austin_dern

My aunt is, apparently, out of intensive care and in good spirits. She's projected to be returned to her nursing home Wednesday. Here's hoping.

My mathematics blog had a fairly quiet stretch which is not to say I didn't screw stuff up anyway. Here's the sorry report:

• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Statistics last week's big piece and I think a really solid, important one.
• Using my A to Z Archives: Smooth which is a kind of function.
• Using my A to Z Archives: Surjective Map which is ... also a kind of function.
• Denise Gaskins hosted the 142nd Playful Math Education Blog Carnival which is a headsup for people who missed that.
• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Tiling which was this week's big piece and I thought really great because I completely forgot ...
• Using my A to Z Archives: Tiling (2018) ... when I already covered the same subject. The highlights are the same although there's enough difference in the material to make these companion pieces.

On my humor blog, I look at 60s Popeye: Popeye's Testimonial Dinner and what the heck was that because what seems like it should be a really easy concept just falls all apart.

We continue the short night at Kennywood, back in early August of 2019, now.

Looking at the reserve bungee and Steel Curtain reflected in the lagoon. It looks so peaceful.

From the bridge over the lagoon you still get a good view of the Jackrabbit neon. Also you can see what parts of the rabbit still have broken neon.

Looking at a duck(?) sitting on a pile in the Kennywood lagoon, with reflections of the midway carnival building around it. My album cover for this trip to Kennywood.

Steelers Country: closed. With the roller coaster out of service whatever else might be there was shut down, although the problem might be we didn't get to the site until later in the day. It was built over what used to be the Log Jammer ride.

Another view of the Jackrabbit neon, and the stars of the loading station. And some direct lights which let you see that I did too clean my camera lens.

Taking in the Refreshments stand again. Sometime we'll have to get a refreshment there. (I kid; we have gotten pop there; I think we got some this trip, in fact.)

Off to Thunderbolt! A look at its launch station.

Notice the True-or-False dot warning people to leave their phones somewhere secure. Also a mock license plate and the spare train for Thunderbolt.

And there's the Thunderbolt station, sparkling in the night. Phantom's Revenge is the tall arc of lights behind it.

A view of the Lucky Stand, the wedding-cake structure on left, so named for no reason anyone's sure about.

Turtle, turtle. The animated neon for the Turtle ride, one of only two tumble bugs still operating.

The Turtle rolling past the station, ahead of us. Phantom's Revenge is the green roller coaster rising to the upper right corner; Thunderbolt is the white wooden coaster behind that. In the far distance are steel mills.

Trivia: On St George's Day (the 23rd of April), 1390, knights from England (Lord John Welles) and Scotland (Sir David de Lindesay) held a joust on the London Bridge. Source: Old London Bridge: The Story of the Oldest Inhabited Bridge in Europe, Patricia Pierce.

Currently Reading: The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA's Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle, T A Heppenheimer. NASA SP-4221.

My dad's youngest sister, the one in New Jersey and formerly estranged, fell out of her bed in the nursing home and broke her hip. There's surgery planned for tomorrow. Apparently the break was clean, but she's had bad reactions to anaesthesia before, which will complicate things.

I don't know if the neighborhood is more decorated for Halloween than it was in previous years. I just didn't walk so much, or over so many places, in previous years. But there are a lot of houses decorated, some pretty elaborately. There's even one house that's making ``Spooky Signs'' --- lawn signs showing stuff like Pac-Man ghosts or whatnot --- and encouraging people to take them. The sign authorizing this says at least 40 ``Spooky Signs'' have escaped into the neighborhood and challenges you to find them all. It's great seeing. Makes all these people I don't know seem more cozy.

Certainly better than the night before when I noticed there were, like, a half-dozen ovens set out on extensions or in driveways or stuff along my walking route. I have no idea what that's all about.

On my mathematics blog: Using my A to Z Archives: Tiling (2018) in which I explain how I came to write an A-to-Z essay about something I already wrote a fine enough A-to-Z essay about two years ago. The secret is: carelessness.

Pfaugh. Well, ReplayFX 2019 was over and there was just the long wait to Pinburgh/ReplayFX 2020 to wait for. What could possibly console ourselves? The answer follows ...

What's this? A sky-chair lift that isn't running? What can this possibly signify?

That's right: we're at Kennywood! We once again went in for a Starlite admission, taking in just a couple hours of park time after the disappointment of Pinburgh ending. Also so we could get home on Monday rather than take another day on the road.

We saw the Sky Rocket was running! It had spent much of 2018 out of service so we leapt at the chance to ride it; who could guess when we'd get the chance again? And, we saw this sign, reflecting the ride's short tenure as a Virtual Reality ride, something parks do to turn a less-popular ride into a more-popular ride with achingly slow ride cycles as it takes forever to load passengers anymore.

