soy ROY

Boxtales at the Greek Villa, Sat. Dec 6 2008

2008-11-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Event:
Family Festival
Saturday December 6, 2008
10 am - 5 pm
Getty Villa
Thrill to Boxtales' theatrical version of the Odyssey as Odysseus encounters Poseidon, Athena, Zeus, the Cyclops, and many more adventures.
11:00–11:45 a.m.
2:15–3:00 p.m.
Listen to master storyteller (and Boxtales founder) Michael Katz magically weave together Greek myths and Italian folktales.
1:00–1:45 p.m.
3:30–4:15 p.m.
Create your own jewelry based on ancient models at one of the hands-on workshops.
Free; a ticket is required.
click here
or call
(310) 440-7300

New Tumble Blog

2008-10-17T14:00:00.001-07:00

From now on I will use this blog for more thought-out, wordy posts.
Which likely means I will use it even less than before.

My current short attention span is well suited to a tumblog.
So, for posts of that sort, meet me over at tumblr using the link below.

Thanks!

-R

link

Boxtales: The Ages

2008-10-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

Earlier I mentioned that I am on the Board of Directors for Boxtales Theater Company.

Boxtales has been producing high quality family theater and educational programs in Santa Barbara for going on a decade and a half. I believe that Boxtales offers something that is fun, unique and valuable to our community standards of education, aesthetics, ethics, and tradition.

A great example of Boxtales' work is a project called The Ages, an after school project in which students interview oldsters (Elders in the parlance of the project) and then create original theater pieces based on those interviews.

The project is underway and has its very own blog. Check them out here:
http://boxtales-ages.blogspot.com/
-Roy
link

Joe Frank's Ode to War

2008-05-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

I am impressed by a recording of a Joe Frank monologue that is posted on NPR.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend during the holiday yesterday in our quiet town. After buckling his baby boy into his car seat, he paused to tell me he had been down to the memorial at the beach wondering at the number of young men who continue to join the war.

Mr. Frank's ode in celebration of war is a provocative mediation on the topic.

Here are two portions from it:

Here's to war. I raise my glass to you and gaze into the roiling liquid of death's own intoxication. O, war, you have made the low elevated. You have created heroes, and history will be written by your winner. Peace is pallid next to you. Peace can skulk and shrink, a weakling, a coward's paradise...
Peace walks through the marketplace offering second-hand bargains, peace, the shaver of points, the cut-rate merchant. Peace, you miserable converter of men into swine, you destroyer of valor, quicksand in which nations founder, the bleeding wound in the side of the great avenging angel. Peace, the apologist, the compromiser, the appeaser, the rust upon the edge of courage's great sword...
There are no gigantic fireworks displays, no champagne corks popped to peace, no last cigarette smoked in its honor. There is no night before peace, no declaration of peace. The very absurdity of a nation declaring peace on another shocks the imagination. And who among us can say that he has heard of the spoils of peace? Is there such a thing as a peace hero? Who among us have gathered with his old cronies late at night, hoisted a glass and told peace stories? What valiant young man has been welcomed back from peace? What young boy has gazed longingly at his father, saying that he would willingly go to peace to save his country?

links:
audio
text
Joe Frank

-R

Louis Armstrong & Danny Kaye

2008-05-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

Here is Danny Kaye singing with Louis Armstrong in "The Five Pennies."
Wow.

-R
Link

Biking with cars.

2008-05-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Personally, I dislike biking in traffic, but here are some vids of some crazy bicyclists getting right in there.
I don't advocate this sort of behavior, but I think that any frequent urban cyclists has likely been annoyed by motorists enough to be able to relate to the fun of watching these guys zip through traffic jams:

for those with more extreme tastes:

-R

A Blessing♦

2008-04-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

links
video
film
poetry

cool music apps

2008-03-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Here are two free apps I recommend, and one I'm trying for the first time today:

Exact Audio Copy is the best audio grabber I have tried. It'll rip your cds to MP3, flac or wav and does a bunch of other stuff I haven't even tried yet.
(PC only, but you aren't a Mac i-tunes slave are you?)
link

Songbird is both a web-browser (based on Firefox) and a media player. Cruise the internet to play mp3s, search for the highest quality files, play file formats your ordinary media player chokes on; phooey on i-tunes, try Songbird. (Warning, it is in development mode and still a little buggy, but I have had only limited problems. My tip is to avoid excessive add-ons).
link

I haven't tried this one yet, but it looks cool. I'm listening to a user's "Muxtape" while I work, and will make one of my own after business hours. It is a "music sharing site lets you create virtual mix tapes."
My user name will be "elcazador" of course:
link

-R

Tune-ful Tuesday: Johnny Otis!

2008-03-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a good video clip for my dad, who has told me several times over the years how he enjoyed the Johnny Otis Television Show on Los Angeles when he was a rocking lad.
As for me, when I was a young man driving my Honda around, delivering pizza's to the hungry people of Brea, CA, I listened to the Johnny Otis Radio Show on the LA Pacifica radio station. Johnny broadcast his show from the Powerhouse Brewery in Sebastopol, CA and played all kinds of great rhythm and blues music.

