Tuesday, August 24. 2010
A friend returned this week from 14 days in Umbria and then Florence. This family is a high-energy biking group, and the first thing they do when they go anywhere is to rent bikes. They go everywhere on their bikes regardless of terrain or traffic. 20 miles of hills is a warm-up for them.
They told me about biking to Civita di Bagnoregio. Biked over the bridge, of course. I had not heard of this interesting, deteriorating wreck of a place. An image which sticks in the brain, because all of mankind's works come to this except some things that are put into words or math or musical notes.
More disorganized snaps from our trip. This is steaming through the green Wachau Valley in early morning fog and drizzle.
More pics below the fold -
Continue reading "A second, bigger photo dump of Austria and Bavaria, including Freud's potty"
Monday, August 23. 2010
My photo uploading system is testing my patience today. Thus some totally random and disorganized trip pics, beginning with this Bavarian farm scene near the hamlet of Baernzell, not far from Deggendorf on the Danube, with the great Bavarian Forest in the background (which is now part of a giant Czech-German wilderness park system). From hilltops here you can see the Czech Rep. (which I still call Czechoslovakia).
More pics below the fold. I'll try to get better organized soon.
Continue reading "A few totally random trip pics"
From The Union:
Planning continues for the restoration of a long-shuttered fire lookout in the Tahoe National Forest.
This fall, volunteers met with Forest Service staff to discuss fixing up the historic Grouse Ridge lookout for use as a rental facility. The circa-1923 tower near Washington sports a spectacular, 360-degree view and a fantastic location near a series of alpine lakes that are extremely popular with outdoor enthusiasts.
But the lookout off Bowman Lake Road has suffered quite a bit of damage over the years and includes an outhouse perched precariously on a cliff. One of the goals of the renovation is to maintain the historic nature of the facility, while still providing some amenities.
Contractor volunteers have met with Forest Service archeologist Bill Slater at the lookout to review restoration needs, said Public Affairs Officer Ann Westling.
“We're still putting together the work plan in terms of what needs to be done and the cost — and how it's going to get done,” she said.
The plans will deal with the needed restoration, health and safety repairs, and historical requirements. Because the lookout is a historic structure, the plans will need to be sent to the California State Historic Preservation Office for approval.
Grouse Ridge will be the third lookout on the Tahoe National Forest to undergo restoration.
The first two include Calpine Lookout, which has been available for rent for five years, and Sardine Lookout, which is expected to be available this year. The facilities are rented through the National Reservation System for about $45 per night.
Grouse Ridge Lookout with outhouse to right (my photos from this summer):
View from the top:
Sunday, August 22. 2010
 The Berkshire Hills, once snow-capped mountains and, in recent millennia, glacier-covered and glacier-scoured, run from northwestern CT up through western MA. They are contiguous with the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Today, tourism, skiing, and second homes form the economic foundation of this chronically economically-depressed but charming rural region which was once dynamic with farming, lumbering, paper mills, woolen mills, and quarries. It has become the sort of area now where locals cannot afford to dine in the upscale restaurants filled with Bostonians and New Yorkers.
Image is the Hoosac Tunnel, about which Walking the Berkshires has written, and which first connected western and eastern MA by rail.
Just east of Berkshire County are the Hidden Hills.
Check out this nice affable ticket seller in the 1989 movie ‘Let It Ride’. Doesn’t he seem kind of familiar? I can almost guarantee you’ve seen a very popular movie he was in later on, and I can definitely guarantee you’ve seen pictures and posters of him in the role he plays in the aforementioned famous movie.
Answer below the fold.
Continue reading "Guess the celebrity"
(Surnames Part 1 here)
Your surname means next to nothing genetically or geneologically. Furthermore, if you are of English or French descent, you are almost certainly some sort of relative of Charlemagne.
Taking our surname topic this week a bit further into the math of geneology, one quickly realizes that the surname or family name one ended up with is close to random. After all, how many c. 1500 AD ancestors do you have (around the time when surnames became fixed and inherited), each one an equal contributor to your genetics?
Well, just four generations ago, you had 32 living great-great-great grandparents (2 to the 4th power), all probably with different surnames. If you have a Mayflower ancestor, they were one of your mathematical 65,000 great-something grandparents 15 generations ago. The simple math, depending on the areas in which your 1500 AD ancestors lived, (your ancestry pool at a given time), indicates that I have up to a theoretical 4 million great-something grandparents who were living in 1500 (with ancestors doubling each generation of 25 years).