Control panel for Sky Rocket, which is surprisingly simple considering it is a Linear Synchronous Motor launch, not one of those low-tech chain lifts.

The statue of George Washington, representing his role in the Battle of the Monongahela. Kennywood is built on some of the vicinity of the park.

A view of Kennywood's antique Merry-Go-Round, originally commissioned for the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926 and, according to Wikipedia, the last carousel built by William Dentzel.

Kennywood's newest roller coaster, Steel Curtain, part of their new Steelers-themed section of the park. MWS was ready to make this his 100th coaster. It was not running the day we visited, or for a while after. (Many roller coasters have shaky operations their first season.)

Steel Curtain sweeps over the central lagoon, and radically changes the skyline of the park. I'm not sure how I feel about it, although mostly because it seems almost from another universe from the rest of the park, which looks like it was assembled in 1928 and then hit with a Quirky Stick.

Steel Curtain run on a very narrow footprint; it's not as nearly two-dimensional as, say, Steel Hawg at Indiana Beach, but it's trying to be.

The Bayern Kurve, one of the park's distinctive rides. It's a circular, single-hilled track that runs up to a nice high speed.

Little door to operations areas for Kennywood Park next to the Bayern Kurve. This stood out to me because usually they use KW for a shorthand.

Bayern Kurve has some nice illuminated trees, part of the decorations. They look great in the sunset, and you can see the lift hill and first drop of Phantom's Revenge. And the sunset behind it.

Trivia: In 1859, Chicago had ten brewers, nine vinegar makers, four pickle warehouses, and 46 confectioners. Source: The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, Joël Glenn Brenner.

Currently Reading: The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA's Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle, T A Heppenheimer. NASA SP-4221.

(The subject line lyric connection is between Steel Curtain and the Steelers and men made of metal and so, of course, the Kinks and Artificial Man. It's weak but it's also late and I don't know what else to do.)

Personally quiet day so let me just stop in to share What's Going On In Prince Valiant? When was Camelot attacked by kaiju? August - October 2020 in my story comic recaps.

And in mathematics, Denise Gaskins hosted the 142nd Playful Mathematics Education Blog Carnival so see if you care to read that.

And now let me finish off sharing the Tattoo Assassins character bios and some of the backstory. No, I did not play the game. Why would you think I'd play a video game?

``LUKE [ Cord ] is a former Navy Seal who was stranded in Alaska after a secret operation against the Soviets was compromised by a bureaucrat. He has been declared dead by the US Navy, but the CIA still has a contract out on him because of his knowledge ... '' There is a whole course in mass media and its role in the rise of fascism and the normalization of the surveillance state, with a bonus about racism and the ways Black figures are suborned to their own oppression, to be made out of this screen.

``HANNAH [ Hart ] was a world class strip club dancer, until a deranged killer started stalking the other dancers and murdered her best friend. She now prowls the night, in search of the man who ruined her life. Her only desire is a cruel revenge ... '' So, first, I remember the Flophouse Podcast regarding this as a good-bad movie with a few moments they kinda liked. Second: it's not until you've seen them that you appreciate the touches that make a world class strip club dancer, as opposed to a merely very good strip club dancer.

``KARLA [ Reller ] was cheated out of her chance to compete in the Olympics when her rival Eva Gunther attempted to cripple her in a late-night ambush. KARLA has sworn a vicious revenge and is practicing her martial arts for that day ... '' OK, so first: yeah, like the Olympics would allow a woman with a tattoo to compete. And second: I don't know what's wrong with her breasts but they need urgent repair.

``DEREK [ O'Toole ] is an aspiring rock star who was false accused of taking part in terrorist activities in his home town of Belfast. He was forced to develop fighting skills to defend himself. He is now part of the underground club scene ... '' What is it with Americans trying to write Irish characters?

General backstory. ``And it came to pass that MULLAH ABBA, spiritual leader of the ORDER OF COLORS, discovered the ancient secret of the mystic INK OF GHIZE ... '' Ah yes, Mullah Abba, who's behind classic songs like ``People Needle Love'' or ``Dotterloo'' or ``The Winner Tats It All''.

``The INK OF GHIZE is an amorphous fluid organism which can form into real objects for brief moments when applied to human bodies as tattoos''. What are the chances that, had this game gone to release, that sentence would have been edited into a thing it could have meant to say?

``MAYA's father, a tribal chief, was killed by foreign land developers intent on taking over her tribe's land. MAYA has taught her people to use guerilla tactics against the foreigners; now the developers want her dead as well ... ''

So here's some nice normal and comparatively non-sexist, non-ethnically-ugly pinball. The Tri-Zone at the end is physically the same as ours, but its chips have been modded so it's now a Simon game. The game will flash the lights in front of a string of the four (separate) drop targets, and you have to hit them in the same order. It's quite challenging.

