John Stewart R.I.P.

This is sure turning into the dead guys blog! The musician and songwriter John Stewart passed away this week. He wrote "Daydream Believer" and other songs, and was a member of the Kingston Trio. Roseanne Cash wrote a wonderful tribute to him and his approach to songwriting and life on her website.

Picking the nominees

I pretty much agree with Jon Carroll's Who Am I Kidding column: I'll be voting for whomever the Democratic nominee is. Clinton, Obama, Edwards - all fine by me.

We here in Washington State don't get much choice in these matters. There is a primary but it doesn't count (for the Democrats anyway). Candidates are chosen in caucuses of party activists. We went to one when we first moved here in the late 1980s. You have to sit there for over an hour trying to convince other people that your candidate is right. Finally they take a vote and then some of the people at the caucus have to agree to go to some sort of regional meeting and cast their vote. I volunteered for that and went to the regional thing, and it turned out our candidate didn't for some reason qualify to get any support at all. In any case, it's all too late to matter anyway, as the candidates are decided early.

It would be nice to have some choice in the matter, but oh well.

Happy 100th, Bill Tapia!

Hawaiian 'ukulele master Bill Tapia turned 100 years old today - and he wasn't even the oldest guy at his birthday party! He is still performing and teaching music. If he's not the oldest active musician in the world, I'd like to know who is. I produced a Bill Tapia concert in Seattle a few years back and really enjoyed hearing all his stories from the old days.

Anita Rowland, R.I.P.

I just read the very sad news that Seattle blogger Anita Rowland passed away yesterday after a long illness. She organized the local blog meetups that I attended a few times. She was a kind and intelligent person. My condolences to her husband Jack.

It's here!

New Uke almost here!

My new Ron Phillips resonator tenor ukulele is almost completed! I am eager to get my hands on it!

John Todd R.I.P.

John Todd was a wonderful mathematics teacher at Caltech. As undergrads, myself and a couple of friends asked him if we could enroll in one of his graduate classes. He said yes. We were worried that we might not be able to keep up with the grad students. It turned out the grad students were even more worried, that we might show them up. In any case, it all worked out fine. It was a memorable class that gave us a taste of what real mathematics research was like. John Todd was unusual in that he didn't have a PhD, just a Bachelor's degree, so you had to be careful to call him Professor Todd not Dr. Todd. He was a great teacher that I remember well to this day.

Interview with Bill Tapia

A fine interview with Bill Tapia, the great ukulele player. He'll turn 100 years old on New Years Day.

Albert Ellis R.I.P.

I never met Albert Ellis, but he was one of those people who had a tremendous impact but are not that well-known. Everyone's heard of Freud and Jung and their followers, but their kind of psycho-therapy has fallen from favor. Instead, most therapists today practice the kind of therapy that Albert Ellis pioneered. His books and speeches were controversial and raunchy. Back in college, we boys eagerly read them for tips on getting girls out of their clothes.

The reason his therapy has become so popular, is that it works, more or less, and it doesn't take a lot of time to perform, say 10 sessions instead of years on the couch. The two psychotherapists I have known socially both follow his school of thought. If Albert Ellis had been more well-behaved the whole media hero-worship thing would have made him a household name.

Mr. Wizard, R.I.P.

I seem to have found a new theme for this blog: wait for a celebrity to die that I had some knowledge of and then comment on him or her. Of course, it could be a long wait between posts!

I grew up watching Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) on Chicago TV. Perhaps he was something of an inspiration for me to go to a science school (Caltech). He'd do stuff like have a long-haired girl touch her hand to a Van Der Graaf generator and watch her hair rise up. According to the obit linked here, he also played the ukulele.

One day, many years later when I had a small software company in Los Angeles, I got a visitor who said Mr. Wizard was in a nearby office and needed some help with his computer. Well I followed him and found Mr. Wizard muttering over a Radio Shack TRS-80 and its dot-matrix printer. He was in a foul mood and stormed off - I don't think he ever asked for help, my contact had done that on his own. I couldn't get the printer to work, so I was no use. I must say I was surprised at his surly personality, so different from the TV show. Maybe that's what a Trash-80 will do to you.

The Sweet Hollywaiians

National Popular Vote

Now this is a clever idea! I always thought that the US was stuck with the electoral college system for Presidential elections, because small states would block an amendment which would reduce their influence. The National Popular Vote idea is this: each state assigns all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. No constitutional amendment is required, as each state can choose how it picks electors.