An Incredulous Stare

New Orleans

2011-06-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Finally, summer vacation. We went to New Orleans for a wedding (see Miss Bee's facebook for some shots) and stuck around for five days to check out the city, and we loved it. Here are some of the photos we took, and the whole album is up on Picasa.

Waiting for the streetcar - notice Chrysanthemum's new carrier. Not pink!

Miss Bee waiting for the Tater Tachos at 13 Monaghan. Actually that wasn't this particular visit - yes we went to the same restaurant twice. When in Rome...we don't eat seafood.

The trees! I think this was in Louis Armstrong Park near Congo Square, the birthplace of jazz. We could hear the drum circles from all across the park.

Another restaurant we ate at twice was in this alley. The Green Goddess was fantastic, with options for vegetarians and carnivores, not to mention the impressive drink menu.

The mules pulling the wagon tours drove Chrysanthemum UP THE WALL. She could hear the bells they wore from blocks away (even over the sounds of 8 different bars playing music all at once).

This is such a classic shot of the French Quarter.

Yes, we went to Cafe du Monde and got beignets. No, we didn't try any seafood. Yes, we took a walking tour and a bayou tour. No, we didn't take a plantation tour. Yes, we rode the St. Charles streetcar to its terminus in Carrollton. No, we did not take the Canal St. line to its terminus in City Park (if we had one more day...). Yes, we walked Audubon Park and Magazine Street in the Garden District. No, we did not walk a cemetery officially, although we saw Saint Louis #1 (Easy Rider).

Yes, we went to Rue Bourbon. No, we didn't like it, not even a little.

The Great Outdoors

2011-05-05T18:15:00.000-07:00

The great thing about spring is getting outdoors after the winter. Well, not so much in Phoenix, where the winter is the spring and spring is summer and summer is hell. But anyways, here are some outdoors things.

*Going to the lake - no photos, but we saw two bald eagles there. In lieu of the diving adults we saw, check out the webcams at Raptor Resource showing a nest of the little buggers. This is a popular activity at school right now.

*Scuba - we are officially certified scuba divers to depths of sixty feet. While exciting, we're getting ready for our "advanced" dives in order to increase our depth to 100 feet.....and beyond!

We went to Lake Pleasant to do our open water dives, driving out along the beautiful Carefree Highway which was fully in bloom and really pretty amazing. This photo by azphotons on panoramio gives you the idea.

azphotons on panoramio

There are some more good photos on google maps.

Here's where we were, by Scorpion Bay. You can see on the map that it's a good drive from Phoenix. It was also a brisk 42 degrees while we were driving out there on Saturday...
Google map scrollable:
View Larger Map

Unfortunately, our teacher friends who have been teaching us were stuck in Mexico and couldn't bring their underwater camera. We saw a striped bass and some other small fish at the bottom, and I apparently was right next to a crayfish but I didn't see it - too busy concentrating on the task at hand. There were also campfires at bottom, since the little bay we were diving in is dry land during summer.

*Hiking - we have been making a conscious effort to be more active, both outdoors and in. This article in the Times Magazine was helpful.

Here we are at South Mountain with Chrys.

We took our teacher friend's daughter out to the Greenbelt to feed the ducks, play on the swings, walk the dog, etc. She took some great photos such as this one:

And a self-shot:

And the geese that harass Chrysanthemum:

And the doggie drinking fountain.

*California - okay, not strictly awesome because of spring, but it's what we did for break. Check out my Picasa Web Albums to see all the pictures. We stayed with Joe and Megan in SF and failed to take photos besides the one, but there are some other good ones in there.

Here's the California coast:

We also saw lots of undocumented wildlife. There were dolphins in the San Diego bay, and seals off the coast near Ragged Point, and bison in the Golden Gate Park, and more seals north by Stinson Beach.

Now we're spring cleaning the house in anticipation of moving. Hello, Craigslist!

A Sentence About the "Government Shutdown"

2011-04-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

"When the threat to opt out is empty for both agents, the outcome corresponds exactly with the (generalized) Nash bargaining solution." - from the abstract of Randolph Sloof's Finite Horizon Bargaining... paper from 2002 (direct PDF link).

We've got some Hollow Threats in the news, this time from the US gov't. Ho hum, right, except Miss Bee and I wouldn't get paid. "Government shutdown" sounds so...I don't know...Windows '95.

The preceding sentences look like this:

Typically the delay threat determines proposals in early periods, while the threat to opt out characterizes those in later ones. Owing to this nonstationarity both threats may appear in the equilibrium shares agreed upon.

Oh, they're going to make on a deal on the budget. Ok. The delay threat has diminished. Reps and Dems can't opt out. I would have put a comma between "nonstationarity" and "both", but otherwise the model holds.

*fingers in ears*

Moving to Mexico, la la la la...

Tip of the hat to T.C.

Geez. Or, Moderation is Dead

2011-03-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

File under: "I can't even imagine this statistic being true."

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American bride and groom hope to drop 162.9 pounds, jointly[...]

I sort of hope it's not, but then again, this is America. The Slate article talks about a TV show dedicated to such efforts.

Filed concurrently with the oral tradition of gossip and hearsay that tells me that the average American wedding is costing the couple and their families over $30,000.

At what price sanity?

From our wedding, a photo of Thomas filming the proceeds from outside the chapel, a bit before things got under way. We came in well under budget.

Worst Paragraph I've Read in a While

2011-03-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

Photo by JD Photography (Flickr)

From The Economist. Not the writer's fault:

The protesters’ main demand was for more jobs—and welfare for those without them. Sultan Qaboos [of Oman] has hastily declared that this will be done, raising the minimum wage by 40%, to 200 riyals ($520) a month.

Sultan Qaboos has obviously never enrolled his spectacular name into an introductory economics class. If he had, the working class of Oman would not suffer the unintended-but-easily foreseen consequence of raising the minimum wage. As a business owner, if I am paying more money for my workers while the same amount is coming in, then I'm certainly not in the position of paying more workers. Thus, an increase in the minimum wage, especially such a dramatic one as enacted by the Sultanate, will have the opposite effect of that desired by the populace.

The Reading Post

2011-01-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

I got a great book recommendation this morning from our librarian. (The Disappearing Spoon by the way, nonfiction about the periodic table of elements.) She thought it fit my "dorky" personality, which was a nice back-handed compliment. That recommendation was a good impetus for me to finally write up some thoughts on reading, though.

The iPad, which I am an owner of, has been a very interesting addition to my reading roster. Before I was given this beloved gift, an article from Alexander Chee was posted to The Morning News. The following paragraph sucked me into the premise:

It began with approximately two paragraphs of the book, lit up on the screen of my phone. I tapped the side of the screen and it flew to the next three paragraphs, and so on. A few minutes passed and I observed that I was reading peacefully. It was both an entirely new reading experience, like I had a secret that fit inside the palm of my hand, but it was also familiar: In the fifth grade I was taught to speed-read on a machine that projected sentences onto a wall at high speeds, sentences in the white box of a screen, flashing in a dark room.

Moments later, I got off the train. That went well, I decided, and slid my phone back into my pocket. And then I drew it back out, turned the app on, and kept reading as I walked, something I taught myself to do as a child when I lacked the patience to put a book down in order to walk to school.

Written about the iPhone's tiny screen, this resonated, to say the least. I remember reading during dinner when I was a kid - I'd get like half a page done. It's not always about the efficiency, but the process.

Near the end of the article, this:

There have been unexpected domestic discoveries: The iPad is perfect for reading at night next to someone who’s asleep, both the book and the flashlight I hid under my covers as a kid. When I need to get water or go to the bathroom, I can use it to see where I’m going in the dark and not wake Dustin by turning on a light. I’m still prone to creating the need for a new bookshelf, with a recent purchase of eight physical books in a single store visit, but I’ve also put 12 books into what Dustin and I now call “the devices.” We both see this as a victory.

Miss Bee and I feel the same way. Her nook and my iPad are conspiring to knock paperbacks right off our to-do lists. We are still working our way through a small backlog of previous purchases, like Zeitoun by Dave Eggers and The Lacuna from Barbara Kingsolver. But I don't see us purchasing additional copies of physical books except in special circumstances.

*Before moving onto the Luddite's nightmare, let me recommend this short riposte from the editors of Ask the Paris Review, entitled Writers and Their Libraries. A host of good suggestions about the wood-pulp side of book stewardship.*

Which leads me to Gary Becker's recent blog post that begins: "The traditional bookstore is doomed by e-readers and online sales of hard copy books." Some interesting notes that follow.

The process of development has been presumed to cause a substitution of market activities for home production. For example, households in poor rural societies have not only grown their own food, but also made much of their clothing, washed their clothes, baked their bread, and cooked from scratch their other food. As countries underwent economic growth, many of these productive activities left the home and migrated to the marketplace. Factory-made clothing was substituted for clothing made at home, and bakeries and laundries developed to make bread and sweets, and to wash, clean, and dry clothes.
Further technological developments, however, such as small motors used in home washing and drying machines, and small machines that cooked bread easily at home, shifted many activities back into the home, and thereby saved on time and energy spent in the shopping process. The online digital revolution is a further major step in this trend of returning activities to the home. Time and effort are saved, for example, when instead of going to movie theatres, consumers both order and download films online to be viewed at “home”, either on television sets, or increasingly on computers.

Read the whole thing here. Insightful, and once again, my experiences resonate with the sociological theory of the author. In point of fact, Miss Bee and I have had free movie tickets, with popcorn vouchers, for months now and still haven't managed to leave the house to consume a new film in the theaters.

Except for the whole bread-making machine thing...that never really caught on.

But hearkening back to the Chee article, I didn't expect my reading experience to be radically altered by the medium. To wit, until I killed my iPhone, I had the nook and Kindle apps on my phone, iPad, and Mac. I could read with any of the devices. But this article on the Read It Later blog shows some evidence that the medium does matter. The phone is used for "whitespace", those short spans of downtime during the day. The computer is used throughout the day, mirroring the amount of input we receive. But the iPad user graph is heavily concentrated during the evening hours, what the author calls "personal prime time". The gist? More of my online reading is going to the iPad than expected, in addition to the "print" media I consume with it (newspaper, sports highlights, weather, books).

Read It Later is part of a crop of great new webapps that save content you find online to read another time. It's like a file folder, or even just a stack of articles you rip out, that you can peruse later when you have the time and inclination. I use Instapaper myself, and would recommend it to anyone. Here's their 2010 aggregation called Give Me Something To Read. Click through the link and give the service a try.

Another list I glommed onto this year was part of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools website, which he calls "The Best Magazine Articles Ever". With such an audacious title, Mr. Kelly made a good move in crowd-sourcing recommendations, and thus sharing the blame of any critical resistance to the selections. That said, there is a lot to love in those pages, from Gay Talese's coverage of Frank Sinatra's sinuses to David Foster Wallace's ode to the savage grace of major tennis stars. Have a look, and happy reading. (If you need a New Yorker login name and password to access an article, email and I'll share mine with you.) As I read through this list again, it's sort of amazing how many of these articles I have discussed with or recommended to friends - it is a repository of cultural treasure.

