Marc Valdez Weblog

Courtesy of Noel, some serious biometric analysis:

Scientists say they've carried out the first rigorous analysis of dance moves that make men attractive to women.

..."When you go out to clubs people have an intuitive understanding of what makes a good and bad dancer," said co-author Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University, UK.

"What we've done for the very first time is put those things together with a biometric analysis so we can actually calculate very precisely the kinds of movements people focus on and associate them with women's ratings of male dancers."

..."We thought that people's arms and legs would be really important. The kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact this was not the case," he said.

"We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region: the torso, the neck, the head. It was not just the speed of the movements, it was also the variability of the movement. So someone who is twisting, bending, moving, nodding."

Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive - so called "Dad dancing".

..."In animals, the male has to be in good physical quality to carry out these movements. We think the same is happening in humans and certainly the guys that can put these movements together are going to be young and fit and healthy."

I'm seriously discouraged about the hands part, though. I put some work into that....

And I remember reminding Jetta about the time when she watched one of Pepper's classes, where I was aerobicizing. She blew soda out her nose and remarked how it was one of the funniest things she had ever seen, comparing me to a dancing Woody Allen.

It's probably those damned hands again....
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Fun!:

Q.: So when did the theater thing first grab you?

A.: In high school, at Sac High, I played Nicely Nicely in Guys and Dolls, and I also played the rabbi's son in Fiddler On The Roof. That's when my grades began to slip a little, after I started performing. I didn't care about my other classes as much as Drama.

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What do the Jesuits say? Get them by age six and they're yours for life (see footnote):

The government of the eastern German state of Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania took the unusual step last month of ordering anyone setting up a children's day-care center to pledge their support for Germany's democratic constitution. The move followed a number of cases in which neo-Nazis had tried to take over the running of a kindergarten, influence teaching in nurseries or get recruited as teachers.

...Concern is also growing that in some thinly populated regions there may be enough neo-Nazi parents to secure a majority on parent boards.

...NPD spokesman Klaus Beier said on Tuesday that the party wasn't actively lobbying its members to become kindergarten and nursery teachers. "But of course it is quite natural and normal that NPD members and sympathizers should want to get involved in these areas. Kindergartens and schools should be politically neutral but unfortunately they are being instrumentalized by left-wingers," Beier told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

...Analysts doubt whether the neo-Nazi scene is pursuing a deliberate long-term indoctrination strategy. They say the debate about extremists in kindergartens is detracting from the far bigger problem of toddlers being influenced by their own far-right parents.

..."Right-wing extremism has become embedded in eastern Germany since the 1990s and has a stable voter base."

...Analysts said far-right views remain endemic in the east because decades of authoritarian rule until the fall of the Berlin Wall had made the region fertile ground for right-wing ideology. The problem was compounded by East Germany's education system, which failed to instill a sense of national responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis.

..."Many people -- normal citizens, not just youths -- view racial ideologies as common sense," Wagner said. "The view that races are embroiled in a battle for survival is widespread. It's social Darwinism. People view strangers as a potential threat that must be driven away."

[Footnote: Gabe asks: "Are you part of an anti-Jesuitical cabal? Why bring Jesuits into a comparison with Nazis? That's not very nice! (on the other hand, a comparison with Marxists may be more apropos, etc., etc....)"

I apologize to the Jesuits for the Nazi reference. I have offended against the recommendations of the Facebook group that Giorgio was promoting recently, 1 Million Strong to End Inappropriate Analogies to Nazism in Public Debate. Even as I was typing the reference, I thought I had exceeded the boundaries of good taste. My only point is that young people (age six, and younger) are particularly malleable for ideological purposes, and people have been exploiting that malleability since the dawn of the human race.]
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Christchurch aftershocks seem to be migrating east into the city limits:

Red markers: on Saturday
Blue markers: on Sunday
Yellow markers: on Monday
Green markers: on Tuesday
Purple markers: today
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Sacramento's Labor Day Rainbow Festival, 2010 (see footnote):

[Footnote: Gabe says "And what is this I see? Mmmmmaaarrrccc! This is NSFW! But then I suppose that depends on what kind of boss you have. I tell you, I've had bosses who were really into that stuff! And some people HAVE accused me of being a refugee from a past century!"

Once again, I apologize for having crossed boundaries of impropriety. Like Gabe, I too am a refugee from a past century; namely, the late, lamented 20th Century. But unlike Gen-X Gabe, I come from that unrecognized generation that immediately followed the Baby Boomers: too young to get drafted into 'Nam, which separates us from the Boomers proper. I very much believe William Faulkner's dictum "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Gabe's Gen-X past concerns his generation's struggle to escape the legacy of the Boomers, with their insatiable, narcissistic demands (I know, I know - I feel their insufferable weight too; I mean, who do you think paid for the excesses of the Boomers? It wasn't the Boomers, but rather, the WWII generation and the immediate post-Boomers!) Thus, the interest in new Orthodoxies of all sorts amongst the generation that came of age around 1990. My generation's struggle was of a different sort - coping with the Boomers' immediate aftermath. And our experiences are different, of course, from today's generation, dealing with the New Depression.

So, whereas today's generation might say "shake it like a Polaroid picture" (even that phrase is a few years out-of-date now) the Gen-Xer's might say "throw a blanket over it," whereas my 70's generation would say, "shake it, baby, shake it!"]

We are all refugees from the conflicted 20th-Century, and just like William Faulkner says, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."


