Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is large, interesting, and fronted by an extremely imposing set of steps and vista.

I quite enjoyed one of Picasso's paintings entitled "Female Nude", which absent the title I might have guessed was "collection of brown and off-brown rectangles in a stack". This sort of extreme distortion of a representation is very appealing; partly for the puzzle (can you find the female nude in there?) and partly for the aesthetic joy of stacked rectangles.

Frits Thaulow's "Water Mill" is incredible:

... as in, I do not credit my eyes. The painting is playing some incredible brain-perception trick, in that the water reflection looks photoreal in the center, yet just off-center it is clearly impressionist, with fine details merely suggested by broad brushstrokes. And the water mill building itself at the top of the painting is a low-polygon-count-style backdrop, reminiscent of a video game level. (I'm thinking of Braid in particular, but maybe Braid was just done in a style reminiscent of Thaulow's "Water Mill"?) By brain reads the whole thing as a photograph, but when I closely examined any detail (in person these are much more easily perceived than in this photo of the painting), I could clearly see that this was the result of paint applied to canvas. Mystifying. Cool.

This is also one of the unusual paintings of water in which the water is not predominantly blue, but still looks obviously like water.

This post's theme word is mazarine (adj), "a deep, rich shade of blue." The churning bubbles lightened the mazarine of the depths into a foamy whiteness in the shallows around the mill.

So many cookies

Truly, a lot of cookies.

This post's theme word is aciniform (adj), "shaped like a cluster of grapes." Hark! Do I see aciniform cookies across the room? I shall go investigate.

Reunion summary, part II

Months of persistent nagging, often several times a day, was insufficient this time. Most of the class defaulted and failed to submit any self-summary for our next reunion (and accompanying book). This forced the alumni office to give us an extension and step up the guilt-tripping to previously-unexplored reaches of extremity.

Lo! and behold: it worked. Well, a bit. I'll admit that I didn't put as much pizzazz and creative obfuscation into this one as the last one. (In my defense, I now have a job which offers me a lot less free time for creative writing projects on the side.)

My quest for evil mastermindhood continues apace. I have maximally levelled up on the education ladder, and collected one degree of each type (arts, science, philosophy); I now demand to be addressed by my full title ("Professor Doctor Master..."), which is becoming an onerous time-delay during dramatic entries.

Since last we met, I moved to Canada, and then, when that proved insufficiently French, I moved to Paris itself. O! that epitome of French stereotypes: the glorious boulevards, the wine/bread/cheese, the magnificently sneery accents. Many truly marvelous adventures were had, which this margin is too narrow to contain. After nearly a decade abroad, I reluctantly returned to domestic shores in pursuit of that most elusive of quest objectives: tenure.

I return to the US a well-travelled, multilingual, and even-more-highly educated person, all things which serve me well for making small talk and getting pigeonholed. As a professor of computer science, I know a lot about both pigeons and holes. Ask me sometime.

I promise to give you homework. (Due date: the next reunion.)

If unnamed editors change anything, that'll pretty much determine my non-participation in future editions. (Last time they threatened that editors might take action, but the final version was what I had submitted, ridiculosity unchanged.)

These periodic check-ins seem decreasingly relevant in the networked social media sphere in which I dwell: everyone I want to hear about, I already do hear about; we are already in touch. And everyone else? Reading about them in the paper-printed book (!) will be useful, but mostly for tracking how many future CEOs and congresspeople I knew in their early 20s.


This post's theme word is aesculapian, "relating to medicine," or "a doctor." I usually introduce myself as "a doctor, but not the type that helps people", but I am considering condensing this to "a non-aesculapian doctor", to alienate all but the most erudite.

How should groups make decisions?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. Today's lecture was on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem so I quite reasonably asked:

How should groups make decisions?

I framed the question as a group deciding where to go for dinner, given the individual ranked preferences of each person over all the dinner options. So one student, confronted with impossibility, wrote, "just starve, we're going to die anyways. ^_^". Another summarized national exhaustion with "I don't like decisions" and yet another echoed the first with "why bother, we will all die anyways".