The title of the Chee article also reminded me of a few things. Most notably, I, Robot starring Will Smith. But I digress. In the spirit of the Becker article, here is a link to the Leonard Read econ classic "I, Pencil" - so old that the text references Ceylon, but still so poorly grasped by most people.

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write....Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Milton Friedman follows up, with plenty more on YouTube where it comes from:

Dear reader, happy reading to you in 2011. It is shaping up to be the best year for personal reading since leaving for college, and I hope that you are in some small way inspired to read something fantastic!

And for those of you that like a spot of tea with your novel, be sure to check on Christopher Hitchens writing for Slate about the proper way to make tea, via the George Orwell method.

Chrysanthemum

2011-01-20T20:26:00.000-08:00

We think it's her one-year anniversary today. Here are some pictures from the year past.

First up is from Tucson last February. Her head is cut off on my cell phone photo, but you can see how small she was.

More recently on our air mattress. One of her new nicknames is "Length".

On a wicker-chair throne before the beginning of this school year.

Guarding the apartment.

Her first day. Not sure if this picture has been shown around, but this is seconds after walking out the door with our first dog. She proceeded to defecate on Miss Bee's lap about 15 minutes later.

We love our dog

School Things in a Text-y Post

2011-01-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

1. I have my Masters degree - it's done, and official, and everything. Whoo!

2. We are registered to attend the UNI Overseas Placement Fair in February, which is exciting.

3. You are reading the words of the new basketball coach at school. That's right, I volunteered to spend an additional multiple-hours per week after school...well, I expect it to be pretty fun, and an easy way to get some much-needed exercise. Already started planning out my practices - on second thought, only one hour a day three days a week doesn't sound like enough!

4. I read a great article this weekend. As usual from Becker and Posner, smart thoughts on international school performance data. Does it blow anyone else's mind that these two gentlemen deign to contribute to the blobosphere? Not too much to offer, but their comments ring true to me as a practitioner of the public-education arts. Dense with information. Highlight reel from Posner:

The rankings tend to be interpreted as measures of the quality of a nation’s pre-collegiate school system (primary and secondary education, since primary education influences performance in secondary schools). But this may be a mistake. Schooling is only one, though doubtless an important, input into performance on the PISA tests. Another is IQ...[which] is understood to reflect both genetic endowment and environmental factors, particularly factors operative very early in a child’s life, including prenatal care, maternal health, the educational level of the parents, family stability, and poverty (all these are correlated, and could of course reflect low IQs of parents as well as causing low IQs in their children)...The 2009 PISA test scores reveal that in American schools in which only a small percentage (no more than 10 percent) of the students receive free lunches or reduced-cost lunches, which are benefits provided to students from poor families, the PISA reading test scores are the highest in the world. But in the many American schools in which 75 percent or more of the students are from poor families, the scores are the second lowest among the 34 countries of the OECD; and the OECD includes such countries as Mexico, Turkey, Portugal, and Slovakia...

Top 10 Albums of 2010

2010-12-24T15:33:00.000-08:00

It is the best of tropes, it is the worst of tropes. It is time for the Top 10 of 2010 Lists. I love the top 10 lists, for informing me of what I missed this year and how I can rectify that in the future. I also love them for pumping out a firehouse of teaser tracks. Don't get it twisted, I did pay for some of the full albums on this list, but to be honest, I heard most of these albums for free by piecing the various available tracks. Of course, in the case of Nosaj Thing, for example, hearing five or six songs was enough to have me hooked, and by the time my iTunes play count hit 10 Guido's "The Way You Make Me Feel" single it was time to go cover to cover. So yes, I bought more music than I would have due to the presence of their free mp3s online.

The "Top X" List can definitely be faulted in a number of ways. They are arbitrary for one, and so subjective as to be almost meaningless in terms of credibility or plausibility for others. As the phrase goes, "your mileage may vary". Further, some of the lists strain credulity. Top 65 Shoe-Gaze Albums of 2009. The 47 Best Witch House Tracks Not Produced By The Guy From Salem. Top 10 Worst Album Covers of the Year. Guess which one of those was real... answer here.

List makers also strain credulity in other ways, namely, how they digested the amount of music they claim to have not only listened to, but liked, nay, loved, in a given time period. While I may have a full-time job, that isn't in the music business, and furthermore isn't online, I still work pretty hard at hearing a lot of music. But I had a hard time picking out ten Full Albums that I enjoyed this year. (One sad thing that happened was that I got really into Mayer Hawthorne this year, but it came out in '09.) You'd like to say that you are highly familiar with each track on your top X list, and that you enjoy close to all of them. But it's just not the case. I trust that the full-time reviewers, who are given/comped new albums on the regular and have a lot of time and energy to devote to music can put together a moderately truthful list, even if it includes a lot of preening, signaling, and jockeying for position in the intangible (hipness) and highly tangible (Technorati).

They (the Lists) are massively useful, however, for finding other blobbers whose tastes match approximately to mine, or close to the blobs that I follow, and so on. Last year I got into dubstep, jj (youtube video), and Freddie Gibbs (see below) as a direct result of the '09 List Season. This year, who knows?

2010 also saw me busting out Audacity and mixing up some medicine. (See my femmes fatale mix for more:

Femmes fatale by Bret Sikkink

In honor of my new hobby, I've put together a mini-mix featuring songs from each of my 2010-List artists. These songs are not necessarily from the album in question, but are in some sense representative of what I like about the artist. Available for your streaming pleasure following entry #10.

Graphic credit: Sam Churchill (Flickr)

Without further ado.

1. My favorite album of the year, as ranked both by my spidey sense and by iTunes count, was by Bristol producer Guido, on the Punch Drunk label. Anidea is chock-a-block with deeply soulful beat-making English-style, and for that sheer suck-it-down listenability, it gets the nod. Sampler from Guido is an instrumental version of "The Way You Make Me Feel" from his FACT Magazine mix (the polished version with help from a singer called "Yolanda" is on the full album). Follow that link for more Guido fire from FACT mix 108.

I also wrote about Guido and his partners in purple here.

2. I bought Nosaj Thing's Drift at the same time as Guido's album, and I initially ignored it in a shameful fashion as I went for the easy hooks on Anidea. Jason Chung's compositions creeped into my brain, though, and really took hold. In fact, my prediction is that Drift will hold up much better than most of the Purple Sound producers, and will sound as good as its release many years hence. Also of note is the remix album of Drift on Brainfeeder, which offers a different take on some of these tunes. Check out "Coat of Arms" from the album here:

Notable L.A. artists of this year: Flying Lotus with Cosmogramma, Alpha Pup Records' Take, Alex B, Lorn, and Shlomo, as well as Daedelus, The Gaslamp Killer, and Teebs, whose full-length Ardour I am just dipping into. Long live the Low End Theory scene.

3. Besides electronic "dance" music, I continued to enjoy a broad cross-section of hip-hop this year. My favorite album of the year in hip-hop was undoubtedly Big Boi's Sir Lucious Left Foot: Son of Chico Dusty. For such an unbelievably dumb title, SLLF:SoCD produced some true bangers, and showed a lot of people that Andre 3K wasn't the only widely-eclectic visionary in Outkast. The crazy thing is, Antwon Patton had to leave some choice cuts with Andre Benjamin on the cutting room floor due to inter-label beef. Lame - Obama extended Bush's tax cuts and Jive can't loan Dre's voice to General Patton for two jams? Listen up for "The Train Part 2" and hit this link for the video to "Shutterbug".

4. A close runner-up this year, coming from a total underdog, was technically a mixtape (see #5 as well). Big K.R.I.T. produced, mixed, and rhymed on K.R.I.T. Wuz Here, sampling over 1,000,000 different songs in the process. Okay, you caught me... seriously, this shit was free, so what are you waiting for. I've mixed up the "Hometown Hero" remix featuring Alabama's Yelawolf. Download "K.R.I.T. Wuz Here" at djbooth.net.

5. Freddie Gibbs took my listening habits by storm this year. I didn't download Midwestgangsterboxframecadillacmuzik until I couldn't shake that "Boxframe Cadillac" beat. Although Str8 Killa, No Filla is technically a mixtape, and is not quite an accurate descriptor (c'mon, all hip hop albums have some filler...), it still makes my year-end list. The Malcolm of the Midwest brings a low-tone but highly nimble flow and a serious, muck-raking, and even earnest attitude to his experiences. Big shout to "Slammin'". Str8 Killa No Fillaavailable here Also worth checking out: The Smoking Section's article about mixtapes that could have/should have been proper releases this year.

More hip-hop news: Shabazz Palaces was ridiculous, G-Side and the Block Beattaz crew did some big things, The Kid Daytona's The Interlude mixtape, The Roots are back with How I Got Over, plus see some notes below.

6. Rusko is one of the producers on the new Britney Spears record. Better you hear it sooner than later. Also, you may want to google "brostep". Dubstep took a beating this year, critically speaking, but it's okay to love the wobble as far as I'm concerned.

With that out of the way, Rusko's O.M.G.! bumps deeply. Like Bristol's Gemmy, he brings a deep reggae and dancehall sensibility to his dubstep and electronic dance music. I feel like he makes a lot of missteps, but for every clunker is a seriously awesome beat. My O.M.G.! highlight is "Jahova", but I "Woo Boost" on the mix.

Other reggae-tinged affairs I liked this year included Nas and Damian Marley's Distant Relatives album, Earlyworm, Rod Azlan singles, Earl 16, OSC, and Jah Cure, as well as the dubstep-meets-Sun Ra group Digital Mystikz featuring occasionally solo artist Mala.

7. Not sure how many people can honestly trace their musical roots back this precisely, but Audiogalaxy.com used to have a ridiculously detailed breakdown of musical genres (as they were understood at the time). Occasionally, and seemingly at random to my 8th grade mind, there was a free sample mp3 of a song that was considered representative of a genre (since most of the other songs I remember downloading were from jam bands, I'm going to push that back to 10th grade). This is how I discovered David Byrne, Yesterday's New Quintet (the Madlib jazz project), and Four Tet. I got to know Kieran Hebdan's work quite a bit more after checking out some CDs from the local library, and I've studiously followed his Four Tet output since (Rounds is my favorite - who's with me?). Also, XLR8R magazine recently front-covered Kieran for a great article.

Listen to the "Much Love to the Plastic People" DJ mix from Four Tet:
Much Love To The Plastic People (DJ mix December 2009) by Four Tet

Notable easy-listening electronica: Bonobo Black Sands was amazing, and if it weren't for my long history with Four Tet, I could easily see Bonobo's fourth album here in my top ten. Also Teebs' Ardour which I mentioned and Mount Kimbie's Crooks and Lovers and Caribou's Swim.

8. LCD Soundsystem was profiled this year in the New Yorker. Is that enough said? Probably not. I completely fell for his first album - how it fell in my hands I can't remember (but I think a Phones remix might have been at play...). "Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up" was so astonishingly brilliant and original (and could have been a Pink Floyd B-Side from 1969-1972) and combined with some insistent dance beats and refreshing honesty, humor, and satire, James Murphy's music became a close friend and driving partner for many Des Moines-Omaha roundtrips. That was several years ago, and I thought Sound of Silver was a little grandiose and less funny. Maybe it was just my attitude, but I like this year's This is Happening quite a Hit the break for "Dance Yrself Clean".

