It's not so bad.
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14 years ago
Friday, May 22, 2009
Stratford tickets sales up...
West Side Story anyone?.. I think I'm gonna have to get some fake I.D.
"
"
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/story/2009/05/21/stratford-theatre.html
Mmm.. Stratford will always remind me of Slings and Arrows. Absolutely great series (doesn't hurt one bit that Rachel McAdams is in Season 1!), and worth watching instead of anything else you downloaded/your once a week series...
Download?.. here (I have season 3 when you're ready!). Don't know how to download torrents? Look here.
btw, wtf is up with Stratford and their under 18?? Why more expensive than 16-30? (29).
UPDATE: oh wait... it's "savings".
"
| Under 18 | $36 |
| 16 to 29 | $25 |
| 30 to 35 | up to 50% off |
| Students | $25 and $35 |
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/story/2009/05/21/stratford-theatre.html
Mmm.. Stratford will always remind me of Slings and Arrows. Absolutely great series (doesn't hurt one bit that Rachel McAdams is in Season 1!), and worth watching instead of anything else you downloaded/your once a week series...
Download?.. here (I have season 3 when you're ready!). Don't know how to download torrents? Look here.
btw, wtf is up with Stratford and their under 18?? Why more expensive than 16-30? (29).
UPDATE: oh wait... it's "savings".
Web Gallery of Art
So, looking for a place to compare/research cubism... and although this has no touch with cubist art, I thought it should be shared cuz it's fucking amazing.
"The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and a searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism periods (1100-1850), currently containing over 22.600 reproductions. Picture commentaries, artist biographies are available. Guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and other services are provided."
The best part, I find, is their dual-window mode, where you can view two pieces of art at the same time, often with an extensive critique, and sometimes with a music accompaniment!
If you click on the pictures there are full screen reproductions>... obviously not sufficient, but something to feel/learn off.
"The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and a searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism periods (1100-1850), currently containing over 22.600 reproductions. Picture commentaries, artist biographies are available. Guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and other services are provided."
The best part, I find, is their dual-window mode, where you can view two pieces of art at the same time, often with an extensive critique, and sometimes with a music accompaniment!
If you click on the pictures there are full screen reproductions>... obviously not sufficient, but something to feel/learn off.
Ghosterbusters 3?
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/05/21/ghostbusters-third-movie.html
The new installment, news of which appeared first in industry reports in 2008, will be penned by Gene Stupinksy and Lee Eisenberg, best known as the executive producers of TV's The Office.
...
'"Let's revisit the old characters briefly and happily and have them there as family but let's pass it on to a new generation," he said, adding that he could envision actresses such as Alyssa Milano and Eliza Dushku as part of the new film."'
Really?
Nah...
No...
yeah?
Really?
I would love to believe this has something more to do with other than Dan pushing his wine ungracefully.
Gawd, love Ghostbusters 1 and, meh, 2, and The Blues Brothers, but hopefully Dan has as little to do with Ghostbusters 3 as it sounds like. mmm... Bill Murray.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Ride of Silence
http://newsfix.ca/2009/05/21/cyclist-deaths-honoured-in-ride-of-silence/
For me, this ride was about two main themes; community and awareness. Community in the sense that there has been this basic idea being bounced around lately, perhaps mostly in my own head, but also most prominently by Pier Giorgio Di Ciccio (from a past Agenda), that community is one of the sure fire ways toward sustainability. Sustainability, as most anything I think, is best achieved when there is a strong incentive for the participating individuals to achieve.
Many people are choosing not to have kids, or, when they do have kids they plan to move and raise them out of the city, and when they do have kids in the suburbs there is a general plan to care for them in a certain way as to not let them out after dark, seldom outdoors alone, etc. Individually one could deny this, but just look at the dis-inhabited parks and playgrounds in your area after school hours; people are staying inside.
When building a sustainable community there needs to be interaction within the public realm to build trust, a sense of co-dependence, co-responsibility and cooperation (sustainability does not necessarily equal livability!) within that community, to be able to build that incentive for sustainability, be that economical, social, or environmental. Long term involvement is a good way to increase people's incentives towards long term sustainability and livability, and this ride, like so many other events in Toronto, is a free and easy way to get this idea on the pavement.
