by scribe | Mar 12, 2011 | off-topic, ruminations
Yesterday I was heading back home from the animal shelter, where I volunteer on Friday mornings, and noticed a helicopter circling around in the sky. Make that two helicopters. It was hard not to notice them, because they were so loud that it sounded like a war zone...
by scribe | Mar 8, 2011 | literature, off-topic
Some of you might have noticed that I had a short pause in my blog posts (two weeks, to be exact) before yesterday’s post on “The Art of Doing Nothing.” In case you were wondering, the reason is that I was writing the last two chapters of my next...
by scribe | Feb 21, 2011 | literature, off-topic, openings, ruminations
Ok, I’ve been waiting to do this for a couple months. Today I finally checked out Google’s “Ngram Viewer,” which lets you see how the frequency of use of various words or phrases in the English language (and other languages) has changed over...
by scribe | Feb 4, 2011 | current news, off-topic
Goin’ off-topic again… As most of you know, this was the week of the Groundhog Day Storm, or the Blizzard of 2011, or whatever you want to call it. On Tuesday morning the newspaper headline read: “Aren’t You Glad You Live in California?”...
by scribe | Jan 17, 2011 | current news, literature, off-topic
Today I am going to depart from my usual ideological purity and succumb to the lure of crass commercialism. Yes, I want to use this posting to promote my new book, What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences (Vol. 8). I’m afraid that you won’t...
by scribe | Jan 11, 2011 | current news, off-topic, tournaments, US Chess League
Here’s my joke for the day. Q: What did Gilligan say when the other castaways fought over places on the raft? A: “Why can’t we all just get a log?” Somehow I think this is relevant to the current world of politics — i.e., if we...