9. 2010 was a big year for me and Erykah Badu. Miss Bee discovered a pristine copy of her 1997 LP Baduizm at Revolver Records here in Phoenix, and from the moment the needle dropped on "Rimshot (Intro)" I knew I had made a mistake overlooking the queen of neo-soul, but my familiarity with D'Angelo, Maxwell, Musiq, and Raphael Saadiq was deep enough to know that Baduizm was in another league. Tearing through her back catalogue, I hit a slump after Mama's Gun (save for "The Healer (Hip Hop)" from New Amerykah, Part One). Part Two came out this year, and proved very enjoyable: organic, spare but lush, deep beats. Pretty classic Badu; I was sold on the singles "Window Seat" and "Love" early on, and recently re-enjoyed the rest of the album enthusiastically. Return of the Ankh indeed.

Notable R&B this year: Aloe Blacc, Janelle Monae, Kings Go Forth, Mark Ronson and the Business International, Dam-Funk, some new Mayer Hawthorne singles.

10. I do listen to rock music, indie and otherwise, it just rarely occurs that I love an entire album. Plenty of enjoyment was wrung out of Sleigh Bells, Tame Impala, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Phantogram, Warpaint, Belle & Sebastian, Spoon, Psychobuilding, Liars, a Pavement reunion, and especially the Arcade Fire's new monument to full-band bombast The Suburbs. However, my favorite rock album this year was The New Pornographers Together which followed the AC Newman formula to pop perfection. From the lead single "Your Hands (Together)" to "Daughters of Sorrow", just classic Montreal-collective indie.

Minimix of 2010 Favorites

The tracklist is in timed comments. Enjoy:

2010 Minimix by Bret Sikkink

Addenda: Because I have more wind than an Ethiopian marathoner.

Pre-2010 obsessions from 2010:

-Big shout out to Ollie for sending me a link to download Steinski's retrospective for free. May be still available here.
-Google THANK U SCREW to find a free mixtape of DJ Screw classics by an unprintable producer. The remix of Aaliyah's "One in a Million" in particular is ruthless (I posted it to Facebook, if you are my friend and care enough).
-Mayer Hawthorne killed it with A Strange Arrangement in 2009, I just wasn't trying to hear it. Now I'm hooked.
-Got into jj's dreamy beat-pop from '09 lists and followed them a bit as well this year.
-2009 was the year of hip-hop beatmakers, while I got into the more electronic side this year. Star Slinger and Onra are some holdovers.

What's coming in 2011?

+ I'm looking forward to going through full-length hip hop albums from Yelawolf, Freddie Gibbs, Big K.R.I.T. and G-Side. Hopefully more of the Block Beattaz/Hunts Vegas crew gets some music out (I see you Jackie Chain, Mata, et. al.).
+ DJ Burn One had a banging 2010 and I can't wait to see what he's been working on. Same story with Big K.R.I.T. who should have a proper release like yesterday, and hopefully Bangladesh keeps cooking up those low-down beats for up-and-coming ATLiens as well as the big names.
+ From England, Young Montana did some big things this year, and if he puts together a full album I would expect some fire.
+ Didn't hear much in the way of new stuff from Joker this year, so hopefully some burners are in the oven.
+ Getting into Teebs, Baths' Cerulean, and hopefully a host of others from 2010 best-of lists.
+ Prediction: Low End Theory producers will keep producing bangers, and I will keep downloading them.

The Evolutionary Biology of Penguins

2010-12-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

I think this article should have used a more restrained title, such as the one modeled here. The TOP 5 ... YOU MUST KNOW NOW!!! link-baiting technique is bizarre in an article published in Scientific American that includes over a dozen references and introductory clauses like "Much of my research" and other phrases unlikely to make your typical listmania.

But there was some interesting information in this fairly brief, cogent-yet-learned piece about current evolutionary biological research on penguins. For instance:

[T]he most ancient penguin fossils are amongst the oldest fossils discovered from any group of living birds. Waimanu ("Water Bird" in Maori) is the earliest known fossil penguin taxon...Pachydyptes was a true giant, but it is hard to reconstruct how big the species actually was because we only have a few pieces of the skeleton...we are also discovering that extinct penguin species had different body plans. Some were short and stout, while others were tall and slender.

Read it here at the Scientific American website.

Tempest in a teapot

2010-12-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

Thank you Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Gretch Who Saved the War on Christmas

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

All Hail The Dissident

2010-12-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

Miss Bee and I had the good fortune to run into a keg of The Dissident last night at Papago. From my review on Beer Advocate:

In this corner, weighing in at 10.5% alcohol by volume and 30 international bittering units, a sour Flanders Oud Bruin hailing from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon: The Dissident. [Raucous cheering]

Full review here. Get some if you can. Image and more information from the Deschutes website.

Ron Artest, humanitarian

2010-12-11T22:27:00.000-08:00

"I always follow my plan 100 percent, even if I know I'm going to fail."

Ron Artest.

I can't believe I would even consider blobbing about this jackass, this jerk who punched a paying customer in the stands, got himself run out of Chicago and Indianapolis...The Brawl at the Palace.

But he honestly sounds kind of great, if a little eccentric. Extended quote:

"[H]e's raffling off the $26,000 championship ring he won to pay for school psychiatry. So far, the raffle -- go to RonArtest.com -- has raised nearly half a million dollars...the money will pay for "at least eight school therapists," he says.

"I needed a therapist when I was a kid," says Artest, who was suspended every single year of his elementary school career. "I needed one real bad. I want kids to know that what they're going through, they're not alone."

Admirable. It's crazy...it's a totally not-crazy thing to fund help for kids that teachers call crazy. And we still call Ron-Ron crazy...as Rick Reilly says "Four parts crazy, one part brilliant".

Also: "Don't all Game 7 heroes thank their psychologists?" And: "There's 1,000 plays in the Triangle. It's such a challenge. I get so frustrated about it, I have to call my psychologist."

Who is this guy? Find out more, some bits less flattering than those here, from Rick Reilly's ESPN commentary page.

More:

"I ask Jackson why he's playing Artest fewer minutes this season. "I'm not," Jackson says. "Ron overheard [substitute forward Matt Barnes] asking me for more playing time, so he's been raising his hand just to get Matt more time."

Why, Ron Ron?

"Because we're a team. I just want to win another title. Who cares about minutes? Who cares about points?"

Uh, everybody else?"

Puzzle Day at the NYT Science Department

2010-12-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

All the articles today in the Science Times were about puzzles and games. Check it out. It inspired me to do the crossword.

Department of Arsenic

2010-12-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

No Old Lace. (Sidenote: Love those old movie, ahem, picture trailers.)

"Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about."

Wow, the New York Times reports.

Kottke comments. T. Cowen comments, with links.

*Another take: "Scientists have found a form of life that they claim bends the rules for life as we know it. But they didn’t need to go to another planet to find it. They just had to go to California."

Zing, Zimmer.

*The upshot, according to Ars Technica:

"The researchers’ discovery that bacteria can substitute phosphorus with arsenic in the backbone of DNA has significant implications for evolutionary chemistry and astrobiology, since it suggests that life won't necessarily be limited to the six elements it favors here on Earth."

*On the satire tip, Doyle Redland, of the Onion News Network, is here to tell us about concerned parents demanding that arsenic be removed from the periodic table.

Who is yours?

2010-11-30T20:58:00.000-08:00

"Finally, the narcissist, who longs for the approval and admiration of others, is often clueless about how things look from someone else’s perspective. Narcissists are very sensitive to being overlooked or slighted in the smallest fashion, but they often fail to recognize when they are doing it to others."

Remind you of anyone? Of course it does...

Narcissism is slated for removal from the DSM-V, along with three other personality disorders. In my neck of the woods, Asperger's Syndrome is also being left out, much to the chagrin of those who self-identify.

*Note*
All photos used on this blob are used under a creative commons license from flickr, unless otherwise noted. This one is by Cayusa.

In the year 2036...

2010-11-28T18:43:00.000-08:00

...and I quote:

"[T]he car, the plane, the bicycle, the voice-only telephone, the espresso machine and, luckily, the wall-to-wall bookshelf will still be with us...
The world will face severe biological and electronic pandemics, another gift from globalisation. Religious practice will experience a revival, seen as a conveyor of robust heuristics, cultural values and rituals...[W]hat is now called academic economics will be treated with the same disrespect that rigorous (and practical) minds currently have for Derrida-style post-modernist verbiage.

Nassim Taleb, of the Extremely Important Concept known as the Black Swan Theory, writes in The Economist about how he sees various institutions in 25 years. Although these are things I occasionally think about, I don't have much additional commentary on this article. It is not immediately clear to me that everything he notes is true (See Robin Hanson on Near vs. Far thinking and Yudkowsky on A.I.; Kurzweil has a different take on the progression of science, at least as it pertains to engineering technology.)

Notably, education, especially in the classical vs. modern sense, is not discussed (how will increasingly entrenched religious beliefs affect the present-day concept of the university? I would infer a move toward madrassa-style disconnect, while many of the other predictions take a very World Is Flat view.)

It is very short, and should definitely be read in totum, if only as food for thought in light of the author's prescience regarding matters in the immediate past.

Reading anything by Taleb is personally very interesting because his book was just coming out the last time I traveled abroad, to Scotland. Not only was I stockpiling a lot of American periodicals for the trip, and thus reading the reviews all at once, I was also reading a lot of English periodicals along the way that were also reviewing his ideas. And at THE SAME TIME I was listening to a lot of Thom Yorke's solo album, which Miss Bee was lovely enough to have purchased beforehand and which I had ripped to my computer. Here is the song that I always think about:

Download directly here.

I wish I could drop some kind of killer, never before heard, ultra-maximum remix, but sometimes life gives you lemons.

Also, if anyone that reads this has a concise opinion re: Taleb's mention of gold replacing individual currencies, please drop me a note. It seems very rare for technologies, concepts, institutions, and theories to jump back 120 years, bypassing the interceding period with nary a backwards glance. Is there any way that the Federal Reserve experiment has yielded so few lessons that we can't even begin to build on it? Inflation is definitely a problem to consider, but in the age of iPod, Kindle, and 1 Terabyte hard drives for a couple hundred bucks, do we want to revert to storing massive amounts of gold ingot?

And now for something completely different.

One of my second-graders got off the bus the other day walking in a very unusual fashion, for no apparent reason. The bus was late so there was no one else around, so I indulged his whimsy and walked halfway to class without looking back. When I did so, not only was he still walking in this ridiculous way, another student in line behind him was also conveying himself about the grounds in a most peculiar fashion. Incidentally, we got a new PE teacher who started that very day, and who watched me and these students behave rather oddly. I said hello and began my day calmly - like a black swan who looks so serene above water but is paddling furiously - and in perhaps a somewhat embarrassed fashion, below.

