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If you’ve never heard of or read Dr. Thomas Sowell, you’re missing out on one of the most brilliant minds since Milton Friedman. REALLY.
P.S. Don’t know why I didn’t do it before, but I’m adding Mr. Ka-Ching to the TR Blogroll. He’s got a lotta good stuff.
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Chameleon frightened by a technological thingie.
Where do we go from here? I’m not gonna post Boy George, and the Utoobage offering of a band called “The Chameleons” held little interest for me. Oh wait. I got it.
The Lounge Lizards, 1988, “The Voice of Chunk.” This experimental group never quite hit, but they had a point. Some might axe me, “Bunk, do you really like this crap?” and my emphatic response is, “No, but at least they tried.”
This is the stuff that I like. Keith Ferguson formed The Tail Gators after he left The Fabulous Thunderbirds, so there’s the lizard link. Big guitars. Yep.
I like this stuff, too, maybe even better:
The Persuasions are an awesome a capella group. Vid from 1971, about the time that they signed their first recording contract, courtesy Frank Zappa.
Have a great weekend folks, and we’ll continue the summer sleigh-ride tomorrow.
[Found here. Click on teh image for a bonus.]
Father Jean-Baptiste de La Chapelle, born about 1710 and probably died in 1792 in Paris. Before a large audience, he jumped into the Seine, eating, drinking, snuffing, discharging a pistol and writing while floating on the surface. He tried again, three years later, this demonstration before Louis XV near the royal hunting lodge in the forest of Senart, but his attempt failed when the current swept him away so fast that the king could not identify what happened to him.
His invention was a cork suit for soldiers, a precursor to the modern life vest. [Found here.]
13 August is “Left Handers’ Day,” and since Friday the 13th comes on a Monday this month, it means a whole week of bad luck – but only for those of the dextral persuasion.
My first inkling that things were not equal, at least handed-wise, was with the q-shaped school desks. Occasionally there was a single p-shaped desk per classroom, but that was a rarity, so us lefties adapted without complaint.
Later on it was penmanship, where part of the grade dismissed content and replaced it with “neatness.” To further embarrass us non-dextralites, they made us put little green plastic thingys on our pencils and pens as if we didn’t now how to grasp them properly. As late as 4th grade, Mrs. Mikulski grabbed and twisted my hand because I was “hooking” in order to write in cursive with the proper slant.
And all this happened in Public School. Continue reading “On The Other Hand”
“How To Make Vietnamese Coffee.” (Hint: Step 1. Go to Vietnam.)
Neil Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for man…” could be translated “Un petit pas pour l’homme,” and the title of the film is “Un petit plat pour l’homme” can be translated as “One Small Dish For Man”
3rd year animation project (assigned subject “Kitchen”) from Charron/Onectin via email. Very cool.
Eric Whitacre‘s Virtual Choir 3 is awesome and kinda creepy at the same time.
His call for the Virtual Choir 3.0, which included a purpose-built website to make video collection easier and more uniform, set a new record. It included 3476 videos from 76 different nations, including one from Vanuatu. That is the video you see above.
[Found here.]
Buster Keaton’s 1926 comedy The General is based on a real event. In April 1862 a group of Union volunteers hijacked a Confederate train in Georgia and led the rebels on an 88-mile, six-hour chase through the state, tearing up tracks and cutting telegraph lines as they went and releasing cars behind them to slow their pursuers. The conspirators ran out of fuel just short of Chattanooga, their goal, but the Union awarded a Medal of Honor to most of them for the exploit.
…
“I was more proud of that picture than any I ever made,” Keaton said in 1963. “Because I took an actual happening out of the … history books, and I told the story in detail, too.”
[Found here.]
That’s probably enough stuff to keep you out of trouble for a while. Have a great weekend, folks, and hope tomorrow is cooler.
Tacky Raccoons 