WATB (Whiny Ass Titty Babies)

Gotta start somewhere:

Washington Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards basketball team and Verizon Center, yesterday blasted Democratic plans to kill a sports ticket loophole from lawmakers’ $50 gift limit, saying it would damage an important local business.

“We support the concept of full and open disclosure on the part of lobbyists and lawmakers to comply with ethics standards,” said Matt Williams, senior vice president at WS&E. “However, we oppose a total ban on all corporate entertainment opportunities. And this ban of tickets to sporting events as gifts will cause a negative impact on our business.

“Probably more than any other franchises in professional sports, Washington, D.C.-area teams count business from lobbyists as a contributing factor to our bottom line. This ban will certainly negatively affect the business we do with one of the major industries in our region — the federal government.”

...The new House rules eliminate the wiggle room that stadium and arena officials have created for themselves by leaving prices off tickets to luxury suites and skyboxes.

“A gift of a ticket to a sporting or entertainment event shall be valued at the face value of the ticket or, in the case of a ticket without a face value, at the highest cost of a ticket with a face value for the event,” stated the new rule, which Democrats circulated yesterday.

It remains to be seen whether lobbyists or other benefactors can continue holding fundraisers for lawmakers. Such events are considered in-kind contributions to campaigns, and their propriety would depend on whether the value of the contribution exceeds campaign contributions. Now that the House has re-evaluated the worth of luxury box tickets, the Federal Election Commission could revisit in-kind contributions.

House Democratic leaders have thrown a new twist in the ethics rules for the 110th Congress by ending the long-standing exemption of certain sports and music tickets from the $50 limit on gifts that lawmakers and their aides are allowed to accept.

The new rules will take place just in time to foil the hopes of any House officials dreaming of free tickets to next month’s Super Bowl in sunny Miami. Likewise, young staffers hoping to catch the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Verizon Center later this month, or older aides looking forward to Rod Stewart’s performance the following evening, will have to pay their own way if the tickets cost $50 or more.

... In recent years it has been common practice for lawmakers and members of their staffs to accept tickets, often to the best seats in the arena, from lobbyists and other would-be friends, even though House rules prohibited them from accepting gifts worth more than $50. That’s because House ethics officials had accepted the arguments of lobbyists that individual event tickets that are part of a season-long rental of luxury suites could be valued below the limit. But to good-government groups it was clear that the tickets were really worth more.

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said lawmakers often accepted free tickets from lobbyists.

“They did a lot, particularly for very important events like the Super Bowl, for which tickets would be normally impossible to get,” said Claybrook, who added that lawmakers and aides often received tickets after they were sold out to the general public and would be “extremely expensive” to purchase from other vendors.

Dry Chinchilla

I thought the place looked terribly dry! In 2006, the town of Chinchilla, Queensland, AU, out on the Warrego Highway in the agricultural district of the Darling Downs, had just 174.0 mm of rain, the lowest annual rainfall ever measured in 117 years, demolishing the previous annual low record of 302.9 mm in 1922, and barely making a quarter of the average annual rainfall of 668.6 mm. Good grief!

Progress Understanding Chickens

Helps shed some light on the broiler underworld:

A chicken going "tck, tck, tck" as it pecks is announcing the presence of food. That clucking makes the chicken the first animal other than primates that's been shown to make sounds that, like words, represent something in the environment, researchers say.

... The old tests, however, left a nagging possibility that the clucks just trigger a reflex to search for food, Evans says. Now, he and Linda Evans, also of Macquarie University, have used a different approach that's "given us confidence," he says, to label the chicken clucks as representational signals.

... For the new tests, the Evanses went back to food calls. For example, males go "tck, tck, tck" upon discovering anything edible.... Hens then stalk over to investigate. They take a tidbit from a male's beak or stare intently at the ground. "They look like people who've lost their glasses," says Chris Evans.

In half the tests, the researchers scattered a few kernels of corn onto the floor. That's enough food for a hen to notice, but nowhere near enough to satisfy its craving. The hens ate the corn before hearing a male's clucks. In the other half of the tests, hens encountered no food.

After each hen heard a recording of a male's food call, those that had already received corn spent less than 3 seconds peering at the ground. But birds that hadn't been fed searched, on average, for 7.5 seconds.

The difference in response times reflected whether a bird already knew that food was available, so the call isn't an automatic trigger for some reflex to search the ground, the researchers argue. In contrast, a rooster's ground-intruder call didn't evoke different responses from the fed and unfed groups, the Evanses say in a paper available online and in an upcoming Biology Letters.

Getting My Names Confused Again

I had marvelled about the discontinuities between the American and Australian pop music universes, and how 'The Veronicas' were big in Australia, but small here, but apparently I had confused the local Sacramento band called 'The Veronicas' (now 'Beyond Veronica') with 'The Veronicas' from Brisbane, Queensland, AU.

It's all so confusing. I have trouble remembering the names of people I see every day, much less rock bands.

But still, it leads one to wonder if a backwater band in Australia could make its way to the big time by spoofing its fan base, and sell lots of music back home by bragging about the huge success of a (barely-existent) American tour.

Ah, probably not. Damn that Internet - knowledge is too-widely dispersed these days!

Monolith

We hired apes to be coffin followers, but all they did was get drunk at the wake, break bones over each other's heads, and run off to found a civilization.

Entitled, "RIP, Arthur C. Clarke": created by 'the legendary shark' over at B3ta.

Ultra-Dry Murray River Basin

The worst month ever recorded for southern Australia's most-important river network:

Just 34 gigalitres of water flowed into the river system in December - a tenth of what is normally expected and the lowest since records began in 1892.

... According to new figures, last year was the driest on record for the nation's biggest river system, with just 1317 gigalitres entering the river. The previous lowest inflow was 1740 gigalitres in 1902, during the Federation drought.

David Dreverman, general manager of River Murray Water, said January was historically a drier month than December and no relief was in sight until more usual levels of rain fell.

Flatback Turtles

Emerge from their nests and head to sea on the western shore of Cape York, Queensland.

More On "Apocalypto"

W. admires Mel Gibson:

There are two true-life Hollywood success stories which fill me with admiration for the people involved. One is the story of Sylvester Stallone's breakthrough where he wrote a screenplay, but refused to sell it unless he could play the lead; after it was made, the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1976. The other story is Mel Gibson's idea of making a story of Jesus's crucifixion from a Christian point of view, and historically accurate even to the languages spoken by the actors. Hollywood refused to support it, so Gibson made it with his own money, and it became one of the most-watched films of all time. After that, I resolved to see whatever movie he made next.

Apocalypto is one of those rare movies which are impossible to leave to use the restroom once the action gets going (Titanic is the only other one I can think of at the moment). After the first half hour of character setup, once the fighting started, there was no let-up until the end.

To me, the most important contribution that it made was to show a native American culture, the Mayans, in a predatory light. The current "progressive" view of native societies in general, and native Americans in particular, is governed by a childish utopian fantasy, partly 1700s Rousseau, and partly 1960s counterculture. On the contrary, anyone familiar with archeology knows that native American societies were consumed by continuous warfare, just like contemporaneous European societies. Some recent movies (Black Robe, Last of the Mohicans) have shown individual Indians acting realistically, with self-serving motives. However, Apocalypto's contribution of bringing a native American society within the circle of Man's Inhumanity to Man is a much-needed wake-up call for the reverential "Great Spirit" paradigm.

The second attribute of the film which commands respect is the way the primitive society (not the Mayans) was portrayed during the first half-hour. Watching it, I had the feeling that I was seeing real aborigines living their actual lives - there was no sense of actors acting a script written by someone else. This part of the movie was filmmaking of the highest order.

Another well-done part of the film was the feeling when the aborigines are brought to the Mayan city. After seeing their primitive lifestyle, juxtaposed against the wealth, technology, organization, diversity, brutality, chaos, and noise of the Mayan city, one can feel something of the shock that millions of captives and slaves throughout world history must have felt when brought to their captor's cities; a feeling of fear, bewilderment, wonder, confusion, fascination, dread, and hopelessness.