The initial walk was something between the high-stepping element of this (first :10) -

and the careening nature of this (skip to :40 in) -

Toss in a little Jack Sparrow and you've got the idea.

How To Drink Coffee Without Being a Prick

2010-11-25T17:51:00.001-08:00

The Clover coffeemaker explained by howstuffworks

You stumble out of bed, struggling toward consciousness, in urgent need of caffeine. You drag yourself into the kitchen. And there, ready and waiting, are 10 cups of coffee, brewed automatically, just five minutes earlier, as a consequence of a few simple steps and some alarm clock-style programming the night before.

Shots fired at the coffee-geek crowd. Frank Bruni extols the virtues of the Mr. Coffee drip coffeemaker, flying in the face of fellow gourmands who prefer the ever-growing crop of complex technologies and strict methodologies for what Bruni describes as "first and foremost a caffeine delivery system...It was medicine, just as food, stripped of its pretensions, is fuel. Expeditiousness matter[s]."

I'm with Bruni, the former restaurant critic of the Times and author of the recent memoir "Born Round". I do make my coffee with the French press, but I would love to have it ready when I get out of bed in the morning. And also I'm intimidated by the more esoteric strictures of the coffee-brewing crowd (swirl the pour. stir every x minutes. etc.)

Check the article for more good times. But no Mr. Coffees in my stocking, thanks.

Best Pseudo-parenthetical Sentence I Read Today

2010-11-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

"Of course if you want to slow down your ship at the other end instead of flying by at 0.1c, you need a much larger ship."

This comes at the end of a post by Robin Hanson that includes such representative paragraphs as this:

Until recently, it would have been expected that 1 mm would be an absolute upper limit for the size of interstellar grains in the warm (T * 6000 K), low-density (n * 0.1–0.2 hydrogen nuclei cm^-3) interstellar cloud [LIC] which surrounds the Sun. However, recent … measurements … have identiﬁed a high-mass tail to the local interstellar grain population extending to perhaps as high as 10^-12 kg (i.e., 4.5 mm radius).

If the technical feasibility of rapid interstellar travel and the requisite economic concerns are of interest, by all means...have at the link.

While we're at it: the best re-creation of space travel ever (Kanye: of ALL TIME), along with a link to a 1969 interview with Kubrick in which, among other things, the director clarifies that HAL is a 'straight' computer. I can sleep easier.

**Update**
During a '90s R&B jaunt down youtube-memory-lane, THIS was discovered. Putting my earlier claim regarding "best re-creation of space travel" in jeopardy.

In other youtube-and-lisps-in-popular R&B music news:

Bristol Ranking

2010-11-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

Purple City:

Lots of digital ink has been spilled about what Dubstep is or isn't, but an unquestionable nexus of the bass-heavy wobble is the port city of Bristol, South West England. Peverelist's Punch Drunk label (and electronic dance music mecca Rooted Records), Pinch's Tectonic imprint, and the loose organization of Planet Mu (google them), Bristol's electronic artists have imprinted the charging London Dubstep wobble with a dash of this and that: Sach O over at Passion of the Weiss mentions trip hop, jungle, and Berlin techno. Dubby, crunchy, wobbly, and above all, tuned very loudly to the low end.

In light of the new Peverelist compilation Worth The Weight, I thought I'd add my own needle into the haystack of music coverage and post some of the tracks that hooked me on the across-the-pond awesomeness of the purple sound. But first, the tracks on Worth the Weight from boomkat:

Read full review of Worth The Weight: Bristol Dubstep Classics - Various / Punch Drunk on Boomkat.com ©

The Hook:

""When you hear a song, you envisage things: soul music is mahogany, basslines are yellow," says Joker."

The color that unites Joker, Gemmy, and Guido is a rich purple, and as the young players on a rich music scene that has given the world Massive Attack, Portishead, and Tricky, these three have emerged as renowned beatmakers and composers in their own right.

Joker is perhaps the most straightforward producer of the three, and his productions are catchy, in your face, and very wobbly. His Purple Wow Sound mix was the first place I had heard such deep bass, pulsating wobble, and catchy melodies. First, the entire 43:00 mix (download here), followed by a representative sample track from youtube. As always, yt is a complete rabbithole that you can follow wherever you'd like.

Gemmy brings a Jamaican sensibility to the Bristol sound, which befits the long-standing relationship between the island and its former colonial overlord. From Keith Richards taking a break from the Stones to record native Rastafarian chants, to a young Chris Blackwell forming Island Records and signing the young Wailers, English music has long been indebted to Jamaican riddim and vocalization. In London, electronic producers have been using one-off dubplates and toasting throughout the 2000s, with Digital Mystikz' DJ Mala as but a prime example. Gemmy's dubby sound owes plenty to Lee Perry, the Professor, and King Tubby. Bomboclot:

Guido is an electronic music producer with an unmatched ear for composition, reminding me of LA's Teebs, another beatmaker whose album Ardour is full of subtle, layered melody. From the clipped horn sample on "Mad Sax" to the wall of synthesized strings on "Tantalized", Guido's Punch Drunk debut Anidea is worth a cover-to-cover listen.

The Godmother:

No mention of the dubstep scene would be complete without a mention of Mary Anne Hobbs, the innovative Radio 1 deejay, whose compilations on Planet Mu brought the music to a wider audience, including yours truly. Wikipedia here, links to her albums here, and her BBC page which is still up here. She has recently moved on from her position at the Beeb in order to pursue tastemaking in other forms, which are sure to be well-received.

In the post referenced earlier, Sach O concludes:

Contemporary House music is fine to dance to and UK rapping will probably never catch on over the pond, but to me, like Hip-Hop in 88 and 94, punk in 77 to 82, soul throughout the early 70’s and psychedelia in its late 60’s peak, this is era-defining music, material that truly speaks to the times and redefines what it means to be a listener or a participant within a culture.

Hear hear.

Best Run-on Sentence I Read Yesterday

2010-11-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways.

That's funny.

Deep down the rabbit hole of Ralph Steadman's website, you can find full texts of Steadman-illustrated, Hunter Thompson-penned classics, including "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", quoted above. Appearing in a periodical called Scanlan's Monthly in 1970, it is considered the first piece of Gonzo journalism. See Wikipedia for more, or hit the jump for the full text. One of the prints from the auspicious occasion is represented above, available for purchase on his website, naturally.

"Shadow Scholarship"

2010-11-17T17:14:00.001-08:00

The topic today is a "shadow scholar" who is paid to write essays for college-level courses. Completely fascinating throughout; I think I missed my calling. He got started when some frat boy friends wanted him to write papers for them, and today he makes more than $60,000 a year. Key quotables:

"I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph."

As an online-course-taking, weekly-paper-writing-machine, I can definitely sympathize with that one. He goes on:

I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me.

People sometimes ask me (when they found out I did graduate school online) how I can write papers each week about different topics without going to the library. Given that I didn't go to the library in college except to print, my answer approximately mirrors this explanation with the caveat that I did use the e-library to assemble and read legit sources:

I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples...Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article...there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way.

The Shadow Scholar is quite explicit about the variety of "students" he has helped, and includes a pretty funny list of the different types of papers and assignments he has written over the years. He takes on nurses, social scientists, architects, and plenty of others. But he saves a particular vitriol for one branch of higher education:

I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

'Graf of the Day

2010-11-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

In my earnest effort to begin posting here more frequently (since the completion of my Master's courses, still waiting on the review of my work), I decided to focus, if ever so some-what, on language and writing. I have composed two "On Language"-type columns in my head that I shall type up forthwith after moderate efforts at research (Footnote 1).

I'm also consistently reporting events, published takes, turns of phrase, and sentences to my Miss Bee, who both judiciously ignores me and comments, occasionally, in a vague fashion, while in turn concentrating on her own affairs. To her betterment. In that light, I'm moving towards a MR-esque "Best __ I Read Today" format, which I can decorate in the finest possible manner. Working within the confines of such strictures, I am parsing my reading material most delicately, and in Day One of my efforts, I am delighted to present this gem, verbatim from kottke.org:

Four 50-packs for around $115. "Whoa!" I exclaimed to my wife, "Someone out there really likes whipped cream!"

Readers, I could almost hear the eyeroll as my wife explained to this naive bumpkin that people use these canisters of compressed nitrous oxide to get high. So whoever you are, thank you for the novel experience of learning a new Urban Dictionary term from my wife.

In a most remarkable turn of events, Miss Bee came home today and mentioned the need to go to Costco, this evening, no procrastinating, It's-For-Student-Council. Standing in line with our one item, which happened to be three canisters of whipped cream....

1 According to the Magic Tree House author Mary Pope Osbourne, in her Opus #9 entitled Dolphins at Daybreak, research is roughly defined as working to find the answer to hard questions. Noted to self: drill that into students.

Palin on Press: Pretty, pretty, pretty good

2010-11-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is funny.

Sarah Palin on the press in this country:

"I suppose I could play their immature, unprofessional, waste-of-time game, too, by claiming these reporters and politicos are homophobe, child molesting, tax evading, anti-dentite, puppy-kicking, chain smoking porn producers … really, they are. … I've seen it myself … but I'll only give you the information off-the-record, on deep, deep background; attribute these 'facts' to an 'anonymous source' and I'll give you more."

Anti-dentite. Hmm.

A quick google search reveals that in fact the only thing that anti-dentite refers to is a Seinfeld episode (the Yada Yada, for those scoring at home). To wit:

Tip of the hat to Slate for that little gem. I miss Bushisms, but Bidenisms + Palinisms is pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Femmes fatale mix

2010-10-25T22:04:00.001-07:00

I've been teaching myself rudimentary audio manipulation recently, both for school purposes as well as entertainment. I've always enjoyed making mixtapes and such, but perhaps due to the talent and prodigious output of my roommate DJ Jewels, I never did get around to learning the ropes in college.

Well, I got super-obsessed with Audacity and made a genre-bending mix that was really fun, subsequently lost all my data in an program crash, and painstakingly re-mixed it for the beginning of the school year. I felt like I learned so much, but after listening to those songs a million times each, I needed to start something else pretty quickly. Right about the time we went to Sedona, I started pulling together this epic, three-suite mix that was to start with a sample from David Axelrod's The Human Abstract, that would reappear throughout the mix as segues. Suite II was to be called A Change of Heart, and would feature female vocalists in a variety of genres, but primarily uptempo. The third movement was to be a hip hop mix based around DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World, which samples the lonesome piano chords from Axelrod.

Basically, they all blew way out of proportion.

Suite I is languishing. At 36 minutes, it has run out of creative steam and I don't know what to do with it.

Suite III is still being worked on, but it's pretty well done. Clocking in at 79:20, this is a CD-R away from a good road trip. But it's not as carefully put together as...

Suite II has been re-named to Femmes fatale and teased out to feature length. Again, around 79 minutes of music, for those who still quaintly like to burn their music to CD. Perhaps more of a creative constraint than anything.

