“Six!”
Do you remember this?
Seeing that “12”, with this background, almost makes me shudder. (It’s the best part!!)
Sesame Street Pinball videos:
- Six!
- Seven!
- Drie! (Dutch)
- The long version
- Family Guy parody
If you do remember these, how about this?
What a strange feeling it is to watch these after so long.
The Putnam (with numbers!)
When I was in high school, I went to math camp. And, of the math camp people, only the super-hardcore kids considered taking the Putnam exam. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what kind of exam it is. It’s a twelve hour test (two sittings) for college students (although high schoolers can take it), of “self-contained questions involving elementary concepts from group theory, set theory, graph theory, lattice theory, number theory, and cardinal arithmetic” ((http://math.scu.edu/putnam/describtcJan.html)). If you score in the top five in any year, you become a “Putnam Fellow“. MIT student Richard P. Feynman became a fellow in 1939 ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putnam_exam)).
I don’t think about the Putnam much (really!). But today I read this article in The Tech (the MIT newspaper), and felt a wee bit of nerd pride:
MIT Sweeps Putnam, Team Takes Third Place
Half of the 26 monetary prize winners and 26 of the top 78 highest scoring participants… were MIT students this year, Rogers said. “We dominated the competition in a way that we never have before,†Rogers said. A total of 129 MIT students took the test this year… Of the top 200 scorers, according to Rogers, 49 were from MIT and 28 from Harvard.
The median score for this year’s competitors was zero out of a possible 120 points… MIT’s median was around 20 points out of the possible 120.
If you’re curious what the problems look like, previous tests (and solutions) can be found here.
Post #47
Mmmeatballs
Ian and I both made the New York Times meatballs today. Here’s the recipe, which was at the top of the Times’s Most-Emailed list for a week: Italian Meatballs
They were great. Nice and crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. (And the leftovers!) If they sound tasty to you, I encourage you to make them – it’s fun to mold the balls and get your hands all messy.
[ For dessert, I recommend Molten Lava Cakes, which are really really easy and as wonderful as they sound. I just made a third of the recipe, for two cakes, and left out the orange liqueur. The mixture can sit for days in the refrigerator, so you can save some poured into dishes, and cook one the next day you want one in just ten minutes (that’s all the time it took to make them in my oven). ]
Escalators
Brent may not remember this, but we once wondered how many stories the escalator at the Porter Square T station, Boston’s deepest subway station, covers. It’s a really long escalator – one of the longest I’ve ridden.
The Wikipedia entry on the Porter station and this article on a scary escalator accident that occurred there both claim that the long escalator out of Porter station is 143 feet long.
I did a few calculations using numbers from the Wikipedia entry on escalators (a surprisingly and wonderfully interesting read), and found that a typical angle of incline for an elevator might be around 27º. This means that the Porter escalator covers about 65 feet in vertical distance, which, depending on how tall you think a “story” is, is somewhere between four stories and 5.5 stories.
(Incidentally, the Porter Square T station has a really cool art piece spread throughout, worth looking out for if you find yourself there.)
Some highlights from the Wikipedia entry on escalators:
- “passengers who stand customarily stay on one particular side of the escalator, leaving the other side free for walkers. The proper side for walking does not necessarily correspond with the passing lane in road traffic: passengers stand on the right and walk on the left on the London Underground as well as the Washington, Boston, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Moscow subway systems; but in Singapore and Australia, they stand on the left. In Japan, riders stand on the left in Tokyo but on the right in Osaka.”
- “For fun, people sometimes use an escalator running in the opposite direction, climbing up or down the stairs faster than it moves. This is forbidden in some places, notably the Paris Métro, where running in the opposite direction can lead to being fined.”
Here’s a picture Hansie took last December, of me looking at escalator innards at the Harvard Square T stop:
Flaming Lips and Beck in 2002
Tonight in iTunes, I noticed someone sharing an iTunes library by the name of “Lame Crap”, which of course made me click on it. And I found possibly the biggest Flaming Lips fan I’ve ever seen (in iTunes shared libraries). This person had an album called “Live Bass Concert Hall Austin, 11-12-02” by “Beck/Flaming Lips”, and I was like “WTF, what IS this?!” And in the next 30 seconds I learned that Beck asked the Flaming Lips to tour with him as his backup band/opening act for his “Sea Change” record in 2002. The fact that I had no idea this happened really shows how out-of-touch I’ve gotten with music in the last several years :(
As I should have expected, the internet session quickly deteriorated into an all-out Flaming Lips solo fanfest, only the very highest points of which I’ll include here.
Beck, Flaming Lips heat up Texas — “If you haven’t seen Coyne live in concert, then it’s something you need to put on the short list of to-dos. The man, undeniably a genius, looks something like the coolest professor you have ever had, but acts like a five-year-old on stage.”
Beck and the Flaming Lips on how Beck decided to do the 2002 tour:
Beck’s Plan For Keeping Everyone Awake: The Flaming Lips
This article is notable for its choice of photo for the band (left), and for backing up Beck’s decision to hire “a psychotic carnival like the Flaming Lips”.
The same year, BUDDYHEAD said of the Flaming Lips’ new album:
“These weirdos are tripping balls so hard, they’re singing about pink robots and karate shit.”
A good NPR interview with a warbly Wayne Coyne talking about covering Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and then the whole band performing a Sonic Youth/Led Zeppelin cover, and even a nice, super-slow “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”:
“The Flaming Lips, a Slow-Growing Phenomenon”
How Sleep Works
Today I caught up on my How Stuff Works “Daily Stuff” feed. Tucked in there, with How Subways Work and How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works, was How Sleep Works.
We hear stuff about sleep all the time… but there’s always something new.
All straight from the above article (with the exception of the bracketed text):
- Cows can sleep while standing up, but they only dream if they lie down.
Whales and dolphins are “conscious breathers,” and they need to keep breathing while they sleep, so only one half of the brain sleeps at a time. (Click here for details.) - Many medicines, including most sleeping medicines, change the quality of sleep and the REM component of it.
- After three days [without sleep], a person will start to hallucinate and clear thinking is impossible. With continued wakefulness a person can lose grasp of reality. Rats forced to stay awake continuously will eventually die, proving that sleep is essential.
[[ And what happens to people? Here‘s one depressing story. Interestingly, resentment is one of the five listed “common causes of sleep loss” in this article. ]]
Scott and Susie SWOOP!
Scott and Susie are on their honeymoon in New Zealand, and today they SWOOPed!
Nicer sandwiches
I want to make nicer food. Even for the normal stuff, like sandwiches. I decided I’ll start with this recipe I found today for Prosciutto, Mozzarella, Tomato, and Basil Panini.
One of the ingredients I’ll need is balsamic vinegar, which, strangely, I don’t have already. So I bought some at the store today. And I found myself in that familiar position of recently having read an article rating The BEST “X”! (in this case, “balsamic vinegar”)… I inevitably will remember the best and worst product, but not which one is which. I lucked out today and bought a balsamic that comes “Recommended” by Cook’s Illustrated: Monari Federzoni Balsamic Vinegar of Modena!
New anime
I watched the first three episodes of Fruits Basket ((not to be confused with “fruit basket”. THANKS to the little bird who pointed out this connection to me.)) today. It’s an anime about a family with a curse that if they embrace someone of the opposite sex, they’ll turn into characters of the Chinese Zodiac. Of course!
My favorite part of the Wikipedia entry:
“She realizes that an onigiri can never belong in a Fruits Basket.”
So sad!
