How old were you when you last used trigonometry?

My father was a civil rights lawyer, but among his many interests, he enjoyed recreational math, and he was never afraid of trig tables. Our family visited his mother's farm every summer, nestled in the Catskill mountains of New York, near the Ashokan reservoir. A beautiful bridged road called the "Reservoir Road" cuts across the Ashokan on its way to the reservoir ponds and the spellbinding aeration fountains. From that bridge, there's a prodigious view of the Catskills. Looking west you see a high, long ridge, and what looks like a "duckbill," the tip of a mountain peeking over that ridge. Everybody said that the duckbill was the top of Slide, the tallest mountain in the Catskills. We always enjoyed stopping to look at that ridge, along with the whole panoply of mountains surrounding the reservoir.

One day when I was about eleven, my father asked, "Is that really the tip of Slide Mountain?" Out came the topological maps and the trig tables, and my father began to plot triangles to calculate our line of sight. From the middle of the reservoir, the view west is toward the Friday Mountain/Cornell/Wittenberg Ridge (running north/south), about 3800 feet above sea level. Slide Mountain is set well back from the ridge, at a height of 4400'. If you look at a topo map like this one, it's hard to imagine what else the duckbill could be, but still, you have to do the math to see if Slide is visible over that ridge. We did the math, and sure enough it was. I can't convey to you how satisfying it was to know that the math proved that that duckbill was Slide.

IBMish Writing:

I'm going off half-cocked today, because I don't have a URL to point to, but I read somewhere that in Great Britain, schools are thinking about using computers to grade essay tests. Obvious jokes arise, as one thinks about how to pad a computer-read exercise to get higher grades. And what's the point in writing to a computer? They can't think.

However, I believe this is a good idea, up to a point. A computer can certainly try to check for proper spelling, punctuation and syntax. And a skilled writer, even in fourth grade, can learn how to avoid fancy writing constructions that a computer will fail to understand. It's all about technique, and everyone could use some practice in developing technique. As long as we don't trust a computer to decide whether the writer has actually answered a question.

Cancel a Mandatory Meeting:

I was invited to a mandatory meeting yesterday.

There's something wrong with that sentence, isn't there? We're not invited to mandatory meetings; we're told to come. To move our heaven and earth priorities, and to get there if we possibly can.

So I went.

This particular mandatory meeting was canceled. The cancellation notice went out an hour before the meeting, so several people – like me – didn't see it. But that's not the point.

I have deduced, in the course of my life, several rules by which a person may live better, and I have now deduced one more:

Do not cancel a mandatory meeting.

Look at it this way. When you cancel a mandatory meeting, you're saying: I'm scheduling this meeting, and you have to come. But I don't.

Now that Jay Leno's in Prime Time:

I Tivoed the second show so I could watch it later.

Bacteria! Infections! Shower heads! Never mind?

BBC News brings us the apparently useless news that showerheads can harbor dangerous bacteria. News sources are pretty good at misquoting their sources, but if this quote is accurate, I think we can forget about the whole thing:
Lead researcher Professor Norman Pace, said: "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy."

Now when's the last time you turned your shower on, directly at your face? Didn't you let it run for a few seconds, or do you like to be frozen by cold tap water? I'm going to ignore this invaluable alert.

Accidental Ping!

I'm sure I once blogged about a clever tactic I used in my years of work at Exxon Office Systems. I had a reputation as a reliable hard worker. That meant that on rare occasions, I could accept an action item for something I hated to do, and then just not do it. I always got away with this, by the way. No one ever noticed; and if they had, I would have played for time by saying, “I sent you an email. Didn't you get it?”

Now I have discovered a vaguely similar tactic, but I have no use for it now. I hope it's helpful to some of you.

Let's suppose there's someone you need to contact by email. You tried twice (no response), and you fear trying again, because you don't want to seem to be bugging them. So you address them on some irrelevant email that was obviously intended for another person. There should be some name-similarity so that it will be obvious you just hit the wrong name in your address list.

After they send this irrelevant email back to you, telling you that you mis-addressed it: voila! You're in touch.

Chivalry?

I drove to the Post Office to ship a light package overseas. I parked to the right of a gas guzzler. A middle-aged woman struggled on my left to remove a large package from her car.

I decided that the right thing to do was to sit and wait for her. If I opened my car door, it would just get in her way. ... Five seconds later, I asked myself, What is she going to do with that package? Obviously, she was going to go into the P.O. and get on line, the same line I needed to get on. And she would be ahead of me.

Oh, no you don't!

I opened my door a tad, squeezed out and slipped past her, mumbling “Excuse me, excuse me,” and I hurried to the door.