Listen up:
Femmes fatale by Bret Sikkink

The lynchpin of the mix is a track called "A Change of Heart" by El Perro del Mar, and a Rakamonie remix that appears halfway through. We detour through the off-key warbling of Nite Jewel, the droning sludge of Fever Ray, and back through the looped sampling of Star Slinger before a quick trip to the dubstep of Bristol, England. The mix finishes with a series of modern rock favorites.

The mix is hosted by Soundcloud, a really cool music sharing website which allows for timed comments. The tracklisting is posted via timed comment, with the song's artist and title at approximately the point that it starts within the mix. Enjoy.

Supplemental materials:

David Axelrod's The Human Abstract

DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World

Arizona State Fair

2010-10-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

Miss Bee is taking a photography class with a colleague, and they had a field trip last night. Wednesdays are free at the Fair with a donation, so off we went to the Fairgrounds on the west side of downtown. First thing I noticed was the vintage Coliseum, which our friend informed us was the former home of the Suns. Built in 1965 and known as the Mad House on McDowell, the Coliseum holds a whopping 14,000 people. With moderate effort, I could determine how it compares in size to other defunct NBA arenas, but the effort is beyond me just now. It seems tiny, all I'm saying.

Here's my compatriots walking along the main food midway. The usual gross-yet-tempting and gross-and-WTF? fair fare is there, with perhaps a slight southwestern flair: chile relleno dogs, Navajo fry bread, and corn tamales seem unlikely in the midwest.

I took this to show my DSLR-toting companions how I would have set up this shot down the Goliath slide, and it turned out okay. I should have checked for a horizontal frame, but it gets the point across.

"Beer: Stronger than Sarsaparilla." Is that an endorsement?

Love the Ferris wheel.

The AZ event is relatively small compared to MN and IA (think county fair), but bottom line: the Fair is the Fair, no matter where you are. Good times.

Congratulations from Kindergarten

2010-10-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Miss Bee's class invited me to come down to their room and watch something "they had practiced". Sometimes I go down to watch a song or poem, but this time it was all the kinders saying congratulations and giving me a card!

Miss Bee gave me a big blue heart, and everyone in the class wrote me a letter. They had no idea exactly what was going on, but the enthusiasm was terrific! I hung them up on a bulletin board in the empty room next door.

"You've got to have the courage...of your convictions."

2010-10-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

"Julie and Julia" clip:

Promo for Julia Child as the French Chef:

I enjoyed the greater bulk of "Julie and Julia", particularly the black and white clips of Meryl Streep acting out famous French Chef scenes.

Also, "no paella for you" on finding the Seinfeld clip. You can read the script if you google Seinfeld Paella, but why bother? In lieu, here's a somewhat stupid, I mean frenetic, mashup of Seinfeld one-liners. Just in case you don't have the 9-disc set. Sucker.

Things Organized Neatly

2010-08-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

*In between writing the rest of this post and posting it, a week or so passed. We are now done with The Wire.*

Michael Johansson's brain seems to work like mine. I love how the "puzzle" comes together like that. Have a few more look-sees at his website. Hat tip to the newest winner of my Subscribe to RSS Feed award: Things Organized Neatly.

Please note the new share buttons at the bottom of these posts. While they exist for no discernible purpose, as this blog is in a state of disrepair from which I can only hope that it will recover, they are in fact there and may be used for sharing this post with your "friends". Social media and all that.

Almost done with the 5th season of The Wire, almost done with my Master's.

I found a couple of pictures of my own things organized neatly, including our Macintosh computers:

And my old classroom:

Perhaps soon I'll take a picture of my new room. My desk is much cleaner - less cluttered, anyways.

A Baby Photo

2010-07-04T07:08:00.001-07:00

Grandma Betty organized the shoe boxes in the downstairs cupboard. Once upon a time, I looked like this:

Here's our nice picture from the beach at Saco Bay - me, Miss Bee, and Chrysanthemum.

2010-05-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

"Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the dachshund and why he can't be trained and shouldn't be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something he wants to do."

The always on point E.B. White [emphasis mine].

Statistics; and, Happy Days

2010-04-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

We are 34/40 = 85% done with the school year. Oddly enough, that places us on Spring Break this week. So far, that has amounted to multiple episodes of Law and Order: SVU, some significant allergy issues, and a large amount of Dim Sum.

I wrote two 1,500 word papers this week, plus some detritus, and consequently finished two of my online classes. Therefore, I am 8/12 = 75% done with my Master's.

********************************************************************************

My new MacBook Pro (middle) includes a 500 GB hard drive among other amenities. The wireless Time Capsule hard drive/wireless router I also got is 1 terabyte (not pictured, but awesome).

The Time Capsule has enough capacity for both my new hard drive plus Miss Bee's (on the right, ). My MacBlack is too old to sync wirelessly (OS X 10.4.11 Tiger), but I can connect to the files already on the drive.

My old machine (three years and two months) has not been shut down for 31 days. Not bad for a computer out of warranty.

I am approximately 80% done with the "transfer of computing activities to new laptop" process.

********************************************************************************

Chrysanthemum is 0% able to procreate, according to a signed document from her veterinarian as of today. Pictured is The Wild Mumpus herself, three days before surgery, enjoying her first boat ride. She actually did seem to enjoy it.

Paws will now recuperate for the next 10 days or so. The pain pills are scheduled to last 3.33 days, with one pill taken per 8 hours. Her next scheduled dose occurs at 2:00 AM.

She is moderately disoriented, with spurts of activity followed by long breaks of idleness. Which, incidentally, is not terribly different from her normal condition.

********************************************************************************

2009 League Champion Diamondbacks are 1-2 so far this season. Not too good.

Chrysanthemum watches her father closely during the games (after going 0-3 in the first game, I'm 5-5 with a sac fly the last two weekends).

Good story: in our first game, we are losing by 6 runs, with a 10-run rule in effect. It's the last inning, so we bring in a new pitcher, who turns out to be a right-hander who has injured his right shoulder hiking. So he pitches left-handed, which is impressive.

His accuracy was much less so, however, and he walks 6 guys in a row. Now we're down 9 runs, bases loaded, nobody out. So they bring me in - if the man on third comes in, we lose. I run the count to 1-2 and throw my first curve ball. The batter hits a weak grounder to my left, which I manage to snare on the move. I spin and fire to the plate - and overthrow the catcher. Game over.

The House of Tomorrow

2010-04-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

I had been meaning to blob this before, but the New York Times Sunday Book Review (!) galvanized me to action:

Peter Bognanni's book The House of Tomorrow is on bookshelves (and Amazon) now.

I ordered my copy today (belatedly, as Mark posted the Boston Globe's review like two weeks ago) and I'm excited to read it. Peter's web site is here, with lots of reviews and information about the book.

Cleaning out the closet

2010-03-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

With Chrysanthemum as a helper!

All those clothes are out of our lives, and in the process we discovered some zippered fleece pillowcases. If you didn't know, fleece is by far Chrysanthemum's favorite fabric, and possibly her favorite thing made by man. So even though her bed of clothes is gone, she has two new pillow-beds.

And we have a clean closet.

Hag kasher vesame'ah - Happy and kosher Passover, everyone.

Pannekoeken, or a Dutch Baby

2010-03-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Just a clarification: I did not make this. Miss Bee did! She saw the name of the recipe in a Moosewood cookbook, and we had to try it.

The Wikipedia entry for a Dutch baby. The picture on there doesn't look much like it, but a google image search brings up some similar things.

The first picture is the batter, with the frozen raspberry-and-sugar concoction just mixed in. The defining characteristic of the Dutch baby is the rising action - it's somewhere between a pancake and just plain cake. It was great!

Word of the Day

2010-03-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Myrmidon, from the Wikipedia: (click on the link above for the Image results)

The Myrmidons of Greek myth were known for their loyalty to their leaders, so that in pre-industrial Europe the word "myrmidon" carried many of the same connotations that "robot" does today.

Myrmidon later came to mean "hired ruffian" (according to the Oxford English Dictionary or "a loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity, unquestioning followers." (Dictionary.com).

I came across it (twice) in Edgar Allen Poe's Mystery of Marie Roget (full text at the link), the sequel to Murders in the Rue Morgue (again). Dupin uses it to refer to the Parisian police under the guidance of Prefect G. Check it out.

Chrysanthemum: Pro Biker

2010-02-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

Another bike trip to the park - photo collage style. After the ride we went to Family Night at school to meet Harley, a chow/Aussie shepherd mix. Chrys got a new dog frisbee this week - it's the rainbow-colored blur you see in some of the pictures.

New video: Chrys out and about

2010-02-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

Newest slideshow of Chrysanthemum going out and about around Phoenix in the last month. Includes trips to 909 and Beach Park in Tempe, the Abrams' in Paradise Valley, the Bridgmans' in Mesa, and South Mountain and Papago Park in Phoenix.

Also available for search on youtube.

Testing: Chrysanthemum in her bike crate

2010-02-03T20:52:00.001-08:00

OK, so I made a super-quick slideshow video in Picasa and uploaded it to youtube. I think it should embed in this page as well, so you can see a lot of pictures without taking up so much space.

The story here is that we got a crate for the handlebars of my bike. Today was our first ride...

Chrys Goes to the Park

2010-01-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

Our first park visit. We're going to try and make this a regular feature here at the Stare: go to a park, play with the pooch, and take some pictures. For the first installment, and Chrysanthemum's first real park experience (the school playground...meh), we stopped by the Creighton School District office, which has a cute little park-backyard with houses all around. It's less than a block in both directions, and in a small community off the main streets, so we've never seen anyone there. It's on the way home from Sprout's grocery store, so we're committed to coming here more often.

At first she just ran around a little bit, following mom and dad. But after we got the Frisbee out, she started running almost the length of the park - we've never seen her run probably half that far, and definitely not in the grass. She was pretty interested in the disc right away, so we let her play with it for a little while.

Bottom side up:

And top side up:

One with dad for the road:

It's cold and rainy here today. We were going to hit the big park today, but we didn't think she would like the wet grass. As it turns out, this was an even better choice for her first park visit.

We got some great stuff for her on Amazon today too. We'll take pictures when we get her new collar, and links to her training books. We've also got a Big Surprise, which will be So Much Fun. Hint: it involves self-propelled transport.

Also, head to himissbee for some additional pictures and a List of All The Things We Love about Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum.

More Chrys

2010-01-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

Look at the girl!!!!

She got into this perch before we left the house where we bought her. Our little parrot...

Her orange blanket with her mini-tennis ball - she can't quite get it into her mouth yet.

Calendar, greeting card, etc. industries? Email me if you need our number...

She likes to lay on this big couch pillow on the ground.

Good night.

Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum

2010-01-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

Our new family portrait

Chrysanthemum (yes, named after the Kevin Henkes character) turns 8 weeks old tomorrow. She's a miniature dachshund whose parents are also both minis (dad is apparently also part mountain goat, judging from his antics on the sofa during our visit). We haven't measured her, but without her tail she is just under the length of my size 12 loafers. No, the picture does not cut off ANY part of her body.