Others took a more whimsical approach:

• anarchy
• define a "mom"  friend, listen to them
• attendance sheet surveys
• attendance sheet popular vote
• separation of power
• choose 50 US residents at random (with replacement), repeat sample 100,000 times, choose most popular winner
• a long and indecisive debate
• only consult those with the loudest voices
• not first past the post
• dictatorship
• elect a dictator
• math
• select the most privileged person, ask them
• compromise
• hand raising
• someone should make an impassioned speech
• oracles
• trial by combat
• long discussions
• flip n coins
• throw questions into the void and wait
• Quaker Process (Organized Consensus)
• no groups; return to hunter gatherer society
• debate
• pick the best one
• rolling dice
• compromise
• capitalism!!
• by assuming I'm always right
• alphabetically

A subset of students were excited by the idea of a dictatorship, but wanted to further specify which dictator in particular:

• politburo with Josif as head
• establish [student in class] as dictator
• Option 1: oligarchy consisting of Ina Garten, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Amanda Freitag
  Option 2: The Purge

In the margins of the attendance sheet, students sketched political signs and placards and then later students annotated them (by adjusting the name) or voted (by writing "+1" nearby).

I don't know what a "complementary probabilistic majority" is, but it sounds neat. Gold star for piquing professorial curiosity.

By popular vote, "compromise" was the only method which received more than one vote. But several other votes were similar (the above, two voting to "die anyways", and several picking debate/discussion).


This post's theme word is consonance (n), "agreement or accord" or "a combination of sounds pleasing to the ear" or "the repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, such as st in the phrase first and last." Consonance and assonance together underlie many tongue-twisters.

What plague do you wish on your enemies?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. As we near the end of the semester, I am asking the truly deep and personality-revealing questions:

What plague do you wish on your enemies?

Traditionalists:

• darkness
• bubonic plague
• bugs (pun intended)
• boils!!
• locust swarm
• black (bubonic) plague

Tradition with a bit of a twist:

• really cuddly locusts
• flaming dog rain
• hairless cats
• bees?

Dark or too honest:

• endless Mondays & cumulative finals
• long Sharples lines
• my life
• misery
• life
• perspective
• classes where you learn nothing & never get any grades back

Not really feeling malicious today:

• teddy bears
• plague them with love
• none
• happy and healthy lives
• pass
• N/A
• no plagues

Earnest and unsortable plagues:

• having to deal with people like them
• P=NP nightmares
• man-eating snowmen
• piece of hair always stuck in mouth
• very droppy icicles form around them and often lightly stab them
• eternally dry eyes
• your face turns into a plague doctor mask with the beaks and stuff
• a case of mitosis, aggressive osmosis

I am fond of "piece of hair always stuck in mouth" as a low-level continual irritation which is not directly harmful, but definitely the sort of thing to wish on an enemy. The icicles also earns points for convoluted (preplanned?!) detail. However, the winner must be "eternal ear wax" which is something we all have, but I guess as a plague it would be unusually bountiful?

This post's theme word is vouchsafe (v. tr.) "to grant or give something as if as a favor" or (v. intr.) "to condescend." I vouchsafed to post the homework several days early, to raucous applause.

What is the most interesting weather?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. The questions are informed by recent events, course material, and whatever else bubbles out of my mind. It's been raining here, so...

What is the most interesting weather?

This question turned out to be an interesting survey of basically "what is the most interesting weather you have witnessed?" for many people.

Among the actual-weather/climate answers, artisanally hand-sorted by semantic nearness:

• sunny
• sunny rain
• warm rain
• raining when I know I'm gonna be indoors
• pouring rain
• light snow
• snowing
• fluffy snow
• lake effect snow, i.e., a mile wide band of several feet of snow (with areas on either side getting nothing)
• falling ash / magnificent sunsets during fire season (the closest SoCal gets to snow)
• hail
• "wintery-mix"
• thunderstorms
• thunder
• fog in the daytime
• dense fog
• cloudy
• partly cloudy
• when there are wavy lines on the horizon
• the season of inverse monsoons
• hurricane season; sometimes you get hail
• tornado; -- sky turns green
• all weather's interesting
• lava

I am astonished to learn that there is something real called "fire season". It sounds straight out of fiction. I'm not sure if "inverse monsoons" are real, but on balance the term seems believable so I've grouped it there. (If it's a cultural reference I've missed then... oops.)

The non-literal answers were fun, too.

• when justice rains from above
• the day I find my dad (<-- a="" across="" answer="" attendance...="" cropped="" days="" enough="" feel="" frequently="" has="" i="" is="" li="" many="" narrative="" student="" tell="" that="" the="" this="" to="" trying="" up="">
• bees
• oobleck (ooblick?)
• the heat death of the universe
• cats & dogs
• raining cats and dogs
• blood
• whether or not P=NP (<-- 5="" another="" hand-annotated="" li="" on="" one="" stars="" student="" this="">
• the dying hurricane on Jupiter

Several of these elicited guffaws, in particular those which played on the expectation that weather falls from the sky: blood?! bees! lava?!?! 

The teacher's preference award is tied this time between the weather/whether-P=NP joke and lava.