Here you go Dad:
The Johnny Otis Band featuring Marie Adams & The Three Tons of Joy (with a brief appearance by Lionel Hampton) performing, Willie and the Hand Jive!

Start doing that crazy hand jive.
-R

link

Happy Pi Day

2008-03-14T15:30:00.001-07:00

-R

link

Mobile Phone Radiation

2008-03-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Some months ago over dinner, the topic of whether or not mobile phones cause cancer came up. My friend Sigrid turned to me and said, "You are in charge of researching this."

Yes ma'am.

Well Sigrid, I don't have an answer for you just yet, but there is some preliminary research that is worth considering.
First we have to remember that cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease; something alters the DNA in the cell nucleus which impacts the cell's protein expression in a highly adverse way. This is not to say that all protein expression alterations lead to cancer, but it is a place to start looking.

So, some Finnish researchers exposed the arm skin of ten volunteers to mobile phone radiation for one hour, took a biopsy from each exposed patch of skin (and one from the other arm for control) and compared protein expression between all of the samples. There was in fact a change in the expression of eight proteins, two of which were present in all ten volunteers. In an earlier test they found similar results using cultured cells.

What these proteins do is still unknown, so there is nothing to link them to cancer or any other disease, but the results do suggest that extended exposure to mobile phone radiation does in fact alter the expression of skin cell proteins.

So don't throw away your cool new I-Phone, but consider whether you want to hold it against your face for an hour. You can read the paper for yourself at the link.
-R
link

Garfield sans cat.

2008-03-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

My friend the Silent Immigrant turned me on to the brilliant Garfield Minus Garfield website, which erases the indolent cat from the familiar strip, exposing the crippled lonely mind of Jon Arbuckle.

Enjoy the disturbing results.
-R
link

BoxTales

2008-03-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

I'm excited to have recently joined the Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara's BoxTales Theater Company.

BoxTales is a talented group of actors who bring folk tales and myths to life in performances that manage to be both starkly minimalist and completely captivating. I have been a fan for years and I look forward to helping BoxTales to achieve their mission to " fire imaginations, strengthen cultural pride, foster tolerance, and engage young people in the excitement and immediacy of live performance."

A few years ago they packed the Lobero theater with their effective adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. They managed to tell almost the entire story with only 5 actors and only a few props -- a triumph that is only faintly conveyed in the promotional video posted below.

-R

Atlantis Liftoff STS-122 : Feb. 7 ,2008

2008-02-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Have you seen today's lift off of the Atlantis Space Shuttle?
Awesome as always:

(Lift off at about 6:45)
-R

"STS-122 delivers the Columbus European Laboratory Module and will be the twenty-fourth mission to the International Space Station."

Bowed Piano

2008-02-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

I wish that I could get down to the American Composers Festival in Orange County. There is bound to be some interesting music. NPR profiled the work of one group slated to perform, the Bowed Piano Ensemble Colorado College lead by composer Stephen Scott.
I've been listening to Scott's bowed piano music this morning. It requires several musicians gathered around an open piano playing the strings: "The primary sound is produced by a bow of nylon fish-line, which is rosined, and that's just threaded under the piano string and across it. There's another kind of bow, which is a stick of wood which has horse hair affixed to it, and that's rubbed against the strings to produce a short, percussive sound."

The effect is truly weird. I dig it and hope you do too. (The cat however seems distressed by the sustained notes.)
-R
Some links:
NPR story
mp3: Rainbows, I (watch out, it is a loop)
mp3: Tears of Niobe

Local News Story:

NAFTA/Corn price protest in Mexico

2008-02-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

photo by Daniel Aguilar for Reuters.

I posted earlier what I'd heard about NAFTA policy having had a negative impact on the ability of Mexico's Farmers to earn a living growing their staple crop, corn. Farmers at risk of loosing their farms worry that they will have to cross the US boarder to find work.
Perhaps you have seen news of the massive protest farmers mounted yesterday in Mexico City against corn-related trade policy. If not, here are some links:
*audio
*video
*text
-R

See the ISS tonight for about 9 minutes from Santa Barbara

2008-02-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

According to the NASA Skywatch Application, the International Space Station will be visible to the naked eye as it passes over Santa Barbara tonight from 6:08 to 6:17 tonight in the WNW to NW sky(~3oo°). Let me know if you see it.
link
-R

What prompted this post?
Day to Day interviewed a guy from Texas yesterday named Thomas Dorman who tracks satellites and other stuff orbiting the Earth, much of it observable with the naked eye. It seems there is a lot of metal falling around the Earth. I wonder how many times I have mistaken a satellite for a meteor.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to be able to look up and say, "Look there goes the ISS." Perhaps tonight.