But, beyond the 4-10 generations back, those large numbers aren't possible, given the population pools in different local areas and the lack of mobility for most people at the time. (The population of London was around 50,000 in 1500. It is thought that the global population in 1500 was only around 300 million.)
Thus there must be abundant redundancy in our geneologies and tons of marriage and child production among cousins, in-laws, and other family members. This site, Redundancy in Geneology, takes a clear look at that subject.
 The technical term for this is "pedigree collapse," wherein our ancestral cone has a narrowing due to various forms of inbreeding, as it were. That collapse may have peaked around the year 1200, and in New England, there probably was another mini-pedigree collapse due to the small size of the population in the 16-1700s:
Colonial Anglo Population of New England through 1700
1650: 33,000
1678: 60,000
1706: 120,000
1734: 250,000
1762: 500,000
1790: 1,000,000
Population growth after 1640 was largely internal, not immigration.
It's still safe to say that I had thousands of c. 1500 ancestor great-something grandparents, and I happened to end up with just one of their recently-given surnames. Luck of the draw.
(If you are from England, you are still probably in some way related to almost everybody else in England. That's why we call our Brit fellow bloggers "cousin".)
Ultimately, of course, we all trace back to Mitochondrial Eve. She was certainly a cutie pie, and she must have had lots of kids.
Photos:
Upper: Holy Trinity Church, Long Medford, c. 1450.
Lower: Church of St. Peter in Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, c. 1200
Saturday, August 21. 2010
The story behind this: There's this nutball who digs things up in his back yard and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institute, labeling them with scientific names and insisting that they're actual archeological finds.
So, here's how his latest submission was received.
Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078
Dear Sir:
Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings.
However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:
1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us simply say that:
A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
B. Clams don't have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard.
We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive wrench.
Yours in Science,
Harvey Rowe, Curator, Antiquities
A re-post from our archives -
I was amused to see Megan McArdle having problems positioning her stereo speakers because I once spent a frustrating year fiddling with that issue in our parlor with my ridiculously high quality but handsome 5 1/2', 175 lb. Legacy Focus speakers, which would be better suited for an auditorium, a barn - or outdoors. You cannot crank them up or it could remove my house from its foundation.
Good stereo speakers need to be at least 3' from the wall, away from direct sunlight, and 6-10' apart, depending on room size. Even so, there will only be one relatively small area in the room where the sound will converge properly. What if you want to sit somewhere else? You cannot sit in front of one speaker. (And don't even talk to me about that stupid "surround sound" fad of the 1980s.)
I finally gave up on doing it right, because it wouldn't work in the room, given the windows, fireplace, piano, and other necessary furniture. I even called Legacy and sent them a floor plan, and they were kind and helpful, but it just didn't work for the space. That marked the end of my pursuit of maximum recorded sound. It's a fool's errand unless you have a dedicated "listening room" like fanatic audiophiles do. Now, I'd just rather spend my money on hearing live music, and I mostly listen to music via my crummy old computer speakers.
My big Focus speakers ended up 24' apart, in corners, about 18" from the wall. Totally wrong, unless you are listening from the adjacent room. Makes me want to return to good old monaural and to heck with this stereo nonsense. I remember when my Dad bought our first mono cabinet "record player." Man, did that sound good. I even remember my kid sister playing "Meet the Beatles" on the thing, when the record came out. (I thought it was dumb music...at first.)
Here's a good how-to on speaker placement.
Photo is a Legacy Focus speaker with the cover off to show the components. Mine are with the gleaming Rosewood.
Weighing in at a bruising 11 minutes, this is the longest movie clip in my online collection, but also one of my favorites. It's from the movie The Pentagon Wars, a great story of bureaucratic corruption, ineptitude and inertia.
It's based on a true story.
One cringes to think how much.
Grab a munchie, pop this puppy open to full-screen size, kick back and enjoy.
I was curious about when English surnames became fixed in time by inheritance rather than being individual descriptors of convenience which were only used for one's lifetime.