Although I enjoyed Apocalypto, it also had some flaws, which it shares with hundreds of other movies. The second half of the film is a relentless pursuit of the hero by his captors. It reminds one of the Fugitive, or even the Terminator. However, the hero takes too much abuse - he is injured too severely, too often, and he endures too much, to be realistic. At its core, Apocalypto is another movie where one simply has to suspend disbelief in order to appreciate it.

Mel Gibson took a huge risk by funding "Passion of the Christ" with his own money, but the tremendous success of the movie meant he also reaped the entire profit. Filmmaking is a very expensive venture, and most filmmakers are under tremendous pressures to cut corners for the sake of money. In addition, one or two failures can destroy a filmmaker's career.

Gibson's big success makes him one of the very few filmmakers, perhaps the only one ever, completely released from those pressures. He could make nothing but duds for the rest of his life, and he'd be OK. But there's no indication at the moment he's going to make duds. It's an enviable place to be!

Regarding the relentless pursuit, and the impossibly narrow escapes, Gibson simply follows the path blazed by Steven Spielberg, particularly 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark". This class of hyperdriven adventure movie tends to make me ill, so improbable the escapes, but it certainly leads to a thrilling cinematic experience.

Gibson also uses the "childish utopian fantasy, partly 1700s Rousseau, and partly 1960s counterculture" of portraying simple village life as a kind of pastoral. This is not to criticize Gibson, only to suggest that the fantasy is very deeply embedded in our culture, and probably will be there always. Gibson uses the fantasy, even if only to break it, for the purpose of the story.

I also liked the attention paid to rendering Mayan/Aztec civilization. The Spanish did much to try to erase that experience from world culture, and it takes scholarship, imaginative leaps and attention to detail to recreate it.

It's interesting to ponder how the American Southwest fit into the jigsaw of Mayan/Aztec civilization. It apparently was a satellite of the greater civilization, in some way. A considerable amount of turquoise from Cerrillos, NM ended up in Central America. The ball courts found universally in Central America are found as far north as southern Arizona, but, interestingly, not on the Colorado Plateau, signifying some kind of cultural or religious frontier along the Mogollon Rim. And I've often marvelled how the archaeologists at Chaco Canyon excavated macaw bones there. Macaws are native to Costa Rica and Panama. Amazing!

General Casey

About to get thrown under the Bush Administration bus. Poor guy. Now he's being treated as some kind of quitter, and all because he followed Bush Administration policy.

Dirty Tricks, Alive And Well For 2008

These media guys are about as subtle as cement:

But instead of asking "Where's Osama?" the graphic over the two Islamists read "Where's Obama?" referencing the surname of popular Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama.

A later segment of the show, which took up the topic of the 2008 presidential election, did discuss Senator Obama's political prospects if he chooses to run for president.

Blitzer apologized during this morning's coverage of the Gerald Ford funeral.

"I just want to make a correction, an apology, Soledad, for what we did yesterday. In 'The Situation Room,' we had a bad graphic," Blitzer said in a transcript delivered to RAW STORY by CNN's public relations staff. "We were doing a piece on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in this new year 2007. Unfortunately, instead of saying "where is Osama," it said "where is Obama." I'm going to be calling Senator Barack Obama to make a personal apology."

A CNN employee also told RAW STORY an additional apology was offered by Soledad O'Brien earlier in the morning.

Bloggers rapidly highlighted the faulty graphic last night. At Daily Kos, a diary started by one user included comments from hundreds of users debating whether or not the graphic was constructed deliberately. While some noted the proximity of the program to New Year's Eve might have resulted in sleepy graphic artists at the cable network, others insisted that the 'B' and 'S' keys are far from one another on the keyboard, making a mere typographical error unlikely. Instead, they saw an anti-Obama bias in the news media as the source of the CNN graphic.

A variety of incidents over the course of recent months have created a perception that pundits and news organizations are attempting to link the popular freshman senator and possible presidential candidate with militant Islam.

Initially, a variety of news organizations and pundits began pointing out that Obama's middle name was "Hussein," given to him by his father who was born and raised a Muslim. In early November, Chris Matthews on MSNBC suggested that the "Hussein" moniker will "be interesting down the road." Republican pundits and strategists then began referring to Obama's middle name more pointedly. On an MSNBC broadcast, GOP strategist Ed Rogers said Obama's full name with a deliberately heavy emphasis on his middle name, and radio show host Rush Limbaugh later called him "Barack Hussein Odumbo." (A list of these and other Obama-related incidents are available at Media Matters for America.)

On a Dec. 11 broadcast of Blitzer's show, other moves suggested an effort to sustain a meme on Obama's Islamic links. First, a commentary by Jeff Greenfield asked "Is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does?" and answered, "Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." He thereupon described Obama as a "sartorial timebomb." Greenfield later insisted that his remarks were merely a joke.

On the same broadcast, CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos made the Osama-Obama link. She noted, "Someone could confuse Obama with Osama. Only one little consonant differentiates the two names. And as if that similarity weren't enough, how about sharing the name of a former dictator?"

Following on these incidents, a conservative pundit went as far as to suggest that Obama might be a kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate. An article by syndicated columnist Debbie Schlussel on December 18th asked "is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"

The Union Calls For A Strike

Against Blue Man Group

Those zany, resourceful Blue Men -- making instruments out of pipes and empty oil drums, creating art out of junk. But local stagehands locked in a labor battle with the Las Vegas-based production are proving no less resourceful. The local branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees recently got union federation AFL-CIO to call for a worldwide boycott of the avant-garde production. On Dec. 20, union federation AFL-CIO asked union families nationwide to boycott the show that has productions in Las Vegas, New York, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, London, Toronto and Amsterdam.

"Lemur" - Deborah's Newest Painting

I sent Deborah the following E-Mail:

Currently, our theater group is doing "Mame", and somehow this painting seems very much in the spirit of "Mame", but I wanted to ask a question. What is the name of the ship in the background? (the pixellation prevents me from determining it). Probably not Titanic????

The connection between the lemur and the rest of the painting is elusive (by design of course - one of these things is different). So, I'm thinking:

• Everyone comes from Madagascar (probably not true);
• The lemur is an alien import, like cane toads and tumbleweed (seems unlikely);
• We all descend from a common ancestor some 30 million years ago (likely true, but irrelevant);
• Lemurs are a fashion accessory (likely true, but irrelevant);
• They are all creatures of the night (likely true, and more relevant).
  
  In any event, it's a nice painting!

Deborah replies:

> What is the name of the ship in the background? (the pixellation prevents me from determining it). Probably not Titanic????
No, it is HMS Queen Mary to commemorate B/D spent on board in Long
Beach with my niece.

> They are all creatures of the night (likely true, and more relevant).
This + the fact I love their stare.

Science Marches On

And opens a whole new can of worms:

SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

But the researchers argue that the work is valid, shedding light on the “broad question” of what determines sexual orientation. They insist the work is not aimed at “curing” homosexuality.

Ghost Riding The Whip

This sounds like fun:

Hyphy was born in the San Francisco Bay cities of Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo in the late 1990s, and devotees often hold late-night car rallies called "sideshows" where crowds perform risky stunts, including ghost riding.

"Ghost riding" refers to the absence of a driver. "The whip" is urban slang for your car. Typically, the driver drops the car into neutral and dances around and on top of the vehicle while it inches forward.

Sometimes it is a solo act; sometimes a half-dozen or more passengers get out and dance, too. The stunt is usually performed late at night, on a deserted road or in a parking lot.

But also exceedingly dangerous:

"It did not take Einstein to look at this thing and say this was a recipe for disaster," said Pete Smith, a police spokesman in Stockton. "We could see the potential for great injury or death."

Earlier this month, Davender Gulley, a ghost-riding 18-year-old, died after his head slammed into a parked car while he was hanging out the window of an SUV in Stockton, police said. In October, a 36-year-old man dancing on top of a moving car fell off, hit his head and died in what authorities said was Canada's first ghost riding fatality.

People have been doing similar things for years. I remember being in the parking lot at Santa Fe High School, NM, in 1971, when a car rolled by with two teenage girls on the hood. The car slowly turned left and the right-hand girl slowly rolled off and bounced on the pavement. It's horrifying to watch all that flesh shake like jelly upon meeting an immovable object (like the slow-mo cameras capture so well at professional football games).

