Lemon Law

Hello World,

Happy October! While a normal and sane person might consider that laughably premature, I can assure you that it is not nearly as premature as we might all hope it to be. In fact, it will actually be October in a scant few days on Monday, believe that or don't, and although that would seem impossible, it is indeed the case. Those of us who don't already have all of our necessary costume parts for Halloween had better take a hint and get hopping on the double. You can't even get away with the old standard of dressing in shabby clothes and carrying a sack on a stick, because nobody even knows what a hobo is anymore. Of course, at the hospital, many people I meet in the hallways always seems to say "fairy godmother!" to me, no matter what costume I happen to be wearing at the time, so I suppose it wouldn't matter if they didn't understand the hobo effect either. You can believe me when I say that costume appreciation is a lost art.

Last year, when I was scrounging around for costume parts for the Easter Bunny, and having nothing but trouble with it, I don't mind saying, I kept coming across this other costume idea that seemed to be all over the place and everywhere at once. I had already made up my mind on the Easter Bunny, but it occurred to me that I should just go ahead and buy all the parts I would need for this other costume anyway, so that in the following year, I would be already set way ahead of time for my costume. Obviously, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that was never going to work, so no one should be surprised. Owing to a variety of factors, the costume that I already have, and through no fault of its own, was not going to hit the mark this time around, and I found myself scrambling about in September, as I usually do, for assorted costume parts that would fit the bill and on short notice. Now, this is a tried and true tradition of my Halloween experiences, so I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on the process at this late date. And as ludicrous as it may seem to your average normal and sane person, I do still have a future costume possibility waiting in the wings, if ever the conditions are right for this concept to see the light of day. I don't know what day that might be, but if it ever dawns, I'll at least have a costume for it.

Speaking of the light of day, one of our alert readers (thanks, John!) shared his observations about Daylight Saving Time --

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About DST. You already know my thought on DST. (That it is a load of $#!+ ) But if we are lucky the wonderfully brilliant members of Congress will move the advance date up to January 1 and the retard(!) date back to December 31. (Oh don't you wish they would move it all the way back to January 2? )
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Of course, everyone knows how I worry when things like that start to make perfect sense to me! And while we're on the topic of things making sense (NOT) I couldn't help but notice this arresting subject line on some junk email that snuck through our spam filters at work:

Subj: NATURAL PERMANENT HAIR LOSS

How's that again? I'm absolutely certain that's not at all what they mean, and it makes me wonder who they expect to entice with that unappealing idea, except perhaps the Wolf Man or Sasquatch. Along those same lines of not saying what they mean, Bill works with a woman who translates their signs into Spanish when necessary, and at one point, she was working on a difficult translation and when it was done, the person she translated it for wanted it translated BACK badly, as an example of how NOT to do it. For anyone else who might be in the market for bad translations, Bill's suggestion is to take a swing by google translation services, and he provides the following illuminating sample, which he submitted in English and translated into Spanish, and then re-submitted it in Spanish to be translated back into English again, with the inadvertent humor that would be expected of such a method:

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ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

Oh, and PS, they fixed the phone so well that the hum on the line is coming over loud and clear! Good thing my ear is still being dull so I can't hear it (took the last antibiotic today, so if nothing improves by Thursday, it's back to you-know-soohoo!) That's all the news from this end. I hope all is better there. Oh, and a quick suggestion -- next time you want a bad translation of something, go to Google Translations (www.google.com/language_tools) and paste the text in there. There is nothing that compares with a good automated translation. In fact, I'm translating this last paragraph and pasting it below -- hope it's as bad as I think it is! Stay cool (in all senses of the word!) and I hope to hear from you soon!

RE-TRANSLATED BACK FROM SPANISH:

Oh, and picosecond, fixed the well of the telephone so that the snore in the line is excessive that comes noisy and clear! The good thing my ear is continuing being dulled so I cannot hear it (took the antibiotic last today, so if nothing improves per Thursday, is again to you-knows-soohoo!) That one is all news of this end. I hope that everything is better there. Oh, and a fast suggestion -- the next time you wish a bad translation something, you go to the translations of Google (www.google.com/language_tools) and sticks the text inside there. There is nothing compares with a good automated translation. In fact, I am translating this last paragraph and I am sticking them down -- hope is as bad as I think that it is! Fresh stay (in all the senses of the word!) and I hope to hear soon of you!
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Well, we certainly don't want to make fun of the hard-working automated translators at google, but it must be said that translation falls just short of the pin-point accuracy that we strive for around here. Picoseconds, indeed.

