How Convenient!

Verdict time coming up:

Meanwhile, a senior court official said a verdict against Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants charged with crimes against humanity in connection with an anti-Shiite crackdown in the 1980s will be announced Nov. 5.

"Grease"

Saw DMTC's YPT version of "Grease" on Saturday night. A great show! I particularly liked the fact that there were lots of people on stage for the big musical numbers (the core "Grease" cast isn't really very large, which takes some of the punch away when it comes to big numbers). I also liked the fact that strong males were cast in the primary male roles (Scott Scholes as Danny, Cody Craven as Kenicke, Wyatt Floerke as Roger, Andrew Lemons as Doody, Mark Lillya as Sonny). Scott Scholes can really hit those high notes!

The traditional "Grease" script was edited to remove unsavory aspects from the show, which mostly-improves the show, in my opinion, since all that that supposedly-edgy raciness adds is seaminess and tackiness. The only downside is that motivations get lost, but, then again, it's a musical, and musicals can often thrive in a haze of illogical incoherence. Apparently, a couple of songs from the original version of "Grease" are excised from this young people's version, but were added back in DMTC's show (thus, the welcome illogic of "There Are Worse Things I Could Do.")

The primary female cast members (Emily Jo Seminoff as Sandy, Jocelyn Price as Rizzo, Caitlin Humphreys as Jan, Meeka Craig as Frenchy, Julia Spangler as Marty) are strong and experienced. Nora Unkel was fine as 'Vickie' Fontain, and Rachel Fader excelled as 'Teen Angel.' Kennedy Wenning tottered on as Miss Lynch, looking considerably older than her years (do musicals long enough, and look what happens to you!) Chris Petersen played Eugene as more-gregarious than I once played the role (it takes a nerd to know how best to play the role, and I'm afraid Chris is no nerd). My only disappointment was that I wished that stellar Meeka Craig had had more time on stage. The biggest surprise to me, however, was just how effective Meghan Vanderford was as irritatingly perky Patty Simcox. This is the first time I've seen Meghan really let loose in a role, and she did an excellent job!

In my corner of the house (left side of house, near the top), there was an anticipatory buzz when Caitlin Humphreys and Wyatt Floerke prepared to sing their sweet "Mooning." At first, I thought it might have been Caitlin's friends, but it may have also been Wyatt's fan club at work (tipoff: the group was mostly-female).

Emily Jo Seminoff sang "It's Raining On Prom Night" together with Rebecca Rudy at the beginning of Act II. Emily Jo also sang a second song from her bedroom: "Since I Don't Have You." According to Emily Jo, the song comes from the "Grease" Broadway revival, and thus isn't in the original.

During the big group number of "We Go Together," at the end of Act I, I spotted Nora Unkel near the back looking slightly uncomfortable. Slight discomfort is often a red flag for something dramatically wrong on stage - cast members falling while running with scissors, set pieces collapsing, light bulbs exploding; i.e., things that can terrify - but afterwards she said no big deal: her particular costume was just too constricting for the big movements of the dance number.

Very clever: 3-D glasses for the "Alone At A Drive-In Movie" scene!

Unfortunately, I have no photos (digital camera wasn't charged).

Listen, It's Just Unacceptable

The world is a messy place when you are G. W. Bush, and increasingly "unacceptable."

In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes "unacceptable" or "not acceptable" as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable. They number 37 so far this year, as opposed to five in 2003, 18 in 2002 and 14 in 2001.

... Having a president call something "unacceptable" is not the same as having him order U.S. troops into action. But foreign policy experts say the word is one of the strongest any leader can deploy, since it both broadcasts a national position and conveys an implicit threat to take action if his warnings are disregarded.

... Bush's targets expanded from 2003 to 2005 to include nine condemnations of "unacceptable" actions by Iraq and Iran, as well as the Social Security system and the administration's own response to the Katrina hurricane. This year, he has hurled the term "unacceptable" at actions by Iraqi insurgents and police, at supporters of a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, and at a U.S. law making the degrading treatment of detainees a war crime.

North Korea's planned firing of a missile was unacceptable, Bush said June 29; after Pyongyang fired several missiles July 4, Bush again labeled the action unacceptable on July 7 and July 10. He also deemed unacceptable the country's starving of its people, its use of concentration camps and its claimed nuclear test.

Using such a categorical term is not that surprising after a policy setback, according to Steven Kull, a political psychologist who directs the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes. Some people deal with failures, Kull said, "by intensifying an authoritarian posture and insisting that their preferences are equivalent to a moral imperative."

Asked at a news conference on Wednesday whether Washington risks looking feckless in making such categorical statements without taking decisive action, Bush said: "It's very important for the American people and North Korea to understand that that statement still stands. . . . I know this sounds [like] just saying it over and over again, but it's -- rhetoric and actions are all aimed at convincing others" to join Washington's effort to impede that country's weapons ambitions.

... Many foreigners think the United States is losing Iraq and are no longer in awe of U.S. military might, Naím said, and at home, Bush is so weak that Republican candidates are wary of appearing with him. "The world has noticed," Naím said. "What is happening is that a lot that was deemed unacceptable [by Bush] now has become normal and tolerable."

Bush's proclamations are not the only rhetorical evidence of his mounting frustrations. One of his favorite verbal tics has long been to instruct audiences bluntly to "listen" to what he is about to say, as in "Listen, America is respected" (Aug. 30) or "Listen, this economy is good" (May 24). This year, he made that request more often than he did in a comparable portion of 2005, a sign that he hasn't given up hope it might work.

A Rogue's Gallery Of Casinos

Left: The handsome new Wynn Casino.


Here are a few photos from my recent trip at the end of September to meet John Wright in Vegas (from the morning of Thursday, September 28, 2006). Some photos are from the fishbowl front of the top level of "The Deuce" double-decker bus:

Fountain at The Paris.

Lion at the MGM Grand. This lion is the largest bronze sculpture in the Western Hemisphere.

The Rio.

New York, New York.

Toni Braxton is big enough in Vegas to qualify as a rogue (even if not a casino).

Caesar's Palace.

The Mirage Hotel radiates as much 'Love!' as is safe for a casino to allow.

How Negritos Come To Fear The Forest

Tales of a Filipina childhood:

E.: One day, when I was nine years old, I came home from school, but everyone was gone - my parents and all my cousins - everyone was gone. I called out "Mama! Mama!", but no one answered. Where did they all go? I thought, "maybe everyone went next door to the nearby farm," so I walked over there. They grew lots of abaca (used for making rope), and coconut and banana trees there. The forest was thick there. As I got closer, I heard chopping, like with a machete, and I thought "maybe everyone is getting coconuts from the trees, and chopping them up to get coconut meat (copra), and so that's why everyone left." The forest was getting thicker and thicker. Then, the chopping stopped....

Suddenly, I was face-to-face with a negrito child - girl or boy, I don't know. M-a-a-a-r-r-r-c-c-c! The negrito was black, black, black, and real short! I looked at the negrito, and the negrito looked at me. I shouted to the top of my lungs "Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!" and the negrito shouted back "Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!" The negrito child turned and ran away as fast as it could, and I turned and ran away as fast as I could in the other direction."

M.: You shouted through the top of your lungs?

E.: I shouted TO the top of my lungs!!!! M-A-R-C! I never, ever saw a negrito before!!

M.: But there are lots of negritos in the Philippines.

E.: Yes, but I never knew any. All my friends would always tell me, "you are too snobby."

M.: Where did the negrito come from?

E.: I don't know - maybe the mountain, or the jungle, or the wild - derness.

M.: Poor negrito!

E.: I ran all the way home. When I got there, my mother and everyone was there. They said everyone had been there all along, and they hadn't gone anywhere. M-A-R-C! In the Philippines, we believe spirits can hide people!!!! I think the spirit of the duwende (dwarf) hid my mother and my family from sight!!!!

"The Departed"

Left: Thank goodness I'm from NYC, and not like those Boston cops at all! (From DMTC's recent production of "West Side Story." Photo by Dannette Vassar. But wait! Dannette is in the foreground. How can that be? I smell a rat!)


Went and saw Martin Scorcese's new crime epic, "The Departed." Lots of unexpected corruption in the Boston Police Department. There was an undercover case opened several years ago that may have been a partial inspiration for this movie - the discovery that the FBI had been using a Boston mafia member in the 70's and 80's as an informant, and hence was directly implicated in at least one murder. Nevertheless, reality aside, it appears the plot of this movie comes from a 2002 Hong Kong film, suggesting the universality of this particular theme:

Years ago, a powerful Irish mafia figure placed a small selection of his youngest, brightest men into the Massachusetts Police Academy as cadets. Their purpose is to eventually rise within the prestigious ranks of the city's police department, to serve as the eyes and ears of their boss. While somewhere else, a young cadet was assigned with an equally dangerous task: infiltrate the Irish syndicate headed by the man sending in his own to the Boston Police.

