There was a scary, but thankfully short, moment before our plane headed west to California on Sunday. We were waiting in line for takeoff when the pilot announced that all westbound flights had been grounded and he would let us know when he found out more. He never did tell us if he found out why, and our plane took off soon afterwards. The possibly related news items I have seen are the “super-heightened” alert for the Golden Gate Bridge over the weekend, the charter plane crash that killed Galen & Barbara Rowell (sad), and the emergency landing of a Boeing 777 at San Francisco. I could imagine that any of these would cause air traffic control to pause for a few minutes to take stock of the situation and decide whether to proceed with caution. I know that the worst crossed my mind and many others’ when we heard the pilot’s words and the relief felt when we took off didn’t stem merely from the knowledge that we would arrive on time.

Goodyear Walker, from the California State Lands Commission, sent an interesting tale in response to the recent Gold Double Eagle auction. The cargo of the ship “Brother Jonathan”, which sank in 1865 off the northern California coast, included a large number of gold coins, some of them uncirculated Double Eagles. In a case that was taken to the Supreme Court, the salvage company that found the wreck fought with California over the rights to it and its cargo. The settlement resulted in a split of the “treasure” with 20% going to the state. The state also agreed not to sell the coins for 15 years. Other items recovered from wreck have been catalogued, such as the contents of a crate which was opened in 2001. The gold coins sit in a safe deposit box under the control of the CSLC. I end this tale with a quote from Mr. Walker’s email: “I have this vision that after I retire the coins will remain in the safe deposit box, like the Ark in Indiana Jones, lost to bureaucracy forever…..”

I never know if I should be happy or sad when a subject I’ve decided to research is already handily written up on a trustworthy web page and no further work needs to be done. But, I suppose, it’s a timesaver at best, so I should be happy. So now I present, with no further wordsmithing from me: “Where do salad dressings get their names?” I’m guessing the people who live in Thousand Island know something I didn’t until today.

Overheard at a Wedding
In the northeastern part of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania there lies about 390 acres of old growth forest. A dispute or misunderstanding over cutting rights between two parties spared this swath of land from a clearcut. It was named the “Alan Seeger Natural Area” and contains hemlock, yellow birch and white pine, some over 500 years old. I was told that Alan Seeger was the first American to die in World War I, but I don’t know the possible caveats to that statement. He graduated from Harvard and moved to France, which he grew to love. He wanted to join the French Army, but was unable to, not being a citizen of France. So he did something that for the rest of us is merely an idle threat. He joined the French Foreign Legion and was killed on July 4, 1916.
He is famous for his poetry, particularly the poignant “Rendezvous with Death.” Pete Seeger is his nephew.

Another NY Times Notes from Music Camp is in, and this one concentrates on the man himself. Itzhak Perlman’s love for food (horrified by the steamed asparagus, legend has it, he made sure it was grilled with sea salt and olive oil from then on) and growth in conducting skills (he used to use a pencil to direct since he didn’t feel worthy of the baton) are discussed between accounts of his words of wisdom for students. He prompts students to critique their own playing and tries to bring out their individuality. Fellow instructor Patinka Kopec has worked with both Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman and shares that “Itzhak’s responses are always of an emotional nature, and Pinchas’s are always of an intellectual nature.” Combining and balancing the two is, perhaps, the ultimate method.

Despite being a programmer by trade and a musician by hobby, I never would have conceived of this project to use musical cues to represent structural elements in computer programs. The idea is to create auditory clues to how a program is executing so the programmer can actually hear the logic progress. Not surprisingly, “false” statements use a minor key, while “true” is major. The system, dubbed Caitlin, was Paul Vickers’ PhD project which is available online, including the contents of the accompanying audio CD. The hope is that bugs in programs can be more easily located through auditory means. Their experiments showed that the added sound did help undergraduate computer science students with debugging. I’m not sure how it would work for more complex systems, with multithreading and other asynchronous event handling, but I suppose problems could be broken down into smaller trains of logic which can then be debugged with aural help. It’s an intriguing concept.

Wired News ran a three part series on Clear Channel communications this week. The first article focused on Clear Channel’s growing control over regional radio markets, as they have snapped up station after station, sometimes circumventing the eight station limit in a market by taking over control but not purchasing. In San Diego they rule the airwaves with 14 stations and have even taken over five stations in Tijuana, Mexico, where they don’t have to conform to any U.S. rules but have English speakers in range. The second article discusses new technologies that allow DJs, often not from the local market, to program shows ahead of time. A five hour show can be recorded in 45 minutes. Clear Channel owns the technology it uses, the Prophet digital automation system. That the name sounds like “profit” has to be intentional. With fewer DJ openings through consolidation and time shifting, will there be more quality or just more blandness? At least there is always the need for local traffic and news.

The final article covers Clear Channel’s future as their dominance is not going unnoticed by politicians. Despite reporting a large profit, their stock is down because of the bad publicity. Republicans deregulated to Clear Channel’s benefit and won’t likely reverse that growth, but Wisconsin Democrat, Senator Russell Feingold has proposed a bill to stop payola and put limits in place. Clear Channel’s response was to point out that the film and record industry are much worse when it comes to having a few companies dominate an industry’s profits. There’s no question to me that they stand on shaky moral ground, but they are abiding by the letter of the law. If advertisers continue to buy into it, local radio will be as regionally varied as your neighborhood shopping mall of national brands. At least you won’t have to leave your familiar local station behind when you travel. (Also noted, via MediaNews: Clear Channel ended legal wranglings with an industry magazine critical of its activities by buying it out.)

The National Academy of Engineering has done a fine job creating Engineer Girl!, a site to educate girls about careers in engineering. An explanation of the process of chocolate manufacturing covers chemical, mechanical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, and industrial engineering. It takes a lot of science to mass produce chocolate! Other engineering disciplines are listed with encouraging descriptions. A companion site for parents, teachers, and mentors describes the myths that discourage girls from pursuing engineering careers and offers advice for encouraging them. There is a lot to delve into with these sites, including links to external resources.

Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet’s “The Juliet Letters” is one of my favorites to listen to over and over. It didn’t fit any radio niches, though the divorce ditty “Jacksons, Monk & Rowe” got some airplay, but I had a hunch that it was treasured by many as a fascinating and tuneful departure from the norm. The performance of it I attended at Davies Symphony Hall was packed and very well received. I recently ran across what amounts to a chronicle of a wonderful reaction to this work, written by Teller (as in Penn &) for The New Yorker. There are two versions of the article, the second is an equally entertaining longer draft. I found much to relate to in Teller’s experience of getting to know the album and his musician friends’ dissection of the inspirations for the motifs. There’s always more to uncover in the interplay of the string arrangements or the wry lyrics. And I wish I could see them perform it again. Perhaps I should invest in the score or sheet music.

Repair work on space shuttle Atlantis will begin next week and it could fly as early as September 28. The cracks that were found in the metal liners inside liquid hydrogen pipes will be welded by a team that was “hand picked during a ‘Superbowl of welders’ for the critical job that requires the steady hands of a surgeon.” Imagine having that on your welding resume. Endeavour is up next for similar repairs, but Columbia, the oldest shuttle, has a different type of metal in the cracked parts, so NASA is doing further investigation.