Thursday, 3/12

Today, I promise not to write ANYTHING about the weather. I'll save that for tomorrow when we're supposed to get another foot (or more) of the white crap.

Sigh...

Instead, two totally unrelated things I've been meaning to mention. First of all is a weird thought that popped into my head yesterday afternoon while eating an apple—do you leave the stem in when eating an apple, or do you twist it out? I don't know why the thought popped into my head; it just did. I personally twist the stem out. I don't know why; I mean, I could eat an apple with the stem in it. It wouldn't bother me at all. But for whatever reason, I always twist the stem out.

I guess I'm just weird like that.

And in regard to twisting the stem out of an apple—is/was there some kind of weird thing that goes along with how many twists it takes to get the stem out of the apple? You know; like if it takes four twists you'll kiss four people this year, or something strange like that? I seem to remember something along those lines from when I was a kid, but I don't remember any of the details. So if YOU know if I'm remembering this correctly or if I've just moved myself one step closer to heading off the deep end (a distinct possibility), let me know.

And thanks.

Secondly, I would like you to read this paragraph--

“In this paper, we develop a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue. This vector has been found to have applications in fields such as graph partitioning and graph drawing. The algorithm is a purely algebraic approach based on a heavy edge coarsening scheme and pointwise smoothing for refinement. To gain theoretical insight, we also consider the related cascadic multigrid method in the geometric setting for elliptic eigenvalue problems and show its uniform convergence under certain assumptions. Numerical tests are presented for computing the Fiedler vector of several practical graphs, and numerical results show the efficiency and optimality of our proposed cascadic multigrid algorithm.”.

My question is this—did you understand it? Please say no. Please say that only a genius (or, in the case of the person who wrote it, a former lineman for the Baltimore Ravens who's a math scholar) can understand it. Because, you know, if that's something most people understand and I don't; well, then, I even dumber than I thought I was.

And that's quite dumb!

Okay. That's it for unrelated things for now. Except for this—if you're in Marquette and wanna see a dork on TV, there's a special fundraising edition of “High School Bowl” on WNMU-TV tonight at 9. There will be two pledge breaks in the show, and the aforementioned dork—well, okay me—will be begging for bucks for Public Media.

Between those, though, will be game segments featuring some of the brightest young people on the planet. And I'm pretty sure at least one or two of them might even understand that paragraph about the cascadic multigrid algorithm.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 3/11

Okay. This can stop any year now.

As I may have mentioned once or twice (or several hundred times) the past few months, we're in the middle of an honest to goodness “Throwback Winter”, a season that reflects what winters used to be like around here before we broke the planet. After a bunch of mild winters in a row I don't think most people are quite happy with the way this one is turning out, and were kind of euphoric on Monday when it jumped up into the 50s and melted a whole bunch of the white stuff--

However, it didn't last too long. Here's what it looked like when I showed up to work this morning around 10--

We're in the middle of a Winter Storm Warning, schools all across the area once again closed, and I'm thinking the vast majority of the 300,000 people who call Upper Michigan home are so ready for this stuff to be over that today is kind of like a gut punch to the psyche.

It really IS unwelcome.

It blows my mind that according to the National Weather Service, here in the city of Marquette we're only 15 or so inches above our “average” snow total. Based on the massive amount of white stuff we've all had to move this year it doesn't seem possible, but that's science and, as we all know, science doesn't lie. Averages, of course, are made up of many different numbers, including those when our horrid winters were the norm and not just “Throwback”.

We've just been spoiled the past decade or so.

Will it ever end? Well, that's a question for people much smarter than I. All I know is that our brief tease of Spring this past weekend was just that—a tease. Apparently, we still have a LOT more of our “Throwback” winter to get through.

Yuck.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 3/10

I wonder if anyone actually got all of the jokes?

Following last week's somber TV piece about the ultimately unsuccessful search for a missing person in Marquette, I decided to go all out on the goofiness this week. Thankfully, this time of the year there is a ready made subject for a little goofiness, which I'm guessing is the ONLY thing potholes are good for. So I went all out on them last night, mixing in gags ranging from Yooper jokes to off-handed comments about 16^th century Portuguese explorers.

Why? The question, perhaps, should be “why not”, right?

8-)

This was also one of those instances where the bit came in way too long, and I had to cut a bunch of gags out, including (but not limited to) my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon, the two least of the Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario, obviously), Bigfoot, and the state bird of Michigan, the mosquito. But you know what? As we've said before, sometimes editing makes things better.

See if it did this week--

I think I've written in here before about a line one of my favorite comedic personalities of all time (Jack Benny) once said—“if we can't stick in one joke a week just for us, we're in the wrong business”. So if there's a gag or two (or eight) in there that you didn't get or seems just plain stupid (probably the vast majority of them), never fear.

I was just paying homage to one of the great comedic minds of all time. It was just me writing a gag (or six) for myself.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 3/9

And now, we’re left with the garbage.

With probably 90% of the snow in the city of Marquette melting over the past week, what was just recently a white wonderland is now a big brown blob of sand and junk and all kinds of crap, both figurative and literal (thank you, the small minority of Marquette dog owners who don’t think the city’s pooper scooper law applies to them). Loraine and I went for a stroll Sunday and were astounded by the amount of bottles, cans, empty fast food wrappers, and other different examples of the refuse of winter, all laying in decaying heaps on city sidewalks and in city streets.

