Our department hosted a distinguished guest speaker last week. He is quite renowned in my field, and perhaps has some name recognition with the general public too. Apparently, we thought he would be a popular enough draw that the talk was advertised to the entire university (and, I believe, to local companies), and was held in the on-campus theatre rather than in a large classroom. Sure enough we filled the theatre (which seats around 750), and turned a few dozen away at the door.

The first person to take the podium was the president of the university, who made some short-but-sweet comments about us and the speaker. Great. Then, my department chair got up to introduce the speaker. The introduction started out alright, but gradually devolved into a recitation of his CV, including a ritualistic enumeration of every single award, fellowship, and honourary degree, which in the case of this speaker is a real endurance trial. Combined with the president's address, the preamble to the actual talk probably went on for more than ten minutes. The speaker ended up skipping some material at the end, and didn't have time to take any questions. That clearly was partly his fault -- he simply had too much to talk about. But shorter introductions might have left more time at the end.

Why try to list every one of a distinguished guest's accomplishments? We already know they're distinguished, and it's probably a bit embarrassing for them. The list itself isn't memorable or entertaining. I'm sure that "Our speaker's accomplishments our too numerous to list, but highlights include..." would go over fine. Better yet, you could paraphrase a line from Ocean's 11: "He's got a list of accomplishments as long as my... well, it's long." Actually, one of the better introductions given in my department was by a professor who was shocked to first meet the speaker -- he had assumed that because the speaker was so distinguished, he must have been dead. "I'm surprised he's not dead" -- high praise indeed.

I seem to have developed a habit of posting about cover songs. I don't know what this means.

But let me add another winner to the list. Chris Cornell (formerly of Soundgarden) performing Billie Jean. I mean, damn.

I'm always telling visitors from the US that yes, our summers here in Ontario are terribly hot, just like wherever they're from. But as I write this in early June, it's currently less than 8 degrees outside. There's a risk of frost tonight. It's amazingly cold for this time of year. Fortunately I saw a documentary on this subject, and I know that if I find myself in the eye of a giant land-based hurricane, I should seek shelter in the nearest fast-food kitchen or public library before the supercooled air comes down from the upper troposphere and freezes me where I stand. Oh yes, I'm prepared.

Whoops, I stopped by to make a brief post, and discovered a partial entry that I had begun to write a week or two ago. Here, therefore, are one or two other details from the weekend of May 19-20, as I had previously written them...

Despite the sad interval Sunday morning, most of the weekend was quite enjoyable. Friends from the next town over visited for most of Saturday, and we had a fun time around the house and at the park. Sunday morning we made an excursion to a couple of hardware stores to scope out backyard playsets. We eventually settled on this one. (As an aside, if you research these sorts of swing sets you discover an amusing aspect of how they're advertised. They always show the set with at least one kid using every feature. Rainbow Play is especially aggressive in this regard. The sheer density of kids starts to look like an infestation.) Our friendly next-door neighbours were kind enough to give me a ride in their truck a few hours later to pick up the playset, with a detour to the Humane Society to leave Ginkgo's remains.

We then spent most of Sunday evening and almost all of Monday assembling the damn thing. The box says "3-6 hours! Build and play in one day!". That may be true for a family of contractors taking a break from building Gothic cathedrals. For a noob like me, it took quite a bit longer.