First, we have to go back to the pre-surname era. In pre-medieval England, the population was so small, and most villages so tiny, that, if your name was Merthin, everybody around knew who you were. Then the Norman Conquest Frenchified England. Many or most of the colorful old Anglo-Saxon given names (like Aldwyn and Odelia and Theomund) disappeared and were replaced with names of French origin like these four:
It has been estimated that almost 50% of the male babies born by 1200 A.D. were using just four common first names: William (15%), Robert (12%), Richard (11%) and Henry (10%). Such percentages show the need, even by the Middle Ages, for a second name of identification. As a result, patronymic naming conventions came into play whereby sons were named after their fathers, and sometimes even after their mothers.
As with traditional Scandinavian names, patronymic surnames are not fixed but are labels of convenience: they change with each generation. "Which John do you mean?" "Oh, John Robert's son.") Robert Richardson's son John becomes John Robertson. (Shifting surnames, of course, persists with women still generally taking on their husband's surname.)
The Medieval Warm Period saw a rapid growth in the English population, with the growth of market towns and cathedral towns, often with thousands in population. Descriptors became necessary: John (who lives on the) Hill, William (the) Carpenter, Jack (who came here from) Aisnley, Roger (the) Knight. By late Medieval times, descriptive (but not fixed) surnames were fairly universal except in small farming villages. These were, generally speaking,
Place names
Occupation names
Patronyms
Descriptive or nicknames
Thus we had Christian (given) names, and descriptive, non-hereditary surnames. As best I can tell, literacy and record-keeping led the way towards fixed surnames around or slightly before 1500 (although they were probably implied before that among the land-owning aristocracy: eg William, Lord of Westmoreland's sons were probably forever Westmoreland in some way unless the King punished you by taking your land away, or cutting your head off.) As Wiki says:
In Britain, hereditary surnames were adopted in the 13th and 14th centuries, initially by the aristocracy but eventually by everyone. By 1400, most English and Scottish people had acquired surnames, but many Scottish and Welsh people did not adopt surnames until the 17th century, or even later. Henry VIII (1509 - 1547) ordered that marital births be recorded under the surname of the father.
Ah yes, there's the answer: government edict, no doubt for control and taxation purposes.
Because of this, it is difficult or impossible to trace non-aristocratic English geneologies much further back than 1500, when John Miller's son Jack the carpenter was named Jack Miller instead of Jack the Carpenter. Before that, there were minimal church records and either no surnames, or no consistency in them if there were any. Furthermore, it did not take long for every town to be filled with unrelated Smiths, Carpenters, Millers, Weavers, Masons, Brewers, Bakers, Hills, Fields, and Rivers. And Bankers (lived near a riverbank - there were no "banks") and Farmers (farm tax-collectors, not tillers of the soil). It's funny, but although they made up the bulk of the population at one time, Serf never became popular as a surname while Freeman did...
Perhaps serfdom isn't all it's cracked up to be, despite its European and maybe North American comeback these days.
More tomorrow, including why, if you are of English or French ancestry, you are almost certainly related to Charlemagne -
A re-post from last summer -
The old town of Lucca, still circled by the medieval defensive walls, is like a Disney Medieval Italy. Like San Gimignano but with many fewer tourists (they all go to Pisa instead, to see that dumb church tower, or to Siena or Firenze for the 10th time). Plenty of towers - if not as many as San G. but who cares? A tower is a tower.
The modern city surrounds the old town which is now preserved in amber (heavily regulated re historical preservation - and rightly so, I think).
This lovely Italian gal ducked, as if I had not wanted her in my photo. She was wrong. Her gladiator sandals are perfect for the location: this is an entry to the Roman arena in Lucca. Its walls are integrated with the walls of medieval houses built into and against the Roman ruins. (Lucca is full of charming northern Italian women. All of them know how to dress, and many of them are blondes.)
More doors and entries below -
Continue reading "My last summer vacation: Doors and entryways of old Lucca"
Abrash is a good thing in a hand-knotted rug.
Friday, August 20. 2010
This was my assignment to the class:
"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca - last name deleted, and Gary - last name deleted.
Continue reading "From the BBS archives: The English Assignment"
I'm going to place these two videos below the fold because they contain language, violence and themes which might be upsetting to innocent young girls, liberals, and small children.
Continue reading ""That extra mile""
From Terry Pratchett's Making Money:
"How did you find out they were down there?"
"The usual way. One of our golems heard one singing. Imagine that. It's been underground for sixty thousand years..."
