"Pajama Game" Opens Tonight!

Left: Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Left: Taking up matters with the Grievance Committee. Left to right, Jonathan Cagle-Mulberg, Lisa Curtis, Amber Jean Moore, Jan Isaacson, and Joshua Smith.

Left: Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore). In background, left to right, Kris Farhood, McKinley Carlisle, and Sarah Pivonka.

Left: Mabel (Dannette Vassar), Gladys (Lauren Miller), and Hines (Herb Shultz).


Left: Hines (Herb Schultz) and Mabel (Dannette Vassar).


Left: Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore) and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).


Left: Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore) and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).


Left: "Pop" Williams (Jonathan Cagle-Mulberg) and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Left: "Steam Heat" (Lauren Miller, Jabriel Shelton, and Kris Farhood).

Left: "Steam Heat" (Kris Farhood, Lauren Miller, and Jabriel Shelton).

Left: Hines (Herb Shultz), with women's ensemble (clockwise from left: Kris Farhood, Sarah Pivonka, Cari Porter (obscured), Kristine Hager, Stacey Sheehan, and McKinley Carlisle).

Look at the moiré pattern on Herb's suit!


Left: Mabel (Dannette Vassar), Mr. Hasler (Dustin White), and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Bistro 33 Light Fixture

The waitress said it reminded her of Medusa's Head, but I thought instead of some kind of fusion laser inertial confinement device of some sort.

So, What Is The Hip-Hop Reference That Obama Made?


I'm a little slow, so I didn't catch the Jay-Z reference that Barack Obama made in the video I posted yesterday....


Of course, Jay-Z's lyrics here might work nearly as well....

I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one - hit me!

The fact that Obama can even make a Jay-Z reference in a public venue, and be widely-understood, tells a lot about the dog-whistle era of politics we live in now. This is better than even George Bush's anti-abortion "Dred Scott" moment from the October, 2004 debate with John Kerry.

Barack Obama for President!

William Langewiesche Explains Meteorologists

There are two kinds of people in the world: People who divide people into two kinds, and people who don't.

In the latest issue of "Vanity Fair", William Langewiesche discusses the cultural and historical background behind Weather Modification, and contrasts typical meteorologists with meteorologists who dig Weather Modification. (William Langewiesche discusses his discussion here, but the original text appears to be only available in the hard-copy Vanity Fair.) Langewiesche discusses Chinese Weather Modification in particular, but his comments are broadly, internationally, applicable.

Of course, I fall squarely in-between both camps, having been both a typical meteorologist, and a meteorologist who digs Weather Modification. I like singing and dancing (if not drinking) through the night. But my fuzzy classification still doesn't seem to help much: it's as hard as ever to find spawning opportunities:

Meteorology is a miserable job. To be an ordinary meteorologist you have to want to spend your life watching the weather slide by, unable to do anything about it, and subject to public scorn every time you get the forecast wrong. To endure this life it helps to be a social misfit, awkward as hell, and, incidentally, uninterested in mating with the opposite sex. So weak is the natural drive among ordinary forecasters in China, for instance, that the one-child policy should be suspended at underperforming C.M.A. offices, and staffers fined for refusing to give "dating" a try. I have nothing against the Chinese. The fact is that meteorologists everywhere are weenies in the extreme. They are twerps. Dweebs. Instrument tappers. Professional virgins. The moral is that you should never give your child a toy weather station - not if you want them to pass along your genes. Weather modifiers, however, are a different breed. In Ürümqi they enjoy dancing and singing and drinking through the night. There is evidence they enjoy mating too. After all, these are vigorous souls, unwilling to watch the weather slide by, whose impulse when spotting certain clouds is to penetrate them and seize control. At that point the party stops. In a world of weenies they are the action heroes, the alpha dogs, the hunters and providers.

Quick Hoochie Music Review

Been listening to:

• Fergie's "The Dutchess";
• Nelly Furtado's "Loose";
• Janet Jackson's "Discipline"; and,
• Rihanna's "Good Girl Gone Bad."

Rihanna's "Good Girl Gone Bad" is best.

The Crackpot Index (By John Baez)

Walt interrupted my reverie regarding Natural Philosophy with this statistic. Actually, I was already working on this particular cutting edge of a "paradigm shift", but then Baez, this "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy," stole my idea.....

