Well...haven't updated recently, but...

will be having a blog, probably cross-posted here and on the official IceCube blog, during my South Pole deployment. Look for photos and videos...all will be school-aged children appropriate as I work with my daughters' science teachers.

The Mike Book Club

Listen to me, not to Oprah! Get your modern American literature here...

William T. Vollmann: You Bright and Risen Angels, Rising Up and Rising Down (7 volumes if you can, 1 volume if you must), Imperial

Don Delillo: White Noise, Mao II, Underworld, Libra

Thomas Pynchon: Crying of Lot 49, V, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day (okay, I'd really recommend it all, so add Vineland and Inherent Vice)

Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian, The Orchard Keeper, No Country for Old Men

Philip Roth: American Pastoral, Portnoy's Complaint, Zuckerman Unbound

Saul Bellow: Herzog, Seize the Day, Adventures of Augie March

John Updike: Rabbit novels

John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany, Water Method Man

Vladimir Nabokov: Ada, Pale Fire, Lolita, Pnin

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan, Galapagos, Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano

Tim O'Brien: Going After Cacciato

William Gaddis: The Recognitions, Agape Agape

Jack Kerouac: On the Road, Visions of Cody, Big Sur

William S. Burroughs: Western Lands, Naked Lunch, Nova Express

Okay, I was just venting a little bit...

Why is there a lack of humorous reviews of this?

State of the music industry

I know it's a couple of years old, but I was just reading the Wired magazine article by David Byrne (relatively) optimistically addressing the future of music. You might as well, while we're on the subject, look back at the famous Steve Albini and Courtney Love articles on the music business economics. Makes one think twice about what is music piracy.

An odd form of advertising

While sitting outside for dinner last night near the Honolulu commercial port, a large roll-on roll-off ship pulled up in the channel. It came to a stop and a large searchlight lit up the advertising for the shipping line. pashahawaii.com

Smart phones appeared at nearby tables to check out the website. Inexpensive car shipping to/from Hawaii.

Television: Drug of the nation*

Here are a few things I have learned from three weeks living with a television (my room at Lincoln Hall at UH-Manoa):

1. SyFy? The science fiction channel appears to have a new name which is different from any abbreviated form of "science fiction" that I've ever seen previously.

2. There are an impressive host of "ghost hunting" shows on SyFy, see above. The guy using an old HP spectrum analyzer with no input was especially amusingl.

3. Infomercials about a colon cleaning system? (I admit that was due to working with a postdoc here who works late nights, and then turning on the TV when I got back to my room at 2am.)

4. Paddling Hawaii and Hawaiian Skindiver shows. Never seen either before. Pretty cool.

5. That's who Glenn Beck is.

6. Corollary to #5. The man's insane.

7. Adult Swim is funny. For a few minutes at least.

8. Chef reality shows? The segment I saw had the "I want to be a chef" folks try to make bread. Few of them ever had, and the results were pretty dodgy. And someone was kicked off the kitchen island as a result.

9. MTV now shows four videos per day. And it's the same four videos each day. Silversun Pickups have a good name, but are pretty dull.

10. There are three Peanuts/Charlie Brown Christmas specials.

I admit that writing about TV reminds me of priests talking about sex or shipwrecked sailors discussing navigation, but what else are blogs for?

* Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.

Rewards in parenting

This weekend, my daughters and I worked on a new super-crazy fast snow sled (built up on old cross country skis) and an ice boat (sail, mast, seats, and runners). Sylvia was working with me and asked "how did you learn to build stuff?" I answered, truthfully, "by working with, and watching, my dad." She smiled broadly. Mara reports that with the sled and boat that "this is going to be the best winter ever." I melt.

Things which should exist, but don't seem to

A right angle adapter for an IEC power connector. You have lots of those power cords in a box in the basement, but sometimes you need a right angle power cord. Sure, they exist, in both right angle "sideways" and right angle to the back, but how about a universal adapter? Should cost cents to make, sell for a couple of dollars. I could use a few. And right angle USB adapters?

Want to add to your Netflix queue?

Every Doc Film shown through 2008. (It's an Excel file.) Doc Films is the University of Chicago "Documentary Film" society which shows, well, films of all sorts. Relive the Jackie Chan festival of Fall 1994 if you like. Good stuff!

IKEA's Secret Annex

Inspired by the discovery of the IAEA's secret annex of documentation of Iran's nuclear weapons program, we have the first reports of the contents of IKEA's secret annex.

1. Meatballs gone very bad
2. The guy who makes the 59 cent superbags (which turn out to be excellent inflatable kayak bags by the way)
3. The remains of the store employee who installed the shortcuts through the showroom
4. ABBA
5. The 1970s
6. The springie in my bungie

Darn, this is hard, why oh why can't I come up with more?

A true Craigslist classic

1,325 Pope Hats

Because of this terrible economy, I'm having to shut down my business. I have OVER 1300 Pope hats (replicas) that I REALLY need to get rid of. The pope hats came from China and are a little too small for most adult heads and are also irritating to the skin, so you would need to have long hair or wear a smaller hat underneath (just like the REAL POPE). Dogs do not like to wear these pope hats, but maybe a large cat or maybe a nice dog would wear one. My dogs will not but they are not very nice and always hate being dressed up like for Halloween when we tried to dress them up like batman but they became very very agitated and bit a neighbors kid. I will lock the dogs up when you come get all of these pope hats.

