Seen on Reddit today: A small French group, The French Will Never Forget, organized an event on Omaha Beach to honor the American soldiers who died there in World War II.

I was driving back from dancing tonight and I noticed that the hubcaps on the car next to me appeared to be spinning slowly backwards. I figured this was probably aliasing due to 60Hz flicker from the streetlights. After a brief moment of confusion (no way were the guy’s tires spinning close to 60 times a second!), I realized that the hubcaps probably had some degree of rotational symmetry, and it wouldn’t be hard to figure out how much.

I know that we were both going around 50mph, maybe a little slower. I’m assuming that our wheels were about the same size; mine are 2.00 feet in diameter. That’s about a 6.28 ft circumference. 50 miles/hour = 264000 ft/hr = 73.3 ft/sec. So my wheels (and presumably the other guy’s as well) were rotating about 11.7 times/sec. If the wheels appeared to rotating slowly backward, the effective frequency must have been just a little under 60Hz, so I’m guessing that the other guy’s hubcaps had 5-fold rotational symmetry.

Who ever said math isn’t important?

While it might be come as a surprise for those who know me to hear me admonish anybody to “move right”, there is one class of folks whom I would fervently exhort to do so:

Drivers on the Kennedy Expressway in downtown Chicago.

For those who haven’t had the experience of driving downtown in the Windy City, the key fact here is that on the stretch of highway to the west of the Loop, traffic enters on the left and exits on the right. While it’s easy to exit at highway speed and slow down on the ramp, the converse situation is quite a bit trickier. If you bring yourself up to speed on the entrance ramp, you’re left hoping that there is a hole in traffic into which you’ll fit. When that’s not the case, you have to slow down or stop, which means that when you do enter, you’re doing so at a much lower speed than the surrounding traffic, which impedes it. If drivers tried to keep right, it’d be substantially easier for people to merge in.

Emily and I went to see a taping of Wait Wait—Don’t Tell Me this past Thursday. It’s worth every penny of the admission price.

The Wait Wait that you hear on the radio is roughly 47 minutes of witty and informative games and banter. I hadn’t realized how much didn’t make it past the editors into the show.

For as charismatic of a host as Peter Sagal is on the radio, he’s twice as much so in person. He’s able to think on his feet and charm an audience all while maintaining the poise and clear delivery that one expects from NPR. He also bears little semblance to his caricature on the Wait Wait home page.

The panel was also a source of great entertainment. PJ O’Rourke was his cantankerous self, and Adam Felber provided even more comedy relief. All three panelists gave the “Not My Job” guest (Steven Cohen) a good ribbing during his valiant effort to defend soccer in an environment filled with us poor heathen Yanks.

As for Carl Kasell, yes, he really does sound the same in person as he does on the radio.

To top it off, they had some neat swag. I was sorely tempted to get the long-sleeve T-shirt they were selling. Who wouldn’t want a shirt that says “NPR without the dignity”?

I’d been resisting for a while, but last night, I finally broke down and bought a copy of Dance Dance Revolution. (Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2, to be precise.)

I’ve been a huge fan of Amplitude and FreQuency since I first had the chance to play them a couple of years ago. I love the way that rhythm games force you into the moment; once you up the difficulty enough, thinking==losing. DDR promises be a fun change, using my feet instead of my fingers. Plus, it’s got a 2-player mode, so I can make a fool of myself with other people.

In a fairly routine attempt to rinse out a cup last Friday, I made the unpleasant discovery that my kitchen sink’s handle was no longer attached to the rest of the sink.

After going to Moen’s website and identifying the parts kit that I needed to repair it, I went to a couple of hardware stores. No luck finding the parts there. After an abortive attempt to place an order for the kit on the website (small brickbat for that one), I called their customer service line.

Moen has a neat feature in their phone system that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Rather than making you sit on hold and listen to bad music (or worse, advertisements), you can enter your number, and the system will call you back when a representative is available. It’s a little thing, but it really shows consideration for our (the customers’) time.

After being called back, the representative was extremely helpful. We went through a set of questions to confirm the model and the parts that needed to be replaced. She was able to tell me exactly when they would have the parts in the mail (next business day) and thus when they would arrive. Every bit of information that I gave her (address, phone number, etc) was carefully confirmed. From a customer’s perspective, this kind of attention to detail is very reassuring and helpful.

As promised, the parts showed up yesterday, and now I can again rinse out my Duvel stemware.

I visited my old roommate Jake down in his newly rehabbed condo in the south Loop last night. On entering, I was blinded by the projector that was playing The Work of Michael Gondry on the wall next to the door. After regaining my eyesight, I was greeted by the video “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto. I was heretofore unaware of the existence of the Director’s Label Series discs or Cibo Matto; both may warrant further exploration.

Jake recently went to visit Ryan in Kazakhstan, where he’s working for the Peace Corps. The ostensible reason for the get-together at his place was to sample Kazakh culinary delights and see his photos and videos from trip.

It seems that (intentionally) fermented dairy products are commonplace in Kazakhstan. We had the opportunity to try both fermented mare’s milk and cow milk. The mare’s milk had a strong smoky odor over the dairy smell; it was like Gouda cheese in a bottle. We each shot a small amount of it. I believe that I can safely say that it was the most repulsive beverage I’ve ever had.

The cow milk was similar, but lacked the smoky scent and flavor. If it weren’t for the tangy, sour flavor, it might almost be good. Maybe it’s better if you get it fresh.

Jake also had a bottle of Kazakh “cognac”. In contrast to the dairy products, drinking this was an enjoyable experience. It tasted much like real cognac, and if I recall correctly, the price of the bottle was around $5. There are apparently some things that we could stand to learn from former Soviet republics.

The centerpiece of the evening was the photo show. While I can’t really hope to relate much about the pictures (it takes me a while to type a thousand words), the photos and videos did introduce me to a sport of which I was previously unaware: kokpar. It’s similar to polo, except that instead of whacking a ball into a goal, there’s a headless goat carcass lying on the field, which has to be thrown into a ring which is surrounded by old tires.
I wonder when ESPN2 will start carrying kokpar.

Observation of the evening: a few drops of bergamot and ylang ylang make bathing an even more pleasant (and aromatic) experience.