A visit to Wolfram Research

Dan Klarmann undertook a pilgrimage to the periodic table table at Wolfram Research in Champaign IL and took some pictures.

Libraries!

What better way for a booklover to prepare for the coming Obamapocalypse than to obtain a library card? We'll save a bundle! So ten-year-old Sarah and I went to our small town's public library Saturday to sign up for cards and see what was available. After filling out the forms (the cards should be available there next week) we looked around. She hit the motherlode and came away with Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, L. M. Montgomery and a healthy dose of Hardy Boys and Boxcar Children. I found nothing by Dorothy Sayers or Elizabeth George among their thousands of mysteries and romance novels, and the friendly lady behind the counter couldn't find anything in the system by Fred Kaplan - either no library in central Illinois has a copy of his Lincoln book, or she didn't quite know what she was doing.

So the local library is a bust for me, but with their card I'll be able to check out books from the Champaign library when I'm in town for office hours Wednesdays and Fridays. I'll just need to be careful not to visit when the Bedlam across the street from the library releases its lunatic inmates for the day.

Perhaps the best chocolates in the world

Ruben's Chocolates, right here in central Illinois. They ship worldwide by the usual methods, and via customers. Every time I visited their store in Champaign there was at least one customer stocking up on chocolate gifts before traveling, to be delivered upon arrival to fellow orchestral musicians or relatives or colleagues.

Steak 'n Shake: a panegyric

Roger Ebert on the Midwestern glories of Steak 'n Shake, via Nancy Nall.