austin_dern | Entries tagged with mathematics

April 2025

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Interested in my mathematics blog? That's kind of you; you can find the RSS feed here. I didn't do anything with it this week, so no sense making you stare at that, though. Over on the other blog I looked at 60s Popeye: Popeye and the Herring Snatcher (it's Brutus, you think Sea Hag is going to steal fish?). Now let's get back to looking at water going down fast.

The plaque marks the site of Table Rock, a bare rock shelf hanging about 60 meters/200 feet out from the rest of the landscape, left behind when the Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls receded from it. They blasted it off in 1935 for safety reasons that I don't understand, but the plaque notes there were rock falls shrinking it in 1818, 1828, 1829, 1850, and 1934.

And here we're finally above the level of the Falls ... for now. The falls are receding at the surprisingly rapid rate of about one foot per year, so, in something like 50,000 years they'l reach Lake Erie.

The Falls looking like a discontinuity in the landscape here.

And a closer look to see the Falls looking like the edge of the world.

Just a few feet up you have water where you'd barely know there was trouble apart from the constant roar and people hollering at you.

Someone trying to capture the majesty of the Falls on their phone ... and me getting a picture of that. What makes this art is that I lined up the top of their phone with the fall line.

Trivia: One-pound tins of baking powder were, in the 1880s, the first store-label brand item sold by the A&P supermarket chain, and may be the first private-label sold in any grocery store; certainly the first in a national chain. Source: Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, Michael Ruhlman.

Currently Reading: Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age, Lori Garver. Lot of talk about the Genius of Elon Musk and considering this is someone who's had multiple encounters with Stretch you'd think she'd be wise to him but, no, she seems sincere about it.

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So you know what I did on my mathematics blog this week? Not a thing. You want to see it, look at last weekend's piece. It's where you thought it was. On my humor blog I looked at 60s Popeye: Autographically Yours, my King Features Popeye Encore! which was a cartoon I quite liked. And now ... the close of our day at Seabreeze. At this point we're already outside the park, after snagging our park maps after that confusing business with the security guy and the women in the bathroom being worried about a skunk.

Seabreeze's entrance gate, lit up but closed tight for the night.

And yet it looked like a ride was still going! Screamin' Eagle, I think. Which considering the park had been closed like a half-hour is amazing. Maybe they were testing it?

A broader view of Seabreeze's entrance, and the parking lot that we couldn't get anywhere near that day. For our 2019 trip we were parked just like one row behind the planters to the right of the picture frame.

The management building, which used to be the trolley station (and in a different location) back when the trolley lines ran to the park.

Screamin' Eagle, a ride that swings you 70 feet in the air, still showing its lights on in the night.

View of the still-illuminated Whirlwind, seen as we walked downhill to our car.

Nice photo of Whirlwind in the night looking vaguely like some kind of space hardware.

And finally, from our car and the parking lot way below, a last hopeful glance up to see just the faintest hint of the Whirlwind coaster, last part of the park that was visible.

Trivia: During his 1936-37 stay in Hollywood Fred Allen eschewed the studio's limousine offer. Instead he rented a car with a chauffeur, proposing to him that, ``With what I'm paying in renta, you could be making payments on a car. Why don't I just give the money to you?'' And thus he and Portland Hoffa would turn up at events in a cream-colored Ford. Source: Fred Allen: His Life And Wit, Robert Taylor.

Currently Reading: Defining NASA: The Historical Debate Over the Agency's Mission, W D Kay.

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Getting bored with how I have so little stuff to report about my mathematics blog week after week? Don't worry, that's going to change soon. Meanwhile, here's the last couple weeks of my writing there:

Now let's take in some reading material from Seabreeze.

In the carousel house were, free for the taking, these five-page brochures, replicas of a talk about the Long Family and its history with carousels, given at the October 1974 National Carousel Roundtable Conference in Flint, Michigan.

Page two. I regret that I held the page badly so that the last words in the upper right corner are cut off, but it's all right, if my photos should end up being the only copies of the essay to survive as ...

There you go. The missing corner appears with the rest of page three here. Also it caught me that Wildwood, New Jersey, gets a mention.

