Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous...

matt is back

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:26:59 -0700

This just made my day. It's almost enough to make you glad to be a human being.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Shortest Poem Ever

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:57:58 -0700

It's raining in Paris.

-- Antoine (on irc this morning, and I couldn't get it out of my head all day)

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

What I'm Doing With Our Tax Rebate

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:49:40 -0700

The New York Times on Sunday couldn't have put it better:

For some, the rebates seem like a trifling compensation handed out by the same administration whose tax cuts and expensive foreign adventures have damaged the economy.
"It's insulting and patronizing to try to satisfy a whole nation of people with a little payout, " says Joy Osmanski, 32, an acress in Los Angeles.

I mean, really, that's the best idea our MBA President could come up with? Print more money and throw it into the crowd? What is this, Mardi Gras in New Orleans?

So here's my response (accompanied by raised middle finger, not shown):

1) Half goes to our local school district, which is being nearly bankrupted by our tight-fisted Republican governor, who was elected on the promise of rolling back a vehicle sales tax, and who has since been sucking money out of the local counties and cities to shore up his no-new-taxes fantasy in Sacramento. Children, education, our future--which of those three things do you not think is important? Hello?

2) And the other half goes to electing somebody who just might be able to bring us some distance out of the embarrasing and destructive parochialism of the last eight years. That's what I think of your "stimulus", buddy!

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the world but lose his soul?

2008 Economic Stimulus Payment

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

triumph of victory, err, errata

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:59:11 -0700

The NY Times this morning has an article about Vesna Vulovic, the Serbian stewardess, who holds a Guiness Book record for surviving a 33,000 foot fall after her airliner was blown up. The article was unclear as to whether she air-surfed down herself or was part of the falling cloud of wreckage, so I ask Mr. Interwebs to clear things up.

An hour later, not only have I found that the "equal transit time" theory I was using to explain airplane lift to Frank for his report was mostly wrong, but I discover this brilliant movie, based on a true story, of what it's like to actually live the two and a half minutes it takes to come down from 20,000 feet, based a guy who got blown out of his B-17 in WWII and survived the fall. One of my personal nightmare/fantasy scenarios.

Triumph of Victory WW2

(See also the Pink Floyd song "The Gunner's Dream"). Needless to say, I'm not going to share the nightmare movie with him. Ah, here he is now.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Frank's Report On Planes

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:16:55 -0700

Just awesome. I am struck dumb by the enormity of it all. And you should hear him do the presentation.

Frank G.
Third Grade, Room 13

Planes
   Flight has been dreamed of for many centuries. Most old flights were when a person got into a flimsy glider and jumped from a high tower. The basic property of gliders is that they have no engine. Another kind of glider is tied to a powered airplane, and when they are high enough it falls away and glides to the ground.
   One kind of plane with an engine is the propeller plane. One kind of propeller engine is the rotary engine which was linked directly to the propeller so when the propeller spun, the whole engine spun. Radial engines are linked to the inside of a plane instead of the propeller. Propeller engines are also called piston engines. Most light aircraft today are propeller planes.
   But when Germany built the first jet plane, the HE 178, people could make much faster planes. A jet engine works by sucking air in the intake, squeezed by going through the compressor blades, then fuel burns to make the air expand, then it shoots out the back which powers the plane forward and turns the turbine which is linked to the compressor blades so that they could turn. Almost all planes today use jet engines.
   Just 4 years after the Wright Brothers first flight a aircraft rose into the air. It had an engine but it but it did not move forward. It was the first helicopter. A helicopter has a propeller engine which is facing up so that it could take off vertically. Most rescue aircraft today are helicopters.
   Lift is what makes aircraft go up. Lift works by air moving over a curved wing. When the air on the top of the wing moves faster it creates less pressure on the wing and with less pressure the airplane can fly.

Richard Platt, Flight, DK Experience series, Dorling Kindersley, 2006
Ian Graham, Aircraft, Smart Apple Media, 2007

Frank-planes2

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

the last dance

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 05:36:12 -0700

Sometime around 1996 or 1997 I started going to the monthly English Country Dance in Noe Valley in San Francisco. At the time it was within walking distance of my apartment in Hayes Valley. Since it was so convenient, I was a regular at the dance, and since I was a regular they asked me to be the house manager when the old one left. The responsibilities were pretty minimal and I worked to see they stayed that way.

But 1997 was about four lifetimes ago. I moved to Berkeley, got married, reproduced. The nice thing about being the house manager was that I had an obligation to be there every month, so I could always say "Gee, I'd love to go to your neighbor's brother's nephew's three-and-a-half birthday party, and thanks for inviting me, but you see I have to go to this dance thing..." So every month I've been down there.

When Frank was a tiny baby, we would stash him asleep in the daycare nursery down the hall. When he was slightly larger we could occupy him in the nursery, which was full of toys and balls and blocks and stuff, a kid's paradise, really, almost as good as being locked in a toy store. One of us would hang there with him while the other danced. Then Mom and him would drive home at about 8:30 while I stayed the rest of the evening and got home on the train.

Then, when he was about six I think, I decided he needed to get out there on the floor. It matched up perfectly with three of his weak spots that really needed work: interacting with strangers, listening to instructions, and moving around physically getting exercise.

Knowing what a powerful incentive lies behind materialistic gain, I bribed him. Starting out small. "If you can do one dance, I'll buy you a toy" and printed out a real certificate. Kicking and screaming, but he survived ten minutes on the dance floor. Later it was two dances, then three. Now we're up to four dances, done well (that means smiling and making eye contact), over two or three months are worth one toy. And he's doing it.

putting out the flyers

And he's enjoying it. And I think he's gotten some self-confidence out of it. And I don't think I've fatally alienated all the other folks at the dance.

