RIP, Jonathan Winters

Art Garfunkel - "I Only Have Eyes For You"

"42nd Street" - Runaway Stage Productions - Opening Night

Bows on opening night.

Haylie Roberts says "Come see the show!"

Sally and myself, with Pam Kay Lourentzos.

Largely-pleased with the show. I was puzzled, though, by the absence of one of the signature songs: "I Only Have Eyes For You". I wondered whether are there different versions of the show? On Facebook, Amy J-J replies yes, that they did the original version and not the revival, but I'm still puzzled: Wikipedia doesn't mention any such change.

RIP, Maria Tallchief

The greatest American ballerina of the first half of the Twentieth Century!:

Maria Tallchief, a dancer of electrifying passion and technical ability who forged a pathbreaking career that took her from an Oklahoma Indian reservation to world acclaim and who was a crucial artistic inspiration for choreographer George Balanchine, her first husband, died April 11 at a hospital in Chicago. She was 88.

...Ms. Tallchief — born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief — was of American Indian and Irish-Scottish descent. In a career that flourished from the 1940s to the 1960s at what became the New York City Ballet, she helped break down ethnic barriers in the world of dance and was one of the first American ballet stars in a field long dominated by Russian and European dancers.

After retiring in 1965, she settled in Chicago and taught at the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet and founded the Chicago City Ballet.

When she received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996, she recalled the pressure she faced as an American dancer. One impresario insisted that she Russianize her name to Tallchieva. “Never!” she said, although she was open to the concession of changing her surname to one word and to use Maria, a variation on her middle name.

From the start, her dancing was characterized by precise footwork and an athleticism that dazzled without being excessive. Her regality and grace won critical admirers, as well as the attention of Balanchine, who was consistently impressed by her musicality, which had been honed through childhood piano lessons.

Balanchine revolutionized ballet by creating sleek, streamlined works that demanded athleticism, speed and attack like no choreography before them. “I always thought Balanchine was more of a musician even than a choreographer, and perhaps that’s why he and I connected,” she told The Washington Post.

Balanchine had a history of blurring the lines between the personal and the professional. He was known to fixate on one woman, making her his artistic obsession and romantic partner, only to eventually abandon her when a new talent came along. Ms. Tallchief became part of this pattern after the two married in 1946, when she was 21 and the Russian-born Balanchine was 42. It was Balanchine’s third marriage.

The next year, Ms. Tallchief accompanied her husband to the Paris Opera Ballet, where he was invited to serve as a guest choreographer and where she would become the first American to dance with that troupe.

She wasn’t greeted very warmly by company members, but she easily won over French audiences. No matter where she performed, Ms. Tallchief wanted to be judged on the merits of her dancing alone. “Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina,” she once wrote.

Ms. Tallchief originated roles as the lead dancer in Balanchine’s ballet “The Firebird” in 1949 and in “Swan Lake” in 1951, along with such works as “Symphony in C,” “Orpheus” and “Scotch Symphony.” Her virtuosic execution of these dances — executed with fiery, sometimes erotic fervor, while maintaining a lightness of foot — helped establish Balanchine as the era’s most prominent and influential choreographer.

One of her best-known roles was that of the Sugar Plum Fairy in Balanchine’s 1954 production of “The Nutcracker,” then considered an obscure ballet. Balanchine revamped it in a number of ways, most notably by adding numerous children to the cast, including in the central roles of Marie and the Nutcracker Prince. Ms. Tallchief’s commanding performance helped transform the show into a American holiday season staple and the ballet world’s most perennially reliable box-office draw.

...Ms. Tallchief and her sister studied dance with David Lichine, a student of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as Bronislava Nijinska, the sister of celebrated dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Upon meeting Nijinska for the first time, Ms. Tallchief observed that she “was a personification of what ballet was all about. And I looked at her, and I knew this was what I wanted to do,” she told CNN television host Larry King.

After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1942, Ms. Tallchief joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a troupe that included some of the artists from the esteemed Ballets Russes, which had recently disbanded after the death of its director, Sergei Diaghilev. Balanchine was also affiliated with the Ballet Russe.

...Of her long career with Balanchine and her key roles in some of his most beloved dances, she once told an interviewer, “I was in the middle of magic, in the presence of genius. And thank God I knew it.”

Maria Tallchief was the most-notable of the five Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma, who made such a profound mark in the history of ballet. Yvonne Chouteau is the best at describing that world.

