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May 31, 2005
Coming Soon: Project A-Kon
Just a reminder, I'll be at Project A-Kon 16 this weekend with my family, dressed as Porco Rosso again. We've got Anne CosPlaying as "Gina" from the same movie, so the entire family will be wearing costumes. Incriminating photos yet to come.
Posted by Steven at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
Scientific Evidence of Limerence?
Everyone who knows me knows I throw the term limerence around a lot. Now the New York Times is running an article that appears (to me) to describe a scientific basis for limerence.
New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.
In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.
It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.
The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their lovers.
"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every day - why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected, some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic love can be stronger than the will to live."
Man, this is exciting. I've experienced this so I know it's real, and now there seems to be a region of the brain that doles out dopamines to the limerent in a very powerful way. No wonder I was addicted to love ... I was literally addicted.
Posted by Steven at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2005
What Leo Wants
 | I took Leo to Willow Bend Mall today, to visit the Apple Store. On the way out, we stopped in at the Sharper Image. Lo and behold, they have a "working" Star Wars light sabre that made me look twice. It's got all the sound effects, and perhaps the best looking glow I've ever seen in a simulated light saber. It occurred to me that it'd make a spectacular Halloween light for any kid to use to be seen in the dark. He wants to get it for all the obvious reasons, but also because his friend Mike and he are working on a Star Wars fan film and it would make a substantial amount of special effects much easier. Anne and I are going to encourage him to save his allowance towards buying it, and so we hope to get some "learning experience" out of it in addition to satisfying his fan boy tendencies. |
Posted by Steven at 06:11 PM | Comments (2)
Austin Bound
Coming down to Austin on the 9th, and staying into the weekend. I have to take Alanna home that Saturday or Sunday, but look for us in town.
Posted by Steven at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
School's Out
God help me. The kids are home full time now ... just as I start working from home on a more-or-less permanent basis. Now I know why Anne signs them up for TKD, Band Camp, and swiming lessons.
Update
We're going to move the console game TV into Leo's room so daddy can get some work done during the day. Oi!
Posted by Steven at 12:20 AM | Comments (2)
Eleven Steps to a Better Brain
Found this article in New Scientist describing eleven techniques to keeping one's brain fit.
Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a geniusA DECADE ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people's mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.
Ouch! I happen to enjoy writing programs while listening to Philip Glass, so I think this assessment is a load of Dingo's Kidneys. But the effects of music (and sleep, another item listed) are certainly there.
Heck, this list should be in Not the Rensselaer Handbook's Chapter of Lists.
Posted by Steven at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2005
Das "Boot to Head" Keyboard
I guess this was inevitable. A keyboard with no markings on the keys.
I know I can use such an animal, but I also know how much I like to see the letters on the keycaps. Some might argue this is a great way to go "Dvorak" but I doubt it ... not seeing the keycaps will make it much harder to use a "non-standard" keyboard.
Never mind the fact that at $80US, this is a major rip off.
Posted by Steven at 04:25 PM | Comments (1)
May 22, 2005
Neighborhood Demolition Derby
Around 10pm on Saturday, I was watching Koyannisqatsi with Leo (ironically appropriate, given what was happening outside) when I heard a terrible tire squeal and a crunching sound. I had just made myself a bowl of ice cream, so I wandered out of my house, bowl in hand, in time to see a black Toyota Tundra come tearing around the corner, cutting his lights and diving into a cul de sac next to my house. He was being pursued by my wife's friend's husband, who has a very peppy Dodge Neon TSX (or something).
The truck was driven by a local kid who used to live down the street, but who's folks moved away because of constant harrassment (on both sides) with another neighbor across the street. Apparently this guy is on the edge, and does loud and obnoxious things at night, and doesn't keep his yard up (a capital offense here). The ex-neighbor's kid, however, keeps the flame going by making a ritual out of harrassing and/or vandalizing this guy's house. He did so this evening, and the neighbor had had enough.