Secondly, awareness. People's deaths, caused by city limits should not be ignored. When charges aren't laid in the aftermath of a collision between a cyclist and a vehicle operator - as I understand is the result in most cases - this provides evidence toward consistent systematic errors within the system. If there are systematic errors involved in these collisions, then not only should addressing these errors be a goal of the government, but it is also their responsibility. These deaths should not and can not continue to be ignored and blamed on human error time after time. It is abundantly clear in the data (given that a large number of cities are doing things differently and resulting in intrinsically safer infrastructure) that this is not just human error.
Nathan Abshire (and Happy Fats)
No reason not to speak French...
Short interview and, uhhh, such a great live performance.
Filmed at Fred's Lounge (Fred Tate's) in Mamou, Louisiana in 1976.
Pine Grove Blues - 12-bar blues, accordion, live Cajun, 1976, one microphone.
Biography by John Bush
Nathan Abshire helped bring the blues and honky tonk to Cajun music and repopularized the accordion with his recordings during the 1950s and '60s, but still never managed to make a living from his music. Born in Gueyden, LA, on June 23, 1913, Abshire began playing professionally in the 1920s, and he first recorded in the early '30s with Happy Fats & His Rayne-Bo Ramblers. Abshire went to work at the Basile, LA, town dump around that time, and he held the job for most of his working life.
His fortunes began looking bright by 1936, however, when the Rayne-Bo Ramblers began backing him on sides for Bluebird. After serving in World War II, Abshire cut "Pine Grove Blues" -- his most famous single and later his signature song -- for D.T. Records. He recorded for Khoury/Lyric, Swallow, and Kajun during the 1950s and '60s, meanwhile playing local dances and appearing on sessions by the Balfa Brothers.
A renewal of interest in Cajun and folk music during the '70s gave Abshire a chance to play several festivals and colleges and star in the 1975 PBS-TV Cajun documentary, Good Times Are Killing Me. The title proved prophetic, however, as Abshire fought alcoholism during his last years. Several sessions for Folkways and La Louisienne followed in the late '70s, but he died on May 13, 1981.
Nathan Abshire
More on Happy fats:
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3bfrxqqjldhe~T1
In 1966, however, Fats was the subject of national controversy when he signed to producer Jay D. Miller's segregationist Reb Rebel label to record the underground smash "Dear Mr. President," a spoken word condemnation of Lyndon Johnson's civil rights policies that sold over 200,000 copies despite its appalling racism. "We didn't have any problems with that, not at all," Fats maintained in an interview. "There wasn't anything violent about it -- it was just a joke. I had a car of black people run me down on the highway one time coming in Lafayette, and they said, 'Are you the fellow that made " Dear Mr. President"?' I said I was, and they said, 'We'd like to buy some records.' They bought about 15 records. There was a big van full of black people and they loved it . . . Either side at that time, they didn't want integration very much. They wanted to go each their own way." The commercial success of "Dear Mr. President" launched a series of similarly poisonous Fats efforts including "Birthday Thank You (Tommy from Viet Nam)," "A Victim of the Big Mess (Called the Great Society)," "The Story of the Po' Folks and the New Dealers," and "Vote Wallace in '72." After a long battle with diabetes, Fats died on February 23, 1988.
http://www.answers.com/topic/leroy-happy-fats-leblanc
http://cgi.ebay.com/Happy-Fats-(45)-Reb-Rebel-501---%22Dear-Mr.-President%22_W0QQitemZ350198790414QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090507?IMSfp=TL090507128007r25316
Short interview and, uhhh, such a great live performance.
Filmed at Fred's Lounge (Fred Tate's) in Mamou, Louisiana in 1976.
Pine Grove Blues - 12-bar blues, accordion, live Cajun, 1976, one microphone.
Biography by John Bush
Nathan Abshire helped bring the blues and honky tonk to Cajun music and repopularized the accordion with his recordings during the 1950s and '60s, but still never managed to make a living from his music. Born in Gueyden, LA, on June 23, 1913, Abshire began playing professionally in the 1920s, and he first recorded in the early '30s with Happy Fats & His Rayne-Bo Ramblers. Abshire went to work at the Basile, LA, town dump around that time, and he held the job for most of his working life.
