striking colors

Posted on Sunday, 2005 February 20 by Anton

L Neil Smith, stung by a gross misrepresentation of his view of 9/11, fires back.

Neil’s piece mentions three people by code-names: “Mike”, “Russell” and “Anton”. Mike Lorrey, a vice-chairman of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, lets one cat out of the bag with an equally public response, so I may as well confirm that two of those cunning pseudonyms conceal Lorrey and me; I won’t say which is who, save that I’m definitely not “Mike”.

(Both items were brought to my attention by Russell Whitaker.)

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

the stubborn spiral

Posted on Saturday, 2005 February 19 by Anton
Rusin’s disco ball
golden angles
Saff & Kuijlaars

Examples of three algorithms for distributing nodes fairly evenly over a sphere. Those on the middle and right slice the sphere into parallel bands of equal area (much narrower than the white discs), and put one node (center of a disc) somewhere in each band. Saff & Kuijlaars place the nodes along a spiral path across the bands, keeping the distance between turns of the spiral roughly constant. Failing to grok how their rule does that, I approach it from another angle.
Continue reading →

Posted in mathematics | 7 Comments

QotD

Posted on Friday, 2005 February 18 by Anton

. . . I consider the right of property to consist in the freedom to dispose first of one’s person, then of one’s labor, and finally, of the products of one’s labor — which proves, incidentally, that, from a certain point of view, freedom and the right to property are indistinguishable from each other.

Frédéric Bastiat (1849): Protectionism and Communism. Cited in FFF Email Update.

Posted in economics, politics | Leave a comment

wp1.5

Posted on Thursday, 2005 February 17 by Anton

I’ve just upgraded to a new version of WordPress. Any minute now I’ll get it looking the way I like, again.

Though this is a huge improvement over the old default template.

A little bit later: Oh dear, oh dear: my links don’t show up on the monthly archive pages. Later still: That’s a flaw of the new default template.

Posted in blogdom, me!me!me! | Leave a comment

if you keep a cat, or keep two or three

Posted on Thursday, 2005 February 17 by Anton

Do yourself a favor: never buy Swheat Scoop cat litter. Some litters absorb pee and make a non-smelly solid lump. Swheat Scoop makes a smelly sticky lump whose consistency resembles that of my oat-cookie dough. It’s a bitch to clean up.

On another hand, World’s Best brand litter (made from maize) is excellent.

Posted in pets, technology | Leave a comment

Bobbin come home!

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 February 15 by Anton

What happened to Joycelyn Yik’s comic strip The New Adventures of Bobbin? The domain has been down for at least a few days, and I’ve never known that to happen before.

Feb.20: She’s back! with a strip about about quirks of climate.

Posted in cartoons | 1 Comment

with crumbs on his face

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 February 15 by Anton

Recently I had occasion to sing a verse of “Rum, By Gum” and Jeff Riggenbach asked whether it came from The Lamplighters; I allowed as how that might well be the case. A spot of websearching now suggests the Mitchell Trio.

In the course of my research (ah, here comes the good part) I found two versions of the song with a remarkably large collection of verses.

Posted in music+verse | Leave a comment