Toontown Rewritten's table of props. Note Royce's straw hat is one of them.

Comic scenery panel for Toontown Rewritten, so, yeah, the game almost looks interesting enough to make me think about remembering it outside looking at these pictures.

Monitor with the information about how to enter games for the Intergalactic Pinball Tournament. This was Sunday, so qualifying was long since over, and in fact finals had begun by the time I took this picture. But I like how this sign was something they realized quite belatedly that they needed.

Zines! They got them. Pinball Summer is a reference to a fairly bad Canadian movie from the early 80s which does, must be said, include some fairly legitimate-looking pinball action that revealed, for example, that trapping was a bigger part of the game back then than we had understood it to be.

Trivia: For the 1889 World's series, the National League's New York Baseball Club [ the Giants ] and the American Association's Brooklyn team [ the Bridegrooms, often called ] agreed to play a best-of-eleven series. With, after the bad experiences of 1887 and 1888, the stipulation that the series ended once the outcome was decided. Source: The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association --- Baseball's Renegade Major League, David Nemec.

Currently Reading: The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA's Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle, T A Heppenheimer. NASA SP-4221.

It's been positively quiescent on my mathematics blog, with just the one big piece per week the last couple weeks. What have those pieces been? Let me take you back ... nearly two weeks so this looks more full:

• I’m looking for V, W, and X topics for the All 2020 A-to-Z
• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Renormalization in which I explain a big quantum mechanics thing without doing quantum mechanics things.
• Using my A to Z Archives: Riemann Sphere
• Using my A to Z Archives: Riemann Sum
• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Statistics in which I get political because it is. Even moreso than the usual ``everything is political'' way.
• Using my A to Z Archives: Smooth

In the cartoons, I look at 60s Popeye: Strange Things Are Happening, and I have questions about them.

Now, back to ReplayFX 2019, and the events surrounding it, such as the parts of Pinburgh we were no longer competing in.

The slow degradation of conditions on Judge Dredd, which from the looks of things was part of the Intergalactic Pinball Tournament, the side tournament giving people something to wait in crazy long lines on for Saturday.

bunnyhugger getting in an Intergalactic game on a game from that time in the mid-80s when Gottlieb said ``we don't need to get the Ghostbusters license''.

``What do you mean by a `wide' pinball stance?''

View of the pants bridge and Pirates Stadium, as a baseball game plays.

Walking back from dinner we discovered that the lighting effects on the waterfall-and-river were still on, even without the water being there.

Ooh, a bonkers-themed early-solid-state game, you say? I am interested.

bunnyhugger pausing a moment in Super Orbit, a sweet early-solid-state game.

We left Pinburgh/ReplayFX about midnight, since there was stuff we'd need to do early in the morning. There was a hint of it in a picture posted Friday; did you catch it?

And that's my Saturday pictures! Sunday was the most free of days and I have a great mass of pictures from that.

Our hotel room, as we left it. I was left alone to do the final packing and clearing out of our room and while I wasn't too worried about lugging our stuff to the car several city blocks away, I was terrified I was going to leave something important behind. I did not, so far as we've noticed yet.

Another view of our room. Note that I opened and left open the drawer in the bedside table even though we never set anything in it.

Ah, but, we were awake early enough that I could get to the hotel buffet breakfast and load up on scrambled eggs, some more scrambled eggs, more scrambled eggs, some scrambled eggs, and I don't know, I probably pocketed a banana or something. Anyway I would like to express my support for eggs.

Mural above the hotel's dining area. The hotel used to be the Pittsburgh branch of the Cleveland Federal Reserve so the room has this style of looking all respectable and fiduciary. I don't know if the mural is actually vintage or just made to look vintage.

Trivia: On the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh Canal of the 19th century --- a network of canals and railroads --- passenger cars would be canal packets which were lifted from the water, set on train beds, and carried to the next canal segment to be re-floated. Source: The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, Wolfgang Schivelbush. (It's the sort of thing that makes you realize how close we were to container cargo long before the 1950s.)

Currently Reading: Barnaby, Volume 1, Crockett Johnson.

Cedar Point has four more operating days this season, the coming two Saturdays and Sundays. And ... I'm thinking about going.

I know the reasons not to. Going out to inessential things spreads the disease. And there is nothing essential about an amusement park. One could argue that, like, going to the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky serves the purpose of propping up their shabby finances. But Cedar Point's parent company thinks it has enough cash on hand not to be in a crisis even with another year of being closed. We would be going because we want to go an amusement park.

