Duet with one guitar

Cecilia Siqueira and Fernando Lima play a duet using one guitar.

Via neatorama

Piper's fight

A friend of mine has a Granddaughter named Piper. She has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes mucous to build up in her body, particularly in her lungs. There is no cure for cystic fibrosis.

Three times a day, for 30 minutes at a time, Piper has to use an airway clearing device called a vest as treatment. It helps loosen mucous in her lungs, which helps keep her airways clear and reduces her chances of hospitalization.

From her eyes, it looks like Piper is smiling behind her mask in the picture.

However, Piper and her parents have a lot to be concerned about. She needs a new vest which costs $15,000. Her insurance will not pay for one, and so her parents are trying to raise money to buy her a new vest. Please visit Piper's Fight if you would like to donate or for more information. Portions of any donation will go towards the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

If you run another blog feel free to post to her story. Piper deserves all the people she can get in her corner.

The gaping hole in my childhood

Oh man, my childhood microscope, chemistry set, plastic Babbage's machine, short wave radio, all of it -- even my brother's toy steam engine -- pale in comparison to the wonder known as the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab.

It included: a U-239 Geiger radiation counter, an electroscope to measure radioactivity of different substances, a spinthariscope to watch "live" radioactive disintegration, a Wilson Cloud Chamber to see paths of electrons & alpha particles at 10k mps, three very low-level radioactive sources (Alpha, Beta, Gamma), four samples of Uranium-bearing ores, Nuclear Spheres (used to visual build models of molecules), the book "Prospecting for Uranium", the "Gilbert Atomic Energy Manual", the comic book "Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom" and three "Winchester" Batteries (size "C").

A Geiger counter, radioactive samples, a "Dagwood Splits the Atom" comic book and Nuclear Spheres? Yowza! Can you imagine the look on a modern Helicopter Mom's face if her kid unwrapped a present and found that inside?

Details and more pictures can be found at orau.org and American Memorabilia.

21st Century Paper Flip Animation

A creative re-engineering of paper flip animation, although the laugh track is irritating. Be warned -- parts of it are rather crude and it may be NSFW.



VIDEOGIOCO by Donato Sansone from Enrico Ascoli - Sound Design on Vimeo.
 

Oops, I guess I shouldn't have sold that at the garage sale

In 2007 Peter Silverman bought a portrait titled Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress for $19,000. Christie's had previously sold it in 1998. At that sale they described it as a 19th Century German drawing.

Silverman thought there was more to the portrait than met the eye, so he decided to have it examined further. The Paris lab he used to assess it found a fingerprint on it that they said substantially matched a known finger print of Leonardo da Vinci.

The drawing was done by a left-handed person and stylistic mannerisms, carbon dating and the dress the young girl wears in the drawing match 15th Milanese fashion.
 
If verified as a da Vinci the drawing would be worth tens of million of dollars.

Aside from wondering exactly how a da Vinci gets lost, I feel sorry for the poor person who sold such a valuable object. I wonder if they got tired of it hanging in their living room and replaced it with an Alma Thomas masterpiece?  Regardless, finding out you peddled a da Vinci it must feel make you feel kind of like you're the Fifth Beatle.

Telegraph article via Neatorama.

And That's What It's All About...

Narcissism, that is.

This from Algore: "Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions."

What utter piffle.

When the Don Quixotes rule the world

He had scarcely gone a short league, when Fortune, that was conducting his affairs from good to better, discovered to him the road, where he also espied an Inn. Sancho positively maintained it was an Inn, and his master that it was a castle; and the dispute lasted so long that they arrived there before it was determined.  --Don Quixote (pt. I, ch. XV)

Perhaps even more amazing than Obama winning the Nobel Prize is the fact that he was ever nominated for one in the first place. The nomination could have occurred sometime prior to the election, during his Office of the President Elect days, or in the in first few weeks after he was sworn into office.

His college years are a cipher to us. Later he had been a State and Federal Senator for a number of years, serving at both levels with no distinction. He had written no bills and had frequently ducked voting on other bills. He wrote a couple of memoirs. In perhaps his most visible position he -- if you'll pardon my French --  pissed away 140 million dollars of the Annenberg Foundation and with it accomplished nothing of measurable value in the process.

Oh, and he gave some speeches and campaigned.

That is to say, when he was nominated for the Nobel Prize he had done little more than write books and give speeches. He accomplished nothing of substance. Instead he just talked. Obviously what he said, rather than what he did, is what mattered to the Nobel jurists.

Pacifism in a parlor is not a brave thing. After all, there are brutish men with guns and greed loose in the world. What of the real peace makers? Mother Theresa stared down the slums of Calcutta, and Ghandi, who never received a Noble Prize, led a revolution he tried his best to keep bloodless. What has Obama done? 

I listen to Obama and I don't hear much but mush. I hear John Lennon singing 'Give Peace a Chance', or I hear a 'war never solved anything' bumper sticker read aloud in baritone, or perhaps a petition to Free Tibet touted. All admirable sentiments to be sure, but nothing more than sentiments none the less. How will those platitudes lead us from blood to peace in the real world?

