What's That Being Served In The First-Class Dining Saloon?

Why, it's poetry, of course!

In retrospect, it was brave for Elk Grove High School senior Kristi Avila to quote Marianne Moore to the hundred and some odd poetry appreciators gathered before her in the Secretary of State Building auditorium last Saturday. Avila had chosen to recite Moore’s poem “Poetry,” which takes stock of the medium and its social usefulness, and counsels not to “discriminate against ‘business documents and / school-books’: all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction / however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry.”

Considering the occasion--the state finals of Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest for high schoolers supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council--one couldn’t help but figure them’s fightin’ words.

...A natural, and apparently practiced, performer, Avila delivered the goods. One of the preliminary judges confided before the contest began that Avila’s reading of Sharon Olds’ “I Go Back to May 1937” had made him so emotional it nearly distracted him from monitoring her accuracy (which, fortunately, also was good.)

She won’t be advancing to the national finals in Washington, D.C., on April 30 (that’ll be Santa Rosa’s Karen Hong), but, for distinguishing herself from an afternoon’s worth of what Moore would call “high-sounding interpretations,” Avila took the runner-up prize. That’s $100 for her and $200 for her school to stock up on poetry books (or perhaps a single science book).

I Felt Lucky

What was I thinking? Must have been the endorphins from aerobics.....

Went to Thunder Valley, and immediately cratered. First I was $400 down, then $600. Ultimately I went down $1,200, before the luck began turning. Hours of sturm und drang later, I fought back to where I had started. As the dealer said, if you leave with the money you started with, plus an ice cream cone, you're a winner.

Winnings: $1,550 minus $1,400, minus $100 E. stake = $50.

How Green Is Your Antichrist?

Apparently pretty green:

An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”.

Cardinal Biffi said that Christianity stood for “absolute values, such as goodness, truth, beauty”. If “relative values” such as “solidarity, love of peace and respect for nature” became absolute, they would encourage “idolatry” and “put obstacles in the way of salvation”.

Bill Patzert

Independent-minded weatherman:

Over the last two decades, the climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge has emerged as perhaps the leading expert on weather in Southern California. He was one of the scientists ahead of the curve on predicting the effects of a huge El Niño in 1998 and ever since has tilted with the windmills of meteorology convention.

...To some meteorologists, Patzert has become just like one of those TV weathermen — quick with the flashy quote.

But the 65-year-old surfer has also gained a loyal following from those who say his forecasts for Southern California are simply the most accurate. Over the last five years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington predicted three times that increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific — the phenomenon known as El Niño — would result in wetter-than-normal winters in Southern California. Each time Patzert disagreed.

Much to the dismay of federal scientists, he started talking about "fictional El Niños," flaccid "El Wimpos" and disappointing "El No Shows."

In July, NOAA predicted another global El Niño, expected to affect Southern California and the Southern states. The 2006-07 season, it said, would be warm and rainier than average.

Patzert's forecast: Dry. Really dry. And he was willing to stake his reputation on it.

WHY are there such enormous disparities between forecasts?

One reason: When it comes to El Niño, NOAA tends to emphasize data from a network of buoys running across the equatorial Pacific from Asia to the Americas. They make measurements on the upper 500 meters in the ocean, where the major deviations in temperature take place. The weather consequences can be dramatic depending on the size of the temperature increase, the area of ocean involved and the duration of the phenomenon. For NOAA, an increase of about 1 degree Fahrenheit over three months in a defined area of the Pacific meets the threshold for El Niño.

Patzert, on the other hand, is an expert in analyzing satellite data.

The satellites measure the elevation of the sea surface as a result of the expansion of water as temperatures increase in the upper 500 meters. The satellites are not as hyperfocused on El Niño and look beyond to other climate patterns.

One of those patterns is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a slow-moving variation of temperatures between the western and eastern sections of the Pacific. In 1998, the western Pacific was becoming warmer than the eastern Pacific, leading Patzert to conclude that in the long term, an "El Niño-repellent" pattern was forming that would favor drought in Southern California for many years.

...Those who disagree with Patzert sometimes point out that he is not a meteorologist but an oceanographer. But Patzert said that as far as El Niño was concerned, that was no disadvantage.

...In 1998, a "monster El Niño" began to develop in the Pacific, and Patzert emerged as one of the most prominent scientists who explained it.

...One day he drove by a Burger King, so the next time he talked about the coming El Niño, Patzert called it "a real whopper." Then he called it "El Niño Grande," a nod to a Taco Bell item. El Niño became "the real deal" based on a McDonald's marketing campaign at the time.

But as January 1998 came to a close, and Southern California remained dry, some climatologists began to waver on El Niño, thinking it might be a bust.

That put Patzert on the defensive.

In late January, Robert Jones, then a columnist for The Times, visited Patzert at the JPL campus. Patzert stared at the sky and excitedly pointed out tropical clouds.

"He's a desperate man, of course," Jones wrote the next day.

Jones was sure Patzert would have egg on his face over El Niño, so he did not hesitate to accept the scientist's $10 bet.

"Sure enough, it started raining, I think a week later," Jones said recently with a laugh. In that February, more than 13 inches of rain poured down on L.A.

...Some scientists criticized him for talking to the media instead of waiting to publish his findings. They whispered about him become a talking head — someone who liked the sound of his own voice.

But others came to respect the fact that he marched to his own drum — something that was becoming increasingly rare in the button-down, highly politicized world of climate and weather forecasting.

"NOAA sees themselves as the official arbiters, so they're always conservative about what they say," Baker said. "There's a little bit of an art to the whole process. It's an inexact science."

And nowhere is the science more inexact than when it comes to El Niño. In 2002, NOAA announced that El Niño was "baaack!" Patzert shrugged it off, saying it wasn't much of an El Niño. Locally, the result was a kind of a draw. Southern California was wetter-than-average — but only by an inch. Two years later, when NOAA forecast a weak El Niño, L.A. experienced record rainfall, but it was from the Arctic and not related to El Niño. (Patzert had predicted dry conditions.)

For Patzert, El Niño had become a convenient explanation for too many things going on in the world. Patzert wasn't arguing that El Niño would have no effects, just that it was being overhyped.

In December, he projected that if El Niño was going to affect the U.S., it would most likely be in the Gulf Coast and Florida —which, in fact, turned out to have wetter weather than the other Southern states.

He quipped that El Niño was even being blamed for stupid things people did that turned out bad — such as taking a trip down a roaring flood control channel on an inner tube.

"Don't blame El Niño," Patzert said. "That was El Nincompoop."

This season, NOAA was back with an El Niño forecast.

As winter came, the government forecasters were looking like they might finally have it right.

The mild, spring-like temperatures that descended over much of the East Coast in the early winter — giving rise to unseasonal daffodils in places like New York — were attributed by some weather scientists, including some at NOAA, to El Niño, rather than to global warming or other climate patterns. El Niño had struck as predicted in Australia, where drought is the result.

But Patzert shook his head. To him, this was the season of "La Nada." The nothing.

In early January, more than 1,000 weather experts from the U.S. and around the world attended the American Meteorological Society conference in San Antonio.

Scientist after scientist rose to present evidence that El Niño was coming.

Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md., declared: "I think we're starting to see signs, signatures of El Niño."

But Patzert repeatedly described El Niño as "El No Show," to the clear irritation of Robert Livezey, the head of NOAA's Climate Services Division.

"I don't want to hear anything more about 'No Show' until the end of January or February," Livezey said. "If we don't see the impacts, then OK. Let's make the noise. Let's get the attention." The conference ended with the debate over El Niño unresolved.