I can rationalize why it's all right. Although I have insisted the amusement parks should not have opened, it does appear that no park can be traced to any real outbreak of Covid-19. That they're running at lowered capacity, and not doing indoor events, surely helps. An amusement park is mostly people being outside. A late October or early November day? If the weather is not good? If it's like our previous November-closing-day experiences that's some sparse park-going. It's easy enough to wear a mask --- we'd likely have a scarf over our faces anyway --- and with gloves all day won't even be touching metal bars other people have rubbed.

But I recognize the motivations behind this reasoning too. A big part is that bunnyhugger and I have been really good, possibly the best of any of our friends, about not doing inessential stuff. We've gone to drive-ins. We went to the zoo once. We've had a friend over to sit outside, at a distance. We've visited her parents and sat outside, at a distance. Weather Underground has completely forgotten my ``Recent Cities'' profile, places like Fremont and Sandusky and Muskegon and Columbus that we don't see anymore. I think maybe moxie_man is the only one more abstemious. As we see through Facebook or other means that friends are just ... going out, hanging out in bars, acting as though wearing a facemask is all they have to do, as opposed to the minimum you must do ... it feels like, you know, why don't we get a fair share?

I mean, if everyone had been as good as we've been --- we haven't even had take-out or delivery through the pandemic! --- there wouldn't be a pandemic by now. But there is still a pandemic, and it's worse than it was in April, and it's not like bad choices now won't make it worse still.

Pressing on me is the realization that, jeez. We've had nothing normal since March. We aren't going to have anything for ages to come. We can't go to Bronner's for bunnyhugger's birthday this year. Silver Bells won't happen. bunnyhugger's mother has rejected our getting together in person for Thanksgiving. There won't be any competitive pinball --- nothing sanctioned, anyway --- for, jeez, it's got to be another half-year at least. It's possible that we might yet talk bunnyhugger's mother into an in-person Christmas, maybe, but even so it'll be impossible to talk her into having bunnyhugger's brother in from Brooklyn. It would take a miraculous collapse in Michigan Covid-19 rates for MJS to hold his pole barn New Year's Eve party, or for us to attend. Maybe we'll be fortunate, we'll get Democrats into every position of power, we'll get a vaccine. But --- consider the Copernican argument. There is a better than 50% chance we are not yet at the halfway mark of this. Even if we are at the halfway mark then it'll be June before things are normal and July before we can finally have Motor City Fur[ry] Con. Maybe. If things start going well.

In light of that, is it wrong to grab selfishly at being able to spend eight shivering hours at Cedar Point?

That I am making excuses for why it is all right is probably a clear argument it's not. And, like, even if we do go, the best that can happen is we don't cause anyone to get sick; it's not like we will have a life-affirming experience on the Mine Ride. But there are reasons we have celebrations in the middle of winter. A bit of festival makes more bearable a long and cold and barren stretch.

And it would be so nice to do something normal.

Well, let's look at something without any but the usual moral quandaries: Friday at Pinburgh 2019. This, too, closes out the day as I took few pictures apart from stuff like scorecards, none of which were amazing enough that I want to share them.

And there on the sidewalk, as we walked from lunch at the pierogie place: one lone used sock. Its origin and purpose still a mystery.

The waterfall and 'river' through the median underneath the convention center was shut down, for some kind of work going on. We were looking forward to seeing it back in normal operation in 2020.

They got us all together for a group picture so I went and took a picture right back at them.

bunnyhugger joining the other women on-stage for the group women's shoot.

Yeah so some groups are just going to keep on taking their time playing Deadpool and hold up the tournament from the next round. (Not actually, not this time; it was a different group that ran so long on one game that even after Pinburgh invoked its new you-can-stop-now rule, it delayed the next round for everybody by a half-hour plus.)

Fourth bank for the second day. Rolling Stones I worked out how to play using the base logic of 'this is a Stern pinball game. There's some shot that, repeated, will start multiball. Pick one and try it' and what do you know but it worked. Minizag I feel like I play every Pinburgh, and I always feel like I should be good at it, and I am not.

Still, that's some great stylized art there. Look at those bodies.

Middle playfield for MiniZag. Again, great, spectacularly pop-art bodies and a message for their time.

So Pinburgh 2018, on that Simpsons, in my famous and controversial two-player group, my opponent put up 22 million --- always a good score on that table and absolutely spectacular for one in Pinburgh tournament conditions --- and I went and put up 40 million on the poor guy. Anyway, so, this time around? I put up the worst game of my life. (Not quite, but close.)

(Sigh.) FINE, Pat, you can play pinball, can we just FINISH and GO HOME some of us have playoffs in the morning?

Early-solid-state game, from the era of making backglasses that would rather be the covers for bonkers science fiction novels of 1978.