Today, upon hearing the news of Obama's ascension into the exalted rank of Peacemaker Supreme, I thought of Alonso Quixano who reinvented himself as Don Quixote de la Mancha. I thought of the foolish old man who was so enamored by the fiction of the chivalric romances that he imagined himself surrounded by giants, kings, castles and fair damsels when the reality was something else altogether.

To the Don Quixotes of the world, and probably to Obama himself, it matters not that all he has done is waste other people's money and vote 'present' when the going gets tough. All that matters is that he talks the talk, that he spins the romantic fictions they want to hear. They are not people to be taken seriously. Don Quixote's earnest obliviousness was funny, theirs is not.

Helloooo visitors from Maggie's Farm. Thanks for dropping by.

But, what if you get turned into this?

Nadine Jarvis is selling a rather unique product. She makes pencils from the carbon of human cremations. She says about 240 pencils can be made from the ash of an average human body. Each pencil has the name of the person foiled stamped on it.

They come in a box from which you can only remove one pencil at a time. You then sharpen the pencils with a sharpener built into the box. This collects the shavings so that, once the supply of pencils is exhausted, the box can be used as an urn for the remains.

It's all rather morbid to say the least, but I suppose the idea is an artistic person can use the carbon from your remains to create a body of drawings as your monument. A graphite on paper headstone. Add to that the notion that the box of pencils has a sort of a life of its own, starting out full and dwindling down to nothing but shavings, and you have an interesting reflection that physical things are born, worn down, and reborn again as something else. Meanwhile the drawings, the artifacts of the wearing down process, are something rather more sublime.

Yet, cynic that I am, I couldn't help but think that the quality of the monument created depended on the skill of the hand wielding the pencil. What if the monument ends up being something like Skull and Lemon, pictured above? However, perhaps that's the message -- what is left behind is nothing but shavings and drawings. The shavings can't be helped, but care should be taken in the quality of the art.

By the way, the Skull and Lemon drawing is from a post Real Drawings by Real Artists at redragtoabull. It was drawn by Harry Adams. Lest we laugh at it too much, or perhaps to add to its humor, it sold for £31.13.

Obama bursts into song

HT: Holger Awakens

Mongolian Death Worm specimen found?

Oh-oh. Have the Japanese beaten the Australians to the capture of a Mongolian Death Worm?

Fear not, as we've seen before, the Mongolian Death Worm research community is rife with clever frauds. This isn't an anatomical diagram of a Mongolian Death Worm. To find out what it is, click on 'Read more' to follow this post below the fold.

Self-determination

Our Gadsden flag predates the Tea Parties. It was chosen as a symbol of the Yargbee's support of Western Values in the fight against Islamic Extremism. The Danish flag in the sidebar is of course from the aftermath of the Moslem rioting over the Mohammed cartoons.

Manuel Zelaya, the legally deposed ex-president of Honduras, returned to that country today in what can be called little more than a coup attempt. Sadly, from the start Obama's administration sided with Latin American dictators, Chavez, Castro, Ortega in opposing his ouster. The situation as summarized in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Zelaya was deposed and deported this summer after he agitated street protests to support a rewrite of the Honduran constitution so he could serve a second term. The constitution strictly prohibits a change in the term-limits provision. On multiple occasions he was warned to desist, and on June 28 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. 

Every major Honduran institution supported the move, even members in Congress of his own political party, the Catholic Church and the country's human rights ombudsman. To avoid violence the Honduran military escorted Mr. Zelaya out of the country. In other words, his removal from office was legal and constitutional, though his ejection from the country gave the false appearance of an old-fashioned Latin American coup.

The U.S. has since come down solidly on the side of—Mr. Zelaya. While it has supported negotiations and called for calm, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both insisted that Honduras must ignore Mr. Zelaya's transgressions and their own legal processes and restore him as president. The U.S. has gone so far as to cut off aid, threaten Honduran assets in the U.S. and pull visas to enter the U.S. from the independent judiciary. The U.S. has even threatened not to recognize presidential elections previously scheduled for November unless Mr. Zelaya is first brought back to power—even though he couldn't run again.

To say the U.S. Government's actions surrounding the situation in Honduras is a travesty is an understatement. President Obama, in his slavish admiration for the world's dictators, has turned America's long held principal of support for self-determination on its head.

The Honduran flag in the sidebar is obviously a small gesture, but it is intended as support for not only the people of Honduras, but for the greater principal of self-determination. President Obama would be well advised to bear in mind, as he coddles dictators without regard to American public opinion and tries to ram through his paternalistic agenda, that Americans know full well the meaning of self-determination.

Don't tread on us, and don't tread on our friends and allies.

Is Obama lazy?

For a week the news has been trumpeted far and wide that Obama was making five appearances on the Sunday talk shows. During that same week the ACORN scandal has been growing, culminating in the House and Senate, as well as numerous State governments, stripping ACORN of their funding.

Was there ever any doubt that Obama was going to be asked about ACORN at sometime during his Sunday media blitz? It was, and on ABC this was his answer to the inevitable question:

STEPHANOPOULOS:  How about the funding for ACORN?

OBAMA:  You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely.  I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.

OBAMA:  You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?

