Written on an airplane earlier this week...

Spending 8 hours crammed into a plane seat in coach is not generally my idea of a good time (oh, how I miss those upgrades). One advantage, though, is that it gives me time to let my mind wander -- time that has been in short supply lately. I don't have to think about diaper changing, or work, or groceries...

Of course, many of the thoughts are still about the kids. Listening to a podcast which mentions "The Right Stuff" makes me think about how it would be fun to show the kids that movie some day -- maybe when they're 13 or so. And then the thought pops into my head -- what if one of  them wants to be a pilot? While that would be cool, I think it would be very stressful to have the same kid who right now can't feed himself in charge of making a hunk of metal hurl through the air.

In order to slow down the mental percolation enough to  get some sleep, I switched from my podcasts to a playlist of my favorite songs. (The measure of success I've had can be seen by the fact I'm composing this blog entry five hours into the flight.) As my fickle fingers skipped some songs
and lingered on others, I pondered what constituted a really enjoyable song for me.

I feel like it's easy to make a decent song out of common themes -- love (requited or no), growing up, etc. Some of the songs on my favorites list come from this source -- "Take Me, I'm Yours",
"In My Life" and "Scenes from An Italian Restaurant," to name three examples.

But what I find really cool are when an artist can take a song about a theme few others would think to sing about -- and then make it work.

Some examples I've listened to tonight:

·       Elvis Costello's "Veronica" -- a song about a woman with Alzhemier's. It brings tears to my eyes most times I hear it. (But not tonight for some reason -- maybe it's the dry airplane air.)

·       The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- about the end of the Civil War -- not a usual topic for top 40. Also, I always take a moment to enjoy the fact that the good guys won that one.

·       Ben Folds' "Levi Johnston's Blues" (with Nick Hornby) -- Not just a song about Bristol Palin's baby daddy -- not just a song from the viewpoint of Levi Johnston -- but a song that incorporates Levi Johnston's own words from his Myspace page and makes them sound melodious. (For the record: "I'm a fuckin' redneck, I live to hang out with the boys, play
some hockey, do some fishing and kill some moose. I like to shoot the shit and do some chillin' I guess. You fuck with me, and I'll kick your ass.") I guess this is technically about love and growing up, but it comes at it from such a different angle.

Sometimes this leads me a bit in the direction of the novelty song -- I don't think anyone's going to confuse Manfred Mann's "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" with a work of genius. These are the songs that earn a look from Christina that says, "Really?"
when they come on the iPod shuffle. In some cases, they earn a quick fast-forward -- say, Jump 'n' the Saddle's "The Curly Shuffle", or most of the"Weird Al" oeuvre -- unless she's feeling particularly indulgent.

I like to think that these are the types of songs I'd  write if I wrote songs. I don't think the world would be any poorer without another song of love lost or regrets of youth. But wouldn't it be a nicer place to live if there were good songs about pseudoprimes or meeples or identical
twins or one of the other things that race through my head on a transatlantic  flight.

You might think, "Jon, I can imagine what those songs would sound like if you wrote them, and I'm glad you don't write songs." Ah, but that's what makes songs like that so wonderful. "The Cask of Amontillado" is a great American short story; I'd have no idea how to turn it into a song -- but Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson did. "Right Here, Right Now" was probably not the most brilliant song of twenty years ago, but the end of the Cold War was a pretty big deal, and I find it odd that this was its only musical commemoration.

I should try to get some sleep now.

Maybe the "E" doesn't stand for "Estonia"

When I visited Estonia in 2007, I made fun of the "Old Estonia" restaurant for spelling their name with a superfluous "E" in tacky "Ye Olde Shoppe" style. On my return this week, I was gratified to see lots of signs for "Old Estonia". I figured they had come to their senses.

