Kickstarter or Kickstopper

Dork Tower webcomic has promoted the use of a (fictitious) service known as Kickstopper.   

    
So in spite of the idea that many creative ideas are really not worth pursuing, there have been two that I have supported recently.   

The first was a company of science guys who had an idea to bring laser cut trebuchets (catapults) to the classroom as a way to model science for kids. I received in the mail last week my own trebuchet as a reward for helping them out. I have not assembled it yet, but when I do, Whimzy better watch out. Treats will be flying across the backyard (a good way for her to exercise without me having to move much).  

And I just sponsored my second project  - Fireside magazine - which purports to be a magazine for fiction in which writers of many genres will get a chance to receive a reasonable wage for writing short stories.     

Besides wanting to publish good stories, my other goal is to pay the contributors fairly for their work. Currently, for fiction, the rate that is considered professional is 5 cents a word. For a 4,000-word story, which is the upper word limit for Fireside, that would be $200. That's not all that much, considering how much work goes into a short story. I've set my budget, and the Kickstarter goal, at 12.5 cents a word ($500 for a 4,000-word story).

Sound interesting? For $2, you can get a PDF of Fireside No. 1. For $4, you can get an eBook too. Got $10? Then you can also get the printed magazine, which will only ever be offered to supporters of the Kickstarter. (The electronic versions will be sold online.) For $25, you can get a print copy autographed by one of the writers.   

 The project leader recalls a quote from Neil Gaimin, one of my favorite authors (also mentioned in the comic above, and whose talent would be inversely proportional to Adam Sandler's):    

I was reading the introduction to the "Stories" anthology edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio earlier this year. In it, Gaiman writes of his response to a question about what quote he would want inscribed on the wall of  the kids' section in a public library. He captured the reason why we love good stories in his response:
I'm not sure I'd put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I'd just remind people of the power of stories, of why they exist in the first place. I'd put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show it's working, and that pages will be turned:

"... and then what happened?"    

If you have extra cash lying around, you may want to consider sponsoring Fireside magazine. They have quite a ways to go yet before they are fully funded.    

Christmas in Holland

Mike and Tammy went to see Santaland Diaries in Portland the other day and it prompted me to search for David Sedaris's story about Christmas in Holland.   

While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you're bad, he leaves you coal. If you're good and live in America, he'll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."     

This is the reward for living in Holland.   

The video below runs for 15 minutes, but you will find it passes quickly.  It is amazing to me that the video begins and ends with blind people hunting with guns in Michigan, and in the middle moves on to Christmas in Holland. If you don't have time to listen to it today, please find time later. Listening to David Sedaris tell a story is the ultimate Christmas treat. Some of you may be getting actual presents from me for Christmas. For all of you, though, this is your real present. Merry Christmas.    


        

Lord of the Rings, Round 4

I am currently re-reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy after being sucked in by my son Mike into watching the entire movie series over a period of 2 days after Thanksgiving. After watching all three movies (probably the third time), I realized that I had not read the books in 20 years or so. And so it seemed like a good time to do so. The interesting thing about reading the books for me has been to see how really good the movies were. They don't match the book perfectly, but in the places where they differ, the movie version makes for a better visual than the books do. There are a couple scenes in particular. Early in the story, the four hobbits make a run for Bree to meet up with Gandalf to begin the quest. The book version is interesting, but not nearly as exciting as the movie visual of Frodo leaping for the ferry at the last possible moment to outrun the Shadow Riders. In the second movie, the defense of Helm's Deep by Theoden, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli (and a few thousand others) is a major scene. The sequence where they ride out into the enemy expecting to die in battle, only to see Gandalf arrive in the nick of time with reinforcements is a very stirring (and lengthy) part of the movie. In the book, the entire battle is downplayed to a couple of pages. The difference seems to be in expanding the sections of the book that seem to lead to exciting action sequences in the movie. Much of the book is spent in helping us to understand the background of the main characters and the history of the regions and peoples involved in the war of Middle Earth. When I read the book the first time, it meant that I cared more deeply about the characters as I worked my way through the books (enough so that our two cats in the house in Mundelein were named Merry and Pip). When I watched the movie, the character development wasn't necessary - I already cared what happened to them. I would be interested to know if those of you who saw the movies without reading the books felt that something was missing from the movies. I am just starting to read the final part of the trilogy. I am especially interested in reading the end where the hobbits come home to a Shire under siege, which was ignored in the movie.  

As a side note, the New York Times Book section has a review entitled "The Hero is a Hobbit" of the first book in the trilogy, written in October of 1954 by the poet W. H. Auden. He writes,   

The first thing that one asks is that the adventure should be various and exciting; in this respect Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, "The Fellowship of the Ring" is at least as good as "The Thirty-Nine Steps." Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory. Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one's own childhood.    