Merch table that also looks like Mario refused to heed the Syndicate's warnings.

Trivia: In 1801 the New York State Assembly declared there should be a translation of old colonial records from Dutch into English. In 1818 the work began with one man, Francis Adrian van der Kemp, translating twelve thousand pages into English over the following four years. van der Kemp was going blind and had a faulty command of English to start with, and his translation was apparently quite bad. The sole manuscript was eventually lost to a fire. Source: The Island at the Centre of the World, Russell Shorto.

Currently Reading: Barnaby, Volume 1, Crockett Johnson.

PS: Using my A to Z Archives: Smooth, maybe the first time anyone has noticed this essay since I published it.

Big piece on the mathematics blog today. My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Statistics gets more political than you might have expected. Well, it's about important stuff.

Back to the photo roll and hey, I'm finally ... only 15 months behind! (Whimper.)

I jested, of course, when I said there was no way of knowing what we were in Pittsburgh for. It was the 1st of August, 2019, and the start of Pinburgh, after the longest wait --- 53 weeks! --- from the last time the largest pinball tournament in the world began. Here, we gather, listening to the inspirational message, ``[ inaudible ]''.

My first bank! Pinburgh is ten rounds, and in each round is a modern game (here, Wheel of Fortune), an electromechanical game (Captain Fantastic), a late-solid-state game (Black Belt), and an early-solid-state game (Super Orbit), at least so far as the tournament can balance it. There's some cases where, like, an early dot-matrix-display game has to sub for the late-solid-state, or other such mild variations.

``Hey ... got any furries left?'' Pinburgh occupies the same hall as Anthrocon, although it attracts less attention from the general community because only a few players compete in fursuit.

Here, though, we see Pittsburgh's famous Yellow Bridge Outside The Anthrocon Hall as it puts on its pants.

``I saved pinball for this?'' Roger Sharpe, famous for the ``called shot'' that clinched New York City legalizing pinball in the 70s, has one of those moments on Star Pool. Electromechanical games like this do that to everybody.

My third bank, which included Goldeneye, Doodle Bug, Taxi, and Flash Gordon. I felt really good about all these games, which I've played and know tolerably well. I came in last on two of them and next-to-last on the other two.

Our hotel used to be the Federal Reserve Branch office for Pittsburgh. So in the basement (which also leads to a ground-level exit) were the safes and they've turned them into conference rooms, in case you need a place to discuss with GREAT SECURITY your projections for the fourth quarter.

I like to think that Anthrocon has some events in the hotels, as satellite events, because it would be really funny to have the Raccoons SIG meeting behind bolted doors like this.

There's a lot of techs who work Pinburgh and do amazing in-game repairs like this as necessary.

Another of my banks! AC/DC for the modern game, Blue Chip for electromechanical, the early-modern game Terminator 2 pretending to be a late solid state, and Big Game as the early solid state. Though Blue Chip is a reliably kind game to me at Fremont events, I came in last by far on this instance of it.

A new thing for Pinburgh/ReplayFX 2019 was these floor lines to help people find stuff. Also I live for mock subway lines.

Electromechanical game Miss-O, made in that era when pinball art really got into the Pop Art style of sharply angular people with sharp points everywhere. I think the woman playing pool has a prominent nipple because of an unfortunate reflection of the light, but am not positive. Anyway, notice a player --- not me, mercifully --- had the most terrible possible outcome: tilting without any score. Ouch.

Trivia: John Mason Neale, author of the 1855 Murray Handbooks for Travellers for Portugal, also composed the lyrics for the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas. Source: On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield.

Currently Reading: Pogo's Sunday Punch, Walt Kelly.

Saturday we went to a drive-in. The Capri, down in Coldwater, which was showing a double feature: The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus. The first we've seen a bunch of times, the second we'd never seen. A pop-up drive-in in town was also showing Nightmare, but just as a single feature, so we decided to go for the full experience instead. Plus, who knows how much longer the Capri will be open this season? It would be a bit chilly, but going this late in the year has advantages. For one, the bill could start about 7:45, two-plus hours earlier than a midsummer show. That and the shortness of the movies meant we were home by midnight, a novel event.

Nightmare, now ... I guess I haven't seen in the past decade. The second-biggest change in my impression of the movie is that, oh, yeah, for a musical animation it doesn't really have any songs, does it? It has a lot of music but almost all of it is kind of tuneless. (Also we learned that Jack Skellington has different speaking and singing voices; who knew?) Even when something has a tune (``Kidnap the Santy Claws'') do you remember any of the lyrics?