Then on Feb. 1, NOAA put out a news release. The agency said it had given up on El Niño having much of any impact in North America. As of today, L.A. has experienced 2.47 inches of rain for the rain year, making it the driest on record so far.

Mammals Took A While To Flourish

Even after the asteroid hit, it wasn't a quick take-off:

But it was not until at least 10 million to 15 million years afterward that the lineages of living mammals began to flourish in number and diversity.

Sparky says that's because flourishing is hard work. Cloudy says flourishing is actually pretty easy, if you are a bunny, but is willing to listen to arguments about the matter.

As If The Desert Didn't Have Enough Problems

Why not let it roam around in Tokyo, where they at least have more experience with rampaging creatures making surprise appearances?:

Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports.

...It is the centerpiece of an elaborate Jackson-inspired show in Vegas, according to Andre Van Pier, the robot's designer.

..."Michael's looked at the sketches and likes them," he told the New York Daily News.

On the subject of the robot, he continued: "It would be in the desert sands. Laser beams would shoot out of it so it would be the first thing people flying in would see."

Worries About Warring U.S. Making Oil Prices Rise

In February, Andrew Schmookler wondered why oil prices weren't going up if rumors of a U.S. attack on Iran were valid.

Well, now they're going up.

High Strange New Mexico

Left: Caption from the 'High Strange New Mexico' web site:Becky Jaramillo runs "UFO City" near Roswell, New Mexico. Becky and her family claim the property has been the site of various supernatural occurrences, and hundreds of UFO visitations.

Now this looks interesting! A filmmaker takes something of an anthropological look at the impact of UFOs on the popular culture of New Mexico.

Along the way, they introduce viewers to a subculture populated by UFO enthusiasts, abductees, skeptics, cattle mutilation investigators, abductees and just plain folks who believe they've contact with extraterrestrials. Humorous, compelling and stripped of tabloid-TV sensationalism, "High Strange New Mexico" examines the cultural, economic and metaphysical factors behind the phenomenon and tells the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

I've taken a look at the free 9-minute trailer, and it looked like fun!

Mormons Begin Edging Away From The Iraq War

Utah, the reddest state in the country, is reconsidering:

A January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune showed a precipitous drop in support for Bush's handling of the war among Utah's Latter-day Saints.

In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something. But what?

...Rather than one unmistakable message from the church, the change may have been ushered by a rapid series of more subtle signals that it was indeed acceptable for Mormons to question their president during wartime. And it all may have started at the very top.

Speaking to Brigham Young University students on Oct. 31, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley lamented "the terrible cost of war."

"What a fruitless thing it so often is," he said. "And what a terrible price it exacts."

Hinckley recalled standing at the graves of some of history's most powerful military and political leaders. "In their time they commanded armies," he said. "They ruled with near omnipotence, and their very words brought terror into the hearts of people," he said.

And yet, he noted, all of them were now dead: "They have all passed into the darkness of the grave."

Though brooding heavily on the consequences of war in general, Hinckley never mentioned Iraq or President Bush specifically. But in the following days, online message boards and e-mail discussion groups lit up with conversation about what Hinckley - "prophet, seer and revelator" to millions of Mormons worldwide - might have meant in regard to the nation's current wars.

"He may or may not have intended anything by it, and he certainly didn't mention Iraq in that speech, but the speech certainly may have been interpreted by the LDS community as an indictment against the world's violence," said Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "Small phrases by President Hinckley are to the LDS community as Alan Greenspan's words were to the financial community."

...The month after Hinckley's speech, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. - one of the more prominent politicians who are LDS members - returned from Iraq with an unfavorable report about the chaos he saw in the war-torn nation's capital city.

"The security situation is Baghdad is out of hand," said Huntsman, who enjoys wide popularity among Utahns. "I am less optimistic about a successful outcome."

Huntsman's dismay echoed that of other well-known Mormon politicians from both sides of the aisle - Sens. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon - who were also issuing disappointing proclamations about what the Bush administration had hitherto referred to as Iraq's "progress."

..."It's true that, in general, LDS members are more conservative as a whole, but at one point the whole country backed this war and this president," said [blogger Guy] Murray. "Over the years, the country has soured on this war, and Mormons may be just following the national trend."

Among The Reasons Why U.S. Attorneys Were Fired

U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton hesitated in filing obscenity charges. Why?:

The government wanted to charge a porn distributor for shipping obscene movies across state lines. The problem is, another Arizona distributor just a few miles a way was selling several of the same movie titles. The second distributor had recently declared bankruptcy, and was being run by trustees for the federal government to fill its federal tax obligations.

The discrepancy understandably gave Charlton pause: How could he prosecute a company for violating federal obscenity laws when another company was making money for the federal government selling the same titles?

Stress In The Sky Islands

Interesting article regarding Mt. Lemmon, just outside Tucson, AZ. The fires there in 2003 were just devastating:

SUMMERHAVEN, Ariz. — High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

Legions of predatory insects have taken to the forest that mantles the upper mountain, killing trees weakened by record heat. And in 2003, a fire burned for a month, destroying much of the town and scarring more than 87,000 acres. The next year, another fire swept over 32,000 acres.

“Nature is confused,” said Debbie Fagan, who moved here 25 years ago after crossing the country in pursuit of the perfect place to live. “We used to have four seasons. Now we have two. I love this place dearly, and this is very hard for me to watch.”

The American Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years, according to records that date to the late 19th century. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. Both developments could be within the range of natural events.

But what has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert.

Fire has always been a part of Western ecology, particularly when the land is parched. But since the late 1980s, the size and reach of the fires have far exceeded times of earlier droughts. And the culprit, according to several recent studies, is higher temperatures tearing at a fabric of life that dates to the last ice age.

“A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But it’s happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.”

Republicans, And The Hatch Act

Back in the 60's and the 70's, Republicans were the staunchest supporters of the Hatch Act, which bans federal government resources from being used for political purposes. Even minor infractions were ballyhooed as Democratic conspiracies. But in the current GSA hearings (YouTube video available here) recent Bush Administration violations were both shocking and flagrant. So much for consistency!

Scary Fireworks

Uncomfortable night in the South Pacific:

Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight.

The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340, which was travelling between Santiago, Chile, and Auckland, New Zealand, notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane about 10pm.

According to a plane spotter, who was tuning into a high frequency radio broadcast at the time, the pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft.

"He described he saw a piece of debris lighting up as it re-entered [the earth's atmosphere].

"He was one very worried pilot, as you would imagine.

..."[It's] not something you come across everyday and I am sure the Lan Chile crew will have a tale to tell."

... Airways New Zealand had been warned by Russian authorities almost two weeks ago that a satellite would be entering the earth's atmosphere sometime today between 10.30am and midday [NZ time].

... "But clearly there has been a timing issue," the spokesman said.

"Either the time that was indicated to us was incorrect or the satellite de-orbited early."

Because the timing was wrong, the coordinates of where the satellite was supposed to enter the Earth's atmosphere also turned out to be incorrect.

Blog Lingo

OK, what is a "concern troll"?:

Democratic Underground (through TPM) defines a 'concern troll' as one who professes complete faith in the progressive cause, but who deliberately works to destroy it by claiming falsely that its displays of courage and strength are actually a weakness.

They typically emerge from under their bridge of misinformation when progressives have a victory of some sort, or have plainly spotlighted issues that are of embarassment and/or those that clearly paint conservatives in a bad light. Their goal is to mitigate resolve in an effort to ensure that any perceived current of reform does not become a tidal wave. They are the 'minute men' of the right.

