I won't move an inch even though my arm's asleep

Haven't really done anything today, just called home and played a little piano over in Helaman Halls. (By Jove, "Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah" is amazing.) This'll be a canonical weblog.

Bought Ben Folds' Songs for Silverman a couple of days ago when Lizzy and I went to Wal-Mart. I guess it's stupid of me to review it, since most people aren't familiar with him and the few exceptions are generally rabid fans. Nonetheless, I've listened to it fivish times; I think I've a solid impression. First off, I'll admit that, not paying much attention to his discography, I expected Songs of Love, the absence of which was a disappointment. Yeah, my fault, but I wish he hadn't done the four mini-albums; I have about ten CDs to my name, and much prefer getting an hour of music when I go out to expand the collection.

More legitimately, though, it doesn't really touch me; I feel like I'm wandering through a modern art exhibition, nodding respectfully at the works. Yes, there's poignancy in the lyrics, I really enjoy the strings version of Landed, and Gracie is certainly sweet, but most of it feels like just so much easy listening. Here's a review that sums my thoughts nicely on Amazon's SfS: "I know Ben doesn't really make 'rock' music, but there are ZERO rockin' songs!...It's a good CD with so many great lyrics and so many beautiful melodies, but I never want to put on a Ben Folds/Five album and be able to ignore it or lose interest." Overall impression: too soft for me, too profane to buy for parents.

Okay, now just going down the favorites list.

My first homepage! Hah!

I cannot overstate the hilarity of these statues.

Self-balancing robots = cool. Child-hunting self-balancing robots = ubercool.

Essay on cephalopod intelligence. Lots of neat experiments.

The plastic number, cousin to the golden number--and possible test of primality?

How to destroy the Earth-- with help from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

The Place of Mormon Women: "This paper is an admittedly apologist response to the question of Mormon women's so-called oppression, but it is by no means a simplistic response to those who have honestly struggled with real and perceived gender inequity in their Church experiences, especially concerning patriarchy and priesthood, polygamy, ambiguities about Mormon female authority, and dictates about women's traditional domestic roles." Insightful and extensive.

Proto-Indo-European and stress/pitch/tone language systems.

Googling myself, I stumbled back upon Pariah S. Burke, and discovered a snarky comment he left in response to my own grammar correction. Pariah, here you go, a mention on my site. And yes, I was an idiot to call an ellipsis an ellipse.

Inflection-based programming.

The Unfolding of Language looks like a brilliant book. And there's even plenty of time to ship it before my birthday.

Auto-Blogger: amusing spoof of Mac commercials and of blog culture.

Rubber band balls! I've started my own, actually. I'd estimate it's about half a penguin so far.

My first glimpse of this page took my breath away, and I'm still a little twitterpated. I present Origin of the Prepositions in the Modern Romance Languages. Man, the Gauls were seriously on crack with "avec". Essentially, "the house of this"/"pertaining to this"->"with".