| speaking of Pemberton Township, New Jersey . . . news about their local GOP |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|13:29] |
Yesterday I posted about homeless people in Pemberton Township, New Jersey, who are living in the Pine Barrens, and how the township provides little, if any, municipal services to help the people out (other than siccing the cops on them from time to time). In unrelated but wonderfully coincidental news, a Blue Jersey blogger was checking out the website of that township's GOP today, and he found an image at the bottom of the page with the following text:
"Obama
loves America
like OJ
loved Nicole!"
The image has since been removed, but Blue Jersey got a screen cap of the page ("The Official Website of the Pemberton Township Republicans") and has saved it on flickr. |
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[Wed 09 Jul 08|09:51] |
I found this pretty interesting.
it's a photographic depiction of various BMIs and what that BMI is supposed to "mean".
what struck me about it was how two people with similar height and weight and BMI can have such a different-looking build.
but it's interesting on multiple levels. |
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| Salsadelphia |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|12:06] |
"So what did you learn at the salsa congress, Tom?"
Everything and nothing! There was so much. More than I could digest all at once. And at the same time, there wasn't much on-one partner work... which is the bread and butter of social dancing in Philadelphia.
So instead I sampled lots of steps: afro-cuban rhythm, cha-cha mambo (*), Colombian, Casino Rueda (**), bachata (**). I spent two hours in classes taught by Mike Ramos of the Palladium Mambo Legends, who apparently also taught a seminar for seniors on Sunday.
One great big walloping exception to the "everything and nothing" rule stands out: David Paris and Zoe Klein's "dips and tricks" workshop. I was apprehensive about trying this— I've never found much traction with dips and tricks before, and I always worry quite a bit about Dropping The Girl On Her Head (tm). But David and Zoe just looked at us, sized up our skill level, and proceeded to teach two very cool tricks that are impressive yet highly unlikely to crack anybody's skull open. I'm... not quite ready to bust them out on the floor (and doing so at Brasils could be dangerous anyway due to the density of the crowd). But I did make my one and only instructional DVD purchase in that class to make sure I have a chance to nail them down soon, before they flee my brain entirely.
I attended six workshops Friday and five on Satuday. Only one on Sunday, but I was coming off three and a half hours in class at Estilo. I also watched the performances all three nights and hung around for the social dancing as well. I got to know some people a bit better, made some new connections and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Of course there was one "oh... are you new to salsa?" moment. No matter how much I dance, there will probably always be a woman out there who's sure I have no idea what I'm doing. (I'm pretty sure she was only familiar with dancing on the two. Combine that with her tremendous strength and concentration and you have a recipe for misunderstanding.)
The congress was not perfect— there was disorganization and attendance levels were a bit disappointing. Even participation in the regional competition to enter the 2008 world salsa championships was very thin. Many major Philadelphia-area dance studios did not participate, at least not at an organizational level, which Just Ain't Right.
I don't care whose fault it is, I just want to see it fixed— we have a strong salsa community here, we should be able to host a world class event like the New York congress.
But did I have a blast? Oh, yeah. Did I learn something? Definitely.
Did I sink, did I swim, or did I hydrofoil? Mmmm.... mostly I swam. I hydrofoiled a little. And I'll admit to a few moments of frantic dogpaddling.
(*) As opposed to the "cha-cha on 1" that we Philadelphians tend to stumble through. Cha-cha really is more natural on two.
(**) Yes, I've tried some of these before. The bachata I'm generally quite familiar with... except that every instructor teaches it a bit differently, and there was plenty of new ground here for me to be baffled by. |
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| wednesday words |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|07:38] |
| [ | Tags | | | writing | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | elsewhere | ] |
635, and I think they're not bad. Still keeping a rein on the optimism, though. I'm still not sure who the antagonist is here. Or if there really is one.
The specific detail is coming along nicely, though.
Off to work. |
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| Thanks for all the happy words! Assorted facts: |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|07:01] |
I'm out of the office for nine weeks (the entirety of July and August).
My parents flew over to stay with us for seven of these weeks.
Juls' parents, who both live in the bay area, are also spending a lot of time with us.
We had a planned home birth with a highly competent midwife, who we would happily recommend. (Our midwife brought two assistant midwives to the birth too.) We also had a terrific doula.
I'm pretty glad for the many prep courses we took here. And, uh, this guy's DVD.
There was, in fact, a cake baked with zero birthday candles on it to celebrate this zeroth birthday. |
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[Wed 09 Jul 08|05:46] |
Happy birthday, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rozk |
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| SO full of crap |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|00:28] |
“We extrapolate from the information we have in adults,” said a member of the panel, Dr. Nicolas Stettler, an assistant professor of pediatric epidemiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “We know that in adults, decreasing cholesterol and giving some of those drugs decreases risk of heart disease or death. So there’s really no reason to think that would be any different in children.”
Giving statins to children? We can extrapolate from adult studies and have no reason to think it would be different in children?
Whatwhat WHAT? You can snatch every cold remedy off the shelves because it's been proven that adult medicines don't act similarly in children... but STATINS are OKAY?
Yeah, sure. Keep 'em locked up in schools for longer hours with more tests, no recess, no phys ed, and vending machines full of junk food. Promote every corn syrup laden convenience "snack pack" and "lunchable" and "juice" box you can think of. Don't walk don't run don't jump don't dance -- hey, be careful on that play equipment! AND THEN GIVE THEM STATINS SO THE LIFESTYLE WON'T KILL THEM SO QUICKLY.
Grand. Just grand. |
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| "The Dob", Take 2 -- |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|00:20] |
It never rains but it pours. Earlier this evening I went over to pick up a disused 2-cubic-foot electric kiln, which I will most likely convert to gas so I can fire more than just a teacup or two and a few glaze tests. (I think I have now been given at least half a dozen kilns, three of which are currently in use.)
