The Egglestonian Creed

I made some science tonight

2005-07-14T00:21:00.000-04:00

I just finished this survey:

MIT offers five buttons for those completing the survey. I chose this one in homage to an unjustly maligned book.

Take the MIT survey and make some science!

A partial solution!

2005-07-06T19:24:00.000-04:00

After more than a month, I finally have PART of the solution to the Destinations contest!

In a personal communication to me, Ron Lipman of Louisville correctly named Lewis Carroll as the author of the mystery poem containing an allusion to the complex number

(-7/2) + (i(sqrt(445/3))/2)

Mr. Lipman put the available clues together -- a British author who flourished between 1850 and 1900, who wrote poetry, and who (from the nature of the puzzle) must have had some interest in mathematics -- to arrive at the author's identity.

THE CONTEST REMAINS OPEN, however, since no one has yet identified the poem or derived the number from its text.

Here are the clues that remain relevant in the light of Carroll's identification:

(1) The poem appears in the standard editions of Carroll's complete works. (Note that editions of Carroll's complete works exclude the strictly mathematical works that he wrote under his real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.)

(2) The poem is untitled (and, so far as is known, was never titled).

(3) The poem was written between 1850 and 1898 (the date of Carroll's death; his literary career began in 1845).

(4) The principal subject of the poem is not mathematics.

I will add another clue:

(5) The only mathematics needed to extract the number from the text is that taught in first-year algebra.

As before, to win the $20 Destinations Booksellers gift card, a solver must give the first line of the correct Carroll poem and explain how the number is derived from the text of the poem.

Again, the derivation is fair. No tricks are involved -- you don't have to count letters or know how long Alice Liddell's hair was, or anything at all beyond the actual text of the poem and first-year algebra.

However, I will now accept solutions e-mailed to me at asilofreak[n-o-s-p-a-m]@yahoo.com (delete the brackets and everything between them) or posted as a comment to this post.

The new clues

2005-06-25T21:22:00.000-04:00

More than a month has passed, and no one has won the $20 Destinations Booksellers gift card yet.

Therefore, first of all, Destinations owners Randy and Ann Smith have posted an announcement of the contest on Destinations' own blog ; and second, I am posting two new clues.

Once again, the question is:

What is the literary significance of the complex number (-7/2) + (i(sqrt(445/3))/2)?

This number is alluded to in a work by a major literary figure. The winning solution must: (1) indicate the author; (2) give the opening line of the work; and (3) show how the number is derived from the text of the work. (It is not written out explicitly, but is derivable from the text in a straightforward way.)

For nonmathematicians, a "complex number" is the sum of a "real number," a more or less ordinary number like 0 or 32 or the square root of 2, and an "imaginary number," which is a multiple of the square root of -1, denoted by the symbol i. The abbreviation sqrt stands for "square root."

I have given the following six clues:

(1) The work is in English.
(2) The work appears in the standard editions of the author's complete works.
(3) The author is primarily known as an author (rather than, say, a scientist).
(4) The work is not a work of science fiction.
(5) The work was written and published between 1850 and 1900.
(6) The work is an untitled poem.

Now for the seventh and eighth clues:

(7) The author is British.
(8) The principal subject of the poem is not mathematics.

I am also clarifying the fifth clue:

(5') While most of the author's works have known dates, the poem in question is one of the few whose date is unknown (though certainly between 1850 and 1900), at least according to the editions I have consulted.

Good luck and happy solving! Please post your solution, or any queries, as a comment to this post.

Report from Deposition Nation

2005-06-25T16:07:00.000-04:00

I've just completed four years of editing legal depositions, and as each day passes I become more and more certain that Depo Nation has an oozing watch on its flag and Salvador Dali's birthday as its national holiday. It's worth a daily 50-mile round trip just to see what new manifestation of the surreal will display itself. Every one of the gems below crossed my desk during May or June of 2005.

Let's start with the attorneys, since depositions start with them. They're well-educated men and women, but once in a while they stray beyond the bounds of their expertise, Daubert be damned. Here's a lawyer who thinks he's an etymologist:

Q. And what is necrotic tissue?
A. It is tissue that no longer has circulation in it.
Q. Is it dead?
A. Yes.
Q. Hence the phrase "necro" --
A. Don't know.
Q. -- from the Latin. Okay. Before graduating from [Catholic high school], did you take Latin?
A. I did.
Q. Okay.
A. 15 years ago.

Fifteen years, fifteen minutes, fifteen centuries; the witness was never going to learn Greek roots in Latin class.

Then there are the amateur historians. The witness is a doctor who has just testified that he believes the plaintiff's carpal-tunnel syndrome to have been caused by overuse of vibratory tools, thereby provoking this lawyerly foray into the history of technology:

Q. So, [plaintiff]'s condition, he could not have possibly possessed had he lived before the Industrial Revolution, when they invented machines?

So it wasn't just the Great Pyramid that was put up by aliens, but the Parthenon, the Pantheon, Notre-Dame, St. Peter's, and Independence Hall, too. (And, for that matter, maybe there wasn't any carpal-tunnel syndrome before the Industrial Revolution. I've never seen any evidence that there was.)

Then there are the transcribers: a dedicated, overworked, sometimes insufficiently appreciated group. Like all other mortals, they err. Some of the errors are jewels, though, and I suspect that our more playful transcribers let a few slip just to tease me. Who could resist this tiny mistake, with its suggestion of an hitherto unsuspected cause of mad-cow disease? The witness is describing a feeding trough that for some reason had to be placed in the entrance to a silo, necessitating a risky climb for the farmhands:

Q. And if you didn't unwire it, how did you get into the silo?
A. Sometimes someone would climb up over it and -- when you get up on top of the chute there, the stationery chute. . .

Not just contented cows. . .educated cows. Might one have received a Dear John letter?

Then, you might want to avoid a certain hospital in North Carolina whose employees, according to the testimony of a doctor who once worked there (with just the slightest tweak by a transcriber), seem to be extraordinarily mutinous:

A. The best recollection I have is that you'd meet periodically to see what -- what infections were occurring within the -- within the hospital -- if you had an outbreak of staff or something and what was being done to solve it.

Higher pay and shorter hours might help. Really, though, management should never have let disaffection come to this pass. They should have done something substantial when there was only a staff infection, which is something like blue flu.

If you must go to North Carolina, it's probably best to plan your itinerary so as to avoid Danville, Kentucky, which apparently has swollen into a megalopolis while we all slept. The witness is an employee of a Danville nursing home:

Q. How many nursing homes does Danville have?
A. Two; us and [the other home].
Q. How far is it from [the witness' place of employment] to [the other home]?
A. In between -- about an hour and a half.

You can cross Chicago in an hour and an half. I've done it. The witness actually said "about a mile and a half," but the transcriber, new to this area, couldn't penetrate the Eastern Kentucky accent.

And what about the editors? What can I, an editor, say that wasn't said better two millennia ago? Read Matthew 7:3-5.

We have national champions!

2005-06-14T22:53:00.000-04:00

While that other bee was winding down in Washington, two New Albanians won orthographical laurels in New York City! Randy Smith of Destinations Booksellers and his brother Larry teamed up to win the co-championship of the annual BookSense.com/American Heritage Dictionaries Spelling Bee, held in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association's BookExpo America on Saturday, June 4. They shared the title with a team from Chicago.

Hostess for the event was Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season.

Here's the story.

The Smiths are now joint owners of Spellbound. They'll love it.

Congratulations!

The contest is still open

2005-06-06T21:10:00.000-04:00

I have still received no solutions to the $20 question:

What is the literary significance of the complex number (-7/2) + (i(sqrt(445/3))/2)?

As I hope everyone recalls, this number is alluded to in a work by a major literary figure. The prize is a $20 gift card from Destinations Booksellers in New Albany. To claim this prize, you need to post the solution as a comment to this post.

The correct solution must: (1) indicate the author; (2) give the first line of the work; and (3) show how the number is alluded to in the text of the work.

So far, I have given five clues:

(1) The work is in English.
(2) The work appears in the standard editions of the author's complete works.
(3) The author is primarily famous as an author (rather than a scientist or the like).
(4) The work is not a work of science fiction.
(5) The work was written and published between 1850 and 1900.

I will add a sixth clue:

(6) The work is an untitled poem. (Please note that I have revised Requirement 2 for the solution accordingly and am no longer asking for the "title or first line.")

Good luck!

No joake

2005-06-05T22:28:00.000-04:00

This is a picture of John Minnich of Roanoke, Virginia, as he was competing in -- yes -- the National Spelling Bee.

I owe this to the Argus eye of Cody Boisclair, a Georgian who placed fourth in the '97 NSB and who organized the Bee community on LiveJournal.

Mr. Boisclair also saved this screenshot in which someone posted a picture of champion Anurag Kashyap on the NSB Web site -- with his name misspelled.

Thanks, Cody!

The plan is fulfilled!

2005-06-02T20:30:00.000-04:00

He Who created us that we might spell must surely be pleased tonight. Not only the 51 on stage in Washington were spelling, but also myriads in the television audience and even on the Web.

Today's segment of the competition was of nearly epic length, with a total of 192 words extending over 15 rounds and 5 hours 10 minutes. Thirteen of the 25 "championship" words were called into service -- had there been 12 more, co-champions would have been declared for the first time since 1962.

In the end, Fort Worth's Samir Patel fell foul of "Roscian" and lost to San Diego's Anurag Kashyap, who spelled "appoggiatura" for the victory.

I "participated" in this year's competition in an unusual way -- for me, at least. I recently found and joined an NSB community on LiveJournal, most of whose members are ex-NSBers. One of its members invited me to take part in The Apiary, an IM chat taking place in conjunction with the ESPN broadcast. I can't see my TV while I'm on the computer, but I turned it up loud, videotaped the broadcast, and happily IMed the other Apiarians as we tried (generally pretty successfully) to spell the increasingly recondite words. The others were all much younger than I, and several of them knew some of this year's contestants personally. They also had an extensive knowledge of what words had come up in which earlier bees.

How did I do? Reasonably well. I spelled 174 words correctly and missed 18. In recent years, it seems that the "championship" words have been easier than their immediate predecessors, and this was true again, at least for me, since I got all 13 of them. In contrast, I missed 5 of the 16 words in Round 9. "Synechthran"? Not even recalling the Echthroi in Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet helped me with that "-an." I spelled it "synechthron."