The True Meaning of Christmas

For those of us who were raised in the Christian tradition, there are many meanings of Christmas. We are happy to light the advent candles at the Christmas Eve service at our church this year, so you can be sure that one meaning of Christmas is in our hearts and minds. Ann went to a party today sponsored by the Wauconda Schools PTO. Guests were encouraged to take Christmas wishes from the various trees set up at one of the PTO member's homes and help someone have a better Christmas. Ann was invited by our PTO and School Board friend Carey to come this year and she found six or seven wishes that she decided to make come true. These are all students in the school district who are on free and/or reduced lunch and whose families have requested some help this year. So tomorrow we are shopping for a boys jacket (XL), some size 6 tennis shoes, and 4 or 5 gift cards for older kids at Target or MacDonalds. Ann was impressed by the organization and dedication of the PTO ladies. They are a truly tremendous group of people. And so a second meaning of Christmas occupies some of this weekend and next week. Which leaves us the third and in my mind equally important meaning of Christmas. Probably the message is given best in a Christmas movie we watched often when the boys were younger.   You are invited to watch the entire video, but the meaningful part occurs in the first two minutes.  
           

               

I agree whole - heartedly with the big spiny guy (Herb, I think). One of the most important things about Christmas is the snacks. We have already done Christmas cookies once this season (mainly for Mike and Tammy at Thanksgiving, since they won't be here for Christmas this year) and I am excited about trying some other Christmas cookie recipes - peanut butter blossoms are a favorite, along with snickerdoodles and pinwheels. Or maybe some candy, like buckeyes. We used to devote a night to baking cookies with Mary and Dave and all the kids, but it gets harder and harder to schedule now. So we'll have to forge ahead on our own. I expect Ann will be pretty sick of cookies by the time we're done. But it's time for her to step up and take one for the team. And by team, I mean me. And maybe Nate and Dave if we can get some cookies delivered to them, too. Merry Christmas!!

Let's Get Demotivated

Somewhere in the last twenty years, it became fashionable to tell people that the reason for their lack of success was a lack of motivation. And that the best way to get that motivation was to see posters on the walls that encouraged you to be motivated. You've seen them. The idyllic poster with the forest scene telling you about dreams or achievement or teamwork. Here's one your boss hung up in your office area that he bought at Allposters.com framed for about $57.00.   

In small print, it says, "The best way to not fail is to determine to succeed." Isn't that a nice sentiment? Unfortunately, you end up working harder than ever, only to find the promotion went to the boss's nephew. That brings on a sense of failure that now makes it even harder to get motivated.  

Luckily, the people at Despair, Inc. have found a way to break that cycle. As they so proudly declare: 

At Despair, Inc., we believe it's time people face the truth - that any kind of motivation you can buy isn't worth owning, and in the end will produce even greater demoralization. Given that inevitable fact, we'd like to invite you to skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointment that follows! 

Or if you want to see it as a poster:   

I had these hanging on one of my file cabinets at work for the last few years:  

And Scott and I agree on this poster about the workplace:   

So if you are having a hard time finding the right gift for that special someone for Christmas, may I suggest a (de)motivational poster. Especially for that special new person in your life. You know, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Wait, I think there's a poster in there somewhere.   

It's Salsa Time!

So lately I've been spending some time on the website Howcast finding out how to do the many things I don't do well; like, say, wear a winter scarf:  

I have found lots of things that I should know more about: how to decorate a Christmas cake, how to play the B Major scale on your bass guitar, and how to handle a screaming child while shopping. That last one they did differently than we did when the kids were little. In the video, they don't mention tranquilizer darts once.   

So take a look at the incredibly long list of how - to videos. There must be something you want to learn by Christmas. How about "How to Play the Pokemon Trading Card Game" or "How to Dance Salsa Style." Man, I can't decide which sounds better.    

Odds and Ends, #5

A.  I am relieved to hear that the NBA lockout will be coming to an end.  I am missing the Bulls run to the championship and have had to fill in with watching episodes of the Wonder Years on Netflix streaming. It's a poor replacement, folks, and I need some real basketball to keep me going. Although the Big Ten - ACC matchup has been interesting this week, with Ohio State whacking Duke big time last night.     

2.  I made it to the Muppets Movie Saturday night with the whole family - it was as good as expected. If you or your kids grew up with the Muppets, this movie will be a delight for you. Lots of cameos by stars (we all love Neil Patrick Harris), lots of good jokes (when someone mentions September is 6 months away, Fozzie Bear tells everyone, "Once I had to wait almost a year for September.") Now that is a Muppet joke. And lots of goofy songs and dancing.    

Jim Henson's daughter Lisa is now CEO of the Jim Henson Company and she describes the movie: “I think the movie is like a big, glorious love letter to the Muppets,” she says. “The whole gist of the movie is, ‘These guys are important—let’s bring them back!’” Hear, hear!    

Next.   I've lost chances to do blog posts because of the online class I'm taking in Artificial Intelligence. Ten to twelve hours a week to keep up on video lectures and homework - much of it spent looking through Google because I didn't want to spend $145 on the textbook.  But I've learned a lot about how computer science people are building the next generation of robots. And recently a story appeared in Sky News about Google's attempt to get robot -  driven cars to be legal in Nevada.  

Last year the company traveled 140,000 miles across California to test the self-driving cars and was encouraged by its findings. Specially-adapted Toyota Priuses drove from Google's Mountain View headquarters in northern California and down the scenic Pacific Coast highway to Santa Monica.  They crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and drove down San Francisco's Lombard Street - among the steepest and curviest roads in the world.  The cars remained manned at all times by a trained driver ready to take control, as well as by a software expert.    