...The Departed is set in South Boston, where the state police force is waging war on Irish-American organized crime. Young undercover cop Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate run by gangland chief Frank Costello (Nicholson). While Billy quickly gains Costello's confidence, Colin Sullivan (Damon), a hardened young criminal who has infiltrated the police department as an informer for the syndicate, is rising to a position of power in the Special Investigation Unit. Each man becomes deeply consumed by his double life, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operations he has penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there's a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin are suddenly in danger of being caught and exposed to the enemy-and each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save himself. But is either willing to turn on the friends and comrades they've made during their long stints undercover?

Very interesting film! The movie has the characteristic Scorcese Taxi-Driver type of bloody grandeur, with language too coarse to be realistic, and lots of blood-spattering gunplay - the inspiration for Tarantino and a whole younger generation of filmmakers. Hooray for the old man! He can still pack the theaters!

Afterwards we wondered: who can you trust? People in power? Not if they are like Scorcese's Boston Police Department. Even if you rely only on yourself, what you believe to be true may be so utterly wrong as to render your judgement useless.

Jack Nicholson, that corrupt, debauched galleon of a small-time Don, is priceless "smelling a rat".

Continued Warm In The West

So sayeth the climatologists. But what's this Indian Ocean connection?:

The West is 2 to 3 degrees warmer than its average annual temperature, calculated using more than 100 years of records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Many studies peg the rise in the earth's average temperature since 1880 at 1 degree, making it the warmest it has been in the last 400 years.

At a conference Thursday, Overpeck said data from some 30 computer-modeling studies shows that by mid-century annual average temperatures in the West will be up 4 or 5 degrees. By the end of the century, the West could be 7 to 8 degrees warmer, he said.

..."The Indian Ocean is (one) of the key ingredients when I make seasonal forecasts," Wolter said. "(We) shouldn't get panicky that there's runaway warming right now."

Seasons Of Life

About ten years ago, I decided to let this stage of life pass me by. It's true: some things do belong to youth!

This is this week's B3ta Question of the Week:

Road Rage: Have you lost it on the roads, or have you been on the recieving end of some nutter?

Here's my response:

American Advice: Just Flip Them The Bird

Road rage? Happens all the time!

Pulling out of a deserted McDonald's parking lot late at night in my VW Bug, my friend and I flipped the bird to some cowboys in a jacked-up pickup truck who were trying to pull into the same parking lot. Aroused, they chased us all over the nearby empty roads, eventually ramming our vehicle before fleeing. When I reported their license plate number to the police, the cop 'inadvertently' released their home address. I spent the next month fruitlessly stalking their neighborhood waiting for the truck to return home (frickin' cowboys probably raping cows at night instead).

Then there was the time I flipped the bird to some exasperated jerk who honked and pulled in front of me, thinking I was taking too long to turn onto a major street. Instead of driving off, that incensed jerk peeled right around, stomped up to my driver's window, and quietly asked "Would you please roll down your window?" I quietly replied, "no."

Then once, I was on foot, on the sidewalk, walking across a hamburger restaurant drive-up window, when some university student 'scholars' loudly honked right in my ear - they didn't even notice me, they had seen some friends across the street. Bastards! So I flipped them the bird, and they noticed me after all. They came peeling out of the driveway, and we had a standoff in the street, in front of dozens of potential witnesses: me the matador, and they the stupid bull. I egged them on to make good their threats to attack and they burnt rubber with their hollow threats to do so. Pedestrians are more agile than cars in close quarters. Stupid university students!

Wanna meet your fellow motorists? Just flip them the bird!

Intimidation

The Secret Service decided to "investigate" Julia Wilson, a McClatchy High School freshman, for ill-advised anti-Bush comments. You would think that they could tell from other MySpace evidence that they weren't dealing with Lee Harvey Oswald, and I'm sure they understood that from the very beginning. The Secret Service's real purpose was to intimidate: prevent others from making threats, or indeed, express any opinions at all. The thinking supposedly will be "Wow! If they go after high school students, who won't they go after?"

Secret Service heavy-handedness will backfire, though. Think they won any friends yesterday?

"Ultimate Kylie" DVD

The going-out-of-business sale at Tower Records, Broadway, has some benefits. Last year, I ordered the "Ultimate Kylie" DVD from the UK, but had to return it, because of the incompatible European format. Nevertheless, there it was at Tower Records, in the proper U.S. format, so I purchased it.

Reading William Baker's quasi-biography of Kylie Minogue, "Kylie - La La La", he had made frequent references to Kylie's videos, but being in the U.S., I had never seen most of these videos, particularly the early ones. Some of the newer ones, I had only seen as grainy images over the Internet. The "Ultimate Kylie" DVD is a compendium of most of her videos, particularly the early, influential ones, so I finally can match words to imagery. (For a Kylie fan, I know so little!)

And what imagery! Some videos really stand out, and others are just OK. The earliest six or seven videos are just OK - her early days, before she fully gained her footing in the world of fashion and music. What Baker refers to the "triptych" of videos from the early 90's are something else, though. They rise to a new level.

"Better The Devil You Know" - Such a dynamic video! According to Baker:

Hair blowing with wind machine on full power, arms raised above her head and lifted by a black man, his hands clearly defined against her pale flesh, it was apparent she was well underway on the course of what she described as her own 'sexual revolution'. The fact that the love interest dancer in the video was black is significant: the sexualising of the black male and implied interracial relationship were pushing boundaries in Kylie's own way. This wouldn't have been worthy of comment had not her previous videos been so twee and asexual in comparison.

"What Do I Have To Do?" - Such art! According to Baker:

Kylie's drag queen impersonation in "What Do I Have To Do?" leapt out from the screen at me in those three and a half minutes of celluloid hi-camp, her whole future and its infinite diversity of possibilities opened up in my mind's eye. The shot where she is ironing, dressed in a Mugler version of a French maid's outfit, hurling the iron back and forth with more makeup than Boy George, Marilyn and Pete Burns put together, remains my all-time favourite image of her, glamorising the most mundane of household chores. Not a fraction of an inch of those eyebrows melted as the steam rose from the fifties iron and from that moment I became a Kylie fan.

...The imaginary fusion of Joan Collins meets Liz Taylor with a tattooed panther on her back perfectly expressed the playful seduction, flirtatious charm, and kitsch glamour of the girl I was soon to meet. With that video, she unwittingly cornered every conceivable member of a pop audience: Her gay fans admired the drag sensibility, her little girl fans dived into their mother's make-up bags, her straight male fans wanted to bend her over the ironing board, and older girls wanted to nip down to the wig shop and re-invent themselves.

Of the triptych, "Shocked" was the only video to disappoint, which I blame mostly at the effort at cinema verite: in close-ups, while the target can continue to move, the camera should cease moving - otherwise, when both move, the viewer tends to get ill.

Other videos surprised me with their charm: Brilliantly-colored space-age kitschy "Put Yourself In My Place" and superbly-staged "Kids" (duet with Robbie Williams) chief among them.

Then there was the first Kylie video I ever saw: "La, La, La". It was March, 2002, and I was in a motel room in Phoenix, AZ. Ostensibly I was attending a family reunion, but the real reason for the get-together was (ironically enough) for my cousin to formally announce to the assembled family that her breast cancer had spread to other organs.

Alone, I was half-watching a video channel, either VH-1 or MTV I can't recall, and suddenly I was transfixed. "Who IS she?" I wondered, as she frolicked through the futuristic cityscape of the video. She encompassed every pop ideal I had ever conceived of, but I didn't know who she was. The name brought only hazy memories (Americans unfortunately being outside her publicity penumbra). I did recall Madonna wearing a Kylie T-Shirt at the MTV awards, though, and if Madonna was a fan, then who could argue?

Shortly afterwards, I saw Kylie's "Light Years" DVD on sale at Tower Records, Davis, and blindly took a chance on it. The campy, live 2000 Sydney concert, inspired so very much by musical theater, was pure heaven! I've never looked back.

Lastly, there is the video for "Chocolate". With its superb production values, high fashion, and modern-style ballet, "Chocolate" is probably the most-artistic video ever assembled by any pop star.

Plus the extras, particularly Kylie's live performance at the Brits awards ceremony!