Little Swirl Advances On New Mexico

It looks like a small swirl is advancing on New Mexico from the Southwest, and will cross the southern part of the state. Right now, it looks like it's over southern Arizona. The model runs seem to suggest it should be crossing northern Mexico instead, but there seems to be a miscalculation or a data gap somewhere. So, maybe some sprinkles for southern New Mexico!

Happy National Grilled Cheese Day!

To celebrate, this evening, I will eat spaghetti.

Thinking About Self-Publishing

On Amazon. Currently reviewing and editing my manuscript about participating in the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall election.

Icona Pop - I Love It

Getting a lot of air play these days!

A Brief Retrospective On The Scientific Career Of Dr. Norihiko Fukuta

With reservations, I present "A Retrospective On The Career Of Dr. Norihiko Fukuta". I've been planning this blog post for several years now.


Dr. Norihiko Fukuta Passes Away

Born in 1931, Dr. Norihiko Fukuta passed away from Goodpasture’s Syndrome in Salt Lake City, UT, on May 3, 2010 (Here is an obituary).

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Dr. Norihiko Fukuta’s passing also generated a brief retrospective in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Dr. Fukuta was just a little too young to serve in WWII.  He was one of a pioneering group of immigrant Japanese Ph.D.'s who came to the U.S. in the 1950's to fuse traditional Japanese attention to workmanship with American scientific verve, and thus seize the mantle of world scientific leadership.

Dr. Fukuta received a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Nagoya in 1959. He came to the United States in 1966, working in California and Colorado before going to work at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City. 

He was best-known as an expert in cloud microphysics.  He developed cloud seeding technology in hopes of controlling the weather. His weather modification methods were patented in several countries, including the U.S. and Japan

Personal Notes and Anecdotes

I was among a number of students, post-docs, and other personnel to work with him over the years (in my case, for only a year, from July 1989 to July 1990).  I thought I should write a brief retrospective of his career, since there aren’t many people around who were both close enough to him to evaluate his career, but distant enough to do it well.  I come to the task with mixed emotions, since Dr. Fukuta and I disagreed over some issues.  Dr. Fukuta was a notoriously-difficult person to get along with.  Still, it’s time to say at least a little bit, even if it’s inadequate, or biased in some manner.

In 1988, I grew frustrated with my post-doc position at ASU.  It seemed to me the research that I was engaged in there lacked value.  Thus, I greeted the chance to work with Dr. Norihiko Fukuta at the University of Utah’s Department of Meteorology (now, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences) with enthusiasm.  Even though he was best known in the field of cloud nucleation and weather modification, there were enough fits between my desire to straddle the line between cloud microphysics and cloud chemistry to make the position appealing.

Of course, it meant I would have to learn a lot about cloud nucleation and weather modification in a hurry.  His initial intent was to hire me for a year, then take a sabbatical leave in Europe, leaving me to run the place.  He was intent on rapidly ramping up his weather modification efforts in the meantime.

Dr. Fukuta had a child-like enthusiasm when it came to speaking about science.  He was charming and energetic.  But one could sense hardness in him – contempt for softness of any sort.  I would have to toe the line. 

Executives of many sorts carry with them that same kind of contempt:  contempt for one’s colleagues; for regulators; for rivals; for politicians; for the general public.  In most executives, that contempt generally reveals itself as dark sarcasm.  Probably because of his Japanese background, Dr. Fukuta’s contempt generally expressed itself as straight, simple, unalloyed contempt.

For example, the Japanese scientific and industrial tradition is best known for its exceptional craftsmanship and hard work.  Nevertheless, Dr. Fukuta had great contempt for the Japanese because of their passivity, their servile nature and their uncertainty in the face of challenges.

The American scientific and industrial tradition is best known for its willingness to ask hard questions, and its daring.   Dr. Fukuta had great contempt for the Americans because of their tolerance for error.  As Dr. Fukuta often said, without a trace of irony:

“Americans always say, ‘well, everyone makes mistakes.’  That is the wrong spirit!  Look at me!  Do I make mistakes?  No!  I NEVER make mistakes!”

And if Dr. Fukuta had contempt for two of the strongest scientific and industrial traditions on the planet, the Americans and the Japanese, the Europeans, Chinese and everyone else had little chance to win his estimation.  The Chinese reverence for age?  Dr. Fukuta would have none of it:

“With too many old people, they are just old.  Old brains.  Nothing more.”

