My "X of the day" routine (Dec. 31, 2007)

Current mood: enlightened

One of the first things I do every day is to look at a set of websites that I call "X of the Day". In essence, it is a collection of sites which change on a daily basis. Here's a quick rundown:

Astronomy Picture of the Day. This shows off a beautiful picture of something in the heavens, along with an explanation anyone can understand. Sometimes it's planets, or the moon, or something in deep outer space like distant galaxies, but just as often they show something here on earth.

Earth Science Picture of the Day. Like APOD, but focusing on our own planet, such as geology or weather.

Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. One word, explained, used in a sentence, and given its history. A great way to increase not only vocabulary, but understanding.

Interesting Thing of the Day. Always interesting, this page highlights an oddity of culture, language, history or an obscure term. Written mainly by one man, Joe Kissell, who grew up in Western Pennsylvania, and occasionally writes about it. [Added in 2011 update.]

Latin Word of the Day. While I added this to help with my daughter's Latin class, I've come to like it myself. Very short, it shows a couple of forms of one word from Latin, and what English words derive from it. In case you missed the previous day, that word is shown, too.

Pot-Shot of the Day. Pot-Shots, a one-panel strip found on the comics page of many newspapers, features an original, simple quip written by a man whose real name is Ashleigh Brilliant. He's been doing this for 40-some years. Each is 17 words or less. All of them are quotable. Many of them are hilarious.

Quotes of the Day. A little more elaborate, this page shows a quote from four famous people.

The Official SAT Question of the Day. Written by the people who write the standardized college board exams, this is one question, straight from a past exam. Hints are available, you get a couple of tries at it, and whatever answer you give, you get an explanation. I find that it keeps me on my toes.

I recommend any of these for parents with children. Granted, young children may not understand a lot of this stuff, but setting a routine for learning each day, and being exposed to information early on, will help them immensely later.

In addition, most of these have an archive. APOD's is particularly nice.

For browsing, I recommend Mozilla Firefox. What makes it so easy to look at all these websites is that I have the set bookmarked together, which I can then "open in tabs", meaning that all seven of them open at once in a single window.

Three Rivers Storytelling Festival

[updated, July 13, 2011; original post, Dec. 30, 2007]

Current mood: happy

I wish I had written this back in August when it happened, but before the memory is gone altogether, I'll record what I can remember. That said, I'll keep this short & sweet.

The event was called the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival, and was held August 10 & 11 (2007) at Northland Library, in Pittsburgh's North Hills. Storytellers traveled from all around the area, around the state (Philadelphia), around the continent (Toronto), and around the world (Ireland), to tell stories with one another, and to whoever showed up. Much of it was held outside, and fortunately the weather was just perfect.

What can I say about storytelling? Done well, it's riveting entertainment! Done even half decently, it's just plain fun. The thing is, it isn't possible to do it poorly. If you can speak, you can tell stories. If you have ears, you can listen to them. No iPods, CDs or boom boxes necessary, though having a mike helps if the crowd or venue is large.

For me, the high point of the show was my own family. My daughter told a story written by my son, not once but three times, to the assembled throng. At show's end, when the five out-of-town tellers took the stage for final bows, they had her come up onstage and join in receiving the applause. Truly cool.

Some of the stories transported me to different places and times, to other universes. Some had me laughing so hard I almost wet myself. Others reduced me to tears. They all cut through whatever cultural differences existed, showing us that under whatever color skins we have, we're all the same.

I only wish thousands could have attended, though we filled the tent quite a few times. There will be another one, I'm sure; check http://www.3rstf.org for details. (July 13 2011 update, yes, it's posted: Friday, August 12 and Saturday August 13, 2011.) Meanwhile, there are smaller storytelling events going on all the time. Yes, the place is handicapped accessible, though public transportation is lacking (3/4 mile hike from the 12 McKnight bus). [calendar] [directions] [Contact me for public transit and bicycle instructions.]

Any other upcoming storytelling events anyone knows about, feel free to post the details in a reply!

The movie rating system (Dec. 27, 2007)

Current mood: awake

As a young child, I recall going to a half-dozen movies before there was such a thing as a rating system. Not that my parents would have taken their nine-year-old to see a movie that today might be rated "R", but in 1967 and early 1968 there was no real guideline that anyone paid attention to, just a vague warning like "suggested for mature audiences".

Along came the original four ratings -- "G", "M", "R" and "X" -- which meant roughly general (G) audiences, i.e., anyone could see it, mature audiences only (M), restricted (R) to adults and children with an adult along, and off-limits to children (X). The M rating got changed two or three times in the next few years, evolving into the PG and PG-13 ratings we use today [more detail here], with G films for a time being so squeaky "clean" that nobody went to see them.

What else happened along with the ratings was an evolution toward allowing violence but restricting sex. This affected television as well. Since I grew up in Buffalo NY, within range of several Canadian TV stations, I always found it interesting how differently the same movie was edited for broadcast in Canada vs. the U.S.A.

The main difference was in sex vs. violence. In the U.S., violence was left in but sexual scenes were cut, whereas in Canada, they were edited equally if at all. In fact, late at night, as late as 1976, it was possible to see movies on the Canadian channels showing full nudity and sexual intercourse, with no apparent editing whatsoever. Later in 1976 I went off to college, out of range of Canadian TV, and in a couple of years had essentially stopped watching TV altogether.