Page four. Mentions of several now-gone carousels including the one at Million Dollar Pier, Atlantic City.

Final page. The 1974 conference was a big step in the organization of carousel appreciation, so it's grand to have this touch from that transformative event. (Note that I do not know how well Robert Long's research is regarded in light of fifty years of further historical research and analysis, but I expect this reflects the best information he had at the time.)

Getting back outside now. Here's a stunt show --- 'Cirque en Vol' --- held a couple times in the afternoon. Besides the bicycle stunts they had the bits of people jumping down and back up the wall on the left there. Seabreeze's midway games and food are in the background.

Trivia: The earliest known Greek writing to mention Rome is a mention in a fragment of Aristotle from the fourth century BCE. Source: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Nicholas Ostler. At least as of the time of Ostler's writing (the book was published 2005, so probably around 2003); I can't swear an earlier mention hasn't been found.

Currently Reading: Defining NASA: The Historical Debate Over the Agency's Mission, W D Kay.

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Thank you, dear bunnyhugger.

I put off doing a Reading the Comics post on my mathematics blog again because I found the chance to talk about drawing stuff instead. Here's the recent set of posts from there, if you missed my RSS feed.

You Could Help Make an Educational Kickstarter More Successful (but not anymore. They're okay, though)
How August 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog: Romania Has Tired Of Me
Some Fun Ways to Write Numbers but Complicated
Have You Considered Spending Next Month Drawing Mathematics?

A handful more pictures here of Sylvan Beach nestling in for the night. The rides are closed but we're still hanging around.

Carello's Arcade closing up for the night, a nice counterpart to their opening for the evening (seen earlier).

Somehow that's my only photo of the main ticket booth! The midway games place with the weirdly dated posters is just out of frame to the right here.

On the left, an ice cream shop; the right, a pizza place we didn't eat at. The Sylvan Beach carousel, Galaxi coaster, and Rotor are down this aisle and closing up for the night.

And ... oh! Something or other going on with the Bomber. We watched them doing some kind of maintenance trying to get things going. I really hope it's not my lost pens causing all the trouble.

It seems serious. They would start the machinery up to move the cars a bit again, but I don't know whether they got the problem sorted out.

I don't think that guy was just planning to hit the ride with that stick until it wasn't broken anymore, since if we've learned anything from Roller Coaster Tycoon it's that you fix rides by having the mechanic punch the exit gate.

Trivia: During World War I, under federal pressure, the steel industry adopted the eight hour day ... nominally. In practice, this meant paying workers time-and-a-half for the last four hours of a routine twelve-hour shift. Source: Behemoth: The History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World, Joshua B Freeman.

Currently Reading: A Mathematical Tapestry: Demonstration the Beautiful Unity of Mathematics, Peter Hilton, Jean Pedersen, Sylvia Donmoyer.

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Got through another week on my mathematics blog with a simple posting to stuff other people wrote. In this case, about some fun complicated ways to write numbers. Here's the recent writings:

Reading the Comics, August 14, 2022: Not Being Wrong Edition
You Could Help Make an Educational Kickstarter More Successful (but not anymore. They're okay, though)
How August 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog: Romania Has Tired Of Me
Some Fun Ways to Write Numbers but Complicated

And now here's some slightly less recent pictures --- from all the way back in July --- of Sylvan Beach.

Some of the carnival games that I thought about playing but never got around to. This is around where we started talking with the old woman who'd been working at the park and told us how it was unchanged from when she was a kid.

Back into Carello's Arcade and my attempt at getting a tracking shot of the carousel in motion.

The rooster came out pretty well this time!

Looking up at the canopy for the carousel.

I missed focusing on any horse but I still like how this suggests movement.

Now I've got the other purple horse on the outer row in motion! (It is the other one. Look at the color of the diamonds on the horse's harness.)

Trivia: Symphony orchestras call for two harps more often than for one. Source: The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Editors Paul Fargis, Sheree Bykofsky. At least as of the book's publication in 1989 and (second edition) 1993. If this has changed I don't know about it.

Currently Reading: The Adventures of Little Archie, Volume 2, Editor Victor Gorelick.