Surveillance Cameras

Help solve serial murders in Philadelphia.

Remembering Names

So, I guess I'm not the only one who has trouble:

Cate Blanchett on Faye Dunaway mistaking her for Kate Winslet: "Faye came up to me at a screening and wanted me to do this project. I said it sounded fantastic. So she turned to her friend and said, 'Debbie, this is Kate Winslet.' I had to ask -- 'So, do you want me to do it or do you want Kate to do it?'"

"Mame" Opens The New Year At DMTC

The last week has been as intense and chaotic as I can recall since - since the last time I did a musical! No, really, since at least "Victor/Victoria" at RSP, in 2005. The difficulty was I joined the cast late (on account of the Australian trip) and missed a few critical musical rehearsals, so it's been catch-up ever since. Plus, it was difficult for everyone to juggle the holidays with rehearsals, and it just seemed that adequate time just wasn't available.

On the other hand, most of the cast were quite experienced, and Ron Cisneros was succinct and efficient as director, knowing exactly what he could reasonably ask for in a hurry. So, we got the show airborne in time for the preview, and after some fine-tuning rehearsals this week, we'll be in good shape for a successful January run.

From my skewed viewpoint, the biggest problems opening night seemed to be technical: lights, cues, etc. Apparently, at one point, there was an open mike in the dressing room and the audience heard a few off-color backstage comments. The cast was running on adrenaline, and so there were fewer mistakes than I expected - the main players largely-remembered the dialogue! - but still, there were a couple of missed or delayed entrances.

Dancewise, some folks were a little out-of-position in the big dance numbers. Dancing can become bowling with people under those circumstances, but we adjusted and kept the bowling soft and easy, in order to avoid unduly alarming the audience.

I'm having some kind of an identity crisis with the Act II dance number 'That's How Young I Feel.' I'm 50 years old, but from the script, it's clear I'm supposed to be some kind of bobby-soxer - aged 17 at most. But since the time frame is roughly 1940, then I should be my mom's age. Should I be Deanna Durbin's date, or, God forbid, my mom's date? And why should I sing "I'm gonna ask my mom, can I go to the junior prom"? Who made her the boss? Am I not an adult? And who am I, exactly? How did I get here? Where am I? Who knew the Oedipal tensions of this carefree number?

I'm so tired - it'll be a long week, even without the psychoanalysis....

Political Fashion

Dark, but funny dig from Talking Points:

In unexpected dig against Jeff Greenfield, entire Bush war cabinet adopts Ahmadinejad look.

LA Times Top-Ten Most Viewed Stories For 2006

We like schlock!

Annoyed Christian Goes Postal

Or at least starts issuing challenges to atheists:

By celebrating Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, you show how out of touch you are with the overwhelming majority of the world's population.

... So much for tolerance and open-mindedness. In Dawkins' view, and presumably Singer's, religion is the source of all evil, while atheism is the path of enlightenment, brotherhood and liberation.

... And never mind that even non-religious academics, such as Prof Rodney Stark, have claimed with massive amounts of documentation that Christianity created Western civilisation.

Prof Stark points out that most of the benefits of the West, such as freedom, democracy and prosperity, are largely due to the Christian religion.

Another secular author says that for all the slaughters in the name of religion over the centuries, there is another side of the ledger.

Every time I travel in the poorest parts of Africa, I see missionary hospitals that are the only source of assistance to desperate people.

God may not help amputees sprout new limbs, but churches do galvanise their members to support soup kitchens, homeless shelters and clinics that otherwise would not exist.

Religious constituencies have pushed for more action on AIDS, malaria, sex trafficking and genocide in Darfur.

Believers often give large proportions of their incomes to charities that are a lifeline to the neediest.

I am not aware of any hospitals or charitable works set up by atheists.

And never mind that many noted philosophers have pointed out that it was the Christian emphasis on reason that gave rise to modern science.

Singer and Dawkins are way out of their depth, showing their ignorance about the gospel accounts in particular and theology in general. They really should keep silent on subjects they clearly know so little about.

... Singer says we should all worship at the altar of reason.

That is just what the revolutionaries argued in the French Revolution when churches were ransacked and believers were sent to the guillotine.

The truth is, a lot of open minds need to be closed for repairs. The nasty diatribes launched by Dawkins and Singer are examples of secular fundamentalism and intolerance.

Indeed, they seek to make a sharp distinction between faith and reason, between religion and science. They claim that science gives us truth, but faith is simply myth.

But more sober minds on both sides of the debate recognise these to be false polarisations. Faith, at least in the Christian religion, is informed by reason. It may at times go beyond reason, but it does not run counter to it.

And the scientific enterprise is also characterised by faith commitment.

There are all kinds of unproven assumptions and presuppositions which may or may not be testable.

The myth of complete scientific neutrality and objectivity has been countered by many important thinkers.

Singer is free to engage in her simplistic thinking and crude materialism, in which only matter matters.

But for billions, non-material things such as truth, beauty, justice, love and even God are very meaningful realities, which the narrow world of atheism will never fully enjoy nor understand.

Toad War

I should have killed that toad at Mt. Glorious when I had a chance, but I had grown leery of killing things:

Environmentalists have asked Australia's military to wage war on cane toads, which have spread across the country's north in near-plague proportions.

The toads, introduced in a batch of 101 from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed bid to control native cane beetles, have spread 3,000 km (1,900 miles) from northeast Queensland to Darwin in Australia's tropical north. There are now more than 200 million.

"We need as many people on the ground as we can possibly get, and if the military can work out strategies for controlling toads on their ground, well that's fine with us," Frog Watch spokesman Ian Morris told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Wednesday.

Cane toads are one of Australia's worst environmental mistakes, ranking alongside the catastrophic introduction of rabbits.

The spread of the toads, whose skin is poisonous, has led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls. A quoll is a cat-sized marsupial.

Killing the hardy toads with anything from golf clubs to air rifles has become a northern Australian pastime, and their carcasses are turned into comic tourist ornaments and fertilizer.

Scientist Waxes Poetical About The Mars Rovers

Those rovers can inspire!:

Which is why these little rovers mean so much to me. They're MY eyes on Mars, my representatives there. I talked in that last poem about Spirit about "walking alongside" the rover, and that's really how I feel. Like many "Mars enthusiasts", I check rover-related websites (Exploratorium, UMSF etc) several times a day, looking for new pics, following the latest leg of the journey. Every time the rovers move and bring a new horizon into view I feel a genuine thrill of discovery, of exploration. That run-up to the edge of VC was UNBEARABLE! Every day so close, so close... then we were there, "Oppy" and I, on the edge, looking into and across it... well, Steve Squyres' long, tight-throated pause in his interview with Doug Ellison on the Unmanned Spaceflight forum (Google it, you won't regret it) described my own feelings superbly. It was like the very first time I saw Yosemite Valley, after emerging from that long tunnel into the sunlight to see The View, where giant hands had reached down from the heavens and wrenched the Earth apart. Look. At. That.

That Depends On What The Meaning Of The Word "Success" Is

Regarding the effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Brings back memories of what the meaning of the word "is" is:

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

Las Vegas School Board Meetings

Looks like I've been missing out! Maybe better than a Las Vegas show!:

NEAR THE END OF THE MOST RECENT school board meeting, Clark County Board of School Trustees President Ruth Johnson was wailing and begging for mercy.

"I'm not going to allow myself to be attacked! Please don't attack me personally anymore!" she wept.

Trustee Shirley Barber pounded angrily on a table with an I-will-bury-you force.

"I'm going to file an ethics complaint with the Attorney General! You do not control me! You do not control this board!" Barber bellowed back, pinning Johnson against the rhetorical ropes with blow after blow.

"We're violating laws here!" Barber continued. "We have not been honest in evaluating ourselves and our superintendent! This is not acceptable!"

Johnson shrank, punch-drunk, and babbled tearfully about false accusations and her family's honor. Yet that didn't stop Barber from pummeling her. There was no referee. Johnson screamed at the audio man to shut down the microphones. Barber howled at him to leave them on.

