J Larsen

Could you either explain the rules of rugby to me or provide me with a good link? I've watched it on FSN World a little, and it looks like a pretty cool sport, but just when I think I have the rules figured out something happens that proves me wrong. I forgot to mention that another sport I'd love to try playing is cricket. I'm a fan from having watched matches on TV, but it's tough finding anyone who knows how to play or who wants to play in America.

It's a New York deli thing. If you ever visit Manhattan, you really should try the sturgeon sandwhiches at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side (near the American Museum of Natural History). Very Jewish in a New York way, and very (VERY) tastey.

We've had a few threads discussing sports from a fan's perspective. I'm wondering what (if any) sports folks around here play. I love playing sports. Going back to high school, I've played baseball, football (which I totally sucked at), basketball (pretty shakey there, too), tennis, racquetball, and golf in addition to (once upon a time) running track. These days I'm focused on tennis, basketball, and my rapidly improving golf game. I'd love to get back in to playing baseball, but due to time considerations and the expense of getting a permit to play in NYC, it's just not going to happen.

If you're really in to bagels, they are easy to make. Just disregard any recipe that doesn't call for boiling the dough prior to baking.

I think I'll stick with sturgeon.

Cheese+hummus???

If you ever feel like changing it up a little, here are my favorite variations: Bagel with cream cheese and smoked sturgeon Bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon Bagel with cream cheese and smoked turkey Scrambled eggs on a toasted bagel If you're really worried about the fat, you can try substituting neufchatel for the "regular" cream cheese. Personally, I'd just as soon spend the extra few minutes in the gym, but neufchatel really isn't that bad. It makes a decent cheesecake, too.

I got the new 30GB model last week. It made a lot of sense for me, since I needed a portable harddrive anyway and I get a steep discount on Apple products. I think the people who claim that it gives "cd quality" sound are kidding themselves (I have a pretty bad set of ears and even I can tell the difference), but for a portable device the sound is more than good enough. It's really nice suddenly having such a large library of music in my office without having to lug the discs back and forth between there and my apartment. It will be great for plane trips, too. I just have to get the external battery pack so it can run on AAs, and I'll be all set.

Last night I added three McCoy Tyner abums: Sahara, Echoes of a Friend, and Enlightenment. To download everything they have that I'm interested in, I'd probably need a terrabyte hard drive.

That's against the rules! You have to play the course as you find it!

In my first day, I downloaded: Pat Martino - East Charles Earland - Black Talk Charlie Christian - After Hours Tatum - Solo Masterpieces Vol. 1 Bob Brozman - Blue Hula Stomp Joe Pass - Virtuoso Don Friedman - A Day in the City Gigi Gryce and the Lab Quintet Other than box sets, I haven't bought many titles from the Fantasy catalog due to their constant availability. Now I'm like a boy in a candy store. I guess my iPod is going to basically consist of the Fantasy catalog.

I almost never bet, but I really wish I had put money on the pre-break standings. I picked every division leader but the Royals. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens before the trade deadline. I think we'll all be surprised at how low-key most of the moves are. There don't seem to be many natural trade partners out there, especially with the White Sox and Royals (!!!) in contention and the Marlins (supposedly) taking Lowell off the table. (I'm not convinced they aren't simply trying to up the ante.) Benitez might wind up in a different uniform, but I'm not so sure. Does any team really want to hand him the ball in a crucial situation in a pennant race? As a Giants fan, I'd just as soon stick with Worrell.

I don't care.

If the prosecutor's office feels that there is enough evidence to press charges, then it's a pretty safe bet that he was at least cheating on his wife. I'm pretty sure that was the point that Mny was making. If he was just cheating on his wife, I don't feel that's any of my business and it won't affect my feelings about him as an athlete. However, even if that's all he did, it was pretty stupid of him considering the potential impact on the value of his endorsements. It would definately tarnish his market image.

Thanks. I'm joining.

I'm considering joining emusic.com. Has anyone used this service? Can you recommend it? Are there similar services out there worth investigating? Thanks.

My Toshiba cable modem went down in the line of duty last night. It was pulling cd information from cddb last night when it gave out. It's going to take me a week or so to get it replaced. I'll be able to post a bit from my office, but I'm really busy this week going through some new data, so I won't be around too much. So have a good July 4 weekend, thanks to whoever alerted me to the show at the Iridium next week, and I'll see you guys later.

I'm torn between Jefferson and Franklin. They were both people I think I could have related to on a certain level, in that they were inquisitive, interested in many things, and opinionated. They both had their problems, but I've never met anyone who didn't.

I like to thank all the little posters who helped me along the way in winning this prize. jacman, do you have any pictures of your pinhole camera that you can post? I had my students make their own in a class I taught a couple years ago. They seemed to get a kick out of it.

Excellent! I have most of that week off! I'm there. $12.50 with my student ID is a decent deal. Thanks a lot for posting this.

I wrote a couple days ago that my upstairs neighbor woke me up with a top 40-style ballad that went "I don't wanna die like that, I don't wanna die making love to you" which I thought was more than a bit perverse. Later in the day I was informed that the actual lyrics were "How you gonna act like that, act like that when I'm making love to you." (I think the problem there was that it was 7:30 AM and the only htought going through my head was "DIE! DIE!".) This isn't the first time I've misunderstood popular song lyrics. When Tina Turner sang "What's love but a second-hand emotion?", I heard "What's love but a second-hand abortion?" Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time as a child figuring out what a second-hand abortion would be. Later, when George Michael (YUCK!) sang "I want your sex, ohh I want your love", I heard "I want your sex, ohh I want your womb", which seemed like a pretty wacked-out line even to me. It actually was fairly recently that I realized he was saying love and not womb. Got any good ones?

Well, they do use the Newton's rings phenomenon at Kodak to ensure the quality of photographic film, and at all lens factories to ensure lens precision, but I guess you have something else in mind. Do you use that thing for light metering or contrast adjustment?

Here's a picture of the diffraction of a laser around a metal sphere. The effect is MUCH more impressive when you see it in person, as it then appears that the light goes right through the sphere. This is actually a pretty lousy photo. I'll replace it with a better one if I can find one.

An example of Newton's rings: I believe these rings were actually produced by placing two glass films on top of each other.

Greg, iTunes is the Mac program that, among other things, allows your computer to talk to your iPod. It can also be used for importing music to your harddrive in the form of AAC, MP3, or Wav files (actually I think it supports one or two other formats as well). However, you can choose any other program to import music files to your hard drive, you just need iTunes to get the files from your harddrive to your iPod. Personally, I don't mind the somewhat reduced sound quality for a portable device. You're subject to so much external noise when you're on the go that I don't really see the point in using a huge amount of memory to get hi-fi quality sound.