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Back to my mathematics blog, recently featuring writing such as this:

Now to the Carello's carousel, at Sylvan Beach but not part of the amusement park. The carousel has been around since the 1890s (they claim 1896), although the animals are modern replacements. Still, I'm getting a lot of pictures because when do you ever see an amusement park ride from Grover Cleveland's time?

The first row we came across. bunnyhugger notes that dog seems haunted, very likely by the demonic rabbit beside them.

That reindeer in back is the twin of ones we've seen at several Santa-themed amusement parks.

Relatively normal row of horses here. Note that none of them go up and down; the ride predates that innovation.

Looking forward from the camel now.

Zebra looking good on the ride. I notice how there's no saddle on them.

Somewhere around here I noticed the animals have numbers and those numbers are kept in order, which seems remarkable.

That's a tiny button of a tail for the rabbit there.

Nice big mane on this horse, though.

The seats are basic enough, although at least they have clowns painted on them.

And here we're back to where we started already!

Let's fill in other animals. The rooster's an always-interesting figure.

It only feels like every second-row horse has that bullseye blanket.

Trivia: On the 31st of December, 1908, Wilbur Wright flew two hours and eighteen minutes, some of it through freezing rain and sleet, to win the 20,000-frac Coupe Michelin for the longest flight of the year. The closest competitor was a 44-minute flight Henri Farmin had made in October. Source: To Conquer The Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, James Tobin. (Wilbur was in France at the time, postponing his return in order to secure the prize.)

Currently Reading: High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolotics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945 - 1999, Erik M Conway.

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Had another week on my mathematics blog where I wrote about the mathematically-related at least. Here's recent postings from there:

Here's the 157th Playful Math Blog Carnival
Reading the Comics, August 5, 2022: Catching Up Edition
Reading the Comics, August 14, 2022: Not Being Wrong Edition
You Could Help Make an Educational Kickstarter More Successful (not anymore you can't; the funding period ended the 1st of September. But they reached all but one of their stretch goals, so it did turn out well enough.)

Strip of runes in the pavement in front of the queue for Time Warp, the former Lara Croft ride.

Decorations for the Flight Deck queue. This ride --- yet another twin of Michigan's Adventure's Thunderhawk and Every Six Flags Park's Mind Eraser --- was originally called Top Gun and the Kings Island version of this has everything set up to be a vaguely US Air Force Base. Here, it's not all that different.

Missing block of decor, one of several, in a tunnel shortly before the ride station. There are a couple of these ... cloud? ... shaped featureless blanks.

And here's the station, with a mock air traffic control tower, and the lift hill. And hey, what's that in the control tower? COMPUTER, ENHANCE.

Yeah, they set up a mannequin there to be the Air Traffic Controller! I hope it's a mannequin.

Canadian fighter jet prop on display near where the entrance and exit queue rejoins the main body of the park.

Trivia: In July 1686 Edmond Halley --- in one of his first projects as salaried clerk to the Royal Society --- proposed the triangulation of England, for the purposes of better establishing the locations of things. The Royal Society agreed to give to Halley £50 ``or fifty copies of Willoughby's History of Fishes'' to support the project. The triangulation of England would have to wait for the Ordnance Survey, next century. Source: Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution, Lisa Jardine. I mean, yeah, £50 went farther back then, but even Halley pointed out that wouldn't nearly cover his personal costs.

Currently Reading: All Natural Pogo, Norman Hale. Hale has a bunch of essays here, several in a row exploring the morality and structure of the animal society as seen, particularly in the comic books, but also the comic strip. And since the comic books started with even more animal-like behavior, like with a story where Albert literally tries to eat Pogo, and that legacy continued a good while. So a lot of the tone here feels like Hale sharing his many, many thoughts about how vore could be just fine, really, and think of all these cases. And, like, yeah, it is all stuff drawn from the comic but it also feels like someone wondering why all the Rorschach ink blot cards are of maws with awesome tongues.

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It's another mathematics-blog review day, so here's the things run on my less-busy blog this past four weeks:

Also! Since I've roughly run out of those 1960s cartoons I reflect upon What I Learned From Watching All the 60s Popeye Cartoons. And I still don't know what my next watch-and-review experience is going to be so if you want to nominate something, drop me a comment.

