text:
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Hold Me Close Young Tony Danza
I have that problem myself occasionally. I thought "Waterloo" was "Wanting You".
And I just found out that I was wrong about a play name. I always thought it was "Morning Becomes Electric", like ... you know.. electricity is in the air.
Turns out, just down the street is the play "Mourning Becomes Electra". Turns out it is a reference to a person and death! Go figure!
Here is part of the Wikipedia entry, and let me just say, it doesn't seem anything like an electric and exciting morning...
The story is an update of the Greek myth of Orestes to the family of a Northern general in the American Civil War. Agamemnon is now General Ezra Mannon, Clytemnestra is his second wife Christine, Orestes is his son Orin, and Electra is his daughter Lavinia. As an updated Greek tragedy, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love and revenge, and even a group of townspeople who function as a kind of Greek chorus. Though fate alone guides characters' actions in Greek tragedies, O'Neill's characters have motivations grounded in 1930s-era psychological theory as well. The play can easily be read from a Freudian perspective, paying attention to various characters' Oedipus complexes and Electra complexes.
Hanker for a Hunka???
Cool Libraries from The Daily Beast
Friday, January 30, 2009
Think about this...
One Last Thing this Super Bowl Week-end
Live from an alternate reality.....
As We Occasional Do....
In the flat romantic comedy "New in Town," Renée Zellweger plays Lucy Hill, a shark in spike heels who wields pretentious corporate jargon like a machete. An aspiring master of the universe who works at the Miami headquarters of a food-processing giant, Lucy is dispatched to an underperforming branch in New Ulm, Minn., to oversee slash-and-burn operations. After a few minutes of listening to her running off at the mouth, you may never again want to hear "dialogue" used as a verb.
"The Uninvited" sounds like the name of a generic horror movie, which is more or less what it is. But when you stop to think about it, the title is actually a clue to the picture's lameness. Words beginning with "un" do have a certain scary resonance — intimations of the unknown, the undead, the uncontrollable and the unholy — but "uninvited"? As in "not on the guest list"? Only in Hollywood could such a notion be a source of terror.
. (later).
Two gentlemen behind me kept up a lively, derisive banter — the kind of thing that would ordinarily drive me mad with rage but that in this case saved me a bit of work. Just at the moment when the kindly local sheriff left the heroine alone in a dark room, assuring her that no one else would get hurt — spoiler alert! he was wrong! — one fellow asked his friend: "Is this a commercial break? Because I need to go to the bathroom."
I saw a wonderful show last night....
Last night I got to see an amazing wonderful show. O shan't review it right now, since it doesn't open until tonight and I my review comes out on Thursday.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
I call bullshit on the NY Times: Updated and Retracted
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Saw Pal Joey Today...
Today I saw a matinee of Pal Joey with Stockard Channing and Martha Plimpton. I really liked it a lot.
An Odd Thing
I don't mean to dish the Pope. After all, he is the titular head of the Catholic Church and the arcane workings of that body, mainly religious but clearly more than just that, are beyond me.
Sometimes a great notion...
(Reprinted from the Daily Mail with no comment) David Beckham scored his first goal for AC Milan over the weekend causing a rush for his ass by teammates:
"The 33-year-old football ace was seen getting groped by his AC Milan team-mates, Andrea Pirlo and Clarance Seedorf during the Serie A stars game against Bologna at the Renato Dall'Ara stadium...it wasn't just a case of cheeky behaviour, the pair were congratulating midfielder Beckham - and also touching him for luck after he scored his first goal for the club he is on loan to for three months. An AC Milan insider said: 'Everyone knows Beckham has a golden touch and he has proved that since he arrived. 'Italy is a superstitious country and people often touch things for luck - the players are doing the same with Beckham and touching his bottom because he is seen as a lucky mascot.' Pictures of the players touching the bottom of Beckham were published in several Italian newspapers, all with the headline: 'Now he is a lucky talisman.' Since the former Manchester United player arrived in Milan, the side has not lost a match both in the Italian league, nor in a friendly."
Okay, with one comment. I could use a little luck myself.
A Twofer
In deference to my "any reason to post a picture of Brad" - let me give a shout out to Phil, John and Carson (I know that Don doesn't care :-). Here is a picture of Jessica Alba.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
In Older Men Sean... not younger
In the annuals of "really?"
The Annual Dance
Anyway, there is an Angelino annual ritual I forgot about. It is the yearly, post-Football season, "Will LA get a pro football team this time?" dance. (USC is only semi-pro and doesn't count.)
It always ends in the negative because LA doesn't do the one thing that successful dancers do (ones like Houston - now home of the Texans, or Tennessee -new home of the Titans (nee Oilers), or Baltimore -home of the Ravens, or Cleveland -home of the Browns (nee Ravens)). LA does not pony up the cash. Not the least of the reasons why is that Angelino's have been without a football team since 1994 and are doing fine.
That may sound odd, but both the LA / Oakland Raiders and the LA/ Orange County /St. Louis Rams could only get out of the contract by pulling horrible attendance figures. So they ran their teams into the ground so no one went. And the Byzantine contract requires that television show the home team if the game isn't sold out so we watched these two dogs play every Sunday for 2 years. We were happy when they left that we could at least WATCH good football.
ps - Georgia Rosenbloom Fortiere was, is and will always be a conniving bitch in my book. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Had Carrol Rosenbloom known what she would do with his beoved Rams, he would have fixed his will.
This year talk is centered on San Diego Chargers moving to the City of Industry.
This would be the new stadium, built on top of a rather tall hill (although it would be a low mountain in Florida).
For those of you familiar with the freeway system it would be at the conflux of the 605 and 60. And on Sundays would bring not only the 605 and 60 to a screeching halt, but play hell with the 10 (at San Fanciscito Carson!), the 5 at the narrow part near Downy and the end of the 105.
It is on the Metro line... oh wait.. it isn't anywhere near a Metro line.
It will, of course, not be built. It will join the ranks of the Carson Landfill, the Irving Gravel Pit, the refurbished Colosseum and the stadium within the Rose Bowl in the "if we only had a billion dollars" hall of fame.
This yearly dance started like some Greek Tragedy for football fans, then moved to farce and is now an annual sideshow much less sad, but just as frustrating as Arab Israeli peace talks.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Bad Mall
Yesterday we were on a quest for Ikea Meatballs. You know, as you do.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Gerr.. Great!!
Dip Shit
So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails." (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don't care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.
So I Went and Saw The Curious Case of ... Button
Well, I went and saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button yesterday (in lui of my afternoon nap).
Was it good? Yes.
Was it great? Depends on your patience.
It is a long movie. If you go waiting to see hot Brad without a shirt, you have about 90 minutes before he nudes up. You will be dissapointed.
It is truly a quiet movie that is really moving... if you are willing to sit through it.
Here is the thing. The movie is "about" love and life. It is about accepting age, accepting fate and embracing what you are given.
There are probably more than a few ways to do this. One is a TV series method - where you learn to enjoy and "feel" characters over time. A movie doesn't really have that luxury. Then there is the Steven Spielberg method - where he just tells you over and over and over "how" to feel. It is a method that most people seem to like, but I find very artificial.
The C Case of B Button chooses an altogether different method. In the case of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, the viewer is already familiar with them - at least their appearance. So the filmmaker is free to let their emotions grow onscreen and things happen without hitting you on the head with it.
As Cate Blanchett gets old or Brad Pitt gets young - we are already so familiar with their faces that the visual clues are almost subliminal. The story, and it's many inducements to fully enjoy life as it is given, can be more subtle because we feel the march of years on these familiar faces.
The fact that their voices, while familiar, aren't an everyday input as much as their faces are, makes their stories more poignant. However, even with those faces, the movie's method requires you to SEE their stories in order to fell them, not just be told how the characters feel.
Make no mistake, it is a 3 hour life story that frustrates with a few missteps. The biggest being a reliance on storm imagery that never really works, and the second being the use of Hurricane Katrina to book-end the piece that seems stupid and artifical.
Finally, if Brad Pitt's voice bugs you avoid at all costs. He is a constant presence that both stars and narrates the story. If, like some folks, that slow, easy, low pitched cadance he has makes you a little weak in the knees - then see it.
Ultimately, I loved it. And I say this knowing it will drive a lot of people crazy. It isn't Brad's best movie (that would be Twelve Monkeys - where he really did deserve an Oscar), but I did think Cate Blanchett was about as good as I have seen her in a much less showy role that Queen Elizabeth. The supporting old folks, his mother works in a home forthe aged, are well used and excellent in the small but sometimes critical, roles. And Tilda Swindon, making a very small part, looks beautiful - something you never really say with her!
As for Best Picture.... It's no Milk - but like I said Milk was a personal time for me and I can be no judge of it. Benjamin Button is certainly better than The English Patient - at about the same pace.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Oscar Nominations (or any excuse for Brad!)
Any excuse for a Brad picture.
So much better.. finally
Thursday, January 22, 2009
This is why it is a big deal...
Hi Ed,
Thank you for the email and sharing your concerns with us. I partnered with the ** Benefits team at corporate in Fairfield and confirmed the following information:
The ** pension plan survivor annuity benefit does not treat a same-sex partner/spouse on essentially the same basis as an opposite-sex spouse . The spousal definition in this plan tracks to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as solely between members of the opposite sex. Since our ** pension plan is federally governed (ERISA), state same-sex marriage and civil union laws do not apply. This is the situation regardless of the state in which the ** employee resides.
Former French Minister Mauled by Maltese
Some headlines write themselves. I would write something pithy and humorous, but that work has been done by the Guardian - apparently a real incident. I copy for you entertainment pleasure.
Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to hospital after being mauled by his own 'clinically depressed' pet dog.