Not necessarily - sometimes nightwatchmen of the left! I suppose the scout who informed Custer that the Indian village in the valley ahead was the largest he had ever seen was a 'concern troll.' I guess the critical term is 'claiming falsely'. For, as Custer eventually learned, his scurvy scout's report was accurate.

Calling Bush's Bluff - Part II

I find this whole business of the Republican Administration holding hostage U.S. troops in Iraq to be nauseating. Here is Joe Scarborough's wrap-up of Pat Buchanan's analysis:

SCARBOROUGH: We're going to have to leave it there. Craig Crawford, Nico Pitney and Pat Buchanan, thank you. And Pat is laughing. If you want to know why Pat's laughing, that's sort of the smile of a Cheshire cat. Pat knows what's coming. He's seen it before, and he knows that the Democratic Party is absolutely horrified of being set up as an anti-war party that is not going to fund troops in the war zone. It is a high-risk game not only that the Democrats are playing but that George W. Bush is playing. And when I use "game," it's just an expression describing the political back-and-forth. It's obviously both sides understand how serious these stakes are, but also both sides care very deeply about what they're fighting for, and they believe that they're right on Iraq. And they believe lives are at stake, and so they're willing to fight to the bitter end. We're just going to see, though, who blinks first and who never blinks first will determine the future course of this war and U.S. history for at least the next 20 years in the Middle East.

Republicans seem to think they have a winning hand here. It's a bluff. It's time for Democrats to call. Democrats need to be deadly serious and do whatever is necessary to stop this war, including the removal of funding. If they waffle, then nothing more will happen to end the war until the next election, and more troops will needlessly die and American influence in the world will continue to degenerate.

[UPDATE: David Sirota games the possibilities.]

Mysterious Hexagon

Saturn's north pole features this interesting shape:

It is a hexagon twice as wide as Earth encircling Saturn's north pole. First observed by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s, the hexagon has been sighted anew by the Cassini probe.

What's up with that? Some kind of stationary wave? But why hexagonal?

Calling Bush's Bluff

Slowly undercut this pointless war:

Defying a veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly signaled support Tuesday for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by next March.

Republican attempts to scuttle the non-binding timeline failed on a vote of 50-48, largely along party lines. The roll call marked the Senate's most forceful challenge to date of the administration's handling of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

Late-Night Sports Poetry

There once was a dancer named Shelley
With nary the trace of a belly
Leaps like a gazelle
Moves faster than hell
Wonder that she's not on the telly?

Yeah, But Who Could Blame Them?

Left: Q1 Building on the right, in this photo...


Such a beautiful building to launch from!:

TWO New South Wales men have been charged over BASE jumping from the Q1 building on the Gold Coast.

A 26-year-old man from Wollongong and a 30-year-old man from Bulli were issued with a notice to appear in Southport Magistrates Court on May 1, police said.

Both were charged with BASE jumping from a building, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail or a $1600 fine.

Q1 at Surfers Paradise is the world's tallest residential tower.

A Specter Is Haunting Texas

Well, it is, if you believe this report. Is this report the work of Chicken Littles, or have they confused bill collectors and market researchers with stalkers, or is Texas maybe the weirdest place on the planet?:

Nearly one in five Texans questioned by researchers in a Sam Houston State University study identified themselves as victims of stalkers over a recent two-year period.

The study by the Crime Victims Institute at the Huntsville school's Criminal Justice Center, believed to be the first-ever on stalking in the state, reported three-quarters of those victims experienced emotional and/or other personal problems. The most common reaction was anger, followed by sleeplessness. Other effects included loss of concentration, fear of being alone and feelings of helplessness.

''Stalking can affect every part of a person's life,'' Glen Kercher, the institute's director, said of the ''Stalking in Texas'' survey, based on questioning of 701 randomly selected Texas residents last spring. ''The psychological effects of stalking can also be daunting. Understandably, many victims were more easily frightened and paranoid, less outgoing and assertive.''

The 18 percent who reported being stalked reported an overall 453 stalking incidents over the 24 months covered by the survey. The most frequent instance was repeated telephone calls, reported by 35 percent of victims, followed closely by 34 percent of victims who said their stalker stole items from their house, car or workplace.

Others reported that stalkers made threatening phone calls, spied on them at home, tampered with their vehicles, waited for them outside their home or work and breaking into their house, car or business.

Pointless Fretting

J. is worried about the public-relations aspect of a recent Climate Change report

Looks like the IPCC botched the section on sea-level change in the Summary for Policy Makers from their latest report. It plays right into the hands of the "I told you that global warming was a load of crap" crowd.

They should have presented a graph showing "comparable estimates", instead of burying that information in the text.

I'm not worried about it, though. Minor botches are tolerable in front of the global-skeptic crowd. Hell, they know so little anyway. It's the paralysis they impose on policymakers that's the big problem, not this niggling over details.

Dancing Etiquette

Thelma Domenici, the sister of New Mexico's Senator Pete Domenici, in addition to her various fundraising duties for Thelma Domenici and Associates, also writes an etiquette column for the Albuquerque Tribune. Recently, she opined about dance etiquette:

Dear Thelma: I recently attended a fund-raising event that included a dinner and dance. The dance floor was small and sometimes very crowded. That didn't matter to a number of couples who seemed to believe they were auditioning for "Dancing with the Stars." Are my partner and I to make way for them or are they obliged to tone it down when the floor is crowded?

Answer: Common courtesy and common sense tell us that when the dance floor is crowded, everyone should make an effort to keep their dancing compact and their elbows in close. It may even require you to alter your style until more space is available or to move to a more open area if there is one. Respect those around you by doing so.

If you bump into someone or fling your partner into another couple, do apologize and take note of any alterations you need to make to avoid it happening again.

Of course, if a couple is oblivious to this need for dance-courtesy, give them room if only to protect yourself.

This sort of advice depends on circumstance. For exhibition, the style of dancing should not be altered, courtesy or not, even if the floor is crowded, except as a matter of self-preservation or preserving the integrity of the show, but it's fine advice for social dancing.

Social dancing! I remember the Seventies! A glorious decade!

Once, I was dancing in a discotheque, when someone stepped on my foot. I did not follow Thelma Domenici's generally-sound advice, and seek out the person and apologize. Instead, I merely surmised I was too close to this particular dancer, and started boogeying away across the dance floor, in order to find more space.

There was still a problem, though. My foot still hurt. Indeed, the pain seemed to be increasing as I continued to dance. What could it be? Finally, I looked down, and I was shocked: a high-heel shoe was affixed to my own. The stiletto heel had become firmly wedged between the outer surface of my foot and the inner surface of my shoe. I looked up, and I was shocked again: the owner of the shoe was frantically signalling for my attention. Apparently, I had wrenched the shoe off of her foot, and as I boogied across the floor seeking space, this elegant woman had been limping after me, desperately trying to catch up.

Yes, dance etiquette! Very important!

Next, bicycle etiquette, and the time I gregariously waved at a bicyclist apparently engaged in fantastic feats of off-road derring-do in the landscaping right next to the street, but only later realized that it had been a matter of self preservation - I had apparently forced him off the road....

Weird Second Harvest In The Mojave

Where's Erin Brocovitch when you need her?:

Paiva, a free-lance photographer and graphic designer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, was seeking fresh material for his passion of “night photography of the abandoned roadside West,” when he and a friend stumbled across the food cache near the hamlet of Helendale, along the fabled Route 66 highway between Barstow and Victorville.

