Accept no substitutes

Category: Amusements (Page 17 of 31)

Things that are amusing

Fly Over Madness

This morning there were several low low low flyovers of campus but some striking aircraft in tight formation.
Why?

The mystery was revealed by UNC News spokesperson on OrangePolitics.org

They are F-15E Strike Eagles practicing for the fly over of the football game on Saturday.
Comment at 11:49am 10/20/2005 by Linda Convissor

And astute Carrboro mayoral candidate Mark Chilton reminds us that we were all in a tizzy last year at about this time over the same thing.

As UNC alum Andy Griffith reminded us even earlier: “What it was was football” or at least a stunt for football fans.

Being a Jones and the Jones of Being

In the beginning, everyone was named Jones. Everyone in the world. A Jones discovered fire. A Jones taught other Joneses to swim and to read and write. All was utopic.

But as time progressed people were not so nice. A killing happened. The killer was no longer called Jones. he was now Caine. At each crime, at each dispicable act, a person was deJonesed and forced to take other
names.

Although there are still many Joneses there are also many who have fallen from their original Jonesian state.

Perhaps in time we will all reJones and all sentient beings will be saved. The first vow of a Jones states: “Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them.”

McConville/Bucky on WUNC

WUNC’s The State of Things has discovered that David McConville and the folks at Black Mountain College know a bit about Bucky (Buckminster Fuller). So they had them on the air today at noon (and in their archives soonnow).

Note: the WUNC archives and their podcasts are hosted by ibiblio.org.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Buckminster Fuller: In 1948, Buckminster Fuller, then a visiting teacher at Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina, built his first geodesic dome. It collapsed. The next summer he returned to Black Mountain and succeeded. Fuller later became famous for his domes and inventions, including the Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map, and World Game. A current exhibit at the Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center in Asheville looks back at those inventions and Fuller’s time in North Carolina. Host Frank Stasio talks with John Wright, board chairman at Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center in Asheville; Lloyd Steven Sieden, author of “Buckminster Fuller’s Universe: His Life and Work” (Perseus/2000); Jay Baldwin, author of “Bucky Works: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today” (Wiley/1997); and David McConville, co-founder of Elumenati, a company in Asheville that designs immersive projection environments. Listener Call-in. (59:00)

100 years of Einstein

“2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Einstein’s three great scientific papers on relativity, light and matter.

Have you read them? Did you understand them?

If not, you are not alone. When asked who is or was the most famous scientist of all time, many people mention Albert Einstein. However, few people know what he did that made him so famous or realize what a great impact his ideas continue to have on our 21st-century lives. ”

The Chapel Hill Public Library (disclosure I am on the Board of Trustees) is presenting a series of talks by Dr. Henry Greenside of Duke the first of which was this afternoon. Dr. Greenside explains the Einsteinian concepts found in his 1905 papers so that most anyone can understand what wonderful surprising and important discoveries and suggestions they were and how they continue to influence our thinking and understanding.

Beginning with today’s talk on “Einstein’s Relativity Theories and What is E=mc2 All About?” (he spent most of the talk on the special theory rather than the general theory today) and following with two other talks. Sunday, Oct. 9 (3:00-4:30 pm): Einstein and the Photon Concept and Sunday, Oct. 23 (3:00-4:30 pm): Einstein and Atoms.

Sally, Tucker and I were there and took in the talk to our various capacities. Sally caught the talk and a following experiment with bending an electron stream using magnets with her digital camera. [photo 1] [photo 2] [photo 3] [photo 4] [photo 5]

Tucker is looking forward to next week’s talk about the properties of light and the dual nature of the photon. So am I.

Big Sweep in Morgan Creek

Before noon today, I was rolling abandoned mud-filled tires out of cold creek water, through the briars and out to the gravel road that parallels Morgan Creek in the Mason Farm Reserve. Sally, Tucker and I along with about ten high school students were taking part in the Big Sweep.

The Big Sweep
is a nation, state and local project to clean streams. So we were a little like the hero of “Spirited Away” as we pulled odd findings and lots of plastic trash out of the sand and mud trying to restore the creek. Sally had been a sweeper for several years, but this was the first for me.

It was actually fun to be in the creek pulling stuff out and leaving a part of the Reserve garbage free (until the next big rain). Sally has pictures that I’ll link to once they’re up.

I don’t know if she’ll have a picture of the oddest of our findings, a bouy from a lake upstream (but what lake is upstream from Chapel Hill on Morgan Creek? University Lake?). A “no wake” warning bouy was quite out of place there in the shallow creek.

Free listening = CD sales and concert attendance – a personal story

The Old Ceremony
There is this guy Django Haskins who is a wonderful writer and performer. He lives somewhere here in town. I’m not managed to see his shows with International Orange or The Old Ceremony or solo. But I heard a cut or two by him on the local low power FM station WCOM.

Then I looked him up and found his website. His shows were listed and I tried to catch him between his trips to NYC, but I’m too pooped to pop and too old to stroll as the song once went. But I did download rough cuts of his music and became pretty attached to American Romeo, Ole, and Blood and Oil.

Today strolling by School Kids Records, I noticed that the window display was for the new Old Ceremony CD. I checked it out. On it were the songs I had liked as roughs. The CD was on consignment to the store so the chance that I might find it any where else were slim. [yes, you can buy it online at this link] Of course I bought it. I was delighted that the money would go to a local record store and to the band. It’s a professional product in every way and very very listenable.

Chapel Hill Pop Noir — so they say.

Brown is the new Black

In case you haven’t noticed, some time this spring brown began replacing black in fashion. Not just brown by itself, but brown accompanied by or should I say complimented by Carolina Blue. Sally mentioned this to me in the spring. Then in June when we walked down Chicago’s Miracle Mile (the street that has been remade to look like the part of a mall that is made to look like a city street), all the store manikins were in the same rich brown and light blue. Matrons and hipplets, teens and office girls, everyone with new clothes was in brown and blue. Now on campus, it’s even more obvious. Folks who two years ago were in black t-shirts now have on brown. Sorority girls and even punkster guys are in the same colors. Even Perry Farrell (once Jane’s Addiction) was wearing the colors at his Lollapalooza show in New York.

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