Spring 2009 Concert

I just realized I never wrote about our concert in May - which was probably the most crowd-pleasing concert I've experienced to date. Take a look at the literature:

• Tchaikovsky - "Romeo and Juliet" Fantasy-Overture: Who doesn't know the love theme? Maybe you find it trite due to its popularity - but let me tell you playing it is a whole new experience altogether. Minute-long extended passages of strings playing legato in octaves - this is romanticism, and I can still appreciate it (I was doubting this.) Then there's the rest of the piece - which has quite a few extended 16th-note runs in the strings, including cellos. Which aren't particularly bad since they are in B minor, which is a nice key for strings. So I could play them farily accurately all quarter long until the concert, when my fingers froze up and I basically flopped my way through every one - story of my life I guess.
• Bernstein - Chichester Psalms: The highlight of the concert for me - I suppose it's because the piece is right up my alley at the moment: not too dissonant, but unconventional harmonies, complex meters (most of the first movement is in 7/4, most of the third is 10/4, divided into two groups of 2+3/4), and colorful orchestration (the first movement requires something like 6-7 percussionists). The University Choir who we performed with did an outstanding job - although I discovered when watching a video recording that they dragged a bit during the first movement. The countertenor soloist in the second movement was quite good - though unfortunately everything is harder to hear when you're in the middle of the ensemble.
• Dvorak - Symphony no. 9 "From the New World": Is there a more famous symphony than this one? Unfortunately the cello part is mediocre and forgettable, like Dvorak's cello parts often are. And then there's the godawful trio in the otherwise exciting scherzo, and that anticlimactic woodwind diminuendo on the last note of the piece. It has its moments - the adagio's gorgeous English horn solo, the giant E-major tremolos in the coda - but I will be honest here and admit performing this was a little disappointing (boy, how my tastes have changed.) But at least audiences still eat this one up.
  

West Virginia is the grossest-shaped state in the US

Looking at a political map of the United States, I have made several conclusions: first and foremost, that West Virginia is the grossest-shaped state in the union. Take a look at a map yourself and I'm sure you will agree. Most US states are nicely in proportion with each other, with a mix of natural and arbitrary borders defining a more or less rectangular area, splitting the country into a checkerboard. And then there's West Virginia, which sticks out like a sore thumb:


As the roundest state, "thumb" is probably not a bad description of the shape itself - if you ignore the two disgusting, wild flailing tentacles protruding from the northeast. And that triangle in between - what's up with that? West Virginia probably gets beaten up by all the other states. To me it looks a bit like chicken:


(Give it a minute)

Then there's Idaho, which has always reminded me of those foam #1 hands:

Will somebody explain to me why Idaho is so enthusiastic? It's as if the state is utterly unaware of its crazy senile neighbor Montana, gaping at Idaho without even a hint of subtlety.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Illinois, which has the most aesthetically pleasing shape of them all by a considerable margin.

With its straight, latitudinal 42° 30' N northern border, Illinois seems to hang down from Wisconsin, suspending below itself the rest of the state and its natural borders with the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. A beautiful stalactite dripping moisture in a cool South American cave; an icicle dangling from an icy winter cottage at dusk in mid-January.

To whoever is responsible for Illinois' borders: kudos.

Underschtand

Something I understood when I was little and don't understand now:

When drinking fountains come in pairs, there is always a lower one and a higher one. As a kid it was obvious to me that the left drinking fountain was for short people, while the right drinking fountain was for tall people, and that was that. This explanation suffices in the case of say, elementary schools, when students' heights vary dramatically. But the "tall" fountain is still low enough that most people older than 13 or so can drink from it effortlessly.

So why is there always a "short" drinking fountain? Clearly it is to accommodate children, which could be reasonably be in any public place. But if they aren't tall enough for the "tall" fountain, are they tall enough for the average public restroom sink? If they aren't tall enough for the "tall" fountain, should they really be wandering around without someone there to assist them? And if we are to accommodate a minority group like children at a university, shouldn't we also consider the minority of tall people with back problems, who can't reasonably bend over that far to drink some water?

It's uncomfortable for me to drink from the tall drinking fountain, and I don't have back problems, nor am I exceptionally tall. And since in the average non-elementary-school public space, the "tall" fountain is used almost exclusively, it is usually not working optimally. So everyone is forced to use the short one - an inconvenience to a much greater number of people than would be inconvenienced if

1. both fountains were the same height, or better yet, if
2. there were still two distinct heights, but both were taller than they are now.

Or maybe if, best of all, there were an adjustable-height drinking fountain (I really should patent this.)