Examination of my old photo, on the other hand, shows that they had already rubbed out the extra "E" in the metal sign, with only the awning emphasizing "Olde". The new awning does as well, although it is not captured in my new picture below. Their web site confirms that the correct name is, in fact, "Old Estonia," so my new theory is just that there's a signmaker in Tallinn who doesn't know how to spell.

A nice memory...

OK, the picture is closer to forty years ago than twenty years ago, but here is an e-mail from May 18, 1991:

I played Spite 'n' Malice w/ Oma today...she seemed tickled to death when I suggested it, although she said "You're only doing this to be nice".  There are worse reasons to do things, and besides it was fun.
I won $0.05, too.

(Not posted: various grumpy e-mails about how she always managed to wake me up a few minutes before my alarm went off, even when I tried to anticipate her and set my alarm for a few minutes earlier.)

Department of e-mails you don't want to receive from a TA...

Twenty years ago today, I got this note:

Jon: When Frithjof faxed the grades for the final papers, yours was not on the list.  I'm going to double check everything just to be sure, but I'm quite certain your grade isn't there.  Assuming that there was nothing unusual about the way you turned the paper in (putting it in a box, sliding it under a door, etc.--if any of that happened, let me know because it may still be sitting somewhere), the best thing to do,if possible, is to get another copy to me via the Dept. office (i.e. give it to the secretary).  If there's a problem with this, let me know. Sorry about the confusion.  --Jeff

I find two things remarkably modern about this: that the bad news was delivered via e-mail, and that I was just able to grab another copy off my hard drive. Not bad for 1991! On the other hand, two things seem quite ancient -- that copy was to be printed off and mailed, and the grades were faxed in.

The Joys of Waymark Posting

On my waymarking profile, I have the following defense of visiting waymarks, which I think I originally posted years ago in the waymarking forums. (Many waymarkers only create their own waymarks, but never visit others'.)

56 reasons why visiting is better than posting.

1. It's easier. You don't have to spend a bunch of time looking up information on when the sculpture was created, or the web site of the library...
   
   
2. It's deeper. After your visit, the waymark page will have more than one perspective on it, possibly including pictures from different seasons, or as the site changes.
   
   
3. It connects you with someone else. You get to see the site through the eyes of the person who posted the waymark.
   
   
4. It connects someone else with you. The person who visits the waymark will (probably) be happy that someone else has enjoyed it.
   
   
5. It acts as a double-check. While in San Diego recently, I found a couple of waymarks where the coordinates were off by about a mile. I pointed that out in my log, so the owner apologized and corrected.
   
   
6. You don't have to wait for approval to post a visit.

I haven't posted a waymark since August, but lately I've been considering the other side of the equation -- namely, what do I get out of my posted waymarks? Well, for one thing, I get notifications every time someone visits my waymark. In particular, it's fun to think that some German guy posted the above photo to verify that he had been at the waymark. Of course, for this waymark (Roman ruins in Cologne), he had taken the picture to log a virtual geocache. Because of the geocache, it's probably my most-visited waymark, but consider my Tim Horton's waymark in Ontario.

This guy undoubtedly took this goofy picture not as a souvenir of nabbing some delicious Canadian donuts, but rather to post to my waymark. Awesome. It makes me want to post more waymarks. Of course, this only works if other people buy into the idea of visiting them. So I'll try to do both on my upcoming trip.

Math Reviews

I have a post up at my mathematics blog about my first review to appear in Mathematics Reviews.

First Bike Ride of Spring

On Saturday, while the kids were napping, I went for my first bike ride of the spring. I tried to do some geocaching at the College Park Airport, but I could not find the geocache.

Since time was short (and the kids were probably going to wake up), I tried to cut through Riverdale. Unfortunately, there was a train stopped on the tracks.

Not knowing how long this would last -- there have been a couple of human-train collisions in the area recently -- I headed through Hyattsville. When I got to the train bridge underpass over the Northeast Branch, I saw the train moving at about 10 mph. So it probably would have been faster to wait. And my legs would have thanked me. But this was a nice ride, and a good workout (about 10.5 miles).