She has had one accident per day in the house (#1, as they say), her crying when we keep her in the kennel is heartbreaking, and I don't think either of us have slept for more than 3 hours in a row since we got her on Tuesday. However, she is learning to walk on the leash really well (she can get to our door without any guidance from just inside the hallway), the last two toileting problems were my fault, and she's so damn cute when she curls up inside the crook of your arm... Tonight, on our walk, she literally walked up my outstretched forearms to get off the cool grass and into my arms.

This has been a tough week, what with waking up every couple of hours, coordinating break schedules, and teaching leash skills. I also started teaching adult English class this week, so everyone give a hand to the 23 people who came on Tuesday and the 24 on Thursday. The even mix of Somali speakers and hispanohablantes make it tough to converse as a group, but there is a lot of smiling! So sorry for not getting a picture up sooner, and be sure to let us know when you're sick of them.

We've got some digital camera pictures of our new family member as well and I hope to post those quickly. Also, one of our new year's resolutions was to post more stuff to facebook...it hasn't gone that well since the airport, but then again, our lives are boring. More Chrysanthemum to come, and we can't wait for everyone to meet her.

Really Great Gifts

2009-12-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

Here are some great pre-Christmas gifts from the giving season so far.

A hand grater for cheese and other things:

It's great. I feel like I work at an Italian chain restaurant. Miss Bee got it for me at the grocery store.

Here is Miss Bee's gift to our friends at her 30th birthday party: a shoe-box full of snickerdoodles.

That very same (amazing) friend gave us this at dinner the other night: the complete set of Seinfeld, seasons 1-9. That's 32 discs of straight-up white-people awesomeness. We're midway through season 2 after a good old-fashioned TV-on-DVD binge.

The wooden crate holds ten chubby bottles of the Irish red that Brian and I brewed (see earlier post). It's bottled and nearly ready to go: it's fridge-ready tomorrow and delicious already.

Des Moiniaks, look out for some Seinfeld-obsessed Phoenicians coming your way in T-minus 2 days.

Brew Day!: Red Cap Ale

2009-11-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

A teacher friend whose DIY-bent husband decided to get into homebrewing invited us out to their place today.

Their house/location is probably worth its own post sometime, but tonight we went out to homebrew some beer. B.B. brewed some wine last week that's been fermenting in their garage, but this was his first shot at an ale - it's a Xmas present to a buddy at work so I hope it turns out.

The setup:

Propane tank wired to a metal stand they use to fry turkeys on Thanksgiving. You heard me. Fry turkeys. On top of the metal frame is a detached keg: the top has been cut out and a spigot retrofitted on the left side in the picture below.

The mash: In this brew kettle we first brought 2 gal. of water and brew salts to shy of a boil, throwing in a muslin grain bag with a mixture of Vienna, pale malt, and roasted barley for a 20 min. mash. After draining the grain bag, BB added a several-cup container of malt extract - a syrupy mixture that looks like honey and smells like raw wheat.

The boil:

Once the water began to boil, he added a 1 oz. packet of E. Kent Goldings, a classically British aroma hop. That was boiled for 50 minutes alone, at which time an oz. of Fuggles was added for a five minute boil. (You can just catch BB in the back there cleaning out the fermentation tank.)

After 55 minutes of slow boiling, the wort was stirred for five minutes before being cooled over 2 gal. of ice that melts into the wort, and then topped off to 5 gallon with cool water. Once the mixture was at the right cool temperature, it was transferred to this 6-gal. glass carboy, and the yeast (which had been activated approximately 3 hours prior) was pitched. The glass stopper admits gas into its chamber without releasing moisture.

If all goes right, this Irish red ale will ferment for 7-12 days in a 66-68 degree environment, and be ready for bottling/sampling in two weeks.

This was my first brew day, and it was a lot of fun. Our apartment/environs leave a lot to be desired for homebrewing, so I plan on pursuing this hobby vicariously through BB. Fortunately, he seems to be in a thrall quite the same as mine - indeed, plans are set for a Honey Brown ale brewing next week.

Better pictures to follow.

2009-11-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

We've got two blobbers in the house again.

Check out Miss Bee's for a frittata recipe she made from farm fresh eggs tonight...and stay tuned, she just might be back!

Halloween 3: Mr. S' class plus a straggler

2009-11-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

This little penguin belongs to a teacher at school.

Halloween 2: Miss Bee's class

2009-11-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

Halloween: The Monster March

2009-11-05T18:12:00.000-08:00

The annual Monster March at Ball-and-Chain Elementary - behold Mr. Sikkink, err, Principal Sikkink in his suit!

Behold Miss Bee, err, Chrysanthemum the Mouse in her sunniest dress!

Behold mi estudiante L.S. in his (overly tight) Wolverine costume:

And behold I.I. in his awesome headgear:

Miss Bee Goes to Sports!

2009-11-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

Miss Bee had not been to a professional sports contest that was not baseball before we went to the USAirways Center with the student council to watch the Suns battle the Golden State Chargers (she meant "Warriors").

Explaining the finer points of the game to a kindred non-sporting spirit.

An unusual piece of headwear elicits an unusual look.

We were in the nosebleed section, but the kids had fun.

Look out for some Halloween Monster March pictures coming soon.

Colorado Pictures Part 2

2009-10-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

The climbers, L to R: Joe, Carlye, Bret, Leslie. Note the outstanding sartorial choices from the flat-landers.

Our intrepid leader, Alex.

This is more or less where Miss Bee and I called it quits for lack of breath. While we were sitting right where she is in the picture, a gentleman came climbing up over that jagged rock that Joe's leaning on. That was quite a surprise.

Flatiron 2: that's it behind us. The Boulderians got to the top of that peak in the middle of the picture.

Long Time Coming: Our Colorado Trip 1

2009-10-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

Sorry. My computer had to take a trip to Apple last week to fix the screen, and I'm quite busy these days. But here are some of the photos from our CO trip to visit Alex, Carlye, and Joe.

Walking to breakfast:

The gnome outside Alex's house. What a great landmark. Nice shot by Leslie with the cat.

At breakfast:

This is too good

2009-09-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

H/t to MR again.

Headline: Arizona driver dons monkey masks to elude tickets

Read the whole thing here.

Tyler sez: "Monkey masks I can see. But giraffe masks? That's good enough for a markets in everything. Who, other than this guy, buys a giraffe mask?"

Has anyone seen Arizona in the news for anything positive lately?

From My Google Reader

2009-08-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

Check out #4: That's me! Click on the picture to see the whole post.

Thanks for the link, Prof.

Maps!: And a roundup of sorts

2009-08-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

Satellite image of Earth at night, showing electricity usage across the globe

I've been remiss in not posting before about my autistic (Excuse me, Tyler Cowen. Neurodiverse.) obsession with maps, charts, and graphs. I've been playing a couple of fascinating geography games of late, that I discovered a while ago. Every so often I get the jones for Sporcle.com, an HTTP-heavy site that let's user upload their own quizzes. Correct answers typed into a Google-like answer bar are entered into the table or onto the map in their spot. Here are the results from my "Nations of the World" quiz (I had previously done Africa and Asia by themselves).

I got something like 145 of 185 nations in 15 minutes. Here is the last column of the "most missed" page:

I also have been going through an old Google Bookmarks page that I don't use anymore. (I use a combination of Instapaper and Evernote for short-term and long-term site or article storage now.) A good one I re-found is called BibliOdyssey: Peep this chart of the respective lengths and heights of long rivers and tall mountains.

Then there's Atlas Obscura, which bills itself as a compendium of the world's wonders, exotica, and curiosities. The format isn't to my liking: too much mouse-clicking. Still, it's interesting, as this screen shot shows. I wish there were more information about each place, but I guess this could be considered the Twitter version of National Geographic.

I also followed a great Kottke lead-in to a story about the donkeys of Fez, Morocco. I don't know if that sounds interesting to you, but the opening paragraph of the story by Susan Orlean should tell you whether or not you want to follow up.

The donkey I couldn't forget was coming around a corner in the walled city of Fez, Morocco, with six color televisions strapped to his back. If I could tell you the exact intersection where I saw him, I would do so, but pinpointing a location in Fez is a formidable challenge, a little like noting GPS coordinates in a spider web. I might be able to be more precise about where I saw the donkey if I knew how to extrapolate location using the position of the sun, but I don't. Moreover, there wasn't any sun to be seen and barely a sliver of sky, because leaning in all around me were the sheer walls of the medina—the old walled portion of Fez—where the buildings are so packed and stacked together that they seem to have been carved out of a single huge stone rather than constructed individually, clustered so tightly that they blot out the shrieking blue and silver of the Moroccan sky.

Finish the article at the Smithsonian magazine online, which I was not aware of until yesterday but I like very much now. Unfortunately no RSS feeds for normal articles, so I suppose I'll have to check back sometimes.

Also wanted to shout out WorldImages, a project of California State University. According to their website:

The internationally recognized WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains almost 75,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes. The images can be located using many search techniques, and for convenience they are organized into over 800 portfolios which are then organized into subject groupings.

Interesting.

The other game I've been playing is super-addicting, and I can't get past level 11 which makes me want to go back for more. And it goes a little something like this:

This Traveler IQ challenge compares your geographical knowledge against the World's Original Travel Blog's other 4,467,002 travelers who have taken this challenge as of Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 05:07AM GMT. (TravelPod is part of the TripAdvisor Media Network)

I believe you click to play. Once begun, a city or place name will come across the top of the screen. Click on the map where you think it is; you get more points for being close to the target than for going quickly. If the player above does not work, the website is here. There are more maps as well, including the hyper-difficult Capitals of the Caribbean Sea. If you know those, I'm impressed.

****************************************************************************************
On a more personal note, I have joined the legion of unfortunate souls who have iBricked their lives by dropping their iPhones into the toilet. Seriously, Google a combination of the words in that phrase: I dropped my iPhone into the toilet. It's crazy how many there are.

Some claim that theirs came back to life after 4 hours, others that they never turned on, and everything in between. I'm now on about 24 hours after the fact, and nothing so far. Very sad and irritating. And possibly expensive. I'm a fool, who's unavailable by telephone for the time being. Maybe I'll get the 3G S to compensate for my sadness...

Finally, my sister has joined the blogging community from her perch in Boulder, Colorado. Check her out at Do.Does.Did. Miss Bee and I are planning to visit her and Joe, along with our friend Alex, in Boulder during our October break, which we are looking forward to, as we are about to start the 6th week of school.

And without further ado, my favorite song (maybe) off the new Mos Def album The Ecstatic. It's called 'Auditorium' and features Slick Rick.

I was going to post 'Maps' by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but felt it was too obvious. Plus, Pitchfork just proclaimed it a top 10 song of the 20-aught years. Too much hype for me.

It's a new year

2009-08-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

Best believe that school has started again. Is summer ever short when you get married and go on a two week honeymoon. The honeymoon is over, as they say, and we are now in our third week of school. We took our customary first day of school photos.

Here we are getting ready to leave for day 1. Who knew that in five minutes we were going to be locked out of our back gate and relying on the charity of an awesome neighbor who backed her car up to trigger the sensor?

Our customary arm-out shot - we got pretty good at that on our trip...