The 76-year-old statesman was savaged by his white Maltese dog - which suffers from frenzied fits and is being treated with anti-depressants.
The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said.
The former president, who ruled France for 12 years until 2007, was taken to hospital in Paris where he was treated as an outpatient and sent home, VSD magazine reported. Mrs Chirac said: 'The dog went for him for no apparent reason.
'We were already aware the animal was unpredictable and is actually being treated with pills for depression. 'My husband was bitten quite badly, but he is certain to make a full recovery over the coming weeks.' The former French First Lady did not reveal where on his body Chirac was bitten.
The pet, named after the Japanese form of wrestling, was a gift to the Chiracs from their grandson Martin.
Recent polls have shown that since leaving office Chirac is now regarded as one of the most popular politicians in France, liked by 70 per cent of people. In the last days of his presidency, he was much less popular, liked by just 50 per cent of the population.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Amazing New Stuff on the Web
Foreign Policy Magazine has put up a new web site that is GREAT.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Who's Birthday?
Above he is with John and below in his full glory.
The Inauguration
It is odd working from home on a day like today. I got to watch the Inauguration and President Obama's speech - but not with a crowd. So I listened like I would watching with Ed (as opposed to cheer as it seemed many in the streets did).
I can't critique the speech. I think it was moving and touching, but it was very personal. He reached out to people's heart in the speech. If, like me, you were willing to be drawn in - or even hoped to be, it was great.
But I don't know how it played to those who still worry about him as President.
I will say that the pool video artists and editors SUCK. Whoever they were, they know nothing about the cadence and emotion of a Black Speaker. And whatever else he is, President Obama is a wonderful, gifted black speaker. The camera, seemingly afraid of viewers A.D.D., cut away from Obama's pauses to random faces the crowd, diminishing the effect of the pause and the following words. The faces, a diversely appropriate mix of races and incomes, were meant to be moving to the viewers - but the words were enough. In fact the words were what we tuned in for.
It was the heavy hand of a video director who no longer trusts the American people to recognize emotion and true commitment. And I only mention it because it is the same heavy hands that insist on telling us what our politicians are saying. Spinning, okay lying, in order to drive us apart.
I hope Obama can end some tiny part of this process. I hope that people heard the speech for what I heard - a praise of the people of the country and a call to action to make it whole again.
You Go Aretha!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Recovery Proceeds Slowly
It is either stomach flu or salmonella and either way it has been a disgusting few days.
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Plane from our house
It landed a little north of our house (so I couldn't see it), but it kept drifting more and more south.
First of all I was amazed at the great job the pilot did landing the plane. I mean any mistake and they are toast.
Second how lucky to land on the Hudson river during the day. The commuter ferries were there in less than 5 minutes to take the passengers off the plane's wings.
Which probably saved a lot of lives or at least help avert a ton of hypothermia.
It was quite the thing to watch live and on TV at the same time.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
I KNEW it!
Monday, January 12, 2009
Trust Me: Bradley's New Show
About the Show
Eric McCormack ( Will & Grace ) and Tom Cavanagh ( Ed ) return to series television in TNT's TRUST ME , a sharp, witty drama series that centers on two best friends working as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency.
Joining McCormack and Cavanagh in TRUST ME are Monica Potter ( Boston Legal ), Griffin Dunne ( Law & Order: Criminal Intent ), Sarah Clarke ( 24 ), Mike Damus ( Lost in Yonkers ) and Geoffrey Arend ( Garden State ). The show from Warner Horizon Television is executive-produced by THE CLOSER's Greer Shephard, Michael M. Robin, Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny . Baldwin and Coveny are also writers on the show. TRUST ME premieres Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) , following an all-new episode of THE CLOSER.
Set against the backdrop of the high-pressure world of advertising, TRUST ME focuses on Mason (McCormack) and Conner (Cavanagh), a pair of ad men whose strong creative partnership has served the firm of Rothman Greene & Mohr extremely well over the years. Mason, an art director, is a responsible, workaholic family man with a beautiful wife, Erin (Clarke), two children and an undying loyalty to the brands he helps sell. By contrast, his writing partner, Conner (Cavanagh), is a single, impulsive copywriter with the attention span of a teenager. Their yin-yang relationship is put to the test when Mason is named a creative director of the agency, making him Conner's boss. The series follows the changing dynamics between the two friends, who are better together than they are apart.
Also working in the same creative group is new hire Sarah Krajicek-Hunter (Potter), an award-winning copywriter whose forceful personality has a tendency to rub people the wrong way. Hector (Arend) and Tom (Damus) are a junior creative team with untraditional ideas that don't always sit well with their new boss. The entire team is supervised by Tony Mink (Dunne), a man who lives and dies by the advertising business but has a growing sense his days in this young person's business may be numbered.
TRUST ME follows these memorable characters as they try to navigate the waters of inter-office politics, personality conflicts, easily bruised egos, professional jealousies and unreasonable client demands.
TRUST ME was created by Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny, who have a combined total of over 20 years of experience in the advertising world having worked for J. Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago .
Hastings T-Bone Story
Hastings would, of course, wolf down any food in order to get to Ashford's food faster. This including devouring any food that was available, then running over to steal Ashford's. The problem with this scheme was 2 T-Bone steak bones. With 2 bones, Hastings and Ashford would both eat as quickly as possible and then trade bones (after some growling and stuff).
But once out in the desert, we gave them both dogs bones – put Hastings outside with his and left Ashford inside. After a few minutes they wanted to change, so we open the door – only to hear Ashford barking.
Hastings, sneaky shit he was, had put his bone on the first step of the pool – because Ashford was afraid of the pool and the water. So Hastings was eating Ashford bone as fast as he could, before I figured it out. And Ashford stood outside the pool and barked at the bone in the pool.
Miss Creepy.. Nice cheek implants
Yikes, I think that Rene Z. has had some bad cheek implants.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Week-end fun
Saturday, January 10, 2009
It's all about the expectations....
Too bad Tom Cruise has become "Tom Cruise; Crazy Scientoligist" because he isn't a horrible little actor.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Here is the problem with Bride Wars
We already have Bridzilla's on WE (or weh! or wee-wee or however it is being written now).
Here's the Problem with the Minnesota Senate race
Quote of the day from Joan Crawford
Well, my g-mail had a quote for today from Joan Crawford. It was...
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Mr. Madoff should be in Jail...
I know it would be hard on Bernie Madoff in jail. I mean he is old and evil and will probably not fair well with the criminal element in the Bronx or Midtown holding jails.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
She's suppose to be great, but....
Did I tell you my "Moment" story?
So Ed and Lynn and I are watching "Hello Dolly" on video, and the song "It Only Takes a Moment to Fall In Love" comes on. That same song is now known by the world as it was included in Wall.E to great effect. Thinking I have something unique to share, I do what I normally do. I pipe up to share my vast fount of knowledge.
"Do you know how long a Moment is?" I ask. Now, I am quite satisfied with the answer because most people assume that a moment is some indeterminate length of time. But I know the truth, and after a moment of hesitation by them, I say, "A Moment is EXACTELY 2 minutes."
Lynn and Ed calmly (and more politely) call bullshit on me. And so I am forced to explain to the poor saps. "No really. When I was little…"
It is at this point in the story I realize I am well and fully screwed. After all, if I heard it when I was "little", I probably heard it through my father. But like a cornered rat, I prattle on – now knowingly bluffing, "…when I was little the commercials would come on TV and say 'We'll be back in a moment'. And I was told that a moment was EXACTELY 2 minutes and you could tell because they showed four 30 second commercials."
Ed pounces on the weak link in my story, "Told by who?"
Being wrong, I get defensive..."Not everything he said was a lie. He said the last title before a movie starts is the 'Directed By', and he was right there."
There is general arguing before we turn back to Hello Dolly – but it is not forgotten. The next night, on return from the desert Ed has to look this up in the dictionary, like, 2 minutes after we are in the door. He is right and I am wrong. He IMMEDIATELY calls Lynn
He starts the conversation without even so much as a hello..."I looked it up. You know what the dictionary says a Moment is?"
He then hands the phone to me and says, "Tell her!"
And since I had the phone I did. "The dictionary says a Moment is exactly 2 minutes." And I hung up.
Ed called back immediately. Ed and Lynn laugh and everyone has a big laugh at my expense. And I vow to always count internally to 10 before I repeated something my wonderful lying father told me - just to do a quick saniety test.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Cool / Fun Story about Sheepdogs and Penguins
For those who might not get Tom Tomorrow
Amazing Pictures and good for George W. Bush
Monday, January 05, 2009
Worst... Show... Ever...!!!!
This is the worst show ever!!
Now that I am turning 50 I must leave the trappings of childhood(ish) behind me. Which leaves me not being able to enjoy the HORRIBLE "Superstars of Dance" in the full method it should be.
Superstars of Dance – which includes neither Superstars nor "dancers" in the traditional sense of being able to keep a beat – is clearly meant to be enjoyed with good friends and high as a kite.
Of course you and I know that I have never partaken of such enjoyment – I have only read out it.
Nor would I. It is an evil that both my parents warned me about repeatedly.
But if I were too be of such unsound mind , this is the show to do it with. From Michael Flatley (somehow proclaimed "the most famous Dancer on the Planet") to the Chinese Ribbon Dancer who couldn't make the Opening Ceremonies to the Australian group angry dancers this is a show teaming with (to quote Michael F) "terpsichorean brilliance".
It is a train wreck that flattens all viewers with blinding lighting, muddled or over amplified sound, unwatchable shots of dancing wherein the legs of the dancers often are not shown and cardboard cutout judges.
The judges by the way are from the 8 or 9 countries and 2 of them (but only) 2 are forced to wear "national outfits". So the US, Australian, Argentinean, South African etc judges are dressed normally and sit next to a Chinese Monk and some poor Russian rip off of Bela Karoli in a table cloth stolen from the local Moscow Diner.
Fabulous (with Tivo only)….