The few stragglers in the audience (it was late) were riveted to their seats, wide-eyed, mouths agape.

...But Barber is black. As is a large contingent of the area she represents. For years Barber has watched schools in her district struggle without basic necessities while schools in more affluent areas have flourished.

...This gruesome threesome that Barber consistently condemns as impediments to progress in the school district are Johnson and trustees Sheila Moulton and Mary Beth Scow. An unspoken implication of their cat-fighting is that the rumble is, sadly, really about race and religion.

"The past is not dead," William Faulkner said. "In fact, it's not even past."

... What finally stopped it? I did. In 20 years of teaching I've stopped hundreds of such fights. That's part of what I do. I'm a trained professional. I started applauding loudly while the women were going at it.

... "Thank you! That was excellent! I love performance art! You should be proud of yourselves! I'm sure 18,000 teachers in the district would appreciate the incompetence you have demonstrated here tonight as they slave for poverty-level wages in the trenches of our overcrowded classrooms! Bravo! Beautiful! Thank you!"

Adam Departs For The East Coast

I'm interpreting the sudden calm in the Sacramento noosphere to mean that Adam Taylor has departed for his family's home in North Carolina. This is for the good, since Sacramento can be quite harsh for dreamers, especially in the winter, and it's always better to be near family.

I will miss Adam a lot, although he often caused no small amount of chaos this year, starting at the end of January when he began working on various projects around my house. He meant well, but he just didn't have the resources necessary to make a satisfactory go at life out on the West Coast.

Dreamers frequently misread California. The entire chaotic history of the Gold Rush is one example. My own family's abortive move to San Diego in 1971, when I was a teenager, was a particularly-vivid, personal, second example. Adam's adventure is third.

Down, maybe, but not out. Adam intends to make another shot at California in two years or so. Maybe then he and E. will spar again. They both kept each other on their toes. Not always a bad thing....

Saki has a story called "The Unrest Cure". It should be dedicated to Adam....

A Dream About Time Management

Under various pressures ("Mame" letting out quite late; the normal, but early, Friday 8 a.m. staff meeting) I fell asleep last night at 1:30 a.m. (early for me), awoke at 5:30 a.m., but fell asleep again.

I dreamt I needed to take a train to the East Coast. Waiting with me at the train station were a number of local musical theater stalwarts (e.g., Michael Miiller, Scott Griffith).

I realized I was mildly hungry, so I left the station and walked six or eight miles to a country-style restaurant, where, after much shopping, I decided to purchase four convenience-store-size packets of Fig Newton bars. Then I walked two miles over to Steve and Jan's house, where there was much animated conversation. I unpacked and removed my shoes to get comfortable, and discovered a variety of unsuspected debris in the shoes, including sawdust, chunks of wood, and waffle fragments.

Realizing it was getting late, I repacked, but had trouble finding everything, including the Australian money. So I hurriedly tried to leave, but just then, a church group arrived. As I tried to slip out the door and down the sidewalk, a reed player in the DMTC orchestra waylaid me. She explained that a garish light-blue-and-purple oval painted on the side of Steve and Jan's house had the wrong combination of colors and glues, suitable only for releasing hazardous fumes. I politely listened, but in the distance, I could hear the train approaching....

I awoke at 7:36 a.m., and hurriedly scrambled for work, leaving by 7:55 a.m. for the two-mile drive. And when I arrived, I discovered the staff meeting had been cancelled (the E-Mail was sent out somewhat late last night).

I think I need a secretary....

Getting "Mame" Ready

Boy, I think we're all beginning to get a little ragged from putting together a show (DMTC's "Mame" previews New Year's Eve) at the same time we are Christmas shopping and attending to a myriad of year-end details! Rehearsals start earlier than ever, and end just as late as they ever did! If I get there by 6 p.m., I'm late! If I leave before 11 p.m., I'm early! Dang!

Strange Pairings

For those who don't like funerals of soulless Republican Presidents, there is always the consolation of funerals for soulful musicians: Ray Charles died about the same time as Ronald Reagan and James Brown died about the same time as Gerald Ford.

A Second Opinion About Australian Drought

A useful second opinion about Australia's drought.

The weather forecasts for the next week actually look pretty favorable, with lots of rain hitting drought-stricken SE Australia. Various cut-off lows from the jet stream are helping out, which seems counter to my understanding that tropical rains are supposed to be making the biggest dent right now. But from wherever it comes from, it's welcome. Hopefully they'll get enough rain to keep all the forests from burning down and all the rivers from drying up.:

THE drought gripping southeast Australia is due to natural variations in climate rather than the greenhouse effect.

... "It is very, very highly likely that what we are seeing at the moment is natural climatic variability," researcher Barrie Hunt told The Australian, saying the CSIRO's model of 10,000 years of natural climate variability put the current drought into perspective.

... Mr Hunt's research focused on three 500 sq km sites in Australia: one on the Queensland-NSW border, going down to the coast; southeast Australia, which included Melbourne, Sydney and much of the Murray River basin; and southwest Western Australia, including the Perth region.

He looked at the frequency of dry sequences lasting eight years or longer.

"In each of those places there are about 30 occasions over 10,000 years where you get one of these eight or more years sequences," he said.

"The longest sequence was 14 years in Queensland-NSW, 11 in the southeast and 10 in the southwest."

Mr Hunt said the Queensland-NSW area had had an 800-year period without an eight-year dry, "but there is another period of 462 years where you get five of these".

Mr Hunt said the onset, duration and termination of the long dries could not be predicted because they were due to random processes. He said the current drought was an example of a dry sequence that began with an El Nino weather system.

"It starts a drought and you get sea-surface temperatures flickering backwards and forwards a bit. The rainfall may go back to fairly near normal but it is still below average, and then you get another El Nino," he said.

"This can go on for a decade. Eventually it breaks. You don't know why, it is a random thing. This is just part of the beauty of the climatic system."

Most of Victoria is in a 10-year dry sequence, the Murray River is in its sixth year of drought, while Brisbane and much of NSW are also experiencing a six-year dry.

"It is important that people realise that natural variability says it will break. It may not break next year, because one of these things went on for 14 years, but it will break," Mr Hunt said.

... Mr Hunt said the dry sequence in the southwest was different, with a decline over 30 years, which included the odd year of above-average rainfall.

"It isn't violating what I am saying, but it is a very unusual sequence of events there," he said.

Gerald Ford, Do Not RIP

So, kind, genial Gerald Ford is dead. Kind, genial, and a fool - the one who let Richard Nixon escape in 1974 without paying for his Watergate crimes with hard prison time. Ford was desperate to rid himself of the Watergate monkey, but we all paid a price for his desperation. If Nixon had been tried and served time, Dick Cheney's ambitious program to resurrect the (supposedly) lost powers of the presidency would have been handicapped, and George Bush would have been much less able to embark on his current series of madcap criminal escapades, from Guatanamo to the Iraq War to spying on everyone. It was time then, and it is time now, for the Chief Executive to pay some kind of real penalty for using the Constitution as firewood kindling.

Disappearing Act

I'm skeptical about blaming the disappearance of a tropical island entirely on global warming. River delta islands are constantly being reworked by tides and river sedimentation, so some other cause may have had more to do with the island's disappearance than global warming.

Recovering Archimedes

From the pages of a palimpsest, or recycled book, using new technologies.

Self-Diagnosis

Really interesting article regarding Michael DeBakey's aneurysm. At age 98, DeBakey is, by far, the world's most-experienced heart surgeon, the fellow who has transplanted more hearts than anyone, so he was uniquely-qualified to advise his own treatment:

“It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician,” Dr. DeBakey said, adding: “As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You’re thinking, What could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you’re perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.”

But when his heart kept beating, Dr. DeBakey suspected that he was not having a heart attack. As he sat alone, he decided that a ballooning had probably weakened the aorta, the main artery leading from the heart, and that the inner lining of the artery had torn, known as a dissecting aortic aneurysm.

