A SherWords Quiz

This quiz has nothing to do with cats or anything else useful.

My students had to take a midterm exam today, so why should I give SherWords readers the day off?

This 10-question quiz is closed-book: no reference materials of any kind are allowed. Each question is followed by a link to its answer and, where I feel like it, some explanation thereof. Use these links only after you have answered the question. Ceiling Cat will know if you peeked, and what happens after that might not be pretty.

Ready? Okay, then, here we go!

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1. Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a ton of lead? (Click here for the answer.)

2. What was U.S. President Truman's middle name? (Answer)

3. What was U.S. President Ford's first name? (Answer)

4. Where in the 48 contiguous states of the USA is it possible to drive southward on a paved road across the border into Canada? (Answer)

5. Which major object in our solar system requires the fastest launch of a spacecraft from Earth to reach on a direct trajectory? (Answer)

6. In a regulation, 9-inning baseball game (not one shortened by rain or other exigency), what is the smallest possible total number of plate appearances for one team's batters? (Answer)

7. If the presidents of San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley stand in the middle of the football stadiums on their campuses, which of them is the farthest west? (Answer)

8. How many accelerators are there in a car? (Answer)

9. What large body of water does the Sun rise over as seen from the Panama Canal? (Answer)

10. If you push straight backward on the lower pedal of a tricycle's front wheel, which direction does the trike move (assuming good lubrication and that the wheel is prevented from turning left or right)? (Answer)

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In case you are thinking of disagreeing with any of the answers, keep in mind who gives the grades around here.

How'd you do?

Newsflash: Astronomers' Spawn Do Cool Things

If you live long enough, you're certain to rub shoulders from time to time with some pretty remarkable people. If you live even longer than that, you've got a good chance to encounter remarkable children of those remarkable people.

I'm lucky enough to work side-by-side with Karl von Ahnen, the technical director of the planetarium in which I teach my classes. Karl is worth an entire blog post all by himself... but this one won't be about him.

It will be about recent works by his son, and by mine.

Karl's son, Garth, recently graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, with a major in fine arts and a minor in astronomy. He combines the two fields in animations, and one in particular will strike a chord with long-time readers of this blog. Called "Arcada Fog," it is a romp through the Copernican revolution.

Garth
(Photo from Garth's Facebook page)

The animation's central and unifying figure is Tycho's moose. The music is by a group of Garth's college buddies, "Acid Westerns," who are just now embarking on a career. I really, really like their soundtrack for Garth's trip through our most colossal paradigm shift. Turn the sound up, if you can, for the treat:



My own boy, Adam, has a career in voice acting that seems right now to be on the first stages of an exponential launch. As the economy recovers, his gigs increase -- but it's more than that. His abilities and opportunities seem to be revving up like some of us remember a Saturn V's engines did before the huge clamps on the pad let go. He has worked hard for the ignition, and that alone is worthy of my salute.

But listen to this, in the context of its delivery -- W.E. Henley's most famous work delivered in an environment he couldn't have dreamt -- and turn the sound up. Don't bother trying to maximize the video window -- it will eventually do that all by itself. And, as Adam says, you'll have to "watch it all the way through to appreciate the incredible effects."

Shivers.

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While We Wait for Sherwood to Have a Thought Worth Communicating...

... a Diversion:

Fonzie on May 7th, 2010


Doggerel for a Cat

Who knows where his mind is,
Who knows where he goes?
Who knows what he’s thinking,
Who knows what he knows?

Deep thoughts about the future,
Or contemplating, if he can,
The foibles of his keepers,
And the final days of Man?

Perhaps he’s astrophysics’
Or mathematics’ sage,
Viewing in this corner
Hadrons' impact in the voiding gauge.

Or maybe he can see into
The chaos of our past,
Mistakes that litter pathways
That our curiosity outlasts.

Or maybe he’s just looking at a wall.

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Mundy

We're busily committing our dollars to our summer's visit to the island.

Birr, in particular, in a county nobody's heard of -- Offaly -- to be visited by a guy from a county nobody's heard of, either -- Chenango, in New York state.

So, today we reserved our car for a month, and sent out e-mails to people we want to see and talk to again (after our short stay there four years ago).

As part of that, we checked into what little Edmund, son of the Enrights of Enrights' pub in Birr, was up to.

Seems to be doing okay, he does:



Most of my efforts concerning meeting folks in Ireland this coming August are now concerned with astronomy-type stuff, not necessarily interesting to SherWords readers (except Brian, maybe), but seeing "Mundy" is high on our list of hoped-fors!

