BatesLine linkblog

Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

Pianos have changed since Beethoven's day. A visit to the Franklin Historic Piano Collection in Ashburnham, Mass., and audio of the "Moonlight" and "Appassionata" sonatas and works by Brahms and Debussy on contemporary pianos, compared to the same works played on a modern Steinway.

Bob & Ray on the web

Home page for the classic radio comedy of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. You can buy a thumb drive with the complete Bob & Ray audio archive -- 90 hours, 1837 routines -- for a mere $349. Bob & Ray audio is also available for download at Amazon MP3. Bob & Ray are (is?) on Facebook, too. And here's a New York Times story about Bob Elliott, his son Chris ("Get a Life"), and Chris' daughter Abby, a featured player on SNL.

Variety review: Biker Fox

Self-produced biopic of one of Tulsa's eccentrics: "The man has no personal relationships we can detect, outside of the few people who work for him and the car-parts customers he frequently abuses on the phone. His past is an enigma, and the basis of his anger, which he admits to, is a secret. Without some kind of insight into what makes Biker Fox who he is, it's all a bit shallow, if frequently entertaining."

Eminent Domain as Central Planning by Nicole Gelinas, City Journal Winter 2010

An over-broad definition of blight (it includes "underutilization") allows cities to condemn land and buildings that aren't blighted at all. (Oklahoma has the same problem, which undermines our state constitutional protection against government seizing land for private use. "In the 1930s...'substandard' and 'unsanitary' meant 'families and children dying from rampant fires and pestilence' in tuberculosis-ridden firetraps. In 2006, by contrast, the UDC's consultants found 'substandard' conditions in isolated graffiti, cracked sidewalks, and 'underutilization'--that is, when property owners weren't using their land to generate the social and economic benefits that the government desired."

Peak Phosphorus May Follow Peak Oil | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

"Without phosphorus, the world cannot grow food. Yet only three countries control 73 percent of the world's remaining known reserves of phosphate rock.... Phosphorus cannot be destroyed, but it is becoming dissipated in the environment... 'There's a whole industry that needs to be invented to capture phosphorus. We need a new way of growing crops that keeps it in the field instead of letting it run down into the Gulf of Mexico. We need plants that are more efficient at getting phosphorus.'" (Via Ace of Spades HQ.)

Old Road Maps of Texas

A great collection of scans, mainly of the city insets of oil company road maps of Texas, from 1942 to 1970. Some street maps (Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston). A resource for finding the pre-freeway routes of highways through cities.

Red army galvanizing in our bluest towns - BostonHerald.com

Thanks to Scott Brown's win, Massachusetts Republicans are coming out of the closet and getting organized. Let's hope the party oldtimers, used to being big frogs in small ponds, don't throw too many obstacles in the path of the enthusiastic newcomers. (By the way, the headline illustrates why the Republican Party should never have allowed CNN's map to define red as its color. The Red Army was the army of the communist USSR. In every other country, red is for the socialist/left-leaning party, blue is for the conservative party.)

Republican Valentine e-Cards

Some of these are pretty funny. Reid and Pelosi: "We crafted this Valentine's card behind closed doors." Obama: "I've saved or created millions of valentines." Algore: "I'll charter a flight to bring you this Valentine's card in person."

Language Log: Modal deafness

Trouble telling the difference between a major and minor triad? You're not alone. It's hardest when the chord isn't inverted.

IEEE-754 Calculators

Because sometimes you need to know the hexadecimal representation of a floating-point number.