text: My advisor recently shared with me the idea of a "learning event," and I've become interested in the idea. Learning events are an interesting way of bounding all the things that go into teaching and learning: the people, places, content, actions and so on. Learning events seem to cover a lot of ground in terms of describing the complexity of teaching and learning. Here I want to focus less on the various specific elements but how those elements work together, and how those events span across time and other learning events to form a network of learning. Continue reading

subset: commoncrawl


text:
It is not a job for the faint-hearted. Anyone taking up a mike for Radio 4 must satisfy a fanatical army of listeners famed for revolting at the tiniest tweak of their beloved schedule. So pity the poor continuity announcer facing the full force of their wrath, apparently because he lacks the 'voice of Middle England'.
Jamaican Neil Nunes, with his Caribbean accent, has provoked the biggest controversy among Radio 4's sensitive audience since controller Mark Damazer axed Fritz Spiegl's 'UK theme' from its early morning slot. Some describe Nunes's voice as grating and inappropriate for the station, while others dismiss this as a 'Little Englander' attitude. The kind of angry exchanges erupting on the station's website are unusual for Radio 4's urbane followers.
Nunes himself remains something of a mystery. He has worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the World Service, and made a programme about the fight against drugs in the Caribbean for local radio. A BBC colleague told The Observer Nunes is a Seventh Day Adventist. It is believed he worked as international correspondent for Adventist World Radio. Contacted by The Observer, Nunes declined to comment.
He is one of several freelancers who complement Radio 4's full-time continuity announcers and newsreaders, including Peter Donaldson and Charlotte Green. Last week the first item on its listener forum, Feedback, was devoted to the Nunes saga. Listener Christopher Robins wrote: 'What an appalling continuity announcer at 13.57 hours today. His voice was American-ish but grating, difficult to understand and not at all pleasant to listen to.' Another, Amanda Herries, said: 'It is not clear what his accent is, but the tones, modulation and pronunciation are just very uncomfortable for Radio 4. Please find him another job.'
Timmy Wren said: 'Mellifluous though it is, I do feel he's trying too hard to be BBC posh, although a hard-edged American note also enters the mix from time to time. I suspect Caribbean origins. Perhaps he could be encouraged to relax and let his natural sound emerge.'
There have been more than 100 postings in all. One contributor wrote: 'BBC does stand for BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, doesn't it? Do we really have to listen to this American drawl every time we hear an announcement?'
A contributor using the name 'quantock' weighed in: 'A lot of Little Englander comments flying around here - perhaps by tuning in to the Empire series some listeners might be able to adjust their mindsets... How refreshing, at last, to hear tones which aren't white, Anglo-Saxon and Little England. Open your minds and your ears!'
Listener Mary Fisher told Feedback: 'I first heard him on the World Service and was enchanted - not only his mellifluous voice, but his delivery and articulation are perfect. I hesitated to comment before in case he was taken off to do higher things. Don't let him go, he's an absolute treasure.'
David Anderson, head of presentations at Radio 4, said in a statement: '[Neil] already has a lot of experience as a newsreader and journalist with the BBC World Service, and comes to us also with the gift of an unusually rich timbred voice, something many listeners have commented on favourably. And to clarify, the accent is an indication of Neil's upbringing in Jamaica.'


text:
FrancoisMediumItalic Fonts
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@import url(//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/e74af9a413f9041279a1c63c38a11d0a?family=FrancoisMediumItalic);#3 Use font-face declaration Fonts.(http | https)
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ambulance shotgun
ambulance shotgunStyle
1.00 August 29, 2006, initial releaseCopyright
ambulance shotgun GYOMSEGS. 2006. All Rights ReservedDescription
This font was created using Font Creator 5.0 from High-Logic.com
P22 FLLW Exhibition W00 Bold
P22 type foundry, Inc./The Frank Lloyd Wright FoundationTrademark
P22 FLLW Exhibition Bold is a trademark of P22 type foundry, Inc./The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.Copyright
2007 by P22 type foundry, Inc./The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. All rights reserved.Description
2007 by P22 type foundry, Inc./The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. All rights reserved.License
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(c)2004 P22 type foundry, Inc. -- Not Your Typical Type(tm) -- http://www.p22.com -- PO BOX 770 -- Buffalo, NY 14213
GLC_Ornaments One W90 Regular
GLC_Ornaments OneStyle
Gilles Le CorreAuthor
Gilles Le CorreCopyright
Copyright (c) 2008 by Gilles Le Corre. All rights reserved.Description
Printabla and Editable embedding allowed
Droid Sans Mono V1
Droid Sans MonoStyle
Ascender CorporationTrademark
Droid is a trademark of Google and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.Copyright
Digitized data copyright 2007, Google Corporation.Description
Droid Sans is a humanist sans serif typeface designed for user interfaces and electronic communication.License
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0
Digital-7 V1
Style : MonoPackages
V 1.00 Oct 02 13:24:00 2008Company
Created by Sizenko Alexander.Author
Sizenko AlexanderCopyright
Created by Sizenko Alexander. 2008 Style-7. All rights reserved.License
Freeware for personal use.For commercial use please contuct us.
1.00 April 10, 2012, initial releaseCompany
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Typeface Xerographer Foundry. 2012. All Rights ReservedDescription
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Style : ThinPackages
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Part of the Neutraface Condensed collection from House Industries
Uniwars W00 Regular
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LomoWallOutline LT W01 100
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text:
A lesson worth learningJuly 5, 2016
If you are an honest, hard-working business professional who has more than a modicum of interest in helping others get through this whacked-out world we live in, then I say it is your obligation to let us know you exist and are here to help... Read more about A lesson worth learning
72 shots – three goalsMay 26, 2016
Like hockey or not, today's message serves as a great reminder for all of us.
Last season the Washington Capitols and The NY Rangers faced off for game seven in the semi-finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It was all on the line. The... Read more about 72 shots – three goals
You are not for everybodyMarch 15, 2016
The lovely little town of Delray Beach is situated along the pristine beaches of south Florida between the towns of Boynton Beach and Deerfield Beach, 15 miles south of West Palm Beach. (That's a lot of beaches.)
That smell wafting in... Read more about You are not for everybody
You are not for everybody - Become the exceptionMarch 7, 2016
The lovely little town of Delray Beach is situated along the pristine beaches of south Florida between the towns of Boynton Beach and Deerfield Beach, 15 miles south of West Palm Beach. (That's a lot of beaches.)
That smell... Read more about You are not for everybody - Become the exception
Love the one you are withFebruary 22, 2016
Strategy #1: Say "thank-you" to your good clients. Presumably, you have a few good clients who are currently "buying your act." They appreciate what you have done for them, and at times they can be heard singing your praise to their... Read more about Love the one you are with
Are you treating your customers like dogs?December 15, 2015
Having recently been introduced to a shameful statistic, I thought it timely to give you my opinion on this subject. See if you can swallow this dose of reality: When interviewed, travel agents believe they retain 78% of their paying customers.... Read more about Are you treating your customers like dogs?
What about me?September 28, 2015
This cartoon appeared in last week's TRO Ezine and I thought of you. It reminded me of the "SBC." This stands for the "Social Bafoon Curse."
Today's message has little to do with travel, and a lot to do with your social... Read more about What about me?
Mental Trigger #7: ScarcitySeptember 14, 2015
Why is it that we seem to always want what we don't have? I found this to be true years ago when a dance club in New York City became the "in" thing. Studio 54 had a reputation to be extremely difficult... Read more about Mental Trigger #7: Scarcity
A double whammy!August 31, 2015
I was reminded this weekend (twice) how the sign wave of life actually works. This curve has been mentioned in my live programs for years and it made the headlines this past weekend.
The first example comes by way of a horse. A very... Read more about A double whammy!
Do what works....again and again and again.August 1, 2015
I was reminded of this simple yet profound truth on a tele-seminar I conducted not long ago. This one is important my friends, and very deep. Tune in. And listen to what I am about to share with you.
As I always do, I asked my... Read more about Do what works....again and again and again.


