Archive for May, 2007
Thursday, May 31st, 2007Nate and Emily have discovered that, if you are coming from a big city such as Chicago, it may save you a real ton of money to fly into either Charlotte or Greensboro. When I checked just now, this was on the order of $400 to Johnson City versus $170 to Charlotte and around $250 to Greensboro.
Obviously, Chicago is a special case, with a huge hub in town that probably has really cheap flights to random places. Still, you might want to check that out, or use the feature on sites such as travelocity which lets you compare prices at several near-by airports. If it looks like this is a good idea for you, please get in touch with us (or start a discussion here in the comments) so that we can help find the best way to get people from these airports to Jonesborough.
For instance, if multiple people will be flying into Charlotte, perhaps those people would like to rent a car together? Or perhaps people flying into Greensboro can hitch rides with my friends and family? Nate & Em have dibs on Keith and Bethany’s free space, if they decide to use it, but there’s a chance that we can find more space if needs be.
Possibly the answer is, “Ew. Way more good than one that you make us look at.”
Nonetheless, I’m going on the assumption that the power of the playoff beard increases with the number of people who see it. This seems most in keeping with the logic of the playoff beard.
First playoff game is tonight. Here’s hoping that I’m back next week with a picture of a beard twice as long.
Also, I will have pictures of Ruth’s brother Leon’s visit up as soon as I remember to get them off of her laptop and onto the intertubes.
Bayes’ All-Stars made the playoffs today. After the two wins I mentioned before, we dropped two straight, and had to pull it out tonight in order to qualify. Luckily, Lars is really tall.
It seems pretty clear to me what I have to do at this point. If we’re going to make it through to earn the championship towels, I’m going to have to grow a playoff beard.
Ruth found out today that she’s had her first paper accepted by a journal! Co-authored with Matt Lattal and her advisor (Marcelo Wood), it will appear as a “brief communication” in an as-yet unidentified future edition of Behavioral Neuroscience.
Woot!
Using only the subtlest of references, Belle Waring points to a Pandagon post on the “wedding-industrial complex.” Therein we learn that the average wedding these days costs $27,000. I’m pretty sure that if you look up “freaking absurd” in Wikipedia, you’ll find a picture of that.
The best part is the story about the limousine company that charges an extra $150 if the bride and groom will be riding, and will drive off if they arrive to find a person in a bridal gown who has not booked the “wedding special.” Sounds absurd (and it is, kind of) until you get to
My ex’s stepmother was a caterer and she said she would not even do weddings unless they paid through the nose for it, because she was sick and tired of being the occasion for fights between brides and mothers-in-law or being screamed at for minor and often imagined imperfections.
Fair enough, then. I can’t tell you how glad I am that our whole affair is so much more low-key than that.
In other news, the funniest thing I’ve read this month. Before you go, note that Zoë is five years old.
I went to an entertaining talk by UCI theorist and computational geometer David Eppstein yesterday. He showed some proofs (the subject was far afield for me, but engaging), some of which employed the Happy Ending Theorem. (Dr. Eppstein also seems to have written much of that Wikipedia entry.) The statement of the theorem goes like this:
Theorem. Any set of five distinct points in the plane such that no three are in a line has a subset of four points that form the vertices of a convex quadrilateral.
The proof is due to Esther Klein, and shortly after she showed the proof to them, Paul Erdős and George Szekeres produced a generalization.
The obvious question is, “So what’s this got to do with happy endings?” It turns out that it was named the Happy Ending Theorem by Erdős, because it resulted in the marriage of his friends Klein and Szekeres.
How adorable is that? One-hundred percent adorable.
There has apparently been some confusion as to whether or not the hand groping Abby’s breast in the photo linked from the About Us page is Photoshopped-in. Let me assure you: that is definitely Corinne’s hand. The confusion arises from the fact that Corinne’s arm looks like it’s part of some decoration in the window.
Please be advised: Corinne is an incorrigible groper. If you plan to attend the wedding, there is always some danger that Corinne may attempt to feel you up. Ruth and Todd will not be held responsible for any emotional damage that results from any such attack.
In case you haven’t heard, Ruth recently won a training grant awarded to two students each year from the INP and MGBG programs. As far as we can tell, the competition is pretty stiff, but either way we’re very excited, because it saves her and her advisor from having to worry about funding.
Also, the Bayes’ All-Stars are killing it. That’s us with the 50, and our opponents with the 20. Also, we’re getting a big lift tomorrow, when our astrophysicist comes back from illness. Because no intramural basketball team worth its salt can go without its astrophysicist for too long.
Over our first six months in Irvine, Ruth and I developed a pretty detailed list of things we disliked about the place: too many strip malls, not enough independently-owned anything, no used book stores, a seeming dearth of cultural activity. Also high on the list was absence of coffee shops other than Starbucks and its clones.
We’re still bummed about the used books thing, but a little research has turned up two good independent coffee shops. Our favorite is Kean, which is run by Martin Diedrich.
Diedrich has coffee in his blood, as his family has been growing coffee for at least four generations. According to the bags in which they sell the coffee, he chooses the beans and manages the roasting himself. This is easy to believe, as he is often found in the store during the afternoon. He is clearly very hands-on.
Another great thing about their beans is that they’re virtually all single-estate, and in many cases the name of the grower is right on the bag. That kind of transparency and attention to detail is such an outstanding contrast with the kind of bulk processing that produces the coffee at places like Starbucks and DunkinDonuts that it’s almost disorienting.
The drinks in the store are expertly made, and it’s impossible to make a bad cup at home with the beans they sell.