Music that changed my life

Maria, the Silver Fox brought this to the Loose Blogger Consortium for our Friday writing.  I’m late (unavoidably), but I wanted you to see how Les Misèrables was not just a movie or another movie or musical to me.  It really did change my life, for the lead, Jean Valjean was my newly minted son-in-law and this was my daughter’s first musical as a freshman.  I even had a part, building major portions of the set from scratch, so it truly was a family affair.

Now, I present to you some highlights and I remind you that every bit of singing you hear is live singing by kids of one of the top choirs every year in the country.  This was created by me taking the VHS tape I made of it, playing it on the TV and recording it with my iPhone.  You can imagine the loss of quality and you can imagine what it was like live.

I present to you the marvelous Mt. Eden High School Choir of Hayward performing the musical Les Misèrables!

Friday LBC Topic Delay 3/15/2013

As W.C. Fields once said in explanation of being late and quite bedraggled, “Things happened.”   Perfect explanation for why I don’t have my entry yet.

I’ll get there, but not for about another 12 hours or so.  In the meantime, make the rounds of the folks listed on the right hand side of this page and I’ll be seeing you soon.

My childhood goals for my life

This topic was brought to the LBC by Delirious and I find it fascinating in that my early goals were very clear … and very relevant to my life.  Kind of something a person might not expect.

When I was five years old, I told my folks that I was going to be a scientist in the winter:

and a Major League Baseball player in the summer:

Well, I did start college as a Physics Major and I taught science on graduation.  Now, I make my living as a computer scientist and I think that isn’t too bad for the first part of my proclamation.

Baseball?  It was always and by far my favorite sport.  I had a talent for it, too, but I doubt you ever heard of my Major League career.

You know how five year-olds exaggerate!

Stupidity, Take Two: Science and the Media Oscars

First on the plate, CNN anchor asks whether Global Warming had anything to do with the asteroid that came close to the Earth.  So, the Oscar for “dumbest question of the week” goes to:

The Oscar for dumb question of the week!

Second, for Fox can never be left out of the “we will just make it up if we need to” game, an anchor asserts that solar can never work in America like in Germany because we don’t have as much sun.  Which is totally incorrect …  So, the Oscar for best “Lie to serve a purpose in a fantasy” category goes to:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

After watching these two, I have to admit that maybe there is no evolution.

Lowering Your Stupid Quotient!

I dug this out of the archives, written in 2007.  I am uncertain if it was ever posted anywhere, but it is as relevant today as it was then, so I decided to repost it:

I've got enough IQ. No one ever says that (with good reason), but I'm breaking the taboo for a very specific purpose. Mention of your own IQ is taboo, because we have forgotten that it is an artificial invention of the human mind trying to understand itself, not a God given supernatural score so that the ego can say, "I win! I beat you by three points." Besides, in practical human affairs, the IQ isn't very important!

You are born with the essential IQ (Intelligence Quotient) that you are going to have going through life. It is a measure of your brain's potential to master academic matters, to reason. Unfortunately, having the horsepower to work through Relativity or Quantum Mechanics is irrelevant in most life situations. If I just want to take a trip to the grocery store, I'm probably better off taking my Honda station wagon than taking that Ferrari I have in the garage (fantasy is also part of the brain's activity). I need more groceries day-to-day than I do conversations with colleagues on spatial dilation as the speed of light is approached. Most daily activities leave me with IQ to burn! Add to that the fact that I can't really change that IQ much (although I can leverage it with education). I'm pretty much stuck with the cards dealt!

When it comes time to play that hand you've been dealt, there is a much more important factor in most situations. I recently worked my way through a very important effort to keep a top faculty member at my daughter's school, an effort that ended in the Superintendent's office around a conference table with the key players from the school district. A large number of people had failed to bring the situation to a resolution until it had devolved into full crisis. I went into the situation with only one determination -a total refusal to be stupid! Not to have day-winning insights, not to dazzle anyone with intelligence, hardly to use intelligence at all. 100 IQ points was plenty for this situation. The dogged refusal to be stupid won the day!

Let's contrast that with the behavior of some very intelligent people in the news. Larry Craig and his "wide-stance" nudging of the cop's foot in the Minneapolis Airport - stupid! The clothes police busting Terry Francona in the middle of a baseball game because he was wearing a pullover in the dugout due to a medical condition that causes him to become chilled - stupid. The Chinese Shaolin Temple (and, indeed the Chinese Government) are demanding an apology from someone who wrote in a blog that the warriors of the Shaolin Temple were once beaten by a Japanese Ninja, saying that they “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user - stupid. Jimmy Carter, with a posted IQ of 175, a few years ago telling the press in Mexico that he was suffering from Montezuma's Revenge - stupid. Now, as we said, there isn't much you can do about your IQ, but your SQ (Stupid Quotient) is something that you can actively change. It is a matter of attention and discipline. You really can refuse to be stupid, thereby lowering your SQ.

So, let me give the kids out there some advice. The next time you find yourself in a job interview or around the conference table working on a project or sitting in front of the boss, be positive. Be friendly. Let your ideas and your creativity flow. But, in the midst of it all, REFUSE TO BE STUPID!

Now … I get to add the American Sequester!  The most STUPID of all!

Fog Over the Bay

The San Francisco Bay is really a bowl surrounded by decent sized hills and an opening through the Golden Gate to the Pacific.  This is what we looked like this morning, with the fog settled in.

And this is how it looked out the door:

I’ve always been enchanted by the fog.  Add the foghorns over by the Golden Gate and the spell is complete!

Getting Things Wrong in a Foreign Language

Paul of Blackwatertown fame brought the Loose Blogger Consortium this Friday topic.  But, he's got an advantage!  He's in Europe.

In America, we don't have enough close neighboring countries that I have been in for enough time to get in trouble.  I mean, I know a few Spanish cuss words, but I know when to not use them.  And I accidentally used a Japanese cuss word with our exchange students that stayed with us years ago.  My Dad didn't translate it as a cuss word when he used it after being part of the occupation force in Japan in WWII.

That is just too boring.  However, America is bigger than most Europeans are used to one country being and we can have misunderstandings based upon the region of the country you are from.  For example, in Kansas, the 3 meals of the day were breakfast, dinner and supper.  In California, it is breakfast, lunch and dinner.  That type of translation won't get you in much trouble.

But ... I did recall one that caused a real problem.  My wife said we were doing something NEXT Saturday.  So, Saturday showed up and ... I wasn't ready at all!  I expected the trip to be a week off still.  In Kansas, the coming Saturday is THIS Saturday and NEXT Saturday is the one following.

That's as good as I can do.  I haven't had a topic I couldn't dig something out for in a coon's age.