Reading Shanks's Rectification of the Circle to 607 Places

Mr. Moore and I to Paul’s school, to wait upon Mr. Crumlum (Mr. Moore having a hopeful lad, a kinsman of his, there at school), who we take very luckily.

Bad polyphenism: "when the water level is low and desiccation is imminent, the tadpoles develop a morphology (wide mouth, strong jaw) that permits them to cannibalize. Cannibalistic tadpoles receive better nutrition and thus metamorphose more quickly, avoiding death as the pond dries up.[8]"

So Paracelsus 'invented' laudanum: "It was early suspected that opium was the real agent of the cures which Paracelsus professed to have effected by this costly means; hence the name was applied to certain opiate preparations which were sold as identical with his famous remedy" (OED).

I found the third edition of Ben Hur (1860) with the duplicate line on the free book shelf.

Making up people to get mad at is kind of fun. Consider the proprietor of the "Barnacle Cove: Estimating the Estimand" blog. I asked him to add an RSS feed, and he replied: "oh, Reddit Speaks Statistics. Sure," in a tone that implied he would not in fact do it. This is jerk behavior!

A statistics textbook from the early 80s uses a grip strength test for women athletes in different sports as an ANOVA example. Tennis was the highest. Racquets were heavier then, suggesting a much-needed follow-up. What if it's golf now? What then?

Hammett's chief of police in Red Harvest gives an "athletic wink." And I read a profile of a grunge band once, in Spin or Moss-less, that described the guitarist speaking in "clipped athletic tones." I have pondered this latter one especially for what, twenty years, however long it's been.

Taxonomists of plot have yet to discover this one: a band of misfits with abilities greater than the sum of their parts defeat an overconfident enemy, while comedic interludes punctuate their improbable plans.

the annoyance of probability violating our intuition (if not logic) causes those who learn a bit about it to imagine they have discovered the Key to all Thought, Art, and Science. Many such cases. Not me, though.

Someone with his ear should tell him, the president I mean, that he's not a good enough literary critic to publish in The Explicator. The results might surprise us!

If you restricted yourself to American, Roman, Faculty: who is the most fucked-up senator? I lack the method and specific knowledge to answer the question as it deserves.

Titles are hard. I go back and forth between The Powys Era and The Age of Powys.

If you go to "Median Rent Over Time" here www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/28511/#real-..., you can see that you can get paid $666m each month to live in Atlantic, NC---not a bad deal. I probably would have stayed, had I known.

I was intrigued by the comments here about cryptocurrency (what is that by the way, something on the computer?) and the endowment of a well-regarded university. Details seem analogous to someone walking into the state fair with $600 and spending two of them on a rigged game---counter-fiduciary!

Just read the phrase "sword and sorcery ethos" in a wikipedia entry. Much to consider there. As a universal ordering principle, we might say "s&s logos." For the passions of combat and wizardry, pathos would do. But ethos?

?UCBAdmissions---> which department in 1973 was offering admission to 500 students?

I was a twitter user for quite a few years, and I always enjoyed accounts of this type: academics, wild F/F ratio (100:1 or so), never heard of them, never post (except occasional announcement of talk, book, article), no conceivable authentic social media audience.

Saw a list of common phrases people had forgotten were from Game of Thrones, but it didn't list "Ser Pounce" (kitty name).

A kind of cultural revolution scenario in which professors are made to admit that Bertrand's Box, Monty-Hall-style problems are just tricks.

Some of the SD songs are clearly SF: "Pretzel Logic" and "Sign in Stranger" for two. Take "Night by Night." The official lyrics read "When the joker tried to tell me\I could cut it in this rube town" I hear "I couldn't cut it in the smooth town," which seems more consistent with what follows. (+)

A difference between us is that you probably think science can explain what happened to my sweatbands.

I'm glad there's a tool that can convert T. Rex lyrics to (T.) Rexx code (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx) without impertinent queries about the whimsical nature of my thoughts, wasting time, etc.

Here are some project titles: "A Literary Theory of the Firm," "The Literary History of the Firm," "The Firm Is More Than Its Widgets," "Do Firms Seek Rents?"

Gave a 'frontier model' a page of Goedel's notebook in Gabelsberger shorthand, and it told me that it was really complex and esoteric, to maybe try an expert.

Now that I think about it, doesn't the warden ask Mr. C how many Rs are in "Mr. Strawberry?" A proleptic or prophetic moment, depending on your pov.

Simon: "Industrial organizations are increasingly adopting the technique of horizontal transfer of people — that is, rotation — as a device for giving executives this broader interdepartmental point of view" --> should universities try it? Math and English could switch responsibilities at first.

Imagine a dunghill next to a mountain whose peak is covered by clouds. Confusing their vistas would seem difficult, and yet...

'alternate-reality game' marketing and Intelligent Design (culture war) have both disappeared, or at least diminished greatly---not sure why.

Seeing some signs of Ted Chiang's "What's Expected of Us."

Luigi Serafini sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/serafi... was born on this day, creator of 'The Codex Seraphinianus', a "heavily illustrated pseudo-encyclopedia of an apparent Alternate World" that's written in an imaginary language. Here are some pages from it:

"There is a negative probability of negative interest rates. Yes, there isn't." ---> I keep imagining someone saying this on tv. I don't know why.

One of these days I'll finish reading the biblatex-chicago manual. Then I'll know what to do.

Accessing JSTOR through our library proxy, and it seems that the server only loads a few pages of the pdf at a time. Read at a reasonable rate, and the proxy times out, leaving nothing but blank pages. Is that in my interest? Clearly it is not. And yet...

Preparing a piece for the Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes on how the illustration of a rakshasa in the first edition of the Monster Manual likely derives from Ernst's A Week of Kindness.

The use of the phrase "category error," any kind of comment on the truthlikeness of "models," 'updating,' 'bootstrapping'---all make me wonder: can the critical faculties survive prolonged exposure to logical/quantitative methods of reasoning, esp. in the inevitable reach/grasp mismatch?

When there's an article about all of this (vague, broad gesture) that includes the phrase "arcana imperii," let me know.

I am curious about how the widespread belief that software is getting worse (which is plausible in terms of memory/processing constraints, plus overall complexity of operating systems, the browser, etc.---teams, sharepoint, I could go on) interacts with the labor disputes in tech.

What is the base rate of close reading?

I am filled with something like awe when a politician accuses other politicians of politicizing something. There are very powerful minds, entities out there---and we do not understand them!

Pace Superman III, a great entertainment, small quantities do no exist in the context of large ones; and yet all organizational bookkeeping seems laser-focused on trivial expenditures. Is this like cancelling a $3 substack to address a $3000 hole in monthly budget? It must be.

Three stages of critical inquiry: something's up, it's stranger than you realize, there are Politics in this dream

Academic dishonesty in many forms seems prevalent in the non-literary disciplines: what can we in the English departments do to help?

Do we still use capsule biographies when introducing well-known figures: "[], a political science major and 80s-style nerd?"

OED not as helpful as I'd hoped on the profound mystery of why the Australians (and some others) call a bluefish a 'tailor.'

If it had started off "Dear Pilgrim, you honour me. You're very beautiful. I offer 100 prayers for your safety...," it might have held my interest---sorry!

Currently listening to www.jstor.org/stable/4474231

An article sure to be popular would be: "Critical Fallacies in TV Tropes, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and Various Wikis"

[discovering some connections between Yale English department, ca. 1950 and the American secret services] wow, has anyone ever noticed this?