Finally, a present from our favorite teacher friend - a shower gift actually. It was the first thing we hung in our new apartment, hanging in a place of honor.

"world music" mix

2009-07-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

Per special request from Derek, asking about accessible "world" music.

Posting the whole mix is a bit lazy, but school starts on Monday and this summer has been a bit hectic to say the least.

"World" music is a hard axe to grind, but I just compiled some easy-listening jams from around the globe. Very accessible for the most part. Sometimes, I just wanted to include an artist (e.g., David Byrne) for their contribution to worldbeat styles.

Others, such as Paul Simon's Graceland album, I simply don't have in a digital format handy.

Here goes the download. As always, check the tracklisting in the picture.

Honeymoon pictures

2009-07-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

That's us at a park in Cambridge, Mass.

Probably most of you have seen them, but if you want to look at honeymoon pictures, click here.

We've Moved!

2009-06-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

Our new address is:
4225 E. McDowell
#1094
Phoenix, AZ 85008

We live at the Residences at 4225. Our apartment is brand new, never been lived in, and has wood (laminate) floors. We are super-excited about the new place, and we are also excited about the new couch we are going to get! Stay tuned for that.

Kitchen: island, black appliances

Living room: wood floor, back door to the patio, non-clickety clacking blinds

Updates to Wedding Site/Official Invitation

2009-05-30T10:11:00.001-07:00

I've added a couple of new pages to the wedding site: an Official Invitation page along with an RSVP form. Please check out leslieandbretcrosstheirts to check it out.

Our official invitation. Feel free to print this out, copy it, tell whomever.

And here's the RSVP survey:

2009-05-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

We got some new Fiestaware for our wedding shower at school!

Orange plates and bowls, deep blue and orange bowls, and a beautiful blue pitcher.

Here's a picture of our first meal with them. Pasta with cherry tomatoes and fresh basil. Thanks everyone!

From My Google Reader: Tyranny in a Sentence

2009-05-09T11:35:00.001-07:00

Baseball update

2009-04-26T16:06:00.001-07:00

The Diamondbacks improved to 3-0 today. I recorded my first strikeout of the year, then my second...at the plate, unfortunately. However, I had an RBI single later, and saved a run with a diving catch at short. Which is all well and good, until you have to dust yourself off.

Miss Bee can't understand why I picked such a dirt-filled game - she thinks I would have liked swimming, since it's just one big bath!

The Salsa Challenge

2009-04-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

The Salsa Challenge is an annual event in Tempe, at the Beach Park by the lake. This was my first challenge.

This was one of my favorite salsas. Heavily imbued with avocado chunks...

Lots of people at the challenge - also a protest at A Mountain when we were leaving. The literature for the event stated that over 20,000 people were going to attend. I don't know about all that, but there was a good crowd.

I bet we had over 50 salsas - some were quite hot for me to handle, but it was really fun. Also, the temperature was below 90 which was nice. It hit 100 last week...

Field Trip to the Children's Museum

2009-04-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

The building is an old school, painted and decorated for kids. Everything is really hands-on. It's a great field trip for young kids; I don't think I would take a 3rd grade class, but Pre-K to 2nd is good.This one's not mine, but what a great picture.

The view from the Noodle Forest - a great concept

A children's foot taxi

They rushed by so fast...

Some of our group in front of tubes that blow air really fast. When you put a ball or a handkerchief in they go sailing around and flying out a hole at the other end.

A six year old in size sixteens.

The art studio has this house that has been painted two million times.

Turned out badly, but this student said, "Look, you can see the whole wide world from here!"

The view from the top.

Future Easy Rider

New Shoes!

2009-04-19T18:15:00.001-07:00

I finally got some Tom's Shoes last night - I'm very excited about them. For each pair you buy, one pair is given away. Check out their Our Movement page.

Unfortunately I can't find a picture online that shows them. This is a generic picture of Tom's. They're not in the Toms online store, and the fabric is made by Livity Eco-Textiles, which I can't find that much information about online.

The upshot is that the shoes are made of 61% hemp (benefits: one of the strongest natural fibers, grown with no pesticides, naturally anti-microbial) and 39% recycled plastic bottles. Pretty cool!

Also, I'm strongly considering the tan-and-white rope-sole Tom's for the wedding to match the Indigo linen suit I got at J. Crew.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

2009-04-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

Herein two poor cell phone pictures of our kite flying are spliced together into one poor meta-cell phone picture.

This past week my class celebrated Winds-Day. Festivities included hanging flypaper and observing our catch, learning about the cause of wind, reading wind books together, folding paper airplanes and flying them with and against the wind, and flying kites.

It was very windy, so that was nice. Our flypaper catch was a little less exciting than our predictions, mostly sand and bugs. The result of our statistical analysis came to the shocking conclusion that we can throw paper airplanes farther with the wind at our back. And the kites were fun - fortunately there are no pictures of me sprinting through campus after a runaway Toy Story kite..

Oregon Trail!

2009-04-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

On the iPhone. It's amazing - if you say it's a waste of time, you're calling my entire time in elementary "Computer Class" a waste of time. Well, except for Number Munchers.

Over an hour of game play and we're not even halfway there. This is not your parent's Oregon Trail.

Tiffins and Berries

2009-04-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

We got our new tiffin carriers in the mail. The jury is still out, but I like them at least as a novelty. The fruit is in the lower container; the one in back goes on top, and a lid secures the two together.

Cameo appearance by the Dahl's bag. Thanks Mom!

Website update: Gift Registry

2009-03-30T20:02:00.001-07:00

I've updated the Gift Registry page on the Wedding website. Please go check out the new information; please don't hesitate to tell me what you think is confusing or could be worded better. Oh, and let me know if the links are wonky.

Ideas for improvement can be emailed to me.

Thanks.
Bret

Save the Date

2009-03-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Google sites doesn't want me to upload this to the website today for some reason, but here's the official Save the Date notice. Feel free to save or print this image to remind you to...well, save the date: June 27th, 2009.

More Zoo

2009-03-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

A long-neck...

...getting bullied by an ostrich.

The victor

Shaggiest palm trees in town

A squirrel monkey on chill

(mostly) first graders

Orangutans

This mama carried her baby up the ladder

Chewing on chalk

P-H-O-E-N-I-X ZOO!

2009-03-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

These were the words of a fifth grader as we rumbled up to Papago Park for an intercession field trip to the zoo today. Here are a couple of pictures: Miss Bee had the camera, so I'll need to get those too.

Supposed to have captured three squirrel monkeys - but they're fast

Orangutans!

Long-range view of the Indian elephant

I am a student

2009-03-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

I guess I didn't really tell people about this: I am enrolled in a Master's program at Grand Canyon University as an online student. I will have enough credits to keep my job for next year in about eight weeks. Hooray!

This is a picture of the mall at GCU

The other day Miss Bee was teaching yoga to some high-schoolers at a private school far outside our neighborhood. As I was not allowed into the class and didn't feel like sitting on my bottom for an hour, I began to walk around the barrio. I realized that I was very close to GCU, so I stopped by campus. I took a walking tour through the mall, the student union, around the classrooms, and observed a baseball game in progress.

2009-03-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

Watching a less than stellar movie sometimes makes me think of what I would have said as a reviewer.

Which reminds me of my favorite movie review, of a film called The Golden Compass:

"It lacks direction."

Fixed Pictures

2009-03-15T15:21:00.001-07:00

I fixed the pictures in the Loss of a Kiddo post. Please check them out if you didn't see them before.

I sent this letter to national newspapers.

2009-03-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

A school district in Phoenix that includes infamous landmarks in recent national stories (see: Joe Arpaio's pink-clad prisoners picking trash on 40th St. and McDowell, protesters gathering at Pruitt's furniture on 36th and Thomas) has become the first in the state of Arizona to exercise the option of adding 20 days to their school calendar.

A 12-year old state law allows extra funds for districts that move to a 200-day schedule; so far no public schools have done so. Confronting social and political realities that include Mr. Arpaio's vigorous para-military border patrol, state-mandated Structured English Immersion classes that amount to de facto segregation (whites and blacks in one class, Hispanics in another, African refugees in a third), and schools with over 90% free- and reduced-lunch, Balsz District has made a bold move to reduce the learning disparity between students above and below the poverty line. While time off for wealthier students often includes extra-curricular learning activies, structured sports leagues, and overnight summer camps, lower income students face starker choices: trips to parks and pools (supervised or not), going to school campuses for pick-up soccer or to tag the walls with graffiti, walking for 45 minutes crossing 6 lanes of traffic to get to the library or just playing that video game again.

The schools of the Balsz District are more than reading, writing and arithmetic. They are sources of education from pre-school to adulthood, offering free services ranging from English lessons for anyone in the community to informal assistance with translating and creating resumes. Kids stay at school for a wide variety of activities despite budget cuts that left the district with no formal sports teams or public funding. They come back at night and on weekends for open gym activities or just to play on the playgrounds, and they bring their relatives and neighbors to campus for award-winning Family Night programs.

Unfortunately, even with far-sighted leadership and extra state funds for the project, Balsz District is still unable to make basic, common-sense choices about staffing due to cuts in the state budget. With no money to make new hires, great young teachers are being left at the bottom of the seniority ladder, becoming the first casulties of Reduction in Force letters and being asked to move campuses and grades with no regard for grade-level team communities or quality of instruction. Thanks to a partnership with Arizona State University, terrific young interns and student teachers have been funneled into areas of need, where they frequently come to stay. However, as ASU's skyrocketing tuition and dramatic changes based on state funding are implemented, fewer up and coming teachers will be aware of the small district in the crosshairs of poverty and community, latent racism and acceptance of new cultures, and hurricanes of transience that swirl chaotically around a hub of families that resist the pull of gangs, drugs, and the culture of cynicism and anarchy.

The 20 extra days of school in this environment will ultimately provide an extra year of instruction for students who manage who stay in Balsz schools from kindergarten to 8th grade. At the margins and in aggregate, this move is working for the benefit of the constituents who make Balsz School District a viable entity; a small, lean, innovative district in a culture of large, bureaucratic management of education.

Balsz District is an example for school districts nationwide who are looking to improve, not only the test scores of their students, but the lives and futures of their students and their community, and we feel that we are worthy and deserving of local and national attention for our efforts in the face of distressing financial news. Schools do not get earmarks; we don't have the bully pulpit of pocketed Senators and Congressmen looking to inject money into our swelling coffers. Schools are eking out an existence writing grants for services that should be provided by the state, every year glancing with trepidation at the latest news of budgets, attendance data, override elections. Will we be able to provide art, music, counseling, a full-time nurse, planning time for our teachers? Will we be able to staff our schools with two full-time, accredited administrators? The answers to these questions over the past few years, for Balsz and many other districts, has been resoundingly negative. We at Balsz are proud of having succeeded (4 of 5 schools are Performing according to state standards) in the face of tremendously difficult circumstances. If the money is there (guaranteed by the state, but who knows what that means) the teachers of Balsz District will be teaching a month after all the other schools have closed their doors, working to close the gap between the education Haves and Have-Nots. It is our hope that publicity for our situation and for our choice to extend the school year will help to persuade the politicians that there are schools making good choices, choices that benefit the students rather than serving the interests of the teachers. No longer can the joke be made here that the three best things about teaching are June, July, and August. If the money is produced, the doors at Balsz District will be open for at least one week of instruction in every month of the year.