My wife is a devout catholic and she finds the presence of all of these pope hats all over the house to be blasphemous. I have pope hats in every closet, pope hats under the sing, pope hats full of other pope hats. She will not stop talking to me about getting rid of the pope hats and has started lighting candles all over the house for my soul but these pope hats are extremely flammable so its a problem in my house (there are pope hats everywhere)

I payed 10x what I'm asking for when I bought these pope hats. I still think there is a market for them maybe when the economy turns around. Act NOW! Don't miss this great deal! I have 1,325 total (I counted this morning). 3 of them have some dog bites and one of them is burnt to a crisp, but you can take that one or leave it. Bring 2-3 strong friends.

• Location: Tempe
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Mathematics of body surfing

This was the result of a long, and odd, series of searches for a completely unrelated topic. PDF article.

Cornelius Cardew's Treatise

One of the most impressive scores ever produced, Cornelius Cardew's Treatise is 193 pages of graphical notation hinting at music to be performed. The instructions for the ensemble are "for any number of musicians with any instruments, may be performed in whole or in part." Sonic Youth and the Ensemble 303 have recently popularized this piece to some extent. An early, 1967, recording by the QUaX Ensemble (highly regarded by Cardew) is now available again as well, see amazon link below.

I won't repeat information easily available online from A Young Person's Guide to Treatise, probably the best single spot for information both on Cardew and Treatise itself. You should check your local library for a copy of Treatise and Treatise (Handbook).

The Cash-For-Clunkers (CFC) scam

Okay, I have to admit that it initially sounded like a plausible scheme to me, even if it was obviously intended to help out the car dealers and manufacturers since it was limited to purchasing new cars. But what's also happening is that perfectly reasonable used vehicles are being deleted from the used car inventory. The engines in the traded in cars have to be destroyed and then the vehicles scrapped. Okay, maybe this makes sense if you're picturing a clapped-out Buick with a bad exhaust being destroyed, but that's not all that's happening...

A BMW 735i engine being run to destruction to comply with the requirements.
A Volvo S80 T6 hanging on to life for a while.

So here it is, relatively recent cars are being destroyed with our government's money to give a discount to the purchase of new, slightly more efficient cars and trucks. But what about the environmental and economic costs of the new construction? Move along now, nothing to see here.

A large fraction of the so-called clunkers are actually modern, relatively non-polluting, and well-running vehicles. This isn't getting rid of the nasty polluting old cars, just thinning the good used car market. That's a newer, nicer car than mine (the Volvo) and gets better fuel economy than most any SUV or truck out in suburbia.

If you had a 17MPG pickup, you could use the money to buy a (new) 19MPG SUV.

Absolutely insane. Next up, a bailout for the US insurance and glass industry by handing out rocks to be thrown through windows.

One of the strangest marketing tie-in items ever.

Blast from the (weird) past

An email I received today...
----
Hi

I found on the internet a note you posted about a tunnel from Puerto
Rico to Spain. (http://webusers.physics.umn.edu/~duvernoi/tunnel.html)

You were requesting more information and you mentioned a lady from
Cabo Rojo had given you an article about it.

I live in western Puerto Rico and never heard of such tunnel. I
passed your link to a colleague from Cabo ROjo and he doesn't know
anything about it.

Do you have more details on this?

Just curious....Miguel

--
---------------------------------------
Miguel A. Pando, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Associate Professor, Geotechnical Group
Civil Engineering Department
University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
Mayagüez, PR
00681-9041
787-832-4040 Exts. 3434 or 3718
* New e-mail address: miguel.pando@upr.edu
----

It's been very surprising to me how often folks get in touch with me about this... :)

Research advisor genealogy

My Ph.D. thesis (1996 Chicago) adviser was John A. Simpson (1943 NYU) whose adviser was Serge Korff (1931 Princeton) whose adviser was John Quincy Stuart (1919 Princeton). He was a student of H. L. Cook and Karl Taylor Compton (1912 Princeton), the latter of whom studied under John Whitmore.

Da word

On hiking with seven ten year olds

Man, they have a lot of energy! We did part four (or maybe five) of the twins' birthday party with a picnic, games, and a hike at Hoffman Hills State Park in Wisconsin. We hit all of the high points: raging fire, two different cakes, hot dogs, jalapeno slices, and a climb to the top of the observation tower. Some of the gals gave the big people a lesson in fieldcraft when they successfully hid, let us pass, and then shadowed us on the trail back from the tower.

On race and pets

So, my next door neighbor got a little white yappy dog early this Spring. It's sometimes tied out in the yard during the day making little yap sounds and snarling ineffectively when someone walks near. A couple of weeks ago, I was outside when the owner was there along with the dog. I asked the name of the dog and reached over to pet it. "Whitey" was the answer and "the dog bites." I've noticed that the owner frequently kicks the dog and throws things at it as well. Today I heard her calling to the dog, not "whitey" but "honkie." I burst out laughing, but am still annoyed with her treatment of the dog.