I meant to post this before–there’s a really interesting take on Frank Rich and Paul Krugman and the NYT power structure by James Wolcott. Here’s a choice selection about the columnist I shyly crush on:
“Look at Frank Rich. His politics aren’t that much different from Krugman’s, practically indistinguishable. But Rich doesn’t draw institutional flak because he’s part of the institution, a superb career politician and champion schmoozer. I’m not saying that as a putdown of Rich, simply pointing out that his identification with the Times itself immunizes him from the sort of static Krugman receives. Rich is a Times insider (as is Dowd). Part of the team.”
I’ve felt the static on Krugman–I enjoy defending him from Dems who find him too zealous (most don’t put up much of a fight, as it’s a retold line they’ve heard themselves). The perception is that his early work of simply explaining complex economic theories was great, and that his Bush-bashing is not. I’ve enjoyed every article I’ve read through–he’s a great voice to rally around.
The Price of Being Too Popular [James Wolcott]
First John Edwards, now ACLU Exec. Anthony Romero, next congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT). TPMCafe’s Table for One is not disappointing–Josh Marshall’s venture is quite impressive.
I’ve been browsing through Technorati in the vain struggle to find a juggling/ulimate frisbee blog nearly as badass as mine, when I found a stand-up comedian’s take on the WJF. Some takes:
“Juggling has to be the only sport where the athletes probably got their asses kicked by the high school chess club.”
“They had an interview with the American juggling team. This guy was saying ‘Juggling is my life.’ Okay, we get it. You don’t have a life. No need to use all this fancy code.”
Yeap, pretty much all accurate.
This actually is quite a good idea. If I didn’t have such sweet access to the old squashball courts above Morrell Gym, I could head over to Mr. Suds. Good to see a blog entirely about juggling–wish he updated more.
I’ve spent the last few hours fully imersing myself into del.icio.us, a really popular internet service that allows your store, sort, share, and view others’ bookmarks. It’s really versatile and expandable. You’ll notice the new link on the side to my del.icio.us page, which has an ever-current database of the newest pages that I think warrant noting. It’ll primarily be stuff that I find interesting but which I lack any desire to comment on. Plus, it’s a great tool for me personally to organize my daily pages that I view, find out what the hottest links are on the net, and find the odd page that I want to look at again from a few months prior (really easy with firefox). Check here for the official ‘about’, here for the Wikipedia explanation (and links of how-tos), and this for the page that I used to get started and implement it into firefox.
My Del.icio.us Page [Del.icio.us]
Anthony Gatto’s newest juggling video is of seven-club backcrosses. Just for fun, let’s do an exercise. Hold your breath, stand up, and imagine seven clubs in the air plummeting towards your head. Now imagine that instead of running away, you’re going to catch all seven very gravity-conscious objects and throw them back to the heavens in a coordinated way. To make things easier, you’ll have two clubs in your hands at all times (so there are technically only five clubs aiming for your head at any given time). To make things far worse, however, you’ve got to catch them in front of you, and then throw them behind your back.
There’s no conceivable way of explaining how complicated and difficult this is. Anthony Gatto is the best juggler in the world (try out any of his other videos). To put this in comparison, I can juggle five balls, six on a good day, and seven sometimes. I can’t juggle four clubs. He can juggle seven–behind his back. This man is god.
Seven-club backcrosses [homepage.mac.com]
Anthony Gatto Videos [homepage.mac.com]
Gatto Documentary [The Long Huck]
I had no idea that Schani, the famous auteur of Thomas Dietz’ utterly brilliant juggling videos–the best juggling videos on the net, definitely, and probably the most famous set among the internet population of jugglers–was such an awesome photographer. His photos are professional. I really like the pictures of jugglers not doing much juggling at all. He’s mates with some greats–can’t wait to see more. Make sure to check them out.
Schani’s Flickr Page [Flickr]
Devoid of any academic responsibility as of this morning. Luckily, Nora spread the good news about Jacko before the exam (I hummed ‘You are Not Alone’ the whole way through). In other news, a majority of my friends are starting the first of their four exams this afternoon.
“Foot-Juggling” is not juggling. It’s just not. It doesn’t involve objects; it involves people. These guys are wicked badass (though the article is such a bland advertisement for Cirque). They’re perfoming currently at Varekai, the Cirque du Soleil show now in Baltimore, which I sent my parents to see. Here’s what they said about it:
Thanks so much for Cirque du Soleil!! The seats were terrific (center, right behind an aisle so the view was clear) and the acts were amazing. But one of the attractions is there is much more going on than just the stuff on stage – many mysterious doings were visible in the background, some of which were explained and some not. In fact, there seemed to be some common thread linking the acts together but because the narration was either in Esperanto or a lesser-know dialect of Chippewa or we rubes don’t understand the complex subtleties of Canadian circus performances, it passed us by.
Fortunately, this did not detract at all from the enjoyment of the show. The acrobats were terrific, of course, but the comedians were great and they had an amazing juggler who juggled little balls with his mouth, did some cool stuff with big balls, and threw straw hats in the air like boomerang Frisbees. He was Chinese and there were three little Chinese kids (age 10) who were equally neat. They had ropes with little weights at each end they twirled around, threw in the air, did sundry flips while waiting for them to return and other amazing stuff.
We had a great time and have told scads of people about our wonderful son who gave us this great gift. Thanks so much!!
I especially agree with the last paragraph.
I’ve implemented Google Free WebSearch (see right, down) for The Long Huck, which works fine as a script, but Google has not ‘crawled’ and indexed my blog yet. When it does, people will be able to search all my posts really easily.
