May this be your best one yet.
One of these years that bon mot will be true…
Category Archives: General
Who’s Watching What
I was just watching Once Upon a Time in the West , a very good Sergio Leone Western. Henry Fonda, as Frank, plays an excellent psychopath. But as I was watching the commentary, some film historian said it was an oddity why Leone showed Frank meeting the widow at the ranch, then jumps to Mesa Verde where Frank meets the railroad baron then jumps to the ranch where the other characters are and then jumps to a love scene with Frank and the widow, back at the ranch. Why the film historian thought the love scene was back at the ranch, I don’t know. I thought it was rather obvious that the love scene was taking place in Frank’s Mesa Verde camp and not back in the ranch’s bedroom, which had already been reviewed in detail.
Synchronicity
I was just watching the Colbert Report where Julie Taymor was his guest, talking about the new movie she just directed – The Tempest. Once the Report was over I put on a “Behind the Scenes” DVD – a TV series the Penn and Teller did on creativity in 1992. This episode was about Theater and Penn introduced the episode featuring Julie Taymor directing a play – The Tempest.
The Equation of Time
I was looking at my calendar and noticed that the Winter Solstice is coming up Dec 21. Then I noticed that the time of sunset on the solstice is not the earliest amongst the days nearby. And the time of sunrise is not the latest. Indeed, looking over the various sunrise and sunset times, it turns out that the earliest sunset was in the period of December 3-10 – 16:37 in Colorado Springs – and the latest sunrise occurs from December 31 – January 10 – 7:18. But the Solstice is still the shortest day, longest night of the year. (9:26, 14:34 hrs). Most peculiar, one would intuitively think that the shortest day would have the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset. Something was wrong and I needed to find out. So I went to Google.
It turns out that others have noticed this phenomenon before and have an explanation of it. I like this explanation – he said analemma. The US Naval Observatory was not quite as detailed but did summarize it nicely- Declination and The Equation of Time.
I still have a hard time visualizing the spacial relationships. What I need is a picture – no… no… doesn’t help…
WAKE UP
I got a new alarm clock that lets you plug in your iPod and will wake you to the music from your player. (if you don’t have your iPod docked then it weakly beeps at you)
The Finale from “Chorus Line” is a good way to wake up in the morning. The Dropkick Murphys The Rocky Road to Dublin also works. Loreena McKennett– not so much.
The Other End
before I forget…. Every rainbow has two ends…except Mobius Rainbows and Sundogs
In which order is discussed
Normally I would expect the rainbow to be after the storm, but this is Colorado
Weather
We had some weather floating around today
Genius
Genius is seeing patterns where no one has seen them before.
Insanity is seeing patterns where none exist.
Creativity is illuminating or illustrating patterns.
Paul Krugman
A good article in the New Yorker on Paul Krugman. I even have a cameo appearance, though I wasn’t one of those wearing costumes, tee-shirts or blue hair…