Something I didn't understand when I was little and do understand now:

Say you are a pedestrian crossing a large intersection: you press the button, the walk symbol is displayed, and you begin to cross. Mere seconds later the icon changes to the flashing red "prepare to stop!" hand. "How can they expect anyone to cross the street that fast?" This baffled me for the longest time. I stopped thinking about it for over a decade, probably because I am rarely a pedestrian in an area with large streets. But this summer I have been doing a lot of walking at UCI during lunch. Almost immediately after I started in late June it finally struck me.

The reason the pedestrian traffic signal changes to the flashing hand so quickly is because beyond that point, they don't think you will have enough time to cross the intersection. If the "walk" icon were displayed much longer than the hand icon, as I thought it should be when I was younger, someone might arrive at the crossing moments before the hand disappeared, enter the street, and then find themselves stuck with mere seconds to cross. So rather than an underestimate of the time it takes to cross the street, it's an overestimate. When I think of it now it is almost offensively obvious; it absolutely could not function any other way.

I'll just tell myself I'm getting wiser.

Great minds think alike

Hopefully you are familiar with Apples to Apples. This is not fabricated in any way.

The best moment of my life

Tonight around 10 PM, the greatest moment of my life occurred - this one will be particularly difficult to explain.

1. We were playing a board game that you have not heard of. It does not have a Wikipedia article. Nor does the company who made it, although we have discovered that it is by the creators of Trivial Pursuit - which renders its obscurity even more puzzling.
2. To make a long story short, it's a geography game. Basically you read vague descriptions of places from cards and then fruitlessly attempt pinpoint the exact location on the planet at which they are/were located. Some are quite easy: "Ubi wasn't built in a day", but most are basically impossible. One of the game pieces effectively described our reaction to the rules of the game:
   
   
3. The game is wild, wacky stuff. Setting up the game felt akin to making final preparations for a demonic ritual, which you might get a feel for if you take a look at these photos. A few statements in the rules are particularly cryptic, and important to my story:
   "The player born closest to March 15 plays first." (As a side note, this was me.)
   "There's something fishy about some Ubis. We are pulling your leg. These are called red herrings. When a red herring surfaces, the correct answer is 'that's a red herring'."
   "Great Caesar's Ghosts lurks within the game. A player to whom he speaks, beware! (Looking on the bright side, we could have included a dagger)."
4. "That's funny, March 15! The Ides of March!" we thought. We started to play and learn as we went along, answering a few corrections correctly, and a whole lot more questions incorrectly.
5. One fateful turn, my team rolled dual Ubi Eyes on the Ubi Cubis which meant that we could choose which accuracy we wanted to give - hexagonal or triangular, which required you to be 6 times more accurate, but is required to actually make progress in the game. We could also choose the region of our choice - AMR (Americas), EUR (Europe), WAT (Water), or UNI (Universal) - a question from each region is found on each card. In other words, we had it made - and we were already two scoring facets ahead of the other team.
6. We drew the next card from the box and read the clue:
   "AMR: Ubi 'Beware the Ides of March!""Ha! That shouldn't be in the Americas, it should be in Europe!" we thought. "That must be a red herring." We then turned the card over to read the correct answer - and to our dismay, it said something like "Et tu, Bruté?" and told us basically we lost all our points and had to start over.
7. Let me just clarify the amount of FAIL here for you - I'm assuming you are pretty lost. We had ideal circumstances. We had the privilege to choose and then chose a question which we were 100% convinced we had the correct for. We recognized it as a red herring, which requires us to have read the rules. Which in turn required us to have read the cryptic note about Caesar's ghost. We have read Julius Caesar. We had started the game with the closest birthday to the Ides of March. The question itself told us to beware the ides of march. In summary: Against all odds and all common sense we walked headfirst into our demise.
8. Andrew immediately began to sing the keyboard cat song - to play us off. If you don't already know what this is, here are some good examples of the keyboard cat phenomenon:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io63z-aRMbg
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLSoYihTtro
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deYn_efItS0
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WSg7dcKFzg
   Of course all these videos require that you have previously been exposed to other videos. It's all very meta and if you are oblivious to the internet subculture and don't get it, I'm sorry, but you probably never will, and nothing I could have said would make this funny to you. But those of you out there who truly comprehend (there has to be at least one) will agree with me, that this moment was perfect, in every sense of the word.

It's only downhill from here.

Quote of the Year

Weisbart, on the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus:

"That's why this theorem is so nice - it takes something that really requires a lot of thought and reduces it to something that ... a 3A student could do."

Trashy