Of course, you can’t hold these attitudes for long without some problems.  Dr. Fukuta won more of his share of contempt in return, generally expressed behind his back. 

Narcissism was another problem too.  I remember one winter’s day in particular.  A graduate student (QJL), Dr. Fukuta, and myself were driving through a thick, wintertime Salt Lake City fog.  A passing car was expelling a huge plume of fog from under its engine hood.  Apparently the car was overheating.  It quickly pulled to the side of the road.  We stopped to see if we could help.

Talking to the car’s woman driver, it quickly became evident there was a huge gulf between the way most people think, and the way Dr. Fukuta thought.  Paraphrasing the woman:

“I just haven’t had time to pay attention to the car!  My boyfriend is thinking of moving back to Iowa, and I just have to keep him here!  He’s such a sweetheart!” 

Dr. Fukuta replied:  “You may have seen us on television.  We’re the ‘Fogbusters!’  We intend to clear the entire Salt Lake Valley of fog, using liquid carbon dioxide seeding!”

It was almost like a dialogue of two deaf people…
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I remember once, Dr. Fukuta made a confession:

“I have –what do you call it? – a hobby,” he said.

A hobby?  What could that be?  Hard to imagine.  I knew he liked to play tennis, but he clearly had something else in mind:

“I like to locate the gas station in town that sells gasoline at the cheapest rate,” he said.  He identified a certain gasoline station in the southwestern suburbs of Salt Lake City as having the cheapest gasoline.  Indeed, we went there one day, and he was right:  the cheapest gasoline in the entire metropolitan area!

A retrospective on Dr. Fukuta’s career

Dr. Fukuta came from the tradition of detailed Japanese craftsmanship.  He believed scientists should be grounded in both theory and experimentation, and should be active on every front possible:  technical skill, academic knowledge, political interaction; even show business.  An effective scientist has to have many skills!

I stumbled across a book review by Steve Lubar in Science magazine in 1992[i] that helps explain the problem:

Eugene Ferguson, emeritus professor of the history of technology at the University of Delaware, explains why this is. Engineering education, he argues, has lost sight of the true nature of technological work. Engineering is not a scientific discipline. It is closer to art than science. It is non-verbal, creative, physical, and intuitive, based on experience of the real world, not on equations borrowed from the scientist.  A good engineer must have an "intimate, firsthand, internalized knowledge"-an "intuitive sense"-of technology. The only way to get this, says Ferguson, is to gain a "tactile and muscular knowledge" of moving machinery, materials, and fabrication processes.  Students should visit factories and construction sites and get their hands dirty.  But today, "engineering schools teach contempt, not admiration" for the people who actually build things. The 1952 Grinter Report on Engineering Education, for example, recommended that courses that taught skills or engineering practice be eliminated and replaced by courses in "engineering science."  The move away from the real world was reinforced, Ferguson suggests, by the increased use of computers in engineering.  "By the 1980s," Ferguson writes, "engineering curricula had shifted to analytical approaches, so visual and other sensual knowledge of the world seemed much less relevant." He claims that the ensuing loss of "sound judgment and an intuitive sense of fitness and adequacy" and its replacement by engineering science has been responsible for many recent engineering failures, from the collapse of the Hartford Coliseum in 1978 to the myopia of the Hubble space telescope. "The successful design of real things in a contingent world," he writes, "will always be based more on art than on science."

Dr. Fukuta was, of course, interested in Weather Modification, since it allowed the freest exercise of skills:  academic and technical skills, plus public interaction.  He had occasional interactions with several contractors and businesses:

• North American Weather Consultants in Centerfield, UT;
• Atmospherics, Inc., in Fresno, CA;
• Fog Seeding, Inc., and:
• Majestic Air Services, (both located at the Salt Lake City, UT, airport). 

Dr. Fukuta tried to clear the regulatory field for his Weather Modification efforts.  In 1989, Dr. Fukuta had legislation sponsored for him in the Utah State Senate that expanded the scope of governmental immunity in the event his weather modification efforts caused an accident.  This bill[ii] read, in part:

Immunity from suit of all governmental entities is waived for injury proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of an employee committed within the scope of employment (with exceptions).