Google engineer Sebastian Thrun (who coteaches my AI class) said: "Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.  Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to 'see' other traffic, as well as detailed maps which we collect using manually driven vehicles to navigate the road ahead."    

So we are getting closer to the point where I don't have to feel guilty about texting while I'm driving. Wooo!    

Last.   For those of you with IPads, IPhones, or IPods, there is an APP called Geo Walk HD World Fact Book that is pretty interesting. From TechRadar. com comes this review:  

Encyclopaedias: not the most exciting of books. And that's a real shame. What if you could take the most interesting bits of knowledge and browse through them in a more visual, engaging way?    

As luck would have it, Geo Walk HD is a fun little app that does just that. Spin the globe interface and tap a hovering object to zoom into its image card; tap again to reverse the card for a brief commentary on the subject. Use the dock to switch to the carousel card mode or turn on a category filter (architecture, for example).   

For $2.99, it seems like a nice add-on to your Angry Birds player IPhone. And it also might help you find out where you are after you made a mistake putting your destination into your robot car. You know, there's a Lima in Peru, too, not just Ohio. That might explain why your drive took so long.  

 

Farewell to the Dragons of Pern

Locus Magazine for Science Fiction and Fantasy announced today:  

SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Grand Master Anne McCaffrey, 85, died November 21, 2011 of a massive stroke at home in Ireland.   

McCaffrey is best known for her long-running Pern series of SF novels and stories. She was the first woman to win both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards, with “Weyr Search” (1968) and “Dragonrider” (1969) respectively. Pern novel The White Dragon (1978) was the first hardcover SF novel to make the New York Times bestseller list. Many of the later books in the Pern series were written in collaboration with McCaffrey’s son Todd.  

She was a great storyteller.  According to her website, she wrote her first novel as a reaction to how poorly women were depicted in 1950's and 1960's science fiction. At last count she had written or coauthored over 100 titles. 

She said in a Locus interview in 2004,   

I think the best story I ever wrote was 'The Ship Who Sang'. It still causes people to cry, including me. When Todd and I were reading it at Brighton, they had a BBC crew filming it. So there were these BBC cameramen hunkered down filming us, and comes the end of the story (which Todd always reads, because I can't go through it without weeping), I saw that these cameramen had tears rolling down their faces.

 If you want to read "The Ship Who Sang", you can download it or read it here.    

It's Holiday Movie Time 2!

The second movie that I am excited about (after Hugo on Nov 25) comes out on December 21 - The Adventures of TinTin.   Based on a children's book from Belgium, the plot centers around a cub reporter who follows his stories to the ends of the earth. According to MovieInsider,     

There will be three back-to-back films, which will be in full digital 3-D. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson will both direct an installment of the trilogy. The movie is animated, motion capture 3-D. The full-length film will be similar to the motion capture elements in The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf and King Kong.

Which explains why Andy Serkis (Gollum) is in the movie. Also in the cast are Daniel Craig, fresh from Cowboys vs Aliens, and Jamie Bell, who appeared in the sci-fi movie Jumper.   We also get to see our favorite indy actor who is suddenly appearing in mainstream movies, Simon Pegg.   


      


Best of all, the writers for TinTin  look great. Edgar Wright was a writer for Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim. Even better, the head writer is Steven Moffat, who brought Doctor Who back to TV from 2005 to 2011 with a marvelously engaging set of storylines. He also wrote the new Sherlock Holmes TV show on Masterpiece Theater. If you have not downloaded them from Netflix or Amazon Prime, you should. They are delightful. Martin Freeman from Hitchhikers Guide and soon to be Bilbo in The Hobbit plays a 21st century Dr. Watson.    

So, all in all, a movie to look forward to. Couple it with the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Jude Law and Robert Downey, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was a very interesting, but violent, series of books. We will see how that gets expressed on the screen. I keep thinking The Game of Thrones.    

So, lots of good choices to schedule in November and December. Make sure you see them all. If you need encouragement, call me and you can go with me. I just don't want to see you sneaking out of TinTin at the multiplex to sneak in to Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked. Mistakes like that are hard to ignore and could get you banned from further movie trips.  


 

Poverty in America

An article appeared on CNN's Belief Blog a couple of month's ago entitled "5 Misconceptions About Poverty in America". It was authored by Rev. David Beckmann, who is President of Bread For the World and the Alliance to End Hunger.  

Here are a few of his 5 misconceptions:

1. “Poverty doesn’t exist in the United States.”
Although poverty often appears less extreme in the United States than in other countries, it is nonetheless real. There are 46.2 million Americans living in poverty, according to data released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The poverty rate increased to 15.1% in 2010, from 14.3% in 2009. That's nearly one out of every six Americans — the highest rate since the Census began tracking poverty data in 1959.

2. “There is no such thing as extreme poverty in America.”
Deep poverty means living below 50% of the poverty line, which would be an income of $11,157 for a family of four and $5,672 for a non-elderly person living alone.