But we Egglestonians are not called on to spell words always without error. There could be no bees if we did. We are called upon simply to spell as best we can. All 273 contestants fulfilled their commission worthily, as did the thousands in the audience; as, I hope, did I.

The first day is over

2005-06-01T22:15:00.000-04:00

222 have fallen.

51 stand.

Day 1 of the National Spelling Bee is over.

Louisvillians may rejoice: among the survivors is #97, John Tamplin, back for a fourth run at the championship.

There are few surprises among those who continue. All four fourth-timers, including Tamplin, remain. Samir Patel of Fort Worth, possibly the closest to an household name among the competitors -- he participated in Fox's Great American Celebrity Spelling Bee in February 2004 -- perseveres in his third try for victory.

The most unexpected early dismissal is probably that of Nektarios Vasilottos of LaPorte, Indiana, who was making his third attempt and who tied for 16th in 2003. He missed "putrilage" in Round 4. Three third-timers failed to clear the joint hurdle of Rounds 1 and 2 (a 25-word written test, 1 point for each correct spelling, followed by a conventional round with no dismissals for errors and 3 points for a correct spelling) and enter the group of 97 spellers who proceeded to Round 3.

Personally, I am disappointed that Evansville's William Weitzel lost out on "endogenous" in Round 3, but pleased that Meg Mathis of Memphis is still standing (she's the numismatist/exonumist who's enthusiastic about math and science).

The climactic rounds of the Bee can be seen tomorrow on ESPN from 10 A.M. to noon and from 1 to approximately 3:30 P.M. Those who can't watch can follow the Bee in quasi-real time (about 20 minutes' delay) on the Net on the round results page.

50 will fall.

1 will stand.

273 will uphold the Creed.

Vigil

2005-05-31T23:31:00.000-04:00

Tonight is the eve of the pivotal day of the year, the day when our highest adepts assemble in solemn conclave to perform the sacramental act we Egglestonians believe makes man man and fulfills the Divine purpose.

The National Spelling Bee begins in just over eight hours!

Click here for round results in quasi-real time (they tend to run about 20 minutes late).

Best wishes to all our mystai and epoptai! Let us proclaim the Creed tomorrow morning!

Contest reminder

2005-05-31T21:59:00.000-04:00

No one has yet won the $20 Destinations Booksellers gift card.

The question, once more, is:

What is the literary significance of the number (-7/2) + (i(sqrt(445/3))/2)?

The answer must:
(1) identify the author;
(2) give the title or first line of the work; and
(3) explain how the number is alluded to in the work.

I have given the following clues:
(1) The work is in English.
(2) The work appears in the standard editions of the author's complete works.
(3) The author is primarily known as an author (rather than, say, a scientist).
(4) The work is not a work of science fiction.

I will now add a fifth clue:
(5) The work was written and published between 1850 and 1900.

For nonmathematicians: i is the square root of -1, sometimes called the imaginary unit, and sqrt is an abbreviation for "square root."

Please post questions or solutions as comments to this post or to "First (?) contest" below. If you have the solution, please give me contact information so I can send you the gift card.

As National Spelling Bee Week begins ...

2005-05-30T22:14:00.000-04:00

... behold one of the most prized artifacts in the Egglestonian world!

On 22 March 2003, I attended the Kentucky Derby Festival Spelling Bee, whose champion represents the Louisville area in the national finals. I had been overwhelmed by John Tamplin's stellar victory in the '02 KDF bee as a fourth-grader and wondered if he could repeat his performance (he did, as he has done twice more -- he is in Washington as I type).

Upon perusing the program, I found that I was sharing the Seelbach Hilton ballroom with no less a person than Frank Neuhauser, a one-time resident of Louisville who had been invited by the KDF to make some remarks to the participants because he was the very first national champion -- in 1925! Aged 89, he now lived in Baltimore. I broke out in goosebumps. Imagine a middle-aged baseball fan who looks up to discover that Babe Ruth is still alive and sitting fourteen rows in front of him, and you've just about got me pegged.

Mr. Neuhauser rose before the bee started and praised the participants, referring to his own victory only with great modesty. The contest began, and I kept notes, but I kept one eye on him throughout the bee. I couldn't let this chance get away.

At last a break came. Mr. Neuhauser and his wife rose to stretch, as did much of the audience, and I swept in: "Please, sir, would you sign my program?" The first of all champions took the program, smiled at the beseeching 45-year-old kid before him, and graciously gave me the autograph pictured above. He even congratulated me on my 15th-place finish in 1970. The Babe then shook hands with the .210 hitter. My hand wasn't washed for days.

Mr. Neuhauser has a part in the recent documentary Spellbound, which follows eight contestants in the 1999 NSB. Watch it -- and him.

The end of an era?

2005-05-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

I set foot in the halls of Floyd Central High School yesterday afternoon for what may be the last time, as 9 years 9 months 8 days of being the parent of at least one high-school student came to an end with Savannah's graduation -- one year early! She accumulated enough credits to achieve a Core 40 diploma in three years.

Her boyfriend B.J. and his sister Tara also graduated, and their parents were there, along with Sarina, her boyfriend Eric, and Emilie -- and, of course, Zada. (She slept through most of the ceremony.)

I suppose she'll miss FCHS. I know I will. While we didn't take much role in their academic life (they were all good students and didn't need that much help), Meg and I did participate to some degree in their extracurricular interests, sometimes only as a taxi service, sometimes as part of the audience, sometimes as actual assistants (Meg at least, who has sewn costumes for several years). All the plays that Aaron and Savannah teched for, Sarina's participation in color guard and choir, Savannah's handbells -- all over! I'm even going to miss running over to school at 10:30 P.M. every night for the last two or three weeks before a play to pick Aaron or Savannah up from tech work.

I'm still Academic Bowl proctor, of course. While that doesn't involve contact with Floyd Central students, it is the last thread linking me to the place upon which so much of my kids' lives centered for so long, and so I prize it (and I may enter the halls again if FCHS should host another invitational). I don't know whether Meg plans to continue sewing costumes.

But it had to end, and I'm happy that it ended so well -- not least, with a second-generation accelerate in the family. Congratulations, Savannah!

Fraternizing with the foe?

2005-05-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

Meg couldn't resist the sartorial juxtaposition and took this picture of Paige and me at Paige's home in Manitou, Kentucky, on March 20 -- at the height of March Madness.

First (?) contest

2005-05-20T18:40:00.000-04:00

I've noticed a few bloggers running contests with prizes on their blogs -- in fact, I recently won one. Check the March 23 post on:

http://readmymanuscript.blogspot.com/

So I've decided to run one too. The prize is a $20 gift card good at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany.

Here's the question:

With the recent release of the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, millions of Americans have been enlightened about the literary significance of the number 42. Readers of the book will remember that the receivers of that answer to the Ultimate Question were utterly shocked. It was just too simple.

Well, there are complex numbers, and while Deep Thought couldn't honestly give one as its Ultimate Answer, at least one has appeared -- or at least been alluded to -- in the writings of a major literary figure.

The question, for a $20 gift card, is:

What is the literary significance of the number (-7/2) + (i(sqrt(445/3))/2)?

The complete answer must:
(1) indicate the author;
(2) give the title or first line of the work in which this number is alluded to; and
(3) explain how it is derived from the text of the work.

As you may have figured out already, the number is NOT actually written out in the work.

The only clues I will give (for now) is that the work is in English; that, while it is not among the author's best-known works, it appears in the standard editions of the author's complete works; that the author is indeed best known for her or his literary productions; and that the work in question is NOT a work of science fiction.

Please post your solutions or any questions you may have as comments. I will contact the first correct solver to inform her or him that (s)he has won and to get her or his address so I can send the gift card.

Happy solving!

(And, even if you don't win, visit Destinations. This area needed a fine local bookstore, and at last it has one. I wish Evansville did. They're on Spring Street, and they have a blog at
http://destinationsbooksellers.blogspot.com/ .)

End of shift

2005-05-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

The Great Room Shift that I spoke of on March 18 in "Call me Arrhidaios" is over, and we're now pronouncing all our vowels differently . . . oh, that was another Great Shift. Toward the end, though, it seemed as though we'd had junk piled in the computer room since 1450.

Aaron's room is now a bathroom/laundry room, the old entryway (which contained the old laundry closet) is now our bedroom, our old bedroom is now Savannah's and Zada's bedroom, and Savannah's and Zada's old bedroom is now Aaron's room. The back door into the entryway was obliterated and a new one placed in the dining room. This confused the dogs, who continued to run into our (new) bedroom and bark for us to open the now nonexistent door as long as the room remained empty. The original bathroom remained a bathroom, but was stripped of all its contents except the tub, replumbed, refitted, and redirected; it now opens into our bedroom instead of the dining room. At last, this weekend, the last wandering stuff found its new homes.

One correction is necessary. The cat box did not remain in its original location, but moved from a distant corner of the living room to the new bathroom/laundry room.

Raw data

2005-05-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

The full Academic Bowl regional and state-final results are available at

http://www.iasp.org/dspcompresults.aspx

Click on one of the class numbers under "Senior Academic Super Bowl Area Competition Results" to see the regional results for that class on April 19.

Click on one of the subject names under "Senior Academic Super Bowl State Finals Results" to see the results from Lafayette on May 7.

Any comments on the scores or correlations?

The last shall be first

2005-05-12T23:33:00.000-04:00

It looks like I'm about as good at handicapping as the Derby mavens are. None of my first three picks brought a state championship home on Saturday evening -- but two state titles did come back to our region!

The role of Giacomo was taken by the interdisciplinary squad of Bedford-North Lawrence, which scored a clear win in Class 1 with 18 after squeaking into the finals in seventh place. Meanwhile, incoming class leader Castle confirmed Scripture by sliding to the bottom at Lafayette with 11. Congratulations, Stars!

Our other winner was perennial Class 2 power Madison -- not in math, where the Cubs' 23 left them one point and place behind winner Indianapolis Brebeuf, but in English, where Madison posted a 20, good enough to win by 2 over -- again -- Brebeuf. Look for a construction contract to be let soon as the Cubs expand their overflowing academic trophy case.

The other three squads from our region placed thus: Scottsburg (Class 2), fine arts, third with 16 behind NorthWood and Griffith; Scottsburg, math, sixth with 17 behind Brebeuf, Madison, West Lafayette, Leo, and Fort Wayne Dwenger; and Orleans (Class 4), fine arts (my best bet), second with 18 behind Northeast Dubois.

Upshot: two championships, two second places, a third, and a sixth. Result for our region: covered in glory. Result for yours truly's face: covered with egg.