And then my heart sank. Between me and the infernal clerk-line lay three heavy double doors. Here came that woman, struggling with her large package. And I knew what I had to do.

I opened the first double door so that she could enter ahead of me.

I opened the second double door so that she could enter ahead of me.

I opened the last double door so that she could enter ahead of me. She stepped in and said, “Go ahead, you go first.”

Chivalry.

Rare Earths:

The New York Times has a great article on the next world elemental scarcity: Rare Earths. Apparently, China mines the giant share of Rare Earth minerals. It is squeezing the world supply and persuading companies that they can get enough Rare Earths by building their factories in China. There's a lot of good background in this story, and a great chart on its second page (click where it says 'Multimedia').

Tomatoes and Tomatillos:

We didn't grow tomatoes last year, but we're at it again. So far, my six tomato plants have produced 643 cherry tomatoes. One of my two tomatillo plants has produced only flowers and leaves, but the other has grown 14 tomatillos. And these lovely things seem to have no natural enemy or devourer in our climate.

Hurricane names for 2009 (not):

My wife and I were struck by the fact that the first two hurricanes to threaten us in 2009 have plebian male names: Bill and Danny. We started to think about a list of hurricane names that would alternate beautiful, elegant women with utterly ordinary men. Here's the real list for 2009. And here's our much better list:

• Ariella
  
• Bill
  
• Cecilia
  
• Danny
  
• Eurydice
  
• Fred
  
• Georgiana
  
• Hank
  
• Iolanthe
  
• Joe
  
• Kimberly
  
• Larry
  
• Mariana
  
• Ned
  
• Ophelia
  
• Pete
  
• Qadira or Quetzalxochitl
  
• Ron
  
• Stephanie
  
• Tom
  
• Ulrike
  
• Vic
  
• Wynona {The official list stops at W, but we don't.}
  
• Xavier
  
• Yolanda
  
• Zeke
  

Well-packed staples:

We ordered 5,000 tiny staples for our mini "Tot 50" stapler. They fit easily into a package about 3/4 of a cubic inch in size. Now I'm sure you will agree that staples are pretty robust. They're not likely to get damaged in shipping. But our vendor wanted to be sure, so he shipped them in a box large enough to hold a reasonable amount of packaging material. Here's a photo of the box, with the staples inside it. Egregious excess.

Sit down! Is your father a glazier?

My mother's family was in construction (father, brothers ...). She said that when she was young, if you blocked somebody's view, they would say "Sit down! Is your father a glazier?" (If you don't get it: the idea is that if you want to stand in front of somebody, you ought to install a window in your body for them to see through.) When they said that to my mother, she would reply "Yes."

www.ravensgift.com (under construction):

Great thanks to those of you who clicked through to my website. Google now has it properly listed again. Update:And thanks to Elaine for getting me to correct this entry's link.

More Efficient genetic Engineering:

This week's NYT Science Times is chock full of medical studies done on mice that might, just might, affect humans. Exhibit one are studies that do or maybe don't suggest how we can prolong our lives.

The rub is that it's terribly unclear how medicines and treatments that affect lab mice will affect humans. This has been a devilish issue for years, and I want to suggest how to solve this problem.

Our geneticists should devote most of their efforts to figuring out how to genetically engineer us humans so that we will be more like mice. That will greatly improve the odds that medicines helping mice will be good for us as well. And think of the side benefits, such as being able to squeeze through narrow doors.

RavensGift.com is not suspended!

Google reported, a few weeks ago, that my website had been hacked and was dangerous to visit. (More precisely, I think, my web hosting company's customer web sites were hacked.) My old provider advised me how to purify my website. But I was in the last month of my contract with them, and I decided to find another provider instead. It took me awhile, and when July began, my old provider suspended my account. I think that being suspended is better than having Google warn people not to visit me.

I'm now rebuilding my website, and you can already see the terrific front cover that the book will have. Please click through here and take a look. A few clicks may help persuade Google that my web site's okay again.

Thanks.

I h8 2 edit ths stff!

Sometimes, for my novels, I write down short scenes or paragraphs on my Nokia N800 PDA. There's only an onscreen keyboard, so I abbreviate in every possible way, writing only in lower case, and using SMS-like abbrs. I've discovered that while this breezy writing style saves many keystrokes, it's horrible for real writing. Because eventually I upload my paragraphs, and I have to edit them into readable text. And that usually means I have to edit every single word.

I'm off my Game:

Most human endeavors require a variety of skills, and the great thing is to use them in their proper balance, rather than to emphasize one at the fatal expense of another.