Let's dig back into Canada's Wonderland and enjoy the scenery.

Psyclone and Sledge Hammer, two great swinging rides that we did not even consider going on.

We dubbed this the 'Action Bathrooms' because of the figures with explosion cutouts behind them, and the hazard-tape-like pattern behind 'Washrooms'. We don't know why it's themed like this. Note the working pay phone, too.

Shield horse on the carousel; likely this was where PTC assumed ride operators would start collecting ride tickets from.

Rounding board above the carousel.

The carousel's chariots are 'pulled' by two horses harnessed to it, a move for authenticity that also cuts two horses out of service as riders; note the wrought-iron figures on the poles that makes them impossible to sit on.

The other chariot and its similarly harnessed horses.

Trivia: In 1850 the territory which would become Germany produced about six million tons of coal. Great Britain produced about 57 million tons. Source: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848 - 1918, A J P Taylor.

Currently Reading: New Brunswick, New Jersey: The Decline and Revitalization of Urban America, David Listokin, Dorothea Berkhout, James W Hughes.

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Got some comic strips on my mathematics blog, so here's your chance to catch up on that.

Also, I have a rather special 60s Popeye: Weather Watchers, and an arguable end to my 60s Popeye Watching in my cartoon reviews. In this one, Popeye has worked for the weather bureau for twenty years, somehow.

You'll want to see more of Indiana Beach yet, though. Here it is.

Sea Dragon was listed as one of the rides not operating today, but it is lit up and I do see someone over there. Anyway here's a look back at it and at the far end of Hoosier Hurricane.

Animatronic outside Frankenstein's Castle, tipping his hat and head at the crowd. This was not the right angle to get this clearly, I'm sorry to say.

Trio of coffins set outside Frankenstein's Castle for people to take their photos. We didn't get pictures inside for some reason.

Support column for the Cornball Express while looking out at the coaster, and Tig'rr Coaster, in the sunset.

Here's one of several metal fountains, illuminated from above to make an interesting shadow.

The Painted Parrot, a face-painting/temporary-tattoo shop, closing up for the night.

Trivia: A map from 1502 identifies Newfoundland as ``land of the King of Portugal''. Source: Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky. (There are Newfoundland locations with names that distantly reflect earlier Portuguese names.)

Currently Reading: The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography Of Space, Rip Bulkeley.

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Had a little bit of business on my mathematics blog, so here's the last couple weeks' worth of business. Not enough comic strips, I know, but I'll work on that.

Let's get back to Indiana Beach and enjoy the scenery, now.

This is ... oh, I believe it's a turnaround for the Cornball Express, beside the log flume. There's a lot at Indiana Beach and it's all on top of each other.

Here's Steel Hawg, with the eighth-steepest drop in the world among operating roller coasters: you go down its first hill at an angle of 111 degrees. It's also way off on the end of the park, in some of the spare land they have to expand.

Extremely faded yellow arrows pointing from Steel Hawg back to the main body of the park. Not sure why they need these since you can see the park from where the coaster is, and vice-versa.

Control station for Steel Hawg. The covered console has some kind of screen there.

Looking down at the log flume splashdown, on the left. There's also a small water fountain next to it that doesn't spray water up high or very far; it's just a little decoration is all.

I guess this is the ride photo booth for the log flume. These QR codes aren't for our ride and I assume they're for a default ride. The Overhead Door company caught our eye because they're a Lansing firm and I guess they're proud of their product.

Trivia: A bill to allow the English monarch to switch the country to the Gregorian calendar (``An Act giving Her Majesty authority to alter and make new a Calendar according to the Calendar used in other countries'') was introduced to parliament the 16th of March, 1584 (old style) and possibly reread the 18th, but then vanished without a trace. Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: Pogo's Double Sundae, Walt Kelly.

PS: 60s Popeye: Baby Phase, a cute enough little baby phase, and I'm almost out of the 1960s Popeye cartoons to watch!

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Although my mathematics blog had its usual single post this week, it's still worth looking at. Here's recent writing from it:

Next up in photos is our anniversary trip to Indiana Beach amusement park. Not pictured: five hours of driving. You're welcome.