Other state champs from southern Indiana include Columbus East (Class 1) in fine arts, North Knox (Class 3) in fine arts (on a tiebreaker over Cambridge City Lincoln), Northeast Dubois (Class 4) in fine arts (by 1 point over Orleans), North Posey (Class 3) in English, and Tell City (Class 3) in interdisciplinary. The latter two won easily -- North Posey by 3 over Kokomo Taylor and Tell City by 4 over Indianapolis Park Tudor. Congratulations, Olympians, Warriors, Jeeps, Vikings, and Marksmen!

The reversal of positions in Class 1 interdisciplinary astonished me enough to lead me to calculate Spearman rhos (rank-order correlation coefficients) between ranks coming out of regionals and ranks at the finals for 23 of the 24 contests. (For the statistically minded, the better known Pearson correlation coefficient was inappropriate because it would be applied to the actual scores, not just the ranks, and the questions used at the finals were presumably more difficult than those used at the regionals -- some of the lower-ranking squads had single-digit scores at Lafayette, though they scored much higher when they qualified.) No coefficient could be found for Class 1 social studies because one of the finalists, Columbus East, placed 47th in the regionals, apparently because of an erroneous score. Here are the other rhos:

English Fine Arts Social Studies Math Science Interdisciplinary

Class 1 .500 .786 (none) .741 .304 -.750

Class 2 .771 .829 .700 .829 .829 .600

Class 3 .043 -.029 .143 .814 .543 -.014

Class 4 .243 .700 -.100 .400 .725 -.200

In words, rank at regionals was a pretty fair predictor of rank at the state finals for all squads in Class 2, as well as for math and science squads, but not otherwise. Outside Class 2, regional rankings actually correlated negatively with final rankings for ID squads, though the small negative rhos for Classes 3 and 4 are much less stunning than the -.750 in Class 1.

It's interesting to speculate on the meaning of these correlations, though in the absence of any other similar data any speculation must remain just that. The high correlations throughout Class 2, for instance, might reflect the presence in that class of several perpetual contenders, such as Madison and (more recently) Scottsburg from our own region and NorthWood, Dwenger, Leo, Wawasee, and Brebeuf from elsewhere in the state, whereas the representation of the other three classes in the state finals is considerably more volatile. Math and science may produce high correlations and high scores for the same reason, which, in my belief, is that they are less bound to the annual theme of the competition than are the humanities. The negative correlations for ID seem to be associated with an inchoate notion of my own that schools with strong subject squads often perform relatively poorly in interdisciplinary competition (even Madison has shown this weakness), though a more obvious reason may be that the competition is inherently less fixed in nature than a one-subject competition would be, and that an ID squad is more likely to encounter an unfavorable run of questions at state than a subject squad is.

Meanwhile, back at Floyd Central, there's always next year!

Horse race? What horse race?

2005-05-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

The place to be tomorrow isn't Louisville. It's West Lafayette. The 2005 Academic Bowl state finals will take place at Purdue University, though without Floyd Central or yours truly:

http://www.iasp.org/iace/Super%20State%20Finals.html

No one qualified five squads, a feat achieved by Madison in 2002. Hamilton Southeastern in Fishers (Class 1; all but fine arts and social studies) and North Judson-San Pierre (Class 3; all but science and social studies) qualified four. Nine schools succeeded in qualifying three squads, including Tell City (Class 3; math, science, interdisciplinary).

Our region didn't fare so well as usual, placing only 6 squads in the finals out of a total of 144. Madison and Scottsburg qualified two squads; Bedford-North Lawrence and Orleans each qualified one. Even Columbus East (just outside our region, but winner of the Hoosier Hills Conference crown with a magnificent 125) qualified only two squads (fine arts and social studies).

However, as you may recall, three of our entrants topped their classes: Madison in math with 24; Scottsburg and Orleans in fine arts with 21 (Scottsburg in Class 2 and Orleans in Class 4). So the chances for a state title are still good. Best bet: Orleans in fine arts. The Bulldogs posted a clear 3-point margin over their closest challengers, and they will have to face only four opponents, while Madison and Scottsburg will have five and BNL (Class 1) six. Second best bet: Scottsburg, also in fine arts (2-point margin, one extra opponent). Third best: Madison in math (only a 1-point edge in a subject notorious for high scores -- Class 1 Hobart made a perfect 25).

But in the spirit of Derby Day, I have to pick one winner. Okay. Orleans.

In that other competition, I'm going with Buzzards Bay. I've read more than 1300 pages of depositions so far this year about a rusty water tank in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, and my coworkers and I think Consus may be telling us something. After all, the Romans later identified him with Neptune, the god of water and presumably of water tanks. (About my title: Just kidding. I'm not going to trash the Derby. The Kentucky Derby Festival saved the regional spelling bee after the Courier-Journal wimped out.)

The roster is up at last!

2005-05-03T21:15:00.000-04:00

The names and short bios of all 273 NSB contestants are now available at http://www.spellingbee.com/spellerindex2005.shtml .

I've only read a few bios. My favorite so far is #231, Meg Mathis of Memphis, not only because her name is Meg, but because she's a budding scientist and numismatist as well as a champion speller.

NSB update

2005-04-30T23:35:00.000-04:00

As of tonight, the National Spelling Bee has posted the grid of competitors. . .

http://www.spellingbee.com/spellerindex2005.shtml

. . .but hasn't posted the names.

The names of repeat competitors are available at http://www.spellingbee.com/bwg/stats.shtml , though biographies aren't up yet.

Evansville's William Weitzel will be #79, and John Tamplin of Louisville will make his fourth run from the #97 position.

Thank you for 20 wonderful years, my friend (Part 2)

2005-04-28T20:33:00.000-04:00

Aly competing for the national Miss Pinto title at World Pinto Championships, Tulsa, 2001. Third from the right; second in the competition; first, after my family, in my heart.

(Blogger insists that all posts be in chronological order. This one is supposed to be at the end of the sequence of photos, but ended up at the beginning because I wrote it piecemeal. Please start with the post below this one, look at the photographs, and return here.)

Picking up the story. . .

She was 4; I was 27. We met at a tour of Angel Mounds sponsored by Evansville Area Mensa. Angel Mounds is the remains of a Middle Mississippian city, and a big one, and our group walked all over it. As we passed the central mound on the way out, Alison just couldn't walk any farther, and I offered to carry her, since her mother, Lana, was dog-tired too. I put her on my shoulders, she thanked me, and we began talking while she rode. Within three minutes, softly but firmly, she broke me. "Befriend" is an active verb, and I was the object.

That was the beginning of 20 years of friendship -- and even love, which she declared at a Mensa Christmas party in '86 by writing I love you, Bill K. -- From Alison on a sheet of notebook paper with purple Magic Marker (which remains among the most prized documents in my muniment room), and which I at last knew I felt for her when she suddenly told me in April '88 that she and her family were moving to Michigan and I feared losing her friendship (in typical Aly style, she hastened to reassure me that there were a postal system and a road network, and that she would often write and visit, both of which she did many times). During those years there have been an abundance of cards and letters, several e-mails when they became available, dozens of phone calls, and frequent -- though all too brief -- visits by her and her family and, beginning in '91, by Meg, Aaron, and me.

Anything like the full story of our friendship would take months to tell. Let me mention just a few incidents:

-- The two-person-team Trivial Pursuit game at a Mensa meeting in early '86, when one player whispered to another -- not softly enough for me not to hear -- that I would be no threat because I'd pick Aly as a partner instead of a grownup. I did, and she and I proceeded to douse our opponents' faces in enough egg to raise their cholesterol counts for a week.

-- Lana and Barry Kington's wedding just before Thanksgiving '87 -- yes, Paige is Aly's half sister -- when Aly, as flower girl, so outshone the rest of the party, including the bride, that when Lana's sister got married the following year, she carefully averted all invidious comparison by relegating Aly to the role of guest registrar.

-- The bittersweet moment in the spring of '88 when Aly and Aaron took up bowling, and Aly rolled a 70, which stood as league high score until the last week of the season (bittersweet because the score she beat was Aaron's).

-- Our first calligraphy workshop together, in the basement of Oaklyn Library in Evansville in December of '88, when the forty- and fiftysomethings in the classroom chuckled at the sight of an 8-year-old only to fall into silence when they looked at Aly's worksheets and observed her talent and dedication; also, her well-supplied lunch bag, whose contents she insisted that I share with her in the library basement while everyone else stood in line at Hardee's.

-- Another workshop in Indianapolis, this one on mediaeval scripts, when Lana and Barry came down from Michigan and Meg and Aaron came up from Evansville, and we all enjoyed conversation and dinner, Aly and I enjoyed Mark Van Stone's tutelage, and Aly enjoyed watching me sink slowly southeastward when the left rear leg of my chair snapped as I was trying to letter a versal M.

-- My 32nd birthday party, with which Aly surprised me when she was visiting her grandmother in Evansville over the summer. She called me and asked that I bring Aaron. When I did, she greeted me with cake, ice cream, and some of her young friends, and I soon found myself playing hide and seek, attempting to pursue 8- and 9-year-olds into crevices whose depths I couldn't even see, much less enter.

-- The bowling trip when Aly talked me into using her 6-pound ball. I executed an orthodox four-step delivery, released the ball, and flew 25 feet down the lane when the ball failed to reciprocate. Foul, of course. I lost that game, 74-71.

-- Her speech to a class of fifth-graders at Stringtown School in Evansville to whom I was teaching a script that she and I had jointly invented. They didn't ask her about calligraphy. They asked her about Michigan. It takes a yard of snow to cancel classes in Holland (take that, Louisville!). This was especially pleasing because Aly is shy about public speaking, but she did a superb job.

-- Horse shows near Holland and Lansing, where Aly showed her Pintos, first Ginger and later Music in Motion ("Moe"). Aly invited me to ride Ginger (not in a show!), but I was just too big. Lucky Ginger. Some classes are judged on conformation. I suppose Ginger and Moe conform to whatever it is they're supposed to conform to. I had no idea what to look for. I wasn't looking at the horses anyway. I was looking at the proud and radiant rider.

-- My 42nd birthday party, organized by Aly, Lana, and Paige (is there a pattern here? What can I expect when I turn 52?) at Holland, where, again, Aaron and some of Aly's other friends attended, though we played board games this time.