His fortunes began looking bright by 1936, however, when the Rayne-Bo Ramblers began backing him on sides for Bluebird. After serving in World War II, Abshire cut "Pine Grove Blues" -- his most famous single and later his signature song -- for D.T. Records. He recorded for Khoury/Lyric, Swallow, and Kajun during the 1950s and '60s, meanwhile playing local dances and appearing on sessions by the Balfa Brothers.
A renewal of interest in Cajun and folk music during the '70s gave Abshire a chance to play several festivals and colleges and star in the 1975 PBS-TV Cajun documentary, Good Times Are Killing Me. The title proved prophetic, however, as Abshire fought alcoholism during his last years. Several sessions for Folkways and La Louisienne followed in the late '70s, but he died on May 13, 1981.
Nathan Abshire
More on Happy fats:
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3bfrxqqjldhe~T1
In 1966, however, Fats was the subject of national controversy when he signed to producer Jay D. Miller's segregationist Reb Rebel label to record the underground smash "Dear Mr. President," a spoken word condemnation of Lyndon Johnson's civil rights policies that sold over 200,000 copies despite its appalling racism. "We didn't have any problems with that, not at all," Fats maintained in an interview. "There wasn't anything violent about it -- it was just a joke. I had a car of black people run me down on the highway one time coming in Lafayette, and they said, 'Are you the fellow that made " Dear Mr. President"?' I said I was, and they said, 'We'd like to buy some records.' They bought about 15 records. There was a big van full of black people and they loved it . . . Either side at that time, they didn't want integration very much. They wanted to go each their own way." The commercial success of "Dear Mr. President" launched a series of similarly poisonous Fats efforts including "Birthday Thank You (Tommy from Viet Nam)," "A Victim of the Big Mess (Called the Great Society)," "The Story of the Po' Folks and the New Dealers," and "Vote Wallace in '72." After a long battle with diabetes, Fats died on February 23, 1988.
http://www.answers.com/topic/leroy-happy-fats-leblanc
http://cgi.ebay.com/Happy-Fats-(45)-Reb-Rebel-501---%22Dear-Mr.-President%22_W0QQitemZ350198790414QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090507?IMSfp=TL090507128007r25316
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Remember Google's PowerMeter?
Google PowerMeter, an online widget that monitors your home's power usage in real time, is one of those ideas that really should've caught on by now. Well, it's starting to!
Google has announced its first partners for the project, who either do or will provide their customers with the "smart meters" necessary for Google widget to work:
Here's the press release.
REGISTER WITH TORONTO HYDRO HERE
Google has announced its first partners for the project, who either do or will provide their customers with the "smart meters" necessary for Google widget to work:
Gizmodo* San Diego Gas & Electric® (California)
* TXU Energy (Texas)
* JEA (Florida)
* Reliance Energy (India)
* Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Wisconsin)
* White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri)
* Toronto Hydro–Electric System Limited (Canada)
* Glasgow EPB (Kentucky)
Here's the press release.
REGISTER WITH TORONTO HYDRO HERE
The Milky Way
At something called the Texas Star Party.. this year. Apparently several newbies were scared off because they thought storm clouds were approaching.
Wait for it. And then watch it again.
Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.
Wait for it. And then watch it again.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Got Perimeter tickets for June.
Astronomers believe our Universe began in a Big Bang, and is expanding around us. Brian Schmidt will describe the life of the Universe that we live in, and how astronomers have used observations to trace our Universe's history back more than 13 Billion years. With this data a puzzling picture has been pieced together where 96% of the Cosmos is made up of two mysterious substances, Dark Matter and Dark Energy. These two mysterious forms of matter are in a battle for domination of the Universe, and Schmidt will describe experiments that are monitoring the struggle between Dark Energy and Dark Matter, trying better understand these elusive pieces of our Universe, and predict the ultimate fate of the Cosmos.
