Friday, April 28, 2017

It's Breakfast, Bitches!

Billboard's Britney Spears Evolution

Hugo liked this, and so I just do whatever he does.

Big on Reddit Today!

I'm excited. My presentation at SWPACA in Albuquerque in February, "Streamline Moderne and Jimmy McGill," is suddenly beginning to blow up on reddit. You're nowhere if you don't have at least crank status on reddit. Other people have noticed glass blocks in Vince Gilligan's work too, and are searching for answers.

Multiple-Car Accident

Feeling down because of a cold, so thought to take a walk, and saw others feeling down because of a multiple-car accident.

And it turned out, Morgan coincidentally knows one of the people involved in the accident.

Bev Liked "Peter Pan"

Great review for Peter Pan!!!
New to this production are body mics, which worked flawlessly and unobtrusively. They gave just that extra oomph to young voices that sometimes can’t fill an entire theater, yet without any reverb or unnatural sound to them.

I suspect, however, that Tyler Traum (Peter Pan) didn’t really need a body mic. What a find she is. A product of Sacramento Theatre Company’s Young Professionals program, she definitely gives a professional performance as the young boy who doesn’t want to grow up.

She can convincingly be an obstreperous boy, a wistful orphan, a loving father to a group of lost boys and savior of Wendy (Claire Quillen) and Tiger Lily (McKinley Carlisle). And she flies, too.

The flying crew of Alex Hom, Mike Traum, Matthew Evans and Chris Colbourn do an excellent job of keeping their young charges in the air, using rigging designed by Isaacson.

Another outstanding job is done by Brian McCann, surely the perfect Captain Hook. From the scary pirate who is set on destroying Peter Pan to the terrified man stalked by a crocodile (Tomas Eredia in a marvelous new crocodile costume), McCann excels. He also plays the blustery Mr. Darling in the opening scenes, before his children fly off to Neverland.

Missing Miss Fatty

Dog Whisperer Mode

This week, I'm trying to use my Dog Whisperer skills on the new dog in the yard next door. The dog doesn't know who the eff I am, and is frightened.

So Much Winning!

So Trump is folding on his wall. So much winning!

Until next week, when he'll bring it back as a zombie wall. But by then it won't matter.

Consistency isn't Trump's strength. But I do like the winning:
According to The Washington Post and NBC news, late this afternoon Trump signaled that he is giving in and will either accept non-wall money and pretend it’s like a wall or just give the whole thing up entirely and try again in the fall, which likely means never.

Wavenumber 5

I like Wavenumber 5 as a better explanation of the the California drought-rain sequence than the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The PDO has been all over the place the last few years, and just seems too inconsistent. Distinguishing causes from effects with Wavenumber 5 is hard, and that's where the erudition starts:
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found in a recent study that the persistent high-pressure ridge off the west coast of North America that blocked storms from coming onshore during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 was associated with the wave pattern, which they call wavenumber-5. Follow-up work showed that wavenumber-5 emerged again this winter but with its high- and low-pressure features in a different position, allowing drenching storms from the Pacific to make landfall.

"This wave pattern is a global dynamic system that sometimes makes droughts or floods in California more likely to occur," said NCAR scientist Haiyan Teng, lead author of the California paper. "As we learn more, this may eventually open a new window to long-term predictability."

Monday, April 24, 2017

"Peter Pan" Opening This Weekend Was Fun!

Let's visit Neverland again next weekend!

The Security Conundrum

Gotta Get Outta Here...

And go far, far away:
A 12-year-old boy who was apparently trying to drive across Australia has been stopped by police 1,300km (800 miles) into his journey.

The boy was pulled over in Broken Hill in the New South Wales outback on Saturday after a patrol noticed the car's bumper dragging on the ground.

Police said the boy had been attempting to drive 4,000km from Kendall in NSW to Perth, Western Australia.

The Protest That Never Works

Sacramento MS Zumba Team Group Photo

Some Excellent Science-March Photos From Around the Country

(h/t John)

My Brain on Facebook

Just woke from a dream about a film regarding the limits of economic development in the Depression-era American Southwest, starring Don Knotts. My brain cobbled the dream together from diverse Facebook posts about sin, Stuckeys, trains, radio, the nouveau riche, and the Donner Party. I think my brain needs more sleep.

A Night After Drinking

Keep Mexicans - Deport Republicans

Living in the Future

Signs at the Sacramento Earth Day Science Walk - Part 5 - The Rally



Signs at the Sacramento Earth Day Science Walk - Part 4 - The Rally