The biggest change is, uh, yeah, the Oogie Boogie Man is not a good look. I guess Halloween Town has to have a villain who's actually scary or else the end of the movie ... comes ten minutes earlier? Did we actually need this plot thread? But he does end up pushing just a couple too many old-racist-stereotype buttons. I'm willing to accept it was accidental, the result of, like, figuring he should evoke the Cab Calloway Betty Boop cartoons and needs a good jazzy/boogie-woogie soundscape and such. But mixing that together without mindfulness, especially with making his gimmick being crooked gambling work, just stumbles over the line in a way that I'd like to think we wouldn't do now, or wouldn't do if there were a non-white person in the writing room. I feel like, for me, this doesn't spoil the movie yet. But it does mean what should be an exciting climax is instead awkward and embarrassing and, you know, did we really need this to finish Jack Skellington's story?

So while he's the centerpiece of Halloween, Jack Skellington is not the Mayor of Halloween Town. So, who's the mayor of Christmas Town? Santa's obviously the center character there but is he the mayor? Is Father Christmas? Someone else? Also, that rabbit that Lock, Shock, and Barrel abduct by mistake: the Easter Bunny, or just a red rabbit who happened to be in Easter Town? Also, did they actually return him? (I vote they returned him, on the grounds that if they didn't, we'd see a follow-up joke about that.)

And hey, imagine a version of the story where Sally ever talks about something that isn't one of the two guys in her life. Also, like, did Sally and Jack know each other before the movie started? I had had the impression they didn't, but watching the movie again I'm not sure.

Really, though, what does the story gain by having the Oogie Boogie Man in it?

On my mathematics blog I'm Using my A to Z Archives: Riemann Sum, which is different from the Riemann Sphere mentioned last week. Promise.

So we're not done with Lakemont Park yet, for all that there's only a few things there.

Gosh, I didn't remember the loading station being this curved. Best of like four attempts at taking a panoramic shot here.

Walking down the exit ramp and getting a look at the lift hill, and the second turnaround where it goes out and back again.

Looking back at the main turnaround and a glimpse of the go-kart track that wasn't being used.

Oh well that's nice, we're welcome to things. I believe that off to the right was where the Toboggan, the tiny carnival-grade roller coaster they had last time, used to be.

The park has got a couple miniature golf courses and we were obviously drawn to this one.

... OK, whose great idea was playing miniature golf? The course and its props were new that year, though.

Most of the holes were themed to some mid-Pennsylvania wildlife, or plant life, and offered some facts that might even be true. Not sure what they think makes an Eastern Raccoon, though.

Ah, there's the Eastern Raccoon, serving as obstacle.

Oh, for crying out loud ... gang, can we spread out a little?

Some Eastern Grey squirrel propaganda here.

And here's the Bunny Golf hole that does not quite give the course its name.

That's ... a lot of bunnies, all in a curved file like that.

Trivia: From 1954 to the end of its independent existence the Pennsylvania Rail Road paid no federal income tax, and had enough annual tax-loss carry-forwards to shelter its subsidiaries from income tax also. Source: The Wreck of the Penn Central: The Real Story Behind The Largest Bankruptcy In American History, Joseph R Daughen, Peter Binzen.

Currently Reading: Casper the Friendly Ghost Classics 1, Editor Mike Wolfe.

Before my walk yesterday I joked, ``I'll be out five minutes and they'll call to say my iPod's fixed''. It was not that close; I was back an hour or so when they called. But the important thing is, they fixed my iPod! At least, they replaced the battery and tested to confirm that now it would run on the battery for hours without crashing. That's a good sign. Didn't even lose any data; I could resume my podcast from right where I dropped it off on Tuesday.

The Minding Animals conference, scheduled for July 2021 in Australia, is indefinitely postponed. Covid-19, of course. We were expecting the announcement since international academic conferences need a lot of lead time, and it's hard to imagine Americans being able to even travel overseas as soon as July. We had planned to attend; bunnyhugger had been to three of the four so far, and we'd used attending it to support our honeymoon in the Netherlands and Britain in 2012, and going to Mexico City in 2018.

Still, uh, I guess the good thing is we don't have to worry about a schedule conflict with Pinburgh 2021, also expected for sometime in July. We can go to that without worrying.

Back to Lakemont Park, and crawling all over Leap The Dips and oh, what a exciting ride it would have been. Had it been running it would have been MWS's 100th roller coaster, in his personal log. He expected 100 to be the only roller coaster milestone he'd be likely to make and with Leap The Dips out of service he'd have to save it for Kennywood's new coaster, Steel Curtain.

Nice view of the lift hill for Leap The Dips. Note the grey-green horizontal slats; that's the mechanism to keep the car from sliding back downhill if the lift chain slips.

The ride sign and rules for Leap The Dips, along with one of the cars --- practically a sleigh --- at the loading station.