In the night under the world, in the pressure of the depth, in the crushing of the dark...a golem sang. There were no words. The song was older than words; it was older than tongues. It was the call of the common clay, and it carried for miles. It traveled along fault lines, made crystals sing in harmony in dark, unmeasured caverns, followed rivers that never saw the sun...
...and out of the ground and up the legs of a golem from the Golem Trust, who was pulling a wagon loaded with coal along the region's one road. When he arrived in Ankh-Morpork, he told the Trust. That was what the Trust did: it found golems.
Rock climbers and boulderers refer to those rocky hills/cliffs/mountains as "the Gunks." Famous challenges for climbers, but, since we are on the topic of family places with the de Medicis and the von Trapp family, we should not omit the Mohonk Mountain House. I have a good photo somewhere of my Grandpa fly-fishing on the lake.
It was a favorite of my grandfather, and remains a family favorite. Nowadays, they even serve alcohol which the Quaker Smiley family never used to permit (you had to sneak in your own, and secretly imbibe in the privacy of your room before dinner).
There was an intriguing ad on MSNBC's web site the other day. You hear about those "visual graphics tricks" that advertising people pull, and you have to figure this is just another example of it. I think it's one of those 'subliminal' things they talk about.
Which gender is this person?
Now, before you say 'guy', take a closer look. Guys don't usually wear frilly blouses with cute bows on the front and rounded collars, do they? And that hair looks kind of coifed for a guy, doesn't it? And do you see any chest hairs? Couldn't this just be a nice healthy German or Russian girl?
Or perhaps the ad agency is going for that 'artistic musician look', where it's okay for guys to wear sissy clothes as long as they're being musical about it?
But the fact that we're discussing it at all says something, doesn't it? It's still possible the question could go either way — if not both ways. Which gender IS this person??
Well, back to that "subliminal" stuff I was talking about:
Thursday, August 19. 2010
Still looking for good, tasty, 15-minute ceegars for under $7-10 per smoke.
I am trying these, this week.
What do our readers enjoy?
 A young man wished to purchase a gift for his new sweetheart's birthday, and, as they had not been dating very long, after careful consideration he decided that a pair of gloves would strike the right note. Romantic, but not too personal.
Accompanied by his sweetheart's younger sister, he went to the store and bought a pair of white gloves. The younger sister purchased a pair of panties for herself.
During the wrapping, the clerk mixed up the items and the sister got the gloves and the sweetheart got the panties. Without checking the contents, he sealed the package and mailed it to his sweetheart along with this note:
My Dearest,
I choose these because I noticed that you are not in the habit of wearing any when we go out in the evening. If it had not been for your sister, I would have chosen the long ones with buttons, but she wears short ones that are easy to remove.
These are a delicate shade but the lady I bought them from showed me the pair she had been wearing for the last three weeks and they were hardly soiled. I had her try yours on for me and she looked really sharp.
I wish I was there to put them on you for the first time, as no doubt other hands will come in contact with them before I have a chance to see you again.
When you take them off, remember to blow in them before putting them away as they will naturally be a little damp from wearing.
Just think of how many times I will kiss them during the coming year. I hope you will wear them for me on Friday night.
All My Love, John
P.S. The latest style is to wear them folded down with just a little fur showing.
A useful term - a noun - for "a problem that severely tests the ability of an inexperienced person." More generally, a problem or challenge which will separate the bright and the perceptive from the not-so-bright and the not-so-perceptive.
"Bridge of asses." Donkeys do not like to cross bridges.
In mathematics, the term is applied to the problem from the first book of Euclid that if two sides of a triangle are equal then the angles opposite those sides are also equal.
Traditionally, the bridge of asses referred to Euclid's Fifth Theorem of planar geometry, the comprehension of which and the implications of which were and are a sticking point for less-bright students.
By the way, this is a good if somewhat challenging book: Experiencing Geometry. A bit of a pons asinorum itself.
 H/T: IOwnTheWorld.com
At Maggie’s Farm we’ve been debating how much nudity is safe for the protection of our readers’ sensitivities. The Raelians, who believe that alien scientists created humans and we should be prouder of our bodies, sponsor annual Go Topless Day “dedicated to the belief that in order for America to be a truly equal society, women should be able to bare their breasts without fear of being arrested.”
A video of their breast “outing” and beliefs is presented below the fold, in keeping with the Maggie’s Farm interest in philosophy.
Continue reading "Free Your Breasts, Free Your Minds?"
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