Many think this level of poverty is exclusive to people living in developing countries, but the number of people in America living in extreme poverty has reached a record high: 20.5 million in 2010.

3. “If you live above the federal poverty line, you’re doing just fine.”
$23,000 a year is too little for most two-person households to live comfortably in America, let alone a family of four. Most people don’t understand that having a job doesn’t mean you’ve made it out of poverty.

In fact, working full-time at minimum wage earns you only $14,000 a year. But there are also millions of Americans living above the federal poverty line who are struggling to make ends meet.

It is a hard time of year for many people. Many of us make plenty of money, but feel poor because we can't buy all the things we want to or have the kind of car we want.  In fact, we are doing fine. But some of us aren't doing fine and they could use our help. Around here, that may mean the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which accepts donations here.   

NIFB is proud to say that 96% of its budget goes directly to feeding the hungry. This efficiency has earned NIFB a four-star rating by Charity Navigator, an independent evaluation of charities.  

In St. Marys, Ohio, where I grew up, that means the AGAPE Food Pantry, where my dad, at age 90, still volunteers by packing boxes of food on Tuesdays every week.    

So find a place near you and help out. Children should not go to bed hungry.   

It's Holiday Movie Time 1!

One of the best things about the Thanksgiving - Christmas season is the increase in the number of movies worth watching. After weeks of choosing among blockbusters like Real Steel, Three Musketeers, Johnny English Reborn, and, this week, Jack and Jill starring two Adam Sandlers, we finally get a flock of movies that don't make us throw up. We haven't looked forward to a list of movies like this since the start of superhero summer.    

It all starts the week of Thanksgiving with the arrival of two interesting movies (yes, I skipped right past Happy Feet 2 the week before) in Hugo and the new Muppet Movie. I've already shown some trailers of the Muppet Movie, so let me tell you about Hugo. It is based on a book by Brian Selznick called The Invention of Hugo Cabret that won the 2008 Caldecott Award. It is an interesting book; here is a description:     

This 526-page book is told in both words and pictures. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things. Each picture (there are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!) takes up an entire double page spread, and the story moves forward because you turn the pages to see the next moment unfold in front of you.      

Hugo is a 12-year old orphan who lives in secret in the walls of a 1930's Paris train station. The synopsis of the book at the author's website says:  

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come together...in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

The movie is directed by Martin Scorsese of Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver fame. Seems like a bit of a stretch for him, but I'm sure it will be interesting. I'm sorry to say, kids, but this one is at the top of my list (Muppet Movie will have to be a close second).  

I'll look at more movies in the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer from Hugo: 

    

My 30 day trials

I have recently added the TED app to the IPad. For those of you unfamiliar with the TED Seminars, (according to their website)  

TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included demos of the Sony compact disc and new 3D graphics from Lucasfilm, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals.  

Since then the conference held yearly in Long Beach, California, has been a chance for people with innovative ideas to get their ideas out. When I first heard of the TED Conferences 4 or 5 years ago, I looked into attending a conference because it seemed really amazing. Unfortunately, the current cost of registering for the conference is about $6000. Even so, it's hard to get solid info about the next year's TED because it has been sold out for some time. Luckily, starting a few years ago, the TED website has videos of the seminars. So you miss out on the discussions at the conference, but still have money for food and clothing.    

In the last few days I have watched seminars that dealt with  

"The strange tale of the Norden bombsight" by Malcolm Gladwell, 

"The real reason for brains" by Daniel Wolper,

and a funny speech by Hasan Elahi titled "FBI, Here I Am".


The seminar shown below was one I watched a few days ago and thought was especially interesting. It is short and somewhat simplistic, but I liked the idea.   


     



So I decided to start with playing the piano every day for 30 days. I have a piano system I think will work in which the right hand plays the melody line and the left hand plays only chords that are marked above the staff (no reading of notes for chords - that's too much work). I have some music that is printed like that, so we will see where we go.  

So what's next? The speaker lists both additions (bike every day or take a picture every day) and subtractions (no sugar for a month or no TV for a month - let's not get carried away here - what if the Bulls end up playing this season). So let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for me or for yourself. My piano playing runs out in mid December. I'll need something new, like cook something new every day or add a new blog entry every day. Let me know what ideas you have. I'll let you know how it works out.   

Pandas Demand Equal Time

After last week's dog video, it seems that pandas are out there doing interesting things as well (thanks to Nate for the video). It's nice to know that regardless of the species, the preferred method for getting to the top of a slide is to climb the slide rather than climb the ladder. Mike and Nate rarely used the ladder.       

          

You Did What?

 From The Talking Animals Channel:

   


   

A Hawaiian Musical Selection

Today's musical selection celebrates the life and music of Hawaiian ukulele artist Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. The album containing the song below and his cover of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World sold over a million CD's after its release in 1993 and made him a celebrity. Upon his death in 1997,  thousands of fans gathered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Mākua Beach. A beautiful song from a big man with a gentle voice.    