Brian Schmidt is a Federation Fellow at The Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory. Brian was raised in Montana and Alaska, USA, and received undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1989. Under the supervision of Robert Kirshner, he completed his Astronomy Master's degree (1992) and PhD (1993) from Harvard University. In 1994 he formed the HighZ SN Search team, a group of 20 astronomers on 5 continents who used distant exploding stars to trace the expansion of the Universe back in time. This group's discovery of an accelerating Universe was named Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 1998. Brian Schmidt joined the staff of the Australian National University in 1995, and was awarded the Australian Government's inaugural Malcolm McIntosh award for achievement in the Physical Sciences in 2000, The Australian Academy of Sciences Pawsey Medal in 2001, the Astronomical Society of India's Vainu Bappu Medal in 2002, and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship in 2005. In 2006 Schmidt was jointly awarded the Shaw Prize for Astronomy, and shared the 2007 Gruber Prize for Cosmology with his High-Z SN Search Team colleagues. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the United States National Academy, and Foreign Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. Brian is continuing his work using exploding stars to study the Universe, and is leading Mt Stromlo’s effort to build the SkyMapper telescope, a new facility that will provide a comprehensive digital map of the southern sky from ultraviolet through near infrared wavelengths.
...ok, now off to the library.
Brian Schmidt is a Federation Fellow at The Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory. Brian was raised in Montana and Alaska, USA, and received undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1989. Under the supervision of Robert Kirshner, he completed his Astronomy Master's degree (1992) and PhD (1993) from Harvard University. In 1994 he formed the HighZ SN Search team, a group of 20 astronomers on 5 continents who used distant exploding stars to trace the expansion of the Universe back in time. This group's discovery of an accelerating Universe was named Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 1998. Brian Schmidt joined the staff of the Australian National University in 1995, and was awarded the Australian Government's inaugural Malcolm McIntosh award for achievement in the Physical Sciences in 2000, The Australian Academy of Sciences Pawsey Medal in 2001, the Astronomical Society of India's Vainu Bappu Medal in 2002, and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship in 2005. In 2006 Schmidt was jointly awarded the Shaw Prize for Astronomy, and shared the 2007 Gruber Prize for Cosmology with his High-Z SN Search Team colleagues. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the United States National Academy, and Foreign Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. Brian is continuing his work using exploding stars to study the Universe, and is leading Mt Stromlo’s effort to build the SkyMapper telescope, a new facility that will provide a comprehensive digital map of the southern sky from ultraviolet through near infrared wavelengths.
...ok, now off to the library.
The Discover Magazine blogs...
All excellent blogs, and below just a round-up from what I found interesting this morning.
HIV vaccine?
"“Mother Nature has allowed us a few breaks, in that we know that in a very few cases, people who have been infected for a very long time have been able to naturally develop antibodies that neutralize a lot of the circulating virus,” he said. “So, we thought perhaps we could take the genes that represent these antibodies ‘off the shelf,’ so to speak” [Forbes]. The researchers engineered a piece of DNA that triggers the creation of artificial antibodies called immunoadhesins ... In the study, published in Nature Medicine, researchers found that none of the immunized monkeys developed AIDS and only three showed any indication of SIV infection. Even a year later they had high concentrations of the protective antibodies in the blood [AP]."
-----
When exactly did humans break off the evolutionary chain from monkeys, apes, lemurs... or did they break off our chain?
"The new research adds to an argument over which of two groups of ancient primates was the evolutionary jumping off point for apes and humans: Was it the tarsidae group, which gave rise to the big-eyed tarsiers found in southeast Asia, or the adapidae group, the precursors of the lemurs found in Madagascar?"
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I remember being taught that once an egg is fertilized, no other eggs could be (umm, within a given female's single cycle). Apparently that is all wrong, although quite rare.
"Despite the fact that they were born at the same time to the same mother, Justin and Jordan look nothing like twins, besides having the same skin color. In fact, they look so different that James Harrison, the supposed father, decided to request a paternity test. Turns out, his instincts were right: One of the infants is his child, and the other is not."
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Apparently there is a gender divide in people's acceptance of global warmin'. Is this more of the "be a man!" syndrome, political inclination, or something else?
Bike Lanes: New York vs. Toronto
I have to agree with Lloyd Alter here... Biking in NYC was a fantastic experience. It really felt like I was not only seen and recognized by the vehicles there, but also that my space was respected. Weird feeling...
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/new-york-city-cyclists-paradise.php
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