May 14, 2008
Category: D'oh(pe)!
The BALCO trials are officially underway, and its targets are finding out that it's not about the drugs anymore -- it's the dishonesty, stupid.
If Barry Bonds believed that his fame and fortune would allow him to slide on federal charges, he may be starting to rethink that philosophy. The government has far more resources that the all-time dinger king could ever dream of, and if it's one thing the feds don't let pass with wink-winks or slaps on the wrist, it's lying to them.
The wording of the AP story is amusing:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 8:16 AM • 2 Comments •
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May 13, 2008
Category: Troglodytes at Play
Quick: What goes through your mind when you look at the following image?
If it occurred to you that this cartoon, which Marietta, Georgia bar owner Mike Norman is proudly and defiantly hawking at his establishment in the form of T-shirts, might be considered racially sensitive in some circles, you're not alone. But as of 5:35 EDT on May 13, you'd be in the minority of respondents to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Poll.
Based on some other verbal gems he's produced, Norman would have a hard time arguing that he legitimately supports the Democratic front-runner for the presidency. To wit:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 5:40 PM • 48 Comments •
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Category: Pattern Juggling • What The Heck Is That Thing?
And now for something completely different, the tongue drum:
The tongue drum is also known as the slit drum or xylo-slit drum. It is the modern descendant of the ancient log drum. This is a large 14 key unit tuned to a pentatonic scale in G. It can be played with mallets or your fingers (with somewhat of a quick, snapping-back style). The sound is very mellow and pleasing. Organic might be a good term. This particular item came from here.
Besides the tone, what I find interesting about the drum is that unlike most musical instruments, it doesn't have a "normal" orientation. That is, the instrument can be approached and played from any of its four sides. You just don't do that with other instruments. Nobody walks up to a piano, lays across the closed lid, and proceeds to play with bass keys to the right and treble to the left. There's really only one way to hold a saxophone in all practicality. While some people have been known to arrange drum kits in non-standard ways, I don't know of anything as simple and direct as a tongue drum which exhibits this sort of free-wheeling, play-me-from-any-side nature.
Why would anyone care? Well, the way you interact with an instrument, the way it talks to you and you get it to talk, depends in part on the way you approach it, both figuratively and literally. While my first inclination was play it in the horizontal mode pictured above, it quickly occurred to me that a 180 degree rotation changed the locations of the notes and thus an identical hand pattern produced a different, though related, melody. It was a short step from there to a vertical orientation, more like a glockenspiel than a xylophone. It's almost like getting four instruments in one.
And ultimately, this reminds of another useful thing about electronic drums, and that's the ability to assign sounds and pitches anywhere on the kit. I think it's time to create a few new kits where the tom pitches are lowest toward the front and higher off to the sides.
Posted by Jim Fiore at 8:34 AM • 2 Comments •
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Category: What The Heck Is That Thing?
Humans have an ability to recognize patterns, even if they're not really there, like the face of Jesus in a pizza or Elvis on the side of a Holstein. Apparently, a local lumberjack recognized something in a certain tree trunk and decided to flip it upside down and paint it blue in order to help passersby see the illusion. This little bit of "found art" is located less than two miles from my house and I had a good laugh when I first saw it:
Jesus on a pizza it ain't, but it sure is entertaining nonetheless.
Posted by Jim Fiore at 8:22 AM • 4 Comments •
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Category: My Bent Brain
Have you been paying attention to science news? See if you can answer the little quiz below (my mind was wondering while proctoring my Science of Sound final exam yesterday).
Which of the following is not both a planet and an element in the Periodic Table:
A. Mercury
B. Uranus/Uranium
C. Neptune/Neptunium
D. Pluto/Plutonium
No fair looking up a Periodic Table either.
Posted by Jim Fiore at 8:02 AM • 1 Comments •
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May 12, 2008
Category: Society Gone Bananas
It's no secret that the amount of bullshit gushing through and out Florida is, by both absolute and per-capita measures, unquestionably higher than in any other state. Even when Texas gets on one of its famous thundering rolls backward, it's not even close
But what has recently transpired between the Pasco County School District and a substitute teacher in the pissburg of Land O' Lakes, located a half-hour west outside of Tampa, makes recent creationist hijinks in the legislature and other gawkables seem like the output of preternaturally composed intellectuals.
