Country codes

Every country has a unique 2-letter abbreviation. The US is, well, US. France is FR, Italy is IT, and the United Kingdom is . . . wait for it . . . GB. Who decides these things, you ask? Who says Saudi Arabia will be SA, while South Africa will have to settle for ZA, for example?

Well, my dear, that would be the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and you can get a list of all 246 codes here. But what, exactly, is the ISO?

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the world's largest developer and publisher of International Standards.
ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries, one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system.

http://www.iso.org/iso/about.htm

Your assignment is to figure out why ISO rates a 3 letter abbreviation, while everybody else in the world gets only 2.

Shelves

Last November, my brilliant, clever, talented, and oh so sweet niece sent me a picture of some sliding shelves she made for her mother's kitchen cabinet:

She made them with some scrap wood and $30 worth of hardware from Home Depot. Well here we are only 4 months later and I've matched her:

OK, maybe not matched her exactly. Mine cost $214.76. And all I had to do was screw in the hardware, while she made the damn drawers, but still . . . Mine do slide in and out, just like hers.

Credit cards

Credit cards charge a "foreign transaction fee" if the price of something you buy is expressed in a foreign currency, which it's pretty likely to be the case if you are heading to, oh, I don't know, say FRANCE AND ITALY for a month. Our Citibank mastercard adds an extra 3 percent to the price of the item, and I think that's pretty typical. Thank goodness for the internet. A little Googling takes us to my new best friend, Rick Steves, who tells us:

Some companies offer far lower international fees than others — and a handful don't charge any fees at all. Capital One has a particularly good reputation for no-fee international transactions. If you're going on a long trip, do some research and consider taking out a card just for international purchases.

And a little more Googling reveals that Capital One also charges no annual fee. So what's not to like? Our new card arrived yesterday. Today I tried it at the supermarket around the corner. It worked! In a month or so I'll find out whether it also works in Paris and Venice and Florence and Perugia and Rome. I'll let you know.

Guess who got a new camera?

I wanted a new camera to take on our upcoming European adventure. The one we have is bigger than I'd like and I have a devil of a time getting a good picture out of it. I just can't hold the damn thing steady, so 90 percent of the pictures come out blurry.

I bought a Canon A720 at Roger's suggestion and it arrived a couple days ago. It's not much bigger than I remember a pack of cigarettes being, though it does have a good bit more heft to it. It'll fit comfortably in the pocket of a windbreaker. It might even fit in a shirt pocket, but I think it might be a little heavy to carry that way. It's a point-and-shoot camera that allows you to control the aperture and shutter speed manually if you want to. And it's got a 6x zoom, which might not sound like much, but it really is a pretty lot. For example, the first of these pictures was taken with no zoom, the second with 6x zoom:



But of course the first thing I took a picture of was not the light switch and the intercom. Can you guess what my first subject was?

Addendum Roger even suggested where to buy the camera -- BuyDig.com -- to which I can only say, Thanks, Roger. (This son-in-law thing is working out very well.) BuyDig's price was (a little) cheaper than Amazon, which is where I usually shop; more important, the camera arrived in only about 3 days. 3 days, even though I chose the cheapest shipping option available. If you're in the market for electronics, you really should check BuyDig.com.

3 Sketches

These require some explanation. In the first two, Abby did not draw the model; it was pre-printed. Abby cut patterns out of paper to make clothes for the model. And, more to the point, Abby added the background. In each case it took her about a minute and a half. It's impossible not to laugh while watching her draw. It's all so easy for her.

OK, she added the background. That means, in the one case, the grass, the dog, and the dog house. In the other, the chair, the drink, the water -- and the flip-flops (though I'm sure they shouldn't be lumped in under the term "background"). Enough. The pictures:

In the third picture, Abby's mom drew the face and then turned it over to Abby. Who turned it into a portrait of her mom, with accurate clothing, seated in the doctor's waiting room.

A reminder. Abby is 6.

6!