The walk from Indiana Beach's free parking lot to the actual entrance brought us to this sign, making us aware of a drive-in. Who knew? There's no full-time drive-ins anywhere near Lansing but there's one in Monticello, Indiana?

The outskirts of Indiana Beach. And ... this ride. When we last saw it, it was La Quimera, at La Feria Chapultepec Magico, in Mexico City. This is one of two roller coasters from La Feria that Gene Staples, the Indiana Bech guy, bought and moved back to the United States.

So, um. Probably not going to be running today, huh? The coaster seemed assembled but there's no station or any of the support structures yet.

La Quimera --- now to be American Dreier Looping --- was set up in what used to be a gravel parking lot, at the far end of the parking lot. Probably about where we parked when we visited in 2016, at that. Steel Hawg, on the left there, is the roller coaster with the 8th-steepest drop in the world, with a 111-degree drop on that first hill.

The entrance booths had some sad news, though. The Hoosier Hurricane, their biggest roller coaster, would not run. The Merry-Go-Round neither.

Still, we felt reassured by seeing that the gift shop still had its nice 1950s(?) vintage name and signage. We'd worried the new owners might try to make it look more slick and contemporary. sWe shouldn't have worried.

Trivia: August 1949 BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, became operational, running in a test for 43 hours without any stops or errors. (The contract for it had been issued in October 1947.) Source: Eniac, Scott McCartney.

Currently Reading: An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942, Peter Grosse.

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But first, a recap of my mathematics blog for the last couple weeks.

And in watching 60s Popeye: Seeing Double, another Popeye cartoon, another Popeye, and I'm sorry not to have kept track of how many times we get doubles of the main cast in. No sense starting a list now!

And now it's on to finish off the Turner-Dodge House visit! What pinball tournament or amusement park gets photographed next? Is there a secret hint in what I list as my current reading? Or is that a feint to throw you off my trail? You'll find out!

One of the bedrooms, here with a ceiling fan like we have gradually filling all our rooms.

Stepping out on the balcony. Some of the people down below said they saw the dragon bunnyhugger looking out over hte land and thought it was a great scene.

The vendors were already starting to pack up. We'd thought the show was supposed to go on another three hours, but it was ending about a half-hour from the time we were here. You can see more sidewalk chalk's been deployed.

Looking from the balcony back to the pergola. Also to the overflow parking, if you can make out the cars parked on the grass near the top of the picture.

bunnyhugger pauses for a smile with the roses.

And a last look back at the house.

Trivia: The Egyptians called the star Siris 'Sopdet'; the Greeks, 'Sothis'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Images of America: Seabreeze Park, Jim Futrell.

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It's been another basic week of mathematics blogging. Here's the recent postings:

So we're done with the animals at Michigan's Adventure. Let's look at the rides and where they've changed any from last year.

Corkscrew --- oldest coaster at Michigan's Adventure --- also got a new paint job over the off-season. Here's the new blue-aqua-white frontage and track theme.

This safety sign is just peeling, but the way it peeled around that bottom center screw made me think someone had for some reason put up a picture of a swan.

This patio, near the lagoon, normally has benches and seats for people eating outside the entrance to the water park. You can see it roped off and closed, and empty. There wasn't any obvious work being done and nothing that seemed obviously wrong about the patio.

Thunderhawk, a coaster moved from Geauga Lake almost fifteen years ago, got a new paint job for 2021, and it stil looks fresh and new. Here's the lift hill.

And here's some of the many head-banging twists of Thunderhawk.

Back to the carousel. The cat holds a fish in their mouth and this picture happens to really get the scales in good shape.

Trivia: The French work on the Panama Canal amounted to excavating about thirty million cubic yards of land, roughly a third of what the Suez Canal had required, by the time the Americans took over the land and project. (Counting only the excavation that would be useful for the United States's plan.) Source: The Path Between The Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870 - 1914, David McCullough.

Currently Reading: Water Fun For Everyone, Bernard E Empleton, Prudence Fleming, Fern Yates. ``Parties are fun. It's fun to create fun.'' --- lead sentence of the chapter about Splash Parties, emphasis in original. Also there is much more about synchronized swimming than I expected, although it does focus on practical aspects like coaxing young swimmers into trying it by asking ``who here can do ___?'' instead of telling them that's what we're doing now.