Even before she moved, I started to teach Aly calligraphy, and she soon became very good at it, as the surprised onlookers at Oaklyn found. She even attracted the attention of a professional calligrapher from Indianapolis, Erika Woods, who used one of Aly's pangrammatic practice sentences as an illustration in the Indianapolis calligraphy guild's newsletter. When I tried to invent an upright italic script, it was too rigid; Aly introduced a key element, a swung dash, which gave the script flow. We called it Riparian, for the banks of the Ohio, and it is still my mainstay; when I do calligraphy for pay, clients often demand that I use it once they see it. She and I exhibited together at an Ohio Valley Scribes (Evansville) show honoring Martin Friedman, our instructor at Oaklyn and founder of the OVS, who had just died.

Unfortunately for me and the noble art, calligraphy lost out to horsewomanship, a field into which I could not follow her, but one that she has found highly rewarding. She showed Pintos regularly for about ten years beginning in the early '90s, won the title of Miss Michigan Pinto in 2001, and competed for the national title, placing second. Despite several visits to Holland, I could not say what color the walls of her room were. They were covered with blue and red ribbons. She has tutored Paige in riding -- they have shown together -- and Paige is now the proud possessor of several of Aly's trophies (there probably simply isn't enough room for them all in Aly's Grand Rapids apartment).

Even I have benefited from Aly's deep knowledge of horses and horse showing. Not that even she can make a rider of me; but the court-reporting firm where I work has the contract for all disciplinary hearings for the U.S. Equestrian Federation, and the transcripts of these are routinely handed to me for editing, because I alone have Aly backing me up. Our ability to retain this prestigious contract is due in large measure to her skill; without her, my understanding of the equestrian world would comfortably fit inside an electron with room to spare for my musical talent. Her photo is on one of my computers at work, and the name of Alison Rademacher is held in honor on Brownsboro Park Boulevard.

Aly has recently been a university student and has worked as a waitress (in which capacity she has served me, which I have enjoyed immensely while regretting that she was not sharing the meal with me) and bartender. She is now preparing to enroll for her final class at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, where she moved from Holland after stops in Allendale and Jenison. She then plans to move to Fort Lauderdale, in which move she will be accompanied by her boyfriend, Derek, who also has occasion to celebrate today, since it is the first anniversary of his and Aly's first date. (I was delighted to discover that they're on the same team in a bowling league. She's averaging 105 now and recently rolled 146. Derek's average is 164.) In Fort Lauderdale, she will take up student teaching for fourth-graders in an exchange program called Urban Academies (she has already worked with a kindergarten class in Grand Rapids), upon whose completion she will graduate with a baccalaureate in elementary education.

(Meg is eager for me to complete my doctorate, and I have been concerned, given the rapidly rising school-entrance age, lest I be sent back to kindergarten before I receive a Ph.D. Should that still unlikely event occur, it's off to Florida for me. The one thing that would reconcile me to my lot would be the chance to recite "Good morning, Miss Rademacher" every day.)

Thanks for 20 years of friendship! Congratulations on your anniversary, Aly and Derek! Hail the Fourth of the Kalends of May! Sic unus, sic viginti, sic mille!

Thank you for 20 wonderful years, my friend

2005-04-28T18:46:00.000-04:00

Meet Alison "Aly" Rademacher, at once one of my youngest and oldest friends! She and I met for the first time 20 years ago today at Angel Mounds State Park east of Evansville.

(I haven't figured out how to put multiple photos in one post, so the next four "posts" are continuations of this one, followed by the one above.)

2005-04-28T18:42:00.000-04:00

Aly and me after her dance recital, Armstrong School, Evansville, 21 May 1988. (She's taller than I am now.)

2005-04-28T18:40:00.000-04:00

Aly at Angel Mounds, Evansville, October 1988. She's in white, poling the dugout canoe.

2005-04-28T18:37:00.000-04:00

Aly as Miss Michigan Pinto, 2001.

2005-04-28T18:35:00.000-04:00

Aly at "Big Red" lighthouse, Holland, Michigan, June 2003. She's on the landing.

Fat stuff

2005-04-24T23:14:00.000-04:00

Juvenal said that it was impossible for him to observe life in Rome and not write satire. While I don't want to turn the Creed into a fat-rights blog and lack Juvenal's powers in any case, it's fairly difficult for me to observe the ubiquity of baryophobia and not comment on it. I recently encountered it in a surprising (to me) venue and equally recently noted it in an area where it had been present for years but has never been addressed.

A little more than a year ago, at the request of a friend, I applied for membership in an organization which I will call Sempronius. Sempronius has some membership qualifications, similar in kind to those of Mensa, but it is a much smaller organization and is less commonly known. It has no meetings, all of its business being conducted online or through its journal.

I was accepted for membership and indeed contributed two articles to Sempronius' journal, one of which featured the picture of Paige and me playing rithmomachy (see December archives). Most of the action took place on its online mailing list, though, and I found myself receiving dozens of e-mails a day when I had previously not averaged more than two or three a week. Some of these were reprints of articles in the papers, and quite a few were tedious (and tendentious) defenses of materialistic monism, but several were of real interest and quality, and I took part in a few discussions.

Suddenly, in late February, my inbox was filled with denunciations of fat persons, along the lines of "Those blimps shouldn't be allowed to show their faces in public" and "I have to sit with them on Chicago trains, and I can't stand to look at their rear ends." Well, my rear end has graced, or possibly disgraced, the seat of a Chicago el train, and so has Meg's (definitely graced).

I promptly responded to the most virulent of the posters, whom I will call John, asking whether Meg, an emergency-room nurse with more than a decade of stellar service who is also "overweight" by fashionable standards, should also cower in shame so that his fastidious psyche might not be traumatized, and advising him to cut the photograph out of the journal, since all 340 pounds of me were on blatant display. I also posted to the list, noting that I could get all the shame and contempt I wanted merely by turning on the TV or radio, and that I hardly needed to pay annual dues to anyone for further doses of them; and, furthermore, that there was no point in my continuing the "discussion," since anyone who believed me unfit to appear in public was highly unlikely to be impressed by any evidence or arguments I might offer. Therefore, I was resigning my membership in Sempronius.

One of the officers, whom I will call Ted, responded by saying that I couldn't resign without writing a letter to the membership officer (who was in transit between residences and had no known mailing address) and asking me to remain in the organization, but discontinuing my access to the list. While this might seem reasonable, it was not balanced by discontinuing John's access, and he continued to post on the topic, as I discovered when John admitted as much in an e-mail to me expressing shock that I took the matter so personally (to which I replied simply by quoting his own posts and observing that the comments therein were not couched in the idiom of clinical discourse). When I questioned the asymmetry, especially since John had violated the list guidelines (made known to all members) by making personal attacks, Ted replied that John was not a Sempronian but a list member only -- he didn't get the journal and possibly didn't even qualify for membership. This was comforting insofar as it was now certain that his tender soul would not be seared by pictures of fat rithmomachy players, but disconcerting insofar as it now appeared that the interests of a qualified Sempronian who paid full dues had been sacrificed to those of a nonmember who did not.

I questioned this in a return e-mail to Ted, whereupon I was told that John's statements did not violate the guidelines since (a) Jews had also been attacked as a class and (b) I had not been mentioned by name.

Now, I don't consider myself PC at all. However, it's not PCness, but simple Aristotelian logic, that dictates that A and E propositions refer to all members of the subject class. If all humans are mortal, and Socrates is human, then Socrates is mortal. You can't argue that Socrates is immortal because the word "Socrates" doesn't appear in the major premise. Of course, any statement that "fat persons shouldn't show their faces" is a personal attack on Meg and me, regardless of whether we are named. (John may never have seen Meg. However, he had that photo and knew what I looked like.) I have no idea why I should meekly put up with such attacks, and I can't fathom what Jews have to do with the matter.

I had earlier pointed this out to John, and I mentioned it tonight to Ted, who is still trying to get me to rejoin (my membership had run out at the end of March, whether or not my resignation was valid). Since Ted is a law student, I put the argument in legal terms. Is it okay for me to commit murder because the statutes of Indiana make it illegal but do not specifically say that Bill Kenney may not commit it?

The real problem, though, as I told Ted in every e-mail, was that I had joined Sempronius in hopes of finding intelligent discussion, and had instead found the same vicious fat-hatred that I could find on five-sixths of the talk shows on TV. I had hoped that the filthy tide would not rise so high.

This leads, more or less, to the other venue (I need to work on writing segues), since it also purports to be, and often is, highly intellectual discourse. I refer to historical writing about the Third Reich. While there is a folk (or filk?) rule that the first person who mentions Nazis loses the argument, I'm not making an argument but an observation, and it's not about Nazis but about writing about them -- or about one of them.

It seems that authors cannot mention Hermann Goering three times without at least once identifying him as "fat" or "corpulent," as if there were a skinny Hermann Goering from whom he had to be distinguished. Nothing like this occurs when other Nazis are mentioned. Hitler's physique was far distant from that of the blond Nordics he believed to be alone worthy of power, but this contradiction is seldom mentioned and never reiterated. Himmler believed in the Welteislehre, a crank notion that the cosmos existed in a state of eternal struggle between fire and ice and that the Milky Way was a pile of gigantic blocks of ice, but his scientific ignorance is discussed only in essays specifically addressing science in Nazi Germany, not harped on every third time he is named. Goering himself was far more interested in looting the Louvre than in consuming the products of French restaurants, but he is not repeatedly referred to as an art thief. Why do we have to read over and over that Goering was fat? Isn't being a Nazi bad enough?

Just wondering. . .

Another big bang

2005-04-24T22:52:00.000-04:00

Meg, Savannah, and I had dinner Friday Evening at Rocky's Italian Pub in Jeffersonville, a restaurant that offers not only excellent pizza and ravioli but a first-class view of the Ohio and of downtown Louisville.

About 6:25, the sky darkened, and approximately five minutes later, we gaped as a funnel cloud formed over downtown Louisville, dipped down, struck something which exploded in a brilliant flash of light, and dissipated.

Soon afterward, hail fell, followed by 30 minutes or so of hard rain, and then, sunshine, accompanied by a sharp fall in temperature. Incredibly, Georgetown did not lose power, though it usually does so whenever a squirrel elects to relieve itself on the lines.

The 11:00 news reports mentioned only that trees were down in St. Matthews (apparently some trees survived last May's storms) and that a few tents blew away in downtown Louisville, these having been pitched in anticipation of the appropriately named Thunder Over Louisville. Nothing was said about the explosion, although several hundred persons must have witnessed it; there were at least 100 patrons in Rocky's alone, and five tour buses carrying observers to the Thunder show were parked outside the restaurant.