Everybody, get on the floor, let's dance!
Don't fight your feelings, give yourself a chance!
Shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty!
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty. ]

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It's worthwhile quoting Matthew's post, in full. I am so glad I cut all ties to TNR in 2004. It has become a pretty wretched rag!:

Peretz: Muslims Are Indifferent to Human Life and Therefore Unworthy of First Amendment Protection

New Republic Editor in Chief Martin Peretz:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

I for one am thrilled that the First Amendment gives Peretz the right to offer his racist views up for public consumption, but it’s unfortunate that a number of very good writers seem to see no problem with the fact that their work goes out under a masthead nominally edited by this character.

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Troubled days:

At the State, Morgan and his staff of film geeks offered movie facts gleaned from trivia books kept behind the counter. Engaging patrons well beyond the "would you like butter on that?" level, the State crew sometimes dissuaded customers from seeing a particular film.

"We (would) tell them our honest opinions," said Justin Keith, 25, who worked for four years at the theater before Morgan reluctantly let the small staff go in August.

"They were always super-informative, about what (film) was worth it, and what wasn't," said Kelly Azevedo, 25, a longtime customer.

Through such personal attention and ticket prices lower than those at Woodland's other theater – a five-screen Cinemark multiplex – Morgan drew enough business to afford first-run Hollywood films, despite lacking the clout of the chains.

Then the recession hit, followed by changes in film-viewing habits. Woodland residents skipped hometown theaters for Sacramento screens with 3-D and digital projection, Morgan said. Or they rented DVDs for $1 at supermarket kiosks.

"We have become that kind of instant society, where everyone wants everything under one brand-new roof," Morgan said.

Morgan could barely afford to fix broken seats, let alone buy an expensive digital projector.

It's hard to run a movie theater these days that makes money. There has to be some value-added feature that makes the experience worthwhile. For my money, it's hard to beat Wanaka, Otago, South Island, New Zealand's Cinema Paradiso as a model of what a movie theater should be like in these dark days. All the sofas and comfy chairs!


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Below: Foot bridge over the Avon River, Avonside, Christchurch.



I do so want to go back for a visit, but it's going to be a long time before the infrastructure is all straightened out. It is cold right now too, and rainy and windy.

It's funny how Mother Nature can so quickly strip the smile off the happiest place on Earth:

The earthquake that devastated a city in New Zealand tore open a new 11ft faultine in the Earth’s surface.

The 7.1-magnitude quake which hit Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, destroyed about 500 buildings and caused an estimated £930million of damage.

But hundreds of lives were saved by tough building rules, it was claimed. Only two injuries were reported.

The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Professor Mark Quigley, of Canterbury University.

‘One side of the Earth has lurched to the right ... up to 11ft and in some places been thrust up,’ he said. ‘We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’

The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted.

Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said power was back to 90 per cent of the city and water supply had resumed for all but 15 to 20 per cent of residents.

Portable toilets had been provided and tanks of fresh water placed around the city. Mr Parker said it would take a long time to fix fully some core services such as water and sewerage. ‘Our first priority is just people,’ he said. ‘That’s our worry.’

The fact that no one was killed was put down to the timing of the quake and strict building codes.

‘New Zealand has very good building codes which mean the buildings are strong compared with, say, Haiti,’ said Professor Martha Savage of Victoria University in the capital Wellington.

‘It’s about the same size quake as Haiti, but the damage is so much less. Though chimneys and some older facades came down, the structures are well built.’

The Anglican Dean of Christchurch, the Rev Peter Beck, added: ‘Thank God for earthquake strengthening ten years ago.’

Prime Minister John Key said it was a miracle no one was killed. He put that down to the building codes and because the quake happened just before dawn on Saturday.

‘If this had happened five hours earlier or five hours later there would have been absolute carnage in terms of human life,’ he said. Parts of the city look like they’ve been put in the tumble dryer.’

...Schools across the region will remain closed for the next two days to allow time to check whether they were safe.

Roger Bates, whose dairy farm at Darfield was close to the quake’s epicentre 19 miles west of Christchurch, said the new faultline had ripped up the surface across his land. ‘The whole dairy farm is like the sea now, with real soil waves right across the dairy farm.

‘We don’t have physical holes (but) where the fault goes through it’s been raised a metre or metre and a half.’

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Left: Christina Rae has been spending time in the kitchen.


Left: Dance ensemble.


Left: Wendy Young Carey as Lena.


Left: Adam Sartain and the orchestra.
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On the outside, eastern wall of my bedroom: scrape, scrape, scrape.....

Suddenly, I realized I had a fatal misstep on the back porch steps. The wood broke on one of the supports, setting up a massive tripping hazard for those who didn't know it was there. Instead of keeping it a secret, I tried to secure it with screws....

Left: Rainbow Festival, 2010!


Every year, I tell myself that I'm going to drop in on Labor Day's Rainbow Festival at 20th & K Streets, and every year something else comes up. This year, I decided to go ahead!

For me, the main attraction was disco diva Caroline Lund's performance. I posted her "Move Your Body" video on this blog just a few days ago. What could be better than seeing an artist on their way up in the world of dance music?

So, at about 4:30 p.m., I paid my $10 entrance fee, and there I was, looking at the various booths near 20th & K Streets!

I started looking at merchandise for sale at one table. Just then, I was caught in a crossfire: two women, on either side of me, broke out water pistols shaped like phalluses and started firing at each other with abandon.