A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

1. A -5 point starting credit.
2. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
6. 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
7. 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).
8. 5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
9. 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
10. 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.
11. 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)
12. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen.
13. 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.
14. 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.
15. 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".
16. 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
17. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism".
18. 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
19. 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".
20. 20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)
21. 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.
22. 20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
23. 20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.
24. 20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.
25. 20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)
26. 20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.
27. 20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".
28. 20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy".
29. 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)
30. 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
31. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).
32. 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.
33. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
34. 40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
35. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
36. 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)
37. 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    © 1998 John Baez

Our Hearts Reach Out....

Our heart-felt sympathies and prayers for Andy & Susan (& Gracie) Sullivan at this difficult time.....

from Marc (and the rest of the DMTC family, and the Magic Circle family as well...)

As most of you know, Sue and I were blessed to have a precious little girl delivered Sunday morning. She was delivered at 24 weeks gestation, about 4 months short of full term. It was a pretty dire situation, but out little Gracie came out fighting. That was the most consistent comment from the N-ICU team of doctors and nurses. Every time we went down there, she was groovin' and dancing away. Sue said that was very much like what was happening before delivery.

Doctors say that micro-preemies (as ours was) honeymoon for a couple of days, then the problems kick in. The first 24 hours and the first 7 days are the true tests to see how the baby does in the world. The honeymoon ended Tuesday night....

Cranking The Numbers

NASA near-miss:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, after noticing the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency, that the young whizzkid had got it right.

...Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

The Utility Of A British Accent

I wonder if I could do something similar in the UK?:

A British holidaymaker with no acting experience bluffed his way on to a film set in a Las Vegas casino and was asked to act in a scene with Gwyneth Paltrow.

Carl Kelly, 29, of Knebworth, Hertfordshire, told security that he had left his pass inside the set and was believed “because I had a British accent”. He sat down with the other extras and, several hours later, was called to do a scene with Ms Paltrow.

He said yesterday: “Some 38 takes later, I think they were getting pretty fed up with me — but that’s what happens when you let an untrained nobody into your film.”

The salesman, who had been staying at Caesars Palace after watching the boxer Ricky Hatton take part in a world title fight last June, now appears in the background of promotional images for the science fiction thriller Iron Man.

Don't Deny The Queen

Because you are just going to regret it:

COMMERCE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Police say a man dressed as a woman repeatedly crashed his car into a suburban Detroit lingerie store that refused to hire him.

Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe says Jeremy McIntosh, 27, was arrested Saturday outside Intimate Ideas. Damage to the store was estimated at $3,000.

McCabe says McIntosh was wearing ‘‘facial makeup, lipstick, blue Capri pants, red flip-flops, a flowery blouse and a matching flowery women’s bra.’’

McIntosh told deputies he is homeless and wanted to go to jail because he had nowhere else to go.

How To Deal With Dumb Media



The debate last night was just the worst example yet of how degraded our national news media have become. This is a good response....

Swedes Go After Oldest Tree Record

Not fair! Not fair!:

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - The world's oldest living tree on record is a nearly 10,000 year-old spruce that has been discovered in central Sweden, Umeaa University said on Thursday.

Researchers had discovered a spruce with genetic material dating back 9,550 years in the Fulu mountain in Dalarna, according to Leif Kullmann, a professor of Physical Geography at the university in northwestern Sweden.

That would mean it had taken root in roughly the year 7,542 BC.

"It was a big surprise because we thought until (now) that this kind of spruce grew much later in those regions," he said.

Scientists had previously believed the world's oldest trees were 4,000 to 5,000 year-old pine trees found in North America.

The new record-breaking tree was discovered in Dalarna in 2004 when Swedish researchers were carrying out a census of tree species in the region, Kullman said.

The tree's genetic material age had been calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.

Spruces, which according to Kullmann offer rich insight into climate change, had long been regarded as relatively newcomers in the Swedish mountain region.

The discovery of the ancient tree had therefore led to "a big change in our way of thinking," he said.

The bristlecone pines in California's White Mountains had hitherto been considered the record holders.