A Post for St. Patrick's Day

Q: What's Irish and gets jumped over by reckless teenagers?

A: Paddy O'Furniture

These photos were taken by my Dad, Lynn Harrington, in the summer of 1962, when I turned 15. The little Gunnison pre-fab house was the box I grew up in, but, to me then, it was a mansion. In the upper-left of the second photo is what I'm sure was Chenango County's finest treehouse at the time.

I'd have a hard time jumping over a thumb drive now.

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Two Minutes and 56 Seconds of Your Life That You Will Never Get Back

"Woody" is the cat's name. Make sure to have the sound turned up enough so you can hear the music playing in the background -- it seems to go along perfectly with his expression.

Thanks to Deborah Young-Kroeger for bringing this to my attention via Facebook.

If You Need a Short Break from Jingling Bells...

... here are three short diversions from Adam, Uncle Bob, and me that have nothing to do with the holidays:






(Click on the last picture to be taken to a short gallery of photos -- again, having nothing to do with sleighs or egg nog.)

Okay, now we can all get back to joy and so on. Merry Christmas!

Farflung. Family. Freaky.

Everybody's got a family somewhere. Everybody's family is a hiccup in the flow of ordinality. There's normal, and then there's "us", and that dichotomy applies to all of us, always, especially here in the blogosphere.

Here's the most recent salvo in the "we're weirder than you are" contest: another short, masterful video clip from Adam's Uncle Bob:

The above video clip is another in Adam's Uncle Bob's continuing series of alternate-sensibility visuals, some of which have been highlighted here on SherWords before. What makes this one notable for SherWords is the collection of talent: Adam's faux-lingo background, cousin Bill's growling guitar, and, especially, Reva's smooth voice make this a multi-generational and cross-lineage collection that should help braid disparate genetic threads together.

And it's really, really cool, too.

Oh, My Poor Son, He Has...

... very odd people on both sides of his family tree. Entertaining, but odd.

His uncle, Bob Kroeger, probably fits both adjectives. Bob is one of the most interesting people I have met in my life, and I met him a long time ago. Bob is the youngest brother of Adam's late mom, Mary, and I taught him his first guitar chords in his family's basement in 1965 or thereabouts.

After that, Bob went on to graduate from the Berklee College of Music and to a career in... oh, gosh, lots of stuff. He is the only professional croquet player I know, for example, and his audio and visual creations are not famous only because we (as a civilization) haven't come up with neat verbal tags within which to categorize them.

Which leads to this blog entry: three collaborations between Bob and two of his nephews, Adam and Bill (Bill is the older son of Bob's late brother, the eldest of the Kroeger siblings, Dick.) Adam provides some of the voiceovers, Bill works guitar, and Bob provides absolutely everything -- concept, music composition, and sense of disconnect from every frame of reference we ordinary people depend on.

WARNING: These videos are completely safe for work in the traditional sense: no pr0n. On the other hand, they may be NSFW if anybody looking over your shoulder thinks that your sanity is suspect.

ADDITIONAL WARNING: Not everybody "gets" this stuff. If you don't get it -- if you think it's just precious self-congratulatory vapidity -- well, okay. You're probably not alone.

But I'm not with you. Or maybe I will be as soon as I stop giggling. In about 2039 or so.

Movie Trailer
Concept: Bob Kroeger
Music: Bob Kroeger
Guitar: Bill Kroeger
Voices: Adam Harrington, Bob Kroeger

Tank Farms
Concept: Bob Kroeger
Voice: Adam Harrington

Pumps on Spools
Concept: Bob Kroeger
Voices: Bob Kroeger, Adam Harrington

Bob Kroeger, Christmas 1966, with his very, very young nephew, Doug. Amherst, Massachusetts.

Bob Practicing his Craft:


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Quiz

What do these items have in common?

Feel free to leave your guess in comments. The answer will appear there in two days (unless someone gets it right before then.)

Joe-Bob Says:

Sherwood-Bob says: Check it Out!

Image by Robert Couse-Baker of Sacramento, one of the most innovative and playful photographers I've encountered on Flickr thus far. Please click here to go to a short compilation of his "Bob's Dreams" works.

A Question You Do NOT Want to Hear from Your Wife When She Calls You at Work

"Honey, where do you keep the snake?"

I Used to Be Able to Do That...

... when I was a lot younger. I think.

Grace-the-Granddaughter.
Photo by Lynda Hermosa.

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Lookit What I Got In the Mail TODAY!

... one in an ongoing series.

PART I: COOL STUFF IN THE MAIL:

OH MY

Oh my, oh my, oh my.