Well, that doesn't happen every day!


Left: Green Cross. Funny!


Wandering along, I saw Keith's J Street Wellness booth, and I inquired about medical marijuana (I've got that prospect of surgery on my foot to look forward to, so I might as well cover all the bases ahead of time). Keith started explaining the policy regarding doctors' prescriptions, but then got distracted by the approach of several women (me no think he's gay).

I bought a bottle of water and got a free hot-pink shopping bag.


Left: Some of the dancers from Face's in-house Sunday-evening performance revue, "Dragalicious", came into the street to perform.


Left: The MC.


Waiting for Caroline Lund to take the Main Stage in the intersection of 20th & K Streets, I saw two women behind the stage dressed in exotic performance clothing. The white woman was clearly warming up for a performance; the black woman was sitting down and texting. Was that Caroline Lund? I didn't know: I'm a newbie fan (one week elapsed, so far) and I'm not sure what she really looks like in person.




Left: Cool Beans.


A lesbian-themed band called something like "Cool Beans" took the Main Stage. So, I was rockin' out with the lesbians. Good band. One of the singers was wearing a "Beaver Fever" T-Shirt. Lots of tattoos.

Shortly after 5 p.m., after an interlude featuring 'Andy' and dancers, it was time for the main show! But instead of Caroline Lund, the first woman I had noticed came on stage. Her name was "Kelsey" and she sang and danced. She seemed to be at ease, pleasant and affable. I caught her first number on my fancy video camera.

Then it was time for Caroline Lund (the second woman I had noticed). Excellent show, with dancers! The Modesto native sang "Move Your Body," plus other songs, with several exotic backup dancers (apparently from Sacramento).

At one point, I had trouble. Someone wanted to wheel a folding table across the front of the stage. Not wanting to stop filming or take my eye off the stage, I took a step backwards without looking, totally unaware that someone had parked a baby stroller directly behind me. I tripped and flailed, and flailed, and flailed, and certainly took everyone's focus off the stage for several seconds as I fought, fought, fought for balance. I didn't fall, but it was a very close thing!

A nice show. Nevertheless, I was a little disappointed by what I thought was the fairly-small size of the crowds. Since this is my first time here, I don't know if it's usually small, or not. The economy? Too many entertainment alternatives? Everyone is packed into Badlands getting smashed on a hot afternoon? Quien sabe?

Afterwards, I wanted to say a few words of thanks to Caroline Lund. Just then, "Kelsey" came over.

I couldn't resist complimenting "Kelsey" on her fantastic eyelashes. Ever since I got those lovely electric-blue false eyelashes for 2008's 'La Cage aux Folles' at DMTC, I've been in love with long eyelashes, and Kelsey's pink-and-black eyelashes were the longest and lushest I had seen since 2008. She got excited: a fan!

I explained that I had been filming the performances. She said, "Ooooh, how do they look?" I answered that I didn't know: I had only just filmed them. I explained that I had caught only her first number on video. She replied:

Oh that's too bad! I was hoping you had caught the second number. That's the one we've been pushing; you know, to move me on up! Besides, I think my vocals were a bit weak on the first number, etc., etc.

As she spoke, a wave of deja vu hit me; a tsunami of deja vu, actually. It took me a few seconds to analyze the feeling. "Kelsey" the disco diva sounded exactly like the musical theater divas we have at DMTC, or, for that matter, over at Runaway Stage Productions (RSP), or Civic Theatre West!

Later, I learned on the Internet that "Kelsey Barney", who lives in Los Angeles now, came directly out of the Bakersfield community musical-theater scene. So, indeed, she is directly-comparable to some of our Sacramento musical-theater divas. She reminded me a bit of Amber Jean Moore, except more amiable, and not as scary/fierce as Amber can get, when she's busy murdering a jealous lover, or whatever she sings about when she's on stage over there at RSP.


The Fabulous Kelsey Barney as ROXY!


Arguing With Myself MySpace Video

So we talked about Kelsey's performance. I told her not to worry about the vocals: festivals aren't the best showcase for vocals anyway - you get whatever you get. I told her that her face was her best asset: strikingly large eyes; large mouth - makes for a memorable performance! (I should have mentioned the eyelashes again). She filed away that information for future reference.

She started talking about her record company's gay-friendly approach, sending her up to this Gay Pride event, and her own gay-friendly manner, and I'm wondering why she's even bringing up gay-friendly anything in conversation, and suddenly it occurred to me she had jumped to the conclusion that I was gay.

So, a question: Just because I spend all my free time doing musical theater, and have loved gay-oriented House and Disco music for decades, and paid $10 to attend a gay festival, and am carrying a hot-pink shopping bag; is that enough information to jump to the conclusion that I'm gay?

On second thought, don't answer that question....

So skipping past the matter of sexual orientation, we talked about matters I couldn't quite follow. She was talking about Palm Springs, but I was looking at her eyelashes, and so all I recall is that there are interesting people doing interesting things in Palm Springs.

I promised I would clear any video footage I took past her first before posting....

Oh, and yes, Caroline Lund briefly shook my hand and said 'thanks for coming!"
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That refrigerated semi-trailer with the TRU operating 24 hours a day is B-A-C-K! It's still lurking around the cemetery!

Is it full of bodies waiting to be interred? Or is it ferrying bodies away, to parts unknown? And why just on weekends?