Looking for a museum run by retired strip-tease dancers in early March, they ventured up a dirt road and came to what appeared to be an abandoned ranch. When they opened their car doors, they were nearly felled by the stench.

“It was horrendous,” Paiva recalled Friday. “It was really bad. Sometimes you smell dead animals and that’s what it smelled like. Creepy, spooky, gross, disgusting, filled with animals and bugs.”

... They snapped a few images of old cars, trailers and buildings, then rounded a corner and saw an awful buffet spread before them. “There was a case of eggnog … whole cases of spinach that are just desiccated into a bunch of dry leaves … a case of Rembrandt tooth whitener, which I find highly amusing as a food bank item anyway.”

The stuff may have covered an acre of land, Paiva estimated. In among it all were several barrels with the name and telephone number of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, a program that works with 390 member charities to help feed 200,000 people a month, according to its Web site.

Shown Paiva’s photographs of the macabre scene by MSNBC.com, food bank General Manager Jerry Creekpaum immediately recognized the crates and pallets as “the product that we send out to our pig farm, product that has gone beyond code shelf life.” Checking into the matter further, Creekpaum found that the pig farmer had been evicted from the ranch in January before he was able to feed the stuff to his animals or move it.

“I was unaware that he had been evicted,” Creekpaum said. “Nobody knew that there was still food on the land.”

Thunder Valley Late Night

It's quite impressive, really, how nice people are in casinos. Playing cards or slots, long losing streaks are common, but people suffer through these horrible tragedies with grace, tolerance, and understanding.

Sometimes there are exceptions, though. Once in a while, you see a broken slot machine - obviously shattered by someone who went medieval on the thieving machine. In general, casino management deals with these cases through inconspicuous ergonomic engineering. Enraged people find that not only is the slot machine encased in armor, but all the chairs are bolted to the floor and all the trash cans affixed to pillars. You are left without weapons, only able to pound your fists into a pulp without leaving anything more than blood on the machine.

I have a friend who can no longer visit Thunder Valley casino with the rest of her family. Several months ago, her brother-in-law became enraged at his long losing streak. He removed all his clothes and proclaimed:

You want my clothes too? Well here they are! You want my body too? Well, HERE IT IS!

This kind of conduct is highly-admirable - exemplary even! But the spectacle of a naked, drunken (not to mention obese) man shouting venemous insults at the casino staff in front of hundreds of patrons was not consistent with casino management goals. He was escorted from the premises and banned from returning. And so my friend has to go elsewhere if she wants to entertain her family in public.

About 3 a.m. Sunday morning, playing blackjack, I began getting enraged. I encountered a massive losing streak that clipped $600 from my bankroll in just twenty minutes. But I had less reason to complain than my friend's brother-in-law: I was still ahead. So I kept my cool - for now.....

Winnings: $1,800, minus $383 original stake, minus $60 E. stake = $1,357.

"Nine Sinatra Songs", And Other Dances - Sacramento Ballet


Left: Question time after the show. Ron Cunningham on the microphone. Seven dancers visible - left to right - Jack Hansen, Kirsten Bloom, Ilana Goldman, (obscured), Nicholas Pabst, (Tarah Finley?), Alexandra Cunningham.




Wonderful program! It was time to check into my crush on dancer Tarah Finley.

But wait! So many other crushes too! Amanda Peet is an AWESOME dancer!

The first offering was George Balanchine's "Scotch Symphony" (1952), with Kirsten Bloom and Jack Hansen dancing pas de deux, and Nicole Haskins in a solo role. Lightning-fast classical ballet, with some characteristically-Scotch toe taps.

One interesting feature of the evening was the unexpected rearward motion of the woman dancer towards her partner. In Scotch Symphony, the rearward motion was simple - pirouette, developpe, arabesque - but the Twyla Tharp dances featured a much more aggressive rearward attack.

The second offering was Twyla Tharp's "Nine Sinatra Songs" (1982). The funniest number was "All The Way", with Kirsten Bloom and Michael Vester. Amanda Peet displayed an almost feline approach to ballet that was riveting to watch! There was one trick that wowed the audience: Peet began running from stage right and launched herself feet-first, like a javelin in flight towards Jack Hansen, stage left, as he distractedly put on a coat. Hansen caught Peet midair at the last possible moment. It looked as if he could not track her movement even in peripheral vision until the last moment, and thus had to rely on musical timing. As a trick, it wasn't the most-complicated thing of the evening - it required perfect timing, of course, but more sophisticated wizardry had been on display all evening - but as theater, it was AWESOME!

The third offering was a world-premiere: Trey McIntyre's "Wild Sweet Love". Ilana Goldman was frequently featured as the (unloved) single woman looking for love. The first selection featured awkward music (by the Zombies) which I felt was actually too awkward for the circumstances. The second selection featured the world's most popular song (and the scourge of the single woman), Felix Mendelsohn's "Wedding March." Otherwise, it was an interesting and engaging piece, but hard to characterize in regards to style - lots of pop music, like from Queen, or the Partridge Family's theme.

Roadkill On The Road To Roswell

Interesting revelations from Fife Symington!

Regarding the proposed explanation from the amateur astronomer for the 1997 UFO sightings, it's important to remember that A-10 'Warthog' aircraft are common in Arizona. They train in anti-tank warfare west of Tucson.

I remember once being startled by an A-10 flying at saguaro-top levels on the road out to Ajo. Usually, A-10's fly over Tucson in slow, stately formation, two by two, as they travel to and from Davis-Monthan AFB and the training grounds, but that day, the aircraft was in killer mode. It was like discovering that my friendly dog Sparky is actually a mankilling wolf! Scary!

The A-10s rake abandoned cars out on the training grounds with gunfire. One time in the 1980's, a Fish and Game truck was annihilated by an A-10 because it was parked very near the boundary of the training ground. The pilot erred, attacked the truck, and two stranded Fish and Game employees had to hike seven miles out to a main road, on foot.

It's rarer when A-10s are over Phoenix, though - I believe they rarely stray far from the western reaches of the metropolis, near Luke AFB - so I wonder what was going on on that day in 1997?

In any event, former Arizona Governor Fife Symington is having none of the more-mundane explanations for what he saw:

Former Gov. Fife Symington says now that those strange lights that appeared over Phoenix a decade ago were from another world and that he had a close encounter with an alien craft on March 13, 1997.

"I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people," Symington said Thursday. "I don't know why people would ridicule it."

Symington, who was in his second term as governor of Arizona during the Phoenix Lights incident, recently told a UFO investigator making a documentary that he had kept quiet about his personal close encounter because he didn't want to panic the populace.

He repeated his story Thursday on CNN, saying the craft he saw was "enormous. It just felt other-worldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was other-worldly."
The governor didn't let on at the time, instead poking fun at the whole thing.

He hosted a press conference a few months after the mass sightings to announce that his Department of Public Safety had arrested the culprit responsible — a very tall bug-eyed creature brought before the media in handcuffs.

He then unmasked the creature to reveal his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, who at 6-foot-4 made an imposing, somewhat comical space alien.

...Heiler said Thursday he isn't surprised Symington believes in UFOs.

He said his boss was a "Trekkie" who enjoyed discussing space travel. Heiler said Symington was convinced that earthlings would be traveling to distant solar systems at speeds exceeding the speed of light "in our lifetimes."

...Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he investigated two separate sightings over Phoenix that March night and traced them both to A-10 aircraft flying in formation at high altitude.