I have heard its praises sung in academe, its values debated in high halls, its import profoundly enunciated from all the far-flung corners of realms governed by TCP/IP, and its products displayed on every monitor and slick paper, everywhere.

Photoshop.

I never had it in my hands, though. Until now.

Two thoughts:

1) It's a good thing that I spent my first 61 years doing other things, because the next 61 are probably going to have to be devoted to figuring out how to use this damn' thing, and

2) Thank God (and Martha) for deep academic discounts. I feel like I've just gotten the keys to a Maserati for $1.98. How does any ordinary person afford this stuff?

What's really scary is how quickly its power can be applied, even before someone becomes particularly adept with it. The disks for Photoshop arrived in our mailbox while Diane and I were in San Francisco, visiting the Legion of Honor art museum on one of our Friday "Playin' Hooky" outings. As part of that, we walked across the street to visit (and pay homage to, on this Good Friday) the San Francisco Holocaust Memorial sculpture by George Segal.

I took this snapshot of the sculpture, looking through the barbed wire toward the Golden Gate, the Marin Headlands, and freedom:

... and toward an alert-yellow traffic hazard sign, too, unfortunately (upper-right quadrant).

When we got home, the Photoshop disk was waiting for us in the mailbox. After I installed it, and after I had glanced at our photos from the day, the first thing I wanted to do was to see if Photoshop could get rid of that bright lemon distraction.

It could, and it did, with very little expertise required on my part:

No sign? Nope, no sign.
(How can any jury believe "photographic evidence" now?)

In anticipation of receiving Photoshop in the mail, I visited a number of bookshops looking for "manuals" or "how-to" books. The major bookshops had entire sections -- bigger than the entire libraries of some small towns, I reckon -- devoted to Photoshop guides. Given what I was able to do with that distracting sign with only a few minutes' fumbling, I am staggered by what I've got in front of me in the way of a learning curve.

'Scuse me while I set out to climb a virtual El Capitan! How exciting!

PART II: NOT-COOL STUFF IN THE MAIL:

Received on the same day as the Photoshop disk's upper: this major downer.

I don't care how damn' free it is, I'm not opening this offer. If I conk out, Diane will do what traditional widows do here in the Santa Cruz mountains: sometime in the next rainy season she'll drag my sorry carcass up the hollow a ways past the last cabin and into the woods, sprinkle it with gasoline, and set it afire.

Been done afore, ay-uh. Lots.

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Great View of the Inauguration Crowd

GeoEye, Inc., released this astonishing image from its GeoEye-1 satellite this afternoon. After you've clicked on that link, the photo you see is only part of the high-resolution image that you can (and should) download via the link on that page. More information about the image can be found here.

National Parks Meme

One of the ways to tell that your blogging has hit a flat spot is that you actually welcome a meme. Chris Clarke just tagged me with his US National Park Meme, and, rather than cursing him repeatedly for the tap, I only did so once, so I guess SherWords is at least approaching a flat spot.

Chris cut-n-pasted a list of US National Parks and bold-faced the ones he has visited in his lifetime, and invited others to do the same. The meme has a bonus question: "what’s the next National Park you’d like to visit?"

First, the list:

Acadia National Park (Maine)
National Park of American Samoa (American Samoa)
Arches National Park (Utah)
Badlands National Park (South Dakota)
Big Bend National Park (Texas)
Biscayne National Park (Florida)
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (Colorado)
Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah)
Canyonlands National Park (Utah)
Capitol Reef National Park (Utah)
Carlsbad Caverns National Park (New Mexico)
Channel Islands National Park (California)
Congaree National Park (South Carolina)
Crater Lake National Park (Oregon)
Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio)
Death Valley National Park (California, Nevada)
Denali National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Dry Tortugas National Park (Florida)
Everglades National Park (Florida)
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Glacier National Park (part of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park) (Montana/Alberta)
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Grand Canyon National Park (Arizona)
Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming)
Great Basin National Park (Nevada)
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Colorado)
Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina, Tennessee)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Texas)
Haleakala National Park (Hawaii)
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Hawaii)
Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas)
Isle Royale National Park (Michigan)
Joshua Tree National Park (California)
Katmai National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Kenai Fjords National Park (Alaska)
Kings Canyon National Park (California)
Kobuk Valley National Park (Alaska)
Lake Clark National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Lassen Volcanic National Park (California)
Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky)
Mesa Verde National Park (Colorado)
Mount Rainier National Park (Washington)
North Cascades National Park (Washington)
Olympic National Park (Washington)
Petrified Forest National Park (Arizona)
Redwood National Park (California)
Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)
Saguaro National Park (Arizona)
Sequoia National Park (California)
Shenandoah National Park (Virginia)
Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota)
Virgin Islands National Park (U.S. Virgin Islands)
Voyageurs National Park (Minnesota)
Wind Cave National Park (South Dakota)
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve (Alaska)
Yellowstone National Park (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming)
Yosemite National Park (California)
Zion National Park (Utah)