I'll get my house painted just in time for Halloween, only to be besieged by restless, undead zombies!

Paint, paint, paint, paint! Then paint some more!

Preparing to spend the day painting my porch, I heard a knocking at the door. It was a canvasser for Sacramento School Board challenger candidate, Paige Powell. I asked the canvasser what did he see as the problem with incumbent Sacramento School Board candidate, Ellyne Bell.

"She's trying to close down Sacramento High School, and its college prep program," the canvasser said. "Ellyne Bell spends her time caving in to the unions' demands. She doesn't care for the students. Paige Powell is the only one of the candidates who has been a teacher, and who understands the students' needs."

I didn't tell the canvasser that I actually know Ellyne Bell, but not in her role as school board member. I used to take Sunday morning ballet with Ellyne, in Pam Kay Lourentzos' class (I've had to take a sabbatical this year). I never discussed school board matters with Ellyne. Instead, I knew Ellyne as a fellow dancer.

I asked the canvasser for a Paige Powell campaign flyer. He produced a flyer with a picture of the candidate that I took a dislike too. In the photo, Paige Powell seemed to be dressed like a teacher. Powell didn't seem to have Ellyne's whimsical and fun-loving sense of fashion.

It's my experience that politicians have a terrible - utterly dreadful! - sense of what performing artists, and artists of any and all sorts, really need to do their art. Politicians instinctively try to rope artists into political campaigns that have nothing to do with art. The modern American fetish over test scores has nothing to do with learning and everything to do with setting up educational fiefdoms and carving out budget turf. I see politicians - all politicians! - as guilty in this regard, until proven innocent.

The only saving grace is if the politicians are actually engaged in art forms of their own. Then they learn, on their own, what artists really need.

Ellyne Bell is a dancer. She's paid her dues. She "gets it."

And as far as unions are concerned, I've always considered it a plus to be able to work with unions.

If Ellyne Bell is considered to be anti-Kevin-Johnson in some way, so much the better. The "strong mayor's" instinct is to make people buckle to his will. What is the role of art in that? Art suffers in that kind of environment. Learning too.

I thanked the canvasser, saw him off, and somehow managed to lose the flyer.
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Left: Joanne (Lorraine de Arco).


A brilliant opening night over at RSP! Strong performances all the way around!

Some things were problematic. Sometimes the sound quality suffered. Lyrics were muddy. I thought people who don't know "Rent" might have trouble following the story. Myself, I had no trouble (I wasn't quite aware that I had practically memorized the entire book, but like all Rent-lovers, that was apparently the case).



Left: Mimi (Shanta Robinson)

I was really happy to see Shanta at RSP. I've seen her mostly in a variety of Pepper Von productions, where her performances have often been quite amazing!

"Rent", like many musicals, has a strong first act and a weak second act (only "Sweeney Todd" seems to avoid this fate). It seems like all these wonderful characters are created in Act 1, only to thrash around like hamsters in wheels in Act 2.

For Act 2, I sat next to one person noted as a skeptic of many things "Rent". He was writhing around in such agony I thought it might be better to remove his skin. I wasn't in that state, though. Act 2 still had some excellent songs. Lorraine deArco's and Lindsay Grimes' duet 'Take Me or Leave Me' nearly stopped the show!


Left: Angel (Joseph Boyette)


"Joesph's 'Today 4 You' stopped the show! I have never seen that happen before!


Left: Benny, or Benjamin Coffin III (Ali Llacer)

Ali, along with Lorraine, were recently in "Smokey Joe's Cafe" at Magic Circle. I liked Ali's cool sense on stage.



Left: Roger (Eddie Voyce). Wonderful voice!




Left: Mark (Tyler Robinson). Excellent performance, and good comic timing!



















And since I was just in "The City Different" only a month ago, it seems like the lyrics to "Santa Fe" (sung very well by Rudy 'Roods' Brown) come to mind!:

You're a sensitive aesthete
Brush the sauce onto the meat
You could make the menu sparkle with rhyme
You could drum a gentle drum
I could seat guests as they come
Chatting not about Heidegger, but wine!

Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
Our labors would reap financial gains



Left: Santa Fe's Coyote Cafe.





Left: View from the cafe's balcony.


"Where The Buffalo Roam" and "Big Coyote Bar" by William Prescott.


We'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
And save from devastation our brains

We'll pack up all our junk and fly so far away
Devote ourselves to projects that sell
We'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
Forget this cold Bohemian hell


Do you know the way to Santa Fe?
You know, tumbleweeds...prairie dogs...
Yeah

I can't believe how lucky I am! In the foreground, I've got Salsola tragus (aka tumbleweed). In the background, I've got a Gunnison's Prairie Dog. Tumbleweeds and a prairie dog in just one photo!
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As soon as I heard about the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake, I dashed off a quick message to Andrew:

Just heard about the quake. I hope you are all right. Presumably utilities and the Internet are down, so I don’t when this will reach you. Let me know when you can!

Today, Andrew replied:

Yes it was a large earthquake but I am okay and just a few broken glasses in the house. I was at a hotel at the airport (just landed from Sydney a few hours prior) when it struck and it was very scary indeed. The airport closed after that so I drove home rather than flying to Queenstown for the weekend. The house is okay but there is a lot of damage in Christchurch itself. I have power and water etc but no internet so am using my cellphone internet connection which is more limited than a proper connection but at least it works.