It looks like what happened is he tore out of his house, dived into his black Cadillac, and gave chase. I guess the kid wasn't expecting that, but unfortunately for both of them, they were well armed in the car engine department. V8 vs. V8 time. There was another kid in another pickup, too, and he was throwing things at the neighbor's car as he chased them, at highway speeds, up and down Quail Creek Dr.
One kid took off in one direction but the ex-neighbor's kid couldn't shake the neighbor. He finally caught up with the kid around the corner from me on Glenn Lane, about two houses up. From the skid marks, it's clear he rammed the truck at a pretty good clip. I'd guess they were going nearly 40 MPH. The kid must have lost control at that point, or locked his tires, but in any case, he slid right up into someone's yard, narrowly missing entering the front of the house, sideways, in his truck. The cadillac driver went a couple more houses down the street, and then stopped. His front end was wasted.
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| The destroyed Cadillac. | The kid's truck skid marks across the yard. |
I went back in and grabbed my camera, figuring no one else would have the sensibility to document this mess.
The kid was in my front yard, panic'd and thinking that my wife's friend's husband was chasing him. What my wife's friend's husband said was he saw some of the accident, and went after the kid figuring he started it. It sure looks that way.
Meanwhile, the entire street emptied out on to the sidewalks. This never happens. We all start gossiping and I find out some of the back story on this kid, his family, and the guy he set off. Everyone wants the crazy neighbor gone, but there is a subtle consensus that the kid was Trouble and he Got What He Deserved.
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| The rear of the Tundra. | The Man showed up (finally). |
About the time the police are talking to the neighbor, who (by the way) has on the regulation Cops outfit of shorts and nothing else, the parents show up. The guy is drunk, messed up, and has clearly screwed the pooch. His car is severely damaged and, yeah, he's going to jail.
The father is a brute who drives a dually pickup like it was an Alfa-Romeo. He starts screaming (at the cops) that he's going to kill the neighbor. The mom isn't any more subtle, and they both cuss up a storm in front of the older kids who came out to see what was what. I'm sorry to say it was hilarious. This is a classic Texas Disfunctional Family. I later found out that they had just given their precious son the Tundra (which I estimated cost $30K) the week before. They clearly enabled the crap out of his behavior.
The dad climbed back into his truck and then drove like a banshee all around the neighborhood for ten minutes or so. We could hear his truck like a Tyranosaurus Rex in heat, tires squealing and hemi thrumming. Clearly, he must need to answer some of those penile spam ads he gets in the e-mailbox.
The cops cuffed the neighbor and (so I heard) booked him on vehicular assault, which was fair enough. He's a mess, but no one cares and so he'll probably continue on his death spiral until he kills or is killed. God I love the suburbs!
Note: because the parent's were threatening lawsuits right and left, I have not used any names in this posting, which has forced me to use the phrase "wife's friend's husband" far too many times!
Posted by Steven at 10:40 PM | Comments (1)
May 21, 2005
Clemmie's Dual Surprise BD Parties
Yesterday was Clemmie's 90th birthday, but today she was feted with two parties, one was exlusively family, and the other included neighbors and friends.
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| Dad, Ana and Clemmie. | Nancy, Clemmie and Harry (front), Randall Lynn, Tina, Greg and Gwen Hartmann (back). |
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| Greg doing "here is the Church, here is the Steeple". | Lyn Coupland, Harry Hartmann and Anne. |
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| Dad, John, Susan's family and mine. | Somerset and Susan Peake. |
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| Alanna (in a dress) doing videography. | John and Randall Lynn. |
Posted by Steven at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
Mars Global Surveyor Photographs Mars Odyssey
For the first time, a spacecraft orbiting another world has photographed another spacecraft.
Mars Odyssey (twice) in frame.
