W.P. Greene

The other afternoon, for lack of air conditioning and a better thing to do, a female companion and myself, snuck into a movie! Aren't we badasses? The primary attribute required of the movie was that it be starting as near to our arrival as possible. What we ended up seeing was well worth the metaphorical firebombing of the film industry by seeing a 10 dollar movie for free. It was Don Cheadle's new vehicle, Talk To Me. Now neither of us had any idea what this movie was, let alone cared, let alone that it was based on real people, and events, and even a real place: Washington DC, in a real time: the 1970's. Wow! I was just happy it wasn't a romantic comedy (as I had assumed based on the title). But anyway, it's a fairly decent film, with some fairly decent points touched upon.

More interestingly is the fact that this man, Petey Greene, played by Cheadle was a genuine human being. Prominent DJ for DC's WOL 1450AM. Ex-con, activist, loudmouth, and all around bad-ass mother-SHUT YO MOUTH! Anyway, Greene articulated a lot of the rage felt in the black communities of DC in the 70's. He also spun some most excellent funk and soul records. He eventually branched out into stand up comedy, and settled in on his own tv show, Petey Greene's Washington on WDCA-TV20.

Greene died of cancer in 1984 and an estimated 20,000 mourners turned out to show their last respect. I'll do my best to dig up some of this cat's more radical moments and shoot em back at you. Sounds like a righteous dude. Hat's off to ya Petey Greene.

Biological Myths Debunked!

Alright, so this isn't news to me (because I'm so smart, duh!) but apparently there are alot of you out there who still believe stuff like this. ...A LOT! Could have something to do with that fact that we came in 33 out of 34 surveyed countries in terms of our acceptance of EVOLUTION! So anyway, you don't have to stop believing in God or Leprechauns yet, but let's at least put two big myths about us humans in the ground.

First up, the assumption (ASSUMPTION! This CAN and IS proven every day) that men have two fewer ribs than women, since God had to take a pair from Adam to make Eve. But dig this, that's not true. Men and women BOTH have 12 pairs of ribs. Period. There is no argument to be made here, just the calm acceptance of the fact that you have spent you life under a false assumption. Link if you still don't believe me.

Secondly, lets address the less biblical belief that oxygenated blood is blue. It is not. It is certainly a deeper, more purple tinged color, but a far cry from blue. It is our veins that look blue through our skin, it is not a result of the royal blue blood that floweth through all of our veins.

Longer, redder wavelengths, though, can penetrate more deeply into the skin than shorter, bluer wavelengths before reflecting out. A vein looks blue because red light travels far enough into the skin to be absorbed by the blood in the vein. If the blood vessel is far enough below the skin, however, blue light--which would normally also be absorbed by the vein--reflects out of the skin before reaching the vein. So the light reflecting from tissue over the vein contains less red light than blue, giving the vein a bluish cast.

From the MadSci Network. Try this experiment if you still don't believe anyone.

So sleep soundly with a slightly better understanding of yourself tonight. Know your own body if nothing else. Maybe next week we'll get on to the widely held bullshit that there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. Yeah...we'll get on to that for sure.

Boffins and Anoraks

Hurling some British slang in your direction this eve, we come to "boffins" and "anoraks". Each in their own way describing a "nerd" to us, although both words carry with them their specific connotations. A boffin describes a scientist or an engineer, generally an older, more mature man, tinkering away at some useful endeavor. An anorak on the other hand, describes a creature from the bottom of the barrel of social sensibilities. Someone like a D&D dweeb, or a trainspotter. Much lower functioning than their cousins the boffin, anoraks are doomed to ridicule with no hope for a way out through technological advancement. You on the other hand know how to identify them, hopefully you didn't learn something about yourself. Have the fun.

Trainspotters

After years and years, it finally occurred to me to find out exactly what the hell a "trainspotter" is. Well trainspotters, or railfans, are a classification of people that range from the amateur spotter to the obsessive weirdo. They are, as simply as the name suggests, people enamored with railways, and all aspects involving railways. Trainspotters are a particular classification of railfans that are particularly hung up on attempting to spot and identify every single piece of rolling stock know to exist for a particular rail company. They can be found hovering around rail line with note pads or tape recorded jotting down the serial numbers of passing rail cars. They are generally well connected with communities of other trainspotters in order to form as complete a picture as possible.

From Wikipedia, more on railfans:

Excessively enthusiastic railfans are sometimes referred to pejoratively as "foamers", especially by American railworkers, in reference to the joking notion that they foam at the mouth in their excitement over train operations. "FRN" (for "fucking rail nut")[2] is a similarly-used term in the American rail industry. The UK equivalent is "crank", which has been taken into enthusiast usage.

In the UK, railfans are sometimes called trainspotters, grizzers or gricers, according to their speciality (see below) or anoraks. In Australia, they are sometimes called "gunzels".

Just further proof that obsession knows no limits. The more you know.