Kylie locates and presses every emotional button I have - no one can compare! She unites the worlds of dance and movies and pop culture and Broadway and Hollywood with a highly-intelligent yet fresh understanding of the past century of fashion and music. Both her and her creative team, particularly William Baker, seem to conceive pop culture as, first and foremost, a matter of fashion. Some people disagree, making music the primary field of action, but Kylie's impressive success argues the opposite.

When it comes to pop culture, fashion is first, followed by music, and then dance.

The 2003 Candidates Confer....

...About Ab Zurd's new movie "The Day Arnold Schwarzenegger Kicked My A**":

Diana Foss: The movie is great! And I'd say that even if I didn't make a microsecond appearance in it. (As if I'm the only one!)

Doesn't 2003 seem like a long time ago?

Marc Valdez: Have you seen the movie, Diana? How many boxes of Mentos does it rate? Has anyone else seen it?

Diana Foss: I have seen it. Abner sent me a rough cut DVD last year. I can't really use the Mentos scale (given how sick I made myself on Mentos three years ago) but I'd say the little man is definitely sitting up and clapping.

Cheryl Bly Chester: Do you think we can get all of the Sacramento Area Candidates out for next weeks showing?! - I think it would be a total blast!!

Marc Valdez: I'm definitely up for it! Let's get everybody down to the Crest Theater on Thursday evening and have a party!

"The Day Arnold Schwarzenegger Kicked My A**"

Last night, while walking my dog, Sparky, near the musical theater rehearsal space for Sacramento's Runaway Stage Productions, I started reading a fresh copy of the weekly, Sacramento News and Review (SN&R). Sparky started coughing as he snuffled through the leaves, and I started coughing as I snuffled through the ads and movie listings in SN&R - Ab Zurd has a movie coming out!!! The film is called: "The Day Arnold Schwarzenegger Kicked My A**".

Abner Zurd, filmmaker, was one of the 135 candidates on the ballot for Governor in the 2003 Recall Election, and she has made a film about her experiences in that campaign. Her statewide tour takes her to three theaters. Let's support Ab Zurd's film!!!

Tour dates:

Sunday, November 5, 2006, 4 PM
Art Share Los Angeles (in downtown arts district)
801 E. 4th Place • Los Angeles, CA 90013

Friday, October 20, 2006, 6:30 PM
The Pageant Theatre • 351 East Sixth Street • Chico, CA 95928

Thursday, October 19, 2006, 7 PM
The Crest Theatre • 1013 K Street • Sacramento, CA 95814

Promotional videos. Music by New Maximum Donkey.

"The Tonight Show" Flaunts The Law - Again!

So, Jay Leno is resisting inviting Democrat Phil Angelides to come on "The Tonight Show," as he is legally-required to do if Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger appears.

I remember the 10 seconds of shouting-in-unison we other candidates were so graciously allowed in the 2003 campaign.

Sorry, NBC must follow the law. If they don't, penalties must follow.

Southern Turbulence, And The Betrayal Of Nerds

Walt from South Carolina sends a gift - a spreadsheet with temperature data:

Hey Marc: I just got back from a business trip to San Diego. Beautiful city; I can see why everybody wants to live there. I got window seats on the flights. It is amazing how much one can recognize on the ground if you watch closely, and keep track of where you are. On the way out, I recognized Deming, Las Cruces, Carlsbad, and even the WIPP site! On the way back, I saw Mexicali, Yuma, Magdalena, and the VLA. Also recognized a limestone quarry in northern Alabama which Kathleen and I visited in May. I'll tell you, the desert around and south of Yuma is one inhospitable-looking place. My guess is that it's the most desolate tract of land in North America, except for perhaps Death Valley.

On the way back, the 757 had screens behind every seat. You could find a channel which listed altitude & temperature. So, in keeping with my nerd roots, I followed the temps as we descended from 41,000 feet in Mississippi, to landing in Atlanta. Check out the attached graph. I'd appreciate any insights you could give.

Hi Walt: I'm having trouble with these numbers. Particularly with the temperatures above 10,000 feet - that whole second inversion - they seem just way too high, maybe by 20 degrees F, or more, compared to temperature soundings for the day for Shelby, AL. Some of the temperatures at the highest levels loosely-follow wet adiabatic conditions when plotted on a Skew-T Log-p diagram, which makes me wonder whether the temperature thermistor was covered with some kind of water, or maybe ice. Hard to say, though.

The most interesting part of your sounding is that second inversion - what causes it? But if it's an instrument artifact, then it becomes less compelling.

The Shelby, AL soundings suggest that it was dry, with little convection, and on the whole, a nice day to fly. - Marc

Observations that day for Shelby AL, at 10/7 12Z (6 a.m. CST), and 10/8 0Z (6 p.m. CST).

Skew T - Log p diagram for Shelby AL, at 10/7 12Z (6 a.m. CST).
Skew T - Log p diagram for Shelby AL, at 10/8 00Z (6 p.m. CST).

Walt replies:

I knew it!!! Those bastards!!! When I flew over from Italy in June, at 39000 ft, the temperature was about -50 or -60 F the whole way. On this trip, they reported it at -30 to -35 F at 39K and 41K feet everywhere from CA to MS. If you can't trust data, what can you trust?

But that second inversion is interesting. I bet it could be real, because there were two periods of turbulence. Do two inversions happen often?

On most afternoons, that first inversion is almost always there - lower-level warmth comes from solar heating. The second inversion is a feature of high pressure systems, where air descends slowly from higher elevations, and warms up by adiabatic heating.

The weather maps for that afternoon (about 4 hours after your flight) show a rather striking upper-level, cold-core cutoff low centered over South Carolina. The low washes out at lower elevations (that's how one can tell it's cold-core), so at the surface, it's all but indistinguishable. At the surface, the entire eastern U.S., including the entire South, was under the influence of a high pressure system centered over New York.

What that means is that there was a significant wind speed gradient. Winds from the north over Alabama and vicinity were much faster at higher elevations than at lower elevations, meaning there was a lot of potential for turbulence.

It's plausible that there was descending air at high elevations over Alabama and vicinity, given that Alabama was on the western (upstream) side of the upper-level low, but it's not assured, since the wind speeds are not equal around the low. Also, the low was moving in a somewhat retrograde fashion (moving to the SSW rather than to the east). The temperature sounding shows a somewhat equivocal isothermal zone above the first inversion. Probably there were a lot of transient waves passing through this zone, so the situation could change noticeably from hour-to-hour, sometimes air rising, sometimes descending, and not always in synchrony from one level to the next, had one been around to measure it.

Turbulence acts in funny ways. Over mountain ranges, it can propagate forward and up, so flying over central or eastern Nevada, you can intercept Sierra Nevada-triggered turbulence, even though the mountains are many miles away. It can also propagate through atmospheric layers defined by inversion layers, sometimes long ways. The turbulence you noted was likely at the boundaries of different atmospheric layers defined by temperature inversions, or at least different temperature properties. There was certainly the potential for it, that day, given the presence of the upper-level low and the wind speed gradient, and despite the fact that elsewhere, it was A VERY NICE DAY.

Sending The Sick Overseas

First there was the business of sending the aged to overseas nursing homes. Now, there is the business of sending people overseas for surgery. The slippery slope of globalization....

Home State Cuisine

Why California fast food just isn't the same:

The Isleta Police Department officers had eaten about half of their burgers from a Burger King restaurant in Los Lunas before realizing that something was wrong. Opening the burgers, they discovered marijuana sprinkled on top of the meat.

“One of the officers, when he was eating his hamburger, he said, ‘This thing tastes like it has marijuana in it,’” said Lieutenant Joseph Sanchez of the Los Lunas Police Department. “And that’s when he opened it up to see what was inside."

Tinhorns

It's like "West Side Story," only without Lieutenant Schrank and with better weapons:

President Evo Morales replaced Bolivia's minister of mines and also the head of the state mining company Friday following clashes between rival bands of miners that left at least 16 dead and more than 60 injured.

...Violence began Thursday morning in Huanuni, a mining town 180 miles south of the capital La Paz, where rival mining groups battled with guns and dynamite over access to Bolivia's richest deposit.

...The violence began Thursday morning, when hundreds of miners belonging to independent cooperatives stormed the state-owned Huanuni mine, demanding more access to its tin deposits. State-employed miners counterattacked to regain control of the mine and the groups exchanged gunshots and dynamite.

Miners from both sides, some only in their teens, threw dynamite and homemade explosives at each other from ridge to ridge, sometimes separated by no more than 50 feet (15 meters).

On Friday morning, members of the miners' cooperative rolled three tires packed with explosives down the side of the mountain toward town, causing an enormous explosion.