What blew up? Meg thinks it was a transformer, and I'm sure she's right.

A mixed bag

2005-04-20T23:35:00.000-04:00

State results are up. How did my predictions fare?

Almost a sure thing: 3 out of 4. Madison's missing a tiebreaker mattered not at all, as the math squad posted the only 24 in Class 2 in the state to qualify first in the class and put the Cubs in the finals for the 18th year in a row. Scottsburg (Class 2) and Orleans (Class 4) easily topped their classes in fine arts, Scottsburg by 2 over its closest rival and Orleans by 3 over its. However, Lanesville (Class 4) missed qualifying for interdisciplinary on a tiebreaker, though its 19 tied with the lowest qualifier's total score.

About even chances: 3 out of 4. Madison failed to qualify in science, losing on a tiebreaker, but did qualify in second place in English, 1 point behind the leader. Scottsburg's 22 in math gave it a fifth-place ranking among the six finalists; the interdisciplinary squad of Bedford-North Lawrence (Class 1) slipped in under the wire, placing seventh of seven by virtue of having 6 correct answers in a row, the third tiebreaker, while two other schools with equal raw scores and first and second tiebreakers had but 5.

Outside chances: Bupkis. The best performance here was that of Scottsburg's English squad, which placed tenth in Class 2. However, neither it nor BNL's social-studies squad, Austin's science squad, or BNL's science squad scored high enough to qualify, even without tiebreakers. BNL and FC weren't even close in English.

Total score: 6 out of 14, though I did pretty well at estimating the chances -- in fact, three of my "almost sure things" actually topped their classes (though the fourth didn't make state).

Type II errors: None; our region had no qualifiers other than the six I picked right. Columbus East (Class 1) did qualify in fine arts, but is assigned to a different region.

(While I'm on the topic of different regions, I'd like to wander back home and congratulate my nieces' alma mater, Castle High in Newburgh, which topped Class 1 in interdisciplinary; Castle's archrival Boonville (Class 2), fifth in interdisciplinary; and Bosse (Class 2), the only Evansville school to make state, placing third in social studies.)

State finals are Saturday, May 7. Best wishes to all competitors at Lafayette!

Report from regionals

2005-04-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

(Retraction: In my previous post, I said that I proctored the Scottsburg math squad at the 2004 Austin regionals. In fact, I proctored the Madison math squad that suffered defeat at Scottsburg's hands.)

The 2005 Academic Bowl regionals are over but not yet in the books, because scores have to be checked with proctors' records of items right and wrong and then totaled across the state before state finalists are announced tomorrow at 1 P.M. (noon Indianapolis time).

A record number of schools -- 22 -- competed at Austin tonight. As usual, Madison posted the highest overall total, 112, but there was no runaway this year; Scottsburg was close on the Cubs' heels at 109, and Bedford-North Lawrence not far back at 105.

Overall scores don't count in regionals, though, even though the Madison players pondered their overall rank several times during the evening (I know this because I was assigned to Madison again this year) and I provided the Floyd Central coaches with aggregate scores after the competition. It's round scores that count. A strong showing in one subject may send a school's squad in that subject to the finals even though no other squad from that school goes on. Even Madison rarely qualifies all its squads for the finals.) Furthermore, schools are ranked in four classes based on enrollment, and a squad may go to state with one score and another from a different school fail to qualify even though its score is higher. Also, you have to have one of the highest totals in Indiana, not just in your region; even a first place in your class doesn't guarantee you a trip to Lafayette, and a second or even a third may not debar you if you have a strong raw score.

Luckily for FC, we don't compete head to head with Madison; we're in Class 1 (the really BIG schools) and they're in Class 2. Unluckily for FC, we do compete with Bedford-North Lawrence, which looks like joining Scottsburg in challenging Madison for supremacy. BNL won every round, including interdisciplinary, against its Class 1 foes en route to that 105 (though it was outscored several times by smaller schools). In Class 2, Madison and Scottsburg faced off, Madison winning in math, English, and science, while Scottsburg achieved a sound 21-15 victory in fine arts; the two schools tied at 16 in social studies and the interdisciplinary round -- I don't know who won on tiebreakers yet (that will also be announced tomorrow). Class in Class 3 was Southwestern, eking out an 83-82 win over Crawford County; tiny Orleans racked up a superb 96 to top Class 4 and take fourth in overall total.

While there were no 25's, Madison again scored 24 in math to register the highest round total of the night, a heartbreaker because the miss came on the last question (which is further problematic because the first tiebreaker is the number right out of the last five, and the second is the number right out of the last three). Second best was -- who else? -- Scottsburg, again in math, with 22. Scores of 21 were recorded by Scottsburg and Orleans in fine arts (what's in the water in Orleans that makes that little school turn out powerhouse fine-arts squads?) and by Madison in science, while 20's were achieved by Madison in English and by BNL in science and the interdisciplinary round.

Overall, scores were a bit lower this year than last; Madison totaled 114 last year, and a score of 80 was no better than average, while only 8 of the 22 schools reached that figure this year.

How about FC? We came in third among the five Class 1 schools, our 76 nosing out Jeff and Jennings County, both with 75. Individually, we pulled down a second in class in English, albeit with a 13, and thirds in class in social studies and science. (BNL, remember, won first in class in everything.) The surprise in Class 1 was New Albany, which posted an overall 83 in its first year of competition, though it too was blown away by the BNL typhoon, and came away with seconds in class in fine arts and math and ties for second in class in science and the interdisciplinary round.

Predictions for state:

Almost a sure thing: Madison in math (the question mark is the timing of the miss -- had it come in the first 20 nontiebreaker questions, I'd give the Cubs a lock); Orleans and Scottsburg in fine arts; Lanesville in interdisciplinary (a 19, but in Class 4 in a tough round -- Madison scored only 16 and only BNL topped the Eagles).

About even chances: Scottsburg in math (a 22, but math tends to produce high scores and 23's are not extremely rare); Madison in science (again, relatively high average scores in this round weaken the effect of a 21) and English (Madison's 20 was three points better than the 17 of Scottsburg, the closest challenger, indicating that the subject might be tougher than historically typical -- not surprising since the topic was Russian literature); BNL in interdisciplinary (20, though the best ID score of the night, is a bit low for a nearly sure thing, although interdisciplinary is the toughest round of all).

Outside chances: BNL in science (any 20 rates at least an outside chance); Salem in interdisciplinary (18 in Class 3); Austin in science (ditto); Scottsburg in English (again, the Russian theme may have lowered average scores in this subject, making a 17 possible state-final material); BNL in social studies (its 17 topped the Austin field, but even though SS is usually rough, a 17 doesn't often make state in the subject) and English (see next entry); FC in English (hope springs eternal).

We'll see how good my predictions are in about half a day.

Austin, here we come!

2005-04-18T22:49:00.000-04:00

Academic Bowl season isn't long enough. It just started, FC had one meet, and regionals are here. Fifteen or so local squads, including the Highlanders, will converge on Austin in Scott County tomorrow at 5 P.M., just as similarly sized groups will congregate at other points around Indiana, to decide who goes to the state finals at Purdue on May 7.

Officially, there's no overall winner at a regional; you can calculate total team score, but it doesn't bear on who goes to state. No one will know, in fact, until all the points are totaled statewide, because it's the top scorers in each subject who go on -- seven of the largest schools, six of the middle-sized ones, and five of the smallest. Last year, both Madison and its surprising conqueror Scottsburg sent their math squads to state, since no one anywhere else matched their 24's.

Since I mentioned Madison (you can't really discuss Academic Bowl in this part of Indiana and not mention Madison), I'd like to note two things that especially impressed me there. I was pleasantly surprised to find that his "Clifty" honors the coryphaeus of our Creed with an Eggleston Elementary School. (There's another Eggleston Elementary on the north side of South Bend, about a Bud Means rock toss from the Michigan line.) Just as remarkable was the trophy case at Madison High. Many high schools fill vitrines with athletic trophies, and so do the Cubs; few, though, can match Madison's stunning display of academic trophies. Attached to the glass front panel of the greatest heap of intellectual spoils I have ever seen is a time line documenting all of Madison's state-final appearances and championships. The line remounts to the beginning of statewide academic competition in 1988 without a break. Not once have the Cubs failed to be represented, and in all but one or two years they have sent squads to the finals in more than one subject.

Will the streak continue in 2005? Can Floyd Central break through to the finals? We won't be certain until the statewide totals are posted on Wednesday. But exciting competition is a sure bet for tomorrow night -- all over Indiana, and definitely in Austin.

Last year I proctored for that incredible Scottsburg math squad, and I'm still reeling from Columbus East's performance last month. I can hardly wait to see whom Floyd Central will be proctoring tomorrow.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

When creation precedes the big bang

2005-04-05T21:56:00.000-04:00

(Legal preface: "Scrabble" is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc., in the U.S. and Canada, and of J.W. Spear and Sons PLC elsewhere in the world.)

A few months ago, in response to a challenge from some of my coworkers, I constructed a Scrabble game with a single play scoring more than 1,000 points. Some days later, I Googled my wonderful word only to discover that I had been beaten to it by a Kiwi named Jeff Grant -- but, as a consolation, I also learned that I had independently, though belatedly, found the highest-scoring word yet known.

I don't have Mr. Grant's game, but here's mine. You may need a board and tiles to follow along. In the standard method of recording Scrabble games, the columns are lettered A to O from the left, and the rows are numbered 1 to 15 from the top. A play is recorded by writing the word, the letter of its column (if vertical) or the number of its row (if horizontal), and the rows or columns it spans.. The word WORD with the W on C4 would be recorded as WORD 4 C-F if it ran horizontally and as WORD C 4-7 if it ran vertically.

