Sapo Verde a Ti

Hang around us long enough, and you will eventually be here for a birthday. And we Kerrs don't settle for a standard "Happy Birthday" ...we may very well wish you a green frog: Sapo verde to you!

This started when we lived in Costa Rica, where, inexplicably, people preferred to sing "Happy Birthday" in English, or as close to English as they could. (I've encountered this attitude in many places, but a Portuguese friend explained it most succinctly: "When we get to heaven, we will speak in Portuguese. But we will still sing in English." All the good songs are in English. Now you know.) If you're familiar with a Latin American accent, you can start to see how, with some enthusiasm and vague familiarity with the words, happy birthday can start to sound like sapo verde. Green frog to you!

* * *

So Aiden is five now. He spent most of the day jumping around with a five-kilowatt grin on his face, just absolutely delighted to be FIVE. I gave him one present at breakfast (which also seems to be more Kerr family tradition than anything else) and by the time I got home from work, Paul and Martha were also there.

There were presents; there was cake.

There was a fun game of catch in the backyard with Aiden's new foxtail ball.

Wait, where's that ball going?

There was a lot of questionable throwing technique.

There was giggling and laughing until certain birthday persons could no longer stand up.

Much of the rest of the weekend was spent reading the "funny cat book" (Martha gave Aiden a Garfield compendium) to Aiden and Fiona. I'd forgotten how much I'd latched on to that comic when I was about that age. I didn't get half of it, fresh off the plane from Costa Rica (What's this "lasagna" they keep talking about? Wait, it's pronounced how?) but it didn't take long for me to catch on. I'd also forgotten how much physical humor there is in it; the kids think it's hilarious. I guess I've forgotten what it's like to be a kid.

...a kid who understood sapo verde, but not lasagna.

Wonder what our kids will think is perfectly normal?

I, Spooner

Every now and then, it's my job to tell you something odd and interesting about myself. So, today, I tell you this: I love Spoonerisms.

Spoonerisms (so named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner, 1844–1930, who exemplified the quirk) occur when one transposes the initial sounds of a group of words, sometimes forming new ones, (e.g., sly gap --> guy slap.) My favorites are the ones that add new meaning or commentary to the original.

The thing is, I'm doing this constantly. As I'm shopping, I reach for a packet of bound grief at the meat display. When Deborah requests that I be on dish duty, I ponder whether I should wash dishes or dash wishes. Some of them even make it out of my head, like telling a giggling Fiona that we should have named her "Sue Tilley."

Over the years, I've been mentally gathering material for a story where one of the main characters talks in nothing but Spoonerisms, and, at the end, says something completely normal, which, no one realizes until it's almost too late, was another Spoonerism, setting the scene for the final climactic actiony bit. (The setting is, of course, a greasy spoon...er.)

So, that's one quirky thing that's always going on in my head. What's going on in yours?

Santa Exposed

Much has been made about the physics of Santa Claus, often calculating his requisite speed in Mach numbers normally reserved for experimental aircraft. I'm told these calculations are a regular exercise at engineering colleges. All these theories are brought to naught, however, by the lack of plausible answers to one question frequently asked by children:

What does he do at the houses with no fireplace?

Ours is such a house. If anyone managed to get down our chimney, they'd end up in our harvest-orange Chrysler furnace. (Yes, Chrysler made furnaces, too, about as well as they made cars.) Houses with fireplaces are now, I believe, the exception, rather than the norm.

So what does he do?

I have an answer: he goes through the attic. Not only that, but, as you'll see in this photographic evidence gathered a week before Christmas, the presents are already there.

This is troubling data, indeed. The presents are already there? A week in advance? Wrapped, and assembled neatly by the attic stairs? One can come to only two conclusions: either Santa visited early, and dropped off the presents, but didn't distribute them (rather unlikely from an efficiency standpoint) OR... Santa has outsourced delivery. Consider that systems are already in place for the timely delivery of packages to individual homes; Santa could simply send gifts by the truckload to major shipping hubs.

The gedankenexperiment ("thought experiment") prompts further questioning: What if Santa wasn't stuffing all the stockings in person, either? The so-called "Santa's Helper" theory would have us believe that local agents carry out the "last mile" of distribution, and we must reluctantly admit that it has merit.

So, then, does Santa distribute presents at all? Actually, this distributed distribution system makes the traditional delivery possible: Santa, in his old age, can still make several hundred, perhaps thousand, deliveries in person. One might theorize as to the how these recipients are chosen; perhaps only those on the "nice" list receive a visit from the old gent himself; perhaps visits are chosen for their high profile, or likeliness to be seen "in the act" by people that will perpetuate the Santa Claus mythos. This reduces the necessary speed of such an arrangement to a much more believable level, and gets around the problem of the reindeer burning up upon re-entry.