Looking up Leap The Dips's lift hill, and two of the figure-eight turns that it makes as part of the dip-leaping ride.

They had two cars out here, where they might be set to ride. It's hard to imagine they'd ever run two cars at once --- no brakes, never mind that it's not a busy park --- but they clearly are ready for the possibility.

And in the deeper recesses, other cars. I assume they're used for parts or anything now, and maybe also kept for fear of losing historically interesting parts of the ride.

Car number eight, which I think is the one we rode in 2013. And imagine a time when they might have run eight cars on this not-at-all-large roller coaster, which hasn't got any brakes except at the end of the track, at a time.

Little metallic hook at the start of the lift hill. I believe this is meant to make sure a car can't roll back from the end of the hill and crash into a car waiting at the station.

Car number six and, as you can see, a lot of wood-maintenance equipment. Unfortunately, Leap The Dips was not running when we visited, or at all during 2019. They were making repairs and doing maintenance and all, though, and the ride opened in July 2020 making it the only roller coaster it actually seems kind-of plausible to responsibly visit this year.

Landmark plaque put up by the American Coaster Enthusiasts when Leap The Dips turned 100.

And the sign, and general entrance, for Leap The Dips. It's a very open thing, no long queue lines or anything evident. There's also a car concealed within dark glass and unexplained. I assume it's maybe the oldest car or one that had some notable event happen but, as I say, it's not explained.

Plaque from the National Park Service commemorating the ride's historic landmark designation.

And a look from behind the loading station, at what I think of as the exit even though you can really just come and go from anywhere along the ride's length.

Trivia: In January 1791 President George Washington wrote Virginia Governor Beverly Randolph of his backing away from schemes to entice British artisans to break emigration laws and come to America: ``I am told that it is a felony to export the machines, which it is probably the artist contemplates to bring with him, and it certainly would not carry an aspect very favorable to the dignity of the United States for the President in a clandestine manner to entice the subjects of another nation to violate its laws''. Source: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, Peter Andreas. Still, Washington did not mean to discourage other people from encouraging British subjects to bring badly-needed industrial skills and machine tools to the United States.

Currently Reading: Popeye And The ``Jeep'', Elzie Segar. Early-80s reprint of the tail end of the story where Popeye is the ruler of Spinachovina, and most of the first two stories with the Jeep. The stories read a little better than they did in daily form, even for just a couple redundant strips (or half-strips) being dropped.

A rare, for these weekdays, instance where I don't have any new mathematics blog post! I just have my usual humor blog posts, a week's worth, to wit:

• A Fluid Dialogue which was last week's big piece and good luck reading.
• Today in how pop culture overwrote the part of me that has personality with Freakazoid references for crying out loud.
• Statistics Saturday: Top Five Letters In October which is silly but also really easy to read.
• 60s Popeye: The Glad Gladiator and wait, is that Ham Gravy? I think that’s Ham Gravy! Plus some really obscure Popeye-universe characters, for some reason.
• So I only just today got this Far Side comic but I don't feel bad about that exactly.
• What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Is Jules Rivera destroying Mark Trail yet? July – October 2020 A plot recap and, yeah, I know people want me to snark on the new Mark Trail but I'm not ready to do that yet.
• In Which My Fortune Is All But Made with a great realization.
• The Fast New Sound which was this week's big piece and is about something in the actual news.

And now? The last of my DelGrosso's pictures from 2019.

Glimpse of the Tipton Creek, I assume, on the Tipton Creek Railroad ride.

View of the Super Round-Up from behind, as well as some of the picnic areas, as seen from the railroad.

As you get off the railroad you face this slight historic marker, the Original Site of Logan Valley Presbyterian Church, 1845 AD. This is all the information you get about it, and it's so unobtrusive that bunnyhugger and MWS did not remember walking past it.

On-ride carouselle picture for bunnyhugger. The lighting was not on my side.

A look at some more of the scenic panels on the antique carouselle.

The Dodge'em ride at DelGrosso's.

It's your basic bumper car ride, except that it has that diagonally-slanted wood paneling like your friend with the cool 60s basement had.

Food stand, which might not look like much but DelGrosso's has really good food and if you ever have the chance to get their potato salad, TAKE IT. Like, a bigger order of potato salad than that. As at many ungated parks, there's people who come to DelGrosso's just for the meal.

A closing thought from the park.

Trivia: The electric tabulators of Herman Hollerith's 1890 Census could count up to 9,999 punch cards in a batch. Then the results would need to be copied --- by hand --- for later processing, with totals reset to zero. Source: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold, Merritt Ierley.

Currently Reading: Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, Amir Alexander.

The city clerk's received my ballot. Glad to have that in, and also glad that the Democrats can save the expense mailing things to me for a couple weeks. Put the advertising budget to somewhere it can do good. Now I just have to hope the Republican partisans on the state Supreme Court decide to allow the counting of ballots this year.