As I wrote about last week, March may be the one month of the year when Marquette isn’t, well, beautiful. Aside from being filled with leftover brown dirt, it's also filled with the leftover remainders of people who think that, just because they can’t see where it lands, it’s okay to toss whatever garbage they have in their cars or in their hands on the nearest sidewalk. And it’s also filled with the leftover remainders of pets, innocent animals whose owners think it’s okay to leave big piles of bacterial-filled waste on a sidewalk where hundreds of people must dodge said piles when the snow melts for the season.

Sigh.

Thankfully, as I mentioned last week, we live in a community where the clean-up doesn’t take too long. But until then, we’re stuck with an uglier than usual city. Uglier than usual because of the natural result of winter ending (the sand everywhere, and the broken branches everywhere), and uglier than usual because, well, some people are just slobs.

The sad thing is, of course, that it doesn’t have to be that way. People COULD pick up after themselves during winter, and then when March rolls around, clean-up would be quicker, it wouldn’t cost the city so much, and Marquette could start looking like Marquette again, instead of someone’s personal garbage heap.

Sad to say, though, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. After all, I know what people are like these days.

And let's just say my faith in humanity is not what it once was...

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 3/6

Wow. I can't believe we're done for the year.

I'll have to keep this kinda short, because I'm off to NMU in a bit to tape the final episodes of “High School Bowl” of the season. We're doing two shows today, the semi-finals and the finals, as well as interviews and material for the "Season in Review" show, and it puts the wraps on another fun year, a year that seems like it just started yesterday.

But now, it's over.

I don't know if it seems like it's been a short season because it all went so smoothly, or because it's been a blast doing it, but I'm kind of stunned at how quickly it went. Maybe it's the fact that I've been doing it for a bit now; maybe it's because this year, more than any other, the young people on the show have been doing things like putting my face on their pants. I have no idea. I just know it's been a blast this season, and I'm very sorry to see it come to an end. Some familiar teams have made the semis, while there are a couple of surprises in there, as well. I can't wait to see how it turns out later today. You'll have to wait until the middle of April to see it for yourself, but trust me when I say this—there are some amazing moments still to come this season.

The season that, like I said, wraps up shooting in just a few minutes.

With that, I'm off to make sure my tie is straight. Have yourself a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 3/5

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm wrong about a lot of stuff. But I know I'm not wrong about this.

Marquette is usually one of the most beautiful places on the planet. During the summer there's green everywhere you look. During fall that green changes to a palette of polychromatic majesty. And even a snowfall during winter can have an ethereal beauty of its own.

At least the first few snowfalls of the year have that ethereal beauty. After that, all bets are off.

However, there's one segment of the year during which Marquette is not at its best. In fact, you could even make the claim that during that particular segment, Marquette is downright ugly. That period of time?

March.

Don't believe me?

That's a picture I took yesterday, as the sun & 45 degree temperatures reduced our six foot snowbanks into five foot snowbanks. And it, I think, proves my point. All winter long city crews dump sand everywhere, just to make sure that vehicles can make it up the wicked hills of Marquette. That sand is covered up by snowfall, so we really don't notice it when it's around. However, when the snow starts to melt, the sand doesn't, meaning the city turns, for several weeks, into a pile of giant brown mush.

And you know what? There's no way a city can look good when it resembles a pile of giant brown mush.

Thankfully, that particular phase doesn't last too long. Soon (hopefully), the snow will entirely disappear, city crews can work their cleaning magic, and in a month or so green grass and the first flowers will make an appearance, propelling the city toward awesome beauty for which it is known.

But that's still a little bit away. For the next few weeks, we'll just have to deal with the fact that Marquette is still in need of its yearly makeover.

And hopefully, after the winter we've had, that makeover comes sooner rather than later.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 3/4

Who knew a sign of its legacy would still be around, and still sitting in my bedroom, all these years later?

I've been reading a book about the history, development, and sales of candy in the U.S., and one of the things discussed in the book was Wacky Packages. Admittedly, Wacky Packages weren't a candy, but since they stuck sticks of bubble gum in the package, I guess that allowed it to qualify for inclusion in the book. For those of you who don't know Wacky Packs, a thousand or so years ago they were stickers satirizing products of the day (for instance, Crest Toothpaste was turned into Crust Toothpaste), something that appealed to those of us who were nine years old back then (as opposed to those of us who occasionally act like nine year olds now).

Anyway, I had quite the collection of the stickers, so reading through the section of the book about Wacky Packages made me chuckle. I was reading in our bedroom, while Loraine was somewhere else in our apartment. I left the bedroom to show her the page, and in doing so walked past one of the dressers we use. I've had this particular dresser since I was a kid, and on the side of the dresser I passed while leaving the room there are several areas where the stain had been peeled off a long time ago. It wasn't until I walked passed the dresser carrying that book on candy that I realized WHY the stain was peeled off.

The stain on the dresser was peeled off because of the fact that when I was a kid, I once had a bunch of Wacky Packages stickers stuck onto it, stickers that were at one time removed, causing the areas where the stain had been peeled off.

It's funny, because I hadn't looked at the side of the dresser for decades. And I have no idea why I looked at it at the moment I was also carrying the book with the section on Wacky Packages. I just know that I, for some reason, looked at the dresser at that exact second and made the connection. It's funny, too, because if you look close enough you can see the stain that's peeled off is actually peeled off in the shape of stickers. I suppose if I had pictures of each and every Wacky Package sticker from my youth I could tell you which sticker on the dresser was planted where, but that would probably be bordering on the obsessive.

Just a little.

It's weird how parts of our youth keep popping up as we get older & older (and older). Sometimes all it takes is a book—and an old dresser—to remind us of that.

(jim@wmqt.com)