Michael Bates: February 2024 Archives
Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide | HathiTrust Digital Library
A guide to football as played by colleges, with rules, records from the previous seasons, team photos, commentary, and a schedule for the new season. All-American players were mainly from the Ivy League, but Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and Holy Cross were also represented. Scoring consisted of 6 points for a touchdown followed by a place kick or drop kick through the goal posts, 5 points if the kick failed, 4 points for a drop kick from the field, 2 points to the other team for a "safety touchdown." Must move five yards in three downs or lose possession, and "the quarter-back, if he run with the ball, must cross the line of scrimmage at least five yards out from the point where the ball was put in play." Because this new rule lines were marked every five yards along the length of the 330' x 160' field out from the center, creating a gridiron pattern. St. John's College finished 5-4 for the season, thanks to not playing against bigger teams, mostly. They were slaughtered by Virginia 48-0, but they beat Gallaudet 22-0 in the final game of the season.
Tiny Moore Live! Download - Acoustic Disc
A live recording of a 1980 performance by mandolinist Tiny Moore, who played with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Billy Jack Wills and His Western Swing Band, and Merle Haggard and the Strangers. Tiny plays big band and jazz standards on fiddle and mandolin, backed by drums, bass, and piano. $15 to download 28 tracks. In a half-hour video, Dix Bruce, David Grisman, and Hayes Griffin discuss the Tiny Moore live recording and play samples from a few of the tracks.
Tulsa Restaurant Equipment & Supply
The other day we needed some 8 oz. styrofoam bowls and lids to hold soup and mac-n-cheese for a fundraising lunch at school. It was too late to order from Amazon, and the item was too specialized to be available at the grocery store or a warehouse club. We only needed about 60-75, not a thousand.
Tulsa Restaurant Equipment & Supply, on the south side of 31st Street west of Mingo, is open to the general public as well as the pros and sells food service in quantities large and small. Individual sleeves of 50 styrofoam bowls and 100 matching lids were marked for sale, or you could buy the entire box of 1000. A "street view" type virtual experience gives you a preview of what they have in stock. There are pots and pans, pizza paddles, plastic cups, flatware, fry baskets, wire storage racks in kits to assemble yourselves, all types of takeout containers. Glad to know they're there. Open 8 am - 6 pm Mon - Fri; 9 am - 4 pm Sat, closed Sun.
Dartmouth: SAT/ACT Requirement Restored | National Review
"The cruelest joke about removing the standardized-testing requirement for elite colleges is that the policy -- designed specifically as a way to increase minority enrollment -- achieves the exact opposite of what colleges intend. Rich and privileged mediocrities used to have their parents donate to secure admission to elite schools. Now, in an era of exponentially increased competition for admission, the rich simply hire six-figure 'college counselors' who stage-manage a child's entire life down to the em dashes in their admissions essays."
In addition to being a pioneer of web development and a visionary in the field of mobile technology, Russ McGuire is a board game developer. This article is a detailed and fascinating discussion of the trade-offs involved in small-scale board game production.
Articles - Sufficient Sleep - Din - Ask the Rabbi
"It is related that the Chozeh of Lublin would instruct his students not to sleep too little. R' Yitzchak Isaac of Kamarna would say that it is better to add an hour of sleep and the rest of the day be a mentch than to limit your sleep by an hour and the rest of the day be a chaya ra'ah."
MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee Ballot - Candidate Profiles
Steven Carhart '70 is running for one of three open seats on the MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee. I applaud his manifesto, which compares the present moment to his years as an undergraduate in the turbulent late 1960s. (Emphasis added.)
"Today I believe we are facing challenges of comparable depth. They seem to come from the hubristic premise (hardly unique to MIT) that educational institutions can solve large social problems, protect students from confronting difficult emotional or substantive challenges, and simultaneously maintain educational quality. The means to achieve these goals seems to be an ever-growing number of administrative offices. However lofty their intentions, they seem to have produced greater internal conflict over social issues, a distracted and burdened faculty, and the highest administrative cost per student of any Ivy Plus university.
"If elected to the AASC, I will seek to nominate candidates who will proactively urge the Institute to renew its focus on providing the world with rigorously trained STEM graduates, attracted from all communities of talent regardless of means, and taught by the best faculty and most innovative researchers."
"We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can't coexist and we can't have them both." -- former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, 2001. The ACT New Zealand Party, a classical-liberal party which is a junior partner in the governing right-of-center coalition, included in their manifesto a bill to set out in a democratic way the principles by which the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between the early M?ori settlers from Polynesia and the later settlers from Britain is applied to modern governmental issues.
"In recent decades the courts, academics, and the bureaucracy have used a 'partnership' interpretation of the Treaty to argue there are two types of people in New Zealand - tangata whenua (land people) and tangata tiriti (Treaty people) - who each have different political and legal rights. This has led to co-governance arrangements and even racial quotas within public institutions. New Zealanders were never consulted on this change. ACT believes the Treaty promises what it says: nga tikanga katoa rite tahi - the same rights and duties for all New Zealanders." As in Australia and Oklahoma, activists have been reinterpreting history and treaties and claims of ongoing territorial sovereignty to create a way to bypass the will of the people as expressed democratically in elections and legislation. ACT's six-page position paper explains the problems caused by the divisive policies of the previous leftist government and how to address them to guarantee equal rights for all New Zealanders.
The Coffee House Club, St. Louis
Before about 2010 you couldn't always count on having internet access, much less high speed internet, in hotels. When traveling, I would always keep my eyes open for coffee houses with free wifi, particularly coffee houses that stayed open late, somewhere I could work on blog entries and catch up on email.
A comment on social media about the lack of late night dining options nowadays brought The Coffee House Club in St. Louis to mind. It was open noon to midnight weekdays, noon to 3 a.m. on weekends. When I visited, probably in 2007, but possibly 2009, it was at 6319 Clayton Ave. in a one-story building with a red brick facade, with the words COFFEE HOUSE inlaid in square letters of blonde brick. I'm not sure how I found it -- possibly through the Riverfront Times, the local alt-weekly, possibly through the late lamented IndieCoffeeShops.com crowdsourced map. It was comfortable and quiet; the only thing I didn't care for was that smoking was allowed.
"Not only is it the The Coffee House club the greatest cup of coffee on the planet, it is also the most relaxing. Its the only place in town to go to when you just need someone to talk to, there is always someone available! So please join us for a fresh cup of coffee and wholesome conversation!"
The Coffee House boasted a nightly AA meeting. A later version of the website stated: "Jeanarae first opened the doors to The Coffee House in St. Louis city in 1994. Her mission was to provide a safe entertainment venue for the people in St. Louis' recovery community. For over 15 years, The Coffee House has been proudly serving Jeanarae's Exclusive House Blend!" The location moved to 2625 Abbott Place, and I've found a reference to 4305 Bingham Ave on a food review website. Jeanarae Booth is mentioned as the owner in a 2001 story about a Dogtown neighborhood nuisance.