If you check Chris's list against mine, I think you'll be struck by the similarities. Each of ours shows surprising omissions for those who are familiar with us or our writing: his doesn't include Kings Canyon or Sequoia, for example, and Crater Lake is absent from mine despite numerous wanderings close to it. But overall, the similarities are remarkable.

As for the "bonus question" concerning the next national park I'd like to visit (and note the technicality that it doesn't specify US national park!), what Diane and I are actually planning to do is to make the following list all bold-faced instead of only two-thirds:

Ballycroy
Connemara
Glenveagh
Killarney
The Burren
Wicklow Mountains

The list is the complete roster of National Parks in the Republic of Ireland. (We almost got to Ballycroy in our 2006 visit, but didn't quite get there -- we hustled through Co. Mayo to get to Clifden from Sligo for the pony show, and didn't quite have the time we would have liked, but we'll fix that next time.) That there are only six national parks in the country seems a bit strange at first for a land so fabled for its beauty (as Diane just said to me, "The whole place is a national park!"). It's less strange when you consider that a) the whole country is almost exactly the same size as South Carolina, which has only one national park (Congaree), and b) the Republic adheres strictly to the IUCN's 1969 criteria for "national parks":

In 1969, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recommended that all governments agree to reserve the term 'National Park' to areas sharing the following characteristics:

• Where one or several ecosystems are not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation; where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educational and recreational interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty;
• Where the highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate as soon as possible exploitation or occupation in the whole area and to enforce effectively the respect of ecological, geomorphological or aesthetic features which have led to its establishment;
• Where visitors are allowed to enter, under special conditions, for inspirational, educational, cultural and recreational purposes.

It is the policy of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, endorsed by successive governments, to abide by the criteria and standards for National Parks as set by the IUCN.

(Quote from the Republic's National Parks and Wildlife Service website. It's a shame, though, that the Service doesn't also abide by the proper use of serial commas.)

I actually had thought that I would do a similar bold- and not-bold list for national parks I've visited and not visited in Australia... until I did a little googling and found that the Ozzies have a staggering 516 of them. Nobody's going to read to the end of that list, and precious few of them would be bolded.

Of course, this wouldn't be a SherWords post without some bandwidth-hogging images, so here's this post's quota: my favorites from the four Irish national parks we have visited:

Connemara: the admonition to stay on the trail is familiar in US national parks; the stern "DO NOT INTERFERE WITH PONIES" is not.

Killarney: enjoying the vista from Ladies' View with one of the locals.

The Burren: Karst, karst all around, and caves beneath our feet. Also Galway Bay in the background.

Wicklow Mountains: heather and a clear, pure brook by St. Kevin's Way.

Coda: As Chris notes, "it’s not a meme unless you tap people for it," so I guess I should burden some readers by name to do their own list. But I won't. I will, though, invite any regular SherWords reader to follow up on his or her own blog, or in the comments here, to the National Park Meme: what US National Parks have you visited? What national park would you like to visit next? (And feel free to add Canada's national parks to the list, too -- or even instead of!)

Post-Coda: As Chris also rightly notes, "yes, this list reflects a certain amount of assumption of privilege in that travel costs money and time, and if you’ve been unable to do the Parks Tour thing, feel free to tell us about a local place you like, NP, National Monument, State Park, or otherwise."

For the Little, Tiny Snide Bit in All of Us...

... Chris Clarke's blog introduced me to Let Me Google That for You. I think we all can find uses for it now and then.

Forty-six Seconds You'll Never Get Back

Offaly in Song!

The town of Birr, Diane's and my past and future temporary home in Ireland, is in County Offaly. County Offaly, I'm sure, is the least known of the Republic's 26 to Americans, so you can imagine our delight when our friend Lucile alerted us to this traditional ballad in which Offaly is mentioned in the first verse:



Oh, and the other stuff in it is pretty cool, too, truth be said.

U Can Has Ur Lolcat Cuz I Can Has My...

(Detail from this receipt:

from today's visit to the neighborhood grocery store.)

Notice that they paid me $2.06 to take the item. Such a deal!

For anyone who somehow has managed to stay unaware of the lolcat phenomenon, click here for background.