California's White Mountains, east of Bishop near the Nevada state line, are a strange place. Very dry, even at high elevations, due to the rain shadow in the lee of the nearby, much lusher Sierra Nevada Mountains. Starved of rainfall, the plant community in the White Mountains is unusually sparse and simple, and time just seems to S-L-O-W...... D-O-W-N...... there....

Then again, some people have thought that creosote bushes of the American Southwest might be the oldest plants on Earth. The question there is, what exactly is meant by a plant? Apparently creosote bushes generate clones in increasingly-larger concentric circles around the original plant, so today you have large rings of bushes where the genetic material is thousands of years old, but where the original bush in the middle perished long-ago. So, how old is it, really?

I hate to see the Swedes competing in this race. Really old stuff should be an American preserve, right?

"Pajama Game" - Wednesday Night Rehearsal

Left: Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith) and Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore).

Left: Poopsie (McKinley Carlisle) and Mabel (Dannette Vassar).

Left: Mabel (Dannette Vassar), Gladys (Lauren Miller), and Hines (Herb Shultz).

Left: Prez (John Ewing).

Left: Max (Michael McElroy) and Mr. Hasler (Dustin White).

Trying To Make That Difference

Ten Sixes

I remember being amazed by the Reader's Digest Atlas that Cousin Eddie from Santa Fe gave to me in 1964, and its predictions that the world's population would reach six million by the year 2000. Such a rapidly-growing number!

And that prediction came true, right on schedule!

On May 10, 2008, the world's population will reach 6,666,666,666.

[Update: Steve points out that I meant "billion", not "million", but really, who's counting?]

"Pajama Game" - Tuesday Night Rehearsal

Left: Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith) and Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore).

Left: Tension on the floor of the Sleep Tite pajama factory.


Left: Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith) and Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore).

Left: Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore) and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Left: "Pop" Williams (Jonathan Cagle-Mulberg, on right) is impressed by Sid Sorokin's (Joshua Smith's) appreciation of the finer points of philately.

Left: "Steam Heat" (Kris Farhood, Lauren Miller, and Jabriel Shelton).

Left: Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Left: Max (Michael McElroy), Mr. Hasler (Dustin White), and Sid Sorokin (Joshua Smith).

Left: Hines (Herb Schultz).

Left: Mabel (Dannette Vassar).

Left: Hines (Herb Shultz) and women's ensemble (clockwise from left: Kris Farhood, Sarah Pivonka, Cari Porter, Kristine Hager, Stacey Sheehan, and McKinley Carlisle).

Below: Babe Williams (Amber Jean Moore).

You're Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

Left: Byron Sneed (aka Dante Hicks)


After six years of managing two Subway stores (21st & J Streets; and 65th Street, near Folsom), Byron Sneed is moving on, and following former manager Eric Osberg's footsteps, to manage the Sonic Drive-In in Woodland (Eric has since moved on to manage a Subway in Yuba City).

Byron's last day at 21st & J was eventful. A man tried to shortchange Tim at the counter over some cookies, and in just seconds was threatening to bash him with a baseball bat. No rest for the wicked!

Byron claims his mother did some genealogy and tracked his ancestry back to 12th Century Transylvania's Vlad the Impaler (aka Count Dracula). Privately, I wondered if it was possible to track his ancestry any farther back than a New Jersey QuickStop, circa 1988. But if we track our ancestries back far enough, we are all related - even to folks like "Silent Bob".

I will miss Byron's steady hand and great humor. I remember the day I deliberately maintained a very low-key demeanor, expressionless and eyes downcast, and passed entirely through the sandwich line, standing directly in front of him, without him even noticing. Gosh, that was fun! I will miss his ribbing about the gubernatorial run, about Lauren Miller's feckless ways in "Titanic", and half a dozen other topics.

Little Brother Is Watching You

The surveillance society is healthy (even if the surveillance state is sometimes blind):

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, unveiled plans on Monday to film its gun sales in the United States and create a computerized log of purchases in a bid to stop guns falling into the wrong hands.

Wal-Mart, which is the largest seller of firearms in the United States, agreed a 10-point code, which also includes rigid inventory controls, with a bipartisan coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns led by New York's Michael Bloomberg.

