I promised an explanation as to why lately I’ve been wandering the strange halls of the Natural History Building.  This (above)  is it.  A shoe-sized very heavy piece of semi-magnetic Nickel-Iron rock that I believe may be a meteorite, and around 4.4 billion years old.

I’ve mentioned this before.  Searching through the warren of rooms and hallways undeneath my Grandfather’s apartment building, this was what I was looking for.  Though I was beginning to think I’d never find it, a few weeks ago an expedition into the basement recovered, at last, the meteorite I remember my grandfather showing me years ago. 

And although he had a habit of making up stories, I’m pretty sure that he himself believed this one.  I found the meteorite in a brown paper bag with notes on it from when my grandfather took the meteorite to the Field Museum to have it identified.  The results seem to have been inconclusive, with the museum rep telling my grandfather that the musuem would need to take posession of the thing before cutting it up to discern its true point of origin. 

So I arranged last week to take the meteorite in tomorrow and meet with an emeritus professor of geology, who takes an interest in identifying meteorites.  I must say, however, that the odds of my piece of iron actually being a meteorite seem small, given that it has some characteristics that are atypical of most meteorites.  It has some bubble-like cavities that suggest a terrestrial origin.  It has sharp edges that are usually more rounded in meteorties that have endured atmospheric descent.  And I don’t think it exhibits the “fusion crust” that meteorites often have.

Yet (as a childhood space geek) I’m not prepared to decide that what I’ve got is a plaing old igneous rock, or a piece of industrial waste.  There are meteories with irregular surfaces and even with bubble like structures.  So we will tomorrow take this piece of cosmic mystery into the Geology department and await the crying of lot 49.

Any bets on what I’ve got?  Does this meteor identification guide help?  Or is it already clear enough to everyone that what I have is really a meteorwrong?

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An astute reader points out that the new head of the AAUP has been arrested in support of the grad strike at NYU.  This news item (blog post?) seems to feel that things may be beginning to turn around for that long-running embarrasment to NYU.  Here’s hoping that the best efforts of grads and others can renew the bedraggled soul of the Washington Square monster.

You’ve all been party to the excited speculation about the uncoming movie masterpice, Snakes on a Plane.  But how will it end?  McSweeney’s has the bases covered.

This is from a flickr photoset I took today, while wandering around the beautiful interior of the Natural History Building.  It is unbecoming a museum.  So now its a museum of itself, all being lost.  Go wander there soon, if you live in Champaign-Urbana.  If you want to see it, you do have one advantage: no one seems any more interested in taking the place apart than they were in keeping it together.  So it may be another couple decades before it is completely swept away.

Why have I been hanging around there lately?  More on that later.

Is it just possible the the move to impeach George W. Bush will get its start in the Land of Lincoln and Jonathan Baldwin Turner?

Maybe yes.

What?  The left is set to make war on Easter?  I just hope they know who they’re messing with!

[WARNING: VIDEO!  VIDEO YOU’VE PROBABLY ALREADY SEEN!]

Well, no.  But I want one.  Would it be too lame, even for me, to buy a thing like this (it’s 4″x4″x1.5″) to use to try to keep me grading on pace?  Could I bring it to Kopi without getting beaten up?

Is reserved for people who hum little tunes in the copy room as I’m trying to write up a quiz for ten minutes from now.

So, you know who I’m liking lately?  Microsoft.  No kidding.  I mean, WinXP is such a lovely operating system as compared to the 95/98 thingamabobs, and Microsoft, when regulated a bit seems to be perforce less overtly ruthless than they were in years past and all-in-all I find myself letting my guard down towards them just a little.

I’ll admit that I’m quite keen to get my hands on, for example, one of their new Origami-type computers (not actually manufactured by Microsoft, but their Big Idea nonetheless).  That’s what I want—a little “notebook” computer that actually has the size and functionality of a notebook.  And although the first generation Origami machines are sort of bulky, with smallish screens and short battery life, one can tell that in a couple years these will be elegant useful machines.

Today’s reviewers are sort of unenthusiastic about them (some confusions about what they are: big PDAs?  a large Ipods?  a small laptops?)  People seem to miss the machine’s best potential, as internet-linked notebook that will allow me to read books on a book sized screen, or take notes with a stylus and one hand as I read an old-style paper book (it’s a pain reading and taking notes on a laptop).  A nice little screen I can plug into a fullish sized keyboard when I need to type on it.

Microsoft is innovating here, and also with their Onenote note-taking software (you can dowload a free trial version), which I’ve lately been playing with and enjoying, this sort of product might finally provide a way to take and organize notes on the go.

Meanwhile, I continue to be annoyed with some opensource offerings.  In Openoffice Write you can’t center the page you’re writing.  In the Gimp, you can’t draw a circle without some absurd cut-and-paste operation.  It’s frustrating to see the way that open-source development can neglect basic functionality, when there’s not much glory to be obtained for those who work on basic functionality features that turn out to be tricky to implement.

In technology as in politics, I give credit to things that work—even when they come from Microsoft.  Nice job, Bill.

Probably not.

Got my Beaumont and Fletcher back from the bookbinders the other day.  Beautiful, sturdy bindings.  At first I was annoyed because the title on the spine reads: “Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works.” (whereas the title page reads “The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher”).  Also there were, oddly, periods after the titles printed on the spines of my new books.  I was about to complain, until I realized that this was how the old spines had been printed in the first place.  Oh well.

Anyway, I can now read around in the plays of B&F with great ease and in high style.  Hooray!

from The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain (1986)

The Cotswold Olympick Games

Founded in about 1604 by a wealthy attorney named ‘Captain’ Robert Dover, these renowned country sports were originally held throughout WHITSUN week in the open country around Dover’s Hill near Chipping Campden.  As a gesture of defiance against Puritan attempts to ban ’sinful games’, they enjoyed from the first the enthusiastic support of courtiers like Endymion Porter—who suggested their ‘Olympick’ title and obtained the suit of King James I’s clothes which Dover wore to direct them, while country gentry and village champions alike flocked to compete for handsome money prizes and the Captain’s coveted yellow rosettes.  Wrestling, leap-frog, hammer throwing, hare coursing and horse races figured prominently among their attractions, but they were most famous for cudgel fights and shin-kicking contests—whose exponents wore iron-tipped boots, and frequently limped for the rest of their lives.