Check it out:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 10:44 PM • 6 Comments •
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Category: Health and Society
Three months ago, I mentioned that the mayor of perennially zaftig Oklahoma City, having lost 38 pounds in 10 months himself, had launched an initiative aimed at getting locals to shed excess weight. By late April, over 17,700 official participants in Cornett's program had lost a collective 68,700 pounds over 16 weeks, about four pounds per person and roughly a pound a month. The ultimate goal: one million collective pounds shed.
Clearly, the numbers are less important than the overall promotion of lifestyle changes that include healthful weight loss as onely one benefit. The site Cornett launched is hardly a "let's-start-starving-you-lardballs!" production; it includes all sorts of information about exercise, nutrition, behavioral modification and so on.
As the wire story explains, fast-food megachain Taco Bell, having launched a new low-fat "Fresco Menu" in December, contacted Cornett after learning of his brainchild and his concomitant fears that fast-food restaurants would balk at it. Company reps told Cornett that once the number of dropped pounds of program participants reaches 100,000, everyone in OKC will be entitled to a free low-fat taco from the recently launched menu. And, save for the fact that Taco Bell's food (in my opinion) tastes like shit warmed over, they all lived happily ever after.
Well, not exactly.
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 2:57 PM • 4 Comments •
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May 11, 2008
Category: Fun with Politics
Carl Hiaasen writes in his Miami Herald column today about Sen. Barack Obaba's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a yammering jackass who happens to be African-American but whose chief characteristic is his religious lunacy, a destructive influence which -- like alcoholism, AIDS, poverty, and other afflictions nearly as devastating and corrupt as a faith-based world view -- is color-blind.
Hiassen notes a very important distinction between Obama's relationship with Wright and McCain's (not to mention various other Republican notables') pandering to conservative Christabouts:
"McCain's bonding with Rev. Falwell remains harder to comprehend than Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright, which began before Obama's political career. Rev. Wright was Obama's hometown pastor in Chicago; not a national TV personality whose endorsement might help get him elected someday."
Spot on. McCain has a long history of symbolically fellating anyone whose influence might earn him votes, which is doubly troubling in that it not only speaks to McCain's mentality and character but also highlights how fucked up this country has to be to render squint-eyed, knee-walking shitbags like James Dobson and the not-late-enough Jerry Falwell -- who would be nothing more than cartoon villains in most any other advanced society -- people worth sucking up to. McCain claims to have balls whenever he invokes his POW days and the Iraq war, but if he had any real sack, and more importantly a concern for America's well-being, he's distance himself from these bloated old delusion-mongering pricks and rely on his strength as a leader to earn him a seat in the White House.
Posted by Kevin Beck at 4:15 PM • 2 Comments •
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Category: The New Woo Revue
If there's one part of the country that may be as obsessed with its collective personal appearance as Los Angeles, it's Florida -- specifically its larger cities and metropolitan areas, especially those in the state's southern coastal areas: Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Tampa-St, Petersburg, Naples, Fort Myers, and others.
In L.A., people at least have the excuse of needing to look New and Improved owing to anticipated, incipient, or extant acting careers. In Florida people just want to look good for the hell of it, and more specifically don't want to look old even though the median age is (reaching into my ass here) about 87.3.
I live in the Sarasota-Bradenton mini-coglomerate, which numbers about 650,000 people, among them Stephen King, Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman), Jerry Springer, and Martina Navratilova. It's not the sprawling hell that Broward County, where I held my first Florida address, has become, and it retains a more of an "old Florida" feel than strip-mall- and golf-course-covered South Florida does. But make no mistake -- it has its fair share of eight-lane thoroughfares, magnificently inconsiderate drivers, and ugly condominiums, with the influx of humanity trickling off recently as a result not of carefully managed growth but of a cratering housing market.
Getting back to the main idea here, plastic surgery and its derivatives are more than alive and well -- they're thundering around town, priapic and beaming ever prepared to give your wallet a nice reaming while returning nothing of value. And some of those derivatives are comically, gloriously dishonest.
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 1:54 PM • 3 Comments •
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May 10, 2008
Category: The Running Ape
Alison Wade is not only a tireless and largely unheralded member of the national distance-running media, but a genuine Idea Person too. If you don't know the background on Ryan Shay or Jenny Crain, follow the appropriate links below.