As long as we're tossing brickbats at the online translating services, here's another story pulled out from the shrouded mists of ancient times gone by, at least as I recall it from when the dinosaurs and I were going to elementary school and singing in chorus. I was in chorus in every grade that I can remember in school, and must have sung dozens and dozens of pieces, good and bad, old and new, of all different sorts. To this day, I can only remember two of them. One was "Up, Up and Away," which was a popular hit song of the day, and because we rehearsed it until we were blue in the face, if I never hear it again in my whole life, it will be too soon, believe me. The other was something called "Verdant Meadows," and I never thought I would despise something as much as I loathed this piece of choral claptrap, and whoever thought a bunch of 6th graders should tackle this, should have had their head examined. With all the vast musical experience of a 13-year-old, I thought this was the worst drivel I had ever heard, and couldn't wait to be done with it. And yet, a curious thing happened, which is the true hallmark of great classical music, that years later, I still remembered it, when everything else we ever did was long forgotten. Without realizing it, I often found myself humming it, and as I got older, I started to appreciate its timeless qualities of melody and charm that could not be ignored. I finally had to buy a CD that had a wobbly soprano airing it out, just for the sentimental value of hearing it again for old time's sake. But the soprano's voice was so shrill and full of vibrato that I couldn't understand any of the words, apart from the opening of "verdant meadows," which I already remembered.

In our house, the research challenges are Bill's bailiwick, and he came to the fore in this instance, as he always does. It turns out to be an aria from the opera "Alcina" by Handel, and you would think that anyone in the world could get the lyrics to this, especially being Handel, for heaven's sake. (Hallelujah! and all that, after all.) Not so fast! Here's what Bill has to say about it --

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I also looked for the original lyrics and had more luck there, finding Verdi Prati (apparently the Handel is in Italian, originally) which goes like this:

Verdi prati, selve amene,
perderete la belta.
Vaghi fior, correnti rivi,
la vaghezza, la bellezza
presto in voi si cangera.

Verdi prati, selve amene,
perderete la belta.
E cangiato il vago oggetto
all'orror del primo aspetto
tutto in voi ritornera.

~~~~~~~> Which translates (online) to this:

Green meadows, pleasant woods,
to lose the beauty.
Vague fior, running rivi,
the vagueness, I lend the beauty in you
it will be changed.

Green meadows, pleasant woods,
to lose the beauty.
And changed the vague object
to the orror of the first aspect
everything to you will return.

~~~~~~> Gotta love those online translations! (Just the slightest bit 'orrorible, guv!) I mean, even I know what "presto" means - so the last line of the first verse should be something like "the beauty in you changes fast." Oh well.

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Well, I don't know about any normal and sane people out there, but personally, I can't see any way to improve upon that. So, short of climbing aboard my old friend the stegosaurus and heading back to my old elementary school (which has since been turned into co-op apartments) and digging through the music room files for the original sheet music from when we performed it in 1966, I suppose this is about as good as it's going to get. Now, it's easy to feel discouraged when the aptly-named Fickle Finger of Fate throws you a curve that upsets the apple cart and dashes your hopes like a runaway freight train. Luckily, I recently found myself at http://www.superdeluxe.com/ and among their artist pages is someone called DC Lugi, who was kind enough to offer these words of wisdom and comfort in a perilous world, and I'm happy to pass them along as a public service.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
IF LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS,
THROW THEM AT CHILDREN
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

No, please don't thank me, honestly, it's enough that I have the vague fior, running rivi, the vagueness, I lend the beauty in you, it will be changed.

Go Fish

Hello World,

Well, it's obvious that either Comrade Mischka is on vacation at the Black Sea and away from his infernal weather machine, or he's been banished to a distant gulag somewhere in the wilds of Siberia (although I don't think it's likely that my prayers have finally been answered after all these years) because the weather around here couldn't have been nicer all week. A couple of weeks like that, and I'd run out of things to complain about, and then where would we be? (Don't answer that!) Fortunately, there's been no lack of political shenanigans and celebrity peccadilloes to fall back on, not to mention, work. (I asked you not to mention that!) In fact, when I came home from work yesterday and realized that I had been wearing my blouse inside-out all day long, to say that it would be par for the course in a week like that would be putting it mildly. Garcon, more pineapple upside-down cake, if you please!