No one in the world was more qualified to make that diagnosis than Dr. DeBakey because, as a younger man, he devised the operation to repair such torn aortas, a condition virtually always fatal. The operation has been performed at least 10,000 times around the world and is among the most demanding for surgeons and patients.

...He refused to be admitted to a hospital until late January. As his health deteriorated and he became unresponsive in the hospital in early February, his surgical partner of 40 years, Dr. George P. Noon, decided an operation was the only way to save his life. But the hospital’s anesthesiologists refused to put Dr. DeBakey to sleep because such an operation had never been performed on someone his age and in his condition. Also, they said Dr. DeBakey had signed a directive that forbade surgery.

As the hospital’s ethics committee debated in a late-night emergency meeting on the 12th floor of Methodist Hospital, Dr. DeBakey’s wife, Katrin, barged in to demand that the operation begin immediately.

In the end, the ethics committee approved the operation; an anesthesiology colleague of Dr. DeBakey’s, who now works at a different hospital, agreed to put him to sleep; and the seven-hour operation began shortly before midnight on Feb. 9. “It is a miracle,” Dr. DeBakey said as he sat eating dinner in a Houston restaurant recently. “I really should not be here.”

Watching The Christmas Shoppers

Fun weekend doing amateur anthropology - watching the Christmas shoppers at the mall!

Saw one woman at Macy's downtown plowing through a Bin O' Purses. She had ten purses arrayed on her left arm as she furiously dug with her right hand, but the more she dug the more agitated she got. Don't know why - presumably that 'special' purse had stolen away in the night, taken by Santa for some other well-deserving lady.

In contrast, the mood at the Galleria in Roseville was calm - as relaxed a group of Christmas shoppers as I have ever seen. Everyone well-dressed and well-mannered, with the ladies arrayed in pastel sweaters. I saw one kid denied his immediate wants by his father, and the kid started blubbering, but since he was behind the glass of a storefront, he looked more like a museum exhibit than a real kid.

One thing that struck me was that the shoppers weren't carrying that many shopping bags. There were several possible reasons, including:

• the majority of their shopping was already done, so they were there on Christmas Eve mostly to socialize with friends;
• they were buying smaller objects that were easier to conceal; but also maybe,
• despite all appearances, they didn't have that much money, and were socializing out of necessity than out of desire.

The last possibility might make sense if people are overextended on credit - the consumer economy of the last decade finally sailing into the coral reefs of debt. But you'd never guess on appearances alone!

There were other vignettes too:

• saw an eight-year-old girl skating by with shoes that were unfamiliar to me - a cross between roller blades and tennis shoes, with wheels on the heels only;
• saw a teenage girl with a hot pink cast on her right hand - ah, I bet there's a story there!;
• saw a man walking into Macy's with several leaf rakes - seemed pretty random;
• saw a woman with a SARS-type mask in the Food Court - wonder why?;
• saw a woman in Macy's with her three-year-old son. The boy ran ahead, reached out and touched the leg of a female mannikin, and the mother said, with an eerie high-pitched voice and a plastic grimace that would have made film director David Lynch proud: "So, you like to touch the girls!"

Apocalypto II

Went to Thunder Valley Saturday night. Did very well for a time, up as far as $1,800, then slowly declined to $1,100 ahead, then lost money so abruptly it took my breath away. Total loss: $685.

"Apocalypto"

Mel Gibson does Central American adventure! It was especially interesting to see how how Gibson rendered the bloody ceremonial rituals (something rarely attempted by Hollywood, partly because the censorious Spanish Conquistadors, appalled by the bloodshed, did such a thorough job of erasing the historical record). All that turquoise, too (much of which, by the way, would have had to have been mined in Cerrillos, New Mexico, and traded south)! The movie works very well as thrilling adventure, with a message of defiance against all odds:

I am Jaguar Paw! This is my forest! My sons and their sons will hunt here after I am gone!

Nevertheless, there were plenty of cringe-inducing moments, like the whole locker-room, boys-will-be-boys opening, or the conflation of Mayans with Aztecs. Plus the fortuitous, unanticipated total eclipse of the sun (Central Americans knew their calendar, so the priests at the very least would have known long in advance of an eclipse).

But still, a fine, bloody, exciting adventure movie!

A Rorschach Test - Celine Dion Covers AC/DC

I suppose people's reactions depend partly on age and partly on whether one likes one's rock-and-roll "authentic." For myself, I like it. Celine Dion covers AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"

On The Success Of "Hannah Montana"

Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal:

As a result, some of the biggest sellers of the year -- from Disney's "High School Musical" and "Cheetah Girls" soundtracks to the "Kidz Bop" series -- are those aimed at the grade-school set.

By contrast, longstanding industry staples like rock and even hip-hop have far less commercial potential. "When we sell 150,000 albums from a new rock group, we think we've set them up pretty well," says Bob Cavallo, chairman of Walt Disney Co.'s Buena Vista Music Group. The "Hannah" soundtrack, meanwhile, sold nearly 274,000 copies last week alone.

Kylie Questions

Friend Walt sent a Christmas card with two questions regarding the Australian Kylie concerts:

• Was I the oldest person there?
  

No, actually there were all ages present. The oldest people I spotted were about 60 years old. Many people treated the concerts as an occasion for an all-ages girl's night out. I saw lots of groups where one or two middle-aged women shepherded five or six teenage girls - mothers, their daughters, and their daughter's friends. Normally, one wouldn't expect such an age range at a rock concert, but Kylie's early start (she started appearing on Australian television by age 11 - 1979!) gave her an early, loyal cohort of fans - critical to success! It makes you appreciate the potential of youth-oriented media outlets, like the Disney Channel of today, in creating the stars of tomorrow!

(Interesting Wikipedia article - I didn't realize that INX's reference to 'Suicide Blonde' is a direct reference to Kylie.)

Even though I wasn't the oldest person there, as an American, I was clearly outside the normal demographic. I got two reactions from people in my immediate vicinity. At the first concert I attended, I talked to two girls, about 16. They were VERY impressed that I had made the trip to see their idol and I sensed nothing but the greatest warmth from them. At the second concert, I talked to two college students, about 20, and they also were surprised, but they were also curious about what I was doing there, in order to properly categorize my 3-sigma scatter point in the demographic distribution. They asked if I was one of these rabid fans who pursue their favorite pop star around the world, and I disappointed them by saying no, it was just that Kylie doesn't perform in the U.S., so, as a fan, I had little choice but to travel overseas.

After the concert, on the train, I talked to a couple, also about age 20, and I told them I suspected Kylie doesn't perform in the U.S. simply because of economics - her fans are too scattered to make renting an arena profitable. The girl found this explanation wholly unsatisfactory: surely she could pack an arena in San Francisco! Maybe - who knows? - but Kylie's entire career arc has relied on avoiding the U.S. as much as practicable. I'm not sure why, although I have a theory....

But first, question two:

• Did Kylie's illness affect her performance?

I think that was the question lurking at the back of everyone's mind. Kylie's career as a Queen of Pop has meant celebrating some of the most evanescent elements in popular culture. Using math-speak, suffering breast cancer is completely orthogonal to that history, to say the least. How could it not affect her performance?

Kylie's team had to make several critical decisions. They didn't want to revamp the "Showgirl" concert tour, since large sums had been spent on costumes, but a year-and-a-half gap was too long to avoid doing so: they HAD to release the European "Showgirl" DVD, for cash-flow purposes, if nothing else. So, they had retool the show for Australia, taking into account Kylie's condition. Fortunately, the show was already a costume-heavy extravaganza, so hiding scars was fairly-easy, but that meant sinking new sums into costumes and rechoreographing the show. What made the whole project feasible was the loyalty of the work force - the dancers, musicians, techies, etc. - and the loyalty of the audience (apparently of the hundreds of thousands of tickets sold, only several hundred refunds were made).

I saw an edited version of the European "Showgirl" show on the flight across the Pacific, and I was trying to mentally compare what I saw (sometimes with binoculars) onstage with that broadcast. I suspect Kylie was a little less active in the Australian show, but not in a way that seriously-compromised the entertainment value of the show. For example, there is one scene in both shows, set (oddly enough) in a 50's-era American baseball team locker room. Kylie and a weightlifter/dancer interacted in the European show (if memory serves), whereas in the Australian show, Kylie sang while seated upon a pommel horse while a gymnast performed behind her - more restful. The Australian DVD will come out shortly, and I suspect more people than would admit to it will carefully compare and contrast the shows to see what has been lost (and maybe what has been gained).