What Abby will remember of me when I'm long gone

Three Fridays ago, February 1, I got to hang out with Abby because some ice on the roads had led to her school's being closed. There was a little rain that morning too, but the weather started to clear pretty quickly, so I suggested that we head in to the zoo. Whereupon, the following dialog:

"Okay, pop-pop, but we better take umbrellas."
"Oh, I don't think we'll need umbrellas, Abby. The rain is ending. And even if we do have a little shower, we both have hoods on our coats."

You know where this is headed, right? After we parked the car and walked to the other end of the zoo, the skies opened up. It poured and poured. We waited in the ape house for 30 minutes but there was no let up, so finally we decided to head back up to the car. We got soaked. And she was wearing sweatpants that just sucked up the water like a sponge. By the time we got to the car, her pants must have weighed almost as much as she did.

That was, as I say, 3 weeks ago.

Yesterday when Cassie was saying grace before supper, Abby said "I have something to add. God, please keep Rogie warm and dry while he's skiing with his brother, not cold and wet like I was when pop-pop took me to the zoo -- without an umbrella, even though I told him we should take one."

Ash Wednesday, part 2

My friend Bob guessed that the reference to lent as a "joyful season" comes from the preface for lent, not, as I guessed, from the opening prayer for Ash Wednesday. (The preface is the mass prayer that leads up to the response "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts . . .", after which the eucharistic prayer begins and the congregation kneels.) Bob's right, as usual. The relevant section is:

Each year you give us this joyful season,
when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery
with mind and heart renewed.
You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, our Father,
and of willing service to our neighbor.
As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ,
you bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.

CNP Liturgical Planning

What jumps out from it is just what my old guru, Paul Cioffi stressed: God is at work accomplishing our salvation. God gives us the season, God gives us a spirit, God gave us new life in Christ, God brings Christ's image to perfection in us. We don't earn any of this stuff, not by fasting, not by good works, not by anything. "All is gift," as Fr. Cioffi used to say (quoting the dying protagonist of Diary of a country priest.)

If I don't post something, I'll forget how

So, . . .

Garrison Keillor's poem today is a sestina, a rather nice one I think, but not really worthy, on its merits, of mention in such a prestigious forum as EineKleineBlog. Rather, I mention it because it reminded me of the first sestina I ever came across (one by Elizabeth Bishop), and that, in turn, reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Ms. Bishop, "The Filling Station." When I read it, I think of the mass: "father" in a funny costume assisted by several sons, colorful books, seats, embroidered doily on the table, and, of course, "somebody loves us all" in spite of all the dirt and filth that we find ourselves in. Is that so very far-fetched an interpretation?

How come . . .

If a supermarket can figure out how to stay open 24/7, why can't museums at least be open until midnight three nights a weekend?

Mark Kleiman
The Realtiy-Based Community

Heck, I'd be happy if they'd stay open until 9 p.m. one night a week.

Manifolds

Sometimes I click around Wikipedia just for the hell of it. That's how I wound up with that lovely (?) schematic of Xenon. Well, today I went through the mathematics "portal" and found that the highlighted article was about manifolds. And I "learned":

A manifold is an abstract mathematical space in which every point has a neighborhood which resembles Euclidean space, but in which the global structure may be more complicated.

Got that? The global structure may be more complicated than one in which every point has a neighborhood "which" (I think they mean "that") resembles Euclidean space.

Postscript: To clarify, I don't actually read the Wiki articles. I just like to look at the pictures . . . and to remind myself of just how breathtaking the scope of my ignorance is.

danlarkins has 0 friends

That's what Google says, right up in the first hit for "danlarkins," so it must be true. I know I'm not exactly Mr. Personality. I know I'm not the most popular guy in town. But zero friends?! Yikes! I'd better go out and buy a dog. Fast.

No, wait. Turns out that the Friendless Danlarkins is a Dennis Kucinich supporter who lives in New Jersey. Well, that explains that. Elsewhere, Friendless Danlarkins claims to have "a nice girlfriend named Michelle," but he does so in the context of a post that makes absolutely no sense at all. I can only assume that Friendless Danlarkins has lost touch with reality. Maybe Michelle is inflatable?

A presumably different danlarkins is involved in what looks like a fantasy baseball league of some kind. Doubtless he has friends, but they're probably all sabermetricians.

I can't decide who is the sadder case, Friendless Danlarkins or Fantasyleague Danlarkins.