A bright spot in the week, however, was getting together with friends on Saturday. We visit our friends in the Albany area for the Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King holiday weekends in November and January, and they usually make a trip or two down here in the spring or summer. Normal people would do this the opposite way, so they weren't driving 200 miles north in the dead of winter, but there you have it. We bid them a fond farewell in January, promising to get together again soon, but what with one thing and another, the eagerly anticipated spring adventure never materialized. I came back from vacation, and expected to find plans afoot for a summer event, but I was disappointed there as well. I said to Bill that pretty soon, Thanksgiving would be rolling around again, and our fledgling warm weather get-togethers would have worked about as well as the Motley Crue reunion tour (don't ask) only without all the lawsuits. Then suddenly out of the blue, our friends said they were coming last Saturday, and it would not be an understatement to say that life became worth living again.

Our plan, such as it was, involved meeting at the always popular Eveready Diner in Hyde Park at 10:30 for brunch, and then set off from there to some areas of interest, as the spirit might move us. Not wanting to be late, we started out bright and early, and made excellent time to our destination, with the end result that we got there way too early. Our friends, meanwhile, took the opposite approach, preferring to defy the laws of time and physics, and decided that they could somehow make this 2-hour trip in a single hour instead. Unfortunately, the laws of time and physics prevailed, and our friends were consequently an hour late to the diner. Because we had left home in a steady downpour, and arrived at the diner to more of the same, we went inside to wait, rather than staying out in the rain. When we told the hostess that we would be joined by four other people, she was happy to give us a large booth in the corner, but Bill said that after about 45 minutes of waiting for our fiends, our waitress would pass by our table and sigh elaborately. Finally our friends did arrive, and maybe you have to be sitting alone at a big empty table for an hour, but when one of them asked if we'd had time to look at the menu, we thought it was the funniest thing we'd heard all week.

Brunch was a rousing success, and I can vouch for the pancakes, plus I had a pineapple smoothie that was scrumptious. Somehow, even though our friends drove all the way down from Albany in the rain, they managed to bring the sun with them, and by the time we left the diner, there was a glorious sunny day just stretching out before us. Wasting no time, we went a little ways up Route 9 to the Hyde Park Antiques Center, where we had been before, and worth the trip. It's set in a large and rambling house, and features collections of interesting paraphernalia from many different vendors, some of whom take up whole rooms with antique furniture and household items, while others have just a glass display cabinet full of jewelry, coins or figurines. The items run the gamut from everything you can think of, to things you could never think of, and everything in between. There is something interesting everywhere you look, and no matter how far you go, there's still more to see. It will come as a surprise to no one that I bought some salt and pepper shakers, but even I was surprised that I bought a used book, which is something I need about as much as a fish needs a bicycle, as the saying goes. I don't even have a fish, so I've got no one to blame this book on but yours truly, and that's not just a load of crap, I mean, carp.

Not content to rest on our souvenirs, we went further up Route 9 to Kings Highway Antiques, which made us feel like we had gone through the looking glass and nibbled on some of Alice's magic mushrooms. Where the previous establishment was enormous and sprawling and made us feel overwhelmed in scale, this next place was so tiny, and crammed to the rafters with over-sized furniture, that we had to take turns going into the display areas. There wasn't enough room in there to change your mind, much less turn around, so we all backed out the same way we had walked in, for fear of knocking things over so that the Queen of Hearts would shout, "Off with their heads!" We were glad to get out of there and return to the normal-sized world, although it was a shame to leave the Cheshire Cat behind.

The hard work of browsing was starting to take its toll on us, so we pulled into Del's Ice Cream, a locally famous snack shop farther up the road. They serve a variety of grill favorites, as well as different kinds of frozen treats, and we had some drinks and ice cream to bolster our flagging stamina. They have a lovely patio with picnic tables and umbrellas, where people may enjoy their selections al fresco, but after we got there, it seemed that other people preferred to eat standing up way out in the parking lot, while staring at us with that "deer in the headlights" kind of look that we've come to expect. Everywhere we all go, we tend to clear a room and this was no different, although it's the first time I can remember that happening even in the great outdoors. It's almost like they didn't even believe we were really the Olympic 6-person chocolate sprinkle relay team or something.