The violence followed a breakdown in negotiations in the nearby city of Oruro in which the miners' cooperatives rejected a government proposal dividing Huanuni's veins of tin between the two groups.

"West Side Story" Ends

A few good pictures. Here are some snapshots from Friday, October 6th. Plus, here's Bev Sykes review of West Side Story.

Left: "Cool." Seated on floor, Anybodys (Chloe Condon). Facing camera, Katy Fast, Kristin Cunningham, Hannah Allen (although she's kind of hard-to-spot), Bess Toyama, and Katherine Vanderford.

"Get smart, you stupid hoodlums!" Lt. Schrank (Mike Jones) delivers some rough advice to Bernardo (David Ott).



Anita (Amanda Morish) in "Quintet."

Tony (Colby Salmon) and Anita (Amanda Morish) in "Quintet."

Study in ballet. Tony (Colby Salmon) and Maria (Chelsea Baldree) in "Somewhere" ballet.





Saturday night, October 7th.

Anita (Amanda Morish), (Maria Chelsea Baldree), and the Sharks (Nick Peters, Jason Masino, Hermenio Torres, and David Ott), in "Quintet."

Marisa Casillas and Edward Nelson in the "Somewhere" ballet.

Baby John (Ryan Warren, back to camera) dolls it up as the social worker in "Gee, Officer Krupke." Facing the camera, Edward Nelson; kneeling, Alex Poe and Andy Hyun.

Happy 25th Birthday, Lauren!

Nice evening with MikeMac and Lauren and everyone!

Call Of The Wild Marsupian

E.: I've had it with that sick psychopattic nut in the head. He is SO ugly! He looks like a alien. His neck looks like a - heron. His voice sounds like a marsupian - Mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh.....Marc! Are you listening to me? MARC! Are you listening to me? MARC! M-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-rc!

M.: What does the marsupian sound like again?

E.: Mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh, mwauffgh.

M: Mmmmmm.....

The Folks Back Home Take Notice



The Half Moon Bay Review does an excellent feature article on Robert Coverdell:

On Sept. 24, Coverdell was also named Best Supporting Actor (for his portrayal of Isaacher) at the 24th annual Elly Awards. The awards ceremony recognizes performers and theater technical talent in the Sacramento area.

"I was shocked," said Coverdell. "I wasn't expecting to win."

Coverdell traces his dance roots back to the Coastside and years of study at the Susan Hayward School of Dance in Montara.

Having grown up in Half Moon Bay, he appeared in musicals in all his four years at Half Moon Bay High. As a freshman, he played Harvey Johnston in "Bye Bye Birdie;" as a senior, he played Evelyn Oakley in "Anything Goes." In between, he had ensemble parts in "42nd Street" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."

At 18, with Coastal Repertory Theater, he played the hero role - named Hero - in the comedy "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" in 2003.

Bobbi Bader, RIP



The Sacramento ballet community has been thrown into turmoil by the abrupt death of Bobbi Bader, a Capitol City Ballet Company alumnus who has taught ballet for a number of years at 'The Ballet Studio' in a shopping plaza near Bradshaw and Folsom, near Rancho Cordova. Services were held Saturday at East Lawn Cemetery, at 43rd and Folsom, in Sacramento, with a reception following at her studio. Here is the Sacramento Bee obituary notice:

BADER, Roberta Ann (Bobbi)

Born September 20, 1951, in Sacramento, CA; passed away September 30, 2006, at the age of 55. Bobbi was the owner of The Ballet Studio for over 20 years. She was the beloved daughter to Robert and Marjorie Bader, who preceded her in death. Survived by her sister, Cynthia Holloway and her husband Thomas; nephews Thomas (TJ) and Robert Holloway of Rescue, CA, niece Elisa Holloway of Lowell, OR. She will be greatly missed by numerous relatives and friends. Funeral services will be held East Lawn Memorial Park, 43rd & Folsom Blvd., Sacramento, Saturday, October 7, at 2pm.

Published in the Sacramento Bee from 10/4/2006 - 10/5/2006.

People are working backwards from symptoms in order to figure out how this happened. She had apparently been unable to keep food down, suggesting a digestive ailment of some sort. She apparently hadn't consulted doctors - a practice discouraged by her Christian Science faith.

Ballet friends had apparently tried to help. One friend, E., in addition to being a student, is also a highly-regarded M.D., and she had offered to shop, or do anything that might be of service, but ever the stoic, Bobbi had firmly refused. I'm sure E. wasn't the only one to offer assistance.

Dance teaches many things. One of these things is a prickly sort of independence, a stubborn determination to master one's own body. In a moment like this crisis, when one should reach out, dance discourages doing so. Plus, reaching out for help to one's long-term friends - often, one's students - means inverting the traditional student/teacher relationship - another no-no.

The ballet community is reacting now by trying to cobble together a response to keep 'The Ballet Studio' open. One student suggests that 'Heidi and Pam' might jointly-offer classes, while inviting others to offer classes in their specialties as well (I don't know who Heidi is, but Pam is Pam Kay Lourentzos). I don't know what Pam's response is, though.

The studio's rent (~$850/mo.) is reasonable, and no upfront expenses are required to install floors and barres. For young, up-and-coming ballet teachers, this may be an excellent opportunity to get business experience.

People will be affected by Bobbi's passing for a long time. In Sunday's ballet class with Pam, E. got emotional when Pam highlighted a particular detail of port de corps as 'something Bobbi had emphasized for many years.' And I got emotional when Pam played Pachelbel's Canon in D Major - Bobbi's trademark barre music - for a floor exercise (I took class with Bobbi from 1991 to 1997, before getting so involved with community musical theater).

Bobbi inspired many students to work their hardest. We will miss her very, very much.

IM Foley

Via Pandagon.net. Overly-friendly instant-message generator.

Visible From Orbit! Amazing!

High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity near the rim of "Victoria Crater."

Slow On Teh Uptake

The Urban Dictionary on "teh."

Apex, NC

Nasty fire, involving any number of toxic substances, plus chlorine gas.

I remember once being given evacuation instructions at a Salt Lake City, UT, sewage treatment facility, in the event horns sounded indicating a chlorine spill. The instruction was "hold your breath and run away just as fast as you possibly can, and never, EVER, breathe - EVER!

Peter Beinart, Useful Idiot

Ezra Klein rips into Peter Beinart's recent attacks on liberals for not focusing more on that German opera house's cancellation of a show:

Liberals are morally remiss for paying insufficient attention to an opera house's decision, but not for ignoring bride kidnappings, murdered journalists, or marauding governments. The agenda behind that odd prioritization isn't difficult to divine, and it's to the credit of the left that they refused to offer aid and comfort to those seeking its partial assent in their clash-of-civilization fantasies. For liberals to jump at each trumpeted instance of Arab misbehavior in this context, under this administration, with this many modern-day Curtis LeMay's populating government commissions, would be downright irresponsible.

Two Foley-gate Quotes

The first from Billmon:

One of the most impressive qualities about the wingnuts -- and the key to much of their past political success -- is their absolute, fanatical unwillingness to surrender, even when reality has them surrounded and is blasting their ranks to pieces with fragmentation grenades and massed artillery fire. At a point when most Democrats would be frantically looking around for a white flag to wave, the GOP hardcore are making banzai charges.

That's the only metaphor I can think of that even comes close to capturing the desperation of the GOP's current propaganda line: that raptorgate is some kind of Democratic dirty tricks operation masterminded by -- you had to know this was coming -- George Soros.

... It's pure fantasy, of course -- a makeshift substitute for the failure (so far) of the GOP dirt squad to find a single, sitting Democratic pederast to drag into the scandal spotlight. A normal political army would be thoroughly demoralized by the notion of charging into a shit hurricane armed with such feeble talking points. It's like trying to fight the Red Army with a sharpened stick.

The second, from Glenn Greenwald:

The Foley scandal is so perfectly tailored -- one could even say artistically designed -- to expose every character flaw of this country's Republican leaders (and their followers), and it has evolved so flawlessly (like the most brilliantly coordinated symphony), that one is almost inclined to believe that it was divinely inspired. It is difficult to believe that human beings (let alone Democrats) could create something so perfect (as Billmon wrote in comments here the other day, the relentless efficiency of this scandal is proof positive that Democrats had nothing to do with it). I agree with John Podhoretz's description:

This whole Foley business is one of the most dazzling political plays in my or any other lifetime - like watching an unassisted triple play or a running back tossing a 90-yard touchdown pass on a double-reverse.