PLAYER 1
... PLAYER 2 SCORE

1 REAL H7-10
1 ... VOTERS 11 C-H 8-23
2 RATTAN 7 H-M
2 ... RADIO G 11-15 16-29
3 SOOTH E 8-12
3 ... YIELD 13 C-G 24-56
4 BET K 5-7
4 ... DABBLE 5 H-M 34-66 (the L in DABBLE is a blank)
5 POUND H 1-5
5 ... FRANK 4 E-I 61-84
6 KAVA I 4-7
6 ... AWE L 7-9 72-94
7 CREEPY 9 J-O
7 ... LOONY O 5-9 86-118
8 JO 6 N-O
8 ... FUEL D 6-9 111-129
9 MATES 8 A-E
9 ... CATERED J 9-15 132-143
10 PURLOIN N 9-15
10 ... YES C 13-15 154-149
11 GEM 12 I-K
11 ... HE M 4-5 160-154
12 LOT 9 D-F
12 ... ID 15 I-J 162-157 (the L in LOT is a blank)
13 HI 4 M-N
13 ... IO 15 F-G 167-159
14 OW 2 H-I
14 ... IN 15 M-N 172-161
15 ES 15 B-C
15 ... DAMNING A 6-12 174-174

Even though Player 1 has caught up, Player 2 has reason to feel confident. He holds only a C, while Player 1 holds G, I, Q, S, U, X, and Z. Even if 1 can manage to rid himself of one of the rarities, he's surely going to be stuck with 20+ points once 2 drops his C on G2 in front of OW. Everything looks cozy, until ...

16 SESQUIOXIDIZING 15 A-O
16 ... (no play; 1 is out) 1,898-174
17 (gains 2 x 3 for C) 1,904-174

The score for SESQUIOXIDIZING is 1,724. Player 1 covers all five bonus squares on row 15, placing the high-scoring Q and Z on double-letter squares. This yields a base score of 62, which is vigintiseptupled by the three triple-word squares to make 1,674. The bonus of 50 for clearing the rack on a single play is lagniappe.

In Mr. Grant's game, SESQUIOXIDIZING reportedly scored 1,962, presumably through links to words already on the board. If a 14-letter noun or verb occupied A 1-14, the initial S would not only pluralize (or singularize) it but triple its score. The score of 1,724 is a "pure" score including no other words.

Baby, baby, fallin' in love. . .

2005-04-04T23:56:00.000-04:00

Zada Brooklynn Jenkins (left, in yellow) and Emilie Jane Sartor (right, in pink) together with Nana Meg (behind, in bliss) and Grandpa Bee (elsewhere, in hiding) for Easter.

The field is set. . .

2005-04-04T22:48:00.000-04:00

. . .for the 78th National Spelling Bee. NSB regulations currently require that all regional championships be decided by 31 March.

At least one regional bee, in Waynesboro, Virginia, was held on the last day:

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050401/NEWS01/504010308&SearchID=73204082593922

Best of luck to the champion, sixth-grader Jordan Driskill. However, "lathe" and "sierra" don't seem difficult enough to be the words that determine who goes to Washington. (Evansville's William Weitzel won on "appellate" and "cilantro," while Louisville's John Tamplin claimed his fourth consecutive Kentucky Derby Festival bee the day before Easter with "myxomatosis" and "chatelaine." Side note: La Chatelaine was the name of a restaurant in Washington's Mayflower Hotel when I was there for the NSB in 1970. The contestant from Lubbock, Texas, was named Elaine, and I did chat with her, though not at La Chatelaine.)

The NSB hasn't posted the roster yet. I'll link to their site when the names are announced.

It's been almost 35 years. . .

2005-03-24T23:39:00.000-05:00

. . .since I first encountered an high-school principal, and the tribe has done little since to induce me to moderate the contempt I swiftly developed for that one.

It's not just me, and it's not just Indiana. Back to RI&PP, already saddled with Linda Newman, for this morsel of hubris:

http://zerointelligence.net/archives/000377.php

Note how administrators go right on defending their indefensible behavior even when it dimly penetrates their two-volt minds that they don't have a logical or legal leg to stand on. Mr. Velasquez must still be chastised for being insufficiently "respectful" toward those whose birth certificates are more lavishly dog-eared than his, even when they have committed illegal acts for which he would have been expelled and possibly lodged in juvie had he committed them.

Read Zero Intelligence. It'll enlighten you. . .or madden you.

Call me Arrhidaios ...

2005-03-18T17:52:00.000-05:00

... because after you read this, you'll know I'm the half-witted king of macedoines. The computer has been so slow that it's only now that I'm able to post much of anything, and it'll have to be a big blooming buzzing confusion, because the beast may break down at any moment.

First off: FC didn't win the Hoosier Hills Conference academic title at Madison. We didn't even come close. As usual, Madison performed splendidly, achieving a titanic score of 120, superb even by Madisonian standards. As is not so usual, the Olympians of Columbus East, emulating their mythic namesakes, overcame this titanic effort with an incredible 125. East's lowest round score was 19 -- a score that nearly always guarantees a finish in the top three and is generally good for a win. There were no perfect 25's, but East got 24 in English and Madison 24 in science (the fifth round), where East scored "only" 19 and Madison wiped out all but 2 of East's 7-point lead going into the round, making for an exciting interdisciplinary final wherein East topped the hosts 20-17.

I was front row center for the most amazing performance I have ever witnessed by an academic squad, since I was assigned as proctor to Columbus East throughout the meet. I suspect that Olympus was assisted by ringers from Asgard, or possibly Valhalla, as the young woman on East's math squad bore the name Valkyrie Savage.

FC's score? A respectable 94, but far behind the leaders. Mid-Southern champ Scottsburg came in third at Madison with 105, and Columbus North was fourth with 104. Bedford-North Lawrence turned in a remarkable 99 for fifth -- remarkable because they arrived late and didn't even field a squad for the first round, fine arts. Jennings County's 97 was sixth; we were seventh. Rounding out the field were Austin (84), Switzerland County (82), and Rising Sun (72).

Next: I attended the Tri-State Spelling Bee in Evansville last Saturday, as I have done every year except two since 1967. Evansville's own William Weitzel won this time around (he lost last year to Alexander Stephens of Williamson County, Illinois, who went on to score the Evansville region's best finish ever at nationals with a fifth place). He was challenged strongly by an home-schooler, Jenna Freudenburg, who also placed high last year, but corrected her misspelling of "appellate" and won with "cilantro." The third through fifth places were taken by Illini, continuing their strong tradition in the Evansville regional.

During the break that always occurs at Evansville when a round begins with five spellers, I noticed a man sitting behind me with what looked like the word list. It turned out that he was a reporter for the Evansville Courier who would be writing the final article on the bee, and that the booklet he held was indeed the word list. We discussed the history of the Vanderburgh County and Tri-State bees, and I mentioned that I disliked the list compilers' predilection for using obscure definitions of words that were much better known with other definitions. He said that he'd never noticed that. Three rounds after the break, guess what? Jenna Freudenburg got the word "affluent" -- defined as a tributary of a river. "Are there any other definitions?" she asked incredulously. "Not on this list," intoned the pronouncer. Fortunately, she had a strong enough grasp of word origins and roots that she got it right.

Third, the computer room is full of Aaron's stuff, because we're changing it into a bathroom. The present bathroom will be conjoined with the erstwhile computer room to become the master bedroom; Savannah and Zada will move into the present master bedroom; and Aaron will get the room that is now Savannah's. The cat box will remain in its current position. Aaron got rid of a lot of books, but he appropriately retained his preschool favorite, The Bert and Ernie Book, which describes a chain-reaction shift of positions (engineered by Ernie and bringing Bert to the brink of apoplexy) even more madcap, if less ponderous, than ours.

Last but far from least, Meg will be coming in the door in a few minutes, and if all the stars align, she'll soon be followed by Paige, Lana, and Barry, and we'll celebrate Christmas with them at last, after our meeting was first postponed by snow and then by viruses (absit omen!).

God rest ye merry, gentlemen; let nothing you dismay; remember Christ our Savior was about three months old on Saint Patrick's Day ...

Sports news

2005-03-03T23:24:00.000-05:00

Showing that its memorable upset of prohibitively favored Madison in mathematics at the 2004 Austin Regionals was no fluke, Scottsburg High School overcame a score of 11 in the tough interdisciplinary sixth period to post a total of 92 and win the Ninth Annual North Harrison Academic Invitational earlier tonight. Scottsburg also claimed the Mid-Southern Conference championship.

Scottsburg's total of 20 in social studies, the second period, won it first place in that subject and stood as the second-best period total of the night. Scores of 17 in the first period, fine arts, and the third, math, gave the Warriors 54 halfway through.

The Warriors held on for the win despite being nearly caught by Brownstown Central. The Braves trailed Scottsburg 81-72 entering the sixth, but put on a 17-point burst to win the ID round and close to within three. At 89, the Braves tied with Martinsville, which tallied 14 in the final period, combining that result with a period-winning 17 in the fourth, English, and 16 in the fifth, science, to amass 47 in the second half, an Artesian surge that, however, came too late.

Little Orleans, a strong presence in recent years, placed fourth with 88. The Bulldogs led through most of the opening period, fine arts being an Orleans specialty of late; however, they faded at the close of the period to place fourth in FA behind Scottsburg, Austin, and Springs Valley. This slight disappointment was more than overcome by the strong 19 in the third period, mathematics, which snared a tie for first with Martinsville in that subject for the 'Dogs.

The host Cougars took fifth with balanced scoring that yielded a total score of 86. North Harrison snagged at least 12 points in every round; its high score was 18 in the fifth period, tying for second in science with Perry Central and Shoals.

Also balanced in its scoring was tiny Lanesville, which came in sixth with 83, claiming second in the interdisciplinary period with 15. Perry Central took the middle of the 13-team field with 82.

Though Crawford County only tied for eighth with Springs Valley, the Wolfpack registered the highest period total of the match, a superb 21 in the fifth period, science, which, unfortunately, came too late for the Pack to close in on the leaders. CC and Springs Valley each scored 80.

Rounding out the field were Salem, 79; West Washington, 76; regional host Austin, 74; and Shoals, 66. Though low scores in fine arts and math toppled the Jug Rox early, Shoals achieved a tie for second in science.

Clarksville, a fourteenth competitor, entered in social studies only and scored 10, tying with Shoals and Lanesville.

The match was run skillfully, as usual, by the North Harrison staff. No questions had to be substituted because of errors, though the sixth period began with amusing moments when Shoals' scorer began by flipping the tens page of the score tablet, giving the Jug Rox an incredible 30 points before the mistake was discovered and the Shoals score reduced to 3.

The next report will come on Monday, when Floyd Central invades perennial power Madison with the Hoosier Hills Conference championship on the line.