Thus refreshed, we headed back down Route 9 to wander around the quaint shopping areas in scenic Rhinebeck, home of the fabled fairgrounds, where they host a wide array of events that draw crowds from far and near. We were pleasantly surprised to see the classic car show happening while we were there, with literally hundreds of beautifully restored and exquisitely detailed vintage cars of every size, shape and color, all visible from the road and stretching across the field like a shiny metal rainbow. It was breathtaking. Even more fun was seeing many of the cars driving around town (we had spotted several of them in the diner parking lot when we arrived) or parked at incongruous places, like CVS or Blockbuster, when by rights, they should have been in front of a millinery shop or around the back of a speak-easy. For custom car buffs, this was truly Valhalla, and a whole day walking around these beauties in the fairgrounds would have been the nectar of the gods. We were thinking it was a good thing that the day turned out so lovely, after an inauspicious start, or the car show would have been a huge wash-out. It probably would have been nothing but fish riding bicycles, and I'm sure no one wants to see that.

Visitors to historic Rhinebeck, as we know thanks to Bill's scrupulous research, are encouraged to visit the Rhinebeck Hardware Company, in a quaint storefront on a side street, and a throwback to an earlier era in American commerce. We had seen their sign on a previous visit, and were looking forward to checking out the store in person. Not so fast! Apparently the sign and the storefront are all that's left of the hardware business, since the building has been sub-divided into a beauty salon and butcher, neither of which we were interested in seeing. Instead, we availed ourselves of a few consignment shops nearby, which had an assortment of merchandise that was interesting but pricey. It was a good thing we were already set for souvenirs, because we didn't find much to tickle our fancy, and I had already satisfied my quota of bicycle-riding fish for one day.

By then it was getting late, and our friends had a long drive home (they had resigned themselves to the idea that the laws of time and physics are immutable, no matter how they might wish otherwise) so once again, we promised to get together again soon, and went our separate ways. In those halcyon days gone by, we would have looked forward to stopping for dinner at Denny's in Fishkill on our way home, but they spoiled that for us in January, when we discovered to our horror that Denny's had closed, and this time, we noticed the building had re-opened as a Japanese restaurant instead. No thank you very much not! Our journey back here was uneventful, which is always our favorite way to travel, and we arrived at home safe and sound, tired but happy. In spite of a long day full of driving, shopping and just generally schlepping around, Bill was kind enough to whip up one of his signature pizzas for dinner, which is a specialty of the house from our very own master of the genre. This just goes to prove that you don't need to be Italian to make good pizza, any more than a fish needs a bicycle, and that's not just another load of carp. Or as they say in Latin: "Carpe diem!"