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| |  We are pleased to announce the publication of The Runner's Cookbook: Winning Recipes from Some of the World's Best Athletes, a fundraising cookbook for Jenny Crain and Ryan Shay. The Runner's Cookbook features 100 recipes from 90+ contributors, including Joan Benoit Samuelson, Sebastian Coe, Shalane Flanagan, Adam and Kara Goucher, Ryan and Sara Hall, Deena Kastor, Craig Mottram, Dathan Ritzenhein, Khadevis Robinson, Alan Webb, and many others. All of the proceeds from the sales of this book will be donated to the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund and the Jenny Crain "Make It Happen" Fund. Any corrections, updates, or information about this project will be added to this web site as they come up. If you have any trouble ordering this book, or with the quality of the product you receive, please let us know. We can't necessarily fix the problem, but we'd like to be aware of it, so we can do our best. Buy the Cookbook | About Ryan Shay and Jenny Crain | Corrections | About the Editor | Contact Us | |
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 11:32 PM • 4 Comments •
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Category: Hootworthy
That may be overstating things, as the video reveals. But given the muddled political picture at the moment (a tableau undoubtedly made all the more obscure by my own apathy), the senator's showing up at the Oregon Twilight Track and Field Classic last night seems as good a reason as any to support him, especially now that he basically can't lose the Democratic nomination and is capable of beating John McCain in the general election.
I was disappointed that the athletic-looking Obama made no attempt to actually hurdle the hurdle. More interesting would be a video of McCain attempting to clear 15 feet in the pole vault, preferably with no mat.
Posted by Kevin Beck at 6:57 PM • 0 Comments •
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May 9, 2008
Category: Society Gone Bananas
Creationists, as blind to the tangible and visible realities of today as they are to the scientific evidence describing how this world and its inhabitants turned out they way they have, are fond of complaining that no unguided process could have created so many forms of life perfectly suited for their niches, creatures efficient and elegant in every way.
If you need to be convinced that evolution is anything but flawless, look no further than Quiver Full Ministry. The goal of this ministry is to make sure people copulate themselves senseless (a fairly quick and straightforward process for adherents) while strictly shunning any and all forms of birth control.
Then there's the usual trash about humanism being bad (a curious yet common Christian assertion that seems only slightly removed from complaining about mercy or compassion), the furious misinterpretation of the First Amendment by secular assholes who just won't accept America's Bibical, Judeo-Christian roots, all sorts of slimy propaganda about the evils of contraception, and various other other solecisms, myth-making, and no-holds-barred cracked-cross bullshit.
Intelligence may not be everything in terms of survival value, but it's the one factor that most sharply distinguishes us from various literal herds. So, given that the stupidest and most hapless members Homo sapiens are -- especially in advanced societies -- almost preternaturally eager to procreate until pieces and parts finally and mercifully wear out, it is safe to say that evolution is anything but a process involving a foregone conclusion or guaranteed improvements on models past.
If this sort of thing continues, it won't be long before people look and sound like larger verson of the Tweedlebugs of Sesame Street fame, chittering madly about nothing between coupling sessions and displaying perfectly bulbous eyes on gently waving stalks, too oblivious to reality to be anything but blissful, pregnant, and covered in shit-smeared diapers and Gerber food.
Posted by Kevin Beck at 10:32 PM • 2 Comments •
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May 7, 2008
Category: The Running Ape
The good news, right up front: Günther Weidlinger is alive, well and at the top of his game. The Austrian was second to Australia's Craig Mottram in the 10,000 meters on Sunday night at the Cardinal Invitational at Stanford, a meet which annually hosts some the most competitive springtime distance races in the world. Weidlinger, who knocked 42 seconds off his previous 10,000-meter best, is Austria's record holder in 1,500m (3:34.69), 5,000m (13:13:44), the 3,000m steeplechase (8:10.83) and the 10,000 (27:36.46).
What may be most remarkable is that Weidlinger ever got up after a horrible fall on the second lap of an early heat of the World Championships steeplechase last summer in Osaka. The steeple -- a 7 1/2-lap event that involves five 36-inch-high barriers, one of them including a water jump, on each lap -- a is a grueling event, even harder than it looks (and it looks plenty tough). I've seen people do faceplants into the water pit and I've seen them hook their feet on the barrier and come crashing to the track. But I've never seen anything like what happened to Weidlinger a little over 45 seconds into this video.
Fortunately, track and field remains, for the most part, a non-contact sport with a minimal risk of serious injury. So I wouldn't recommend screening this one at too many summer youth running camps.