By the time I left I had the kiln (which is on a rolling stand), its lid, two shelves, a bunch of shelf-posts, some grog to donate to one of the local studios, and...
...another Dob. This one is an Orion 8" Newtonian, which came with an Orion 17-mm eyepiece. There is a remote chance of more eyepieces, but the former owner is moving; if there are others they are probably packed somewhere, and may not materialize for some time.
This scope is nowhere near as badly beaten up as the Celestron, but the mirrors were grossly out of alignment, and the objective mirror was expectably filthy. (No protective cap on the tube, several years in a dusty basement room...) I spent a pleasant 30 minutes or so cleaning and then aligning it; this goes much faster the second time ’round. There is some damage to the coating on the main mirror, but overall it cleaned up fairly well. The diagonal was not as dirty, but was much too close to the primary, and I had to back it out quite a bit to get it centered in the view through the eyepiece holder.
Once I got all of this resolved, I dragged it outside.
To my surprise, the view of Jupiter is at least as good through this scope as it is through the larger one, save for the fact that the mount on this one is much more wobbly. The splendor may have to do with the slightly higher magnification I’m getting with the 17-mm eyepiece; I am not pushing either scope to its limits, so I am probably working in a realm in which more magnification gives me more detail. (There is also the possibility that I should take another shot at aligning the Celestron, to see whether I can improve on what I did the other day.)
I tried to take a photo, but the wobbliness is so bad that I was completely unable to do so. I got a few large blurry blobs, one or two of which may even show a hint of a moon as a much smaller blurry blob. Sigh. I am now thinking about ways to stabilize the device...
Cheers —
jon |
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| The new math is a real mother |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|01:22] |
Fatboy Slim + David Byrne (Talking Heads) + Dizzee Rascal = The Brighton Port Authority. See also: "Toe Jam." Kinda NSFW.
Recent research shows precedent. To wit, Santogold + Pharrell Williams (N.E.R.D.) + Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) = a Converse-commissioned original song. See also: "My Drive Thru." |
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| the 100 best films of the last 25 years, so they say |
[Tue 08 Jul 08|23:03] |
| [ | Tags | | | movies | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  devious | ] |
I learned today from soylent_screen that Entertainment Weekly announced their picks for the 100 best films of the last 25 years:
Which means, of course, that I have to bitch about their choices.
Actually I don't think it's all that bad a list. A list of the 100 best films of anything is kind of ridiculous in the first place, so once you get past that it's not bad. Of course I have objections, though. Titanic was cleverly made but was artistically irredeemable. Blue Velvet: very daring in 1986, but kind of passé today. And so on.
If this were my list, these are some of the changes I would make:
The Lion King ----> Beauty And The Beast or The Little Mermaid
Pretty Woman ----> Steel Magnolias: just as maudlin but about a thousand times better written, fills the Julia Roberts quotient, and keeps Richard Gere off the list. What more could you ask for?
Gladiator ----> To Die For. Preserves the Joaquin Phoenix balance. Also: a movie that actually had a script. Bonus!
sex, lies and videotape ----> Traffic. Steven Soderbergh is an excellent director, but s, l and v isn't it. (Runner-up: Ocean's 11, 2001 edition)
Dirty Dancing ----> Ghost. If we absolutely have to have Patrick Swayze on this list, then by god we're going to get Whoopi Goldberg too.
Jerry Maguire ----> Almost Famous but I'd put just about any other Cameron Crowe movie here first, even Vanilla Sky, I swear to God.
Unforgiven ----> Million Dollar Baby. Yes, Unforgiven got rave reviews. It just didn't move me. Suck it. Million Dollar Baby, on the other hand, is an indisputable tour de force.
The Departed ----> The Color of Money. I know I'm the only person in the world who didn't care for The Departed, but look. The list already got the movie Marty should have won for, and it doesn't have a single Paul Newman movie on it. And as far as I'm concerned no list of 100 movies is complete without at least one Paul Newman movie, and I don't care if it's the 100 best movies about construction workers or the 100 best West German apocalypse movies, if there isn't a Paul Newman movie on your list then there is something deeply wrong with your soul. |
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| Tweets for today |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|00:02] |
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Here are the things I said on Twitter today.Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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| 3 hours of dancing = owee. |
[Tue 08 Jul 08|22:58] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
i am going to be a big pile of suck tomorrow... everything hurts. but it's a good hurt -- salsa class was a blast, the level 3 westie class was solid, and my hoop practice in between had me dripping with sweat within 10 minutes.
note to self: have a decent dinner before class, so you're not stopping at the store to buy piles of junk afterwards because you're starving from the 3-hour workout. lesson learned.
last but not least: i came in second place in last week's ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ditl contest! w00t! i don't win anything except miniscule internet fame, but i'm still psyched. angus has let it go to his head, he's now demanding that i fan him by hand instead of sitting by the tabletop fan. what a divo. |
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| Journey's End |
[Wed 09 Jul 08|10:23] |
I know, I promised that I'd comment about it, but it's been a few days and I haven't gotten the time and energy to really sit down and do a decent review. Also, I've been feeling a bit irritable in recent days so I may wind up being harsher on it than I intend. Bottom line really is that it was entertaining, a crowd pleaser, had a few good bits, but it irked me on several levels... and ye gods, the ending.
Is anyone still interested in a more detailed take on it even after all this time? |
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| This is why airport security is a monumental joke. |
[Tue 08 Jul 08|17:13] |
Anyone want a TSA shirt? (It's clean, even..)
A TSA employee is staying in my hotel. Their freshly laundered shirt was delivered to their room and left hanging on the OUTSIDE of their door.
Anyone want a TSA shirt? |
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