First Ride of Spring at EveryTrail

Because I didn't have a blog in 1991...

20 years ago today,

The donut sale that we were supposed to have today got cancelled because the student government told us the wrong day & the Korean Christian Fellowship was actually the group scheduled for today. For a while, we were stuck with 360 donuts, but the marching band, which is having a sale elsewhere today, bought most of them & the student government bought the rest since they messed up & we don't have any money.

 I believe the "we" is the Undergraduate Math Club.

The "Stay at Home Bowl": Dubious Achievement Update

In 2003, I gave a list of all of the teams to defeat both Super Bowl participants. Teams that can sit at home and say, "We can beat either of these guys." At the time, I was rooting for a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, since the (5-11) Redskins had beaten both teams and would have tied the 1981 Browns for the worst team to have this "dubious achievement" had the Seahawks not exited the playoffs before the Big Game. I was reminded of this post recently when I heard Bob Ryan on Tony Kornheiser's radio show talk about how great the 2010 Patriots were because they had beaten both Super Bowl entrants. So which teams in the past 8 years get added to the list?

• 2010 New England Patriots (14-2)
• 2008 Philadelphia Eagles (9-6-1)
• 2008 New York Giants (12-4)
• 2005 Jacksonville Jaguars (12-4)
• 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers (15-1) 

The Patriots are second only to the 2004 Steelers for the team with the best record to hold this distinction. Let's ask the following question, though.  Of the 15 previous winners of the "Stay at Home Bowl", how did each team fare the following season?

• Won Super Bowl: 2005 Steelers
• Lost Super Bowl: 1979 Rams
• Lost in Conference Championship: 1980 Chargers*, 1981 Chargers, 2008 Eagles
• Lost in Divisional Round: 1994 Dolphins
• Lost in Wild Card Round: 1982 Browns, 1987 Seahawks
• Missed Playoffs: 1986 Dolphins, 1997 Cowboys, 2001 Titans, 2001 Redskins, 2006 Jaguars, 2009 Giants

So these teams have a 60% success rate making the playoffs next year, well above the normal rate (which has been between 35 and 43 percent, except for the 1982 strike year). Perhaps more impressive, these teams have a 33% rate of making the conference championship game, well above the 12-15% rate when you consider all teams.

Book Review: Voices

Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Voices is the second book in Le Guin's Tales of the Western Shore trilogy. I read it because the third book, Powers, won the 2008 Nebula. I'm also reading it because Le Guin is a fantastic writer. If I counted correctly, Le Guin has won the most Nebulas for Best Novel with 4 -- nobody else has won more than 2. Even more impressively, her wins were in four different decades. I wouldn't put it past her to add a 5th in the coming years. She's also won a National Book Award and a Newberry Medal.

I had been avoiding reading fiction recently, except on travel, because, you know, babies. But I find it important to read a little before bed to unwind. I figure that since I can renew books twice, nine weeks is more than enough time to finish a novel. What I didn't count on is the compelling nature of Le Guin's writing. I planned on reading a chapter at a time, but sometimes I got so absorbed that I went through 2 or 3 chapters, robbing me of precious sleep. (Of course, sometimes my eyes drooped after a few pages, and I couldn't get through the chapter.)

Voices is less of a sequel to Gifts than a companion, set about twenty years later in the same general setting. The two main characters from Gifts appear in important, but not leading, roles. It tells the tale of a young woman in land under foreign occupation. She is from a prominent family, but a branch of it who have ended up as servants. Nobody in this land is doing particularly well due to the occupation (she is in fact the daughter of a soldier who raped her now-deceased mother). The book chronicles the awakening of her somewhat-vague magical powers and the struggle of her people to free themselves.

It was interesting reading this book while, in the real world, protests shook the Egyptian dictatorship. I don't want to be too glib in drawing parallels -- in particular, Egypt is not under foreign occupation. But there was a certain resonance that made Voices more exciting to read in this context.