BOX SCORE

Fine Arts Soc. Studies Math English Science ID TOTAL

Scottsburg 17 20 17 10 17 11 92
Brownstown 10 16 18 13 15 17 89
Martinsville 9 14 19 17 16 14 89
Orleans 15 11 19 15 14 14 88
North Harrison 12 14 17 13 18 12 86
Lanesville 14 10 16 12 16 15 83
Perry Central 11 15 14 14 18 10 82
Crawford County 13 12 13 9 21 12 80
Springs Valley 16 11 12 10 17 14 80
Salem 9 15 13 13 16 13 79
West Washington 13 13 14 12 12 12 76
Austin 16 17 14 5 12 10 74
Shoals 8 10 7 11 18 12 66
Clarksville - 10 - - - - 10

SUBJECT WINNERS

Fine Arts: 1, Scottsburg, 17; 2/3 (tie), Austin and Scottsburg, 16
Social Studies: 1, Scottsburg, 20; 2, Austin, 17; 3, Brownstown Central, 16
Math: 1/2 (tie), Martinsville and Orleans, 19; 3, Brownstown Central, 18
English: 1, Martinsville, 17; 2, Orleans, 15; 3 (3-way tie), North Harrison, Brownstown Central, Salem, all 13
Science: 1, Crawford County, 21; 2/3/4 (3-way tie), North Harrison, Perry Central, Shoals, all 18
Interdisciplinary: 1, Brownstown Central, 17; 2, Lanesville, 15; 3 (3-way tie), Martinsville, Orleans, Springs Valley, all 14

Watch out, Kitty

2005-02-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

Sparkles, our cat, in her perpetual quest for pup-inaccessible perches, recently discovered our rithmomachy board. You can see a picture of the board in the December archive, with my friend Paige and me playing a game. She sits between the opposing ranks of numbered pieces, but closer to the odd side. This morning, I found her sitting directly in front of the odd vanguard, containing pieces numbered 3, 5, 7, and 9.

She'd better jump back up there and enjoy it. She has 13 minutes of safety left.

On March 1, Sparkles will be 15. If she goes on sitting next to the number 5, someone (or somepup) might move the 3 diagonally forward to the left. 3 x 5 = 15. Ambush!

No sophomore jinx, please

2005-02-25T21:04:00.000-05:00

I made the team again!

Mr. Donovan Robinson, head coach of Floyd Central High's academic team, graciously accepted me as a proctor for the 2005 season, which begins statewide on Monday, though FC opens on March 7. I was a proctor for FC for the first time last year.

Oddly enough, a proctor has little contact with her or his own school's team, because it's her or his job to sit with another school's squad and make sure that they don't refer to notes or use programmed calculators or overstep the time limit. This drawback excepted, it's a dream volunteer job for a fellow who enjoys academic competition.

It's Mr. Robinson's first year as coach -- last year's coach, Josh Whicker, was transferred to the new Highland Hills -- and he's in for a baptism of fire. The March 7 meet is at Madison. What about Madison? Think IUS at Duke. During the last three years, out of 150 possible points per meet, the Cubs have routinely scored over 100 and frequently top 110, while the average is between 75 and 80. (Officially, only round, or subject, totals are kept, not grand totals, but invitationals frequently declare an overall winner.) Beating Madison in a single subject area -- there are five, plus a sixth interdisciplinary round -- is a noteworthy accomplishment. Often enough, the Cub interdisciplinary squad doesn't really need to hit the floor, because Madison is so far ahead after five periods that nobody can hope to catch up in the sixth.

The Cubs' gym eerily resembles a lions' den. But if anybody can field a team of Daniels, it's Floyd Central. Go Highlanders!

A turn of the tables

2005-02-23T23:05:00.000-05:00

I often turn on "Oldies" WRKA-103.1 as I drive to work in the morning, partly because they play my kind of music -- I'm 47 -- and partly because the 8 o'clock news is accompanied by a traffic report, enabling me to learn what areas I need to bypass because there's a collision or because traffic is stymied by snow, or by rain, or by sunshine, any of which can send Louisville-area drivers' Glasgow Coma Scale scores into the subbasement.

This morning, the 8 o'clock news led off with a report that the CDC in Atlanta feared the possibility that Asian avian flu might mutate, in response to which the government has apparently ordered some derisory amount of vaccine possibly sufficient to immunize the upper class, after which came an announcement that three persons in Louisville were ill with bacterial meningitis. After this item, the female announcer moaned that she didn't want to hear any more health stories.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with preventing contagious diseases, so I might as well say that my equilibrium was a bit disturbed too. After ten or so seconds had passed, though, I thought: "Wait a minute. This woman is getting a little taste of what it's like to be fat, and she can't take it."

You see, she'd just heard the health news the way I'd report it. But how is the health news usually reported? Fat this, weight that, obesity something else. I suspect that if I took every condition that's ever been blamed on fat (do you know that carpal-tunnel syndrome has been blamed on fat?) and added up all the lost life expectancy I'm supposed to have incurred by weighing 340, I'd find out that I should have died sometime in the reign of Henry VIII. And I've had to listen to the crescendo of baryophobia for over 45 years. Now I'm supposed to feel sorry for someone who can't bear 45 seconds of being reminded that other things can kill you?

The bee that almost wasn't -- has been!

2005-02-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Sarah McGill, a sixth-grader from Lincoln, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, who won her district spelling bee on Thursday, February 17.

As you may recall, this was The Bee That Almost Wasn't. It's a safe bet that Ms. McGill and her 17 opponents didn't see Ms. Linda Newman when they scanned the ranks of the audience in the Lincoln High auditorium. It's an equally safe bet that neither she nor they shed any tears therefor. Their common foe was defeated. The stage was theirs.

A brief news story appears in the Pawtucket Times, though I would like to note that "School Department administrators" didn't just consider canceling the bee -- they DID cancel it:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13987174&BRD=1713&PAG=461&dept_id=24491&rfi=8

The Valley Breeze has a picture of Ms. McGill and the second- and third-place winners, Jonathan Kwarta and Nick Calabro, at www.valleybreeze.com .

Best wishes to Sarah McGill in the state bee on March 5!

Valentine villain?

2005-02-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

In about 30 minutes, it will be Valentine's Day, a time for lovers around the world to send flowers, celebrate romance -- and blacken the name of Marcus Aurelius Claudius, otherwise known as Claudius II, Roman Emperor from 268 to 270.

About the only time most of us reflect on the second half of the third century is when we read a version of the story of Saint Valentine's martyrdom. In popular versions (some of which appear on actual valentines), Claudius is represented as forbidding youths to marry, or sometimes as abolishing marriage itself, because he believed that married men made poor soldiers -- or sometimes merely out of madness -- whereupon Valentine, a Christian priest, marries several couples in defiance of the edict and is promptly executed by the enraged emperor.

Apart from the frequent omission of the regnal number and consequent attribution of the act to Claudius I (my favorite emperor, of "I, Claudius" fame), which is distressing enough, there are a few inaccuracies in the popular account which ought to be cleared up, in fairness to a man who, though he may indeed have been a persecutor, was not driven by hatred of marriage or love. He was trying to save his empire.

To begin with, there is simply no evidence that Claudius II issued such a decree. The legal sources for his period are admittedly scanty, but several of his enactments survived to be included in Justinian's code. None, so far as I know, refers to marriage at all, nor is there any indication that a law forbidding marriage was reversed by a later ruler.

What Claudius II possibly did do was to revive an ancient prohibition of marriage of serving soldiers that had been in effect throughout the first and second centures, but which had been abolished by Septimius Severus (193-211) in an attempt to placate the troops. The early emperors had found, not that married men made poor soldiers, but that married men made sessile soldiers -- they didn't want to uproot their families and move when their units were transferred (enlistment in the Roman army was for 25 years).

Claudius needed troops who could be moved, and moved fast. The barbarian invasions of the fifth century are rather well known, but the barbarians of the third century were a good deal more barbaric than their fifth-century successors, and they were invading just about everywhere. On top of that, the east and west ends of the empire had broken away, Gaul, Spain, and Britain forming an empire of their own, and much of the present Levant under either Persian assault or Palmyrene rule. While the figure of 320,000 sometimes given for the Gothic horde which Claudius defeated at Naissus (now Nis, Serbia) is probably greatly exaggerated, the invaders certainly outnumbered the Roman forces available in the province (the entire Roman army did not contain more than 300,000 troops at the time). Claudius needed every man he could sweep up, and it's not at all unlikely that he saw Severus' legalization of soldiers' marriage as an obstacle.

One doesn't have to like the idea of persecution of Christians or agree with Claudius' belief that the empire's salvation took precedence over its soldiers' love lives to understand that while he may have been in some respects a desperate man, he was not a madman or even necessarily an anti-romantic. Besides, his victory did destroy the greatest threat to the empire's survival, and when the West was eventually taken over by barbarians, those barbarians had had a further 150 years or so to become Romanized and Christianized. Constantine, despite his sympathy with and eventual conversion to Christianity, did not disavow his brave predecessor; indeed, he proclaimed, possibly truly, his descent from him.

To close by paraphrasing Willie Nelson: Valentine hears your prayers, that's true; so say a few for Claudius, II.

Whose Calvin?

2005-02-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

Deposition transcribers are hard-working, generally knowledgeable folk, but once in a while an editor just has to throw his hands in the air.

Today, I was working on a depo in a workers' compensation case when I read the following exchange. The employer's attorney has just asked the witness/plaintiff what she did once she suffered her injury and went to the employer's offices to report it:

A. I was in pain when I got there, so I went to talk to Calvin [name changed].
Q. Whose Calvin?

"Is Calvin a slave? Is the attorney trying to identify his owner?" was what I wanted to ask the transcriber. The crowning irony: Transcription is a second job for her. She's an instructor at a nearby university -- in the English department.

Io Triumphe!

2005-02-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

Determined parents and citizens, incredulous journalists, and that rara avis, a superintendent of schools willing to reverse a decision, combined to score an upset victory over administrative absurdity in Lincoln, Rhode Island, on Monday.

THE BEE IS BACK!!!

According to an article by Elizabeth Gudrais in the Providence Journal for February 1, Lincoln school superintendent John Tindall-Gibson didn't even know about the cancellation -- dreamed up in January 2004 , before he became superintendent, by assistant superintendent Linda Newman and five school principals -- until he learned of it from newspapers and talk radio. Curiously, three of the five principals have since retired.

Tindall-Gibson found out about the cancellation, and about the firestorm it was raising among Lincolnians and other Rhode Islanders -- who were writing letters to every editor in the state and phoning, e-mailing, and buttonholing school-committee members from hell to breakfast. The Woonsocket Call alone received 79 letters, not one of whose authors supported the cancellation.

