results when entered into Google search, and only one at Yahoo search): "I don't give a stamp!"
Posted in Language, Whim | Comments Off
Friday, November 18th, 2005
Live Fast, Die Young - the Short Life of Early Modern German Auxiliary Ellipsis (!)
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Saturday, November 12th, 2005
Kalamazoo hosts a biennial Festival of Sacred Music, which is taking place this weekend. Martha Beverley and Sam Sommers lead a Sacred Harp workshop this morning; I love listening to Sam describe how to remember the shapes: 'FA points fa-r fa-r away; LA is square like the Law (and starts ...
Posted in Music | Comments Off
Friday, November 11th, 2005
Kalamazoo offers free tuition:
ALAMAZOO, Mich., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Kalamazoo, Mich., has announced plans to pay tuition for any city public school graduate who attends a Michigan college.
The deal begins with the class of 2006, the Kalamazoo Gazette said. The Kalamazoo Promise announced Thursday by Superintendent Janice Brown would ...
Posted in Education | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 11th, 2005
Mildly amusing reviews of the $33k Gulbransen (Beer) Bottle Organ on Amazon.com. (Note: I was not looking for beer bottle organs when I came across this...)
Posted in Whim | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Our little country church--where we can sing I'll fly away without irony--is putting on a nativity play, "O Savior, where art thou?," which is based on O Brother, where art thou?, which is based on The Odyssey . I get to sing I am a man of constant sorrow as ...
Posted in Books, Literature, the Arts, Religion | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 7th, 2005
New Yorker Talk of the Town piece of a linguistics hero of mine: William Labov (via kottke).
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Monday, November 7th, 2005
Mostly to bookmark these quotes by Cosma Shalizi:
[O]ne should very much like to know how it has come to pass that many of those who feel qualified to judge intellectual eminence take it as a revelation that the United State of America is an imperial power which has committed, supported ...
Posted in Politics and News | Comments Off
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
I was able to pull off attending the Hyde Park Anniversary Sacred Harp singing in Chicago on Saturday. It was great fun. A group of Moody students attended. This was (I think) their first time at a singing, except for one guy who has been apparently practicing at home. I ...
Posted in Music | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
The San Francisco Chronicle has published an interesting graphic showing the number of suicides per location at the Golden Gate Bridge (each location is linked to a light pole, of which there are 128). My morbid curiosity asked whether this would show a long tail-like distribution, given the "many choices, ...
Posted in Networks, Science and Tech | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
Windows Live screen shot (in Safari).
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