But as far as singing by itself went, I detected no weakness - she is probably singing better than ever!

I suspect Kylie's illness has accelerated several trends that were already evident in her career - a classicist tendency you normally don't see in musical theater. She is relying more and more on fashion as time goes on, particularly her favorite, Italian fashion, in the mode of Dolce and Gabbana. Her videos are becoming increasingly "arty", even abstract. Her longtime collaborator, William Baker, had been rumored to have been exasperated with her for supposedly 'playing it safe', but it may simply be a difference in artistic vision - fortunately Baker reunited with her for this tour (she does better with him there).

(Actually, Baker has written that he tends to see clothes as direct representations of ideas, so the use of clothes to represent abstractions probably makes him uneasy.)

Oh yes, my theory (wholly original)! When you look at the movie "Xanadu" (1980), you see many elements that pre-figure Kylie's career: Gene Kelly's last major movie (the 'dying' tradition of Hollywood/Broadway), together with fashionable disco dancers (massed on rollerskates!), and with the ingenue Australian (Olivia Newton-John) as the reincarnation of Kira (sounds similar to Kylie), an ancient Greek goddess of music and dance (classical tradition). I just bet she went nuts when she saw that movie, as a precocious 12-year-old! She decided she would appropriate the entire tradition - the whole tamale! - and relocate it to its natural home, Melbourne, and she would reign as the Queen of Pop. And it would be FUN!

Interestingly, in Kylie's videos, you rarely see specifically American settings or references except as nostalgia - almost nothing after about 1980.

The vision suffered a little in the execution - she had to relocate to London, and America, particularly in the persona of Madonna, has proved to be not quite as dead as it might have looked from the distance. (She had the grace to cover Madonna's "Vogue" on this tour - the first time she has ever acknowledged the voracious American on stage, and very much very fashion-conscious). Still, considering everything, she has succeeded, as much as could have been done, in what looks like was originally a very ambitious plan. And there are other international female starlets out there too, using Kylie's experience as a guide. Imagine the swarms of ambitious starlets in Bollywood, or in Latin America, trying to make a difference! The American musical theater tradition moves offshore, and changes in unexpected ways!

All That Musty Polyester

Stockholm gearing up to build an ABBA museum.

More on John Derbyshire....

And his health insurance woes:

Christmas is a time to think of the neediest. Although I think that the free market is the best philanthropist, every year at this time I make a tax-deductible $20 charitable donation to some worthy cause against my better judgment. ... But who?

Then I stumbled over this tragic story on The Corner, which brought a tear to my eye. Conservative pundit and humanitarian John Derbyshire received some devastating news this Christmas: "My health insurer has just notified me, in a brief form letter, that my monthly premiums are to rise from $472.33 to $857.00 on January 1st....

My heart went out to Derbyshire....

You might expect liberal bloggers to feel some compassion for what he is going through, but instead they have reacted with shockingly uncharitable glee, gorging themselves on Schadenfreude pie. "Was he somehow unaware that his own principles leave him with no grounds for complaint when something like this happens?" sniffed Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings. "You see, John, there is this thing called the "'market,'" Brad DeLong explained with just a smidgen of condescension. A Washington Monthly reader wrote: "I've heard people say a conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. Then maybe a liberal is just a conservative who suddenly got this in the mail."

Are liberals really living up to their principles when they seem to care so little about Derbyshire's tribulations? That is why I would like to challenge them to consider making John Derbyshire their charity this Christmas....

Although I haven't seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life in a long time, since I rented an edited version from Wal-Mart, the ending always makes me cry. If I remember correctly, at the end of the film irascible but good-hearted capitalist Mr. Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore, discovers he is about to go bankrupt. So the people of Pottersville, remembering how he helped them build modest but affordable homes with loans whose interest was only a little above the market rate, rally around him. They scratch together what little money they have left after paying their mortgages to Potter's bank, and give it to the old man who is brought to tears by their generosity. So this Christmas let's think of John Derbyshire as our Mr. Potter. Let's show him that Americans really are a compassionate people.

Health care insurance issues may defy both conservative and liberal cures, because health care is often inefficient and error-ridden. Nevertheless, there is hope, particularly now, with the example that digital rectal probes can cure hiccups as well as diagnose enlarged prostate glands. The assembly-line brought us cheap cars: it can also bring us cheap health. With a regrettable loss of identity and dignity, of course, but what is that compared to saving money?

Our Virgin Mother, Flora The Komodo Dragon

Parthenogenesis can be powerful!:

In an evolutionary twist, Flora has become pregnant all on her own - with no male help. The timing is auspicious: the seven baby komodo dragons are due this festive season.

"We were blown away when we realised what she'd done," said Kevin Buley, a reptile expert at Flora's home at the Chester Zoo in northern England. "But we certainly won't be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus.

... Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora's virginal conception, and that of another komodo dragon this year at the London Zoo, are the first times documented in komodo dragons. The reptiles, renowned for their intelligence, are native to Indonesia. They are the largest lizards and have no natural predators, making them on par with sharks and lions at the top of the animal kingdom.

Mt. Hood Rescue Efforts

Rosie O'Donnell, among others, think that the current Mt. Hood rescue effort is too costly. Probably so. Still, like the Sheriff says, there needs to be some capability to launch serious rescue efforts. That's one dangerous mountain!

I remember climbing that mountain in 1974. Nearly got killed. The body recovery would have been cheap, though, because tourists tend to get into trouble at the same point on the climb - just SW of the peak - and most falling bodies would tend to cluster at just a few points. They could just set up some big trampolines there and save the taxpayers a few dollars in helicopter and hospital expenses.

Don't know about these climbers, though: they were better-prepared than most. But it's so windy there this time of year! Brrr!

Land O' The Bizarre

Australian skiiers are looking at the cold front approaching Victoria's Australian Alps, and thinking it might be cold enough for some snow flurries on Christmas Eve. The height of summer no less!

Kylie Minogue Showgirl Homecoming - snippet only

Kylie Showgirl Homecoming version of "Shocked", as posted on YouTube by "suzyleigh."

It's funny, how I got into trouble for my non-functioning digital voice recorder, while these folks get away with much more, but in the end, like the Aussies say, "it's all good, no worries mate!"

Sticker-Shock Siren

John Derbyshire discovers the high cost of Health Insurance.

Snowstorm Hits NM

And the High Plains too.

Dead Deer Still Festering Over At Dick Cheney's Place

(Left: Previously-posted picture originally from Lucianne).


I wonder why there's a dead deer over at the official VP residence (the Naval Observatory)? Maybe one of those bonding rituals, or something.

Emergency Responders ... Hesitate

Small plane apparently vanishes into huge Gilroy sewage tank.

Bush, And That ISG Report

Interesting commentary over at Obsidian Wings regarding Bush's dismissal of the results of the Iraq Study Group.

My take?

L'etat c'est moi!

Bush may formally be a President, but he is, in fact, a Monarch. A strange, 21st-Century Monarch who believes in the American Dream. He can be anything he wants to be, including a salmon-colored prime number, if he believes in himself and works hard enough at it. Anyone who says otherwise is probably European. Or amongst the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Things You May Not Mail To Australia

Picky, picky, picky!

• Coins; bank notes; currency notes (paper money); securities of any kind payable to bearer; traveler's checks; platinum, gold, and silver (manufactured or not); precious stones; jewelry; and other valuable articles are prohibited.
• Fruit cartons (used or new).
• Goods bearing the name "Anzac."
• Goods produced wholly or partly in prisons or by convict labor.
• Perishable infectious biological substances.
• Radioactive materials.
• Registered philatelic articles with fictitious addresses.
• Seditious literature.
• Silencers for firearms.
• Used bedding.

Various Kylie Showgirl Homecoming Segments

You just knew people were filming segments of these concerts, and that they'd be on YouTube soon! Surprisingly large number of snippets, actually, by several people.