      

The Lockout Continues

Starting to worry about what to do with the basketball season going down the tubes? From the friendly folks at the Grantland website - a translator that tells you which European soccer team to root for based on who your NBA team of choice is.Here's the verdict for those of us who cheer for the Chicago Bulls:   

What can replace the giant-size hole the lockout has left in your life? Your franchise has fielded one of the most dominant starting lineups in history. Your current talent-soaked roster, loaded with championship expectations, lures the NBA’s best attendance to the nation’s second city. Mazel tov. You have the good fortune to be a MANCHESTER UNITED fan, current and perennial champions, sponsored by Chicago-based reinsurer Aon. 

For those Boston Celtic fans:   

You live and die for a tradition-rich franchise with a rabid fan base in an Irish-tinged city. Your team’s legend was cemented by the glory of the 1980s, though the 21st century has been less kind, delivering just a single taste of meaningful silverware. Seventeen championship banners and 21 retired numbers waft over the floor. You are born to be a LIVERPOOL fan. Swap Lucky the Leprechaun, the mascot purveyor of high-flying dunks, for the toothy alacrity of Luis Suarez and the teams are basically interchangeable.  

Or maybe a Nets fan:   

Your team is relentlessly crap. Will a change in ownership and the promised land of new digs (obtained in slightly controversial fashion) make a difference? No chance. Congratulations. You are a WEST HAM fan. Born to be Claret and Blue. Ever hopeful, yet always cruelly denied.     

Portland Trailblazers anyone:   

You have a nasty case of Blazermania — a love so blind it compels you to bellow for your team, whatever the result. As one of the most rabid fan bases in pro sports, you are born to be a NEWCASTLE UNITED fan. Few teams mean more to their fans, despite giving them so little in return. In the same vein as Portland’s “Jail Blazers,” the law has often presented more of a challenge for Newcastle than opposing teams. But an injection of talent has transformed results, and Geordie fans, fueled by multiple pints of Newcastle Brown Ale, are living proof that few acts are more joyous than cheering for your local team.     

 Finally, maybe you are a Lakers fan:   

Simply put: We have had too many e-mails from Lakers fans begging “not to be Chelsea” to not make you CHELSEA. Lakers Nation, you doth protest too much: Your winning tradition has been soiled by an arrogance which, real or imagined, has caused you to be roundly despised across the league. You have a young coach attempting to gain the respect of a veteran squad, led by a soft Spanish big man and an aging Kobe, who could be any one of Chelsea’s graying superstars — John Terry, Frank Lampard, or Didier Drogba — attempting to substitute experience for pace.   

So enjoy your new team, NBA fans. And pray that at least some season is still left by the time the negotiating ends. Although every thing I read says that the Cavaliers owner (along with several others) thinks he will make more money if there is no season at all. Doesn't sound good. Now what do we do to take the place of eleven Bulls games this winter?     


   

13 Days When Music Changed Forever

WFMT, the Classical Music radio station and the San Francisco Symphony have developed a classical music series called the "Keeping Score Series - 13 Days When Music Changed Forever". Remember, these are classical music people, so the breakup of Creedence Clearwater Revival is not on the list. What is on the list are a number of musical pieces that I haven't heard (or heard of).   

It begins on February 24, 1607 with the premiere of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. The radio broadcast for this one runs 59 minutes and, according to the description,  

This is a program about the dawn of opera, but also about secular music becoming ...  high art (something that had been the exclusive purview of church music).  We’ll look at precursors to L’Orfeo in Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Jacopo Perri’s Euridice, written a generation before Monteverdi.   

And it finishes on November 4, 1964 with the remiere of Terry Riley’s In C.   

This piece, which debuted at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and the minimalist outpouring that it sparked, were a reaction to the rigid strictures of serialism and the stranglehold of the academic composers of the time.  

           

I may not know art, but I know an alarm going off in the morning when I hear it. I think it probably gets really cool later on. I don't know - I shut the alarm off after 3 minutes and got up. Maybe Mary can explain this to me sometime.   

Anyway, it does show my incredible lack of knowledge in the area of classical music. We sang a lot of Bach in high school choir and in church and when I was in the State Singers choral group at Michigan State University we did a Beethoven festival in 1970 with the MSU Orchestra and Albion University's choir to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. I still have the two vinyl records from the concert, though I haven't pulled them out in twenty years. The classical list on my IPod nowadays consists of Aaron Copland (I love Fanfare for the Common Man), Vivaldi, and Pachelbel's Canon in D. So, time to get to work. Let's see if we can teach an old dog to enjoy classical music. But we're going to avoid Terry Riley for a while. No need to go overboard here.   

May I Have the Envelope, Please?

I know you've been waiting for this. Grammar.net today announced the winners of the Best Grammar Blog of 2011. (Drumroll, please)   

3rd Place - Arrant Pedantry     

   Most recent post - "Rules, Regularity, and Relative Pronouns"   

          The age-old struggle to determine the correct usage of who, which, and that.   

2nd Place - Grammar Girl  

   Most Recent Post - "Why Does 'Gadaffi' Have So Many Different Spellings?"  

         The age-old struggle to translate Arabic words into English.   

1st Place - A CLIL To Climb

   Most Recent Post - "Compound Adjectives - To Hyphenate or Not"   

        The age-old struggle to decide whether to hyphenate "ten-mile run" and "loud-mouthed lime".   