My county library continues their practice of shelving much science fiction in the "young adult" section. It used to bother me more to have to go there to retrieve what I consider quite-sophisticated fiction. Perhaps parenthood has softened my perspective, though -- if it means that well-written books with mature themes are more accessible to kids, maybe it isn't so bad.

In the end, I gave Voices 4/5 stars rather than 5/5 because I found it compelling, but not gripping. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but while it was very enjoyable and thought-provoking at the time of reading, I don't see this as a book I'll be mulling over in the months or years to come.



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Geocoin Update: Free State Generic #3

I haven't had the chance to find any geocaches since the two in November (winter is always a slow season, even when you don't have twins to juggle).  But the geocoin I dropped off then has been getting some updates.

Three days after I dropped it off, someone picked it up.  They dropped it off New Year's Eve in a cache in Delaware.    Yesterday, someone picked it up with the note that it was their "first geocoin". That makes me a little nervous, since it seems more likely that they won't know what to do with it or that they will give up geocaching shortly.  Then again, I've been holding on to a trackable for two-and-a-half months, so I'm one to talk.

Sadly, since my last update, the other geocoins have been MIA.  I marked them as such, and have pretty much written them off.

Foursquare, reconsidered

A year ago today, I wrote a post about this new site called "Foursquare" I had started using. At the time, none of my friends were using it, so that dampened my enthusiasm.  Well, a year later, I'm still using and enjoying it.  Here are my reflections after a year:

• Being mayor is cool, but a majority of places I'm mayor of, I have a very tenuous hold on -- someone visiting two days in a row could knock me out.  
• I like saying I'm the mayor of a park or a good restaurant, but less so a grocery store or a gas station.  As the parent of twin infants, I find my opportunity to visit places frequently to be fairly diminished.  That should pick up again as they get more mobile.
• Nobody cares about Foursquare points.  They need to revamp them or get rid of them.
• By April, five of my friends had started using Foursquare, and when Christina started in May, it became a lot more interesting.  Sometimes, seeing where people check in interests me more than a Facebook status update.
• I still haven't used it for a spontaneous meeting with a friend.  I think it promises a lot of, "Hey, so-and-so is at the bar down the street, let's meet up," but at my age and place in life that isn't going to happen.  As I said last year, "I could see this being pretty neat 15 years ago in grad school."
• The badges are awesome.  I think they're my favorite part -- I especially enjoy generating badge envy.  Some badges I'm envious of: Just Desserts, Historian, and for some reason most of all, I'm on a Boat!
• They've addressed the cheating pretty well, especially with the recent requirement to use a location-aware phone for check-in.  It would have prevented me from getting any mayorships and badges from last January to April on my old Palm Treo, but I guess the world moves on.
• It would really help if the game got more developed.  For now, as long as they release more badges, I'll be pretty happy, but the whole real world meets digital gaming nexus probably needs more dimensions to take off.

Nebula Update: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book won the 1971 Nebula award for Best Novel, so I read it as part of my project to read all such award winners. I vaguely recalled starting to read it before and never being able to make it through.

Well, I got to the end, and then remembered reading the whole thing. Can't remember when -- 5 years ago or 20?

The middle is very nice -- pure Silverberg world-building in the style of Lord Valentine's Castle (aside: this book won the Nebula, and none of the Majipoor books was nominated??!). The beginning and end are weaker, dealing with two peculiarities of the work -- the world's insistence that individuals hide their individuality (the word "I" is considered an obscenity), and the narrator's attempt to overcome that through the use of drugs.

At times, these themes seem very dated -- rooted in the 1960s/1970s. Silverberg handles them well, though, showing the downfall of the narrator in fairly subtle terms. On the one hand, since he's fighting for individuality, we're inclined to root for him. On the other hand, his insistence that he's got this wonderful drug with no side effects (despite all evidence to the contrary) seems a little familiar and turns him into a pathetic figure.