Plus I've started him on his first job. He gets paid five bucks to help me lay out the fliers at the beginning of the dance and to fill out the money form for the BACDS the next morning, with the take from the fez.

I'm pretty proud of the whole thing, myself.

But all good things must come to an end. The church is renovating, and closing the hall for a couple years, so it's time to say goodbye to that hall

It's a grade-school kiddie gym. Like twenty feet by forty feet. Definitely old and funky, some character, some just tawdriness, and a frighteningly patchwork electrical system. But it's got a stage for the band, and the acoustics are just fantastic. No mikes necessary, and when you're dancing it sometimes feels like your head is inside the fiddle.

Bethany United Methodist hall

from the stage

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

And the rent was good and the neighborhood was good and parking always worked for me. And there was a kitchen and extra space and wacky old architecture that would never pass code nowadays and the world is poorer and less interesting for it.

Oh, well. We'll see what comes next.

a dark and spooky corridor

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Death on BART

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:12:22 -0700

Feeling something like an ice-cream-headache-type pain in my left temple
this morning on the train listening to Beethoven's Seventh while reading
David Foster Wallace's surreal account David Lynch and his movies and the
production of Lost Highway, a recording of the Seventh from 1959 or 1960 by Joseph Krips
and the London Symphony Orchestra that my dad probably bought before I was
born and that I recently ripped from the original vinyl I've been carrying
around for twenty years and have always considered, since it was the first
one I heard, as the definitive interpretation of Beethoven, made me think
of the story I found on Jill Sobule's blog of Jill Bolte Taylor (no relation) telling at the TED
conference what it felt like to have a stroke herself, listening at that moment
to the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh, I say "slow" even though it's listed as
"Allegretto" that I first heard while mistakenly seeing the unforgettably cheesy and strange
film Zardoz as part of a double feature, when I decided that I would
be perfectly happy to die while listening to the slow movement of Beethoven's
Seventh, much as I dislike the though of my last moments being spent on BART--
that would suit me just fine.

25 No. 7. 2nd mvmt Allegretto

Josef Krips and the London Symphony Orchestra

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Danceground Keriac

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:59:16 -0700

Back around 1996, when I first got interested in English Country Dancing, the monthly San Francisco dance was going on at a little church in Noe Valley, Bethany United Methodist at Sanchez and Clipper. It was in a gradeschool kiddie gym, unpretentious, but quite effective, as the smallness made the acoustics intensely immediate, like the violin is playing inside your head. After a couple years the house manager, the guy in charge of the keys and the money every month, had to move on to other things and they drafted me into that role, where I've been ever since. After I moved to the East Bay and got married and reproduced I stayed with it, because the commitment was an excuse to get out, to go to The City, and to dance, and I could safely excuse myself from having to attend insipid stand-around-and-drink parties and whatever else might come up on an evening.

But now Bethany church is starting in on a remodel which will last a couple years and the BACDS is looking for another place to hold that particular dance. Mary Watson came up with the suggestion of Danceground Keriac, a dance studio on Divisidero and Bush, so we're looking into that.

The address is on the uphill side of Geary, the nice side, and the neighborhood is full of up-scale restored gingerbread Victorians and the street itself is quite vibrant. There are a ton of restaurants--it was all I could do to keep from having a second lunch while I was there. There are a couple of bars, and apparently the area is still active after dark, which is good to know. Right down the street from UCSF Mt. Zion hospital.

Divisidero and Bush panorama

street in front

I'm not sure at all about parking in that neighborhood. The closest public parking I can find mention of over the internet is the Japantown garage, which is a mile away. I guess it's street parking, and I honestly can't say how that's going to go. Personally, I hate parking.

For public transit to the East Bay or anywhere else by BART, I think I'd take either the 3 Jackson or the 38 Geary.

Highway access is actually as good as our current location in Noe Valley, once you know the trick. It's less intuitive, possibly:

Dgkeriac-map

The building itself is old and funky, lots of character. Was a dance hall around the time of the Great War. Some comments here on Yelp. Apparently it was run by Ms. Keriac as a community dance studio/performance space since the Seventies (?), and has continued since she passed away a couple years ago.

The hall is about 25x50 feet. It looks slightly smaller than what we're in now, and it doesn't have a stage, so it would be even smaller with the band set up on the floor. But the floor itself is in good condition. The mirrors on the walls would be an interesting effect, they might make the dancers self-conscious and uncomfortable, or they might improve the dancing, who knows? There are skylights in the ceiling, which might add a nice touch in the summer when the sky is still light until 9:00.

Danceground Keriac: view from the door

skylights in the ceiling

from the top of the hall looking at the entrance

looking down the stairs at the front door

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Libby Larsen

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:17:34 -0800

An unexpected pleasure going through a pile of CD's, a recording of the one time I got to hear my wife sing; a movement of Libby Larsen's Seven Ghosts, the letter from Jenny Lind to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Even she didn't know she had a copy of it.

12 Seven Ghosts_ II. Jenny Lind to Harriet Beecher Stowe

Anne Goess/Cantabile Chorale

She's the soprano at the beginning, not the alto who comes in later.

The tracks on the CD were badly labeled, I had to do some research to figure out what exactly they were, but was gratified in so doing to learn that especially worthy of mention were soprano Anne Goess...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

one last little word about Christmas

nobody@vox.com(Kevin G.) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:57:13 -0800

You may feel excluded by Christian symbolism, but you're in America. Work with it.

Garrison Keillor's essay at Salon.com. And I didn't even know he had a column there.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend