I was talking to some friends today who were convinced that Palin actually said the line, "I can see Russia from my house." After searching YouTube and Google for a while, one of them finally conceded that the line came from the SNL skit making fun of a similar sentiment in her Charlie Gibson interview.

It doesn't seem to matter if something is true. If it's repeated often enough, everyone will believe it. Obama isn't Muslim (and it shouldn't matter if he were) but some people will be convinced if they hear it more often than they hear he's Christian. I wish people were more informed. I say that as a terrible hypocrite, especially regarding local elections. It bothers me that willfully ignorant people get the same voting power as someone who's done the research. But what else could we do?

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

Senate campaigns keep their fundraising and spending records on computers, using free software from the Federal Election Commission. But when it comes time to file their legally required public disclosure reports, they deliver them on paper - a step required by the Senate.

The Senate then submits picture images of the paper records to the FEC, which is forced to hire a data-entry company to retype the paper records into computers so they can be disseminated, stored and more easily analyzed. That costs taxpayers about $200,000 a year.

[source: AP]

Nerd note: I leave it as an exercise for those readers who are acquainted with the methods of formal language theory to turn what I have just explained into a rigorous argument that the set of all possible properly punctuated English texts cannot be accepted by any finite-state automaton.

[source: Language Log]

Coming to terms with the essential ineffability of experience.

There are programming assignments due all the time. I'm going to a quiz bowl tournament in Rochester tomorrow. My English classes own, particularly Prof. Jeffrey Williams and the topics we ramble on about in class.

I've got to come out and say it: I'm not going to see Spamalot this Sunday because even though I bought a subscription to seven Broadway plays in Pittsburgh, I'm not interested enough in Monty Python to attend. I sold the ticket to my roommate instead.

I feel like I just commited heresy or something...

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C.S. Lewis

Still tired from the video game symphony at Wolf Trap and midnight dinner at the Silver Diner. (That reminds me: screw you, overpriced Disney restaurants! For over $20 per head for lunch, I expect a truly immersive 1950s environment, replete with anti-Communist rhetoric. McCarthyism throwback, anyone?) I hoped to pay obscene amounts of money for a legitimate high-quality CD or DVD at the souvenir stand, but finding none, I hit up mininova for a Stockholm audience recording. The same group that did Play! organized a Final Fantasy concert series a year or two ago, but that CD hasn't been released stateside yet, so I'm not holding my breath.

The last concert is in Toronto on September 30. I doubt anyone I know in Pittsburgh wants to drive ~6 hours to catch it, but there will be two famous composers in attendance.

I figured I'd be fairly well-dressed in my brother's homemade Link t-shirt, but there were some full-blown cosplayers (a friend and I collectively spotted Rinoa, Auron, Yuna, and Sephiroth) who could just have taken 495 South instead of North and wound up far away from Otakon by mistake.

It's been over a decade since I first played this stuff, but hearing familiar (authentic!) beeps and synth noises from SNESmusic.org will never get old. You'll need a plug-in or stand-alone thing (available from the site; Windows/Linux/Mac) since the files aren't in a standard music format, so it's a little more work than opening a link in µTorrent. On the other hand, since these are Super Nintendo-ripped files, they're all incredibly tiny.

If you like Super Smash Bros. [Melee] or are interested in a proper recording of an orchestra playing video game music, I uploaded Super Smash Brothers DX Concert Live by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mainstream America doesn't often see quiz bowl in raw, uncensored form. Though readers of this journal may occasionally be subject to tournament standings or points per game statistics (as a friend once said when declining to hit on a certain opponent, "I think he prefers girls with a bigger PPG"), a jargon-filled summary is no substitute for the true experience.

I have personally dodged cameras at local tournaments (and have heard tell of RM players graciously giving interviews--oh, the burdens of fame) but, at the high school quiz bowl message boards, I stumbled upon several video clips of quiz bowl kids talkin' smack, demonstrating their mastery of pop culture, and proudly wearing their team spirit. Forget Ken Jennings's (you remember the Jeopardy! champion?) carefully constructed blog promoting awareness of his September book release; this is the real deal.

After all, it's MTV. If you can't trust them with the truth, who can you trust?

"You are a nefarious transgressor!"
"I think you're a nascent misanthropist."

There is a couple getting married that wants encrypted messages engraved in their wedding rings. How romantic!

I miss school. I think I might appreciate it more when we all return to academia in the fall.

eta: Follow-up on the encrypted engravings.

( Books read: )

35/101?

(italics for begun but unfinished.)