I contacted Mr. Dorman, and he suggested that I use the resources at www.heavens-above.com to track orbitals passing overhead. They have a lot of information about the dozens of communication satellites owned by the Iridium company (a very interesting business story by the way).

Medical IT

2008-01-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

From time to time I attend medical and bioscience professional conferences.
One recurring theme is how much room there is for improvement in medical data management and information technology. Some of the challenges include:
*getting the hodge podge of computer systems found in a large medical facility to interact and share data
*improving methods of storing, accessing & sharing patient records
*tracking treatment results.

I've recently read about some initiatives that may make a big difference.
First, WorldVistA is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a mission to make "medical information technology better and universally affordable." WorldVistA promotes the development and extended use of an open source medical-records program called VistA. VistA was originally created at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The open source nature of the project means that it ought to be very adaptable and robust and could improve wide-spread data sharing.

Second, Microsoft Health has acquired a project called Azyxxi. According to the website, the Azyxxi software can be used to assimilate "patient-centric, financial and operational data into one unified database." This kind of approach ought to help streamline operations in a facility. The project is in a test stage and MS has partnered with some prestigious hospitals to test the system in real-world situations.

And of course Google has been at work on the problem too, with a health information storage program codenamed Weaver or Google Health. There are some screen shots of the project posted on a blog called blogoscoped. It looks like the project combines Google's search technology with a way for patients to access, store and transfer their own medical records. I like the "put the patient in charge" attitude.
I wonder if it will be compatible with the VistA project?
Google posted a video of VP Marissa Mayer describing(in very general terms)what Weaver might become(see below).
-R

Google Map of Medical ParticleTherapy Centers

2008-01-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

I provide research and analysis to a private firm that plans to participate in a rapidly developing sector of the health services industry: ion particle radiotherapy.

The term radiotherapy refers to the medical practice of irradiating cancers. These days radiation therapy is usually accomplished by use of a compact linear accelerator that directs electrons at a tungsten target, producing high energy x-rays that irradiate the targeted malignancy.

However, a growing number of patients have been treated with radiation generated by accelerators that emit beams of larger ionized sub-atomic particles, most commonly protons or ionized carbon. Advocates for this type of radiation therapy prefer it over x-ray radiation because they say the unique physical properties of the ionized particles make it possible to better focus the radiation on tumors thereby sparing the healthy tissue nearby. The Wikipedia entry about Proton Therapy is a good resource to learn about this kind of radiation therapy, but I also recommend reading Paganetti& Bortfeld (for protons) and Amaldi & Kraft (for carbon).

A number of equipment manufacturers have now developed particle accelerators specifically for medical use and have incorporated them into complicated treatment devices which are being marketed to medical groups around the world as the centerpiece of a cancer treatment center.

These Particle Treatment Centers are growing in number, and one day on a whim I started a project of mapping the world's particle therapy centers with Google Maps. It is not an easy task as I am not familiar with many of the regions where these centers exist. I haven't done much yet, so I will have to post my efforts later, but while I was working on my map I found that one Stefan W has already been at the same task for months. He isn't always precise in some of his marks, but he has extensive knowledge of the field and has done a lot of work tracking this sector. I will certainly use his very useful map as a resource.

Check out Stefan's work here:

View Larger Map

Nikola Tesla on Studio 360

2008-01-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

Novelists Kurt Andersen & Samantha Hunt discuss Nikola Tesla on today's Studio 360.
If you already know about Tesla, you probably won't be bored hearing the same stuff you've already know, but if you don't know much about Tesla, then don't miss this chance to learn about him from a non-technical source.
-R
The mp3 "podcast" is here:
link

PS Here is the film Edison shot of an elephant being electrocuted, a part of his crusade against Alternating Current.

False Pretenses

2008-01-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

We are listening to Harry Shearer on Le Show sing about the "935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq" made by the Bush Administration.

He is referencing the Iraq War Card issued by the Center for Public Integrity.

I believe I will have a look, maybe you should too. If you do, let me know what you find there.
-R
link

Nice Rainbow over the Santa Ynez River

2008-01-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

It was nice to get out of the house after several days of hard rain.
-R

New Reader Feed

2008-01-25T17:13:00.000-08:00

I re-routed the web-feed for this blog through FeedBurner, as I hear that is what the cool bloggers do.

If you have already subscribed, thank you very much, but please consider an update to the NEW WAY:

Subscribe in a reader

Thanks
-R

and it ain't a fit night out for man or beast!

2008-01-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

the inclement weather reminds me of one of my favorite wc fields bits:
-R

the mower-in-chief

2008-01-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

W launches his economic rescue plan from atop a standing mower.
-R
From: the Windsor Star (in Ontario):
U.S. President George W. Bush called on U.S. lawmakers Friday to agree on a stimulus package of about US$140 billion...hopes that Bush's announcement could return some optimism to the markets were short-lived, with stocks tumbling back into the red on Friday for the fourth straight day.
Link