We get aftershocks about every 30 minutes which are also scary and at night you lie awake in bed not knowing if a large one is on the way! It is no fun at all. But at least no-one has died so we are blessed in that.

I hope you are well and thank you for your thoughts and prayers at this challenging time for Christchurch.

Best regards,
Andrew

I replied:

Hi Andrew:

I’m greatly relieved to hear that you are well! I thought it likely your house would be fine (on the hillside, there is little chance of waterlogged ground amplifying the ground movement).

I’ve been trying to follow the news on my iPhone (I finally broke down and got one). There is discussion about destruction of the Godley House and also pictures of a small rockfall on the drive into Diamond Harbour. I hope Lincoln University is OK (considerably closer to the Darfield epicenter).

...Thinking good thoughts for you, and everyone in Christchurch!

(no need to reply at this time – save your phone’s battery!)

Marc

It looks like Andrew's house is about 30 miles from the earthquake epicentre, near the rural crossroads of Darfield. His workplace is about 16 miles from the epicentre.

Featured now on her YouTube Channel! And, as always, the highest production values!
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It was felt widely across the South Island, most strongly in Christchurch and Timaru, and there have also been reports of the quake being felt as far as Wellington. Several aftershocks have been felt.

Emergency services say so far only minor injuries have been reported.

Power is out to most of Christchurch and the central city has been closed down by police because of the amount of rubble in the streets. Water pipes have ruptured and there are reports of flooding in some eastern Christchurch areas.

The facades of several inner Christchurch buildings have crashed down onto roads, Christchurch Airport has been closed down because of damage to the runway and several streets and roads are impassable. The surface of Avonside Drive, in eastern Christchurch, has been ripped up.

Colleen Simpson, from Christchurch, said everyone was out in the street in their pyjamas looking scared and worried. There was no power, buildings were down and the mobile network was failing.

"Oh my God. There is a row of shops completely demolished right in front of me," she said, from her car.

Simpson and her young family were heading to her sister's house, where there was still power, so everyone could be together.

Authorities have asked people to avoid making mobile phone calls unless it was an emergency as the networks were becoming overloaded.

Some Christchurch residents have reported chimneys have fallen in through roofs, ceilings have cracked and brick walls have collapsed.

Kevin O'Hanlon, from Mairehau in Christchurch, said it was unbelievable.

"Just unbelievable. I was awake to go to work and then just heard this massive noise and, boom, it was like the house got hit. It just started shaking. I've never felt anything like it."

A spokesperson for lines company Orion said sewer lines and water pipes have ruptured, and whole substations are offline.

The Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, John Hamilton, said that the National Crisis Management Centre has been activated to co-ordinate central government response if required.

Police said damage and power outages have been reported from as far away as Dunedin.

The rail network in the South Island has been shut down while it is inspected for damage.

A number of severe aftershocks have also shaken residents, one of 4.9 magnitude at 5.26am and one was 4.6 magnitude at 5.55am.

Christchurch Press chief reporter Kamala Hayman said power was out in many southern suburbs.

"The first shake tipped books and glasses off our shelves and we are still getting sizeable aftershocks."

Ad Feedback Ryan Shaw, in Christchurch, said "TV fallen off cabinet, books, pot plants everywhere and I'm very shaken."

Roads around the seaside suburbs of New Brighton and Sumner are thronged with cars as worried residents flee any possible tsunami. There has been no tsunami alert issued.

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Hurricane Earl is both weakening and veering more out to sea. The East Coast folks dodged a bullet here! There may be stormy days this weekend, particularly in Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, but it won't be the end of the world.

And I was so looking forward to that!
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We're at the recurve inflection point! Just about at the point where the shift was forecast too! That's good, but the shift is not far enough east to have Earl spare the coast some trouble.
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Jetta wanted to participate in the karaoke contest at Scarlets, part of the Powerhouse Pub structure in Folsom. The grand prize is $1,000.00. I thought it sounded like fun, so I went too.

The crowd there was mostly in their 20's, or 30's. It was a warm and inviting crowd.

There was lots of nighttime construction in Folsom, particularly at Sutter and Riley Streets, where the Powerhouse Pub is located.

Usually, it's the young women that distract young males in bars of this sort, but on this night, there was plenty of heavy equipment too.

The karaoke contest featured secret judges. Jetta like this innovation, because it limited the inevitable sucking up people do to twist the fates of contests. She got a 15 out of 25; not bad, but not the best. I recorded her performance.
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Stephen Hawking goes one step further. But I don't know what he means by 'spontaneous creation' (I guess I have to buy the book to find out):

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In The Grand Design, co-authored with US physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

...His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

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When I lived in Tucson, my landlord's parrot had very specific hates. She hated women (I think she viewed them as competition for human male attention). The postal worker was a bearded man, and so his sight would send the bird over the edge (but whether it was the beard or the postal-worker status, I don't know). The parrot also hated other birds. Now and then, my landlord would let the canary out. The parrot would wait until the canary flew over and was sitting on her cage, and then she'd carefully nip off the bird's toes, until the bird could no longer remain upright. A very cruel (but loving) bird! So, I'd tell this mail carrier in Calgary to be very, very afraid:

Dogs are usually pegged as a postal worker's worst enemy, but in one southwest Calgary neighbourhood a hawk is the one spoiling for a fight.

Mail delivery in Bayview has been temporarily suspended because a hawk has been nose-diving the local mail carrier.