The retailer said it will develop a first-of-its-kind computerized crime gun trace log that will flag purchases by customers who have previously bought guns later recovered in crimes.

"Wal-Mart currently uses a strong point of sale system," said J.P. Suarez, senior vice president and chief compliance officer of Wal-Mart. "This code is a way for us to fine-tune the things we're already doing and further strengthen our standards. We hope other retailers will join us."

The Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership is designed to strengthen the points in the gun purchasing system that criminals have exploited in the past, Wal-Mart and the Mayors Against Illegal Guns said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 46 percent of its criminal gun trafficking investigations involved cases in which someone who is not legally allowed to purchase a firearm does so through the use of a proxy, known as a straw buyer.

"Mole Man" In Trouble

Just having too much fun:

William Lyttle, 77, spent 40 years excavating a maze of tunnels beneath his 20-room Victorian property in Hackney, East London, before the council intervened.

...Inspectors discovered that parts of the house were supported by nothing more than household appliances and that ceilings had fallen in as a result of his extensive “home improvements”.

Mr Lyttle also dug out holes around his home, in which he placed a range of items including cars and boats.

The London Borough of Hackney had Mr Lyttle evicted in 2006 so council workmen could move in and save the house and a neighbouring property. The pavement outside was also affected.

Judge McKenna, presiding at the hearing at the High Court in London, ordered Mr Lyttle to pay £283,026 for the repairs and £10,000 in legal costs.

He also imposed an injunction on Mr Lyttle to prevent him undoing any of the work completed so far on site.

Simon Butler, representing the council, said in his written submissions that Mr Lyttle had used assorted items such as a fridge-freezer and a bath to prop up portions of his home. “There were poles which had been used to prop sections of floor, which were clearly bowing out of vertical due to the excessive load which the building had been subjected to,” he wrote.

“Mr Lyttle had extended below the existing basement to the property and mined the two main garden areas. He had also undermined and cut away at the foundation of the neighbouring property.”

Mr Butler said Mr Lyttle was ordered by Thames Magistrates Court to take down or repair the house in May 2006, but failed to comply, and the council moved in to undertake the work.

He told the court: “Mr Lyttle has been obstructive, has issued numerous applications in the County Court and the Royal Courts of Justice over the last five years, and has caused the council to incur unnecessary expenses abating a nuisance he has created, because he fails to use his land in a reasonable manner.”

Mr Lyttle, who defended himself in court, was given 14 days to pay.

Judge McKenna, giving his judgment, said the costs bills were reasonable.

Obama's "Bitter" Comments

It's been fun listening to the various elitists hold forth about what has been seen as Obama's elitist tone-deafness, by linking gun culture and immigrant-bashing to economic insecurity. Hillary Clinton has a rebuttal (Yale vs. Harvard, of course), and so does John McCain (although I'm sure he, the son and grandson of admirals, knows nothing about elitism). Even William Kristol at the New York Times, the son of Irving Kristol and a complete stranger to real work, has joined in the fun.

Yup, just pork rinds and beer-swilling in fly-over country like Pennsylvania.

In any event, I'm glad we are having these nano-controversies now, rather than in the general election. By leeching the poison out now, there will be less available in October and November.

Kevin Drum opines:

Once you clear out all the meta-clutter, though, what really strikes me as odd about Obama's statement is that, on its merits, it's largely untrue, isn't it? Economic distress probably is responsible for growing anti-trade sentiment (though the Midwest has never exactly been a bastion of free trade support), and maybe for a bit of the increase in anti-immigrant sentiment too (though I think this has been more cultural than economic, and is primarily rooted in the simple fact that we have a lot more illegal immigrants today than we did 15 years ago). But does anyone really think that stagnant wages and globalization are responsible for rural gun culture? Or the rise of the Christian right? Or an increase in bigotry? This stuff just doesn't seem to be related to recent economic distress in any serious way at all. Gun culture, for example, has been around forever. It's just that it was largely unnoticed until liberals started trying to take guns away in the 60s and 70s. The rise of the Christian right has lots of causes, but it's part of a long American religious tradition that has very little to do with the ups and downs of the economy. And bigotry hasn't increased in the past 25 years, so that part doesn't even make sense on its own terms.