There have been hundreds of movies with implied sexual encounters (i.e., you know they're doing it but they don't show it), and thousands with PG and R ratings with all the preamble to sexual encounters. (Hint: What do you think kids learn from, anyway?) Yet all of them, it seems, show plenty of violence, and the same goes for TV shows.

Here's what I don't understand: Why is it OK to show people being killed onscreen, but not OK to show people being made onscreen?

God rest ye MERRY. What does that mean, actually? (Dec. 22, 2007)

Current mood: peaceful

What a difference a comma makes!

"God rest ye merry, gentlemen!" <--Isn't there something wrong here? Shouldn't that comma be one word to the left?

Actually, no. The word "merry", which derives from the Old English myrge or myrige, originally meant pleasant or agreeable. The current meaning -- joyful, full of fun -- dates only from the 1300s. The term "rest you merry" meant, simply, rest (or sleep) peacefully, take it easy. Shakespeare even used it (Romeo & Juliet, I ii 62).

"Let nothing you dismay." Let nothing dismay you, i.e., don't let anything get you down, a simple restatement of the foregoing. And why not? Perhaps you've forgotten:

"Remember Christ our saviour was born on Christmas day ..." Yes, that is a comforting thought. However, that is not all of the sentence.
"... to save us all from Satan's power when we have gone astray." Now there's news! And what's another word for news? Tidings, of course!

"O tidings of comfort and joy!" Yes, everyone, take comfort and have peace, knowing that we are protected, saved.

So, let's take it from the top:

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power
When we have gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy!

Now doesn't that give you an agreeable sense of peace?
Oh, and there's one more place you often find that word:

- Merry -
Christmas
everyone!

Like a trumpeter at a harp concert (Dec. 19, 2007)

She got on the bus one stop after I did downtown, along with five other friends. She was 13, give or take a year, a little heavy but not overly so. Nothing remarkable about her face or body. She sat in the back, and the six of them formed a little horseshoe so they could chat. Nothing wrong so far.

Then I heard her voice. Piercing. Searing. Not exactly fingernails on a chalkboard, more like tearing something with a shard of glass. Yeah, a little louder than her friends, but not that much louder. She wasn't singing, just talking, yet I feared for the integrity of the bus's window glass.

How do some people get voices like that?

How to describe it? Like a trumpeter at a harp concert. Maybe a better analogy is someone playing an oboe reed at a harp concert, minus the oboe.

As I've said many times, I've ridden well over 15,000 trips on public transit. Rarely have I had to cover my ears when someone 15 feet away spoke. Gawd, was I happy when she exited that bus.

It was that bad. Yeeeesh.

123,457 (Dec. 18, 2007)

Current mood: disappointed

I knew it was coming. I missed it anyway.

Yesterday, my car's odometer read 123,456. I was behind the wheel, had two family members in the car, and had given everyone a heads-up a couple miles ahead. Yet we all missed it.

It happened on the way back from a trip to a local mall, itself a fairly rare thing, as I detest shopping at malls, especially at Christmas, especially at rush hour. That might have been part of it, actually. We got stuck in traffic behind an accident, and between all the flashing blue and red (police) and yellow (tow truck) lights, not to mention the brake lights of the car in front of me, the last thing on my mind was the odometer. By the time we were clear of the scene and I looked down, it read 123,457.

Oh well. I'm only about 2,500 miles from the point of having owned the car for 100,000 miles, so I guess that's the next psychological milestone.

Brief story about two of my bus stops (Dec. 13, 2007)

Good news, bad news. Fortunately, the good news is permanent, and the bad news is temporary.

At the other end of my road is McKnight Road, the main business thoroughfare through Pittsburgh's northern suburbs. It's about a 3/4 mile walk, but since bus service there is much better than the much closer Perry Highway, I make the long hike at least as often as the short.

First the good news. Last week, I discovered with glee that the Perrymont stop has a bus shelter. Yay! I've been standing in the mud and weeds there for 16 years, not that I had much choice. The only real alternative was to stand right on the curb, where I could easily fall into the path of fast moving traffic. On occasion I would trample down the burdocks and goldenrod, but mainly I put up with it. But no more!

Now the bad news. One stop downstream is Malibran Drive, a short hop across a dry cleaner's parking lot and the edge of a gas station. This bus stop matters because some buses arrive from a different direction and so do not pass by the Perrymont stop. Getting there requires an extra 30 seconds travel, but on weekends the buses only use that one.

This morning, as I was filling the tank of my two ton tin can, I noticed water spouting from under a manhole cover in the corner of the gas station near the bus stop. Upon closer inspection, that was the sanitary sewer that was overflowing, and all that crud between the cover and the bus stop sign was ... well, you can guess. Aaackkk!!! Fortunately, the mess went right down a storm sewer 20 feet away, but still ...

I called 9-1-1 from my cell phone, and in 5 to 10 minutes, a town cop stopped by to check it out. Just what had happened to cause it, I do not know. It had been raining pretty hard a bit before, but that should not have caused the sanitary sewers to overflow.

It's possible to avoid the mess by sticking to the grass. I sure hope, though, that whoever uses that bus stop later chooses to use the muddy grass to get to the stop instead of the paved lot. It'd be cleaner.

Aaacckkk again. Bleah. *shivers*