The expansion of the universe manifests in odd ways.

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979):

. . . two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine [276709 = 17·41·397] to one against.

By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat . . .

I’m fairly sure that the number in the recent movie had more digits than that, beginning with 20, which since 2000 April 22 is the code for greater London.

Movielens invites you to rate movies you’ve seen and offers recommendations according to your ratings. To my amusement, most of the top fifteen titles suggested to me are foreign: six Japanese (all by Miyazaki), four Chinese and one German.

I called a locksmith today and he said he recognized my voice’s “heavy tone” from a previous job. I wonder whether that’s a translation of a Chinese idiom. Perhaps my voice was gravelly, as it sometimes is in the early morning.

I sing baritone, and that word comes from Greek bary- ‘heavy’, though you’d think the metaphor would apply better to a basso profondo.

Novel digital effects (interesting though somewhat crude by current standards) and slapstick mitigate the pointlessness of Kung Fu Hustle but detract from the fight scenes. Would I like it better if I understood the language?

Come Monday, I’ll be working in Menlo Park. How should I spend the early evening before braving the bridge?

A few years ago we thrilled to an exhibit by the Library of Congress of color photographs of Russian life made in 1909–15. Now I learn that the images shown there are a small fraction of the Prokudin-Gorskii plates, most of which were never assembled into color images; and that there is an amateur project to do the rest of them! (Link found here.)

Ken MacLeod‘s recent novel Newton’s Wake (whose title I’m not sure I understand) has a character say:

What we do is you tell us some more about Eurydice and its beautiful people, and then you get tired and emotional, and then we take you home.

tired and emotional is wink-wink euphemism for drunk, popularized (I gather) by Private Eye. How many Americans, I thought, will be baffled?