Postscript: A Google search for danlarkins finds "about 26" occurrences. About? About?! What's with "about"? Computers count things, right? Computers are precise, right? So how come Google never tells me exactly how many occurrences it finds?

Xenon

Just in case you were wondering

try and

Well, since Mr. Wilson and I find ourselves correcting the world's grammar, let's do one more. If I don't "go postal" over thusly, it will be over try and.

For generations, commentators have criticized try and, as in I’ll try and see her tomorrow, preferring try to in such constructions. Both have been in constant use throughout the period, however, and the main difference is that try and is almost always limited to Casual and Impromptu levels and their written imitations, whereas try to is Standard, appropriate at all levels.

Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–).
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.

To repeat, "try to is Standard, appropriate to all levels." That's Mr. Wilson's gentle way of saying "Never say try and'; always say try to.

thusly, thus (advs.)

I'm seeing "thusly" an awful lot these days, and my patience is wearing thin. Listen up, world, I'm only going to say this once:

Prefer thus, or use circumlocutions such as as follows or in this way if you have any doubts about thusly’s reception; to some people it is still jocular at best. Thusly apparently began in the nineteenth century as a humorous “ignorant” substitute for thus, but it has now come into much wider use, often for serious purpose, particularly in introducing an example. Most dictionaries label it Colloquial or Informal at best, although at least one considers it Standard at nearly all levels. It is frequently but not always interchangeable with thus, but thus is the better choice.

Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–).
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.

For example:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;

David

In an earlier post, I expressed an interest in seeing Michangelo's David during our visit to Florence. I just learned of another David that I'm much more eager to see. This one is by Donatello and is at least "R" rated if not "NC-17." Pretty clearly, if this David defeated Goliath, he(?) must have had supernatural help.

Ash Wednesday

Lent always reminds me of Paul Cioffi, SJ, may he rest in peace. (Actually, lots of things remind me of Paul Cioffi, SJ, may he rest in peace.) One of the mass prayers -- I think the opening prayer, either on Ash Wednesday or, more likely, the first Sunday of Lent -- refers to Lent as "this joyful season." Fr. Cioffi was the first person who called that to my attention. And he actually made some sense out of it: "Slow down. Relax. Luxuriate in the sure and certain knowledge that God is working to accomplish your salvation. A joyful season indeed!"

Endorsements

I haven't even tried to decide between Clinton and Obama. (I'll take either one over anybody the repubs might put up, and I'll be thrilled to do it.) But this endorsement of Obama might just be enough to get me singing Kumbaya.

Abby's first two pictures as a six-year old

A self-portrait

and SpongeBob SquarePants at the Beach

Click each picture for a bigger view.

A Widget . . .

. . . imported from espn.com. And the process was as simple as could be - - all courtesy of my brilliant son-in-law!

Europe, here we come, part 4

From Florence (actually Fiesole), we head down to Perugia, where we will set up camp on the outskirts of the city in a Best Western, from which we will explore Umbria and the southern part of Tuscany. Best Western?! Yeah, well we got a really good deal on it -- Thanks, Zarguna -- and we don't really expect to be in it all that much. And who knows? Maybe we'll take up golf.

Click for more info on the hotel.

From Perugia, we go to Rome for a week. We'll stay in an apartment in the San Giovanni neighborhood -- not the most chic area of the city, but authentic and close to the Metro.

Click for more info on the apartment.

Addendum:

• Europe, here we come, part 3
• Europe, here we come, part 2

Happy Birthday, Abby!

Abby turned 6 yesterday, culminating 3 days of celebration:

• Saturday: a rockin' 4-hour (4-hour!) party with current and former schoolmates.
• Sunday: more festivities at her friend Keertana's party.
• Monday a.m.: cupcakes and songs at kindergarten.
• Monday p.m.: cupcakes and songs at TigerDen.
• Monday later p.m.: hamburger and fries with grown-up friends (and cute little Sadie) at Red Robin.

Two pictures from the Saturday marathon:

• In the first, the birthday girl makes sure the cake is up to her standards
• In the second, she leads her motley crew in a raucous rendition of "Louie, Louie."

More pictures are here.