Posted by Steven at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
Alanna Graduates With Top Honors
Alanna was awarded today at her 8th grade graduation ceremony. She finished the year with a 97+ average and was awarded the following:
- 8th Grade Diploma (Certificate)
- 'A' Honors Roll
- Gold Presidential Award Medal and Certificate
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| Alanna and her mother. | Alanna and her father. |
Here are two versions of the awards ceremony, a web streaming version and a Video-CD resolution one, both in Quicktime format.
We are so very proud of her!
Posted by Steven at 10:42 AM | Comments (1)
Alanna's Graduation iPod
At the end of the graduation ceremony, Anne went down and gave Alanna a small, wrapped box and card. She had no idea what was in the box, and took a long time to open the card, read it, and then open the box.
Surprise!
I guess she liked what we put in the box.
Anne and I, with Barbara's help, bought Alanna a 20 Gb iPod for her graduation gift. I loaded it with 6G of her favorite songs, and made sure that the Llama Song is the first thing it played when she turned it on.
Here's the video (in Quicktime).
Posted by Steven at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Frank Gorshin Passed Away
Frank Gorshin, most famous in my generation for portraiting The Riddler in the 60's version of Batman, passed away today.
Posted by Steven at 04:37 PM | Comments (1)
Darth Yoda?
I found this gem of an essay on Salon today, about a man my age and how he's coping with his personal experience with Star Wars, Legos™, and his seven year-old son (who comes across as mildly autistic, but aren't most Star Wars fans?).
 I can totally see Leo coming up with Darth Yoda. | My 7-year-old son's eyes aren't yet fully open, but he is already mumbling something about "Star Wars" and Lego. His voice is still rough with sleep and almost incomprehensible, but I can tell he's clearly troubled. |
Posted by Steven at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)
New ReplayTV
We added a second ReplayTV unit for $40 (after rebate) and only $7/mo. (second unit discount). Now we can capture even more copyright material, and skip the commercials in it, too!
On the same note, Penny Bailey sent me this:
Posted by Steven at 02:06 PM | Comments (2)
May 17, 2005
Alanna is Outstanding Woodwind Performer at DMS
Alanna performed her final concert at Dowell Middle School tonite. During the ceremony, she was honored as the band's outstanding woodwind (Clarinet) performer of the year! Her friends Monse, Megan and Lauren also won awards so it was an awardfest for her and her closest friends in the Band.
She's been going to McKinney North HS marching band practice every afternoon this week and next, and is really looking forward to HS band next year.
Posted by Steven at 08:45 PM | Comments (1)
May 16, 2005
I Drive a Popemobile?
As you may have heard, Pope Benedict's former car was a VW Golf, which was sold in 1999 to a German citizen. He recently sold the car on an eBay auction for $244K, and now VW is capitalizing on the event:
I drive the frickin' Pope's car, dude!
Posted by Steven at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
Alcohol Damages Women's Brains More Than Men's
The BBC is touting a study that claims that women suffer greater brain damage from drinking than men.
Women are far more vulnerable to alcohol-induced brain damage than men, scans have shown.CT pictures of the brains of more than 150 volunteers revealed how women come to more harm and quicker than men when they drink heavily.
Scientists have suspected for some time that men might be more resilient to booze than women. The German research gives visible evidence of this.
The University of Heidelberg team published their findings in Alcoholism.
Women who were heavy drinkers lost the same amount of brain volume as the drinking men, but over a much shorter period of alcohol dependence.
Lead author Professor Karl Mann said although men generally drink more alcohol, women probably develop alcohol dependence and adverse consequences more readily.
Other alcohol-related disorders, such as heart problems, depression and liver disease, also occurred earlier in women than men, he said.
"Women typically start drinking later in life, consume less...and one could reason that women are less affected by alcohol.
"But there is evidence for a faster progress of the events leading to dependence among female alcoholics and an earlier onset of adverse consequences of alcoholism.
"This suggests that women may be more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption."
Yikes.