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It's been another basic week of mathematics blogging. Here's the recent postings:

And for cartoon reviews as I come new the end of the King Features Syndicate set of 60s Popeye: Popeye's Corn-Certo (I wonder if Hungarian Rhapsody #2 gets played) gets some attention.

Now some walking around town in early June, after Anthrohio but before today.

The Umoja House, which seems to be two houses based on the flags hung out the porches. This is a new development in our neighborhood and apparently it's some sort of hostel intended for international travellers, which seems like a nice thing to have around. The 'T' in their sign keeps tipping over, somehow, but the sign also has fallen over at least one day a week.

Liz's Alteration Shop after a fire ruined the attached apartments that I think the shopkeeper lived in.

I don't know what's to become of the building but it doesn't look good and in the couple weeks since I took this photo it hasn't got any better.

The hipster bar where we play pinball removed the faux-wood-cabin peak on its frontage, revealing the 1943s(?) vintage brick front hidden behind for several decades, at least since the camping good store put (we assume) the false front on. Note that in taking off the fake front, they also took off the not-too-attention-catching letters that said the name of the place. A month later and they still haven't put up anything identifying the place, but they have hung up, to the left of the door, a bedsheet with ``I ASSURE YOU WE'RE OPEN'' spray-painted on.

Meanwhile new businesses develop. I'm not sure what Aplus Value is, but it's opened in a long-empty grocery storefront and asks people to come in around back from the parking lot, rather than the side that faces the main street. I haven't seen anyone inside but the tables suggest probably a restaurant of some kind? I guess?

And someone in the neighborhood decided to make the sidewalks a video game.

Trivia: Neil Armstrong did not report to Mission Control that he had manually flown the lunar module away from the automatic landing system's target point --- which turned out to be a rock-strewn crater --- until after the Eagle touched down. Source: Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of NASA's Lunar Expeditions, William David Compton. NASA SP-4214. (He had been too busy flying the craft to say what he was up to.)

Currently Reading: Return To Earth, Buzz Aldrin, Wayne Warga.

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I kept my mathematics blog going, by writing the same essay about my mathematics blog that I always write early on in the month. Want to see what I've published there recently, without using the RSS feed? Here's what you can see there:

Stopping at the Pipsqueakery table on the way to the end of Anthrohio.

Patagonian cavy come over to see why everyone's so interested in the baby woodchuck all of a sudden.

Woodchuck just trying to get his story out to the world, you know?

Rabbit can't believe what we all just heard the woodchuck say either.

One smaller attraction all weekend was the building of this kinetic structure for a series of balls to bounce around and fall and somewhere along the line ring some pleasant little chimes.

Closing ceremonies already? People get organized for the grand finale of the convention.

The good news of how absurdly much money got raised for the Pipsqueakery!

Trivia: The Prussian Loan of 1818 --- the first international loan to be repaid in pounds rather than the currency of the borrowing country --- was issued in London, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Vienna. Source: A History of Credit and Power in the Western World, Scott B MacDonald, Albert L Gastmann.

Currently Reading: Harvey Comics Treasury Volume 2: Hot Stuff, Editor Leslie Cabarga.

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Had some comics to talk about this week on my mathematics blog. It wasn't a lot of talk, but it was there. Here's my recent postings:

And for you cartoon fans here's 60s Popeye: Uncivil War, about the processes that drive one bad.

How did the cupcake decorating contest at Anthrohio turn out? I know, of course, but have you had the chance to look at my pictures?

And here's the cupcake I made, with, if you squint, a flying saucer zipping through space, because I thought the theme of the convention was ``I don't know, space or the future or something''. (It was ``Tech Noir''.)

bunnyhugger getting assistance from her new puppet dragon in working on her cupcake, one that encourages everyone to ``loop it through Jones'', the cybernetic dolphin that's one of many baffling images in the film version of Johnny Mnemonic and also something actually appropriate for the ``Tech Noir'' theme.

bunnyhugger's dragon and cupcake and I am embarrassed that this is the best photograph I got of her well-themed cupcake.

