Et Cetera

A “time capsule in Tulsa”:http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/06/15/buried.classic.ap/index.html contained a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, which had been intended to be started up and driven off by someone once it was opened this week. But time, chance and especially groundwater happeneth to them all and the thing turned out to be a rusted-out wreck. But the best bit was this: “The contents of a ‘typical’ woman’s handbag, including 14 bobby pins, lipstick and a bottle of tranquilizers, were supposed to be in the glove box …” Sadly, “all that was found looked like a lump of rotted leather.”

“Alan”:http://www.schussman.com, a former student and co-author of mine (and recent graduate, congrats Alan), goes hiking in “Black Canyon National Park”:http://www.nps.gov/blca/ and reminds me how spectacular the American West is. Sheer canyon walls with “crazy rock climbers”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/belay/544579199/in/set-72157600350091740/, fly-fishing for “rainbow trout”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/belay/550006617/in/set-72157600350091740/ and “terrific views”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/belay/548660116/in/set-72157600350091740/ along the way.

Via Unfogged: Was Dubya’s watch stolen off his wrist while he worked the crowd in Albania? Seems too funny to be true. Looking at it from around 50 seconds into the clip, you can see the watch as he reaches to shake hands with people, then there’s no watch. It’s possible that it was grabbed and fell off, as Bush seems to look down at the ground just around key moment. But it’s hard to tell. The Zapruder film of this Administration.

“Here”:http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen/2007/6/12/120607_bush_horloge.html is a higher-resolution video, via “Alan Bostick”:http://www.spicejar.org/asiplease/archives/000605.html, and some “comments”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/06/bushs_watch_sto.html from Bruce Schneier on the various official construals of the event. Bush’s hand goes back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back and to the left.

Interesting to see that he was so popular over there. Albanians are also crazy about “Norman Wisdom,”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1251406.stm as it happens.

By all accounts not any sort of couch potato, Ogged is “understandably distressed”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.html#006859 to look at the age-group records for his chosen event, the 50 meters freestyle, and find that he has to go all the way up to the 75-79 age group to find a time he would stand a chance of beating.

I have the related experience of having family members who are irritatingly athletic. For instance, my brother was on the Irish cross-country team and won a bunch of stuff in college. My sister-in-law ran the Chicago marathon in 2004 — her first — and finished seventeenth. Worst of all, two years before I was even born my uncle won a marathon in “Kaduna”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaduna in a time of 2:15:03, then the fastest time ever run in Africa, and now more than thirty five years later still one of the the 20 fastest marathons ever run by any Irishman. (And also, “to my knowledge,”:http://www.arrs.net/AC_Mara.htm still the fastest marathon ever run in Nigeria.)

Elite athletes are different from you and me, and this is true even when, as in my case, you share a significant percentage of their genes. My sister-in-law once told me of the experience — common amongst top women athletes — of being out for a run and getting held up at a stop light. Some regular semi-fit guy out for his evening jog runs up alongside, and glances over. The light changes, and the guy takes off at an unsustainable speed because, obviously, it would be a violation of natural law for a woman to be able to run faster than a guy. Having gone through this one too many times, my sister-in-law adopted the strategy of just tucking in behind the guy and waiting to see what would happen. After a short while he realizes she’s behind him. He tries to go faster. He glances behind. She’s still there. A very short while later the guy, now beginning to boil in a self-made vat of lactic acid, starts making random turns down streets in a desperate effort to shake his pursuer. It doesn’t work. Eventually the guy grinds to a halt, she breezes by, he’s left gasping for air and maybe reflecting on his views on gender.

The NYT has an article about Bruce Sperling, who apparently publishes a series of rankings of U.S. cities, with separate rankings for Singles, Young Couples, Families with Children, Empty Nesters and Retirees. Through the magic of weighted averages (of data on economy and jobs; cost of living; climate; crime; transportation; arts and culture; etc) we get a string of Top-10 lists and more. Like many such ranking systems, Sperling is free to put his thumb on the scales if he feels that people are caring more about variable _x_ these days.

In the Top 10 for Singles are the fun, densely-populated places you might expect: New York, L.A., Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, etc. For Young Couples, we have cool hangouts like Portland, Austin, and Boulder. Empty Nesters get to kick back in Bellingham, Santa Fe, Tahoe and Berkeley.

But what does my demographic, Families with Children, get? Number 1 in the nation: Louisville CO. It’s followed closely by Gaithersburg MD. Roswell GA, Lakeville MN, and Flower Mound TX round out the top five. Now, I don’t want to offend the many fine people of Gaithersburg, MD or Noblesville IN, but Roll on the Empty Nest, I say.

_Update:_ Sorry, but I am going to resist sundry efforts in the comments and elsewhere to stretch this small joke to fit the Procrustean bed of “Elitist Liberals Hate Regular Folks and All-American Suburbs.” Dan Drezner thinks I display “shock” and “distress” at these family-friendly places and that part of me “shudders with dread about the exemplary suburban locale.” I don’t think so. New York … San Francisco … Gaithersburg. That is a set-up and punchline. It could be the opening montage of any number of comedies about family life. By the way, child-free urban hipsters in restaurants or shops can bite me, too.