Posted by Steven at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
Gumby Recognized
Art Clokey may be bringing Gumby back in the digital age. Salon has a news wire story about this. Joe Bob probably doesn't say, "check it out", but I do.
Five decades after Gumby first captured the nation's imagination, the little green guy and his chums are starring in a new art exhibit - the first in a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the television icon's creation and launch his comeback."Gumby and Friends: The First 50 Years" attracted fans of all ages at Saturday's opening at the historic Lynn House Gallery in Antioch, about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco. Creator Art Clokey, now 83, signed Gumby figurines at the two-story exhibit, which featured photographs, toys and other memorabilia.
"Gumby is an icon," said Diane Gibson-Gray, 49, executive director of the Arts and Cultural Foundation of Antioch, which is sponsoring the monthlong exhibit. "He's a cultural icon that many of us grew up with. And there's another wave coming. There's a whole new generation that's going to embrace and love Gumby as much as I did."
The Antioch exhibit is the first event planned this year to commemorate the 50 years since Clokey made a short art film called "Gumbasia," featuring clay animation set to jazz music, that inspired the beloved television series that debuted a year later in 1956.
Posted by Steven at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2005
Scarborough Faire
This afternoon, Alanna and I joined her 6th grade band teacher and his girlfriend at Scarborough Faire.
One of the first acts we watched was the pipe band The Rogues on the Gypsy Stage. Alanna's teacher is a big fan of the band, and now has all their albums on CD.
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| The Rogues pipeband. | A Typical Rogues' Fan? |
The next stage featured a man who did acrobatics on a suspeded rope. He donned swim fins, climbed up on the rope, and proceeded to juggle large dull blades. It was rather remarkable. Next we encountered a llama on merry-go-round ride, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to photograph Alanna next to her nickname namesake.
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| Juggling on a rope in swim fins. | Have you ever seen a llama? Standing here, next to Alanna? |
We encountered many natural wonders, such as "Dragon's Eggs" (geodes) and moths.
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| Freshly opened "Dragon's Egg". | A Moth upon a Tilley. |
Lots of silly garb was for sale everywhere, including hats and wings.
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| There are some who call him "Jeff". | Not just Red Bull gives you wings! |
Would you believe elephant rides and turtle races?
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| Anne would love this. | The turtles were actually pretty fast. |
The highlight was a two man act Don Juan and Miguel, which was a hilarious mix of swordplay, whip work, and vaudeville. I bought their two DVDs so Anne could see the act and I could see the "Weird Show".
A side attraction was Zazool, which is an actor simulating a robot fortune teller.
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| "Don Juan" signing my DVDs. | Zazool giving out fortunes. |
Alanna's teacher really enjoyed testing the musical horns in The Horn Shoppe. I insisted on photographing Alanna in the stockade, which reminded me of the photo Mike Jones took of me in Stockbridge, MA at the tourist trap there.
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| Jeff feeling horny. | How not to not be seen. |
 | It was a long afternoon and evening, but we walked the entire Faire and saw most of the acts, including such bizarre things as the "Mud Show". One of the things that overwhelms you at first, and which never quite goes away, is the overpowering smell of large animals. I wonder if I could really stand to be on a farm. Man, that place was odiferous! The crowd was about as freaky a mix of SCA types, fen, and mundanes as I could have imagined. I saw people with frightening gumwork, and even a S&M pair with a real dog collar and chains. There was a distinct "skank" to a surprising number of folks there, but since the turn out was light, I was probably seeing the die-hards rather than a more representative mix of vistors. Fortunately, some costumes were stunning and gorgeous. The Royals on promenade were quite a sight, and the knights were unmistakable in their glinting armor. On the whole, it was a lot to take in the first time. |
Posted by Steven at 09:37 PM | Comments (2)
May 14, 2005
Memory Upgrade Day
Fry's ran a special today, offering two 512 Mb PC3200 DDR chips for $70 (after rebate) total. I double checked on the web to make sure it would work with my iMac, and I found the manufacturer's stuff is rated for Macintosh PowerPCs (Kingston), so Leo and I went out and bought it.