The perfection of this scandal lies in its substance, not its theatrics. The Foley scandal is not -- as even some Bush opponents have asserted -- an aberrational, isolated, inconsequential melodrama that is unrelated to the substantive and important critiques of the Bush movement and which just coincidentally emerged as a cynical weapon that can be used to defeat the Republicans. The opposite is true. This scandal has resonated so powerfully because it is shining such a powerful light on the towering hubris, utter lack of intellectual and ethical integrity, and deeply engrained corruption that accounts for virtually every other Bush disaster -- from Iraq to law-breaking scandals to torture to Abrahmoff-type corruption schemes and everything in between.

... Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM'd with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on. There has been a virtual carousel -- as there always is -- of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working.

... Beyond the deceit and desperation is the hypocrisy so glaring that it makes one's eyes squint. The examples are literally too numerous to chronicle, but one of my personal favorites is the feigned above-it-all, dismissive bewilderment that something as inconsequential and petty as a sex scandal could possibly be getting so much attention.

... The same people who impeached a popular, twice-elected President of the U.S. over a sex scandal involving consenting adults, who caused our country's political dialogue for several years to be composed of the filthiest and most scurrilous speculation peddled by some of the lowest bottom-feeders and dirt-mongers, and who constructed a political movement based in large part on sermonizing about private sexual morality and demonizing those who deviate, are now protesting -- without any irony -- the fact that a sex scandal is distracting from the Truly Important Issues our country faces and that Mark Foley's sexual pursuit over many years of 16 and 17-year-old Congressional pages is nothing that really matters.

It is as though Republicans are being punished for all of their serious political sins at once, in one perfectly constructed, humiliating scandal designed to highlight their crimes and exact just retribution for them. The Foley scandal is shining a very bright light on their conduct, not just in this one incident but with regard to how they have been governing the country generally over the last five years. That is why this scandal is so important and it is why Bush followers are so desperate to proclaim the whole thing over with -- even if it means having to jump on a pathetic Matt Drudge item to do it. The one thing they don't want is for a clear, illuminating light to be shined on how they conduct themselves.

Shhh!

Deborah in Phoenix writes:

It just now rained - overhead!

I reply:

Maybe if you pretend it isn't there, it will go away.

This morning, she writes:

--just woke up to MAJOR thunderstorms--look at all that water. All the saguaros are thrilled!

I reply:

There's an interesting mismatch between the NOGAPS model and the satellite pictures. Even though there is another line of storms to your west, it looks as if it's thin and won't yield much, if any, rain. Nevertheless, NOGAPS seems to think it will develop, likely this afternoon.

In a conflict like that, satellite picture (based on reality) wins out. Nevertheless, it's interesting that NOGAPS went out on a limb.

Frankenrabbits

Cloudy the Frankenbunny says "no way!"

Foley-gate

Jon Stewart's take.

Kylie's Latest Interview

So, what's up with the Impossible Princess?:

THERE'S one T-shirt Kylie Minogue fans won't be able to buy as a souvenir of her Showgirl Homecoming tour. They're the shirts the singer is planning to print up for her road crew sporting the Frankie Goes to Hollywood-inspired slogan "Kylie Says Relax". "The motto for this tour is 'We're over stress'," Minogue says.

Actually, that motto is exactly emblematic of her appeal. It's unlike Madonna's emblem, which is more like - do as I say!

Always a glass-half-full type, Minogue pauses when asked what positives she's taken from her illness. "Positives? How long have you got? It's about people . . . my family, friends, my medical team . . . and how resilient we are. How you discover different layers of yourself you didn't understand in how you deal with the situation.

"It's like your world is falling down around you, and no one knows until you're in that situation how you will cope with it. And there was so much love and goodwill from my fans and the public."

Good!

Minogue admits the other side-effect of her illness was discovering a new passion for her craft, and the impact it has had on others judging by the endless flood of cards she has received from the public. "The discovery that sounds all too obvious for me to be saying is, 'This is what I do'," Minogue says.

"Performing, relating to people, communicating is what I do. I'm hoping to get back on track, but I'm even more determined than before to do it well. I feel really inspired, more than I have for quite a while."

Also good, since Minogue has admitted in the past to a certain, searching ambivalence.

Minogue hooked up with Jake Shears and Babydaddy of Scissor Sisters in New York, the team behind her 2004 hit I Believe In You. The New York jaunt spawned the new song White Diamond, which Minogue hints will appear in the Homecoming tour.

"It's glorious," Minogue says of the song. "It's another track you'd expect from Jake, Babydaddy and I. It's a big, shiny, raising-the-arms-in-the-air moment. We're dying to get back in the studio together again.

"Jake is the greatest," Minogue says. "The last thing he said to me was 'We should dress up in each other's clothes!' because we're so alike in so many ways."

Good teammates, but forgive me if I leave the room prior to the dress exchange.

Minogue's illness demonstrated the loyalty felt not only by fans who held on to their tickets, but by her road crew - who remain almost unchanged to a person.

"When I was diagnosed and in those months when no one really knew what was going to happen, my tour manager told me the crew had to go and take other jobs, but only on the provision that if they got the call that my tour was back on, they could get out of their other jobs.

"There's so much devotion. I'm sure I'm going to see these big burly crew members who have seen it all and done it all with maybe a little tear in their eyes."

Trying To Leverage The Vegas Brand

So, what do the folks at the Billboard Dance Music Summit think about Las Vegas?:

Janie Hoffman, head of West Coast marketing/event production company All Things Possible (ATP), offered to organize parties exclusive to the Summit, and reached out to clubs that would already be operational those nights - making the events a no-brainer for organizers, registrants and club management as well.

“Vegas is known for their nightclubs,” says Hoffman, whose strategy for keeping things simple, but accessible, enticed venue management. “They're the stars of the show here. You don't have to go out of your way to do anything special.”

Life By Night parties are to be held at the Palms' pool, Tryst, Voodoo Lounge, Pure, Tangerine and Tao. The biggest of the parties is arguably Monday night at Voodoo, co-organized by Harrah's Director of Nightclubs Pauly Freedman and headlined by Dutch trance superstar Ferry Corsten. Italian DJ Spankox, emerging English act Loose Cannons, and locals Robert Oleysyck and Scotty Boy round out the bill. (A full schedule of nighttime events is included in this issue.)

“This has become the industry standard for around the world,” says Hoffman. “[The nightclub industry] comes to Vegas and goes [back home and says], ‘OK, Vegas my nightclub,' wherever it may be. The original pitch I made to Billboard, as far as the importance of Vegas overall as it appeals to this audience, is, ‘It's fucking Disneyland on acid, the Emerald City on steroids ...'”

Beware of Sopranos!

James McElroy writes: "Did you catch this?"

Alaskan storm cracks giant iceberg to pieces in faraway Antarctica: Study tracks surprising connection between distant events

James adds: "I especially like the simile expressed in the following":

Tiny ocean swells may seem too small to break an iceberg, but the crew of Captain Cook’s Endeavour knew well their hazards. The Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef near Australia on a calm night in 1770. "But there was just enough swell to pick up the Endeavour and pound it relentlessly against the coral heads," MacAyeal said. Until his crew lightened the ship, Cook feared it would be pounded to smithereens.

And just like the Endeavour, the iceberg had run aground near Cape Adare and the Possession Islands in Antarctica before the swell hit. "We think that B15A was in the right position where these waves would be fatal to it," MacAyeal said. "The iceberg shattered like a gracile wine glass being sung to by a heavy soprano."

Beware of sopranos! - Jim McElroy

Cinnamon

Page and Charlie Berghoffer got a puppy. So cute!

Hard Work...

...Keeping up with the sexual indiscretions of Republican politicians (but this blog tries).

Retroactive Immunity

From Jim Vanderventer, Jr., a timely message from the Cafferty files.

Trunk Monkey

Call on your trusty chimp.

Theater Notes

From their newsletter, Thistledew Dessert Theater needs short plays:

The Thistle Dew Theatre for PLAYWRIGHTS SPECIAL call: ten to twenty minute plays needed. E-mail submissions accepted: tom@thistle-dew.net. Or bring it to The Thistle Dew Theatre.

Thistle Dew's Playwrights Workshop and Readers Theatre. Our group meets every Monday evening at 7:00pm. If you would like to take part in the playwright's workshop process, please call Tom at 444-8209 or email: tom@thistle-dew.net.