After, in the words of the official news release, "thoughtful consideration" -- "and a lot of input," adds Ms. Gudrais -- Tindall-Gibson overrode his effrenate underling. The Providence Journal, which sponsors the state bee, graciously waived its requirement that districts register by the previous October so that Lincoln's schools could hold bees in preparation for a district contest on February 17 (the state bee takes place on March 5, and Lincoln has a winter vacation from February 19 through February 27).

Equally gracious was the response by National Spelling Bee director Paige Kimble, national champion in 1981. She sought to meet any genuine concerns about the feelings of defeated competitors by observing that schools and districts were free to offer prizes for participation (something we've done in Evansville for more than 50 years) and that "there are benefits and rewards in life for just having tried." Tindall-Gibson noted that "[w]e'll certainly be giving that a lot of thought. . . .I would expect at least we'd be giving certificates to every kid. Everybody deserves to walk away with something." Absolutely right.

"Spelling bees, when done correctly and in a celebratory fashion, can be a rich experience even for those who aren't among the last left standing at the end of the bee," says Kimble, who has proved that she knows how to do spelling bees. Again, absolutely right.

Best of luck to the Lincoln spellers! Now, if that pile out in Nebraska were so easy to clean up. . .

(The Web site of the Providence Journal, www.projo.com , requires registration. The article, dated February 1, is entitled "How do you spell 'oops'? Lincoln spelling bee is back on.")

Deep doo-doo in Lincolns

2005-01-30T18:57:00.000-05:00

David Dickinson of Milford, Nebraska, just outside Lincoln, has a disturbing problem. It seems that the waste products of his burgeoning kine-fattening operation have compressed themselves into a state of spontaneous combustion -- which has entered its third month.

CNN has an article with the finest photograph of a burning sterquiliny I have ever seen at http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/28/cow.fire.ap/ .

Farther east, the good citizens of Lincoln, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, find themselves confronted with a more noxious, if less immediately tangible, pile of flaming manure. The assistant superintendent of schools, in the ineffable chuckleheadedness so typical of educational administrators, has decided on the grounds of a "feeling" that the regional spelling bee should cease forthwith. The idiocy is old and tired, but the excuse is new. If there's one place where educrats show imagination, it's finding excuses not to recognize the intellectually talented. The Woonsocket Call has an article at:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13834334&BRD=1712&PAG=461&dept_id=478996&rfi=6

Or, if you can't bring this up, Kimberly "Number 2 Pencil" Swygert has extensive quotes under "Spelling the End of Spelling Bees," January 28, at www.kimberlyswygert.com .

I've voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1976, and I'd love to hang this albatross around Dubya's neck; unfortunately, that's not where it belongs. Whatever one might think of NCLB, there's no way in Tartarus it could reasonably be interpreted to mean that academic competition should end. This odoriferous pile of poop is the product of Ms. Newman and her minions.

News flash: If you're a public employee, save your feelings for your lover and your psychiatrist. The public is entitled to cogent reasoning. They pay your salary. They don't give a Turkish lira what you feel.

The encouraging sign is that the Call received 44 comments, and that all 44 were in favor of reinstating the bee -- good and bad spellers alike.

So, which stack would you prefer to live next to? I'd think a clutch of one-way tickets from Providence to Omaha might be a great investment.

Okay, so what's the Egglestonian Creed?

2005-01-30T15:38:00.000-05:00

The Creed is: "Words were made to be spelled, and men were created that they might spell them." It was proclaimed in 1871 by Edward Eggleston in his minor classic The Hoosier School-Master, dear to my heart not only because of its rustic Indiana setting but because it is one of the few works of literature in which a spelling bee -- Eggleston's characters call it a "spelling-school" -- is a principal scene and turning point. The title character, Ralph Hartsook, unseats the defending champion on "theodolite," only to be himself upset by the darkest of horses, a young woman named Hannah who is an indentured servant, when she spells a word he cannot, a word so new to rural Indiana that it was not even in the spelling books -- "daguerreotype." Much of the novel's later action springs from the unexpected consequences of Hartsook's defeat. (There was no "inclusive language" in 1871. That didn't stop Hannah. Women were created that they might spell, too.)

Eggleston was being gently sardonic, pointing out that rural schools of the period overemphasized the spelling of words as opposed to their meaning. Yet the idea that a society, backward though it might have been in so many ways, once existed in which spelling (or any intellectual) competition was pivotal in a way it no longer is in ours must capture the imagination of anyone who cherishes such competition. For, despite the term "spelling-school," the contenders are not generally schoolchildren. Jim Phillips, the defending champion, has distinguished himself by defeating the last three schoolmasters; his exploits have been eagerly followed even by the tough fighter and weak speller Israel "Bud" Means, with whom he "divided the hero-worship of the district." Hartsook, of course, is honor-bound to compete because of his profession, despite the looming threat of Phillips. Even Hannah is 18 -- another fact that takes on unexpected importance near the end of the story.

I don't want to go farther into The Hoosier School-Master here -- instead, I want to encourage you to read it. Suffice it to say that, despite all today's fears, Hartsook's self-esteem is not in the slightest damaged by his stunning loss.

There's no panic like snow panic

2005-01-30T15:02:00.000-05:00

Meg and I had dinner with her sister Phyllis on Friday. During the meal, as federal law requires, the phone rang. Phyllis' younger son, Samuel, had a call from his scoutmaster. Sam excused himself, took the call, and returned a minute later to say that his troop's skiing trip to Paoli Peaks, planned for Saturday, had been canceled because an inch of snow had been predicted for Saturday morning. Yes, a skiing trip had been called off on account of snow.

On Saturday morning, about a centimeter of snow having actually fallen, I received a call from one of Meg's brothers, Don, who is remodeling an old house nearby and who was looking for Savannah's boyfriend, B.J., who has been helping him. I said that Savannah and B.J. were at his parents' house. Don replied that he wanted to tell B.J. not to come, since he was afraid that the roads were bad. Now, Don faced AK-47-wielding Iraqis in Desert Storm, and he's one of the hardest workers I've ever met. But two-fifths of an inch of snow were too much even for him.

That's life in Greater Louisville, snow-panic capital of the universe. This is a place where school has been canceled because snow has been predicted -- leaving kids to revel in absolutely flakeless weather the following day. This is where John Belski, a local meteorologist, once gave a talk to an audience of grocers and told them that he knew their three favorite words -- "winter storm warning." This is a place where the first hint of snow in the offing generates a gadarene rush to the groceries for bread and milk, even though three-fifths of the people I know will not drink milk. What do they do with it?

The first snow I encountered after moving here from Evansville in 1995 was about one and one-half inches deep. Meg said that I needed to check the school cancellations on TV in the morning. "They might call school off for THIS?" I replied. Well, sure enough, the perky newscaster announced a long list of school closings, including New Albany-Floyd County, and then followed it with "And the following businesses will be closed. . ." "BUSINESSES?" I yelled. In 38 years in Evansville, just 100 miles to the west, I had never heard of a business being closed on account of snow. But it happens all the time here.

Strangely, Louisville Snow Panic Syndrome ultimately affects even immigrants. I know someone who lived the first 17 years of her life in Fort Fairfield, Maine, a prior residence which would seem to conduce to a certain insouciance about winter weather in the Ohio Valley. Yet she is as gripped by LSPS as any native. So far, I've remained immune. I hope I find the magic elixir that will keep me so.

With apologies to Jimmy Buffett ...

2005-01-24T22:51:00.000-05:00

... I'll excite you with a story that a transcriber told / About a meth-lab bumbler who turned sulfur into gold.

Editing depositions and trial transcripts is one of the most fascinating jobs imaginable for someone of my kidney, because people sue each other about almost everything and commit crimes in almost every conceivable way, and an editor needs to know something about almost everything.

Like chemistry. Today I was editing the transcript of part of an arraignment hearing in a meth-lab case (a little bit unusual for our firm, 99% of whose business involves civil litigation).

The sheriff's deputy who made the arrest asserted that the arrestee stated that he had not made any methamphetamine, and that he had indeed found no meth in the arrestee's possession; however, he said that the arrestee had the ingredients necessary to make meth, including salt and muriatic (sulfuric) acid, which, if combined, could yield a substance whose name the transcriber heard as "chlorauric gas."

It's hydrogen chloride gas. The equation is 2NaCl + H2SO4 --> 2HCl + Na2SO4. Close listening to the tape established that the deputy did in fact say "hydrogen chloride gas." To be fair to the transcriber, a phenomenal cloud of static obscured the testimony.

Chlorauric acid exists. It's HAuCl4. To have produced this, though, either the sulfur or the sodium would have had to turn to gold. Pretty good trick for a guy who supposedly can't even make methamphetamine.

I described the correct reaction equation to the transcriber -- who is normally a superb performer -- and recommended that she read Isaac Asimov's short story "Pate' de Foie Gras," a classic of screwball science fiction featuring a goose who lays golden eggs, a farmer reeling in consternation, and a platoon of scientists desperately trying to discover where the gold is coming from.

Hello, Emilie!

2005-01-24T22:10:00.000-05:00

There's nothing better than being surprised by someone who turns out to be a new friend ... except being surprised by someone who turns out to be a new grandchild, too!

Absolutely no one suspected that Emilie Jane Sartor was about to burst in upon an unprepared world until 5:30 A.M. last Wednesday -- just 77 minutes before her arrival. Sarina and Eric didn't have a diaper or a baby bottle to their names; Emilie never gave them a sign of her presence. (Meg and I have come to find out that this happens much more often than either of us knew.)

So it was a rush to Bloomington on Thursday afternoon with such spare paraphernalia and outgrown newborns' clothing as Zada owned, along with a supply of diapers and bottles. Meg, Savannah, Aaron, and I all joined the caravan.

Meg and I returned on Saturday, along with Meg's mom, her sister-in-law Andrea, and Andrea and Don's son Jamie. In the interim, Sarina and Eric had returned to their apartment with Emilie. Jamie and the ladies went shopping for baby furniture, while Eric and I alternated caring for Emilie and shoving the existing furniture out of the way.

Zada says "Hi!" to Cousin Emilie.

You can visit Emilie on her own blog: www.livejournal.com/~emiliejane05 .

2004-12-06T20:03:00.000-05:00

Paige Kington and Bill playing rithmomachy, October 11, 2003

2004-12-06T20:02:00.000-05:00

Bill and family (L to R: Sarina, Meg, Aaron, Savannah) at Christmas 1996

Test

2004-12-06T02:43:00.000-05:00

This is only a test. Had this been an actual blog entry, you would have been directed to another Web site where you could have read something with content.