"Take A Chance"

Along with many others, I've been making periodic visits to Tower Records on Broadway in Sacramento to peruse the merchandise and partake of the sale as they prepare to close Tower Records for the last time. A week ago they closed their video store, and last night they closed their bookstore, and so all that's open now is the music portion of Tower.

Today, you could tell we were getting down to the last dregs of the CDs and DVDs on hand. Almost all the popular singers were gone, and many obscure singers were gone too, leaving just the eccentric leftovers. Even the titles told the story: Wong's "No Better Than This," or Vanessa Randall's "Take A Chance."

Some bands you could tell never took off: The Bangkok Five, for example. Others spoke of a lack of audience acclaim: Emma's "Crickets Sing For Anamaria," or Kimberley Locke's "Coulda Been." Other titles suggested oblivion: Roadtrip's "Road To Nowhere," or Samantha's "Square One," or Drywall's "Barbeque Babylon." One title suggested tedium: an opera based on Prokofiev's "Betrothal in a Monastery."

Some groups saw bright, gleaming possibilities, presumably now dashed: The Spores "Imagine The Future," or Whitestarr's "Luv Machine." Other singers seemed disillusioned: Joel Elizalde's "Ayudame a Creer" (Help Me To Believe). Other groups seemed to have missed their audience altogether: Cow's "Hear This! 3," Boy Hits Car's "The Passage," Unknown's "Volume II," or Asshole Parade's self-titled album. Other groups seemed to glory in the chaos: The Bleeding Alarm's "Beauty in Destruction."

Before walking in Tower, I had decided to degrade my already-low standards to the vanishing point, but even still, I couldn't stomach the thought of taking some of this music home to collect dust, much less pay for it.

Nevertheless, I decided to pick up two albums by Carquinez Straits. I don't know who they are, but they seemed local and ecological and thus a sure sell by my now infinitesimally-low standards. One song on their album "Humiliation Jacket" was called 'The Time We Left H-Bomb in Woodland,' a song title full of joyful possibilities. I hope it's good!

I also picked up some fairly-obscure stuff, like Moloko's Greatest Hits, and "Work This!", a collection of pump-you-up exercise music hopefully suited for aerobics and driving long distances across the Southwest.

Two genres seemed particularly slow to clear the tables: Dance and Goth. Even Dance fanatic me couldn't seem to get excited about what was left behind - obscure Brazilian DJ's mixing trashy French techno - and you could tell that the dramatically anti-commercial attitude of Goth/Metal groups like Necrodeath and Graveworm had finally come to its logical end point of dust, ruin and 70%+ discounts.

In the checkout line, a woman saw "The Cranberries" DVD I was purchasing. "Cranberries! Score!" she said. I said: "It was the last one on the shelf!" She said: "Well, I guess that means I have to beat you up now!"

Hurry up for the sale! Time is short!

"Beauty And The Beast" - Woodland Opera House

Left: Belle (Buffee Gillihan) talks to Leona Craig after the show - Beast (Troy Thomas) is at left. Buffee also gave impromptu curtsey lessons to young girls dying to know her Belle secrets.

Left: Bobby Grainger acknowledges tumultuous applause Friday night.


Excellent final-Friday show at the Woodland Opera House! Excellent costumes as well. (more)

Dagnabit! Julia Othmer Concert Cancelled

From DMTC:

We regret to say that the Dec. 16 Julia Othmer benefit concert for DMTC has been cancelled due to lack of interest/pre-sales. She may perform later as part of a another concert, but we couldn't ask her to travel here with just a few tickets sold. If you have assisted DMTC in publicizing this event, thank you very much. If you have purchased tickets, please come to the box office at your earliest convenience for a refund.

Come on people! These are great musicians!

Try, try again!

And What Were Those Final Election Results?

From the hotly-contested District 1 Congressional race in New Mexico this last November?

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE - DISTRICT 1

PATRICIA A. MADRID Democratic 105,125 49.8%
HEATHER A. WILSON Republican 105,986 50.2%

Sigh.....

"Always Look On the Bright Side of Life!" (whistle...)

Those Who Don't Learn History...

I saw Emma Tom's newspaper column while passing through Australia's Gold Coast - I'm glad it's on the Web!

Australian students are just as ignorant of history as their American counterparts, but then again, our politicians are ignorant too (even as an outsider, I know 'Damien' just won 'Australian Idol'):

ONCE again, Australian school kiddies are in big trouble. According to a new report commissioned by the nation's education ministers, bucketloads of the ignorant little buggers don't know why we celebrate Australia Day, have a governor-general or whack a Union Jack in the corner of our flag.

...Australian students are a bunch of lazy pinheads who should be sent to a corner to think about what they haven't done. And while they're down there, why not force 'em to start memorising important dates such as 1788, 1901 and 1947 - the latter marking one of many previous media panics about ill-educated Aussie youngsters unable to write in proppa sentences.

Here's the thing, though. If students are required to swot up on subjects politicians think are important (namely history, civics and blindly swallowing spin), surely politicians should have to gain a rudimentary knowledge of something young people rate highly, namely pop culture.

Last week during the electioneering in Victoria, punters were treated to what has become a pre-poll staple: candidates making tokenistic appearances on yoof media programs and revelling in their dearth of pop cultural knowledge, wearing their ignorance (or at least their professed ignorance) of Paris Hilton's shaggin' habits like rosettes of honour.

On the penultimate day of the campaign, Steve Bracks and Ted Baillieu accidentally ended up on air at Fox FM at the same time. Neither was able to answer questions about Jessica Simpson, Australian Idol or even the winner of the Melbourne Cup.

...It's easy to dismiss the nipply adventures of Hilton, Simpson et al as low-brow ephemera, but this could well be at politicians' peril.

Insisting that citizens develop more interest in crucial matters of state won't change the fact that many are not interested - or at least not as interested as they are in whether bootleg honeymoon videos reveal that Britney Spears is bisexual and threesome-eager (to quote one popular, saliva-dripping internet site).

One Australian broadsheet - regarded as a quality publication - regularly charts the most clicked-on stories from its internet site ... the A and AB-demographic readers of this particular organ prefer feasting on fast food features about grisly baby deaths, celebrity sex romps and cyclops kittens. On Monday, the fifth most popular story here was Crocodile yak: Elton shouts at shoes - 321 words about Elton John dashing off stage for a Down Under chunder during the first performance of his latest Australian tour. Apparently a guitarist masked the knighted pianist's sudden and wordless exit by noodling an impromptu solo.

While I'm not suggesting that knowledge of such an event be tested in HSC exams, it is worth ditching the heated, high versus low culture debate for a moment and looking at the situation from a realpolitik perspective.

Growing political disengagement among young people is regarded by many pundits as a serious threat to democracy, with party membership, trust in office-holders and interest in traditional politics plunging faster than a Brownlow Medal ceremony neckline.

Reaching these voters requires learning to speak their language or, at the very least, not taking such elitist delight in disparaging it.

Carnivorous Plants Seem To Worry East And West Alike

Great civilizations, with little prompting, sometimes come to a common understanding. People worldwide seem to fear being eaten alive, whether by sharks, tigers - or plants.

DMTC recently hosted Steve Ross' and Jabriel Shelton's production of "Little Shop of Horrors." Fear of chlorophyll hung in the air.

Meanwhile, in Brisbane, artist Jean Poole focused on an Asian version of a Venus Fly Trap as he prepared for battle. People worldwide, in many languages, may instinctively agree: "Don't feed the plant!"

Vietnam Deja Vu In Iraq

Remember how Richard Nixon, after exploiting how badly Democrats botched Vietnam to win the presidency in 1968, decided to go for victory instead of withdrawal? Remember how well that worked?

We are at it again, in Iraq:

Since the Pentagon has decided to discuss its new strategy in gambling parlance, it should at least use the proper terminology. Today's LA Times article says that a Pentagon official has referred to the option of sending more troops in to Iraq as a "double down" strategy. The reference is to a bet in blackjack when, based on the cards that have been dealt, the player seeks to maximize a payoff that is more likely to occur in that hand, given the probabilities. The double down is a calculated bet, made from a position of strength when the odds are favorable to the bettor.