I put both 512 DIMMs into the iMac G5, so now it has not only 1G of RAM, but matched memory DIMMs. The PowerPC is a 64 bit processor and if you install matched RAM modules into the two DIMM slots, the system bus does 64-bit instead of 32-bit fetches instead, which speeds memory access by almost 50%. Faster memory access is a fundamental speed improvement in gigahertz processors, and it will most likely show up first when rendering video to MPEG.
 | I pulled a Kingston 512 Mb DIMM (I installed) and a 256 Mb Micron DIMM (which shipped with the original machine) out of the iMac G5, and after some soul searching, put the 512 Mb into the Mac mini server (deltos.com). What an experience was taking apart the Mac mini. The key thing is to get as wide and thin a putty knife as you can find, because you want to release as many of the snaps on the inside of the case as you can, all at once. I broke one snap, but it didn't seem to impact the reclosing of the case. The single DIMM (fortunately) is right on the side (inside) and is easy to swap. Booting the Mac mini with 512 Mb was a delight. After I started up all the services I currently run on it, it quickly went to 312 Mb of core in use ... 50+ Mb more than it had this morning. I expect this will ease congestion on IMAP and on web services, as well as the Samba traffic in house. |
| My Mac mini opened (DIMM on left). |
I also ditched my brand new ($30 from Fry's) Netgear WiFi 802.11g NAT router (WGR614 v5). It kept locking up (possibly from overheating) and I could not get it to talk to a neighbor's PC laptop's 802.11g card at all. It turns out that Linksys has upgraded their firmware on the 802.11g w/Speed Boost to support port triggers, which is why I bought the Netgear in the first place. I'm still trying to get iChat AV to work across two NAT bounded subnets ... anyone had any luck with this?
Posted by Steven at 05:29 PM | Comments (2)
Ikea Comes to Frisco
Imagine my surprise when I opened the Dallas Morning News and read that Ikea is opening a store in Frisco, about ten miles from my house, this summer. I can just hear Bosney saying, "You don't deserve it!" ;-). Bill, you're right. Let me know what you need and I'll get it to you ...
Posted by Steven at 11:28 AM | Comments (1)
Organic Wars
I don't know what to make of this ... it's a brilliant ... well, not a parody. Homage comes closer ... but ... you'll just have to watch it yourself to see.
Kudos to Mike Jones (Albany, NY) for spotting this!
Posted by Steven at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2005
Clemmie's 90th Birthday Party
Clemmentine Staton (ne Spivey) is 90 on May 20th, 2005. I've organized a birthday lunch at Steak and Ale in Addison at 12:30pm on the 21st. Randy Staton will drive her there with his wife. All her kids, grandkids and their spouses will be there to welcome her and have lunch.
Important
This is a surprise, so please don't pass this info on to her. Also, plan on being at the restaurant by 12:00pm so we can get the birthday card signed and everyone in place before she arrives.
After the lunch, we'll all leave with Randy holding back. We'll all drive to the First United Methodist Church in Farmer's Branch, where Clemmie's daugther is organizing an afternoon party for her with her friends from church. All the family is invited, too.
John and I will video tape everyone there and create a DVD of the party for the family.
If you have any amusing photos of Clemmie, please forward them to Randy so he can add them or a copy to a memento book he's putting together for her.
Posted by Steven at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2005
Chimney Repair Complete
The L&H Construction team (husband and wife Len and Helen Orsak) finished installing Hardiplank® siding on our chimney exterior today. They finished caulking around noon, and applied two coats of paint this afternoon. They even replaced the rotted wood on our garage door frame, which has been languishing for some time now.
There were some problems with the existing framing of the chimney which resulted in the trim planks not being absolutely true to the corners, but with caulk it's not at all obvious. On the whole, it looks fabulous, especially when compared to the neighbor's rotting chimney.