I don’t know if the Utah legislators realized what the unintended consequences of this bill might be.  An article in the Utah Daily Chronicle states that fear of lawsuits stemming from snowfall was the impetus for the law passed in the Utah legislature.[iii]  Nevertheless, I always figured this legislation was intended to help avoid liability in the event a plane carrying myself and several others crashed.  At the time, we were planning to dangle a hose out of a plane and fly at very low altitudes over the Salt Lake City urban area.  It is not hard to imagine how the dangling hose could get entangled on a power line, and cause loss of life.  Fortunately, we never got the chance to “test-drive” this statute.

Probably Dr. Fukuta’s greatest contribution to Weather Modification was to experiment with, and evaluate, a large range of ice-nuclei materials:  not only crystalline silver and lead iodide (AgI and PbI), but slower-acting, hydrophobic organic ice nucleants like metaldehyde too, as well as low-boiling-point liquids, like CO2 and propane.  The subject provided the grist for much of Dr. Fukuta’s research.

The behavior of different materials in cloud seeding was always of the greatest interest to Dr. Fukuta[iv].  Silver iodide always nucleated more ice particles than organic materials did.  The reason was because the organic materials were more hydrophobic. 

Dr. Fukuta favored seeding as long as possible at -10 C, to get maximum seeding effectiveness[v].  He was also interested in orographic seeding[vi].

Dr. Fukuta pointed out that the surface temperature of a falling dry ice pellet should be about -100 degrees C, not the-78.2 degrees C that it would be at equilibrium with CO2 at 1 atmosphere[vii].

Project Mountain Valley Sunshine was Dr. Fukuta’s signature effort to clear the Salt Lake Valley of oppressive supercooled fog in wintertime.  Project Mountain Valley Sunshine was laid out in detail in a number of preprints[viii].  Homogeneous ice nucleation fog-seeding was also tried out at the 1986 Sarajevo Olympic Winter Games[ix].  A better description of the liquid CO2 seeding is given in this work[x].

One aspect of Project Mountain Valley Sunshine was extending liquid CO2 seeding to locales where supercooled fog had been a dangerous nuisance in the past.  In the winter of 1989-90, Dr. Fukuta, QJL, and myself installed racks containing liquid CO2 tanks at three locales in the Salt Lake City area where traffic accidents had occurred in the past (I215/Jordan River site, the Beck St./Chevron Refinery site, and the South Salt Lake Sewage Treatment Plant, on the hill overlooking the western bank of the Jordan River).

There were a number of basic physical questions regarding the behavior of ice in cloud microphysics that attracted Dr. Fukuta’s attention.  One of Dr. Fukuta’s many innovations was a Supercooled Cloud Tunnel[xi], which allowed observations and measurements of ice crystal growth in free fall to be extended from three minutes to as long as 25 minutes.

In my opinion, probably the best work Dr. Fukuta ever did was summarized by articles regarding ice thermal diffusion chambers [xii] [xiii]and a CNN counter[xiv].  The Tomlinson work is the last of these works, and most mature too.  In my mind, this is the pinnacle of Dr. Fukuta’s scientific career.  Dr. Fukuta was able to apply his experience, his technical skills, his knowledge of materials, and theory in their most imaginative and helpful ways here.  By subjecting a variety of materials to ice and water supersaturations under stable conditions without any substrates many good data were taken.  These are gold-standard works that will last.

Nevertheless, these ice thermal diffusion chambers also permitted Dr. Fukuta to infer and calculate what appeared to be remarkably high efficiencies for ice crystal nucleants like dry ice – on the order of 10^15 ice particles per gram of dry ice.  I always thought these rates were way too high, and that there must be a self-limiting process that hadn’t been clearly identified.  Dr. Fukuta never thought so, however, which was one reason he was so characteristically optimistic about the potential of Weather Modification techniques.

Dr. Fukuta was also interested in various theoretical topics involving the chemical and physical properties of water ice.   He was interested in the so-called quasi-liquid layer, a disordered zone, known to present on the surface of ice. 

(Indeed, we ended up quarreling about the matter.  Snow scientists – e.g. Sam Colbeck – allowed for the stable presence of water at temperatures below freezing, at the triple-junction of curved, interlocked ice-crystal surfaces.  These scientists maintained surface-tension caused pressure melting between ice crystals, even in the absence of dissolved solutes.  Dr. Fukuta was convinced that the approach was unsound.  I maintained the approach worked in theory.  We never satisfactorily-resolved that battle.)