Also, Gil and Lenore Sebastian are performing, but in separate theaters, in Roseville:

Lenore is Mama Rose in GYPSY
September 8 - October 21
Fridays/Saturday @ 8:00; Sundays @ 2:00
Roseville Theatre, 241 Vernon St., Roseville, CA 95678
******************************************
Gil is Oscar in THE ODD COUPLE
September 15 - October 14
Fridays/Saturday @ 8:00; Sundays @ 2:00
Tower Theatre, 421 Vernon St., Roseville, CA 95678

Anniversary

How could I forget? Today is the 30th anniversary of shaking hands with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter, at Stapleton Airport, shortly after a campaign rally in downtown Denver, during the 1976 presidential campaign.

I haven't washed my right hand since.

Small Gifts

Where was Heather?:

Sometimes in the midst of a national scandal, the smallest and most seemingly innocuous item from an incumbent's legislative history can turn into a political gift. In the scorched-earth Albuquerque race pitting GOP Rep. Heather Wilson against New Mexico state attorney general Patricia Madrid, the Democrats discovered to their glee that the incumbent had served on the five-member board overseeing the House page program from 2001 until the end of 2004, a time when Foley had already been suggestively messaging these young boys. That tendentious bit of guilt-by-timing was enough to produce an Albuquerque Journal story Tuesday morning with the headline: "Wilson Denies Prior Knowledge of Foley E-Mails." As Heather Brewer, the press secretary for the Madrid campaign, said in a phone interview: "This is a nightmare for Wilson. She sat on that page board for three years."

Peter Beinart's Valiant Battle Against Straw

Via Atrios. Frank Rich rips into TNR's Peter Beinart. And he should. Beinart's strange obsession with Michael Moore is inexplicable:

He's also a straw man. It's hard to argue that Moore, a diva whose shtick is hyperbole and provocation, has fomented any movement that threatens to take over the Democratic Party or even Hollywood. Fahrenheit 9/11—seen by less than a third of the audience of leading 2004 hits like Shrek 2 and The Passion of the Christ—did not move election results; it did prompt an outpouring of liberal documentaries, most of which have barely registered at the box office (Gore's An Inconvenient Truth being a modest exception). However many reflexive pacifists there may be in Moore's audience, or at Cindy Sheehan rallies, or on blogs, the number of Americans who opposed defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban after September 11 was a tiny fringe; Bush enjoyed nearly 90 percent–plus support, including for the war in Afghanistan, with good reason.

The tragedy is that when Bush betrayed the country's trust and hijacked a united citizenry for his own ends there were too many liberals who went MIA, whether in Congress or on opinion pages, at a time, as Beinart concedes, when such a principled opposition "was needed most." That opposition could have rallied around the same principles that are espoused in The Good Fight without succumbing to Bush propaganda about a war that has done more to harm the battle against terrorism than any blogging pacifist has. It would have been a far better thing for the country if liberal hawks had articulated those principles clearly then without compromising them. Their inability to do so was a systemic intellectual failure that Beinart's book only begins to address. And while it's better late than never to stand up for the credo outlined in The Good Fight, what current Democratic leader does not now endorse the same basic national security catechism as Beinart's, from Howard Dean to Hillary Clinton? The only real debate among Democrats today is over the timetable for the inevitable drawdown of American troops from Iraq, not from the battle against Islamic terrorists. So limited is the power of the leftist activists feared by Beinart that they have been unable to persuade most Democratic candidates in tight election races this fall to support any plan for a precipitous Iraq withdrawal.

"Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West"

"Hey, Marc, you really should check out this movie! It's full of conspiracy theories concerning 9/11!" That was the promise Keith made. So I watched the DVD. The next day I said, "I'm surprised you suggested this movie: it's 105% pro-George-Bush." "It is?", Keith said, somewhat flummoxed, "I don't know about that. What I liked was all the Al-Jazeera outtakes, showing us what the Arabs actually see on their TV sets, all the anti-Semitism, rather than just hearing about it from Fox News."

"Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West" is a movie about the War on Terror from a neoconservative perspective. The movie is partly an inspiration of UK-based activists, and features many leading activists fighting against radical Islam:

From the creators of "Relentless," comes a new film that will challenge the way you look at the world.

Almost 70 years ago, Europe found itself at war with one of the most sinister figures in modern history: Adolf Hitler. When the last bullet of World War II was fired, over 50 million people were dead, and countless countries were both physically and economically devastated. Hitler’s bloody struggle sought to forge the world anew, in the crucible of Nazi values. How could such a disaster occur? How could the West have overlooked the evil staring it in the face, for so long, before standing forcefully against it?

Today, we find ourselves confronted by a new enemy, also engaged in a violent struggle to transform our world. As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.

Using images from Arab TV, rarely seen in the West, Obsession reveals an ‘insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. With the help of experts, including first-hand accounts from a former PLO terrorist, a Nazi youth commander, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader, the film shows, clearly, that the threat is real.

A peaceful religion is being hijacked by a dangerous foe, who seeks to destroy the shared values we stand for. The world should be very concerned.

Today, WWIII is raging, but few are aware of it. War has been declared by Radical Islam against the West, but much of the the West, like Chamberlain did in his time, tends to discount the threat, choosing instead to appease it. Today, even those with courage enough to recognize the conflict, fear to identify the enemy, instead calling it a 'war on terror', as if terror—a means of battle, not an enemy—and not some specific group of people, was the foe.

Aside from 9/11, we are today witnessing violent Islamic insurgencies erupting all around the world: In Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. We see the Russians are fighting Al-Qaeda linked rebels in Chechnya, ... Obsession makes clear that we are facing an enemy intent on destroying us.

We’ve been here before. Obsession also explores the current threat and its surprising parallels with Nazi Germany. We can learn about Nazism by listening to Hitler in his writing and actions - he was a clear thinker who knew that he was battling over the moral foundations of Western civilization. Hitler fought against the 'insidious Judeo-Christian ethics' which had been almost victorious over the ancient values of power and 'might makes right'. In going against the West, Hitler determined he must focus on and destroy the Jews as well, the people who he identified as the source of these sinister Western values. WWII, Hitler's war, showed how deeply he believed his ideas.

And what are the Radical Islamists about? They also express themselves clearly, if only we choose to listen. Obsession will help us listen. The Islamists are now acting out their ambitions and threatening the values of freedom, democracy, respect for human life, and other shared ideals of Western civilization.

Much of the Western world today would like to believe that we have arrived at an era of heightened moral refinement, or that Radical Islam has some legitimate grievances that, once solved, would bring peace and stability. But Radical Islam, a dangerous strain of the world's fastest growing religion, believes the time has come for its final violent victory over the Crusader infidels of America and the West.

Like WWII before it, this is an ideological war of aggression against Western civilization, and like WWII, the Western powers are waking up far too slowly.

Our shared values are at stake. The enemies of the West are not mistaken: the West stands for an ethical system of civilization that threatens them. And they have not come to terms with these values. To the degree that the West recognizes that they are ALREADY in a war for the survival of their democratic civilization, they will resist.

An erstwhile peaceful religion has been hijacked by extremists who are seeking to transform our world. Obsession will help people appreciate that freedom itself is at stake today. Western civilization should be concerned.

As made clear by their timeline of terrorist actions, the movie emphasizes that we are facing a single, unified threat.

Nevertheless, there are strange omissions that make one wonder. Film footage shows Bosnian Muslims attacking an unidentified Christian church. The church is probably either Serbian or Croatian, and begs the question of whether the moviemakers feel we should have allowed the 1994/95 genocide against Bosnian Muslims to proceed. Mass killings are one answer to supposed religious extremism, after all.

(Which brings up an old memory - an excellent essay from 30 years ago - was it Czeslaw Milosz? - regarding going through the ruins of a Serbian church desecrated by the Communists - history repeats itself yet again)

Graphic footage is also shown of "American civilians" being burned alive in their vehicle and dragged through Iraqi streets. But these killings are likely not of American tourists on a jaunt, but rather the mob attacks on four Blackwater security contractors - mercenaries who defied U.S. Marines and travelled undermanned through Fallujah, Iraq, in March, 2004.

Constant invocation is made of the threat once posed by the Nazis, and its equivalence to today's threat. There are, indeed, many disturbing parallels, and particularly for people who have lived in Arab societies - Nonie Darwish, for one - their testimony can be compelling.

But it's one thing to resist tyranny from within a society, and to aid those resisting; it's another thing altogether to invade one of the primary centers of the Islamic world from without, with only 140,000 troops, and with the expectation of a cheery welcome.

What I found most galling was the invocation of Edmund Burke's famous quote:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

and to openly state that every generation has to renew the gift of freedom through sacrifice, and that THIS battle was our generation's task. Very heady stuff, and very appealing to the idealistic young, but whom may I ask, decided that THIS task is ours? To me, it sounds like a call to arms. It sounds like jihad, but a Western variant - the Crusades, 21st-Century version. The movie's title is very revealing: it's about "Obsession" all right, but not just from the radical Muslim point of view.