In The Know

Hello World,
Happy New Year! No, Comrade Sergei and his infernal Russian date machine hasn't got a hold of me, so that I don't know it's the middle of September and not January 1st, although it's probably not from a lack of trying on Comrade Sergei's part. By way of explanation, I call your attention to the following entry that was recently posted at wikipedia, courtesy of Bill, who is a regular visitor to their site:
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I finally got the time to stop by Wikipedia to see what today is, and had to write. You might be surprised to find an old favorite of yours wandering in later this afternoon (I know I was):
September 12: Ramadan begins at sunset (Islam, 2007); Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset (Judaism, 2007); Second Millennium of the Ethiopian calendar (2007); New Year's Day in the Coptic calendar (2007); National Day in Cape Verde.
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So, for all of our Jewish friends, Ethiopians and Copts, this has obviously been a big week, and one that even our old nemesis Comrade Sergei can't sabotage. So let's all wish a great, big cyber Happy New Year to everyone who may fall into those categories, or anyone who's just looking for an excuse to celebrate. Why don't we all make like those wacky Cape Verde-ians, and party our socks off!
Meanwhile, we have one of our alert readers (thanks, Jim!) to thank for this unsolicited testimonial on mankind's never-ending quest for knowledge:
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Hey lets not make fun of Great Courses Taught by Great Professors I have purchased a large number of their history and a few of their religion course over the years, I use them instead of talking books on long drives, some are very good and some are less good. They sent me a free-bie to comment on their new packaging, Transcendental writers or some such thing, I tried listening but I was never a fan of those writers to start with, if you think it may be your cup of tea I will send it to you, but NO Backzees. the problem with buying these is what do you do with them after you are done with them? If you ever decide to purchase one wait till they go on sale, every one goes on sale sometime during the year, to $69 for DVD's and $49 for cassette. otherwise you have to be rich, most of them are the same price as a sit-down real class.
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Along those same lines, for anyone who may have wondered, as I did, about some of the more arcane subjects in the Great Courses lecture series, and well may you wonder, well, you may wonder no more, thanks to Bill's diligent research again at wikipedia:
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Here's a quick SAT-type question for you: what pattern is reflected in these numbers:
(1) 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 . . .
If you guessed that each number is the sum of the two previous numbers, you win the Uncle Albert Fibonacci Number Award. I couldn't figure out what you actually DO with them. The Wikipedia article goes on for PAGES AND PAGES of incredible mathematical gibberish until it gets to what they're "good for". So just in case you wanted to USE this stuff for something practical, here's what they say (hold onto your hat):
Applications The Fibonacci numbers are important in the run-time analysis of Euclid's algorithm to determine the greatest common divisor of two integers: the worst case input for this algorithm is a pair of consecutive Fibonacci numbers.
Yuri Matiyasevich was able to show that the Fibonacci numbers can be defined by a Diophantine equation, which led to his original solution of Hilbert's tenth problem.
The Fibonacci numbers occur in the sums of "shallow" diagonals in Pascal's triangle and Lozanic's triangle (see "Binomial coefficient").
Every positive integer can be written in a unique way as the sum of one or more distinct Fibonacci numbers in such a way that the sum does not include any two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. This is known as Zeckendorf's theorem, and a sum of Fibonacci numbers that satisfies these conditions is called a Zeckendorf representation.
Fibonacci numbers are used by some pseudorandom number generators.
A one-dimensional optimization method, called the Fibonacci search technique, uses Fibonacci numbers.
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Well, I don't think it would be an understatement to say that makes things just about as clear as mud, and that's putting it mildly. I say we send that whole mathematical idea back to the drawing board, until they can come up with a real something to do with it. Pseudo-random number generator, indeed.
Of course, it's not wikipedia's fault that these things make no sense, and without our friends at wikipedia, we would miss out on a wide variety of miscellaneous information that we can have right at our very fingertips, and for no particular purpose whatsoever. An ordinary person might be forgiven for thinking that I was responsible for posting the following entry, to lend an aura of legitimacy to my contention that things fall over in our house because the gravity is too strong in certain places. Au contraire! (That's French for "A pint's a pound, the world around.") Here's what the wikipedians have to say about it, and I can assure you that I had nothing to do with it:
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A mass concentration or mascon is a region of a planet or moon's crust that contains a large positive gravitational anomaly. This term is most often used as an adjective to describe a geologic structure that has a positive gravitational anomaly such as the "mascon basins" on the Moon. The lunar mascons alter the local gravity in certain regions sufficiently that low and uncorrected satellite orbits around the Moon are unstable on a timescale of months or years. This acts to distort successive orbits, causing the satellite to ultimately impact the surface.
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Well, as Dave Barry always says, "I'm not making this up!" and I think we would all have to agree with that. Or do we? For anyone with time on their hands, and a sense of humor, I invite you to check out the following web site:
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Main Page - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia ================================
This distinctive site is set up to look just like wikipedia, except that none of the stuff they have is true, and some of it is so incredibly goofy that you wind up laughing at it in spite of yourself. I thought it was very inventive, although you know what I always say about people with too much time on their hands! But I still feel this is a better purpose for using precious Internet resources, than posting instructions on how to build your own pipe bomb, or ways to hack into an iPhone. Let's have more of those stories on the NASA space shuttle billboard, with a chaser of Norwegian princesses.
And last, but by no means least, when the next article reared its ugly head on wikipedia recently, you know that Bill couldn't resist letting me know about it, and with good reason:
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Today's featured Wikipedia article was about one of your favorite subjects, Daylight Saving Time. It was EXTREMELY interesting (especially since, being Wikipedia, it was allowed a distinct anti-DST slant!) and if you get a chance, you should read it. But if you don't have a chance, I've noted two salient sections. First, the guy we owe all this to was not, as has been suggested, Ben Franklin (it says Ben used the idea in a SATIRE -- it figures the governments didn't get it.) It was -- should we not have guessed? -- a snooty GOLFER. And wait until you find out who got us stuck with the present set of changes!
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In 1905, the English builder and outdoorsman William Willett invented DST during a pre-breakfast horseback ride where he was dismayed by how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day.[14] An avid golfer, he disliked cutting short his round at dusk. Two years later he published his proposal,[15] but his idea was not acted on immediately. Germany, its allies, and their occupied zones were the first European countries to use DST, starting 30 April 1916. Most belligerents and many European neutrals soon followed suit, but Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States did not use it until 1918. Since then the world has seen many enactments, adjustments, and repeals.[16]
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[There's whole SECTIONS about whether or not it does any good, mostly concluding that it doesn't and that the farmers hate it and the retailers love it. The most telling part is the following, in the "Politics" section (where is Michael Moore when we need him?):]
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In the U.S. the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores successfully lobbied for the 2007 extension to DST;[39] in the mid-1980s Clorox (parent of Kingsford Charcoal) and 7-Eleven provided the primary funding for the Daylight Saving Time Coalition behind the 1987 extension, and both Idaho senators voted for it on the basis of fast-food restaurants selling more French fries made from Idaho potatoes.
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Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't need to be hit over the head with a brass band to see the fine Italian hand of our slippery Russkie pal, Comrade Sergei working behind the scenes (and what else would you expect?) and in cahoots with the retailers (which you wouldn't expect) with the end result of making our lives miserable twice a year. Skeptics may scoff, but don't forget that thanks to Bill, I won the coveted Uncle Albert Fibonacci Number Award, so I ought to know.