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| Our shiny new chimney. | The neighbor's crappy original chimney. |
We have "before" and "after" beauty shots here:
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| Original chimney with my attempted "repair". | The new Hardiplank® painted to match old color. |
Hardiplank® is essentially concrete impregnated fiberboard. It's essentially cement planks, and cannot burn. Consequently, the insurance people love it. It will break if hit hard enough, but since the builder was hammering nails into it I can only assume that's a pretty severe impact we're talking about here.
My architect friend James West highly recommended it, too. He says the stuff that is originally on my house is not holding up as long as it was supposed to; I've got the entire second floor rear siding to replace at some point. Ouch. Such is the fun of home ownership, right Dad?
Postscript
The Stonebridge Home Owners Association Materials and Construction Review secretary called today to tell us that the plan we submitted for construction was approved. On the same day it was finished. Len, the carpenter, said, "Damn, I'm fast!" We had a good chuckle at that, while I silently cursed the SB MARC under my breath.
Posted by Steven at 03:25 PM | Comments (2)
Alanna is 6th Chair in MNHS Band Next Year
Alanna found out today that she is sixth chair clarinet in the McKinney North HS band next year. This puts her in the top band and comfortably near the top of the performers, which is where she was hoping to end up.
Update
Anne informed me that Alanna is the highest ranked incoming clarinet player (i.e. 9th grader). All the other 9th grade players are in chairs below her. And in fact, she's sixth only because the band director placed the 10th through 12th grade players (they have only five) in the top chairs.
All her years of practice and work are paying handsome dividends now that she's gearing up for high school (she is on the road to her TKD black belt by early Spring next year, too!).
Posted by Steven at 03:23 PM | Comments (1)
John Irving's Next Novel
CNN published an article about John Irving's newest novel, Until I Find You.
John Irving says his new novel is a melancholy story of an actor whose mother is a tattoo artist from Edinburgh and whose father abandoned them as a child -- a family story that has some echoes in his own life.Irving never knew his own father, a pilot in Asia in World War II who divorced his mother when Irving was two.
The 63-year-old writer, best known for "The World According to Garp," said he only recently realized he has been inventing his father throughout his life and work.
At a reading in New York this week of the early chapters of "Until I Find You," due out in July, Irving said it had taken years and a lot of pain, both physical and mental, to get him to the point where he could address the issue.
The new book is the story of actor Jack Burns from his early years at a girl's boarding school -- it is not clear why -- to his adventures in Hollywood. Jack's mother is a tattoo artist who was abandoned by his father, a tattoo addict and organist she met in church.
"I recognized there were emotional and psychological similarities between myself and Jack Burns," Irving said, explaining his initial decision to write the book as a first-person narrative. Just over a year ago, he handed in the completed work at a mammoth 345,000 words, only to realize it was "too dark" and didn't work in the first person.
"I knew I had to rewrite almost every sentence of it," he said, describing a year of working eight or nine hours a day, seven days a week, battling chronic tendinitis and other aches and pains as he worked in longhand and on an old typewriter.
"I tried taking some marvelous antidepressants, but I couldn't remember the names of the characters in my book," he said at the Monday night book reading.
The final version is 30,000 words shorter, but still his longest novel.
This goes a long way to explaining some of the inspiration for the character Garp, and his mysterious father.
Posted by Steven at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2005
Author of The Calculus Dies in LA
Louis Liethold died this last week. What was he? Well, I'll tell you ...
It was rare for Louis Leithold to miss a day at Malibu High School, where he taught Advanced Placement calculus for the past several years.He had been pounding theorems and proofs into the heads of his teenage charges for eight months straight. He had humored them into a homework load — two hours a night — that could incite rebellion in most other classrooms. He made them memorize and recite complicated rules of calculus until the theorems ruled their brains. And he moved them with his own mantra, which he recited daily. "We go step by step by step," he would say as he covered all the dry boards in the classroom with equations.