Take chess for example. A grandmaster spends part of his time visualizing precise positions that may arise in the future, assessing the tactical danger of each. But he or she may spend equal time assessing the strategic value of positions, in order to choose moves that have long-term value. Imagine that you are a chess master, and you are playing an opponent who, as you know, is more tactically skilled than you. You may be tempted to spend more time than usual analyzing tactics against him, and if so, your strategic assessments may suffer. Imagine playing a twenty game match with such a person. Inevitably in the course of the match, you will adjust way from your normal balance of tactics and strategy time. It may be weeks after the match before you have regained your normal equilibrium.

That's the way it has been for me, washing dishes. Our dishwasher died after many years of service. I hardly realized it, but I had developed a typical balance in my dishwashing skills. Now do not imagine, even for a moment, that every dirty dish goes into the the dishwasher. Some will be needed so soon again that they must be washed at once. Others are too delicate or too precious. I had long since fallen into a groove in which some dishes were washed by hand and others queued in the washer. My judgment in determining what to wash by hand resulted in a smooth procession of full dish loads, auto-washed in time to meet our needs.

And then we spent two weeks without a working dishwasher.

I learned to wash everything quickly, so that the sink never piled up to a depressing height. It all went well, I thought.

And then we got a new dishwasher. It's very nice, really. But it doesn't fill up fast enough. That's my fault, of course. I'm washing too many dishes by hand. Too often, I fail to appreciate that a certain dish must go into the dishwasher.

The sure touch I had in the past is lost. I'm off my game.

If you can study the Rorschach ...

Wikipedia now has a detailed article describing the Rorschach Test, and how it is interpreted. The article is over 5,000 scholarly words long. What does it mean that this information is now online and accessible to anyone? Here's what I think: if you can understand this entire article, then you are sane, and probably quite boring.

Old Habits ...

Our municipality used to pick up garbage on Monday and Thursday mornings. Months ago, to economize, they cut back to once-a-week pickup on Thursday. You might think it would be easy, even for an oldster like me, to adjust to this change. But it has been very difficult, and here's why:

Years ago I realized that we only needed to put our garbage out once a week. So despite the choice of days, I have put my garbage out for pickup on Monday morning only. The new schedule has forced me to do two things:

1. Do not put out garbage for Monday (easy to remember).
2. Put out garbage for the unfamiliar day of Thursday (very, very hard).

Malted Coffee:

How do you feel about malt flavoring? I really like it, so I tried putting about two tablespoons of malted milk powder into a cup of coffee. (I wouldn't do this to $20/lb coffee, just to supermarket coffee.) The result was delicious for us malt lovers. You can buy decent malted milk powder (Carnation) in most supermarkets, but I'm enjoying this brand: CtlColfax. (I paid less than retail, and avoided shipping costs, by buying a full can from a local ice cream store.)

Free MonsterApocalypse!

MonsterApocalypse is a tabletop game played with monster figurines. The makers of this game recently developed a new strategy guide. When the published guide was shipped to the USA to be sold, it was impounded by ... you'll never guess ... the Department of Homeland Security. After a few anxious days, it was released, and it will soon be for sale.

If you think that it's worth giving up a lot of your freedoms and rights so that our government can protect you better, think about this debacle. We have a fine set of laws to protect us, and most attempts to diminish our rights in the name of security just create new stupid pitholes in our lives.

Techno/Swim:

Now that the powers that be in the world of swimming have removed the ugliness of technology, by banning the LZR Racer Speedo swimsuit, I have invented a better way to put high tech into swimming. In fact, I've invented a whole new sport worth billions, and I'm going to just give it away.

Here's how it works. The goal, as usual, is to race some number of laps in the shortest time. The swimmer is allowed to wear, in addition to his modest swimsuit, a powerful motor of any kind, plus whatever helmet and pads he (or she) deems adviseable. The motor is operated by the swimmer's teammate, the 'navigator', who sits on dry tile with a remote-control pad. The swimmer's job is to get his body and the motor into the ideal position for supreme-speed efficiency at all times, and to manage the turn-around at each end of the pool. The navigator is responsible for accelerating as much as possible during a lap, and decelerating near the end of a lap to avoid killing the swimmer, by breaking his neck in the the fast-rushing water, or by slamming his body against the end of the pool.

I'm afraid the paying crowd (and they will pay a lot!) will be more interested in whether any of the swimmers is bashed to death during the race. But hey! That's why this sport will be worth billions.

The fifty minute mile:

I swam one mile in 50 minutes today. 49'50" to be more exact. This is a personal best for me, and I'm proud of it, although I must admit, it compares poorly with the world mile swimming record, which is probably about 16 minutes.