  A fellow blogspot resident - so we are happy they won.  

The scariest part - online voting determined the winner - over 8000 votes were cast. And my high school English teacher, Ms. Geiger, would be 115 by now, so I don't think she's doing much voting anymore. I didn't know there were people who followed in her footsteps - but I can still diagram a sentence, so she is probably looking down on me (OK, she is probably looking up at me - she was a grammar teacher after all) with a smile.     

Conspiracy Theory, Anyone?

The movie Anonymous is due out soon. I have already started seeing trailers on TV. That's good, because I haven't had a bizarre conspiracy theory to think about for quite some time. I've worked my way through the Dan Brown Catholic Church conspiracies pretty well by now. I've quit seeing Opus Dei each time I go to the grocery store to buy grape juice. And the birthers have pretty much given up for a while, although with the Republican primaries starting up soon, I expect to hear at least one  candidate call Obama's citizenship into question.  I can hear it now - "No, 9 - 9 - 9 is not bad for the middle class and besides, how would Obama know - he's a Muslim."  I'm pretty sure we did go to the Moon in 1969 and not just to a NASA soundstage in New Mexico. And contrary to what Tommy Lee Jones tells me, I don't think Dennis Rodman is from another galaxy.   

Steven Marche, a former college English professor, writes an interesting article in the NY Times about the movie Anonymous and about conspiracy theories in general. He explains that he wasn't sure if the movie was any good. He spent most of the movie being upset by the absurdities given to justify the original premise: Shakespeare did not write his own plays. He describes a good final exam for a graduate class in Shakespeare would be to have the student find 10 ridiculous things that are stated as facts in the movie. The Oxfordian hypothesis, he writes, is a dead issue. But after this movie comes out, the loonies will come out and play. Despite having no background in English literature or English history, some people will take this seriously.    

I think that is the part that is so frustrating to me. Texas governor Rick Perry, in a recent debate, was talking about how climate change is a fraud perpetrated by scientists to get more funding, then goes on to compare his skepticism to that of Galileo. Come on, Mr. Perry. Really? It is frustrating to me that a denial of science comes so easily to those with no science background whatsoever. They can't explain what Galileo or Newton or Hawking did, but they are sure that their position on climate change and evolution and quantum physics is scientifically valid. And they take the fact that there are constant arguments about each of those to mean that they don't exist. The scientific community has a lot of arguments about how climate change will manifest itself, about the speed of the change, basically all about how it will unfold. But there is almost no argument in the scientific community that climate change is real and needs to be addressed soon.    

Marche sums it up very nicely:   

The Shakespeare controversy, which emerged in the 19th century, was one of the origins of the willful ignorance and insidious false balance that is now rotting away our capacity to have meaningful discussions. The wider public, which has no reason to be familiar with questions of either Renaissance chronology or climate science, assumes that if there are arguments, there must be reasons for those arguments. Along with a right-wing anti-elitism, an unthinking left-wing open-mindedness has also given lunatic ideas soil to grow in. Our politeness has actually led us to believe that everybody deserves a say.

The problem is that not everybody does deserve a say. Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. Some opinions deserve to be marginalized and excluded. There are many questions in this world over which rational people can have sensible confrontations: whether lower taxes stimulate or stagnate growth; whether abortion is immoral; whether the ’60s were an achievement or a disaster; whether the universe is motivated by a force for benevolence; whether the Fonz jumping on water skis over a shark was cool or lame. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is not one of these questions.     

And neither is climate change or evolution.  I'm just really happy that my brother Alan is retired from teaching Shakespeare courses at SOU; I feel sorry for the instructors next fall who will have a student say, "Well, everybody knows that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays. I mean, that's why they did the movie, right?"  
 

Costume Ideas if You Grew Up in the 80's

We know you have every intention of making your own costume this year for Halloween. You do every year. But you know things will get busy and you will run out of time and you will end up putting in a pocket protector and going as Steve Jobs. Well, BuyCostumes.com, the world's largest costume store, has just the thing for you twenty-somethings - a blast from the past.    

Yes, it's an adult size Skeletor Masters of the Universe costume and it includes "A chiseled muscle chest jumpsuit featuring attached brilliant purple armor, matching hood and a vacuform character mask." What it doesn't include are the socks so you are on your own there - and somehow tennis shoes or black dress shoes just won't look right, so you're going to have to spring for the purple boots.    


And we don't want to forget the ladies, so you can "Embody the powerful princess of Eternia in the Masters Of The Universe - She-Ra Adult Costume which includes: A white dress featuring a gold emblem with aqua jewel detail, tiara headpiece with a faux ruby accent, red cape and a pair of gold wrist cuffs." It's a good thing they told us it's a faux ruby accent. I expected real rubies for $54.99, didn't you?     

 And Thundercats are on the loose with your official Lion - O costume.    

Or you have lots of other choices:    

Super Grover - Numero Dos!

Optimus Prime

  Waldo  

 PacMan 

  Stay Puft Marshmallow man 

  Waluigi  

So let's get going out there. I want to see pictures of all the costumes. Unless you're going with the Naughty Nun again. I'm still recovering from seeing that one last year.     