McGaha said he talked to an amateur astronomer who observed the A-10s and to the National Guard unit that flew them.

"It was clearly aircraft in formation, flying at two different times and then dropping flares and it's clear to any rational person that's what it was," McGaha said Thursday.

McGaha said Symington "is not a trained observer and what he feels in his gut doesn't make any difference."

Symington said he's always believed that life existed elsewhere. "The universe is a big place and we're conceited to think we're alone."

"Suessical - The Musical" - CSU, Sacramento

Left: Set at the top of the show. Note all the circles! There were several circular stages, the foremost of which was tilted towards the audience.







Left: Natasha Scott (Mayzie La Bird) takes a bow at the end of the show.

Excellent show, featuring three friends (Andy Hyun, 'The Cat In The Hat'; Michael R.J. Campbell, 'Horton The Elephant'; and Brad Bong, a 'Wickersham Brother') plus a host of talented people.

Two people in particular merit mention: Stephanie Zito (Gertrude McFuzz) and Natasha Scott (Mayzie La Bird). Very energetic players both! Zito's winning manner on stage was wonderful to see!

There were also fine character sketches: Mr. Amyor (Ed Dyer) and the hunched-over old woman. Vlad Vladikoff (Ryan Harbert), with his juggling skills, was a welcome addition!

Andy Hyun is getting more and more animated in general as his stage career develops. His hands were a marvel to watch in this show.

The music was loud, but appropriately so, given the cartoonish nature of "Suessical - The Musical".

The front, tilted stage was worrisome to me. Not only was the tilted stage a slipping hazard all on its own, but there were times, such as when a rippling sheet simulating water was draped across the stage, when the circular edges of the stage were obscured, when accidents were even more likely to occur. I understand that Christopher Carlson (Jojo) has actually slipped twice into the orchestra pit during the run of the show (but not on Friday, when I was there).

The costumes were great. I wondered a bit about perfect circles for the stages (ovals anyone?), but it all worked well....

--------------------------------
I had read that Ted Geisel (Dr. Suess) was a political cartoonist at one point, but I had thought he was a conservative. The anti-war nature of some his writing thus might have been consistent with an 30's isolationist bent, but according to Wikipedia, Geisel was a New Dealer with pacifist tendencies once the Nazi danger had passed.....

Selections from Wikipedia regarding "Dr. Suess":

Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 - September 24, 1991) was a famous American writer and cartoonist best known for his classic children's books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. ... Ted's father was a parks commissioner in charge of Forest Park, a huge park that included within its borders a zoo and was located three blocks from a library. ... Being an immigrant from Germany, the name "Seuss" would have been pronounced "zoice", the standard pronunciation in German. ... Geisel also used the pen name Theo. LeSieg (Geisel spelled backwards) for books he wrote but others illustrated.

He entered Lincoln College, Oxford, intending to earn a doctorate in literature. At Oxford he met Helen Palmer Geisel, married her in 1927, and returned to the United States without earning the degree. The "Dr." in his pen name is an acknowledgment of his father's unfulfilled hopes that Seuss would earn a doctorate at Oxford.

... He became nationally famous from his advertisements for Flit, a common insecticide at the time. His slogan, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" became a popular catchphrase.

...As World War II began, Dr. Seuss turned to political cartoons, drawing over 400 in two years as editorial cartoonist for the left-wing New York City daily newspaper, PM. Dr. Seuss's political cartoons opposed the viciousness of Hitler and Mussolini and were highly critical of isolationists, most notably Charles Lindbergh, who opposed American entry into the war. Some cartoons depicted all Japanese Americans as latent traitors or fifth-columnists, while at the same time other cartoons deplored the racism at home against Jews and blacks that harmed the war effort. His cartoons were strongly supportive of President Roosevelt's conduct of the war.... In 1942, Dr. Seuss turned his energies to direct support of the U.S. war effort. First, he worked drawing posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board. Then, in 1943, he joined the Army and was commander of the Animation Dept of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces, where he wrote films that included Your Job in Germany, a 1945 propaganda film about peace in Europe after World War II, Design for Death, a study of Japanese culture that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1947, and the Private Snafu series of adult army training films....

...After the war, Dr. Seuss and his wife moved to La Jolla, California. Returning to children's books, he wrote what many consider to be his finest works, including such favorites as If I Ran the Zoo, (1950), Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953), On Beyond Zebra! (1955), If I Ran the Circus (1956), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957).

At the same time, an important development occurred that influenced much of Seuss's later work. In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, Seuss's publisher made up a list of 400 words he felt were important and asked Dr. Seuss to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Nine months later, Seuss, using 220 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat. This book was a tour de force—it retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Seuss's earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers.

... Dr. Seuss went on to write many other children's books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as "Beginner Books") and in his older, more elaborate style. ... The Beginner Books were not easy for Seuss, and reportedly he labored for months crafting them.

... Today, Dr. Seuss is widely viewed as one of the greatest American childrens authors of all time.

Dr. Seuss wrote most of his books in a verse form that in the terminology of metrics would be characterized as anapestic tetrameter, a meter employed also by Lord Byron and other poets of the English literary canon. (It is also the meter of the famous Christmas poem A Visit From St. Nicholas, more familiarly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas".)

Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units (anapests), each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong, schematized below:

x x X x x X x x X x x X

...Seuss generally maintained this meter quite strictly, until late in his career, when he was no longer able to maintain strict rhythm in all lines. The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks; the many imitators and parodists of Seuss are often unable to write in strict anapestic tetrameter, or are unaware that they should, and thus sound clumsy in comparison with the original.

Seuss also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of four units each with a strong followed by a weak beat.

X x X x X x X x
An example is the title (and first line) of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. The formula for trochaic meter permits the final weak position in the line to be omitted, which facilitates the construction of rhymes.

Seuss generally maintained trochaic meter only for brief passages, and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter:

x X x X x X x X
which is easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in Bartholomew and the Oobleck make their first appearance chanting in trochees (thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth):

Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff
then switch to iambs for the oobleck spell:

Go make the oobleck tumble down
On every street, in every town!

In Green Eggs and Ham, Sam-I-Am generally speaks in trochees, and the exasperated character he proselytizes replies in iambs.

...Seuss's figures are often rounded and somewhat droopy. This is true, for instance, of the faces of the Grinch and of the Cat in the Hat. It is also true of virtually all buildings and machinery that Seuss drew: although these objects abound in straight lines in real life, Seuss carefully avoided straight lines in drawing them (in fact, he never drew a completely straight line at any part of any of his works). For buildings, this could be accomplished in part through choice of architecture. For machines, for example, If I Ran the Circus includes a droopy hoisting crane and a droopy steam calliope.

Seuss evidently enjoyed drawing architecturally elaborate objects. His endlessly varied (but never rectilinear) palaces, ramps, platforms, and free-standing stairways are among his most evocative creations. Seuss also drew elaborate imaginary machines, of which the Audio-Telly-O-Tally-O-Count, from Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, is one example. Seuss also liked drawing outlandish arrangements of feathers or fur, for example, the 500th hat of Bartholomew Cubbins, the tail of Gertrude McFuzz, and the pet for girls who like to brush and comb, in One Fish Two Fish.

Seuss's images often convey motion vividly. He was fond of a sort of "voilà" gesture, in which the hand flips outward, spreading the fingers slightly backward with the thumb up; this is done by Ish, for instance, in One Fish Two Fish when he creates fish (who perform the gesture themselves with their fins), in the introduction of the various acts of If I Ran the Circus, and in the introduction of the Little Cats in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. ...