Bret Sikkink
Balsz Elementary School
Special Education teacher
Autism Spectrum Disorder, self-contained
(515) 210-4540

Links:
Arizona Republic front-page story about the district
Balsz School District home page
Attached is a labeled satellite image of the district

Decision

2009-03-11T20:01:00.001-07:00

I'm not enjoying the upkeep of a blog and a website for one event.

Henceforth, the blog for the website is dead. I will update the website and forgo the blog post. Once again, the website with various details is located here. Add it to your bookmarks.

Pertinent information since the last blog update:
1. The reception party is not going to be at a city park due to the "No Alcohol Allowed" rule.
2. The date has been set: June 27th, 2009. Mark your calendars.
3. If you would like to see the rings we are going to get, go to the website.
4. We will be using an e-vite system to save paper. Don't expect any snail mail; your official invitation will be online along with the rest of the information.

Look out soon for a proper Welcome video; as always, with any questions, comments, or desires to be added to the online mailing list: bret.sikkink@gmail.com

Problems

2009-03-11T19:51:00.001-07:00

Is anyone else missing the pictures on the "Loss of a Kiddo" post? None of my browsers are showing the photos.

The pictures are the best part...

Grilling vegetables

2009-03-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

Not as good as the first time we did it (with pasta btw) but this looks like a new kick for our fooding.

Onions, eggplant, tofu, bell pepper, mushroom, and pineapple.

The Loss of a kiddo and other Mr. S. stuff

2009-03-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

My newest student is now officially newest casualty. We'll miss him.

This was his piece de resistance as my student. For our Dr. Seuss-themed door decoration, he combined his obsessive love of all things geography and national landmarks with his favorite Seuss book "There's a Wocket in My Pocket".

My contribution was the title: "And to Think That I Learned it on Belleview Street". Here's my take on the "Mulberry" kid. Check out those calves!

Here was the gang sans 1 while J.K. was with us, eating breakfast at the Pentagon Table as the Long Table was otherwise occupied.

Pride Day

2009-03-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

Pride Day this weekend for the district at a local park. Some quick snaps.

A Mr. S. student waiting for the rock wall.

Two Miss Bee students jousting.

As Miss Bee herself looks on.

Two brothers duke it out.

Pride Day and other school stuff

2009-03-08T14:00:00.001-07:00

A new DIY Coffee table

2009-02-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

..aaand..We're Back

2009-02-19T17:14:00.000-08:00

We have finally appeared to resolve our Internet issues. There has been an update to the website.

As always, any questions or comments, requests, etc. can be directed my way:
bret [dot] sikkink @ gmail [dot] com

J. Dilla

2009-02-12T15:55:00.001-08:00

3rd year since the passing of James Yancey. I've been meaning to post this sample: the centerpiece (to me) of "Donuts" and a cool flip on the Jackson 5 original.

Listen: "Time: Donuts of the Heart"

Listen: Jackson Five - "All I Do Is Think of You"

We're Getting Married

2009-02-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Not my best picture, but we took it the night we got engaged.

Okay a little late, but here's some breaking news. Miss Bee and I are tying the knot this summer in Des Moines [Gracious bowing]. If you actually read this page, you're probably already aware. For more news, etc. I have created a Google Site about the wedding: check us out here. There will also be a blog dedicated to these updates, for those who prefer to get their news via RSS. Last but not least, I'm working on a e-mailing list - don't freak out if you haven't gotten anything yet. I'm still working.

Bret!

2009-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

Like those Obama posters created by Shepard Fairey? Roll your own at Obamicon.me.

I know that's right!

The Cereal Aisle

2009-01-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

Maybe I just need to get out more, but I found all of these pretty hilarious.

I'm getting into blogging from the new Picasa for Mac. It loads so fast, especially compared with iPhoto, and I don't need to open a browser, upload photos, etc.

Testing: Posting from Picasa

2009-01-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how much I like posting pictures from the new desktop Picasa client. It's definitely kind of nice, though. More to come.

**Update** Weird formatting alert. I'll have to look into this.

Family Picture '08

2009-01-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to our hosts!

L to R: Miss Bee, Mister 'Chicken', Li'l Sista, Pops, Moms, and Joe
(names changed to protect the innocent)

Department of "What??"

2008-12-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

The text on this bag of bread reads:

"Vegetarian Friendly". A little below that is "Perfect for Turkey Sandwiches!"

What a great last weekend in Phoenix

2008-12-21T10:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the sheisty photograph, but I couldn't really find much in the way of Creative Commons licenses for this specific pose.

Miss Bee taught her first yoga class on Friday!

It was great - there were six students, and pretty much everyone knew what they were doing. She planned her series of poses in the afternoon right before class, and I made the 80 minute mix of songs she was going to play. I think both of us were very happy with our contributions!

My favorite moment of the class was a transition that Miss Bee was very proud of. It was right in the middle of the class, and we had made our way back to Downward Facing Dog (there's a lot of that in Ashtanga). Then we did something called a Half Wild Thing, which means that we took one foot off the ground in Down Dog and twisted round. Then we took that foot and brought it all the way forward into Pigeon pose, seen in the picture. As we were doing that, a DJ Shadow song was playing called "Midnight in a Perfect World". I was so proud of Miss Bee's transition and happy at how my song seemed to be working with the class!

Listen to an extended mix of "Midnight". Highly recommended for yogic activity!

She got compliments and an ovation from everyone in the class when she was done, and one of the students who is also in the yoga teaching training asked for a copy of the mix!

Click here to download "Yogurt".
Tracklisting:

In other news:

-After the class we went to a convocation party for Miss Bee's best teacher friend Katie. Congratulations on your Masters!

-On Saturday we went shopping for some new winter clothes. I got some purple slacks at Goodwill and Miss Bee got a velour sweathshirt with a drawstring at the bottom to keep the wind out! Then at the Buffalo Exchange I got a pink cashmere sweater and Miss Bee found a gray cardigan with flowers embroidered on it - we're all ready for the Iowa Winter now. (...)

-We also went to a student's birthday party, complete with two pinatas, a brinca brinca (pictured below for you gringos), and of course, authentic rice and beans with some sort of oily roast beast.

-After the party we went to a pretty cool coffeehouse called Cartel Coffee Labs in Tempe to meet a few friends. Really awesome space, with mostly found and amateur art and decoration. The coffee itself was amazing, and very strong, from freshly (in-house) roasted organic beans brewed one cup at a time. Visit Cartel online for more information - those of you in Des Moines can try some with me, as we bought a pound of Brazilian whole beans.

-For the coup de grace, we went to see The Godfather at the Tempe Valley Arts theater. My favorite film on the big screen, in a newly restored version! Absolutely stunning.

Baking!

2008-12-20T15:13:00.000-08:00

I forgot about how Blogger reverses the order of your pictures, so they're in pretty much backwards chronological order of the way they were baked. (Of course, if this were Mac OS X software I could just drag the pictures around. Damn Windows...and Google while I'm at it.)

Ok, this was the whole spread. There are no surprises anymore. But c'mon, that's a lot, right!

Chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips.

This was a double chocolate bar with peppermints...didn't work out. These babies stuck to the pan like it was a mama bear and they were cubs. No dice.

Pound cake.

Less awesome photo. They were great, and didn't last very long.

Oh, my contribution? .... The kitchen was clean when we were done. Enough said.

These are called Blondies: brownies without the chocolate. Butterscotch chips were a last minute audible for Heath bars (we couldn't find any..) and they turned out amazing. Except for the appearance. They didn't really look right. So we ate the whole thing!

Coffee cake

This our counter after we got home from the store. Oh boy.

Miss Bee got a new toy.

I guess we didn't get a photo of the oatmeal cookies with Craisins...those were good too.

These were for Miss Bee's first grade team members. The rest went to the office staff and the rest of the faculty. It took a few hours, but it was worth it.

All recipes came from the Mark Bittman book "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian".

Still alive

2008-12-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

Holy ignoring your blog, Batman.

Since last I posted, Miss Bee and I visited Vegas, but didn't take any pictures to post. Sorry. We enjoyed a wonderful time with the family Buttar, and are just now sending off thank-yous to them for including us in their Christmas celebration.

Two nondescript weeks of work later and here we are, a mere 5 days from vacation.

Here's some links to tide you over:
The New York Times annual year in ideas 2008 - always interesting reading.
New blog from mathematician Terrence Tao - this link is to an airport-based puzzle (Hat tip Tyler Cowen)
Netflix is now streaming movies instantly to Macs! No more waiting two days for your new movie to come.
The New Yorker now has a digital edition of their magazine. As a subscriber it is free to me. Hit me up if you would like the login details to read all of the New Yorker articles.
The A.V. Club interviews Wes Anderson on the eve of the Criterion release of his debut film "Bottle Rocket". Here's the talk, here's information about the film.

New Table on the Porch

2008-11-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks to our friend Pam for giving us the little table, and to anonymous Goodwill donors for the chairs. Also, there's my bike in the background; thanks to our friends Jake and Stevie for providing that to me (Jake got the frame, Stevie built it). Thanks to Miss Bee for the lentil soup.

This post reminds me of the old "emotionally disabled" class teacher at our school (she quit about a month into school). For even the tiniest little thing that you did for her, she would thank you effusively. Sample conversation:

Her: "I'm so sorry to bother you. Sorry. What page are we on in the new teacher manual?"
Me: "No problem, we're on page 64."
Her: "Thank you soo much. Thank you. Thank you."
...Five minutes later...
Her: "I'm so sorry. Do you have the extra sign-in sheets? Sorry to bother you, I'm so sorry."
Me, growing annoyed: "Yeah, they're right here [in front of your face]."
Her: "Oh, sorry, they're right there. Thanks! Thank you soo much. Thank you. Thanks."

The People Have Spoken

2008-11-16T09:41:00.001-08:00

In case you would like to look at the results from the "What Should I Blob" survey:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pLSGPc5ZtBN9BG8Zh8pP7Yw

A Crisper Posse

2008-11-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

I finagled my scanner to get a little better picture here...

Mr. Bret's posse

2008-11-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

There they are. Haha!

The Suns Come to School

2008-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

Click here to watch the video of the Suns "Planet Orange" visit to school a couple weeks ago.

The girl in this picture is the sister of one of the kids I worked with last year. Some of you might remember Alfred from a few posts; this was the first. Also see my Picasa photo album, mostly of him, on the web here.

**Update**
Miss Bee taught Brianna how to read when she was a student teacher!

Russ Roberts everyone

2008-11-11T20:02:00.001-08:00

That doesn't mean that free markets are perfect. Or that you can't have bankruptcies or meltdowns or bubbles or busts. But to get a really spectacular meltdown like we're in the middle of now, for that you need government.

Spotted at Cafe Hayek.