See the full review at chicagotheaterblog.com
Was this the first Spaghetti Western? We saw it Wednesday afternoon. Not Puccini's best, but entertaining.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
I have to get to one of the the coasts!
via congress.org
Green = no health care unless you don't need it! Red = help those who need help. The insurance companies win this round of posturing - but thankfully it will go nowhere.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Beware Bipartisan Anything
Beware Bipartisan School Reform
If everybody on the Hill is happy, Americans probably shouldn't be.
Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 7, 2011
As an example of what happens when Democrats and Republicans agree, consider the Reagan-era dismantling of the mental-health system. The conservatives wanted smaller government, the liberals did not want anyone locked up against their will -- and now we have lunatics like Jared Lee Loughner with no ability to stop them until they have wreaked their havoc. He was identified as mentally ill ( http://tinyurl.com/2acg968 ) but nothing could be done until it was too late!
Friday, January 07, 2011
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Watch Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
Interesting interview with a great street photographer.
Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/01/video-joel-meyerowitz.html
Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/01/video-joel-meyerowitz.html
Monday, January 03, 2011
An thought-provoking take on Shabbos observance from DovBear
When you think about it, camping is an odd little ritual. You exert energy pitching a tent and setting up camp, then subsist for the duration on food that is tasty, but hardly gourmet. Real camping enthusiasts drive miles into the woods and do without the conveniences of store bought wood, and indoor plumbing, but even amateur dabblers like me deliberately put ourselves into a situation that, on the face of it, seems uncomfortable. What's the appeal of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, the pervasive smell of smoke, and limited access to modern conveniences like air conditioning and WiFi?
see the rest of the story at dovbear.blogspot.com
Also applies to Conservative Judaism - or any other ritualistic observance.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Just testing to see how Posterous treats image files when posting by email.
Posterous is an interesting service that enables easy uploading of many media types to multiple social sites like Twitter, Flickr, blogs, etc. If you are not interested in seeing if Posterous worked, move on, nothing much of interest here.
This is a test post to see what it does to images sizes directed at several destinations. The original attached image size (the flower) is 3209 × 2848 pixels and 1.5 MB.
I am not sure where the text ends up on the various services, and how it will be formatted.
It is also a test of formatting.
This email should post it once, and only once, to each of Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr, as well as a Posterous blog which I don't really want but it insists on using, as far as I can tell. It could be useful if you don't already have a blog.
My sites can be found at
http://clivemoss.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/chmoss
http://www.facebook.com/clive.moss
http://chmoss.tumblr.com/
http://chmoss.posterous.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chmoss/
Actually, I am on other places as well, but Posterous can not get to them.
I have no good reasons for so many sites, only excuses
- My most credible excuse is that I have been doing this sort of thing for many years and as the world changes, I move on, carrying the detritus of a long life in technology and photography
- My other excuse is that I am a geek and I enjoy finding out how this stuff works and wondering why anybody in their right mind would want to do it
Oddly enough, Posterous can be found at www.posterous.com
If a rather unexceptional picture of a flower (which is being sent as an attachment) does not appear, then the test was a partial failure.
In addition, I am embedding, rather than attaching, a 2888x2475 pixel 1.7 MB page of images from our last trip to Turkey, to check if Posterous cares how the image is sent from the Gmail client.
The Right knows they are right. The Left gets left behind.
There seems to be a certain temperamental difference between conservatives and Republicans on the one hand and liberals and the Democrats on the other. In broad strokes, Republicans, especially of the tea-party stripe, are typically proud, at least unapologetic, and sometimes belligerent about their beliefs. Democrats, in contrast, seem to adopt the defensive position by default. ...
Why are Democrats more anemic? One thought comes from the liberal journalist Thomas Frank. Writing in Harper's, Mr Frank argues that while Republicans respond to their base, Democrats have a misbegotten faith in a "Magic Middle" of centrist ideas that are tolerable, at least, to most Americans:
Democrats, for their part, tend to do the opposite, dreaming of bipartisanship and states neither red nor blue and of some reasonably-arrived-at consensus future in which the culture wars cease and everyone plays nicely forevermore under the smiling, benificent sun of free trade and the knowledge industries.
read the full article at economist.com
The Economist often has an interesting take on American politics.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
I always wonder why people sing songs ...