Gas Guzzler

Hello World,

Well, we all knew that it was just a matter of time and had to happen eventually, and sure enough, there's obviously been some sort of serious mix-up at the Kremlin, because the weather and the date are certainly not in sync at least in our little corner of Paradise, and that's for sure. I don't know if it was Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine, or Comrade Sergei and his infernal date machine, but there's no escaping the fact that the time and temperature are way off-kilter. Here it is, almost the second week of September, and instead of those crisp, cool fall days of lore and legend, it's back to being 90 degrees with 90% humidity, just like the middle of the summer. If only we had someone like Dwight Eisenhower around to stare down these darned Russkies, and make them straighten up and fly right. People can complain about the Cold War all they want, but at least the weather back then wasn't all screwed up like it is now, so you don't know what to expect next. We may have beaten them in the arms race, and the space race, but we're definitely on the losing side of the temperature race, and it looks like the spirit of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is going to have the last laugh after all, da?

While we're on the subject (almost) of the fabled lumpenproletariat, let's not forget Labor Day this past Monday, a great boon for the working class in this land of the free and home of the brave, when the rank and file can toss off their yoke of oppression and rest from their labors, and deservedly so. Well, except for those people who had to work on Monday, that is. After all, the spirit of Samuel L. Gompers can't begin to compete with the spirit of rampant commercialism in this country, and if millions of businesses are going to be open for sales on a holiday, it means that tens of millions of people are going to have to be working in those businesses. But for those of us lucky enough to have the day off, it was a treat, and as short weeks go at work, this one wasn't bad at all. For three days, the weather was spectacularly glorious, and I can't remember the last time there was a three-day weekend with such perfect weather the whole time. The flag brigade did an admirable job on Monday, not only hoisting the colors upstairs and downstairs, but remembering to take them back inside later, which is in no way a foregone conclusion around these parts, and I ought to know. So as long weekends go, this one scored high marks in a variety of categories. And the best part about having a day off from work when the whole office is closed, as opposed to just taking a day off when everyone else is still there, is that nothing happens in your absence, so you don't come back in to find a whole day's work piled up on yoru desk, which effectively defeats the purpose of takng a day off in the first place. This was way better.

Speaking of better things, we don't want to overlook gas prices, which through a subliminal program of mass hypnosis, have somehow managed to seem reasonable at $3/gallon, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. One of our alert readers (thanks, Rich!) sends along his insights on the topic:

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...and speaking of gas, I filled my tank yesterday @ $2.69 / gal. A bargain, to be sure, but nothing compared to New Jersey, which is selling it's finest for $2.40 / gal ! Now, if I were a shrewd man, I would take that trip to the western shores of the US, and purchase a tankful. Lets see, locally the average is @ $2.80 - so I'll use that as a baseline. At a savings of .40 / gal, and roughly 20 gallons - thats a savings of $8.00. Figure the round trip of 80 miles, at 20 mpg, thats 4 gallons. 2 at $2.80 & 2 at $2.40 - for a total of $10.40 - if my math is correct (and don't dare check). Tolls. $8.00, Lunch at McBurger's $6.00, Lost time at work $60.00. Lets add it all up now. Hmm - the savings should be - well, howdy do, I've lost $76.40 ! So much for shrewd.
I'll take that .60 cent savings of yore!
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Well, I'm sure there's a lesson in there for all of us. Well, not the math-challenged among us perhaps, but there are some things that just can't be helped. Speaking of help (even for the math-challenged) you don't want to miss the opportunity for Great Courses Taught by Great Professors, so please feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ and see for yourself. They offer audio CD as well as DVD recordings of lecture series on a wide variety of subjects by renowned professors at prestigious universities all over the country. Packages range from a set of 8 audio lectures on Elements of Jazz at $19.95, all the way up to 96 lectures of An Introduction to Astronomy for a whopping $189.95 on DVD. Subjects run the gamut from science, mathematics, art, music, literature, language, history, philosophy, economics and religion, across the ages and around the world, not to mention, outside of the world. Now, it's true that I'm a well-known Luddite, and I would expect a course called "Consciousness and Its Implications" to leave me in the dust with lectures such as "Mental Causation and Physicalism Refined" or "Ontological Argument and Phenomenology." My grasp of history is tenuous at best, whether it be ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt, the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, England or even the American Civil War, so I'm not surprised to find bewildering titles in those lectures that mean nothing to me. But I admit that in the dusty boredom of arithmetic, I certainly don't expect to find a course called "The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas" with lectures such as "The Sexiest Rectangle," "Hunting for a Sixth Platonic Solid," and "Sizing up the Fibonacci Numbers." (That last one sounds like it should be in the course "The History of the Mafia," but as we all well know, there is no such thing as the Mafia, so there couldn't possibly be a lecture course about it.) Heaven knows I don't have time to fritter away, but if I had an extra $60, I'd be tempted to spring for their "Calculus Made Clear," just for the sake of proving them wrong, in spite of their claims that "calculus is a crowning intellectual achievement of humanity that all intelligent people can appreciate, enjoy and understand." I'm sorry, that would be just plain impossible, and please step out of the booth. In fact, my favorite part of the whole thing is what they call their "Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee," and while I'm not exactly sure how this works, I figure they would lose their shirts with me, because I've been finding my lifetime to be full of a tremendous amount of dis-satisfaction, and I certainly feel entitled to a refund, either in years or happiness that should have been rightfully mine. I don't need to hear a lecture on "Transcendental Relativism in an Intentionalist Paradigm" to know the short end of the stick when I see it.

Meanwhile in local news, and you can't get much more local than this, we received a notice from the president of our neighborhood association about a film crew that will be working at a neighbor's house down the block on the 12th, 13th and 14th, and we should be prepared for disruptions. They tell us that this is going to be a Coen Brothers movie about a CIA agent, starring George Clooney, or should I say, "Be still, my heart!" While it's true that I've been living for over 20 years in this somewhat exclusive neighborhood full of the rich and (at least semi-) famous, the prospect of having George Clooney down the street for three days can in no way be considered a "ho-hum" idea in my life. Although I will say that this would be my second brush with celebrity, as they filmed "The Hot Rock" with Robert Redford in 1972 across the street from my high school, and to say that academic life was brought to a complete standstill would be an understatement of epic proportions. So it should be interesting times ahead in the old stomping grounds, what with the film crews, technical equipment, trailers, supply trucks, production staff, actors and miscellaneous personnel that are invariably attracted to the bright lights and big city. I was thinking that I might even get into the movie as an extra, except for the fact that it's about the CIA, and everyone knows that I can't keep a secret.

In other local news, readers of The Journal News (please feel free to visit their web site at www.LoHud.com and see for yourself) might have been surprised (but probably weren't) to see in the Travel section, a tantalizing picture of a young and beautiful fraulein holding two enormous beer steins, while the caption informed us: "An employee of Munich's tourism office holds beer steins with the official logo for Oktoberfest 2007, which begins September 22." Okay, NOW tell me that Comrade Sergei with his infernal date machine hasn't been out there playing fast and loose with the day and date, when even a festival named after the month it's in can't seem to get started on time anymore. I'd ask the CIA to look into it, but I hear that they're out hunting for a Sixth Platonic Solid, and heaven knows, that should keep them busy for a while. In fact, I can practically guarantee it, but only if your lifetime has been completely satisfactory.