This month’s issue of _Contemporary Sociology_ contains the following erratum notice:

bq. In the January issue … in the review written by Elizabeth Gorman of _The Work and Family Handbook: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches_, edited by Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Ellen Ernst Kossek, and Stephen Sweet, the contributors’ last names should have been spelled “Karen Gareis” instead of “Karen Agrees,” “Laura Beavais” instead of “Laura Beavers,” and “Gerstel and Sarkisian,” not “Gretel and Sardinian.” We regret the errors.

Via “3QD”:http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/04/paternalistic_d.html, Ernest Lefever “writes”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/574nhmym.asp about Africa and irritates my inner copyeditor:

bq. BECAUSE OF AND in spite of Hollywood films like The African Queen and television shows like Tarzan, tropical Africa south of the Sahara and north of the Zambezi is terra incognito for most Americans.

I imagine a giant moustache on top of the Central African Republic. The CIA engages in the war on terra incognito.

bq. Others accept the opposing myth promulgated by Thomas Hobbs that in a “State of Nature,” there are “no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worse of all, persistent fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Maybe he’s confusing him with “Russell Hobbs”:http://www.russellhobbs.com/. I know, I know … this is just nit-picking. But then, a classic:

bq. Unduly critical of the European colonists, they seemed unaware that the British, for example, had ended slavery 79 years before Lincoln signed the Emaciation Proclamation. …

Onward:

bq. Back to Hobbs. If it took a thousand years for the barbarian tribes of Europe to become democratic and prosperous states, how long will it take African tribes that missed the Renaissance, Reformation, Magna Carta, and Industrial Revolution? … And brutal demagogues like Mobutu in the Congo, Adi Amin in Uganda, and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe have ravaged their countries to enjoy the fruits of unbridled power.

Mmmm. Adi enjoyed unbridled fruit.

bq. [Rhodesia] was conquered by explorer-entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes in 1897 and eventually established as a self-governing British colony. Determined to make the country safe and prosperous, Rhoades established the world’s first national park there, insisting that it be open to all races.

I’ll leave Tim Burke to deal with the content, as needed.

So, in a fit of nostalgia I picked up a DVD of Wanderly Wagon episodes. Although marketed as “Vol 1” it seems to be a slightly haphazard collection of episodes, as these were the days (the 1970s) when most programs were not preserved on videotape. The second scene in the first episode re-introduces us to the character shown here, Sneaky Snake. I had forgotten about his fez. But the tiny rush of adrenaline that I felt as he hoisted himself up on his bench (prehensile tail and all) next to Dr Astro reminded me how much he used to scare the bejaysus out of me when I was a kid. Something about the eyes. Always looking at you they were. On second thoughts, maybe I’ll hold off on making my own kids watch this stuff.

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Today while walking across campus I had the sobering realization that many people who were not yet born when I started college will themselves be starting college this autumn. In an effort to spread this sinking feeling around amongst readers older than me, I started college in 1990, when I was seventeen. Whenever I teach an undergraduate class, I ask the students what’s the earliest major news event they can remember. When I started teaching at Arizona, most students could remember the Challenger disaster. Then it was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then the first Gulf War. Then Bill Clinton’s first-term election. At the moment it is the Oklahoma City bombing. Soon it will be the death of Princess Diana.

“In-N-Out is opening a franchise in Tucson soon”:http://www.in-n-out.com/location_details.asp?id=207, not too far from where I live. This may well pose problems for my, uh, ruthless nutrition and fitness regime. I’m not a connoisseur of American fast food, but In-N-Out is pretty damn tasty. “Sonic”:http://www.sonicdrivein.com/index.jsp is apparently also worth a bypass. I mean detour. Two locations recently opened in Tucson, but I’ve never eaten there. I think the last really good fast food chain I ate at was a while ago in Auckland, where I got to try the frighteningly large burgers and dangerously tasty kumara fries at “Burgerfuel”:http://www.burgerfuel.com/flash.html, on Ponsonby Road.

From the Economist, some advice on “English As She Is Wrote”:http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=673903. As is usual with such lists, there’s much to agree with and a few nits to pick. A current peeve of mine — which doesn’t make the list — is the use of “incredibly” to mean “very.” There is also probably a name for the law requiring that there be several errors of style or grammar in this paragraph, but I don’t know what it is.

Driving home today I saw a guy standing by a busy downtown intersection holding a large sign that read, “9-11 Was An Inside Job.” It doesn’t quite rise to seeing a giant muppet-like creature holding the same sort of sign, but maybe he’s working on it.

_Update_: Here’s a recent piece from the _Chronicle_ about 9-11 Conspiracy Theories in academia. (Hat tip: Evan Goldstein.)

Ok, after studying an expert I think I’ve gotten the hang of the medium now.

Who says there are no benefits to blogging? If it wasn’t for CT then I would never have met Matt Gordon and would never have been invited to his wonderful Seder last night. Thanks, Matt!

We talked about lots of things, among them how most Haggadahs lack enough information for a newcomer to really get the Passover story while making the central role of He Who Has No Name unmistakable (even while the rest of the story might remain a bit blurry and I don’t just mean because of the amount of wine consumed).

But we also talked about other things, for example: how one comes to name machines in one’s lab. Perhaps not surprising given my previous post, the machines in my lab have Star Wars references. This idea dates back to the machines in the offices of one of my college mentors: Joe had a big black Next machine that was called Darth and the little white Mac I used was called Yoda. So when I started populating my lab with machines I named the white one Yoda and the two black ones Darth and Vader.
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