...Dr. Seuss was a friend and drinking partner of crime author Raymond Chandler, who was also a resident of La Jolla.

... Is often attributed with inventing the word 'nerd'.

How's The Permanent Republican Majority Project Going?

Seen better times, it seems.

Intriguing New Musical Proposed

People find inspiration from the strangest places - like the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Was that song from the Coachella movie from this album? I think maybe so! What was with that big plastic ball? I mean, it's nice for Wayne Coyne to walk across the mosh pit inside a big plastic ball - tricksy footing, that - but how does that relate to Yoshimi's struggle?:

Coyne compares the proposed concept to Terry Gilliam's dystopian sci-fi movie Brazil. ''There's the real world and then there's this fantastical world,'' explains Coyne. ''This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It's almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive.

Birthday - Shhh!

Left: From Whipped Dream at B3ta.


I was going to mention that yesterday was Marcel Marceau's birthday, but somehow couldn't find the words.

David Obey re: Washington Post

It's taking years, but finally our representatives are beginning to talk back to the sick fools at the Washington Post:

Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn't listen enough to people like The Washington Post. It's that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost two-thirds of the people in this chamber to vote for that misbegotten, stupid, ill-advised war that has destroyed our influence over a third of the world. So I make no apology if the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post, are offended because they don't like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines.

What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians that we're going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service. That's what we're trying to do. And if The Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that's just too bad.

A Song About Rush Limbaugh

A surprising number of people, many likely wacko wingnuts, have been accessing my blog for the last two days, because I wrote that post about Rush Limbaugh seizing the concept of 'the Magic Negro' from the LA Times and singing 'Barack, The Magic Negro' to the tune of 'Puff, The Magic Dragon.' The visitors want the lyrics to the tune as Rush sang it. So why are they accessing this web log? Because, if you do a Google search on 'Barack, The Magic Negro', or similar terms, this site is listed second, and the abstract Google provides makes it look like I'm right there in lockstep with the wingnuts.

So, what to do? When life hands you a wingnut, make wingnutade. Here is a song about Rush Limbaugh, sung to the tune of 'Puff, The Magic Dragon.'

Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me,
Ditto Richard Cheney loved that rascal Rush,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh

Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me,
Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me.

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Richard kept a lookout perched on Rush's gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flags when Rush roared out his name. Oh!

Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me,
Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me.

DJs live forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Richard Cheney came no more
And Rush on oxycontin, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, beer cans fell like rain,
Rush no longer went to play, along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Rush could not be brave,
So Rush on oxycontin sadly slipped into his cave. Oh!

Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me,
Rush, on oxycontin lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in the land for you and me.

Good For Us All

John Edwards has decided to continue his Presidential campaign.

"Faithful Friends O' Th' Suburbs", And Other Fighting Words

I've been looking on-line for that list of Shakespearean insults we used in 'Fie On Goodness', in "Camelot", but haven't found it. Instead, I found this bin o' insults.

Media Crusade Against Gore

Interesting article detailing the repeated and outrageous conduct of the New York Times and other media outlets in distorting Al Gore's words.

Deborah Does Zazzle

Deborah McMillion-Nering is now selling T-Shirts featuring her colorful surrealistic paintings on Zazzle. Buy a few!

(I was going to call this post 'Debbie Does Dali', but she'd probably kill me....)

Walk A Mile In My Shoes

Well, maybe not:

Sitting in her living room in Tooele, a few days before she won the contest for the stinkiest shoes in America, 13-year-old Katharine Tuck seemed quietly confident.

..."A girl today told me I needed to get new shoes," Katharine said. She replied that she had to keep wearing this pair — scuffing them and forgoing socks to make them even rattier — because on March 20 she'd be taking part in a national contest, the 32nd annual Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest. Katharine also told her classmate, "The winner gets $2,500."

...Her mother, Paula, notes that Katharine is an honor student and that she followed the rules of the contest quite scrupulously. Katharine knew her shoes would be judged on not just smell but on appearance of tongue, soles, laces, eyelets and the like. And she knew she could not take a knife or a saw to the shoes, that she had to let them wear out by doing what kids her age would naturally do.

So she rode her bike, dragging her toes into the stop, as kids will do. And she helped her mom in the garden, and the shoes got muddy and wet. And she wore them to school, day after day, without socks. And who knows, she may even have strolled the shores of the Great Salt Lake, delicately dipping her feet into the decaying brine shrimp.

...She reported by telephone to the Deseret Morning News after her win, saying she was hopeful when the head judge, a rocket specialist with NASA, had a look of disgust on his face as he smelled her shoes.

Sure enough, after the judges discussed the shoes for what Katharine said seemed to be about three minutes, she was declared the winner.

John Backus, RIP

The leader of the team that developed the only computer language I've ever seriously bothered to learn, John W. Backus, has died at age 82. A very sad day for all.

Various Theories Regarding The Cause Of Global Warming

Via Skynoise, contributors offer their insights and suggestions:


From Diogenes, two images:
























Left: From Brian O'Blivion:














Left: From Your Doppelganger:

Promotion

After six years at the Grant Unified School District as a 'substitute clerk', E. yesterday was named as a 'health assistant'.

Oh No! Mr. Tumble!

The importance of dialect in sign language:

ANGRY parents have accused BBC TV character Mr Tumble of greeting watching children by saying "I'm f****** you" in sign language.

But the CBeebies character, the star of Something Special, has defended his greeting, saying his gestures mean "I'm happy to see you".

...Mr Miller, who said the signs for "happy" and "f******" are quite similar, contacted the BBC five times but Mr Tumble continues to open the show by saying with "I'm f******* you".

The BBC has defended Mr Tumble - presenter Justin Fletcher - saying he uses Makaton signals, which are different to British Sign Language.

... “Makaton is used more for children with learning difficulties — it is essentially a different language.”

In British Sign Language “happy” is shown by gently brushing the palms against each other. The swear word is made by brushing the hands together between the thumb and first finger.

"The Magic Negro" - Rush Bait

With the subtlety of blaring klaxon horns and squealing air brakes, Rush Limbaugh has decided to appropriate the description of Senator Barack Obama as "The Magic Negro":

"I'm going to keep referring to him as that because I want to make a bet that by the end of this week I will own that term," adding, "If I refer to Obama the rest of the day as the 'Magic Negro,' there will be a number of people in the drive-by media and on left-wing blogs who will credit me for coming up with it and ignore the L.A. Times did it, simply because they can't be critical of the L.A. Times, but they can, obviously, be critical of talk radio." Limbaugh continued to refer to Obama as the "Magic Negro" throughout the broadcast -- 27 times, to be exact -- and at one point sang "Barack, the Magic Negro" to the tune of "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Limbaugh defended his use of the song, stating, "Well, that's what we always do here. We do parodies and satires on the idiocy and phoniness of the left."

Leaders often succeed by tapping into subconcious templates we all possess, particularly of past leaders or familiar roles. It doesn't bother me if Barack Obama seizes upon 'The Magic Negro' template: it's out there for the taking, after all. It's wise for voters to understand the existence of these templates, however, so as to better inform their votes, so that they don't cast their votes out of ignorant emotionality.

Nevertheless, if Rush is going to attack Obama just because of the template, he'll anger and provoke Democrats, and Americans in general, into coming to Obama's aid. Obama is a real person, after all, not just a hollow shell. In other words, he is not a Magic Negro, just a regular Negro with friends he can call upon in a time of need.

Do it, Rush, do it, do it, do it........