As the Cold War made clear, the best answer to foreign aggression isn't rollback, and isn't appeasement, it's containment.

And no good 9/11 conspiracy theories besides! What was Keith thinking?

Getting A Grip On Titanic's Fuel Use

I was dumbfounded by the statistics I saw on Titanic's use of coal, and James McElroy was intrigued. Here is his research on the question.

Marc,

This started as a post to your Blog on the Titanic Exhibition but it just got out of hand. If you want to use it feel free. It's just something I like to do.

Jim McElroy

==========================================================
Fun with Numbers

The fuel consumption numbers quoted for the Titanic do appear questionable but the way the statistic was presented is even more interesting. 60 lbs every 1.5 sec? WTF! It is the same mind boggling approach seen every day at the supermarket when asked to compare two products that are $1.98 for 24 oz. or $2.29 for 28 oz. The intention is to confuse.

Anyhow, the quoted fuel consumption is obviously 40 lb of coal per second, 72 tons per hour, or 1728 tons per day. Since the trip across the Atlantic required 6 days, the ship's capacity of 6,000 tons would have run out 3 days and 11 hours into the trip. I think that was before they met their iceberg. That would probably have been a "good thing", at least we wouldn't be visiting various Titanic road shows.

Being incurably curious, I looked up the Titanic's fuel consumption posted in the Titanic specifications listed on the website

http://library.thinkquest.org/21583/to/spec.htm

quoted at 825 tons of coal per day. This means that 4950 tons would be consumed on the trip, much more suitable for the 6000 ton capacity.

This leads to thoughts of global warming. Is there some way to graphically show the thermal cost of this trip? Well, yes, in a general way. Coal has a heat content that varies greatly with the source and composition. It is a raw material, not a manufactured product. Coal of the type used for marine propulsion has a heat value ranging from 11,000 BTU/lb to 14,000 BTU/lb (per Marks Mechanical Engineers Handbook) so we'll pick 12,000 BTU/lb because it is an easy number to work with. For those who studied computer science instead of the real world, a BTU (British Thermal Unit) is a standard unit, dating back to the days of James Watt, and is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water from 60 deg F to 61 deg F. From this we can state that the 4950 tons (9.9 million pounds) of coal, would release 118.8 billion Btu's of thermal energy. We could round off to 120 billion Btu's, but what the hell, I have a calculator (score one for Computer Science).

Whee-ooo! That's a lot of Btu's, right? Or not. Is there any way to graphically describe how much heat this is? Well, yes, you knew there would be didn't you. We'll pull out another number from Mark's Handy Handbook and note that it requires 144 Btu's to melt one pound of Ice at 32 deg F. The heat produced by one trip across the Atlantic could melt 825,000,000 pounds or 412500 tons of Ice. To give a more visual perspective we look up another number, the density of Ice at 32 deg F which is 56 lb/cuft. A cube of ice weighing 825,000,000 lbs will occupy 13.22 million cubic feet and will measure 245 feet on each side. An iceberg of this dimension would weigh almost 10 times the gross tonnage of the Titanic and be almost one third of it's length. The top surface of the cube would be 24 feet above water level. This is probably comparable to or larger than the iceberg which did in the Titanic. You think it may have been a preemptive strike? If so it didn't work there either. Icebergs in the northern hemisphere are becoming an endangered species.

What about modern transportation? We can do exactly the same calculation for Air Travel. From the website

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/question192.htm

I acquired a fuel consumption figure of 5 gal/mile for a loaded Boeing 747. The figure was attributed to the Boeing website but I could not confirm. Probably a marketing news release. Anyhow, using 3,500 miles as the distance from New York to London, about the same as the Titanic route, it takes 17,500 gallons of jet fuel(kerosene) to cross the Atlantic once. The density of kerosene is 6.8 lbs/gal and it has a heating value of 19,810 BTU/lb. Jet fuel is a manufactured product and the numbers are pretty precise. Using the same calculation we find that a Boeing 747 flying from New York to London will release 2.36 billion BTU each trip. But wait, a 747 carries only about 500 passengers, while the Titanic carried about 2000. So, it takes four 747's to carry the same passenger load, or 9.44 billion Btu's compared to the Titanic's value of 118.8 billion Btu's to transport the same number of passengers. This is really why you see so few ocean liners on the transatlantic crossing today, not passenger convenience.

From here you get into the details of where combustion products are deposited, at ocean level (next to the world's largest carbon sink) or in the stable stratosphere where they stick around and block heat loss. The same type of calculations can be and are made for these effects, but I'm gonna bail.

Regarding Jim's last paragraph, most climatologists and atmospheric chemists believe that most of the carbon dioxide released by combustion processes remains in the atmosphere. The ocean is nearly supersaturated with CO2, and can only take it up in certain locales, one of which isn't too far away, actually, as Jim mentions - cold, sinking water near Iceland. Another primary sink for CO2, the weathering of rocks on land surfaces, is widely-dispersed, and the numbers are still poorly-understood. That's why CO2 has increased 15% or so, from 315 to 380 ppmv, just in my lifetime - it just accumulates.

Time To Mock The Dead

Via Atrios. It's getting to be that time of year, after all:

Helen Chenoweth-Hage, a conservative Republican firebrand who served three terms as an Idaho congresswoman, was killed Monday when thrown from a car that overturned on an isolated central Nevada highway.

Chenoweth-Hage was a passenger in the S-U-V-type vehicle that flipped just before noon on State Route 376, the main route between her Pine Creek Ranch, in Monitor Valley, and Tonopah.

The Nevada Highway Patrol says the 68-year-old victim was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver, daughter-in-law Yelena Hage, and her 5-month-old son Bryan weren't seriously injured.

N-H-P Trooper Rocky Gonzalez says Chenoweth-Hage was holding the baby and wasn't wearing a seatbelt. State law requires both seatbelts and babyseats. Both Chenoweth-Hage and the baby were thrown from the car but the child had only minor injuries.

October Surprise

Left: Photo via Talking Points Memo.


Everyone falls on their faces as the congressional races get down to the wire. In New York:

The Upstate media today is all about Tom Reynolds' bizarre press conference yesterday, at which he surrounded himself by small children. At one point, reporters asked if he could make the children leave so they could as adult questions, and he refused.

"West Side Story" - Week Three

Left: Maria (Chelsea Baldree), Anita (Amanda Morish), and one of the Sharks (Hermenio Torres).







Bernardo (David Ott) gets ready to practice some "shock and awe" on Riff.

In the back, Andy Hyun (obscured), Ryan Warren, Edward Nelson, Colby Salmon (as Tony), and Henry Holloway.



"Somewhere" Ballet - Chloe Condon, Marissa Casillas, and Edward Nelson.

Third Friday was fairly-rough: Bess got the giggles and folks were breaking character during "Cool." Saturday was great - lots of energy! Sunday was a little more subdued, although I think it was the audience, not the cast. Katy's party the night before notwithstanding, everyone soldiered on with lots of energy.

Familiar Haunts Between Las Vegas And Sacramento

Left: The Las Vegas Strip. The Mandalay Bay Hotel and Resort is in the foreground, where Kelly Daniells performs nightly.


We live in an Age of Miracles, when SO MUCH can be learned just by looking out the window of an aircraft!

Contrail shadow across the land, across the southwestern flank of the Spring Mountains, west of Las Vegas. Highway 160 crosses over Mountain Springs Summit (5,493 ft a.m.s.l.) down there.

The same contrail (above), and its remarkably dark and vivid shadow on a haze layer at the top of the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL).

At first, I thought this was Coaldale Playa, but in retrospect, it's probably Mud Lake, SE of Tonopah. Not many other round playas in the desert (although Willcox Playa in southeastern Arizona and Searles Lake in California come to mind).


What is this crazy place? It may be a salt marsh near Silver Peak, NV, but I'm not sure.

At first, I thought this was the highway intersection between Highway 395 (left-to-right across center of picture), and Highway 3 (bottom-to-middle along right edge). Just a wide spot in the desert, really, but I'm fond of it nonetheless. I had good times playing with my dog Stella, in December, 1993, at this intersection. Stella vanished in February, 1994, and I've been sad about it ever since.

Looking again, I may be wrong. Now, I think this is the intersection between Highway 10 and Highway 395, south of Mina. Also another wide spot in the desert!

Walker Lake, remnant of Ice Age Lake Bonneville. I love this semi-desolate salt lake! Just imagine it one thousand times bigger, and that's Ice Age Lake Bonneville!