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A glimpse into post-war Glasgow life, via the Ruhr, from the unpublished memoirs of Martin Chalmers
Tag: Labour history
West Yorkshire Lasses: Female Trade Unionism and its Radical Past
While trade unionism had long been dominated by the voices and experiences of men, an 1875 strike in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire was different.
Rural Radicalism Conference
East Anglia has a rich but often overlooked history of radicalism and this conference will introduce people to some aspects of this history and provide a focus for a renewed interest in Labour History.
Review: Resist Much, Obey Little
A review, written by Ross Bradshaw, of the special issue of The Spokesman, comprising of a set of essays on aspects of Ken Coates' life, who was editor of the journal for forty years


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About & Hosts
Welcome to the World's Premier Thinly-Premised Podcast,
We have two pots, we take topics from the hosts and the community. The topics go into the pots, drawn at random, and talk about them for about two hours. The one rule is topics never leave the pot until they have been talked about.
Sit back, relax and enjoy the (not so) witty repartee.
Out every other Sunday.
Hosts So Far
Tom – Twitter
Taran – Facebook
Hal – Website
De'Ola – Facebook
Johnny – Elsewhere Way (band) – That Crippled Space (poetry)


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If Dana White gets his way then lightweight champion Anthony Pettis will get his first title defense against TJ Grant at UFC On FOX 9 in December.
Ariel Helwani indicated that was the fight the UFC president wanted to headline the UFC's last FOX event of the year during yesterday's episode of the 'UFC Tonight' show on FS1.
Pettis has already agreed to the proposed bout, but Grant is somewhat reluctant as he's still recovering from a concussion that forced him out of his originally planned fight with Pettis last month. Ideally he'd like to fight in January, but by the sounds of things if it's what the UFC wants then he'll accept it.
As we reported earlier, also on last night's show it was confirmed that the co-main event for 'UFC On FOX 9' will be a bantamweight clash between Urijah Faber and Michael McDonald.


text:
By Yew Wei Sin, Digital Product & Media Specialist, Innity
Innity's Performance Network is South East Asia's largest affiliate marketplace for online advertisers, agencies and publishers that specialize in pay for performance advertising. Below are some tips and tricks for publishers on how to make more using this network:
1) Ad Inventory
Ad formats are like a candy jar; if you have only 1 jar you can never fill it with more than a jar. If you think certain ad sizes might not be suitable for your webpage layout, we offer you formats that can be added in without altering the existing layout. Try putting up Innity propriety ad formats such as the Balloon ad and Bottomsup ad; they don't consume all your ad space and you will be surprised to see how well they perform!
2) Ad Placement and Formats
a) Understand your webpage and user behavior on the page better in order to place your ads at the most effective spots. Different ad formats tend to work differently depending on the placement. For example, above the fold ads normally work better than below the fold ads. Observe the ad placement's performance over a period of time and try out different combinations to determine which works best. But remember not to clog up your page with too many ads. You do not want to shoo your readers away with a site cluttered with ads!
b) Choosing a suitable ad format is very much related to the nature of your website. If your website has a lot of text, you can opt for the Dynamic In-Text format which needs to be paired with keywords or even place your display banner at the bottom of the content. Studies show that ads placed at the end of articles tend to do well even though they're below the fold (Kaiser, 2007).
3) Alternate Ad
We understand that your website is a source of revenue for you and our tools are designed to help you get the maximum out of it. The 'alternate ad' feature in Advenue does precisely that. We provide free hosting service for your own ads to be hosted as an alternative to the Innity ads. You can run ads from other networks or an in-house ad and rotate them with Innity's paid ads. Sounds like a plan? You can find the simple instructions on your Advenue FAQ section.
4) Marketing
A website's advertising revenue always directly relates to its traffic. Hence promoting and driving traffic to your website is very important to increase earnings. If your website registers tremendous growth in traffic, do send us an update. Also, if you are looking for premium advertising opportunities, you can always prepare a media kit and rate card for the site. We will be more than willing to help you with this. When we have suitable clients for your website, these would come in handy.
Kaiser, S.E., 2007. Banner Ads: The Best Performing Banner Ad Sizes, Formats, Locations, and Colors. [Online]8 October. Available at <http://websitetips.com/articles/marketing/banneradsizes/#best-ad-locations


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Everytime I went to Tesco's, I saw a big poster featuring Cristiano Ronaldo (footballer - Portuguese squad & ManU) advertising Portuguese golf courses. His photo had an interesting effect, his face merged with some landscape photography and last week I thought - I can do it too.
This is my attempt with two photos of my kids playing in the beach.
After I finished, I went looking for the original photo in the web and found it here, you will have to download the PDF to see Cristiano, but you can have an idea looking at the cover. That's when I discovered that the photos are much more sophisticated than mine, blending texture and the black&white photo. I might have another go later but I am happy with the results I've got. I'll try to print it and if it looks good, I'll frame them.
The pattern in the photo is a from a texture gallery, this one taken by Andronicus Riyono.
It is really easy to do, I'll write a step-by-step another day, gotta go to bed now. Night night.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
PSE experiments
Labels: photo editing
5 comments:
- Close To Home said...
Now THAT is pretty cool! You did a great job!
- Tuesday, 03 June, 2008
Oh that is really cool! Do share the instructions, please!
- Tuesday, 03 June, 2008
- Denise said...
WOW...Elisa, that is completely amazing. I am in awe. Please teach me!
- Tuesday, 03 June, 2008
- Evonne said...
Oh WOW Elisa - that is just amazing!
- Tuesday, 03 June, 2008
- Kiki said...
Excellent !!I finally have PSE,I havent even opened it...but I will be asking you a lot !! LOL ! x
- Saturday, 07 June, 2008
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text:
A week ago, I didn't really know what to expect. Yes, the doctor said he was sending me home with drains attached...but I didn't know to what extent. Eighteen years ago, I was discharged with one drain under my arm, emptying me of the lymph from the node dissection. Today, I still have three drains...one on my side to drain the excess fluids from the mastectomy and the newly constructed breast, and then two in the lower abdomen area to drain the surgical site where muscle, fat and tissue were taken to create the new breast. I have to monitor this drainage (which is not nice), emptying the drains into a measuring cup and noting the cc's from each site. I have to keep a drain log which I call in to the surgeon's office.
I've learned to listen to my body. I've not ever been a "nappy" type of person. But after this surgery, let me tell you....I nap. The Vicodin kicks in after about 20 minutes, and I need to nap. When I haven't been able to, because of family, etc., I can feel it. The rest helps me heal, and I actually think I'm doing better because of the napping.
I think the hardest thing to get used to is allowing myself to rely on others. I have never been very high maintenance, and I've never been going at asking for help. After surgery I have no choice. I can't bend. I can't drive. I can't move quickly. I can't shower or wash my hair. What I CAN do is ask. This is not easy, but unless I want to get my hair washed, I have to ask. Sponge bath? Ask. You get the idea. Not easy, but necessary.
And then this week, Ani and I signed up to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. We've done this before...and we're doing it again. I was on the fence about signing up again this year -- we have an $1800 fundraising goal EACH. It's hard to ask friends for money. BUT after this year's diagnosis, I feel that I HAVE TO WALK. First of all, I need to push myself. The training will be a way to get out, push myself to get up and moving, but most of all....it's to celebrate life! And to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, and to work toward a cure. So I've included a link to my page. I hope you'll consider supporting me. Any amount you'd like to donate is fine and very much appreciated. Here's the link: http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR/Walk/LosAngeles?px=2246507&pg=personal&fr_id=2060
Do you have a friend or family member that you'd like us to walk in honor/memory or celebration of? Please send me their name and we will carry them along with us:
Anyways, I hope you'll consider supporting the cause. If you'd rather send a check, please email me: email@example.com
Help us take the next step in breast cancer. Here we are at the Avon Walk 2010 after crossing the finish line. It's incredible to participate in something so powerful....and to do it with your daughter! Because of walkers who walked and raised awareness before me, I am alive today! And grateful!