Whatever the case, these revelations neither confirm nor deny the existence of Santa Claus, but we believe make the theory much, much more plausible.

I walked right into that one...

This afternoon, I was trying to install a compass on my motorcycle, and having a hard time of it. After disassembling the bracket to turn it over, I discovered that they had designed the bracket so that it only fit one way. "There's no useful way to mount this compass," I grumbled to Deborah. "Must be a Tates," she said, without looking up from the computer. I hadn't heard of this brand or type of compass before, so I asked what she meant. "Oh, you know," she said, "he who has a Tates is lost."

Fooling Around at Work

Every now and then, I get to have a little fun at work... it's now gotten to the point where people are calling and asking where our April 1 material is when they don't find it early in the morning. So, please, stop for a minute and go enjoy six months of work that were finished in a hurry mere minutes before it was posted:

http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/04012009

The pièce de résistance, in my opinion, is the song, which was written by Norm Sherman of the Drabblecast for us. Norm seriously impressed me with the depths he was willing to go to to write this song. Deborah and I have been quoting lines from it ever since we got the file late last night.

In my own humble opinion, the poster came out pretty well, too:

If you're interested, this one actually is for sale. An Andy Kerr original, for $15? Amazing!

The disappointing bit that wasn't for sale, the USB flash drive/cylinder seal, actually has a petition going, trying to convince us to make it. Funny thing is, I want to make it... it would be cool. I even have quotes from manufacturers. But alas, I don't think even I can convince 500 people to part with $30+ for a flash drive, no matter how cool.

Now, how do we top this for next year...?

The Sleepschild Radius

Abstract

A phenomenon is hereby noted in that particular bodies with a small gravitational pull (<= ~3.49 kg.) exhibit a greatly elevated Sleep Field. Those within the reach of this field (that is, within the Sleepschild Radius) will also fall asleep, while small, faster-moving bodies outside the Radius remain largely unaffected. Once a large body within the Sleepschild Radius goes dormant, the radius can be observed to expand almost exponentially, from the normal 0.75–1.5 meters to several tens of meters, sometimes claiming all orbiting bodies within a local system, although some researchers theorize that larger bodies outside the Radius will cause other, smaller, faster-moving bodies to go dormant before they go dormant themselves. Of further interest is the so called Alpaca Blanket Theory, which greatly increases the effects of the Sleep Field within a 3 m² area.

Figure 1. The Small Gravitational Body shown here has an unusually pervasive Sleep Field, here aided by an alpaca blanket.

Healing Huehnergard

So what do you do, when you want to reprint a classic book... but you've got corrections for it? Well, normally, you could just re-edit and re-set the whole thing, and there you go. In this case, though, the book was John Huehnergard's Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription, and the text was very complex. The author's corrections and additions alone ran to 32 pages, so we decided to just make an index. It then fell to me to take the scanned pages, and let the reader know that there was supplemental material:

Later that week, after describing what I was working on, Deborah summarized what I'm doing as "the laying on of hands."

I thought it was quite appropriate.

Indefinite Shelf Life?

Three years ago, Marti, the customer service manager at Eisenbrauns, bought five Twinkies that had just reached their expiration date, and set them aside in a desk drawer with notes on each of them as to when they should be opened and tested. Does the urban legend of an indefinite shelf life had any truth to it? You can see the results yourself...

I felt surreal and light-headed for about half an hour afterwards. Then I had an apple, and that made me feel better. Thanks to James for recording and posting the video (his first ever!) I think it came out pretty well, especially since I wasn't working from a script!

Nothing Like a Good Story...

It could be because my sisters and I grew up having stories read to us. (Thanks, Dad.) Or, it could be that, with my head so immersed in right-brain stuff at work, my left brain needs something to do, lest it chatter away to my distraction. Whatever it is, there's nothing like a good story to help me sit down and keep plugging away at whatever I'm doing.

Now, obviously, I can't go reading books while I'm correcting manuscripts or retouching photos, but I have found that I can listen to them... and that, rather than distract me from what I'm doing, it keeps me planted. My feet don't wander when I want to know what happens next, and I don't think of a dozen things I'd like to say when someone else is reading.

The real trick has been finding good stuff to listen to. I've listened to the Harry Potter audiobooks (Jim Dale is an incredible narrator), and discovered the Septimus Heap and His Dark Materials books, but the talking books selection at the library has largely been hit-and-miss. While I keep trying books there, I have found a few reliable sources for stories done right:

Podiobooks.com
There's a pretty wide variety here, and I've yet to find a story that wasn't worth finishing — which I find remarkable, given that most of the stories are done by the authors themselves in home studios.