Circumfrence of your brain

Eratosthenes (276-194BC) the Greek who measured the circumfrence of the Earth within 202 miles. (He was short, and the actual distance is 24,902, so do the math.) His measurements were all accomplished using mathematics:

Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the town of Syene on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the Sun would be 7.2° south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 7.2/360 of the total circumference of the Earth. The distance between the cities was known from caravan travellings to be about 5000 stadia: approximately 800 km. He established a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is no longer known (the common Attic stadion was about 185 m), but it is generally believed that the circumference calculated by Eratosthenes corresponds to 39,690 km [citation needed]. The estimate is over 99% of the actual distance of 40,008 km.

This same method was repeated 150 years later by Posidonius, and subsequently rejected by the Christians, who had faith that they were more intelligent and advanced than the Greeks, for about 1,400 years.

Eratosthenes was also a playwright, developed the idea of latitude, and longitude, cataloged over 650 stars, many cartographic maps, was a currator at the Library of Alexandria, and wrote a historical account back to the Trojan War. Because of all of this, he was labeled as "Beta" by his contemporaries for being second best at everything. I'm not sure if they knew they were complimenting him.

from: Wikipedia

cuddle up with Claudine Longet

A recent happy discovery for me has been the works of Claudine Longet. One of her records was spinning at work the other day and it blew me right away. I have it one order from Sweden. It could allegedly take a year to arrive. She traffics mostly in the sweet and sultry territory of late 60's bubble-gum pop. I love it! When I went up to ask about ordering her album I was informed that she had become somewhat infamous for shooting her Olympic skier boyfriend. Ladies and gentlemen, I am in love. Anyone who can record such lush and sweet renditions of pop songs AND get away with murder is alright with me.

Here's the rest of the whole story:
Claudine Georgette Longet (born January 29, 1942 in Paris), was a popular singer and recording artist in the 1960s and 1970s. She was best known as the ex-wife of singer Andy Williams and later for being convicted for killing skiing star Spider Sabich.

She met Williams while he pulled over to aid her on a Las Vegas road. She was a dancer at the time at the Folies Bergere. They married on Christmas Day 1961 and had three children, Noëlle, Christian and Robert. In 1968, she appeared in The Party with Peter Sellers and sang "Nothing to Lose" by Henry Mancini. Longet recorded a series of five albums for A&M Records between 1966 and 1970 and two albums for Williams's Barnaby label in 1971 and 1972. She also made frequent acting appearances in television series and appeared from time to time on Williams' variety series and specials. Williams called Longet a beautiful, sleek brunette with large doe eyes, "my favorite French singer". She and Williams separated in 1969 but did not divorce until 6 years later.

One song, "Wanderlove" (music and lyrics by Mason Williams), went to #7 on the charts in Singapore and still occasionally gets airplay on Asian radio.

Longet was arrested and charged with the March 21, 1976 shooting death of her lover, Olympic skier Vladimir "Spider" Sabich at his Aspen, Colorado home after he had showered and was preparing to dress. Sabich was a very handsome athlete with no lack of female companionship when he met Longet. As their relationship progressed, Longet and her three children moved in with Sabich, radically altering his bachelor life. There were widespread rumors of discord between the couple before the shooting. Spider had told friends he wanted Claudine out of his house but had taken no real action to evict her because he adored her children. At the sensational trial, Longet claimed the gun discharged accidentally as Sabich was showing her how it worked. Despite the fact that the autopsy found that Sabich was bent over with his back turned to her and Claudine was no closer than 6 feet from him, she stuck to her story that it was a tragic accident. Williams very publicly supported Claudine throughout the trial, even escorting her to and from the courthouse.

The Aspen police made two enormous blunders which turned the tide for Longet. They took a blood sample from her and confiscated her diary without warrants. Longet's blood contained cocaine and her diary showed that her relationship with Sabich had turned bitter. Since the evidence was not obtained legally the prosecution couldn't use it. The gun was also mishandled by non-weapons experts. It was given to a policeman, who wrapped it in a towel and put it in the glove compartment of his unit; for 3 days it was unaccounted for.

Put on the stand, Longet reiterated her innocence and pleaded for mercy because her three young children needed her. The jury acquitted her of felony manslaughter but convicted her of criminal negligence, a misdemeanor and sentenced her to pay a small fine and spend 30 days in jail. As a generous gesture, Judge Lohr allowed Longet to choose the days she served, believing that this arrangement would allow her to spend the most time with her children. Longet chose to work off most of her sentence on weekends. Once the trial was over, she took off for a vacation with her defense attorney Ron Austin. Austin left his wife and children to do so. Longet and Austin later married and remain together residing in Aspen.

Longet has never performed again. After the criminal trial, the Sabich family initiated civil proceedings to sue Longet. The case was eventually settled out of court for a large monetary settlement, with the proviso that Longet never tell or write about her story. They also demanded that Claudine withdraw from public circulation her recording of "Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down."

from: Wikipedia