Thursday, April 03, 2008

The experiments begin; a light shines in the cemetary; Avignon versus Rome; no feijoada for you, infidel!

Here’s the general sense of potential experiments vis-à-vis the newspapers. First, play around with aggregators. I’m using Google Reader now, because you can share it. The question becomes how much to share. Since we’re talking about serendipity, we need more rather than less. But at the point where it’s an avalanche, we become counterproductive. So this may take some time. CLG points out that she simply reads the Times online, and I know plenty of people do, but that homepage brings us back to the self-selectivity issue, where we lose the serendipity. Nonetheless I do feel that an aggregate of sites that one ought to visit daily could be a possible solution to the problem. Forensicians are presumably motivated self-starters, after all. But even there there’s the issue of overload versus underwhelm, and that has to be sorted out. But one thing at a time. If you’ve got a different solution, pass it along.

We ground to a Cavemanic halt Tuesday, pretty much covering everything except a few odds at the end. We hit all the high points. The crappy prize given as a reward for sticking it out for all the installments was an illustrated copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Jewish Maiden,” in which our poor little heroine, although she dies at the end like most HCA characters, apparently sees the light in a fashion congruent with Mr. Andersen’s middle name. I like to think of this as a subtle warm-up for the hate crimes rez at States this weekend.

We have three people braving the States elements. Hardy Sailors all. I like to think of them as the proof that statistical deviation is unavoidable, given our team’s general sense of the event. I have detailed my opinions of our State organization at great length in the past; since that organization has not changed, neither have my opinions, so I won’t bore you with them again. As CP says on his blog, what has happened is that we now are edging toward competing culminating events. It’s sort of like the Avignon popes. One wonders if there will ever be any resolution. One doubts it. Building up the Avignon tournament over a few years could do the job in some oblique way. It’s not there yet, though. We’ve got a good start, but the lack of Massachusetts teams hurts. Since CP and I are coordinating calendars (I’ve just given him access to the Google tournament calendar), we should be able to end up on the same page at next year’s end. If we’re really talking a Northeastern event, locating it every now and then in Massachusetts makes obvious sense. Key to this will be the disposition of Lexington after the various chips fall with Maggie’s emigration. We’ll see.

They Who Use Every Inch of Space on the Ballot have sent out their schedule for the Columbia RR, and I’ve been mulling it over. It starts damned early in the morning, and the trains don’t look too agreeable. If I had some way of doing so it would make sense to stay over Friday night, but I don’t really want to spend the money on hotel rooms. Oh well. On the other side of the coin, all these guys who I thought would be chowing down at the Brazilian restaurant have suddenly gone all Jewish on me and are insisting on chowing down at their various seders instead. As I explained to Robbie, who’s never eaten Brazilian food (feijoada forever!), they don’t have Jewish people in Brazil. It’s like Denmark and Hans Christian Andersen.

I wonder how long it will be before Hen Hud comes to its senses and fires me?

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