Dr. Fukuta also published, and attempted to have published, more-theoretical articles regarding Chemical Physics, but I always treated them with suspicion.  As I recall Dr. Fukuta saying, he never actually took a class in Chemical Physics at the University of Nagoya.  Thus, I don’t think he was fully-informed about the subject.  It’s one thing for Dr. Fukuta to state that non-meteorological scientists might be ignorant about Cloud Microphysics:  it’s another to state that expert scientists in Chemical Physics are ignorant about Chemical Physics.

There are many more subjects that can, and should be addressed.  This is a start.

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[i] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/258/5087/1504.full.pdf Review of ‘Engineering and the Mind’s Eye’, by Eugene S. Ferguson, MIT Press, Cambridge mass., 1992, xvi, 241 pp.  reviwed by Steve Lubar, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C., in Science, Vol. 258, 27 November, 1992, pp. 1504-1505.

[ii] Extension of Governmental Immunity, 1989, General Session, S.B. No. 265, Fred W. Finlinson.

[iii] The Daily Utah Chronicle, Vol. 99, no. 29, fron page, Monday, October 23, 1989.

[iv] Application of Slow Acting Contact-Freezing Nuclei In Ice-Phase Weather Modification, N. Fukuta, Preprints, Fourth WMO Scientific Conference on Weather Modification, Honolulu, HI, 12-14 August 1985, WMO/TD- No. 53, Vol. I, pp. 219 – 224.

[v] Side-Skim Seeding For Convective Cloud Modification”, 3^rd WMO Scientific Conference on Weather Modification, Clermont-Ferrand, France, 21-25 July 1980.

[vi] Proposal submitted to the Utah Division of Water Resources, December, 1985.

[vii] The Surface Temperature of Dry Ice, solid CO2, N. Fukuta, Preprint. Pp. 99-101. J. Weather Modification Assoc., 13, 1981.

[viii]  Project Mountain Valley Sunshine, N. Fukuta, IV(A)-2, p. 505-508.

[ix] Experiment of Supercooled Fog Dispersal at Sarajevo Airport And Skiing Slopes of the 14^th Winter Olympic Games, J. Weather Mod., 18, 34-39 (1986), D. Milosevic, S. Bajic, Z. Radonijic, and N. Fukuta.  Also, the preprint, proc. 4^th WMO Scientific Conference on Weather Modification, Honolulu, Hawaii, 12-14 August 1985, 633-638.

[x] Low Level Penetration Seeding With Homogeneous Ice Nucleant For Optimization Of The Induced Microphysics-Dynamics Interactions, Norihiko Fukuta, Preprints, 13^th Conference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification, AMS, Jan. 28-Feb. 2, 1996, Atlanta, 164-171.

[xi] Determination of Ice Crystal Growth Parameters in a New Supercooled Cloud Tunnel; N. Fukuta, M.W. Gowa, and N.H. Gong.  Preprints, Conference on Cloud Physics, November 15-18, 1982, Chicago, IL, 325-328.  Also, a monograph entitled: Supercooled Cloud Tunnel Studies of Ice Crystal Growth for Extended periods of Time; Naihu Gong & N. Fukuta.

[xii] Ice Nucleation by Aerosol Particles:  Experimental Studies Using a Wedge-Shaped Ice Thermal Diffusion Chamber, R.C. Schaller and N. Fukuta, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 9, pp. 1788-1802, September, 1979.

[xiii] A New Horizontal Gradient, Continuous Flow, Ice Thermal Diffusion Chamber, E.M. Tomlinson and N. Fukuta, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Vol. 2, No. 4, December, 1985.

[xiv] A Horizontal Thermal Gradient Cloud Condensation Spectrometer, N. Fukuta and V.K. Saxena, Journal of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 18, No. 10, pp. 1352-1362, October, 1979.

Quiet Midnight Walk

On Saturday night, I was groggy from inadequate sleep the night before. Thus, I napped (while catching most of a good movie, "The Shawshank Redemption", on TV).

Later, I was feeling restless, so I drove to Midtown and walked the streets, heading first from where I work to the nightlife on the K Street Mall, then to Faces in Midtown, then back. Still fatigued, I didn't go into any clubs: I just observed.

Not much was happening. I saw only one person appearing to evade nightclub security (and despite that person's amateurish efforts, nightclub security overlooked him). I saw only one person writhing on the sidewalk in a fitful effort to get some sleep. It seemed to be a quiet night.