Decisions, Decisions

The folks at KCRA TV Channel 3 have a site where you can vote for your favorite Sacramento business.

The folks at Step One Dance Studio noticed the site rather late, and are encouraging all their friends to quickly vote for them for Best Dance Studio. For me, it was a difficult choice, because should I vote for the studio I once belonged to (The Ballroom of Sacramento), the studio I belong to now (Step One), or the studio that probably is the best dance studio in Sacramento (Deane Dance Center)? Or should I nominate Ron Cisneros' dance studio instead?

Thank goodness it was a secret ballot!

What Aging Dogs Don't Notice

During our nocturnal sojourns after 2 a.m., I act as Sparky's eyes. This is good, because I'm not sure he can see all that well anymore, and given his much lower height, it's no surprise he misses things. Cats hiding behind parked cars, Sparky usually finds, by using his nose, but he doesn't notice other cats who craftily stalk him from behind (like three nights ago) as he blunders through the flower beds adjacent to the sidewalks. Sparky didn't notice the three fast-moving possums cross the street two nights ago. And last night, Sparky missed the fact that I turned down a side street. I veered back and approached him from behind, calling out to him. For some reason, Sparky couldn't tell I was behind him, and he started running forwards towards where he thought I was. I started running after him, calling more urgently, and soon we were both running at top speed, in hot pursuit, down the deserted streets of nighttime Sacramento.

Applying Irresistible Force Against The Immovable Object

Daylight at the end of the tunnel. Maybe soon, I will receive my 2004 California State Income Tax refund!

Environmental Lament

Inscribed on the emerald-green rear license plate frame of a lime-green VW Bug seen driving around town:

It's not easy being green

Intersections

How the crusade against porn interacts with the federal prosecutor scandal, and helps keep corrupt Arizona Republican Representative Rick Renzi in office.

Criss Angel's Trick

Splitting women in half (watch, but avoid spoiling, explanatory text).

Lice

Gorillas have one kind of lice, and chimpanzees have another kind, and humans have descendants of both kinds. Nevertheless, we had to have picked up the gorilla lice at a pretty late date, maybe from sleeping in gorilla nests:

"[Lice] are simply stranded on their hosts with no means of escape," he explained. "They can't fly, they can't jump, and they can't live apart from the host for any period of time."

The loss of hair over most of our bodies may have created two distinct habitat islands in humans. The scalp and pubic regions differ significantly—and they are separated by largely inhospitable terrain.

"Pubic lice could not have established on humans without suitable habitat," Reed said. "Loss of body hair would have left the pubic region an open island of habitat that [the gorilla louse] could have colonized."

Dale Clayton, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, called it "a fascinating example of ecological opportunism."

"Different hair diameters [in the scalp and pubic regions] probably represent different habitat templates," he said, "just as different-size tree branches are used by different species of birds."

Barack Obama, The 'Magic Negro'

You aren't heavy, you're his brother:

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. ... But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia.

...As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

...And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That's a question asked by John Guare in "Six Degrees of Separation," his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn't fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton's whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial "goodwill.")

But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

... Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

If There Is No Terror, Is There Terrorism?

It's very impressive that Union Pacific has started so quickly rebuilding the trestle that fire destroyed last Thursday. According to a report I heard on TV, it is costing UP $1 million/day to have that track section out of commission, and so they are moving heaven and earth to get concrete pre-fab trestle sections in place to rebuild a new trestle, for about $38 million, by next month. It's like a war-footing!

Union Pacific has also offered a $2,500 reward for information about foul play that may have been involved in the suspiciously-rapid destruction of the trestle - peanuts, basically, considering the scale of the damage.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the sort of terrorism the Homeland Security folks were most-worried about after 9/11, because it was the most-likely: highly-disruptive activities aimed at causing economic hardship and provoking fear. And you can't say the arsonist(s), whomever they may prove to be, didn't try. The fire was set on that portion of the trestle parallel to the heavily-traveled, Business 80 Capitol City Freeway,where tens of thousands of people would have their most-unencumbered view as they passed over the American River on their ways home in the evening commute.

And yet, there is little sense of dread - in fact, no sense of it at all! Indeed, the sudden absence of train traffic has made commuting life quite a bit easier in downtown Sacramento. So, terror has its upside!

The key here, of course, is the absence of a (publicly-acknowledged) threat, and no deaths (maybe one injury from a firefighter, though). Terror is hard to foment if there aren't at least some deaths. That's one reason Iraq is such a frightening place now: combatants are going for maximum terroristic effect, killing indiscriminately....

So, was the railway trestle fire just the start of a crime spree in the Sacramento area by newbie terrorists flexing their capabilities? Maybe so! So, the stolid reaction of law enforcement and Union Pacific so far may lead the newbies to try again, for greater effect, perhaps this time tripping up. On the other hand, maybe that's the best way terror should always be addressed - just a cost of living in the modern world.

Move along, move along, nothing to gaze at here!

The Meaning Of 'Mortgage' Is 'Death Pledge'

Here is the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter.

Over at Obsidian Wings, Hilzoy frets about the collapse of the mortgage bubble:

But the real potential for ugliness comes when you put those things together. A fall in housing prices drives consumer demand down, as well as hurting housing-related businesses. A credit crunch means that it's harder for anyone to borrow money, which means that all sorts of demand-creating activities that people want to borrow money to undertake won't happen. All sorts of people will lose money. Not good at all.

And remember: housing recessions take a long time to unwind. When bubbles burst, prices have to return to their normal, non-bubbly level. If the bubble is in tulip bulbs, that happens when people get rid of all the tulip bulbs they couldn't really afford anyways, and things go back to normal. But people don't get rid of homes they couldn't really afford nearly so easily. People like their homes. They'll part with almost anything else first. This could take a while.

Left And Right Coast (And The Middle Too) Carbon Footprint Smackdown

Walt in Aiken, South Carolina, proposed a project:

I was curious to see how folks in Aiken are doing in reducing their carbon footprint. So one day I counted vehicles in the parking lot at work to see how many are driving gas guzzlers. My workplace is in a remote area; the nearest town with more than 5,000 people is 20 miles away. So most employees have a rather long commute.

Of 476 cars, the breakdown was thus:

sedans - 53%
SUVs & vans - 26%
pickups - 22%

Not a very environmentally conscious showing, considering that almost half the vehicles (SUVs, vans, and pickups) probably get 20 mpg or less. It was worse in town. While walking at the park on a weekday afternoon, I observed 400 non-commercial vehicles driving on the main street.

sedans - 44%
SUVs & vans - 35%
pickups - 21%

Overall, it looks as if Aiken residents do not choose their vehicles for gas economy, although they do tend to drive sedans to work, and use SUVs for running errands. I encourage you to take similar censuses in your cities. Let me know what you find.

I sat down outside at the Una Mas! Café one block from where I work, ate a burrito, and counted the mid-afternoon Monday traffic along J Street as it passed by. The location is just outside Sacramento’s urban core and includes many commuters on errands, local traffic, and commercial activity. I also counted the parked vehicles on the walk over. Since the object of interest is commuter vehicles, I tried to leave out heavy-duty vehicles and clearly-labeled commercial vehicles, but I likely-included poorly-labeled commercial vehicles. There is always the chance of some double-counting (vehicles circling for parking spaces; parked vehicles I counted driving past, etc.)

I was impressed by the noise in the counts. Sometimes there would be no pickups going past at all, and sometimes nothing but pickups.