I swim with no mechanical aids! It's my body, handled as efficiently as I can manage, against the drag of the water in the 25 yard pool. No fins, no gloves, and especially, no high tech Speedo swimsuit that requires 45 minutes to put on.

I am glad that those high-tech swimsuits will no longer be used in world racing. (They've just been disallowed.) I think that in swimming, the challenge is simply to use one's body as best as possible. Shave your hair short, toss on enough swimsuit to be decent, use your body perfectly and race. Swimsuits add a level of technology that is wholly out of place.

But there's an even better reason the high tech suits should be disallowed. If they take 45 minutes to put on, and some time to take off, then a swimmer who regularly practices with them will spend over 400 hours a year doing nothing but dressing, just to be competitive. Think of all the things you can do in 300 hours a year! What a waste, to spend it all in dressing.

A good name for the Open Source Cloud:

There's a lot of controversy right now about how beneficial it will be to move our computing to the "cloud", which means becoming more dependent on others for access to our data, and for its security. There are several cloud alternatives out there already, but I think that so far they are proprietary. I, for one, would feel more comfortable with a "disk drive on the Internet" that was provided by truly open software. In the long run, I would expect such a "cloud" device to be more reliable and more secure.

Best of all, I have a good name for an open source "data in the cloud" device: Gnuage.

How do you get a recommendation ...

When I search for companies and services on the Web, I also try to find recommendations and reviews. It's getting harder and harder to do this, I think. Searching for the word 'reviews' is part of the problem. Many web sites will explain that there are no reviews, but they have many different ways to say that, and I get hits for them all. Recently, I looked for a low-cost website provider. There are lots of reviews for such companies, but most of the positive ones are obviously written by the companies themselves; they sound too much like marketing documents. The negative reviews sound like they are written by asylum inmates who have been utterly destroyed by their provider and have an urge kill.

By the way, Can anyone recommend an inexpensive website provider that will give me an easy-to-use webpage builder, and also let me post integrated pages of my own html?

The good news story today is that I found a new way to find recommendations. We need a company to do some work on our house. For this type of work, there are many companies that are obviously not local, that service our region. I found no reviews for any of them. And in any case, a review by someone in, say, Indiana would not help me much. But while looking for reviews, I discovered that some of our local real estate agents recommend local businesses. In one such page, I found the recommendations I needed. And like everyone else, I know a few more local real estate agents ...

... and a Bowling Ball:

Keith Malley, of the Keith and the Girl podcast (#998), recently stated that it's always better to have a bowling ball with you. (For those of you who know nothing about bowling balls, picture 16 pounds of heavy solid plastic, about 8.5” in diameter, that you can cradle in your arms, or try to hold by hooking thumb and fingers into its close-set holes.) Keith gave a few excellent examples: wouldn't you like to be able to throw a bowling ball down the aisle of a bus? Wouldn't you like to take a bowling ball with you when you go camping in the woods?

Now it seems to me that there are a few rare moments in life when I would rather not have a bowling ball. And I'm not thinking about that moment when I got married. I'd rather not have a bowling ball:

• on a unicycle
• in a plane toilet
• in a steam room
• while rock climbing
• near the top of Mount Everest
• on a seesaw.

Have I left anything out? Anything at all?

When Eddy Interviewed Ruth Slenczynska:

I think about Ruth Slenczynska every year. She was born in 1925 and (I believe) is still alive. In 1957, she was about as famous as she could get. She was recording and concertizing, and her (ghost-written?) autobiography, Forbidden Childhood, was much talked about. You can listen to some fragments of her marvelous playing here (but be sure to read the terms and conditions on that page; I have no idea whether they state the law accurately).
She had been an awesome child prodigy pianist, and she developed into a very mature pianist. The pressures of being a child prodigy got to her, and she did not perform between (according to Wikipedia) 1940 and 1954.

Her autobiography told the familiar story of a father driving her much too hard to succeed, and a family giving all its love to their other children while expecting her to practice and perform. For me, the most memorable anecdote in her book concerns her father's parsimoniousness: when the two of them traveled to her concerts, he always shared a hotel room with her. But one day the clerk listened to her father order a single room; and then the clerk said, "the young lady will require her own room." And after that she always had her own room.

I can't remember Eddy's last name. He was a friendly, middle-aged fellow with some knowledge of classical music, and he talked his way into running an interview show on one of New York's classical radio stations. My (pianist) aunt Lucy knew him and regarded Eddy as a bit of a confidence man. Of course, in 1957, there had to be an interview with Ruth Slenczynska. I believe her recording of all 24 of the Chopin Peludes Op. 28 had recently been issued to acclaim. In the interview, Eddy asked Ruth which prelude was her favorite. She replied that she had no favorite. Surely, he said, she must prefer one of them. She replied that they were her little children, and she was their mother. And like any parent, she loved them equally. Eddy could see where this was going, and he gently commented that a parent might prefer one child to another. "No," she said, "a parent always loves all the children the same."