Escape Pod
All sci-fi, all the time, with many new and notable names of the genre, reading half-hour to hour-long stand-alone stories. Sci-fi is a fairly broad genre, but this keeps close to traditional sci-fi while also linking to other, often-mingled genre stories in the form of Pseudopod (horror) and Podcastle (fantasy) if those are more your cup of tea. The presenter (and often-as-not narrator) Steve Eley throws out many thought-provoking bits in his intros and (as the neologism goes) out-tros.

The Secrets of Harry Potter
Not stories, per se, but commentary on stories, specifically the Harry Potter series. Although this claims to be a Catholic podcast, but there's really not much that a Protestant should take offense to. Production and content vary from episode to episode, but for the most part, it's worth wading through some of the awkward bits to get the nuggets of insight into the mythological and theological symbolism that J.K. Rowling's books are drenched in.

Design Your Own Luck

This is a cover I'm working on, and I'm curious to see what people think of it. Comment away!

The results are in

The results of the 2008 Eisenbrauns Ancient Near Eastern Valentine Contest are in! I was this year's instigator and judge, and I'm quite pleased at the level of participation we got. Go check 'em out!

Roses are Red...

A little something I'm doing for work...

ANE Valentine Contest

Love is in the air! We're looking for a few good scholars to display both eros and erudition in our first (and possibly last!) Ancient Near Eastern Valentines contest.

We want no more than three of your original* compositions, in any ancient Near Eastern language (yes, we'll take Greek, too), accompanied by an English translation. Artwork is similarly welcome. All entries should be sent via e-mail to akerr at eisenbrauns dot com before noon on Wednesday, February 13.

The decisions of the judges will be final and, most likely, extremely arbitrary. Prizes will be given. Winners will be announced on February 14, 2008, and winning entries will be showcased on the Eisenbrauns website. Submitting an entry constitutes permission to reproduce your work.

* We have memorized the entire corpus of Near Eastern poetry, and will be watching for cheating. OK, we haven't — but someone out there will catch you at it if your words are not your own, and that wouldn't be good. So don't.

What, you don't have a secret decoder ring?

Several people (not just you, Mom) have asked about the translation/pronunciation/meaning of the inscription on the shirts I blogged about on Friday. Take this as fair warning if you get one — people will ask.

The main inscription is from the first two lines of Enuma Eliš, the traditional Babylonian creation story:

e-nu-ma   e-liš   la   na-bu-ú   šá-ma-mu
šap-liš   am-ma-tum   šu-ma   la   zak-rat

When on high no name was given to heaven,
nor below was the netherworld called by name

So, basically, "In the beginning" for Babylonians — something most students of the Ancient Near East would recognize readily. (Or so I am told.)

The smaller inscription next to "eisenbrauns.com" has the determinative LÚ.DAM.GÀR (merchants) plus the phrase kib-rat erbe-tim "of the four corners [of the earth]," which was a classic epithet of the Neo-Assyrian kings.

Don't you feel smarter already?

The Cuneiform Invasion

It's rather nice to have your work in popular demand. After the success of the Enuma Elish cuneiform mug last year, a number of people have requested the same design as a T-shirt. Well, now you can. Get 'em here if you want 'em!

In the meantime, meet my two new co-workers, Amy and Jon, both editors, who started on Monday. I don't think anyone told them modeling was part of the job description, but they got the hang of it pretty quickly.

I suppose that's an occupational hazard, working in the same room as me. Now, to find someone to model the cuneiform Onesie for me...

New Emoticons

Most of us here are familiar with "emoticons" — sideways smiles and winks we add to our posts and emails to help convey certain sentiments. Only using the standard keyboard characters available to you is quite limiting, though, and I figured I could do better. Just adding the International Phonetic Alphabet to the standard set of emoticons opens up all kinds of new possibilities:

That was tasty, but I'll probably regret it later.

colon, hyphen, Unicode &#x02A0; (Latin small letter q with hook — voiceless uvular implosive)

My lips are sealed, but you can't stop me from smirking.

colon, hyphen, Unicode &#x025F; (Latin small letter dotless j with bar — voiced palatal stop)

I am screaming so loudly that you can see my uvula quite plainly

colon, hyphen, Unicode &#x029A; (Latin small letter closed epsilon — lower-mid front rounded vowel)

I'm keeping an eye on you, buddy.

Unicode &#x0298; (Latin letter bilabial click), hyphen, close parenthesis

I'll create more in the days to come. In the meantime... ʘ-)

I don't feel that old, though

For those of you who count in binary, I am 100000 years old today. For those of you that don't... well, there are only 10 types of people in the world: those that can count in binary, and those that can't. :-)

I do wonder what's going to become of my birthday party this evening; we had initially planned for outdoor games in the backyard with my friends and their kids, but with near-freezing temperatures and 50-mph gusts, we might have to find a different location. Indoor piñata, anyone?