In Iraq, we are certainly not in a situation where the odds are favorable to winning. Our bet is not a double down. Let's call it what it is: double or nothing. This is more like the gambler who has been on a bad losing streak deciding to empty the savings account and put all of his chips on red, hoping that the roulette wheel will spin his way and bring him back close to even. Double or nothing is a desperation play. It is an ill-advised way to gamble, with chips or human lives, and such a strategy inevitably leads to another appropriate gambling term. Gambler's ruin: winding up completely broke.

"Weekly World News" On Top Of Things

Jim McElroy writes:

This afternoon I was down at SaveMart picking up E-Coli samples for some research I am conducting and noted this 4 page research report on the library rack near the checkout. I know that you are interested in Titanic Research and thought I should draw it to your attention. As is well known, most research leads to information that you were not even looking for, and I saw this other report that contradicted your recent research on drain swirl effects. Maybe you should tweak your parameters and try again (justifying NSF funding for another trip to OZ?). Also a small Item that would make a good footnote to your excellent description of various flora and fauna that you encountered.

Here are edited versions of some of the JPEGs Jim sent:

WMD sank the Titanic!



Why I had so much trouble in Australia finding Koala Bears.

The real importance of the Coriolis Force.

Rehearsing For "Mame" at DMTC

Left: Mary Young in the title role.



Mame (Mary Young) and Vera (Peggy Schechter)

Julia Othmer This Saturday

I like this concert series: it is an introduction to splendid music that one otherwise might miss.

STC-2

Here is an article from Sacramento's "Inside The City" regarding STC's Peggy Shannon's STC-2 classes for young actors (and featuring Anna Miles):

Anna Miles, also 15, concurs. “Theater is literally like my home. I’ve never experienced any feeling that’s better and more amazing than when I’m onstage. I love it, and I can’t ever stop.”

Report On The Australian Drought

Here is a recent governmental report regarding the unprecedented drought affecting Australia. The figure to the right helps express the terrible nature of the drought. The new hyperaridity of Interior Queensland contributed to my unease while travelling there recently. I just hope that the climatologists will screw up with their forecasts and that things will improve over the next few months.

Key conclusions:

Much of southern Australia and coastal Queensland has experienced a protracted downturn in annual rainfall which has intensified since the 2002 El Niño event and has most severely affected the eastern states and the southwest corner of Western Australia.

Some areas of central Victoria, southern New South Wales and south east Queensland have had continuous lowest on record or very much below average rainfall since 1997.

A sequence of seven failed autumn breaks in the Murray-Darling Basin has not previously occurred in the records. Chances of a break in the current Autumn are fast receding. There is no sign that the months up to December 2006 will lead to any major relieving rainfalls, with rainfall in the southeast and even the summer rainfall in north-eastern Australia likely to be below average.

Indeed, the presence of a developing El Niño event suggests that it is very unlikely that Australia will see extensive drought breaking rain before the autumn of next year.

Major urban water storages are low and well below average for this time of the year across the south eastern part of Australia and south eastern Queensland. Storages for virtually all the major urban centres of Australia are being progressively drawn down, with no signifi cant inflows for a number of years.

Tough water restrictions, which include complete bans on the outdoor use of water, are already in place in Goulburn, Gosford, Bendigo and Toowoomba. More cities, such as Brisbane, Gosford and Ballarat, are likely to follow in the immediate future. Sydney has had a ban on sprinklers for three years. Significant water conservation measures are already in place and contingency measures for augmenting water supplies in the face of a deteriorating situation are also well in train.

In rural areas, inflows to dams in the Murray-Darling Basin System over the past five years have been the lowest on record. Consequently, irrigation allocations are significantly below entitlement.

Storages such as in the Wimmera Mallee in central Victoria have received no substantial inflow for six years.

The impact on individual farm incomes will vary depending on the way irrigators respond to low water allocations. The ability to trade water under the NWI will assist farmers adapt to the shortfalls.

"Happy Feet"

Very interesting, clever and fun computer-animated film! All-star voices, lead by Elijah Wood as the Emperor Penguin Mumble, and including Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, and even the late, great Steve Irwin.

Take the kids!

Terrible Fires

The fires in Victoria, Australia, east and northeast of Melbourne, are seriously out-of-control, taking a huge toll on wildlife, and destroying property:

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said the weekend conditions could be compared with the 1939 Black Friday fires that killed 71 people and destroyed several towns.

Black Friday is considered to be Victoria's worst day of bushfires.

We Sell! We Buy!

Still trying to track down some of that strange MAAP art. Having trouble, maybe because the artists fear being ripped off, maybe because the artists are obscure, but maybe most of all because I read neither Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Still, it's gotta be out there somewhere on the Internet!

For those who like soothing music with imagery frenetic enough to make you seasick, here is something from Candy Factory regarding - Okinawa!

Tornado Hits North London

Amazing! These things CAN happen, though.

Signs

Left: Meaning "Yield"


Left: Meaning "Cattle Guard"


Left: Watch out!

Left: In America, when surveyors were faced with just another redundant creek, they usually called it 'Deer Creek.' In Australia, they tended to speak a little more directly to the problem.

Australian Miscellany

Left: A "Road Train", full of cattle.

Memorials

Left: "Wall of Remembrance", in honor of military service, at Miles, Queensland.


Left: A military aircraft, piloted by Americans, and filled with Australian soldiers, crashed at this creekside site near the base of the Carnarvon Mountains, during an electrical storm, on November 16, 1943.

Australian Churches

Left: St. Patrick's Cathedral, Toowoomba, QLD.

Left: Tenterfield Uniting Church, NSW

Left: St. Mary's Catholic Church, Casino, NSW

Left: St. Carthage's Cathedral, Lismore, NSW

Left: St. Andrews Uniting Church, The City, Brisbane.

St. Patrick's Church, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

St. Stephen's Cathedral, the City, Brisbane

St. John's Cathedral, The City, Brisbane

The Longest Day

December 3rd began with the harrowing forest walk at Mt. Glorious, then the surprisingly trouble-free drive to the airport, then airport security, then the flight on the crowded Boeing 747-400 from Brisbane.

My mates on my row of seats were two pleasant women, representatives from SunSail yacht rentals. Based in northern Queensland's gorgeous Whitsunday Islands, they were headed to the British Virgin Islands, for serious work discussions with American compatriots. Such a life!

I watched three movies, but imperfectly, because of jet noise and entertainment center glitches: "Joyeaux Noel," "Little Miss Sunshine," and the recent Australian hit "Kenny." "Kenny" is one funny movie: an Australian foreman of port-a-loo installations talks about his life and work, and even finds romance, when he travels to attend a portable toilet convention in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. My mates found "Kenny" uproariously funny, and I must agree with them.

Crossing the International Date Line, we caught the last few hours of Western Hemisphere December 2nd, but then December 3rd started all over again. We landed at LAX about 7:30 a.m. (after an abortive landing, however, because we got too close to another aircraft on the ground and had to circle back again).

After returning via Southwest Airlines to Sacramento shortly after noon, I took a much-needed nap (two nights in a row without sleep is tough), before heading to Davis, to catch the DMTC folks after "Oliver!" strike, and to pick Sparky up from Steve and Jan. Sparky had gotten along famously with Mrs. Lovett and Scruffy, but had repeatedly peed all through their house, so - it was time to leave!

December 3rd was the longest day ever! I thought it would never end!

Does Water Drain Clockwise, Or Counterclockwise?

In graduate school, we learned that the Coriolis Force is much too weak on the distance scale of a sink to affect how water drains. Only over large distances is the Coriolis force large enough to affect fluid flow. Local friction effects and residual circulation determine whether water drains clockwise or counterclockwise from a sink, in either hemisphere.

Now that we were wise to this little Coriolis factoid, we made fun of people who believed otherwise.

Still, it would be nice to know.... The last time I shaved at Mt. Glorious, I paid attention to how the water drained, so as to know for sure.

The drain at the bottom of the sink was so large that the water didn't have a chance to drain either clockwise or counterclockwise - instead, the water drained straight down.