Is Florida Becoming the Scariest Place on Earth?

So a lot of the state - level political bickering these days seems to center around the idea of testing people on welfare for drug use. As a follow-up to the post a couple of days ago about conditional probability and drug testing, this just seems like an incredibly expensive program with few benefits, but let's see what the experts say. As of July 1, residents of Florida have been required to be drug-tested to receive their welfare benefits. According to Governor Rick Scott, the program will pay for itself and is needed because people on welfare are notorious drug users. But the Tampa Tribune reports that according to the Department for Families and Children which runs the program in Florida, the state is seeing a fail rate of 2% through the first two months of the program. According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, performed by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, 8.7 percent of the population nationally over age 12 uses illicit drugs. The rate was 6.3 percent for those ages 26 and up. That seems a tad higher than the 2% use rate among welfare recipients in Florida. Welfare recipients must pay for their own drug testing, but are reimbursed by the state if the test proves negative. So a welfare recipient must shell out $30 ($60 if he/she ends up being a false positive - and remember that more than two-thirds of the positive tests are false positives) to be eligible to receive welfare. Estimates in Florida so far show little savings for the state in what they spend on welfare. Adam Cohen of the Yale School of Law (not exactly a hotbed of liberal thought) , in a Time Magazine op ed piece entitled "Bad Policy, Even Worse Law", writes, "If Florida and other states are really concerned about drug use, they should adopt stricter laws and better enforcement policies aimed at the whole population, not just the most vulnerable. But these laws are not really about drug use. They are about, in these difficult economic times, making things a little harder for the poor."   

As Cohen states, the problem with Florida's law is that it isn't about drug use. It's about bullying.  And it's about bullying a group of people who don't have the resources to fight back.All the research I have read about student achievement has stated that the single most defining statistic in whether students pass the standardized tests is the poverty level of the families involved. It would seem that if we care about kids, attacking poverty should be our approach, not attacking food - stamp recipients. I guess that's why the Occupy Wall Street movement has struck such a basic chord for me. There is plenty of money out there to help people out, to create the jobs that would lift people out of poverty and give them a sense of hope. But the private job creators have other uses for that money - bonuses for the banking execs who received bail-out money, stock-options, and a record dividend paid out to the shareholders of BP.   

In Ohio, there is a big push to pass this odious piece of legislation about drug-testing welfare recipients. In a marvelous counter-strike, Ohio Democratic legislator Robert Hagan has taken it to the next step.  Rep. Hagan’s bill would require statewide officeholders, legislators, members of Gov. John Kasich’s jobs board and recipients of federal bailout money to pay for their testing for un-prescribed pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs and alcohol. Officials testing positive would have to undergo treatment or be booted from office.    

Now that seems a little more fair - everybody who gets state or federal money gets tested - farmers who get crop subsidies, executives whose companies get state contracts, legislators and legislative boards. I like that idea much better.   

  

  

  

Let's All Go to the Lobby, Let's All Go to the Lobby!

Trailer 2 for the Muppet Movie is out for your enjoyment. I see a reclining seat with pillow and blanket in South Barrington on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Popcorn for everyone. Woooo!   

Today's Math Lesson - Conditional Probability

The instructor in the AI online class I am taking from Stanford was discussing conditional probability today, which is an old topic for me. One contest every year for the North Suburban Math League was only probability: simple probability for the Freshman team, geometric probability for the Sophomores, and more advanced probability for the Juniors and the Seniors. And in the lesson, the instructor does a problem that I first saw done by John Allen Paulos in 1988 in a book called Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences.

It is still available on Amazon - although if you buy one it probably won't be signed by Dr. Paulos like mine is. What can I say - I'm a math geek. The example Dr. Paulos gives is intended to give people a more numerate understanding of drug testing - something to counteract the typical "Well, he tested positive and the test is 90% accurate, so he's probably guilty."

So, let's assume the test is 90 % accurate and let's guess that our population of drug users is 5% of the total population. That is, for any random group of 100 people, 95 are drug free and 5 are not. Let's suppose that our workplace has 1000 people. 95% of 1000 is 950, so 950 is our expected drug free population and the remaining 50 are drug users. So we give everyone the drug test.

Of the 50 drug users, 45 test positive. (Remember the test is 90% accurate - 90% of 50 is 45.) The other 5 drug users test negative.

Of the 950 people who are not drug users, 855 test negative (Again, 90% accurate and 90% of 950 is 855). That leaves 950 - 855 = 95 people in this group that test positive, even though they are drug free.

So, let's suppose you are contacted by your employer and told that you tested positive. What does that mean. Well, 140 people tested positive - the two big numbers above added together. And only 45 of those 140 people are drug users. So the probability that you are a drug user if you tested positive is 45 out of 140 or about 32%. Less than a third of the positive tests are accurate. But the company sells itself as being 90% accurate, which it is. You just have to understand that  90% accurate doesn't mean what it sounds like. Or to modify an earlier statement, he tested positive and the test is 90% accurate, so he's probably not guilty.

So what should the company do? Well, at the very least it should retest all the positive results. Should it fire everyone that gets two positive tests? The probability that you get two positive tests if you are drug-free is pretty small, but there are still going to be people fired who are not drug users but are labeled as such.

