I want to go to the GeekProm! (Is it open to info-sciences and humanities geeks as well as math and science geeks?) If only I lived in Minnesota. Every state should have a Geek Prom, don’t you think? Who’s with me? Who wants to organize one?
Via PZ Myers, who has been honored with an invitation.
(Special bonus points if you recognized the Buffy reference in this post’s title.)
I’m still here, in case any of you were wondering. Life (specifically,
where I’m going to be next year) is still uncertain, and I’d
rather not post about it until things are a lot less up in the air. And
plans for next year constitute a lot of what’s been on my mind; hence, fewer
posts. But blogging is good for cutting through both the dullness-of-brain and the anxiety of times like this. So, a few things I’ve been looking at and bookmarking lately:
LibraryThing is a perpetual source of things to post about. On the LibraryThing blog, Tim Spalding suggests a bunch of topics, including books you share with only one other person, books only you own, and the top X books you share with others. Happy to oblige! Here are my top 10 most-shared (numbers in parentheses are how many people share the book):
"Lonely books" are harder to list. A search for them led me to spend way too much time combining separate copies with slightly variant titles. Tinkering with works is nearly as addictive as cataloging my collection was, and fills my bibliogeekish heart with joy.
43 Folders’ "Inbox Zero" series has inspired me to get rid of several hundred outdated messages, and I feel much lighter every time I look at my inbox.
Jane Dark‘s Rome blogging is making me miss Italy so much it hurts. Next year I’m going back there, come hell or high water.
BibliOdyssey, a gorgeous visual blog on illustration, book arts, and book history, is a brand-new favorite of mine. Check out the cyanotypes. (Did you ever have one of those home cyanotype kits? I did, but my results never looked that good.)
Last night some friends and I caught the Live Arts Theater’s production of Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman’s stage adaptation of Ovid starring an ensemble cast and a pool of water. It’s kind of Ovidian sampler, featuring some of the more famous myths (Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, Psyche) and some of the lesser-known ones (Erysichthon, which in this adaptation was both wickedly funny and creepy as hell). I’m a big fan of classics translated into a modern idiom, so I loved seeing the way the myths were transformed in this version: e.g. Phaeton as teenager in sunglasses explaining to his analyst how he demanded of Apollo "Where have you been all my life, Dad? … Give me the keys to your car!"
Other things I loved: four actors becoming a ship for Ceyx’s ocean voyage (two rowers and a figurehead); the inclusion of Rilke’s "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes" in the Orpheus section; the charmingly funny take on Vertumnus and Pomona, bracketing the really disturbing Cinyras and Myrrha episode; the pool full of floating candles at the end; the way the myth of Narcissus made its way in without any words (just an actor staring besottedly at his reflection in the pool, while other actors brought out a tub of narcissi and then carted him off the stage). Also, we were sitting close enough to the stage to get splashed with water once or twice.
You can read the Metamorphoses in Latin at the Perseus Project and the Latin Library, and in English translation from UVa’s Etext Center.
I didn’t get the job after all. Rejections are never fun. Though I will say that the search committee was admirably fast about getting back to me, and I wish all search committees behaved with as much courtesy and consideration toward the candidates they don’t choose, because a prompt rejection is so much better than a “left hanging indefinitely” rejection.
Right. Back to the drawing board, then.
I’m unplugging for the next few days. I’ll be back when life settles down a bit. In the meantime, here’s a favorite semi-obscure William Carlos Williams poem:
The Attic Which Is Desire
the unused tent
ofbare beams
beyond whichdirectly wait
the nightand day—
Herefrom the street
by* * *
* S *
* O *
* D *
* A *
* * *ringed with
running lightsthe darkened
paneexactly
down the centeris
transfixed— William Carlos Williams, from Selected Poems, ed. Charles Tomlinson (New Directions, 1985)
Via Crooked Timber: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog! Go. Read. Now. And be prepared to laugh until you cry.
(The Brokeback Mountain parody post slayed me: "At morwe-tyde, he sayde me, ‘Thou knowst I am not of the scole of Edwarde II.’" And the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight references! Hilarious, by Seinte Loy!)
Psst, readers in Charlottesville who read this blog for the music bits (all two or three of you): The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s annual Friends of the Library book sale is an unexpectedly good place to find classical music CDs. I spent the earlier part of the afternoon there and walked away with Cecilia Bartoli’s 18th-century Italian love songs collection and (this was what really snowed me) a complete recording of the 1956 Karajan Rosenkavalier. It looked like someone was seriously into Strauss’s operas at some point and then decided to offload their collection, because I also spotted recordings of Salome and Die Frau Ohne Schatten.
Right now I’ve got the Met broadcast on in the background. Wow, it’s been a while since I listened to anything by Tchaikovsky. And tonight I’ll be communing with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Christa Ludwig, or maybe La Bartoli, and life, for the moment, is good.
Today I learned about Musipedia from two of my colleagues. Sheer brilliance. It’s basically a Wikipedia-esque encyclopedia of tunes (classical, popular, and folk, plus hymns and national anthems), and you can search it by humming the tune you want to identify. I haven’t had a chance to try the latter feature (I need a microphone for my computer), but you can also search it by picking the tune out on a virtual keyboard or typing in the Parsons Code for the tune. I was sold on it when I tried the latter method and successfully found the "Va, pensiero" chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco, the Marseillaise, and the first couple of bars of the Pogues’ "Fairytale of New York." Best search tool ever! And you don’t even have to sing on key to make it work.
As soon as I saw the Dynamic Einstein Picture Generator (c/o Rana), I knew I had to make this. Click to enlarge:
(For the non-librarians reading this: He’s showing a class how to use science article databases. And yes, I also considered having him demonstrate Boolean operators: "search for (wave OR particle) AND quantum.")
And on that completely un-serious note, I’m heading off to my interview tomorrow morning on a plane. Wish me luck!