"The hawk just really seemed to have a hate on for that particular letter carrier," Teresa Williams, spokeswoman for Canada Post, told CBC News.

"The attacks got so bad that she was resorting to wearing a bicycle helmet. And the hawk even broke the bicycle helmet."

...Heinz Sander, 92, said he regularly sees the mail carrier hiding from the hawk under trees or in his garage.

"I saw [the hawk] coming, I was ducking ... it was so fast and he was up again. It's fairly big ... more than a metre or so."

He likened the attacks to a fighter plane.

"I was in the air force you know ... in the Luftwaffe, in the German air force."

Mail will return when the hawks leave. Wildlife officials say that could be in a few days, once the hawks head south for the winter.

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Far-less sympathetically, indicating that maybe Governor Brewer has been watching too much "Breaking Bad", is her absolute refusal to acknowledge that she erred in saying beheadings were going on in the Arizona desert. A politician who can't walk back transparently-false statements is too brittle for the job!


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That skeetobite animation was offline this morning: it's back now....

I don't like any of these forecasts at all. The storm is coming in pretty fast, but still, it's coming in slower than they've forecast, and I keep thinking it's going to go farther west than they think (because it's path is being influenced by the low located over the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bermuda High to the east). Earl isn't at the recurving inflection point yet; the mid-latitude winds are still pretty far away.

And so, the consequences?

Farewell East Coast! Or at least farewell to Capes Hatteras and Cod! Glad I don't have an expensive yacht floating on Long Island Sound!
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But I'm just the kind of guy who will crawl through broken glass to darken the "Yes" bubble on the ballot!

Utility rates have been rising at greater rate than the CPI ever since I started paying utility rates, in 1998. And the rate of increase is accelerating, and in a recession too! This abuse has to stop, soon, and this ballot measure is one way to make it do so.

The ballot language could not be more screwed up. And it's likely to remain so too!:

The supporters of Measure B—also known as the Utilities Rate Rollback Initiative—are taking the city council to task over ballot language that they say is so convoluted and complicated, voters may have no clue what they are voting on.

Measure B qualified for the November 2 ballot earlier this summer. If approved by city voters, it would cancel a 9.2 percent hike in water, sewer and garbage rates that went into effect July 1. It also would limit the council’s power to raise rates in the future to annual increases in the consumer price index, requiring city
voter approval for rate hikes above the CPI.

On July 27, the Campaign for Common Sense Utilities Rates protested the ballot language at city hall and urged the council to rewrite it. When the council failed to take up the group’s request, Measure B supporters filed a petition for a writ of
mandate on August 6 in Sacramento Superior Court seeking a courtordered rewrite of the ballot question.

...“All we want is a fair election, not one tarnished by a city effort to confuse rather than inform city voters,” said Powell. “Barring last-minute judicial intervention, however, city voters should be prepared to sift through gobbledygook for a ballot question on Measure B in November.”

Here’s how the Measure B ballot question approved by the council reads:

Shall the ordinance repealing increases in monthly water, sewer, garbage/solid waste disposal service rates approved by the Sacramento City Council in June 2009, setting these monthly utility rates at the amounts in effect on February 2010, and allowing the City Council to increase these rates without voter approval beginning July 2012 only if the rates are not increased above the annual increase in a specifified consumer price index, be adopted?

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Over at Sacramento's Rainbow Festival!

Move Your Body (Outer Sunset Mix)


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This looks like it might be quite interesting. Temple Grandin has had a most-unusual life.
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This article whizzed by two weeks ago, but I thought it was an interesting conundrum: trying to sing narcocorridos, trying to please everyone, and trying to stay alive:

Since last November, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, one of the most recognizable bands in the Mexican norteño regional genre, are banned from playing in their hometown and namesake, the border city of Tijuana.

The ban is a result of a 2008 concert in which the band's lead singer sent his regards from the stage to the city's most notorious and wanted men, "El Teo and his compadre, El Muletas." The city's get-tough police chief, Julian Leyzaola, was outraged.

Leyzaola pulled the plug on shows by Los Tucanes as they prepared to perform at the city's storied Agua Caliente racetrack in November. Leyzaola said the band's polka-driven narcocorrido songs glorify drug lords and their exploits and are therefore inappropriate to play in a city that has suffered soaring drug-related violence in recent years. The band, with millions of record sales and a fan base as broad as the international border, hasn't been allowed to play in Tijuana since.

..."I'm not justifying them, or approving of what they do," singer Mario Quintero told Marosi. "The señor [Leyzaola] shouldn't fault us for the corridos as if we're responsible for the killing of his police."

...Narcocorrido singers walk a fine line between merely commenting on the larger-than-life figures in Mexico's drug war and singing their praises -- sometimes at their own risk. Several norteño performers have been hunted down and killed, such as Valentin Elizalde and, in June, Sergio Vega. Some of the most well-known narcocorridos describe news events in coded details, such as the song Los Tucanes de Tijuana released about Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

Quintero said the shout-out by Los Tucanes to the then-at-large drug bosses (both El Teo and El Muletas have since been captured) was not an optional thing. He told The Times that someone passed him a note requesting the kingpins be greeted from the stage.

"If they want a greeting and you don't honor it, they can hold it against you," Quintero said. "You know how I defend myself? By being agreeable."

...After the ban, the band posted a public statement on their MySpace decrying the police chief's decision as censorship: "In general narcocorridos, not only ours but those of all groups who interpret them, reflect a reality in which we have NO participation. We don't share in it nor defend it. They are about facts in public knowledge, involving news and persons that are a part of everyday reality."