Praying To The Goddess Of Cutoff Low Retrograde Motions

Please, NM needs the moisture. Stay as long as you like.

Catowner Tries To Figure Out Where The Cat Disappears To

GPS tracking triggers more questions than answers.

Failed Mating Ritual Among The Deer?

Mating Rituals In The Fifties

Jumping Spider Mating Ritual

The German Shepherds Of North Korea

Where There's Smoke....

Mitch McConnell's hysterical overreaction to the candid tape recording is serving to just attract more attention to the episode. I just bet he's intensely-paranoid about now. Patting down all visitors for recording devices, etc. His people are lashing out at imagined enemies too. And the malefactor he's looking for is likely just under his nose:

Brother Benen’s got the goods:

I’ve followed enough campaigns to know how the game is played. McConnell doesn’t want to talk about his opposition-research team digging up dirt, and certainly doesn’t want to talk about his willingness to use the suicidal thoughts of a sixth-grader as a legitimate line of attack in a Senate campaign, so instead he and his aides are trying a misdirection strategy — the recordings aren’t important, the argument goes; it’s how the recordings were obtained that matters.

It’s all rather transparent, predicated on the assumption — which is probably a rather safe one — that the political world is easily distracted by smoke and mirrors.

But the hysterical reaction isn’t helping McConnell’s case. The Republican senator’s office initially blamed “the Left” for “bugging” McConnell’s campaign headquarters. Then McConnell aides blamed Mother Jones magazine. Then Team McConnell blamed a local liberal group called ProgressKY. Then McConnell sent out a fundraising letter arguing that “the liberal media” is responsible.

That’s all today, folks. And it’s gotten steadily crazier, with McConnell calling in the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate the “bugging” (which is pure speculation), and the NRSC demanding that everyone in sight denounce the conspiracy against Mitch. 

Christchurch Earthquakes Continue To Diminish

Things continue to improve. I always expected the northern fringe of the Canterbury Plain would eventually start acting up, but it remains silent.

A Crisis In Albuquerque

Looks like light rain in the area for most of the day. Lucky if they get 0.10", though.

Spam Saves The Day

More spam please! (h/t John: news item from 2011):

According to Russian security sources, the attack was supposed to be carried out by an unnamed woman, believed to be part of a radical Islamist terror group. The woman reportedly planned to strap a bomb to herself, and blow herself up in the middle of a crowded Moscow square on New Year's Eve. Like many other devices used in suicide bomb attacks, the explosives attached to this particular bomber were designed to detonate in response to a text message. The woman was to walk into the square, place herself in a crowded area, and wait for one of her accomplices to send the text that would blow her up. The only problem, though, was that she forgot to turn off her phone.

A few hours before the planned attack, her mobile provider sent her an unsolicited 'Happy New Year' text, and, just like that, the 'Black Widow' bomber was blown to pieces. At the time of the explosion, she was getting ready for the operation at a safe house, with two other accomplices -- both of whom survived the attack, and immediately fled the scene. Police have yet to identify the bomber, but she is believed to be affiliated with the same extremist group that attacked Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday.

Most Predictable Ending Of Any Story On The Web

"Well, I'm going into the drug store for just a few minutes. I won't put any money into the parking meter."

Answers To Questions That I Hadn't Even Thought To Ask

So, I haven't seen Hattie Craven for awhile. Wasn't I the least bit curious what she was up to?

Well, the question hadn't really crossed my mind. Hattie is a little girl. If I figured anything at all, I figured she must be up to little girl stuff, whatever that might be.

I was dumbfounded to learn from James Chavez Glica-Hernandez's Facebook post today that Hattie is about to release her first CD. The album, "Eleven", features eleven songs, and is also her numerical age.

What can one say? When I was eleven, I was traumatized by the end of my elementary education, and the looming peril of middle school. The idea of launching a musical career would have been ludicrous.

But if one can launch a musical career, why not do so? Why waste time? And to launch her career at the prestigious Palms Playhouse too! An amazing feat!

I'm going to have to make a point to go this unique event. And her vastly-talented older brother, Cody, will also perform. That's worth the price of admission all by itself!

Apocalyptic Dramatization Of Woodrow Wilson's Address To the Citizens Of Pueblo, Colorado (9/25/19)

Well, the actual text reads a lot milder than the Hollywood dramatization. That said, I can't help but admire the Hollywood dramatization immensely!

Watch for five minutes, starting from about 2:11:00.