Took my iPod Touch to the off-label Mac repair store in their new Downtown East Lansing location, my first time setting foot in Downtown East Lansing since the students came back and set off the plague wave. (The place looks like a Rustic-Lodge-Themed Apple Store, and it has a popcorn maker, not in use.) Couple hours later they called the with the evaluation: they believe it's a bad battery. I'll be getting it repaired, for about $90, or about half what a replacement iPod Touch would cost. ... I should probably also take the chance to buy a new OtterBox as the old one's been pretty battered by the years.

Saturday we drove to bunnyhugger's parents. This weekend was looking to be sunny and warm and who knows how many weekends like that we're going to see until 2021? It happens Saturday was the most overcast day of the weekend, but it was still really good weather. Maybe our best overall day of weather for sitting out in the yard while the dogs run off their anxieties since the pandemic came upon us.

It was a day for chillin-and-grillin, they'd put it. The grilling here being a bunch of BeyondMeat sausages and bratwurst. We'd tried to get regular Italian sausage, but the stores only had Hot Italian. We think they only make Hot Italian. This is trouble only for bunnyhugger's father, who does not care for anything spicier than having a shaker of black pepper on the table. So bratwurst was the backup and was pretty well-received. I ended up having two Italian sausages myself. Also we had a lot of potato salad that her mother made and that she'll never believe is as good as we say.

The dogs were, really, doing better than average. Pookie particularly was not all that freaked out by me hanging around, though she much preferred the times that bunnyhugger's father was nearby. Peewee has hyperactive as usual and ran enough that I could see the phenomenon bunnyhugger's parents described. She'll sometimes run on three legs. No idea what would drive her to this.

We stayed through to sunset, and left them with a couple of things. This includes snapdragons not going back into our window box and a bunch of dog toys that bunnyhugger earned as thanks for a virtual 5K run she did recently. Returned some Tupperware of theirs and took some of their Tupperware home with leftover potato salad. That kind of thing.

Along the way bunnyhugger's mother mentioned how Thanksgiving was obviously off. I guess we'd known that was likely, since the United States chose to pretend that if we didn't do anything the virus would go away. It's hard, though. Given how scrupulous both we and bunnyhugger's parents have been about quarantining it really seems like it'd be safe for us, for this time. But it would certainly be safe to have dinner over FaceTime instead.

And then there's Christmas. Because bunnyhugger's school goes to Christmas break early this year it's viable for us to completely quarantine, not going out for anything, for fourteen days. It might be worth it to have something be normal for this year.

In the story comics: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Is Jules Rivera destroying Mark Trail yet? July - October 2020 in plot recapping. Features some amusement park content! Honest.

Now back to our short visit to DelGrosso's, the last day of July 2019.

We couldn't possibly be there long enough to justify getting a ride-all-day wristband. So we got ride tickets instead, and here's what they look like.

DelGrosso's bigger roller coaster is this Crazy Mouse, the same model as Kennywood's (indoors) Exterminator, La Feria's Raton Loco, and many other parks.

So, uh ... yeah, the ride came to a halt when something or other got stuck. This is a picture of right after it came back, following a pretty long downtime, but it had to stop shortly after again.

So we went to the carousel! DelGrosso's has an antique carousel, bought in 1924(?), and I believe it's the oldest carousel we've ridden that's still in its original location.

View of the carousel with a glimpse at its band organ. Notice the Little Red Riding Hood scenery panel in the upper right corner.

Extreme close-up look at the saddle of one horse and the animals behind.

More direct look at the Wurlitzer band organ.

And here's scenery panels. The dog playing a flute sure seems like it's referencing some fairy tale; possibly the Bremen Town Musicians? No idea about the polar bear.

Scenery panel with ... I don't know, possibly Mary and a Little Lamb? The elephant could be anything, I suppose.

Sign with some historical information about the Carouselle, another spelling encountered this trip. So the Bland's Park thing: the location was named for the Blands, the family farm on which the Rinard Brothers opened the park around 1907. Fred DelGrosso bought the park in 1946, but kept the Bland's name until 2000 because of the reasons.

Some more scenery panels, including a clown and a dog-and-pony show.

Yet one of the scenery panels has Niagara Falls, which reminds you this is a Herschell-Spillman carouselle.

Trivia: For the 1963 astronaut candidate selection NASA received 71 applications from the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, and 200 applications from civilians. Source: The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight For A Generation, Michael Cassutt.

Currently Reading: Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, Amir Alexander.

PS: I'm looking for V, W, and X topics for the All 2020 A-to-Z in case you'd like to see me talking mathematics some more.