... With no clue at all about what they are saying.
The combination of Google Reader and Posterous included the post below when I shared it with no attribution. I did not write it. It is from the excellent blog "Language Log"
Google Reader and Posterous omitted the heading and credit below. I include it here, with apologies to the original authors.
From the auldies but guidies file
(This post first appeared on 12/30/2004 under the heading "And a Right Guid Willie Waught to You, Too, Pal.")
We like the incantations we recite on ritual occasions to be linguistically opaque, from the unparsable "Star-Spangled Banner" (not many people can tell you what the object of watch is in the first verse) to the Pledge of Allegiance, with its orotund diction and its vague (and historically misanalyzed) "under God." But for sheer unfathomability, "Auld Lang Syne" is in a class by itself. Not that anybody can sing any of it beyond the first verse and the chorus, before the lyrics descend inscrutably into gowans, pint-stowps, willie-waughts and other items that would already have sounded pretty retro to Burns's contemporaries.
But it's my guess that most people take the first two clauses of the song as the protases of a conditional, rather than as rhetorical questions. True, most versions of the lyrics end the lines with question marks (this is the most familiar version, a little different from Burns's):
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o' auld lang syne?
But a lot of people leave out the question marks (for example here, here, and here), which suggests that the interrogative force isn't obvious. It may make no sense that way — "if old friends should be forgotten, we'll drink to bygone days anyway." But incomprehensibility only adds to the sense of immemorial tradition, even this happens to be a borrowed one, grafted onto American culture in 1929 by a Canadian of Italian ancestry.
As Eric Hobsbawm has observed, after all, the point of invented traditions like the kilt or the Pledge is to provide "emotionally charged signs of club membership rather than the statutes and objects of the club." And what could be more evocative than a New Year's song that's sodden with quaintly impenetrable phraseology? "Is not the Scotch phrase Auld Lang syne exceedingly expressive?" Burns wrote to a friend in 1793. Well, it works for me, anyway. Have a happy one.
The combination of Google Reader and Posterous included the post below when I shared it with no attribution. I did not write it. It is from the excellent blog "Language Log"
Google Reader and Posterous omitted the heading and credit below. I include it here, with apologies to the original authors.
From the auldies but guidies file
(This post first appeared on 12/30/2004 under the heading "And a Right Guid Willie Waught to You, Too, Pal.")
We like the incantations we recite on ritual occasions to be linguistically opaque, from the unparsable "Star-Spangled Banner" (not many people can tell you what the object of watch is in the first verse) to the Pledge of Allegiance, with its orotund diction and its vague (and historically misanalyzed) "under God." But for sheer unfathomability, "Auld Lang Syne" is in a class by itself. Not that anybody can sing any of it beyond the first verse and the chorus, before the lyrics descend inscrutably into gowans, pint-stowps, willie-waughts and other items that would already have sounded pretty retro to Burns's contemporaries.
But it's my guess that most people take the first two clauses of the song as the protases of a conditional, rather than as rhetorical questions. True, most versions of the lyrics end the lines with question marks (this is the most familiar version, a little different from Burns's):
Should auld acquaintance be forgotAnd never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o' auld lang syne?
But a lot of people leave out the question marks (for example here, here, and here), which suggests that the interrogative force isn't obvious. It may make no sense that way — "if old friends should be forgotten, we'll drink to bygone days anyway." But incomprehensibility only adds to the sense of immemorial tradition, even this happens to be a borrowed one, grafted onto American culture in 1929 by a Canadian of Italian ancestry.
As Eric Hobsbawm has observed, after all, the point of invented traditions like the kilt or the Pledge is to provide "emotionally charged signs of club membership rather than the statutes and objects of the club." And what could be more evocative than a New Year's song that's sodden with quaintly impenetrable phraseology? "Is not the Scotch phrase Auld Lang syne exceedingly expressive?" Burns wrote to a friend in 1793. Well, it works for me, anyway. Have a happy one.
Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone
Making life easy (for me)
I am switching to Posterous for all posts to social apps. This post is a test to see what happens. It may result in dual posts somewhere. Sorry. A picture of nothing in particular is attached to see what happens. A boring video for the same reason.
Here goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