Suiting! bunnyhugger gets a bit of time in front of those concentric diamonds.

Going in to the dance and enjoying a glowing tiara for it.

Just gorgeous splashes of color all around the dance floor.

Trivia: Jean de Mairan first showed, in 1729, with the first controlled light-dark experiments on plants that the opening and closing of plant leaves kept a persistent, periodic effect, even if the plants were kept in complete darkness. Source: Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures, Anthony Aveni.

Currently Reading: The Nightlife Of The Gods, Thorne Smith. Trying my hand at reading long-form (if comic) fiction after a long while.

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I managed my quota of writing at least something, this week, on my mathematics blog. And it was about the comics, my usual domain of original writing material. If you have my RSS feed on your reader, you already saw it, but if you missed that, here's the past four weeks' writing:

Next in photos is Saturday at Anthrohio, which starts with the Rodents SIG, that got quickly and completely diverted into people touching patient animals. So enjoy a bunch of those pictures, please.

Rats! One of the rat fursuiters gets to hold an actual rat who was very patient with the whole thing. Also, you see that guy in the background, the one petting the rat's back? You'll see him again.

The rat has decided to accept this gift of attention.

Rats enjoying some time together.

The rat fursuiter didn't have the rat's attention the whole time. Other fursuiters were able to get some time, too!

And here's the adult woodchuck, the one with the unsteady walk.

Woodchuck giving us a glamor shot. Also, hey, that guy's in the background again, too. Keep watching.

Trivia: The first woven silk fragments are known to date from about 3000 BC. Though silkworms (and mulberry trees) can grow in very many climates, China did not lose its monopoly on silkworms until around the Han-Roman trade boom of 200 BC to 200 AD, when silkworms were transplanted to Korea and Japan. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, William J Bernstein.

Currently Reading: Moon Launch! A History of the Saturn-Apollo Launch Operations, Charles D Benson, William B Faherty.

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Made it through another week on my mathematics blog without really writing much about mathematics. Here's the last four weeks' worth of posts, if you call them that:

And if you're just here for the old cartoons being reviewed, here's 60s Popeye: Spoil Sport (sorry, I don't know who's spoiling what sport here).

I'm on, finally, to Anthrohio pictures! Here's stuff from Thursday, when we arrived and nothing was going on. You know how I am.

Prepping. bunnyhugger gets her Cerberus kigurumi on and you see our hotel room at just about its cleanest ever. Note my tail and guinea pig puppet in the aged cardboard box to the right.

Meanwhile Chitter considers the options at the hotel restaurant. Well, they had a southwest veggie burger, $12.50.

bunnyhugger venturing into the hotel lobby to see who we might meet.

Not yet accessible: the path to the wedding-pavilion-type area that's the Dealers Den.

Backdrop that would be set up for the fursuit photographs, in lieu of a group photo.

And here's the Pipsqueakery's setup, all ready to have guinea pigs deposited within.

Trivia: In the aftermath of the 1798 cholera epidemic the New York City Council bought the rights to the no-longer Fresh Water Pond, occupying seventy acres of lower Manhattan, dug a canal (what is now Canal Street) to drain water, and filled it in with earth and stone by leveling Bunker Hill (east of Broadway on what is now Grand Street). By 1807 the pond was ``rapidly turning to dry land''. Source: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G Burrows and Mike Wallace. The springs that fed the Fresh Water Pond are still there and are why the area has never stopped being flood-prone.

Currently Reading: Moon Launch! A History of the Saturn-Apollo Launch Operations, Charles D Benson, William B Faherty. So the book was written (for NASA) at a time when NASA wanted its writers to use Metric units or, as the authors put it in the introduction, ``the new international units''. Mostly that's fine since everything being measured is so big or so small or about something so abstract that the the number hardly matters. And then you run into a reference to, say, the launch facility's liquid oxygen pumps delivering ``37,854 liters per minute'' and it's, like, guys, I mean, c'mon. Just ... you know, c'mon.

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Yes, on my mathematics blog I forgot which month we just finished. I'm embarrassed enough by this. Don't worry. Here's the last couple of posts to have gone up there, though:

And in cartoon watching, here's 60s Popeye: Private Eye Popeye and the case of the missing credits. It's a pretty good one, with reservations, since I always have those.

