Albuquerque Arsonist

Methinks from the choices of the Albuquerque arsonist (Starbucks, Project Defending Life, etc.) that he has a political agenda:

Hickman was arrested by Albuquerque police after an officer heard explosions from the Old Navy store and then spotted Hickman fleeing the scene, prosecutors said in court. He had a firearm, a flare, an AR-15 rifle and Mason jars full of explosives in his vehicle when he was taken into custody.

Bruce sent this in an E-Mail (unknown link):

Timeline of Fires:
Nov. 16 – Starbucks Coffee, 800 Broadway NE
Nov. 23 – Project Defending Life, 625 San Mateo Blvd. NE
Nov. 23 – The Carlisle Condominiums, 3600 Central Ave. SE
Nov. 25 – Starbucks Coffee, 5301 Gibson Blvd. SE
Nov. 25 – Starbucks Coffee, 4407 Lomas Blvd. NE
Nov. 25 – Starbucks Coffee, 3400 Central Ave. SE
Nov. 26 – Shred-It Albuquerque, 1415 Broadway Blvd. NE
Nov. 26 – Barnes & Noble, 6600 Menaul Blvd. NE
Nov. 26 – Old Navy, 4900 Cutler Ave. NE

Just A Few Laure Courtellemont Videos

Last Summer, Laure Courtellemont's choreographic talents were featured on SYTYCD - Next Gen! A triumph!



She taught us half of this dance in March, 2014.



The control she has!

Sacramento Autumn Leaf Fall Finally Seems To Have Started In Earnest On Friday, December 2nd

The autumn leaf fall in Sacramento seemed delayed this year. Don't know why. Leaf falls here are often like this:

Here is my house Friday afternoon, showing the beautiful red leaves of the gum tree.

2016 NorCal Ragga Jam Session in Sacramento with Laure Courtellemont

What an awesome time! She is a marvel: the most-inspiring dance teacher!

Lovely pix of lovely ladies after the Laure Courtellemont workshop (and a couple of guys too).

RIP, Bella the Dog

Poor Bella. The cancer had made her life increasingly-miserable.

It was hard to know when to put Bella down. At least near Sparky's end in 2009, his personality changed as the heart disease accelerated. It was easier to tell when to end the suffering. But with Bella, she kept her personality, never showed pain, and was stoic to the end.

Bella was unusually thirsty Friday morning, but otherwise in a pretty good mood. I've had unusual sleep disturbance all week long, and it slowly dawned on me that the cause may well have been the necessity of making a final decision regarding her fate. I spent time Thursday with her previous owner, Joe the Plumber. All along, I thought he was in denial about her condition, but we finally came to agreement Thursday afternoon about what needed to be done. Joe accompanied me. Thanks to the folks at Midtown Animal Hospital, Sacramento.

Bella plans for the future on Friday morning by burying a Milk Bone.

Resting and wondering at the fuss.

At the vet.

RIP, Gilbert Martinez

I never knew him, but knew OF him, as drummer for Miller Hilites.

A Big Slab of Buried Ice at Utopia Planitia

Even though Mars' Utopia Planitia is at mid-latitudes, they can detect a significant slab of water ice buried there - enough to fill Lake Superior:

It was found using a radar mapper on MRO. Called SHARAD, it sends pings of radar down to the surface, which are reflected back up to the satellite and recorded. Different substances reflect radar differently; the rocks on the surface aren’t particularly good at it, which is why the radar can penetrate the ground. Water, on the other hand, reflects radar quite well, so SHARAD can detect water ice down to a depth of a kilometer below the Martian surface.

Scientists focused their attention on a region in Utopia Planitia that features lots of odd, scalloped terrain (aresain?), which is similar to places on Earth in the Arctic that have underground ice. Combining the data from over 600 MRO passes indicates how much ice there is. The area of the ice deposit is over 300,000 square kilometers and the thickness ranges from 80 to 170 meters. So yeah, that’s a goodly supply of ice.

"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night"

Leighton posted this. I had never heard of this article, but it may well have been the inspiration for "Saturday Night Fever".

My sense in the Seventies was that the revolution in music and lighting technology over the previous decade laid the ground for Disco. I remember seeing discos as early as 1970, but the attraction of listening to a stereo system in a club when it could be better enjoyed in a living room seemed perplexing. Then technology surged ahead, allowing discos to become Sonic Cathedrals. By 1974, the tempo of pop music was accelerating. By 1977, Disco had arrived:

Vincent was the very best dancer in Bay Ridge—the ultimate Face. He owned fourteen floral shirts, five suits, eight pairs of shoes, three overcoats, and had appeared on American Bandstand. Sometimes music people came out from Manhattan to watch him, and one man who owned a club on the East Side had even offered him a contract. A hundred dollars a week. Just to dance.

Everybody knew him. When Saturday night came round and he walked into 2001 Odyssey, all the other Faces automatically fell back before him, cleared a space for him to float in, right at the very center of the dance floor. Gracious as a medieval seigneur accepting tributes, Vincent waved and nodded at random. Then his face grew stern, his body turned to the music. Solemn, he danced, and all the Faces followed.

In this sphere his rule was absolute. Only one thing bothered him, and that was the passing of time. Already he was eighteen, almost eighteen and a half. Soon enough he would be nineteen, twenty. Then this golden age would pass. By natural law someone new would arise to replace him. Then everything would be over.

Carrier Took Trump 'Hostage and Won'

What a joke of a deal:

Sanders key point: If corporations want cushy tax cuts, all you have to do is threaten Trump and say "we're moving to Mexico."

"He has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives," Sanders wrote.

My Sleep is Disordered of Late

I just finished breakfast. It's 3:30 p.m. Feels like the day is slipping past.

Vince Gilligan's Symbolism

I'm continuing to look at symbolism in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul". I was struck by the similarities in composition between this image of Jimmy McGill's Nail Salon office and Salvador Dali’s 1954 “Corpus Hypercubus”.

Dali was convinced that the separate worlds of science and religion can coexist. I attended a talk a year ago (Davis, CA: 12/10/15) where Vince Gilligan expressed essentially the same thought.

The Interwebs Are Dark

Respect For the Multi-Tasking

Not everyone can do it:

FORT WORTH, TX—Credible sources within your office reported Monday that the guy on the third floor with two computer screens on his desk is not fucking around. "Amazing—he comes in here, sits down next to me and my one sorry-ass screen, turns on his two screens, and starts tearing it up," marketing assistant Todd Piotrowski said as the guy dragged a window from one screen to the other, which sources confirmed was like watching fucking Minority Report or something. "He's got three, maybe four programs open on each screen, plus some sort of group video chat running nonstop—he's going balls to the wall over there. How is he doing all this with only one keyboard?" Piotrowski also speculated that if there’s a limit to how many tabs you can have open in your web browser at once, this guy's gonna hit it.

Praying Mantis Hitchhiker

As I drove off this afternoon, I noticed there was a praying mantis on my windshield. I stopped to put the mantis on a tree trunk. As "The Compleat Idiot's Guide to Volkswagen Repair" notes, we'd all drive more safely if we were strapped on the front of our cars like Aztec sacrifices, but that doesn't apply to baffled insects.

"Lord of the Trance"

At "An Irish Christmas" last night, I noticed that one of the dancers, Keara Osborne, listed her work with DJ Tommy Trash's "Lord of the Trance". Here is that:

"I Am Cuba" - 'Funeral' Scene

'Funeral' scene from the beautiful 1964 film "I Am Cuba".

"An Irish Christmas"

A Kerry Irish Productions show at the Harris Center in Folsom. Excellent show! But first, dinner at Mimi's.