OBAMA:  George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country.  It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to.

The answer to this type of question had to be carefully prepared for by him and his staff. It had to have been a question they spent a considerable amount of time practicing answering.  None the less, could Obama have sounded any more absurd and disingenuous?

Was that the best they could do? Is Obama too simply too bored by such minutia to be bothered, or maybe he figures us little people just flopped off the back of a turnip truck and will buy his nonsense? Whichever, it is hard to believe he took his preparation for the question seriously.

The more I watch him, the more I begin to think he might be the laziest President we've ever had.

Well She Only Said She'd Take the 3 AM Call...

... but didn't mention whether anyone would take hers.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed today that he declined last night to take a call from the U.S. informing him of the decision to scrap planned missile-defense bases in his country.
Two U.S.-based sources close to the Polish government said Thursday that Tusk also rejected a call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — on the grounds that, as the head of the government, he should speak to the president.

Thank goodness we have such a sophisticated foreign policy now.

The show is real

One of my guilty pleasures is the ever ridiculous Steven Seagal. Imagine my joy when I stumbled across the above trailer for a his new AE show, Steven Seagal: Lawman.  It is a reality show with the premise that, between movies, he's been a Louisiana cop for 20 years. He assures us, "well, the show is real. I mean it's... this is not a joke."

Now Steven, why would anyone ever doubt you?

As I patiently wait for the premier I've been wondering... how much would it suck if, drunker than a skunk in your trailer park, you answered a knock on your door to discover Steven Seagal, dressed like a cop with a camera crew shadowing him, spouting Zen inanities as he arrested you?

Man, talk about a 'Come to Jesus' moment.

Yeeps!

I almost lost the blog screwing around with the templates. Unfortunately, I did lose our links list, so I'm going to have to rebuild that -- I'm open to sites we should link to. I'll have to add some widgets and what-not to the side bar.

ETA: Whew, I got the contributors, sitemeter and the flags back. I was in a panic there for a while. When I blew the blog up I just about had a heart attack. Mrs. Sinistral was wondering why I was laying on the floor in a fetal position, whimpering and sucking my thumb.

Anyhoo... how's it look?

Never Forget.

Musical Face

My last post featured record album covers used as faces.
Now a face used as a musical instrument.

Daito Manabe via Odd Musical Instruments

Weird Corner of the Internet

One thing about the internet is there are enough people on it for some very strange clumps to form from time to time.

The pictures below are from a site called Sleeveface. There are many, many more at the site. It has page after page of pictures of people posing with old record album covers in such manner that the pose and the cover art blend into a single illusion. The care they have taken in not only cleverly staging the pictures, but also matching not only the poses and clothes, but even the wrinkles in the clothes, is quite remarkable.

Squaring the Circle

The blog The Gormogons has a post by Ghettoputer, Doctors and the CIA, that discusses an ObamaCare issue that has also been puzzling me.

Conspicuously absent from the bill is any mention of tort reform regarding medical malpractice. When Howard Dean was asked why such reform was not addressed in the bill he bluntly answered:

"Here’s why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that, the more stuff you put in it, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on. And that is the plain and simple truth."

It is generally accepted that the real cost of malpractice law suits is not so much the cost of settlements, but rather the need for doctors to practice defensive medicine by ordering the maximum number of tests conceivable in any diagnosis.

ObamaCare attempts to address that problem by establishing boards, agencies and the like that will review medical best practices and mandate the scope of what treatments and tests should be performed (and for those who, like me, are too lazy to read the bill The Gormorgans has a good series of posts where he live blogs his reading of the bill in 100 page chunks).

That is ObamaCare seeks to reduce medical costs by setting up a set of guidelines that will free doctors from the need to do unessential medical procedures to protect themselves from lawsuits. Ignoring for the moment any questions about the wisdom of such a remote "top-down" approach to diagnosis, I wonder how malpractice suits will be impacted by the bill, especially in light of the fact that trial lawyers are such an important Democratic constituent that no attempt to reign them in is even considered?

The obvious answer is that, while the government insurance plan will be shielded from malpractice suits, the private insurers will still be exposed to them. However, it is rather more complicated than that, because over time the private insurers will be rolled into the treatment and testing guidelines mandated by the government. Would all insurers then not be shielded?

What then of the powerful trial lawyers lobby?

I think Ghettoputer might have squared that circle when he considers Holder, and the CIA investigation. The CIA interrogators had acted under Congressional and Justice Department review, yet at this late date the rules can simply be shifted and their cases opened again. Will the doctors end up facing a similar set of fluid rulings?

If they and private insurers are allowed to layer supplemental insurance on top of a government mandated minimum, does Holder and the CIA set the precedence of the rules being redefined after the fact move them into malpractice territory? Will that be the hidden fund the trial lawyers can expect to draw their settlements from?

Roh-oh! Bill might be in trouble again...

...but this time not with Hillary.

In addition, individuals interviewed during the Review identified other techniques that caused concern because DoJ had not specifically approved them. These included the making of threats, blowing cigar smoke, employing certain stress positions, the use of a stiff brush on a detainee, and stepping on a detainee's ankle shackles.