Yerington, Nevada, with the East Walker River flowing in from the west (left) and flowing out to the east (right).

Crazy ranchettes near the intersection of Highway 395 and Highway 3 to Yerington, right near the CA-NV state line, about 20 miles SE of Minden, NV. Is that Topaz lake down there? It looks so small! There is a U.S. Marine base just south of Topaz Lake, over the state line in California.

I can't quite figure out the exact attraction of living here - far from civilization, hard-scrabble (wait - I'm from Corrales, NM, not much of a different kind of place, so I should just shut up).

Looking north along the CA-NV state line, just east of Lake Tahoe. Washoe Lake is evident - it's just on the other side of Carson City, NV.

Lake Tahoe, as seen from the southwest, looking past the big bathtub provided by the Sierra Nevada, into the Great Beyond of northern Nevada.

Bridge over the American River, on Highway 49, just south of Auburn, CA.

"Mamma Mia" At Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

When John Wright and myself handed our tickets to the usher, the usher got excited and said "Oooh! These are special tickets!" Then he showed us where they were: dead center, first row, of the 1600-seat house. Pointing at the conductor and lead keyboardist, the usher said: "Say hi! to Pepe!" We all said: "Hi Pepe!"

I sat directly behind "Pepe" (the program lists him as Michael Brennan). I could easily see the three electric guitarists and three other keyboardists in the orchestra pit. I could comfortably read Pepe's music, and if I didn't like what he was playing, I could easily have leaned forward and smacked him on the side of his head.

Beside us sat a couple from Winnipeg, Manitoba. The fellow was a radiologist, and was a frequent visitor to UCD in Davis. Especially at intermission, they listened appreciatively I told them all about Kelly Daniells, and her start with DMTC, and some of her background in Sacramento-area musical theater.

The show itself, from such a close vantage point, was like being swept away in an explosion of high energy - a nuclear detonation of high-energy singing and dancing, with no end of exciting shocks! I have nothing but the highest praise for the show. Kelly was fantastic as Sophie Sheridan, of course, but everyone else was a phenomenon too: Vicki Van Tassel as Tanya, Robin Baxter as Rosie, and Carol Linnea Johnson as Donna Sheridan. The men were great as well: Jefferson Slinkard, Rick Negron, and Andy Taylor (Taylor played Leo Bloom in "The Producers" when its tour last stopped in Sacramento, and he will be reprising the role in the Las Vegas version of "The Producers.") The supporting corps of performers were just as fantastic, or in some cases, even better.

The only concerns I had were safety issues - I freaked when Vicki Van Tassel skidded towards the orchestra pit, and I was concerned in the Dream sequence at the top of Act II, when Kelly's head was positioned at the whip end of a rapidly-moving bed. My concerns were apparently-unmerited, but in community theater, such moves would be problematic.

At the end of the show, I leaned forward and told the conductor: "Great job! Now, play "Chess"! He nodded and said "Actually, I'd like to play that."

After the show, we lingered briefly in the event Kelly came out early, but we were both hungry and tired and ABBA-blasted, so we departed.

"Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition"

Left: A silly mortal stands on a recreation of the Titanic's Grand Staircase, at "Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition", currently at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas.

We are all passengers on the Titanic - Jack Foster, Irish philosopher

"Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition" has been at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas since June 1st, and was joined more-recently by one of the two (independently-managed) travelling "Bodies" exhibitions. The "Titanic" and "Bodies" exhibitions are side-by-side at the Tropicana.

The ethical circumstances of the "Bodies" exhibition are somewhat murky - did the people whose pieces and parts are on display actually give their permission for this strange afterlife? In any event, the "Titanic" display sounded more interesting, and less-compromised, so I went to see it.

At the exhibition wall, a banner was painted announcing the paired exhibitions. The banner read:

Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies *

I found the banner annoying. I thought, "it was 1,573 bodies, or so, OK? Give it a rest already!"

At the beginning of the walk through, they hand you a White Star Line boarding pass for a real person on the Titanic. I drew Mr. David John Barton, age 22, who was travelling to Rochester, NY, to take a job with Kodak. He had twice-failed a physical exam for third-class passengers, was left behind as his friends sailed forth on other ships, but finally was deemed healthy enough for travel.

The exhibition featured great photographs, plus some film clips, showing the process of hand-riveting steel plates (an older process used in difficult-to-reach places) and the newer, hydraulic riveting process.

The heart of the exhibition was all the various artifacts of daily-life recovered from the depths. Some artifacts are good-as-new, but depending on the exact manufacturing processes involved, some artifacts have suffered salt-water damage over the decades. Well-made artifacts jostle with indifferently-made ones to catch your eye.

There were strange looking items, such as the Titanic's whistles, as well as "Kilroy's Sounding Indicator," which gonged every few minutes, and flashed a number, to signal that one of the coal furnaces in a boiler room needed coal. The Titanic had a first-class gymnasium, featuring dumbbells, a Turkish bath, a squash court that could be rented for $1 per half hour, plus an "electric camel." Mockups of a third-class cabin and a first-class stateroom were presented, as well as a frigid, ultra-air-conditioned first-class promenade deck. A twisted porthole and a decorative ironwork from the Verandah Window Cafe were also shown.

Dining and personal items include: jars, dishes, a chef's cap, a waiter's notepad, tiles, cooking pots, shaving gear, a medicine dropper with a rubber bulb, an eyedropper, a toothpaste jar, a shoe brush, and face mirrors made with faux-ivory plastic backing and handle (plastics were just being invented).

One big surprise is how much paper they recovered intact from the depths. In 1912, the federal government still had not taken full control of the authority to issue money (that was in 1914, I believe), so there were a variety of dollar bills issued by obscure national banks all across the U.S., featuring Indian chieftains, wildlife, and all sorts of people, including the late President William McKinley. Many European banks looked upon this colorful array of paper money with suspicion, so most Americans travelling internationally at the time carried British pounds instead.

The fuel use statistics confounded me: I don't even know if they are correct. One pound of coal consumed per foot of travel, or 60 pounds every 1.5 seconds. The Titanic carried 6,000 tons of coal!

Towards the end of the maze-like exhibition, they played a soundtrack featuring what sounded like New-Age whalesong, which conjured up emotions of aquatic dread. They have a large scale model of what the forward portion of the Titanic looks like today on the ocean bottom. The Titanic is rusting away rather quickly: in 40 to 90 years, the remaining structure will utterly collapse.

The last room features personal items that have been tracked directly to specific people: Adolphe Saalfeld's perfume vials, Howard Irwin's business cards, Marion Meanwell's valise, and items belonging to George Rosenshine and Franz Pulbaum. I saw a woman quietly weeping as she looked at the surprisingly well-preserved black leather shoes belonging to Edgar Samuel Andrew, an Argentine-born English teenager.

Andrew's story was a real surprise. He had been summoned from England by his family to attend his brother's wedding in the United States, but like many others, he had been bumped from his first-choice of trans-Atlantic ship by a coal miner's strike, and he was forced to depart sooner than he wished. Andrew was very annoyed:

Eighty-nine years after the sinking of the TITANIC, a conservation team and researchers from RMS Titanic, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SOST - news; the company owning the salvage rights to the famous ship) discovered that a suitcase brought up from the wreck site this past summer contained the personal belongings of a seventeen- year-old man named Edgar Samuel Andrew. Mr. Andrew, a citizen of Argentina, boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England, not far from where he was attending school.

Ironically, an exhibit of Titanic artifacts opened in Argentina in March 2001, and researchers were able to locate the family members of Edgar Samuel Andrew. Further investigation revealed a remarkable letter sent by Andrew to his friend in Argentina, Josey Cowan, just two days before he was to board the TITANIC.

Edgar had purchased a ticket to board the Steamship OCEANIC, but due to a coal strike, he was forced to change his ticket and go aboard the TITANIC. He wrote:

"You figure, Josey, I had to leave on the 17th this (month) aboard the ''Oceanic", but due to the coal strike that steamer cannot depart, so I have to go one week earlier on board the ''Titanic". It really seems unbelievable that I have to leave a few days before your arrival, but there's no help for it, I've got to go''.

"You figure, Josey, I am boarding the greatest steamship in the world, but I don't really feel proud of it at all, right now I wish the 'Titanic' were lying at the bottom of the ocean''.

The Titanic Exhibition captures a moment flash-frozen in time - a different, vanished world, just out of living memory, but still intimately connected with every part of our own world.

And Mr. David Barton? Like so many third-class passengers, he did not survive.