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"You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later."
- Mitch Hedberg
April 9. I've been putting off writing about this, but one month ago I finally had a good LSD trip. A few months earlier, when I tried it the first time, I stayed home and listened to music, and it was nice, but inferior in every way to strong cannabis edibles. The second time, on the same dose, I did two things differently. The first was to vape some weed to overlap the peak of the trip. Cannabis-acid synergy is controversial, because some people get bad trips from both, but for me, the cannabis put a glow on the acid's altered perception.
The second thing I did was to go outside. Immediately I noticed how beautiful the trees were, from the whole shapes to the tiny bifurcations of the leafless twigs. I saw that nature looks like Dr. Seuss -- or really, Dr. Seuss took the weird beauty of nature and made it obvious.
There was never any distortion of senses, but I interpreted things differently. Cars in the distance seemed like tiny cars in a model. It was a trillion years in the future, the whole universe was dead, and I was getting a precious look back in time to when it was alive. I was the protagonist of a fairy tale, with such plot armor that it seemed I could do dangerous things -- but I knew this was an illusion because other people have tested it.
I sat under a footbridge watching the rapids in a stream, and understood that streams are alive. I stopped to look closely at a cluster of shriveled cloudberries, and they were more beautiful than any human art. I passed through a developed area and saw the obvious crudeness of the human-made world compared to the world that made us. It reminded me of the Heraclitus quote: "The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls."
I once saw one of Monet's wheatstack paintings in a museum and wondered: how can a painting of a wheatstack be more moving than an actual wheatstack? Now I know the answer: because we don't know how to look. If we did, the actual wheatstack would always be better. A month later, that aesthetic sense has mostly stuck with me.
April 6. Music for the weekend. There are different kinds of great songs. Some are delicate and complex, with challenging beauty that must be gradually decrypted. Other songs take simple melodies and simple words and pack them into a perfect bundle that makes you jump out of your chair on the first listen. This is a great example of the latter, from 2014: The Fat White Family - Touch The Leather. Leigh Ann and I have had it stuck in our heads all week. There's also an interesting live version.
April 4. Since the subject seems to be in the air lately, I'm going to write about getting older, in the context of how we think about society and our place in it. The cliche is that young people are rebellious and old people join the establishment, but that's not quite how it works.
When you're young, you expect people older than you to have it all figured out. So when the world sucks, it makes sense to react with righteous anger. Now that I'm old, I look at the world and think, "Those poor kids, they don't know what they're doing."
Young people are impatient. They want to see Utopia in their own lifetime. Now I think it's going to take hundreds of years, maybe thousands, before being human is even half as much fun as being a squirrel. I used to want to slay dragons and now I want to plant seeds.
Young people have lots of energy and little tolerance for complexity, so they look for meaning in things that are mentally easy and physically hard. As we get older, we learn to make ourselves happy with less energy and more subtlety. For a young person, the difference between living well and living badly is entirely in what you do. For an old person, the difference is more in how you look at it.
One thing that was not obvious when I was younger: motivation is a really hard problem. If you live a conventional life, that problem is mostly solved for you by other people telling you what to do all day, and if you're lucky, it will be stuff you want to do anyway. To the extent that you're able to do your own thing, motivation becomes your own responsibility, and I see no sign that it gets easier. Doors are always closing and opening, both out in the world and inside you, and it's a permanent challenge to keep looking and moving.
April 2. Some stray links from reddit. Here's a new thread of Mitch Hedberg lines. Other than the one at the top of this page, my favorite is "It's not the photographer's fault bigfoot is blurry."
A reader pointed me to the Maladaptive Daydreaming subreddit. What strikes me about these people is not that they're good at daydreaming, or that they spend a lot of time doing it, but that they feel like they don't control it. This is obvious, but it never occurred to me that you could apply that standard to drugs or video games or anything people do for fun: it's okay if you control it, but not if it controls you. But what is "you"? I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this definition: You are the moment-to-moment choice of where to put your attention.
From a couple weeks ago, a nice comment about meeting Mr. Rogers:
...at that age, a lot of "bad" behavior is really just a kid's imperfect way of expressing and processing big, new emotions. When Mr. Rogers knelt down to talk to me, it was the first time any adult had outright acknowledged my feelings, made me feel safe to express them, and made sure I knew that expressing them was okay.Finally, a promising new subreddit, Explain Like Caveman. Right now the questions are mostly about caveman subjects, but I look forward to people trying to explain advanced science and philosophy. Here's my caveman explanation of how a particle accelerator works: "Smash rock, make rock small. Some rock too small for eye, too big for head."
March 30. Three links from Nautilus, about what we notice and don't notice.
The Key to Good Luck Is an Open Mind:
"His research is hilarious," says Carter. "He takes people who self-define as lucky and people who don't say they're lucky, and then he puts a $20 bill in the street and the lucky people notice them and pick them up. And unlucky people don't."Scary AI Is More Fantasia Than Terminator. I would say it like this: AI will do what we tell it to do, not what we want it to do, because what we want it to do is full of all kinds of assumptions that we're not even aware of ourselves.
March 28. Monday's post is a good example of why I now see myself as a fiction writer, and blogging is just something I haven't got tired of yet. Because that idea, that a civilization could collapse by trying to force reality to be too objective, is good fiction and completely disreputable nonfiction.
Everyone agrees that "truth" is breaking down. What they mean is, there is an objective external world, and more people are wrong about what it's like. If it turns out there is no objective external world, does that mean we could stop climate change by not believing in it? I don't think it works that way. I do think that physical reality is 100% created by mind, but "you" and "I" are not the agents of that mind. We're more like its hallucinations.
New subject, sort of: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic. Six women in the UK tell their stories, including some stuff about how autism diagnosis is skewed toward male traits, and women are often misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
I've never been to a professional for a diagnosis, but I can relate to a lot of this. It's always seemed like everyone but me is a mind reader, like they're tuning into some broadcast that tells them the right way to do things, and they take it for granted. Not just social things. I remember the roller skating fad in the 70's, and it took me the longest time to figure it out. People said, "You just go. You just move." Really, you angle your toes slightly outward and then alternate pushing your legs to the side and picking your feet up. It's not complicated, but their minds didn't even notice what their bodies were doing for them.
This comes around to the first subject, because the "self" is just the part you happen to notice, of some larger and deeper set of habits and adaptations. You can choose to bring subconscious behaviors into the realm of the conscious, and most people can get by without doing that, but some people have to take conscious charge of subconscious behaviors to do them with any competence.
So here's my wild speculation: that "autism" is part of an ongoing evolution of humanity, in which the conscious mind is being challenged to expand its scope. A different angle: society has become so strange, that more and more bodies are failing to do the right thing automatically, and the head has to get in there to make everything work.
Related: Aliens of Reddit, what are some human things that make absolutely no sense to you?
March 26. Fascinating interview from 2016: The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality. This is a guy at the cutting edge of science, who has concluded that "there are no public physical objects," that reality is made of "points of view," and the math says you can "take separate observers, put them together and create new observers, and keep doing this ad infinitum. It's conscious agents all the way down."
This reminds me of something I wrote in an email a couple weeks back, about an idea I call pan-solipsism -- somehow, through some hidden dimension of causality, the universe behaves for every person as if they're at the very center. Of course this is the popular new age "you create your own reality" thing, but new agers rarely face the hard philosophical problem: to reconcile the idea that the universe is all in your head, with the idea that we're all in the same universe.
My speculative solution is that the sharing of reality is mostly an illusion. It's like that thing where maybe we see colors differently, and what you see as red I see as blue. But expand that to everything: what you see as "house" or "book" or "money", I see as the incomprehensible components of my own bizarre alien world. And in the slack created by these hidden differences, we each live in an outer world that's largely a projection of our inner world. Even "the brain" is a projection, a symbolic user interface for hacking our own streams of experience.
Getting really weird, I wonder if that's how technology is causing the epidemic of depression and anxiety: by forcing us to inhabit the same world. Physics says there are events where it doesn't make sense to say what happens until they are observed. Maybe even if an event is observed, two observers could still see it differently, and be in partially different universes -- as long as they don't compare notes. Information technology has forced us to do too much note-sharing, and now we all have to compromise to a reality that's satisfying for fewer and fewer people.
Coincidentally, when a quantum function that could go either way is pinned down into being the same way for all observers, it's called collapse.
March 23. Continuing from Wednesday, where I framed "good at dancing" as two definitions with no necessary overlap, Eric writes:
I believe that there is some overlap. Consciously training your body and senses to be receptive and responsive to your partner, then giving your partner movement, stimulus that has been smoothed, reduced, refined so that there is a clear 2-way conversation in (unconscious) body language. Dancing like this is not an intellectual activity, in fact feels opposite of intellectual, but only the greatest dance geniuses can do it without making the conscious effort to build the necessary skills.
Of course I should have known that. I'm not a good dancer, but as a writer, I have exactly that partnership inside myself. There's that voice that spits out words from who knows where, and if I were to put that stuff on the page unfiltered, it would be terrible. But I also couldn't ignore that voice and write anything good. Good art, and good living, are about skillfully walking the line between conscious and subconscious, or rational and sub-rational.
But if art and living are similar skills, then why are highly creative people so often bad at life? I think it's because their subconscious energy, which can illuminate invented worlds, is too wild to be integrated in a world shared with other people -- or at least this world.
On a personal note, I've been doing a lot of work lately to clean up bad subconscious habits, but I still haven't got to the core problem: the lack of overlap between what I feel like doing and what's good for me to do. I wonder what it's like for other people. I mean, every night I force myself to floss my teeth because I know it's good for me -- but most people don't, and if they can't even force themselves to floss, how are they forcing themselves to cook and clean and pay bills and do their jobs? That's why I've become so interested in channeling spontaneity, because I imagine that if I could learn to do it right, I could coast through life instead of having to drag it around.
March 21. Sometimes I think that all disagreements come down to semantics. Or, if we somehow had perfect communication, there would be no conflict -- but then, that depends on your definition of "conflict".
Anyway, after some feedback from the last post, I realize that being "good at dancing" has a range of meanings, which could be framed as two competing definitions with no overlap: one is when the head trains the body to make a set of precise moves; the other is when the body moves on its own. Both kinds of movements become smoother and more complex with practice. I think it's obvious that some cultures are much better than others at loose and spontaneous movement, and that it has something to do with social class and authoritarian politics.
I was thinking it had something to do with intellect, where more cerebral people are also more stiff, but now I'm doubting that, because intellect can be either allied or opposed to authoritarian culture. In Nazi Germany, you had an anti-intellectual ruling party whose members were terrible dancers (definition 2), and an underground culture that was both looser and smarter.
Those people mostly got killed, but their values lived on. I believe that top-down systems, whether inside or outside the body, tend to break down from their own inflexibility, while bottom-up systems... but now I've hit a semantic wall, because what exactly is the "bottom"? The first line of the Tao Te Ching says: the Tao that can be described in language is not really the Tao.
And now I'm getting into theology. Imagine the unknowable Divine, not as an authority we obey, but as a wave we ride.