Of 546 vehicles, the breakdown was thus:

sedans - 54%
SUVs & vans - 31%
pickups - 15%

The count is so close to Walt's, it’s quite eerie! The only significant difference is that SUVs/Vans seem to substitute somewhat for pickups. Californians like to preen over their eco-friendliness, but you can’t spot it these statistics.

[UPDATE:] Not to be outdone, John in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma writes:

OK, I did a count this morning on the street in front of my shop before opening and the results are as follows:

Of 437 vehicles counted, there were 241 sedans, 117 SUV's and 79 pickups for:

Sedans: 55%
SUV's and vans: 27%
Pickups: 18%

It seems that the numbers run fairly consistent on a national basis.

Eric Idle Hangs Out With Billionaires

Taking "Spamalot" to Vegas:

"Can I give you a ride home?" he (Steve Wynn) asks nicely. I'm thinking 6th Avenue, but he means L.A. Well, OK. He flies us home in a plane bigger than my boarding school. There are dogs on board, so my wife is happy. All the way he plays the "Spamalot" cast recording, regaling his passengers with his version of scenes from the show. Later he leaves a message on my phone in a British accent so good that for a moment I think it is Hank Azaria.

As part of my research, I decide to visit all the major attractions (in Vegas). Nothing quite matches the intensity of the plot of "Jubilee," which grips me with its thrilling story of 150 bare-breasted ladies seducing Samson and causing the Titanic to sink. At the Crazy Horse, the girls have blond wigs, perfect derri–res and genuine French names like Fifi and Suki. They remind me what the '70s was all about: light shows and shagging. But the show is a little thin on plot. And clothing.

The rest of the entertainment is all French Canadian, from Celine to the many Cirques. Monty Python was a Flying Circus, but does that qualify as a Cirque? We have no acrobats, no contortionism, apart from Silly Walks and only a few French people yelling abuse, farting in our general direction. What will the nipple-sated Nevadans make of our little show?

I know upfront that I will have to cut 20 minutes from it. What F. Scott Fitzgerald said of American lives is definitely true of Vegas — there are no second acts. Partly this is because they want you back in the casino, and partly it's because they want you back in the casino. In fact, with our low ticket prices I figured out that you will actually save money if you spend 90 minutes in "Spamalot." And if you sleep during the show you can save on a room.

...Last month we launched "Spamalot" in the new Grail Theater. I do a bit of stand-up: "I was in Vegas last night and I missed my wife so much I paid for a woman to come up to my room and ignore me…. "

I introduce our new King Arthur, producing John O'Hurley out of a can of Spam. Then we ham it up and dance a tango together. Why? Because I can't do the pasodoble. And of course we bring on our beautiful girls, wearing only white lingerie. Why? Do you need to ask? I announce that, as an added attraction, some of our shows will be topless, but only in John's part.

Steve Wynn is very funny. He says he has been trying to kill Broadway in Las Vegas and what better way than to put on "Spamalot." Earlier I had tried half-heartedly to persuade him to put his elbow through a painting. "It'll be a big laugh," I say, but he sensibly declined. "Bad enough I am known as the Inspector Clouseau of the art world," he laughed.

...THINGS are going well until the third night of previews, when we have a major glitch. Our elevator fails, and instead of the Lady of the Lake and her Laker girls emerging in their skimpy fronds, nothing happens.

King Arthur stands gesturing to an empty stage. "She's a bit late," says O'Hurley manfully. From below we can hear the Lady of the Lake singing away, but nothing emerges. Oh, dear. We are going to have to stop.

Some deep showoff instinct kicks in and I find myself rushing down through the audience and up onto the stage. The place goes wild. Easiest standing ovation I ever had. "This is what in theatrical terms is called a screw-up," I say. "A huge helicopter was supposed to land onstage … oh, no, that was another show." I ad-lib for about 10 minutes, thinking how Eddie Izzard would be proud of me doing improvisational stand-up in front of 1,600 people. Luckily the glitch ends before I do and I can escape back into the audience and the show continues.

Just Supersize It

Big ripples from a big problem. I wonder when we'll follow suit here in the U.S.?:

NSW Ambulance was the first in Australia to introduce the ambulances, which cost nearly $100,000 more than a regular vehicle, in 1999.

...Recent studies estimate 67 per cent of Australian men and 52 per cent of women aged 25 years and over are overweight or obese.

The weight epidemic has also extended to the school playground with NSW Health estimating that between 1985 to 1995 the number of children either overweight or obese has more than doubled.

..."Due to their unique capabilities the ambulances also assist patients with routine medical appointments such as doctor or dentist visits, with examinations and treatment often completed in the rear of the MPV," he said.

..."A recent case in Sydney's northwest, where a 400kg man had fractured his leg at home, required the demolition of part of a wall and required multi-agency teamwork between ambulance officers and officers from NSW Fire Brigade and NSW Police," Mr Willis said.

"The case took 16 emergency services personnel five hours to complete."

The crisis has also forced an upgrade to air emergency services with new helicopters due to arrive in May which will have a greater load capabilities than the current fleet.

"Camelot" Final Weekend, And Strike


Left: King Arthur makes Mordred an offer he accepts to Arthur's face, but refuses behind his back. King Arthur (Gil Sebastian) and Mordred (Jon Jackson).













King Arthur (Gil Sebastian).


















Two more shots with Nimue Dancer (Meg King, foreground), Merlin (Paul Fearn, middle), and Nimue Singer (Bridget Maguire, background).



Kaya The Hawk was hungry on Friday night, and complained about it back stage during the performance. On Sunday, the Sebastians presented Kaya with a chocolate Easter Bunny, but the offering didn't mollify her: her unscripted calls could be heard several times in Sunday's performance.

I think we were all happy to have a living raptor in the show: it added a lot of color. And now, we all know what a Red-Tailed Hawk sounds like (I saw pigeons panicking Saturday morning over a hawk circling near where I live in Sacramento. Bridget Maguire says there are raptors circling everywhere in the area, and I'm sure she's right).

A couple of bumps and scrapes were suffered by people back stage from the moving furniture during the weekend - nothing serious, but always a reminder that theater has its dangerous side.

On Sunday, the may pole dance got a bit tangled - it was always a danger, but the problem lurked until the last show to express itself. No big deal; just mildly embarrassing....

In Act I, Sunday, a woman in the audience abruptly started talking loudly, just a couple of feet from the stage, and very-nearly knocked Gil and Marguerite off their scripted lines. Obnoxious and rude! Director Lenore Sebastian posed a rhetorical question back stage: "Why do all the meshuganas have to sit in the front row?" A good question! If I had had a voodoo doll with me that instant, I'm sure Lenore could have converted it into a pin cushion.

Audience rudeness is a problem that sometimes bedevils live theater. Perhaps audiences should be encouraged to stop shows as needed and ritually ostracize unwelcome noisy individuals. It could be spooky and weird, like in a Twilight Zone episode, so as to discourage violations. Someone stands up (perhaps an usher), points at a loud person and shouts "J'accuse!" The show stops and the offender is hooted out of the theater. Or maybe it should be done with paintballs. Or pitchforks. Or tasers. Whatever works!

Strike was an easy business this time, and we all went out for pizza afterwards.

John Hancock On The Town

On Friday night, Juan Ramos and John Hancock came to see "Camelot" at DMTC. Their visit was unexpected, and it was a very happy one. To impress his fans, John stood up from his wheelchair and took a few steps. The quiet miracle wrought by physical therapy since last May's auto accident left us all awestruck. Best of good fortune to both Juan and John!