Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree

Actually, it's an entire family of kookaburras, and they are adorable.

It's nice to remember that there are, after all, a few creatures in Australia that aren't bound and determined to kill you or frighten you to death. 

Celebrity Dude Mobbed By Rabid Fangirls

Wait for it ...

Disgustingly Cute: Meet the Ili Pika of Northwest China

Funny name, weapons-grade adorable furry face.

Up in Flames? Oh the Humanities!

Why are humanities not only valuable but freaking awesome?  You'd better figure it out on your own, because university presidents can't mount a substantive defense of the humanities.  Of course, I think most university presidents aren't worth the pixels it would take me to express my displeasure with most university presidents.  No wonder higher ed is in trouble: its putative leaders have no idea about education.

Music Hath Charms: Vivaldi's "La Primavera" (Spring)

The calendar tells me that spring arrived on the 20th, even though the weather is still chilly.  Ah, well.  Let's have some Vivaldi, shall we?

Awesome Nerd News: Meet John Urschel, Chess Player, Mathematician, and NFL Athlete

John Urschel, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, is one smart cookie.  He's just published a paper entitled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector" in the Journal of Computational Mathematics.  Sound mind in a sound body, indeed, mens sana in corpore sano.

Here's the abstract:

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.

I have no idea what that means, but I do know how hard it is to get published in a scholarly journal.   Congratulations, John!

March Madness 2015: Wisconsin vs. Stenographer

Word games in addition to basketball games!

Thoughts on Bibi's Return and Its Ramifications

I ended up wanting to excerpt too much, so let me suggest that you read the whole thing as a jumping off point for analysis.  More off-the-cuff nonsense after the fold.

LOL: Now THAT Is How You Call Into a Cable News Show

Supermoon, Solar Eclipse, Vernal Equinox, March Madness, Starbucks Race Hustling, and Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome All In One Day!

Well, I guess the only thing I can do as commentary is post this Onion story. 

It's been a lunatic day, in which learning that Starbucks is actually encouraging its baristas to engage customers in discussions about race relations wasn't even the craziest thing that happened.  The inevitable backlash has, admittedly, provided its own form of Schadenfreudelicious entertainment. (Of course the incomparable Iowahawk has a quip.)

Elsewhere, my head is spinning from all the post-Israeli election howling from various people and quarters and media outlets.  I really can't take any more of it, because all the yelling and yammering has coalesced into one wordless collective shriek.  Maybe later I'll try to consider the fallout and talk about foreign policy again, but for now let's just call the furious reactions together "Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome" and let it go at that, mmmkay?

Finally, let me add: THANK GOD March Madness has finally started.  It's the only madness right now that makes any damn sense at all.  

(PS: Go, Anybody-But-Duke!)

Proposed Euro Coin Design Spawns Fight Over Napoleon's Legacy

The design is intended to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.  The French are objecting.  At least there's no doubt where this op-ed writer's sympathies lie.

Oh, since we're on the topic ...

Bibi Got (Come)Back

Well, whaddyaknow?  Several folks I know are calling it "a St. Patrick's Day miracle."

Nobody puts Bibi in a corner.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Today we're all Irish, my dears!  Have fun, be safe, and take a listen to an old favorite:

Quote of the Day: Kurds vs. ISIS

From an anthropologist and a retired general writing together in the New York Times opinion pages today (well, that's not a combination you see every day):

Together with Lydia Wilson and Hoshang Waziri, our colleagues at Artis, a nonprofit group that uses social science research to resolve intergroup violence, we found that the Kurds demonstrate a will to fight that matches the Islamic State’s. The United States needs to help them win.

"Them" means the Kurds.

A Law Professor Considers the University of Oklahoma Speech Kerfuffle

The umpteenth reminder: free speech also protects speech that you don't like.

Here's a bit of it:

Though some ignorant people argue that "hate speech" is unprotected under the First Amendment, that is not the law and never has been. Nor should it be. The test of our commitment to free expression, after all, isn't our willingness to tolerate speech that everyone likes. If you only support free speech for ideas you agree with, you're a hack. If you only support free speech for ideas that everyone agrees with, you're a coward. 

MM in the Kitchen: Cupcakes for Saint Paddy's

Look at that green frosting!

The Best Ad of the Israeli Election?

Apparently Netanyahu is not doing very well in the polls, but I have to say that I really liked this ad.  I thought it was clever, funny, and made its point without being nasty.

Here Are the Best 3 Minutes of Your Day. Guaranteed.

Is this Swedish sign language interpreter the new Numa Numa?

Movie Review: "The Imitation Game" (2014)

Demand the genuine article. 

  

This movie review is long delayed, but I promised La Parisienne that I would write one ... and a lady keeps her promises (even if she's not always punctual!).  The Imitation Game is Oscar-bait biopic filmmaking at its most quintessential, and even if the film ultimately failed to win that golden statuette for fangirl favorite Benedict Cumberbatch in his role as Alan Turing, it is still a largely solid project even if it (inevitably) takes liberties with factuality and (even more inevitably) verges on hagiography.  

In short, The Imitation Game is a movie you watch once and enjoy in the watching (hey, look, it's Tanner from the Bond movies, Tom Branson from Downton Abbey, and Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones!), but it is also a movie that (aside from Cumberbatch's elegantly messy turn as Turing) I swiftly forgot when I left the theatre.  Maybe I should simply refer to the famous Turing Test for seeing if an intelligent machine can be mistaken for a human being.  This movie plays as a machine.  It's not human.  Oh, it tries.  Cumberbatch tries, and he tries on an Oscar caliber level.  But this movie both tries too hard and not hard enough.

I think part of the problem is that the movie keeps leaping among three different time periods: Turing's schoolboy days as an awkward adolescent, the thick of World War II and Bletchley Park's attempt to break the devilishly complex Nazi code enabled by the Enigma machine, and then 1952, when Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality (still criminalized under British law at the time).  The three separate threads do not come together into a unified whole, and so the final product seems disjointed and not a little incoherent.  Besides, Turing as a historical figure is far more (and far more interesting) than "tortured, persecuted genius," and I'm sorry to say that in the end, that is what the film makes of him, first and foremost.

Mad Minerva gives The Imitation Game the grade of B+.  Part of that grade is in grateful acknowledgment of how the flick resists the temptation to be a bloated, 3-hour-long, self-indulgent behemoth.  Another part is for Keira Knightley, who manages not only to be not annoying but actually interesting as a character.  Most of the B+, though, is for Benedict Cumberbatch, who is hands down the single best thing about this entire film.

The Imitation Game runs 114 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sexual references and some adult themes and situations.

Rotten Tomatoes gives The Imitation Game the Fresh rating of 89%.