I'm now up to having read 31 of 45 Nebula winners. This one was harder to find, so I bought it used off Amazon. That worked pretty well, since I was under no pressure to return in to the library. I could read it a few chapters at a time, as parenting permitted. As it turned out, I finished the second half on a fairly empty flight back from New Orleans, as we were able to spread out and both kids slept most of the flight.



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The Decline and Fall of the Android's Dungeon

Here's a graph of the number of posts to this blog by year.  As I commented in one of my (rare) posts last year, over time, there's been more non-blog outlets for my random thoughts.  21 is pretty low, though, even given the significant life disruptions of 2010.  I'll try to do better this year, even if it means including goofy, "meta" posts like this one.

Thanks to the Department of Education for helping me create this graph.  Your tax dollars at work!

World Heritage: 2010 in Review

Last year, I said

"I don't anticipate a big haul next year, but one conference near an iconic World Heritage Site (on the level of Stonehenge) intrigues me. Stay tuned..."

Well, the conference originally was supposed to be near the Pyramids, then got moved thousands of miles away. To top it off, it didn't look interesting enough to go, and it was too close to the boys' birth for me to travel.

So the lack of a big haul was prescient. My two trips out of the country, to Montreal and Singapore, were not sufficiently close to the locations of any World Heritage Site. So I didn't visit any new sites this year.

But that doesn't leave me empty handed. On further review, the inscription of Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes in 2007 appears more interesting. It consists of three sites: Geomunoreum, Seongsan and Mount Halla. Digging through my photos from my first trip to Jeju, in 2001, turns up one labeled, "Me, on top of Sunrise Peak". A little searching leads me to the discovery that "Sunrise Peak" is the English name for Seongsan.

With the new sites inscribed this past summer (none of which I've visited), my total is now 47 out of 911, or 5.2%. It's a rounding error away from last year's percentage (which should have included Jeju, but didn't).

What does 2011 hold? The most promising item is a return trip to Korea, where two World Heritage sites look to be within public transportation of the conference site.  There's also the possibility of picking up one in Hungary, if a conference there turns out to be worth the trip.

Where's Jon? Singapore Edition

It's time for the slightly less exciting version of "Where's Waldo?" in which I try to find myself in pictures that people have posted of conferences I've attended. (I've labeled similar posts so you can view all of them here.)  The clearest shot (reproduced above) is here.  I'm also on the right in this picture from the rump session.

I have no idea who any of these other people are.  Also, I don't like fisheye lenses because they make people (in particular me) look like they have hunchbacks.

Maybe There's a Third of a Century Club I Could Aim for?

In 2003, I posted about the Traveler's Century Club (and updated in 2006).  Basically, it's an organization of people who have visited at least 100 countries (and have a pretty loose definition of what constitutes a country).  Since 2006, I have visited 8 more:

1. Bahamas
2. Estonia
3. Japan 
4. Netherlands
5. Sarawak
6. Singapore
7. Spain
8. Turkey in Europe (Istanbul)

Also,  Jeju Island (South Korea) was added to the list this year, so I have a total of 31.

My pace of two a year was helped by the fact that I attend two particular conferences every year, one of which rotates around Europe and the other around Asia. Each, however, rotates entirely among countries I've already visited for the next two years. This year, though I missed the European one, it repeated also, so I visited no new countries this year for the first time since 1999. I might go to one in Hungary next year, so there's always the chance to add to the total through other conferences.

930 Places Left to See

 In 2004, I posted a list of the 49 places from the book 1000 Places to See Before you Die that I had seen.

