Tag Archives: humor

Jácaras and Ensaladas

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I am singing with the UChicago Early Music Ensemble, a somewhat relaxed group led by David Douglass and Ellen Hargis of The Newbury Consort. I started rehearsing a bit late, so I’ve been playing catch-up. This year the repertoire is all music from Spain and Spanish colonies, and today we worked on two of the harder pieces in the program : an ensalada called La Bomba, by Mateo Flecha “El Viejo”, and a jacara by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla. Too many words!

In looking for some recordings to get a better sense of the pieces, I came across this charmingly old King’s Singers TV special (check out those sweater vests!) acting out La Bomba in what appears to be the house from Clue:

Lucky them, they get multiple takes which makes it a bit easier to manage the crazy transitions in the piece. There’s also a multitracked recording on which is pretty good:

Unfortunately we are doing it up a third from there, much to the chagrin of my passagio.

We spent a bit of time trying to get the jácara up to speed, but singing Spanish that fast is hard! When I heard how fast this version went I almost lost it:

It looks like I have my work cut out for me, especially if I want to roll my r’s like that.

Linkage

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The variation of the human body across sports is fascinating (via Matt Tong).

The films of Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) are available for free online (via Zhenya Tumanova).

A paper arguing that systems-CS conference reviews are bad. (via Manu Sridharan)

Downton Arby’s.

A watch that’s on Indian Time. Works for other cultures too! (via Harbeer)

Linkage

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I’ve been refraining from talking about the Dharun Ravi case, because it’s pretty complicated. On the one hand, after reading the New Yorker article and other material, it’s pretty clear Dharun is a grade-A jerk. And Tyler Clementi’s death was a terrible tragedy. But on the other hand, 10 years in prison is a serious thing, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out. Ashvin shared a link to a blog post on “Deporting Homophbia”:

I have been Tyler and Dharun in a post 9/11 U.S. that accuses white men of exploiting the rest of the world and accuses brown men of destroying it. I have been Tyler and Dharun in a post 9/11 world where white men advocate for homosexual rights and advance homophobia and where brown men are understood as always homophobic. I am being presumptuous, so let me stop.

It’s an interesting take on things, and has made me think about the media coverage of the event and if and how Dharun’s race has played into how the story has been told.

Via Kamalika I learned about a lawsuit against IMDB.

A gem from SMBC via Cosma. The Beef Tensors are a nice touch.

Sepia Mutiny is shutting down, and Amardeep has some closing thoughts.

We always get to hear these stories about how service providers needs differential pricing for network traffic because they can’t make money, but then stories like this make me question the integrity of the complainers.

I heard Of Monsters and Men on KEXP and their show is sold out in Chicago, boo. Here’s their crazy video though:

Quote of the day : the Scholar

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In the Hieroglyphica of Valerian, the Ass is the symbol of the Scholar, humbly chewing his dry diet of texts, laboring mightily for Learning. The lacquered eyeballs moist, intelligent maybe, but a little cocked, not easy to make them both look in the same direction. Left side the wackier one, mad and errant; right side patient and mild.

– Daemonomania, by John Crowley

The post office is winning at programming

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I received this email from the USPS today:

Your hold mail request has ended $endDate

The Hold Mail Service for $dateRangeText has ended. So we’ll be resuming your regular mail delivery. Remember to pick up your held mail at the Post Office if you’re not having it delivered to your address.

Hold Mail Details

Confirmation Number: $holdMailDTO.confirmationNumber

Hold mail for…
$fullName
$holdMailDTO.address.addressLineOne
$holdMailDTO.address.city, $holdMailDTO.address.state $holdMailDTO.address.zip

Phone: $phone

Email: $holdMailDTO.emailAddress

Hold Mail Start Date: $startDate

End Date: $endDate

Delivery option: $deliveryOption

A new uncertainty principle

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During a recent Google+ conversation about the quality of reviews and how to improve them (more from the CS side), the issue of the sheer number of reviews seemed to be a limiting factor. Given the window of time for a conference, there is not enough time to have a dialogue between reviewers and authors. By contrast, for journals (such as Trans. IT), I find that I’ve gotten really thorough reviews and my papers have improved a lot through the review process, but it can take years to get something published due to the length of time for communication.

This points to a new fundamental limit for academic communications:

Theorem. Let R be the number of papers submitted for review, Q be the average quality of reviews for those papers, and T be the time allotted to reviewing the papers. Then

R Q / T = K.

where K is a universal constant.

The basketball strike and some confusing lingo

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Via Deadspin I saw this AP article on the latest twist in the NBA labor dispute and this tweet from columnist Adrian Wojnarowski : “The chances of losing the entire 2011-12 season has suddenly become the likelihood.” Assuming we correct to “likelihood,” what does this mean from a statistical standpoint? Is this frequentist analysis of a Bayesian procedure? Help me out folks…

Linkage

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Via Jay P., a pretty amazing dance video.

Via 530nm330Hz, a very interesting tidbit on the history of the one-time pad. A free tech report version is available too. The one-time pad XOR’s the bits of a message with a i.i.d. random bitstring of the same length, and is credited to Gilbert Vernam and Joseph Mauborgne. However, as Steven Bellovin‘s paper shows,

In 1882, a California banker named Frank Miller published Telegraphic Code to Insure Privacy and Secrecy in the Transmission of Telegrams. In it, he describes the first one-time pad system, as a superencipherment mechanism for his telegraph code. If used properly, it would have had the same property of absolute security.

Although in theory Miller can claim priority, reality is more complex. As will be explained below, it is quite unlikely that either he or anyone else ever used his system for real messages; in fact, it is unclear if anyone other than he and his friends and family ever knew of its existence. That said, there are some possible links to Mauborgne. It thus remains unclear who should be credited with effectively inventing the one-time pad.

Another fun tidbit : apparently mother’s maiden name was used for security purposes way back in 1882!

I really like shiso leaves and their cousins. I had a shiso plant but it did not survive the California sun / I have a black thumb. One of my favorite meals at ISIT 2009 was with Bobak Nazer, where we found an out-of-the way BBQ joint where they brought us a long box filled with 7 varieties of leaves, including perilla leaves. It makes me hungry just writing about it.

Kudos to Adrienne for the amazing photo.

There’s Only One Sun, a short sci-fi film by Wong Kar-Wai.