Posted by Kevin Beck at 10:10 PM • 5 Comments •
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Category: Spankin' the Crank
I admit that I disappoint myself by vacillating between topics that deal with interesting new developments in science and functionally illiterate bigoted hicks whose minds are under siege from a two-pronged demolition team, with an innate lack of cognitive wattage protruding from one side and lifelong religious indoctrination jutting out from the other. But when someone is as consistently malevolent, hypocritical, and laughable all at the same time as Nathan Bradfield is, it's fair to consistently maraud him. After all, as he'll tell you himself, he is the quintessential Christian, and folks who may not be convinced how akimbo the minds of these slap-happy ding-dongs have every reason to be as informed as possible.
Nathan is making a stupendously senseless complaint, one adored by wingnuts across the land: that calling people on their intolerance and unfair judgment invoked a double standard, because dammit, the person doing the calling is himself being intolerant and judgmental!
Most people can spot the flaws in this "logic." If I go on record as saying that blacks make poor cellists and am criticized by my employer, friends, or the media, few would be sympathetic to any pleas I might make about being targeted by hate speech or not being given the right to speak my mind. Yet this is exactly what the Bradfield errorbot does, over and over, and now he's waxing apoplectic about the travails of a University of Toledo pencil-pusher who wrote a wreck of a column for the Toledo Free Press that included this idiotic passage:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 9:07 PM • 16 Comments •
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Category: Bio-bizarre
The New York Times ran a piece yesterday about the biochemical anomalies of dogs who compete in the Iditarod, an 1,161-mile, eight- to fifteen-day sledding race across Alaska which is something of a companion event to the Tour de France in that it for a week or two it commands the interest of Americans in a sport they are generally content to ignore.
Long-distance runners have two chief concerns. One is aerobic fitness. Competitors in events ranging from the 800 meters (which is considered roughly half-aerobic and half-anaerobic based on the relative contribution of different fueling pathways and fuel sources) all the way up to the multi-day events favored by the lovable nutjobs in the ultramarathon community have to be trained not only to transport more oxygen to the working muscles, which is accomplished chiefly by adaptations in cardiac muscle and increases in the number of red blood cells, but also to more efficiently utilize the oxygen that arrives at those muscles, which occurs through increases in mitochondrial density in muscle cells and other changes.
Second, true endurance athletes face an additional concern that 5K and 10K racers do not. Roughly speaking, even well-trained athletes -- whose bodies are better at storing glycogen, the polymer form of glucose and the primary fuel in aerobic exercise any more intense than walking, than those of sedentary people -- can only stock up on about 500 grams of glycogen (about 100 in liver and the rest in muscle). This is enough for about 20 miles of perambulation, give or take and varying as a function of individual athletes' efficiency. So while you don't have to be especially diligent about "carbo-loading" before a race lasting under an hour and a half or so, you cannot expect to perform at your best in a marathon without taking in some kind of carbohydrate, usually in drink or gel form for ease of digestibility, along the way.
As you might expect, humans' metabolic rates soar while they are taking part in exercise, and especially intense bouts lead to an elevated basal metabolic rate (BMR) for hours after the body comes to rest. I can recall numerous nights in which I lay in bed having raced a marathon twelve or more hours earlier, sweating and listening to my heart hammer along at 120 beats a minute, about three times as fast is it normally is when I'm lying around.
But the metabolisms of sled dogs who participate in the Iditarod pose a genuine and intriguing mystery. Notes Michael S. Davis, an associate professor of veterinary physiology at Oklahoma State University and an animal exercise researcher:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 12:55 PM • 9 Comments •
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May 6, 2008
Category: Spankin' the Crank
Truth be told, I can't come up with a single reason -- good or bad -- why misinterpreting the Constitution in such a way as to portray freedom from religion-driven harassment on the basis of sexual preference as "liberalism run amok" is at all meaningful or necessary. I cannot fathom why some people believe that it is not only acceptable but obligatory to fire employees for the manner in which they seek consensual sexual gratification on their own time.
Then again, either can the addled and animated pile of excrement dubbed Nathan Bradfield, who exemplifies perfectly why places such as Alabama more closely resemble Third World outposts housed within the continental U.S. than legitimate American states. Never one to be stopped by his own freewheeling hypocrisy or his dogged inability to offer consequentialist arguments, Nathan is now bleating about a situation in Ontario in which a sinner and her supporters in the Canadian government, which fined Christian Horizons $23,000 for firing a lesbian over lesbianism, are pulling a fast one:
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Posted by Kevin Beck at 2:47 AM • 1 Comments •
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