Thinking most definitely of Slenczynska's autobiography -- most of his radio listeners were doing the same, I'm sure -- Eddy said, "I've heard of cases where a parent might love one child more than another." Ruth Slenczynska went right on denying that such a thing could ever happen, throwing the accuracy of her own book into doubt.

By the way, I'm older and wiser now, and I can see how Ruth Slenczynska could have ignored her own painful family experience while insisting that any mother will love her children all the same. What seemed embarrassing to me then, now seems poignant.

Little Birds for Michael Jackson:

I shall not partake of the memorializing for Michael Jackson.

I'm biased. I love many kinds of music, and I believe that hearing must be the primary sense that perceives it. Live performances are wonderful, and the eye is a great aid to enjoying them; but live performances seize all of the senses, and sight is not the primary one.

Michael Jackson's great skill in dance and movement, and his creativity, helped to kickstart the age of music videos. These strange creations, in which, when we must hear them without seeing them, we will inevitably try to imagine them as they were shown to us, are at best a sidestep on the grand march of music through the millenia.

Music videos, and Michael Jackson (indirectly) damaged the career of a much finer composer and musician: Stevie Wonder, whose blindness made him unsuited to this era of video. (I'm sure Wonder holds no grudge; he has collaborated with Jackson, and he sang at Jackson's memorial.)

But enough of the music; let's consider Jackson the human. For many years, every reference to him has reminded me of a short story by Anaïs Nin, the title story for one of her books. It's called: Little Birds.

The Lemon Malted:

I recently purchased some excellent malt powder, and I was naturally reminded of my adventures, many years ago, with the Lemon Malted.

I've always liked the taste of malt powder, so it was quite a natural thing for me to order a “malted”, rather than an ice cream soda, wherever malt powder was available. (As far as I can determine, a “malted” is just an ice cream soda to which malt powder has been added.) When I was young, I always looked for opportunities to demonstrate what an oddball I was, so once I requested a Lemon Malted, that is, a lemon ice cream soda with the special addition of malt powder.

How do you think malt would affect the taste of lemon? I've drunk this malted several times, and the result can be quite sophisticated, with the malt flavor subtly changing the quality of the lemon. But a lemon malted can also taste like cheap beer. My great dream was that some day, when I ordered this drink, the restaurant I requested it from would realize what a great drink it was, and add it to their menu.

The last time I ordered this drink, I watched with gathering excitement as the waiter prepared it. I could see he was making an extra-large batch, and when he poured my drink, he poured what was left over into a separate glass. He brought my malted to the table, and it was good, one of the better renderings of my drink. A minute later, he was back with the second glass, and this is what he said: “We were really curious what your lemon malted was like, so we made some extra and tasted it. We all think it tastes terrible. Would you like the rest?”

Another great secret about cooking with eggplant (barbecue sauce):

Morningstar Farms has introduced a new product to its line of soy burgers. I tasted it and realized that I was eating their usual soy product, steeped in barbecue sauce. I figured I didn't need to buy their product for this, I have my own barbecue sauces. The first thing I tried was this:

Zap a thick slice of eggplant in a microwave. cover with barbecue sauce and eat. Delicious. (Our incredibly weak 450W microwave requires two minutes for this.)

Barbecue sauce is great with almost everything. To think I used to assume it should be reserved for barbecues! Try it on a cheese sandwich. Why not? It's good.

My Little disfunctional Margie:

Gale Storm has just died. I almost hate to admit it, but I was a little too young for I Love Lucy, and "My Little Margie" came along at the right time for me. I watched it every week. I've looked at some of the ink about this show on the internet, and I think the reviewers and historians have missed a central point about this show: it was one of TV's earliest forays into the Dysfunctional Family sitcom. Tolstoy probably has the best explanation of why there are few normal families in TV series, but it took the networks a while to discover how much fun they could have, when they left "normal" far behind.

Margie's (Gail Storm's) "family" consisted of a widowed father and a grown daughter. The episodes, again and again, revolved around attempts by the father and daughter to "get even" with each other. The tricks they wanted to play got more and more elaborate. The "getting even" premise was so routine that you tended to accept it as normal relations, although -- think about it -- it was bizarre. Here's an obit for Gail Storm, and here are two analyses of: My Little Margie.