March 19. I'll continue on music because I just got an email from Eric with two different fertile ideas. First, that "music serves as a cultural marker. Listening to a certain kind of music makes us feel like we belong somewhere."
Suddenly I understand why my musical taste is so "weird" -- I've always felt that I belong nowhere in this world, so I look for music that makes me feel like I belong in some other world that doesn't quite exist. This line from The Picture of Dorian Gray is exactly how I feel about many of my favorite songs:
...the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was!
Most people listen to music to feel at home with some human subculture, while I listen to music to talk to God -- typically after breathing cannabis vapors, and sometimes kneeling before two large vintage speakers.
Eric's second idea is that many genres of popular music have their roots in some kind of fringe dance music. As the sound becomes mainstream, people no longer dance to it.
This reminds me of something I often wonder: why are white people so bad at dancing? I think it's because dancing comes from the body, and European culture has been consistently heady for hundreds of years now. That's why Elvis was so popular. Just as television was emerging, he was the only white man whose movements were fluid and not stiff.
What would it take for everyone in the world to be good at dancing?
March 17. Linked the other day on the subreddit, an interview with indie rock star Julian Casablancas about money, music, and politics. I'm not sure where to start. Of course I agree with him that this is a dark age for popular music, but I see his music as part of that dark age. His band's biggest hit, Reptilia, has 95 million YouTube views, and sounds to me like by-the-numbers indie rock, nowhere near as creative as someone like Ezra Furman.
This is a good point:
The Oscars obviously have blind spots, but with movies it's generally the authentic artistic endeavors that get recognized. But when you look at what gets nominated for a Grammy? I don't understand what the hell it's all about.
It's also interesting to compare music with TV, which has been in a golden age for a while now. The 1970's cannot hold a candle to the last ten years of television, so we're not talking about a general cultural decline. I think there's something about the medium of music, in the context of our economy and technology, where popularity has become strongly correlated with blandness.
Casablancas sees the evil music industry excluding the best artists, but I see it the other way around: with cheap home recording and internet distribution, the best artists no longer have to fight for a place at the table of big money. They're happy to stay independent and do exactly what they want, and big money is happy to go on with beautiful people and algorithmic songwriting.
Is it better this way? With all the great TV shows out there, there still has not been a single episode that speaks to my soul the way my favorite songs do. Maybe some future technology will enable visual storytelling to be cheap enough to take the risks to reach that level.
By the way, a 2018 album has emerged as my favorite non-Big Blood album of the decade: Insecure Men. That's the album on YouTube and here's an article about it. I would tag it as space lounge music. The songs have the structure and melody of classic pop, with so much strange beauty layered on top that I guess people find it hard to wrap their ears around it. For an argument that music is getting better, compare Dire Straits' 1985 hit "So Far Away" with Insecure Men's "I Don't Wanna Dance With My Baby".
March 14. Taking the week off from heavy thinking, here are four links from Nautilus. The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood, specifically, wood processed in a new way that makes it as strong as steel but only one sixth the weight.
Why Is There So Much Hate for the Word "Moist"? People imagine that it's about the sound of the word, but studies show that it's completely about the meaning, which people project onto the sound. Similarly: "In one study that exposed Americans and Canadians to different British accents they were unfamiliar with, they couldn't guess with any accuracy which ones belonged to people in the upper classes and which ones to people in the lower classes." But once we know, then the sounds of the accents sound upper or lower class.
Inheritance Is Moving Beyond Genetics and Epigenetics, to weird neo-Lamarckian stuff that we can't completely explain.
This Neural Net Hallucinates Sheep. It's about how artificial intelligence works more by correlation than understanding. So given the kind of landscape that often contains sheep, an AI will identify anything white as a sheep -- yet actual sheep, colored orange, it will mistake for flowers, and it's terribly confused by goats in a tree. The practical upshot: "Want to sneak something past a neural network? In a delightfully cyberpunk twist, surrealism might be the answer. Maybe future secret agents will dress in chicken costumes, or drive cow-spotted cars."
March 12. Some doom from reddit: What significant changes to the environment have you noticed throughout your life?
And some techno-optimism mixed with some doom: What BIG THING is on the verge of happening?
On the lighter side, Concert venue workers, what band/genre of music has the worst fans? Which has the best? There are a lot of nominees for worst, but everyone agrees that metal fans are the best.
March 9. Important new David Graeber essay, How to change the course of human history (thanks MakeTotalDestr0i). The whole thing is worth reading, but I'll try to summarize it.
Graeber wants to overturn the "conventional narrative": that primitive life was good, agriculture changed everything, and now we're stuck in big systems that can only work with hierarchy. Recent archaeology refutes this. There were complex civilizations before agriculture. Then agriculture didn't suddenly capture us -- it was one of many food options, tried and sometimes abandoned over thousands of years. Hierarchy also didn't capture us -- there were cultures where politics were seasonal, authoritarian in summer and anarchist in winter, or vice versa. Prehistory wasn't a row of falling dominoes -- it was a time of massive experimentation.
In Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, "cities with sophisticated civic infrastructures flourished for over half a millennium with no trace of royal burials or monuments, no standing armies or other means of large-scale coercion, nor any hint of direct bureaucratic control over most citizen's lives." This leads Graeber to his most radical point, made explicitly in one of the comments: "there is no correlation between scale and hierarchy."
This gives us hope for a better world. But it also leaves a void, by taking away a beautiful answer to an important question: How did the world get so fucked up? If it wasn't agriculture or cities, what was it? If our ancestors experimented and found Utopia, how did they lose it? It's suspicious that we have no written record of a non-repressive large scale society. Did the world get fucked up by writing?
Taking another angle, imagine we're in Utopia now. I mean clearly we're not -- even with all the antidepressants, depression is probably higher now than it's ever been. But imagine if someone from Gobekli Tepe traveled to the present day. What would they like most about our world?
March 7. Loose ends. This new subreddit thread, social bumper cars, has some good discussion of Friday's post. Gene makes an important point, that people with social disorders find each other difficult to be around. So we can't build a social utopia out of total incompetence. But I still think bumper cars are a good metaphor. If we can all develop the skill of being thick-skinned, then we don't need to develop the skill of not saying anything offensive.
Also linked from the subreddit, The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized. I would go even farther, because if you look deeply at things other than luck, it still comes down to luck. What is talent if not luck? Even "hard work" might come down to genetic stamina, or having people around you who are skilled motivators, or that you happen to really enjoy doing something that society happens to find valuable.
New subject: several ex-doomers are writing fiction now. James Kunstler has his World Made By Hand novels, John Michael Greer has written Lovecraftian fantasy, Tim Bennett wrote a novel about aliens, All of the Above, Paul Kingsnorth wrote an acclaimed historical novel called The Wake, and an ex-peak-oiler and reader of this blog, Gregory Jeffers, has just released his second novel.
I find fiction much more rewarding than nonfiction, and I'm only continuing this blog through force of habit. My unusual fear is that my novel will get popular too soon, and complicate my life so that I can't continue writing at the same level.
March 5. I don't have a post today, but do I have some news. This summer I'll be in Europe for a month, from July 10 to August 10. Leigh Ann will be there for a class, so I'll be based with her in Bonn. During the last two weeks we'll be traveling together, and during the first week my sister might join me. If anyone wants to host me, or me and one other person, for a night or two, let me know, ranprieur at gmail. Trains are very expensive, so I'll have to stick to an efficient route. I still need to research buses and possibly hitchhiking.
March 2. Continuing on psychology, this new Nautilus article is about schizophrenics and how they do lot better in developing countries, supposedly because their cultures are more collectivist and value "empathy and social competence".
But the article also mentions autism, which in one model, is the opposite of schizophrenia: "Where an autistic person's sense of self is cripplingly narrow, schizophrenics' selves are cripplingly expansive."
So I'm wondering, would someone on the autism-aspergers spectrum also do better in a more traditional culture? Or worse? This smart Twitter thread (thanks Gabriel) argues that even the developed world demands too much social competence:
You don't need to be on the autism spectrum to lack social tact or find yourself disgusted with the need to demonstrate social tact everywhere. When people talk about "neurodiversity" it's not because there's giant group of oppressed Aspies. It's because Aspergerdom is a cultural symbol of what it means to be undersocialized.
I like Starcraft but my reaction time is never going to get up to the level necessary to compete with the pros. So I play casually. I'd get destroyed if I played with people of even a moderate skill level. This is how undersocialized people see the world of oversocialized people.
I've never been to a professional for a diagnosis, so I don't know if I would come out neurotypical, aspie, or schizoid. But when I imagine my ideal culture, it's like social bumper cars: everyone is having fun, because no matter how big of a mistake you make, nothing bad can happen.
February 28. Continuing from Monday, in this subreddit post, goocy describes a ketamine trip where he became aware of his "subprocesses" -- the different personalities and roles of all the voices in his head. I've had similar experiences on cannabis, but it's vague and dark, like I'm going in there as an undercover boss and finding a nest of snakes. I wonder how many people have the same experience, call it anxiety or paranoia, and avoid it.
Then Myles reminded me about that new chess computer, Alpha Zero, which learned the game from scratch and outplayed a top chess computer, Stockfish, that was running 900 times faster. The old computers look ahead and calculate the value of individual moves, while Alpha Zero somehow evaluates whole-board positions, but the way it works, even the programmers can't say what it's "thinking".
So now I'm wondering, do some of my sub-personalities work like Stockfish and some like Alpha Zero? If some inner voice tells me something that doesn't make sense rationally, how can I tell if it's reliable? Highly successful people can follow their "heart" or "gut" and make consistent good decisions, but I've never seen an explanation of how they do it. Can they somehow tell the difference between reliable and unreliable urges? Or are they somehow free of unreliable urges?
This also reminds me of what Rupert Sheldrake says about "instinct", that biologists have no idea what it is, and just throw that word around to describe behaviors that they cannot yet explain.
February 26. Great reddit thread from the weekend, What's the biggest culture shock you ever experienced?
There was also a good thread about important psychological experiments.
Just lately I've been thinking about psychology and culture in terms of layers. This is all so obvious that it can't be original, but I find this model helpful. The top layer is society, the rules that we have to publicly follow. The next layer down is persona, the way we present ourselves to fit society. Most of us are aware of a difference between how we present ourselves and how we really are. So the next layer down is the "self", what we think of as our true identity.
But the more you look at this level, the more shaky it becomes. What we call the self is not even a thing, more like an interference pattern, a standing wave of habits and strategies and stories that are determined partly from above, by culture, and partly from below, by a still deeper layer of subconscious psychology.
This deeper layer is not intrinsically subconscious -- you could look at it, but you usually don't. But now the language gets tricky, because who are "you"? I think we're talking about two different things. One "you" is the constructed self, that nest of habits and stories; and the other "you" is the ongoing choice of where to put your attention.
Normally, without being aware that we're making a choice, we direct our attention to maintain the constructed self: "There's something I like, there's something I don't like, this is who I am." To direct it differently requires a mental leap, to stop being the person with this set of tastes and values and goals, and start being the project of investigating a wider landscape in which we see that person from the outside.
This is difficult and painful, so why do we do it? Typically it's because the constructed self is dysfunctional, the layers are no longer working together, and this is more likely to happen in a society that changes fast and recklessly.
I'm wondering how many collapses happen because social rules get so far from our unchangeable deep nature that most people can't bridge the gap. I'm also wondering if it's possible to have a human world with only one layer, where society fits our deep nature so perfectly that self-reflection is not necessary.


