There is no reason why he should not . . . take her waltzing in Strauss’ Vienna or to the theater in Shakespeare’s London – as well as exploring funny little bars in Tom Lehrer’s New York or playing tag in the sun and surf of Hawaii a thousand years before the canoe men arrived.

Brave to Be a King, a time-travel story by Poul Anderson. I wonder, would he have said “Tom Lehrer’s New York” in any year other than 1959?

“I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”

All you radicals, do me a favor: go sign the “Proclamation for the Separation of School & State” and let me know.

Changed my mind: I won’t ask to have my blog rated at HotOrNot, since I’m unwilling to give a numeric rating to those I see there. How do you quantify a subjective impression? But I’ll keep it bookmarked, for days when I’m desperate for a new blog to read! (2004 Oct 22: Yeah, like that’ll happen. I try halfheartedly to keep up with 46 blogs, and have 417 entries on a “get back to it eventually” list.)

Recent reading: Gene Expression; The Kolkata Libertarian; IBM Research’s puzzle of the month; Follies and Folly Towers, Monuments and Obelisks; Science News, the web version of the weekly magazine; How Stuff Works: Articles of the Day; BBC News sci/tech; Designing a Baseball Cover; Forgotten New York, curious corners of a city I’ve never visited; Duct Tape Fashion Gallery

The most exquisite crop circles are showcased at c i r c l e m a k e r s. (Link from Steve Sailer.)

I was thinking about telephone area code splits. How do they decide where to draw the line, if there is no ‘natural’ boundary (mountains, water, a highway, a county line)? How would I do it? ( . . more . . )

A comment to Vodkapundit says “Lileks . . . must be the only writer in America to know and use the plural hiatii.” Lileks is of course free to invent words if he likes, in which case he’s naturally the only one to know them; but in Latin, there is no word in which singular -us corresponds to plural -ii. hiatus is a u-stem abstract, and its plural is hiatūs (with a long u).

And by the way, the plural of Elvis is Elvides. I have spoken.

Satellites Reveal a Mystery of Large Change in Earth’s Gravity. In the last five years, Earth has grown more oblate, reversing a trend since the Ice Ages. Amazing what they can measure nowadays, eh?