As if that weren't challenging enough, he scheduled two marathon study sessions at his house on Sundays — the last two Sundays before the Advanced Placement exam May 4. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., his 17 students willingly set aside surf, sun and IPods for polynomials and Riemann sums.
"Dr. Leithold," as his students called him, was clearly no ordinary teacher.
First of all, he was 80 years old, a UC Berkeley graduate who earned his PhD in math education long before his students' parents were born. He started teaching high school in his 70s.
But he was revered not only because he had spurned retirement for the rigors of the classroom: He literally wrote the book on his specialty.
He was the author of "The Calculus," a widely used college and high school text praised for its thorough, lucid and logical presentation of one of the most demanding of subjects. Originally published in 1968, it is now in its seventh edition.
He also was a sought-after trainer of calculus teachers. His presence at Advanced Placement seminars could send a wave of excitement through the room.
So when Leithold was found dead at his Pacific Palisades home April 29, the loss was felt not only at Malibu High, where he taught for the last seven years, but across the country.
"Louis is a legend in AP calculus circles," said Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program for the College Board, the organization that sponsors the exams taken by thousands of high school students every May. The Advanced Placement program offers high school students the opportunity to take college-level courses and earn college credits.
"A lot of his fame is not just due to his textbook," Packer said, "but to his impact on other teachers and students. That's where he left his mark — in classrooms across the country, through their teachers."
He influenced one of the most famous calculus teachers in America, Jaime Escalante, the former Garfield High School instructor whose success with inner-city students in Los Angeles was told in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver."
There's more, but it's in the LA Times obit.
Posted by Steven at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2005
Alanna's Band Trip to Six Flags
I took Friday off as vacation to chaperone Alanna's middle school class trip to Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, TX. I went last year (on a weekend home from Toronto) so I had some idea what to expect from the experience. A twelve hour trip to Six Flags is not my idea of a great time, but I knew enough to pace myself and take it easy.
Images from the trip are here.
One interesting side-effect of the trip was meeting Alanna's band director, who struck me as a kind of Stuart Smalley-like person. I also spent a lot of time conversing with Alanna's 6th grade band director, who is a big SciFi fan. We kept each other entertained with quips from films and books, and in general were stand ups for the kids.
About the only part of the trip that was lousy was the bus ride. The drivers dove directly into the worst traffic in Dallas, and on the way home, we hit two spectacular wrecks on I-30 in Grand Prairie and spent an hour getting through the High-Five construction. Awful, just awful.
Posted by Steven at 10:05 PM | Comments (1)
May 01, 2005
Restaurant Update
I know a lot of you think I'm obsessing on this, but for sixteen years I've had to drive a minimum of 15 miles to get to a decent restaurant (or at least, to one like these two). That's Troy to Albany, or Whitney Point to Binghamton, or ... you get the picture. So here's the current state (as of May 1st) of my two great restaurant hopes in McKinney:
Snuffer's has broken ground just south of El Dorado Parkway at US 75.
Café Brazil is building out in the shopping center that currently holds our Half Priced Books store.
Both restaurants are within walking distance of each other, which is peculiar. If a Great Outdoors opens in this plaza, we may have to move closer.
Posted by Steven at 08:54 PM | Comments (1)
Home Repair
Friday and Saturday a two man team rebuilt the front fence at the house.
Not a lot to add here other than the guys worked pretty hard since they didn't bring their nail gun, and the geometry in the ground made the project more challenging than it needed to be. But it looks nice.
The next big project is the chimney exterior, which is rotting off the building.
We've got a contractor lined up to repair it for around a grand -- hope this goes as well as the fence did. You can see how well my "patching" did from a few years back ... that T-31 plywood doesn't like getting wet anymore than the masonite that was originally used does. Feh.
Posted by Steven at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)