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An autopsy conducted by the Dutchess County Medical Examiner's Office revealed the 68-year-old man found with serious injuries several days ago was the victim of a homicide.
The name of the man, James Griffin, was also released the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department. Grffin died of his injuries on Tuesday.
The criminal investigation is continuing. There is currently no threat to public safety with regard to this incident, police said.
Anyone who may have information on the activity of James Griffin between Saturday, Dec. 30 and Tuesday, Jan. 2 is asked to call the City of Poughkeepsie Police Tips Line at 845-451-7577.
Original report:
A 68-year-old man found by police several days ago with serious injuries inside his home has died following surgery, according to the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department.
The unidentified man was found on Tuesday, Jan. 2, at his home at 2 Wantaugh Avenue after police were contacted for a welfare check by the family who had not been able to contact him, said Det. Lt. Matt Clark.
Responding officers said the man inside had serious injuries. The homeowner was transported by ambulance to MidHudson Regional Hospital where he underwent brain surgery and was put into a medically induced coma, Clark said.
An investigation was immediately begun into the events leading up to the homeowner being injured.
The man died of his injuries on Tuesday, Clark added.
The investigation is continuing.
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This is a nice cover, very much like the Moleskine. I prefer the inconspicuous black versus the bright orange, just my opinion but the orange is nice too. The cover is what I describe as a semi-hard cover. It bends slightly but it's stiff enough to not need a hard surface to write upon if needed.
A closer look at the texture of the calendar cover and elastic band. I like the texture, it's smooth but has enough grip so it's easy to grab in a hurry.
Pretty self-explanatory, just the little information on the inside. I appreciate that the paper is recycle-able and that the paper came from sustainable sources.
Contact information which is always useful but something I don't always fill out but you may have a use for it. The international phone access codes are interesting and new to me. I don't go out of the country much but you travelers may find this useful.
More international information, this time, temperature. lol It shows the temperatures of the world in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. Crazy Americans...we had to change our unit systems....Then on the other page is a 3 year look ahead, 2012-2014, which may be useful if you need to look that far ahead.
I like this layout, as you might already know, I prefer the hourly layout which helps me plan and block times. Unfortunately there are only a few pages of this which I suppose one can use for big or important dates.
At a year glance for those who use it. I do like the cycles of the moon and the holidays established. It is a bit weird that it starts from July 2012 and ends June 2013 but I suppose it's to allow some leeway for future buyers in case they weren't able to purchase it right when the year started. I do like the priorities box at the top to list important information. It doesn't get in the way when looking at the actual calendar.
This is the actual calendar layout. I do like the layout of this planner. Fairly standard and minimalistic design. As usual I do wish that the hours extended a bit more in the night but has the standard 8 to 5 work day on there. I like the different color uses of the day of the week and the date, it makes it easy to distinguish between the two.
Ah, I almost forgot, there is a little tear off at the corner for those of you who use them to keep track in your planner. I just never got around to tearing the edges off, I don't like wasting the paper and I don't like having to worry about throwing it away. Most times the planner is worn so that it flips exactly or close to the actual week for me so it was never an issue finding my page immediately.
Maps and timezones! There were more maps but decided this was probably good enough to show you. I'm not sure many of you actually use the maps in your planner unless you travel a lot.
Another notes page if the regular pages weren't enough for you. Then it looks like an address and phone book which is also something I don't use regularly but probably should in case I lose any information. lol
Testing the pages with a Lamy Safari Fine with Lexington Gray. Silky smooth as many of you probably already know. I love this paper, I see why many people fall in love with it. :D
Close up and no feathering! No bleed through and only a hint of a shadow but it's totally acceptable.
Closer look at the page texture if you're curious.
Overall, highly recommended! The reason I didn't use this planner is because it ends July 2013 and I would prefer a full calendar year so I settled for another one that had the whole 2013 year. Nevertheless, I still intend to fully use the calendar for it's paper. Perhaps not for it's intentional uses but I can't waste that wonderful paper!
Do you guys use old calendars? If so, how do you use them?


