Do smart people really live in [geographic location redacted] ?

A friend recently asked this question about a specific place, and the only answer I could come up with was:

There are really smart people living everywhere in the world.  [Geographic location redacted] is one of those places where the choice of living there is not one of the smart things those people did.

I like the universality of this answer, but Google's location services can't find [redacted] anywhere on Earth.

Permutative ninja turtles

The latest xkcd got me thinking about how I've long liked the fact that the words in the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" theme can be easily permuted with no change to the rhythm of the song; for example, "Mutant Teenage Turtle Ninjas", and how changing the order of the words in this way makes repeating that line over and over a little more interesting, and while I love the thought of singing "William Henry, Duke of Gloucester" to the tune of the TMNT theme, it doesn't permute very well.

Heroes in a Half Shell by mattcantdraw

However, when permuting the words in the original TMNT theme, you can't really put "Teenage" in the last spot because the noun form is "Teenager", which breaks the rhythm. Without resorting to something awful like "Teener", then, how many permutations of TMNT does that leave us?

Combinatorics doesn't come naturally to most of the human species, but this one is relatively easy.  With no restrictions, we would normally note that there are 4 possible choices for the first spot, then 3 for the second, 2 for the third, and 1 remaining choice for the last slot, so 4*3*2*1 = 4! = 24 permutations.  With the restriction that only 3 of the options are available to the last spot, then there are 3 for the first spot, 2 for the second, and 1 remaining choice for the third, so 3*2*1*3 = 3*3! = 18 permutations before you have to repeat yourself.  Yay counting!

Demolish != Destroy

I was glancing at 10 Mythical Things that Actually Existed over Sarahmac's shoulder and saw the claim that the Tower of Babel "was a ziggurat named Etemenanki, a temple to the god Marduk that was later destroyed by Alexander the Great."  And I was, like, WTF?  The Macedonian army destroyed Persepolis, but Babylon was treated well AFAIK. 

Well, following the link to Etemenanki, the Wikipedia page states:

In 331 BCE, Alexander the Great captured Babylon and ordered repairs to the Etemenanki; when he returned to the ancient city in 323 BCE, he noted that no progress had been made, and ordered his army to demolish the entire building, to prepare a final rebuilding.

There's a big difference between "destroyed" and "demolished, after years of failed attempts to repair," and we have a responsibility to use phrasing that doesn't completely misrepresent what happened.

And yes, there's a lot of "Duty Calls" at work here.

Among Others (Jo Walton) 2010

This might not be the best book I read this year, but it might be my favorite.  Suzy McKee Charnas's back cover blurb beautifully explains its charms:

I don't know when I've seen such an intense, heartfelt exploration in fiction of what it is to struggle with being an outsider as a young person.... This is a love letter, laced with sharp-edged anguish and triumph, from within the SF/F genres to the SF/F genres.  Among Others shows just how such books are not only entertaining stories but social lifelines.

Ironically, Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry was not published in time to be name dropped in Among Others (the narrative of which ends in February 1980), but I like to think that Mor reads it soon.

I'm even more overjoyed to have been recommended this book because I read Farthing seven years ago, based on the strength of it being a finalist for the Nebula award, and was so put off that I didn't bother looking up any of Walton's other books.  Now I might have to go look up Tooth and Claw... and since Fletcher Free doesn't have it, I'll make like Mor and fill out an inter-library loan slip.