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The weather forecasts of Earl's path for the last week have been pretty dreadful (see the skeetobite animation from my last post). The storm keeps shifting south and west from where most models would have placed it. Somehow, the Bermuda High must be stronger than most people are giving it credit, but that's the easiest thing of all to measure, so why the goofs?

Give me the NOGAPS model any day. NOGAPS knows that the East Coast is in for some significant trouble.....
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This dates from 2008, but it's as true today as then. And if someone wants to whine about the skeptics regarding intervention in Afghanistan or Iran, that someone needs to be pointed here:

My Iraq War Retrospective
by John Cole

I see that Andrew Sullivan was asked to list what he got wrong about Iraq for the five year anniversary of the invasion, and since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:

Everything.

And I don’t say that to provide people with an easy way to beat up on me, but I do sort of have to face facts. I was wrong about everything.

I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare.
I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.
I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections.
I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections.
I was wrong about the containment sanctions.
I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East.
I was wrong about this making us more safe.
I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq.
I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath.
I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps.
I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army.
I was wrong about the looting being unimportant.
I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent.
I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators.
I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors.
I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

I mean, I could go down the list and continue on, but you get the point. I was wrong about EVERY. GOD. DAMNED. THING. It is amazing I could tie my shoes in 2001-2004. If you took all the wrongness I generated, put it together and compacted it and processed it, there would be enough concentrated stupid to fuel three hundred years of Weekly Standard journals. I am not sure how I snapped out of it, but I think Abu Ghraib and the negative impact of the insurgency did sober me up a bit.

War should always be an absolute last resort, not just another option. I will never make the same mistakes again.

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I'm glad to see that Orrin Hatch is speaking up on behalf of that NYC mosque (Mormons are a little more sensitive to these kinds of issues than most folks).

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer suggests it might be better to build that NYC mosque somewhere else:

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there -- and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.

That's why Disney's 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War (and that was wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It's why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It's why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.

Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who denounced opponents of the proposed 15-story mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero as tramplers on religious freedom, asked the mosque organizers "to show some special sensitivity to the situation."

...Bloomberg's implication is clear: If the proposed mosque were controlled by "insensitive" Islamist radicals either excusing or celebrating 9/11, he would not support its construction.

...Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

...America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero.

Actually, this is a good argument, and I'm sympathetic to it. But it's important to remember that Ground Zero remains in private hands: it's not a national monument, or cemetery. There is only a limited amount of influence non-New Yorkers can have in making decisions that infringe on the religious liberty of private citizens in New York. Indeed, I'm sure that because Ground Zero is 'hallowed ground' that Muslims would feel that makes it especially suitable for a mosque. I can offer opinions about where mosques should and should not be built, but it follows that others can offer opinions about where or whether I might want to build churches, or any other religious structure.

And that's another good questions: where are the precise boundaries of 'Ground Zero'? Presumably it incorporates the former WTC site, but does it extend any further than that? Does it extend two blocks away? Questions that New Yorkers are in the best position to answer!

New Yorkers can use zoning law to make any changes with the proposal that they see fit. But if New Yorkers see no troubles with parking, land use, appropriateness, why should anyone else care?

Charles Krauthammer then goes on to assert that because liberals don't agree with him that liberals don't agree with 'the American people':

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. ... Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

...What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

...And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

Ha! This argument makes me laugh! The Tea Party movement is about as "spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural" as the Catholic Church. At least in California, it started as an astroturf movement; a consultant's creation. FOX News was intimately associated with the Tea Party's birth.

When a liberal looks at the anti-mosque movement and describes it as bigoted, it's because the liberal is looking clearly and plainly at what is obvious. Bigotry has characterized almost the entire opposition to the mosque. I don't think I've seen anything quite so bigoted since the police dogs were released on Selma's Pettus Bridge in 1965!

Meanwhile, "The Onion" interviews a local man, who understands what it is all about:

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."

Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

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I like some of Spacefish's work:




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There are better ways to handle this, of course. A firing squad would be a useful start:

OK. We get it. Wall Street hates Obama.

As far back as last September, CNBCs Charlie Gasparino told us in the New York Post that "the top guys on Wall Street are feeling burned" by Obama's "wild-eyed redistribution of wealth and massive programs."

Just two weeks ago, one of Wall Street's richest private equity moguls, Steven Schwarzman, compared a plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

And now, today, the New York Times is prominently featuring a piece by Wall Street's most avid stenographer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, that purports to explain "Why Wall St. Is Deserting Obama." Once again, the problem is that Obama is trying to "regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity" and this clearly, in the view of Wall Street's elite, is pure evil.

Wall Street, writes Sorkin, "did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains. "

One popular way to respond to this increasingly popular theme is to note, despairingly, that the White House has bent over backward not to crush Wall Street under its jackbooted heel, despite the fact that such punitive behavior would please substantial portions of the populist right and left in this country.

...These jokers are annoyed at the prospect of wealth redistribution? What do they think they were doing over the last couple of decades, aside from sucking wealth out of the "real" economy and redistributing it to themselves. And now they are are upset about higher taxes? What they should really be nervous about is the prospect of 20 years in prison.

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Starting Thursday night at Cape Hatteras, NC, Hurricane Earl will start making life miserable for East Coast folks. Friday night and Saturday morning will be extra-miserable from NJ to Maine! All those boats in Long Island Sound!