Here are the places I've seen since then:

• Blenheim Palace, which we visited in 2005.
• Vienna, which I visited in 2007.
• Paris, which we visited in 2005.
• Place Stanislas, which I visited in 2008.
• The Rhine Valley, which I first visited in 2006.
• Cologne's Cathedral Quarter, which I visited on the same trip.
• La Sagrada Familia, which I visited in 2007.
• Museu Picasso, which I visited on the same trip to Barcelona and found a bit disappointing.
• The Hermitage, which I visited in 2006.
• The Park Hyatt Tokyo, which I walked by last year.
• Tsukiji Fish Market, which I ate at last year.
• Hagia Sophia, which I visited in 2008.
• Topkapi Palace, which I visited on the same trip.
• Headhunter's Trail, which I visited in 2007
• Raffles Hotel, which I visited earlier this week.
• Singapore's Street Food, which I also sampled this week.
• The Great Ocean Road, which we drove in 2008.
• Hotel Del Coronado, which we first visited in 2008.
• Museum Mile, which I visited in 2008.
• Graceland, which we visited in 2005.
• Old San Juan, which we visited in 2005.

That's 21 more, for a total of 70.

What prompted me to revisit the list?  I wrote a review of this book for the site Goodreads.  Goodreads offered to let me post the review to my blog.  In order to have the content in a more open place (and to provide more content for this blog), I've decided to start doing that with some of the reviews.  (I'm also posting some to Amazon.)

1000 Places to See Before you Die by Patricia Schultz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It's an intriguing concept, and kinda fun to page through, but way too heavy on $300/night hotels, spas, etc. Let's say I'm going to Dublin (to open to a section at random). She recommends a festival, the Book of Kells and the pubs (possibly in conjunction with St. Patrick's Day). All good. But she also recommends a $65/plate restaurant and a $300/night hotel. I could forgive the restaurant if there was less of that kind of stuff.

I prefer to use the almost-1000-long World Heritage List. Maybe it's just as arbitrary in its own way, but at least it's the product of a consensus, and it's heavier on cultural and natural must-sees.



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Pictures from Singapore

Perhaps you can view this as a sequel to this post and this one from 2007.  Then I had two layovers comprising about 30 hours in Singapore.  This time Singapore was my actual destination, and I had about 80 hours total.  Of course, this time much of that was taken up by the conference, so I feel like I didn't do as much, oddly enough.

I did throw back a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel, visit the National Museum of Singapore, and enjoy some chili crab at a place called Gluttons Bay.  Pictures of these and more are shown in the album below.

Singapore 2010

Two More Geocaches

I've found two more geocaches this month, bringing my total for the year to 3.  Not too impressive, but it matches my total from 2009.  (Of course, last year, I did them in three consecutive days in two countries, which was a bit cooler.)

On Veterans Day, I took a bike ride around my usual 8.5-mile loop of the immediate area.  There are at least 4 geocaches on that loop, one of which was the first of my 2009 finds.  With the aid of a USB charger that takes AA batteries, I powered my phone for the drive and took off after one of these caches.  It was a nice combination of having my Garmin GPS receiver loaded with the coordinates and being able to use the Android phone app to get details once I got to the cache.  As much as I'd like an "all-in-one" solution, this method works pretty darn well.

Spoiler alert: the cache was located just off the trail in the tree stump pictured.  I dropped off Free State Generic #3, my latest geocoin and picked up Montana Plata, a similarly state-themed trackable.


Yesterday, while on my way to pick up our Thanksgiving Turkey from a Frederick County farm, I had a rare opportunity to add a new Maryland county to my list.  There is a virtual geocache in Mount Airy, based around the town 9/11 memorial.  Below is a picture of the memorial plaque, cropped to remove the information needed to log the cache. 

Mount Airy is in Carroll County, which gives me my 9th Maryland county, as shown on the map below.  In July 2008, I noted that I had 122 virtuals (and similar) within 70 miles of home left to find.  Mainly due to the addition of earthcaches, that number is now up to 137.  I may have to reconsider my goal, given my reduced time for traveling up to 70 miles and the news that virtual geocaches may be reintroduced in some form.