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Our purpose is to provide value added printing that meets and exceeds customer expectations. We print on paper – from business cards to direct mail. We intend to be a major player on the internet as well as the go to place in our community. We provide printing services and products such as business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, wedding announcements, document scanning and archiving, and direct mail and much more.
Precision Press is a printing company that specializes in printing for small businesses in the DFW area and the internet. We have experienced and energetic employees who have a dedication to the business and its customers. Printing is still a growing industry, though it is ever changing. Precision press intends to be at the forefront of that change. We intend to be a market leader in quality and value.


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On Tuesday, Ted Strickland's campaign announced support for repealing the Hyde Amendment. While this may gain him points with the political elites of the Democratic Party, it won't gain him points with average Americans. In a recent Marist poll, 62 percent of Americans said that they oppose tax payer funding of abortions.
The problem with tax payer-funded abortions is this: All tax payers have to bear the burden, without regard to whether they agree with it or not. The Hyde Amendment is a bipartisan budgetary measure that has protected the conscience rights of millions of Americans for the last 40 years by banning Medicaid funding from covering abortions. The Hyde Amendment is crucial to our First Amendment rights, as it protects the conscience rights of Americans who believe that abortion kills a living baby.
In the past weeks, both political parties have shifted farther from the center, in their attempts to solidify and turn out the base. In so doing, the Republican Party adopted the most pro-life platform ever, while the Democratic Party adopted the most radical pro-abortion platform, pledging to repeal the Hyde Amendment.
The horror is that, in catering to the far left, the Democrat Party has alienated pro-life Democrats. But, aside from just pro-life Democrats, pro-choice Democrats should be concerned about repealing the Hyde Amendment as well. When we allow the government to trample the conscience rights of some, we allow the government to trample the conscience rights of all.
It's sad that, in an already extremely polarized society, Ted Strickland has upped the ante, and attempted to further polarize the American people.
But on top of being polarizing, Ted Strickland is also inconsistent. In 2003, Ted Strickland voted for the Partial Birth Abortion ban. I assume that on some level he knows abortion is a ghastly practice that should be limited to some degree. If he can draw the line on partial-birth abortions, why can't he also draw the line on forcing taxpayers to pay for late-term abortions? In fact, Ohioans have already drawn the line on late-term abortions, prohibiting abortions after viability in 2011. Why then would he propose a policy that would facilitate late-term abortions in other parts of the country?
One thing is clear: Ted Strickland is not the right choice for Ohio taxpayers.


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Tune in Saturdays from 2 to 4 PM CBS Sports Radio 650.
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The first sign of Art Basel popped up on the Venetian Causeway today: Purple-pink snails, part of an art installation that will dot the causeway and other part of South Beach for the rest of 2010.
We first wrote about the snail invasion in September, and The Miami Herald's David Smiley had a story on Saturday. In all, 45 of the snails, brought here by an Italian art gallery, will be placed along the Venetian and in Maurice Gibb Memorial Park and Lummus Park.
Now that they are in place — wow, crazy!
The Ca' d'Oro Gallery & Cracking Art Group, based in Rome (and planning to open a Miami gallery), is spending about $100,000 on the six-week exhibition, which would be in place before, during and after this December's Art Basel (Dec. 2-5).


text: The story of Thomas North Carolina Legion as a reenactment group started in 1988 in the state of Ohio. I was commissioned and given authority to form a unit and chose to recreate the Legion based on the fact that my sergeant's great grandfather had served in the Legion as a Cherokee warrior. We decided that the Legion was the best unit to recreate because of the versatile nature of having representatives of all three branches of land military and the unique racial mixture of the soldiers. The Legion,serving as the 69TH North Carolina Infantry, was active in Ohio,Michigan,Indiana and Pennsylvania until I moved to Colorado in September of 1989,at that time the membership consisited of myself,Captain Paul E. Carstensen and our regimental surgeon, Major Jack Carstensen and our desire to establish the Legion as a reenactment group in Colorado.We started by setting up a Living History camp at the annual Lyons Good Ole Days Festival in Lyons,CO. and trying to recruit interested people to join. It took three years of apearing at Lyons and handing out flyers until the first new person joined the Legion that was our second in command, Lt.Randy Bullington. Then the next year we were joined by the man who is now our Corporal, Bob Milner and that is how the current command structure came into being. We are continuing to grow and are becoming more and more active as a group and our intent is to continue to grow and do at least one event per month from May through October and to try and establish activities such as a winter camp during the rest of the year. Our largest goal at the current time is to host a reenactment event somewhere here in Colorado, however there are events such as Nebraska City, Fort Kearney and Grand Island that we plan to keep as events that we attend regularly. In closing,as the Commanding Officer, please allow me to say that the Legion is open to ALL individuals interested in recreating the War of Northern Aggression and my philosophy about reenacting is that if there is historical justification for any impression you are free to do it as long as there is approval for your impression, and this philosophy is the foundation that Thomas North Carolina Legion is built on. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of the Legion, please contact Cpl. Milner and let him know. We look forward to meeting you and sharing the joy of reenacting with you! Deepest Regards, Captain Paul E. Carstensen Commanding, Thomas Legion


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Ronald Varim was a corrupt Imperial officer. In 1 ABY, he became one of the Bounty Hunter Guild's top ten most-wanted fugitives, for neglecting his duties and spending Imperial funds for personal gain. An unknown bounty hunter tracked him down and killed him.
- Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (First appearance)
- Fugitives on the official Star Wars Galaxies website (content now obsolete; backup link)


text: Life & People Blue Bell Ice Cream Fans Upset After 2017 'Christmas Cookies' Ice Cream Sold Out In Record Time As we are God's favorite creations, it is our purpose to spread the Spirit of Christmas to everyone around us. Just as God wanted, we should bring happiness and joy to our fellow brothers and sisters. During this festive season, we should be thankful to God for giving us the opportunity to eat various types of delicious food. We should … Read More