Then it's likely that Earl will merge with the mid-latitude low passing through Quebec, form a cutoff low, and linger over Quebec for days, making life there extra-miserable!

Oh, it's going to be bad!

This skeetobite animation is pretty cool! It shows where Earl was forecast to go by the major weather models in use, and where Earl actually went.
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Chinese down-payment requirements help protect home buyers to some extent. So, when their real estate bubble pops, the Chinese economy will fall onto the floor, instead of into a pit, like the American economy did. Nevertheless, it can hurt bad to fall on the floor:

When the global marketplace went into meltdown mode two years ago and Chinese exports dropped off, Beijing mounted a stimulus several times bigger relative to the size of its economy than in this country. It announced a four trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus for infrastructure projects and housing developments.

...Beijing also lowered capital reserve requirements for its state-owned banks ordering them to dole out loans to "support growth." Though official data are unreliable, in 2009 Beijing apparently handed out somewhere close to 10 trillion yuan in new loans—more than twice the year before—and expanded the country's total loan portfolio and money supply by one-third, according to Patrick Chovanec, associate professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing.

...Fueled in part by this massive injection of liquidity, housing prices that had started dropping due to the recession began to soar again. Over the past year they increased nearly 12 percent, according to the latest figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics. So many middle-class Chinese (especially young couples wishing to move out of their parents' home) are being priced out of the market that their travails became the subject of a popular TV series called Dwelling Narrowness. Beijing banned the show, fearing it would cause unrest.

The problem is that government money is going to build homes not for occupancy but for ownership. Speculation, if you will. Andy Xie, a Shanghai-based economist formerly with Morgan Stanley, believes almost 25 percent to 30 percent of private commercial and housing stock in China is vacant. Entire cities, such as Ordos in inner-Mongolia, erected literally from scratch, stand empty.

"Chinese treat homes like gold bars buying multiple units as a store of value," notes Chovanec. Chinese avoid the stock market because it is still volatile and risky, and banks and bonds offer a low yield. Hence, Chinese are content to buy homes and let them sit because, thanks to the absence of property taxes, holding costs are negligible. Having never experienced a housing slump since China privatized its housing market in the 1990s, they believe that home prices only rise.

This can't last, but backers of China's stimulus believe there won't be any serious economic downside when the bubble bursts. Homeowners won't be thrown on the street because Chinese buy their first homes outright through their savings—not loans. And when house prices drop, the excess stock will quickly get scooped up—not boarded up.

While Chinese homeowners are not generally leveraged, those who buy second homes do finance them. And developers, including local governments and state-owned companies, are massively leveraged. This poses a big problem—Shen Minggao, Citigroup's Hong Kong-based China economist, estimates in Bloomberg Businessweek that at least 2.4 trillion yuan of the stimulus is already in nonperforming loans.

China's autocrats understand that they have a bubble on their hands. They've mandated minimum down payments of 50 percent on second homes and are considering property taxes to rein in speculative purchases. However, this will mean that the houses put on the market will find fewer buyers.

Beijing is in a dilemma. It can cut spending and rein in its monetary expansion, releasing over time capital for more productive endeavors (especially if it opens up hitherto closed investment options) and putting the economy on a healthier footing. However, that would mean slower growth, lower home values, rising unemployment and potential political unrest. Alternatively, it can buy a few more years of faux-growth and stability by propping up the real-estate market—and risk making the day of reckoning far worse when it arrives.

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I saw this wonderful tear-jerking ballet movie at the Tower Theatre on Sunday evening. In some ways, the story of defection follows predictable lines. Nevertheless, there are surprises. Because defecting ballet star Li Cunxin intended to establish American citizenship through marriage, rather than through another route, like fear of political persecution, suddenly everything personal became political. Politics so close to home is a scary thing!

Also surprising was how Li's new American home base, the Houston Ballet, suddenly discovered, upon Li's defection, that it had more interests in common with the Chinese government than it did with Li. The investment of time, money, and energy by the Houston Ballet was too large. The company director needed, above all, to retain his personal contacts with the Chinese government, in order to retain access to China's ballet world. If that meant sending Li to the depths of hell, so be it.

It must be remembered that ballet companies have always been run as authoritarian fiefdoms, and they always will be run as such. They are not democracies and mushy sentiment does not govern their actions. The Houston Ballet and Red China have more in common than first meets the eye.

If the Chinese government hadn't overreacted by detaining Li in the Chinese Consulate, the story could have ended much differently. The Houston Ballet was reluctantly dragged into Li's defense by Chinese excess.

Don't you just hate politics?

Also interesting was watching Li's instructor in China trying to retain his influence with local authorities, and avoid charges of being a counter-revolutionary, by talking about the Vaganova Method of ballet instruction as almost a talisman - as if it were a secret formula and as if China's effort to rise in the world of ballet was analogous to, say, American's Manhattan Project.

The Vaganova Method is a wonderful, logical, and systematic way to teach ballet, but it is not a secret formula, and by itself guarantees nothing. Other methods of teaching ballet can, have, and will be devised.

Nevertheless, no blame attaches to Li's instructor. He was in a desperate effort to retain control and avoid being sent to prison. Sometimes you are forced to say untrue or silly things when speaking to skeptical political authorities.

Don't you just hate politics?
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Strange dance novelty song.
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Very impressive!
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