Well, one solution would be to focus on people whose performance has slipped or who are making a lot of mistakes at work. But that should really mean that they should start by seeing counselors to find out other reasons for behavior changes. Stress at home, maybe difficulties with a spouse or adolescent children, the beginning of a physical or mental illness that may need treating; in general, that would require an interest in the worker and his welfare. And that would require managers who are skilled at working with people. Nah, the test is simpler. Besides, it's 90% accurate. Let's just go with that.

And that's what Paulos meant by the consequences of mathematical illiteracy. 

Today's Music Selection - The Cat Song

One of my favorite things to do is to listen to the radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion.  If you are unfamiliar with the show, here in Chicago it airs on NPR's 91.5 WBEZ at 5 PM. Since Saturdays tend to be a bit busy, I rely on their website to hear the show. You can see a rundown of last week's show (or earlier archived shows) here.  The show runs for two hours and includes songs, skits, and commercials from places like Bertha's Kitty Boutique and Powdermilk Biscuits (Heavens, they're tasty!).  Each week Keillor gives a 20-minute monologue about the news from Lake Wobegon. After a while, you know all the characters and you enjoy it even more. You look forward to hearing the latest about Lutheran Pastor Inqvist, Father Emil of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, the Lake Wobegon Whippets baseball team, and various members of the Bunsen and Krebsbach families. When our kids were young, they fell asleep listening to cassette tapes, then CDs of Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." The best show of the year is the Pretty Good Joke Show, which usually has Roy Blount, Jr. or Paula Poundstone as a guest. A typical example:   

What does your father do for a living?
He is a magician. He cuts people in two.
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Yes, one half-brother and one half-sister....   

I have used several of their jokes over the years in Commencement addresses. Always a hit. I would encourage you to listen to a show on the website. It takes some time, but I think that's one of the messages of the show. Sometimes you just have to make time to do the things that are worth doing. The video below is from quite a few years ago and is typical of the songs and skits you will hear on the radio show.  Enjoy.     

Whimzy Makes a Statement

So our puppy Whimzy (5 months old now) has obviously decided that the celebration of Christmas should be confined to the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Here's the story.   

Buddy 1 was a stuffed toy something - it looked like a moose, but had a horn (unimoose) - that Whimzy loved. At least she loved to chew it. And she would run around the back yard with it in her mouth until it tangled with her legs and she did a somersault. It died an ugly death when the puppy ripped open its stomach and pulled out lots of stuffing. I had already sewn it up twice before from small tears. This one was not going to be sewable.   

Buddy 2 was a stuffed giraffe. Also well loved and her first (and only) choice for what to take to bed with her into her cage. Whimzy performed a tail-ectomy on Buddy 2 and, more importantly, ruined the squeaker in its tummy. No squeaker made Whimzy very sad, so we went today to pick up some things at the pet store (and look for a new stuffed toy with a working squeaker). Now you might ask why we are spending money on a third stuffed animal if she destroys them within a month. I have no answer for that except that if we weren't spending it here we would probably be wasting it somewhere else, like on our kids. And they're the ones who talked us into getting a puppy to begin with, so they will just have to deal with it. Week by week their inheritance is getting eaten up by stuffed toys with a squeaker. So be it.    

Which brings us to Buddy 3. This time we are going with a more spherical animal - which could only mean ... ? Right, a hedgehog. And because the pet store has already shifted into Christmas mode, a hedgehog with a Santa hat sewn on. I would like to show you a picture of that, but it took me five minutes to find the camera, and during that time, Santa the Hedgehog was unmasked (well, unhatted, anyway).      

Does Whimzy look guilty? No, I didn't think so, either. So now the toy is just Buddy 3, the non-Christmas Hedgehog. And no, we don't call her Buddy 3, but we explained it to Whimzy when we bought it today so that she would know that it was a different Buddy. Unlike Darrin on Bewitched and the new Dumbledore that didn't really look like the old Dumbledore, but never gets explained in the movie. Come on, it's a movie about magic; you can't figure out a decent explanation to give us?   

Old Dumbledore

New Dumbledore

So we have a pool going on how long Buddy 3 lasts, but I'm worried that Ann may not be an impartial observer now that she has money on it. If I see her taking too much interest in Buddy 3,  I may have to set up the video camera to keep an eye on her. I'll let you know the outcome.    

Official Avengers Trailer

The Avengers, coming out in May, 2012 is next summer's big blockbuster geek movie. The Avengers include Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. This summer and last summer, we saw the origin shows for the first three listed above, and got a glimpse of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Directed and written by geek superstar Joss Whedon, who wrote the original Toy Story and the Buffy, Angel, and Firefly TV series. We may want to see this at the fancy movie theater in South Barrington that has the recliners with pillows and blankets. We saw Moneyball there last week and it was pretty cool. Plus they have Chicago style popcorn (mixed cheese and caramel corn) for sale.  

Has It Really Been 24 Years?

Good Morning America invites most of the main cast of The Princess Bride to the studio to talk about the movie.

My favorite character: Vizzini played by Shawn Wallace.

Inconceivable!