Now finally we get back to the amusement park photos. Here's the start of our trip to Cedar Point two weeks ago.

First visit of the season! The front of my car, looking out at the Cedar Point skyline. See how Wicked Twister isn't there? ... Well, trust me, it's not there.

Cedar Point's main entrance, flanked by GateKeeper and its two keyholes.

Just past the entrance is the 150 years sign and the Midway Carousel.

Reverse angle on the 150 Years sign, with bunnyhugger showing off her lanyard of tradable pins. (She did not trade any.)

Operations! People roping off the seat on Blue Streak ahead of us.

Not sure what the problem was, but it was bad enough to close the seats on that train indefinitely. (It was probably the restraints not opening up when they were supposed to, the most common problem on a roller coaster.)

Trivia: United States Army Chief of Staff George C Marshall did not attend the first in-persom meeting of the Allied leaders, in Tehran the 28th of November, 1943, because no one had told him abou the meeting. He was sightseeing. Source: Why The Allies Won, Richard Overy.

Currently Reading: Chulo: A Year Among The Coatimundis, Bil Gilbert. This might be the first book I ever bought from Amazon (I just don't remember), although it could be I simply bought it online (still my first) from the University of Arizona Press. Anyway I haven't re-read it in ages, so, felt like taking the time to do that.

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My mathematics blog, meanwhile, managed not to miss a week of publication by the expedient of another repeat. But it's of a post ten years old, so it should look like new to just about everyone. I didn't remember it, or all the essays linked to from it, and you'd think I would know something about my own writing by now, wouldn't you?

And if you're into cartoons that turned out surprisingly good? 60s Popeye: Voice From The Deep! Or See Here, Sea Hag!! is worth a look.

After the Pinball At The Zoo tournament we went to MJS's pole barn, to take in the afterparty.

MJS's Attack From Mars had a new, after-market, backglass. This one is themed to celebrate a great variety of the killer Bally-Williams pinball games of the 90s (plus Gorgar, from 1980); you can see tributes to about a dozen games here, of course anchored by Sexy Female Robot Woman Of Sexiness.

MJS's pole barn has fewer games than it did when we last visited, New Year's Even 2019-2020 (he's started routing some of them), but this meant there was omre space to move around, too.

Star Gazer's an early solid-state game from Old Stern and I started playing it and somehow could not miss a shot even if someone came and tackled me. The three million points isn't the best score ever recorded at the pole barn (that's somewhere around five million), but, wow, this was a game that felt really good to play apart from my thinking, why couldn't I play like that at the tournament?

I don't know where this banner of monsters doing The Last Supper came from or what it's bout.

The Pink Panther's an early solid state game, new to MJS's pole barn, and themed, as you can see, to Sexy Female Jewel Thief of Sexiness.

Oh, huh. Also they snuck this kind of cute cartoon cat on for some reason.

Trivia: The Brooklyn Children's Museum in New York City was founded in 1899. Source: The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Editors Paul Fargis, Sheree Bykofsky. The book claims it was the world's first children's museum and I know better than to believe a claim about ``the first'' for something like that.

Currently Reading: Women In Space: Following Valentina, David J Shayler, Ian Moule.

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Page Summary

Baby, so you think you can start again
And made plans to meet tonight
I can't stop thinking about how I'm feeling this way
I learned it with no rhythm and so can you
Fixin' test scores to get the best scores
Oh, come, take my hand
And we can fly from here into a sky that's clearing
And I gots a lot of muskle and I only gots one eye and I never hurts nobodys and I'll never tell a l
Buy your girl a cotton candy while you're down on the ground
At Euclid Beach on the Flying Turns I'll bet you can't keep her smiling
Take me to the fair
I must begin my journey
Come dancing, just like the palais on a Saturday
Come to my house, be one of the comfortable people
My sister always did
In anticipation
All her boyfriends used to come and call
They put a parking lot on a piece of land
Midway hawkers calling ``Try your luck with me''
Excuse my shoes they don't quite fit

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Resources: Yusuke Kamiyamane and Atle Mo