Congrats, everyone! Come back later this week and the beginning of next for the final two rounds of our silly contest.

This post's theme word is inspissate (v. tr., intr.), "to thicken or condense." The fine droplets of lava were manageable weather until they began to inspissate and collate, at which point the danger escalated quickly.

What are you thankful for?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. Seasonally themed: What are you thankful for?

"Family" came in a clear winner, closely followed by "friends" (often "family & friends"). Many people offered other sincere answers:

• the morning sun
• life
• serotonin
• an education
• the hw deadline being pushed back
• comedy
• the upcoming winter vacation
• breaks, and how soon the next one is
• life
• stability
• sleep
• naps!

Notable exceptions:

• naps!
• pajamas
• corn
• plastics
• HOT WATER
• our reptilian overlords

I'd like to combine these into one giant, vacation-fever-dream-during-a-nap dream sequence.

This post's theme word is paragmenon, "the juxtaposition of words that have the same roots. Examples: sense and sensibility, a manly man, the texture of textile." A false future paragmenon perpetrated by misled linguists: friendly family, family friend.

Family quips

Gather sufficient clever and verbose people together, and the resulting tumult of verbiage will dazzle and astound. And, I hope, amuse. Here is a selection of quotes from a recent family gathering --- keep in mind, these were only in conversations I witnessed*, and these were only the things I remembered long enough to jot down. I've interspersed other notes, not quotes, of things that happened.

"I made it sweet for you! ... sweet with chili beans."

"Why is your foot so far away from your body?"
"... I don't know."

"Look, you have all these ingredients, you have to use them all..."

"They made that noise, you know, like when someone chews with their mouth open the week before you get your period and you just want to smack them like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

A rederivation, on the fly and from first principles, of cold-smithing techniques for certain metals.

"I'm telling you, Mom, I'm not going to adopt a child this fiscal year."

"No, no, it's a theoretical machine that I carry around in my brain."

Regarding sourdough starter:
"You feed the baby, but first you discard half the baby and make sure the other half hasn't died."
"I think nurturing a baby and yeast are a little different."

There was a point in the evening when all the some adults took out their smartphones and installed Snapchat, and then started trying to have snapchat interactions. Hilariously. (I think the youths did not appreciate the situational comedy.)

Pedantry about "=":
"Ernie's mastery of breads and baking! ... it's unequalled in the Western hemisphere. But you don't know how many decimal places we're using to measure."

"That just looks like something you took out of a dumpster."
"Initially, yes, but..."

"It was so nice to see you --- I was so impressed that at one time I fell asleep." (Said without sarcasm.)

Just before the (brief) break for this USian holiday, the students on my course message board asked, "What is a Fontes Thanksgiving like"? These same industrious and forum-using students also posted a poll whose results revealed that several of the students read this blog. This post goes out to you, then, my students: you are almost done with me (this semester), but for now you remain in my pedagogical clutches and I remain tethered to your minds, trying to squeeze in more knowledge in the scant remaining weeks.

*I'm a possible confounding factor here, I acknowledge that.


This post's theme word is fissiparous (adj), "tending to break into parts" or "reproducing by biological fission." The Fissiparous Fonteses are feared far and near.

Pasta pizza

Why, though?

You know what would go great atop this starchy transport layer? Another layer of starch, with a different form factor!


This post's theme word is matutolypea (n), "the state of being in a bad mood, annoyed, obnoxious first thing in the morning." Pasta pizza is known to invoke matutolypea, for its inappropriate use of starches too early in the day.

What animal goes on your family crest?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. I try to pique their interest, spark their imagination, and give them a chance to make a silly joke. I try. Student responses, as you have seen, vary.

What animal goes on your family crest?

Actual animals, ranging from more standard crest-fare to less:

• wolf
• lion
• dragon
• my dog
• a husky (no, not ripping off the Starks. We have a husky)
• shiba 💙
• my pet parakeet Snowwhite
• llama
• a camel
• a very small cat
• a mole
• penguin
• blind molerat
• the worst one
• dodo bird
• the best one

Not animals, but apparently crest-worthy:

• pillows
• plants

Opting out:

• I don't have a family crest
• what is a family crest?

I appreciate the extra detail in the description "a fox between theater masks," although additional style points would be awarded for use of crest descriptors like "rampant", "X on a field of Y", or "X quartered with Y".

This week's winner is pink fairy armadillo. I'd join in a parade with such a crest.

This post's theme word is brummagem (adj), "cheap and showy," or (n), "something that is counterfeit or of inferior quality." My homebrew crest was a visually-incomprehensible brummagem of assorted flourishes, animals, figures, geometric shapes, and other crests.