Accept no substitutes

Category: Amusements (Page 5 of 31)

Things that are amusing

Tucker the DJ

Tucker guest DJed on WCOM yesterday and will do his own show as a substitute DJ next Sunday from 2 pm til 4. The show is called “Dance Jam (dance .music from around the world).” The world has mostly been India and the Carribean with some English and a little French music. If you have suggestions, send them on or call in while Tucker is on the air next Sunday.

Jacques Menache at Panzanella

One of the best artist’s bios I’ve read comes from Jacques Menache in this announcement of his show (now up) and reception (tonight) at Panzanella in Carrboro.

ART: Currently at Panzanella:
Jacques Menache-A Retrospective: 1972 – present
Acrylic Paintings and Multi-media Artworks
June 19 through August 20
Artist Reception: Monday, July 10th, 5:30pm-7:30pm
Most pieces are for sale; some are on loan from private collections.

Jacques Menache was born in Paris, France in 1948. He moved to Mexico City in 1955 with his family and attended the University of Mexico’s Academia San Carlos where he studied under Siqueiros and other Mexican muralists. In Mexico, he met Amy Abernethy, a native Chapel Hillian, and moved here in 1969. Jacques first attended NC Central University, then UNC, where he earned a Masters in Fine Arts, graduating in 1973.

In search of a job, Jacques founded the ArtsCenter in Carrboro in 1974. During his 15 years at the ArtsCenter he caused havoc in the community and resigned in the midst of controversy. He became an electrician to make a living outside the arts field.

Looking for more trouble, in September 1999 Jacques Menache opened a Mexican restaurant/Latin-American Cultural Center. He had his first artist retrospective there among the enchiladas, tacos, and salsas. The restaurant closed in September 2002 after three years of drunken fights and excellent dance parties.

In search of a different type of trouble, Jacques and Ruffin Slater (legendary Weaver Street Market General Manager) founded WCOM, a low power, all volunteer community radio station. Who knows where that might lead?

With very little time to keep out of trouble, Jacques manages to create three or four new pieces of art each year. His favorite format is large abstract paintings with complex weaving of lines, often creating moiré patterns and deep layers. On the more playful side Menache likes to create small pieces with found objects, always searching for a social comment.

For inquiries on commissions, sales, or electrical work call: 919 306 2749

Squirrels are proof that God is not entirely good

They pulled all the perches out of my old Droll Yankee cylinder feeder. I’ve managed to keep one in after all these years.
They ripped the “squirrel proof” feeder from its hanger. It had worked pretty well. It’s a small cylinder enclosed in a spherical cage. But they threw it to the ground and ripped the lid off of it.
Then when I left for vacation and didn’t fill the feeders, they ripped a hole in the screen of my porch. They came in and tossed seed all over.
So I went down to Wild Birds Unlimited on MLK Blvd. WBU is run by a long lost friend Carl Delamar. When I was in college, I shared a house on Park Ave in Raleigh with Carl. Later he worked at UNC for a while. Now he is a happy bird accessory peddler — a very nice life.
Carl has a nice little selection of squirrel bedeviling feeders, baffles, hangers and the like. I was originally hot for a battery powered Yankee Flipper or a Yankee Whipper. Each of these spins the squirrels off the feeder with a nice degree of force (for the bird lover not so nice for the squirrel) and into space. The Yankee Tipper which also looks like trouble for squirrels has a seed pan/perch that tips over with the weight of a squirrel — no batteries required.
We ended up buying Wild Birds Unlimited’s own Eliminator. It doesn’t send the squirrel to meet his maker, but it does close down when a squirrel grabs the perches.
It’s up now and full of seed and waiting to feed bird and to cut off all squirrels.

Mr Sugar on State of Things (WUNC)

The ever active Anton Zuiker aka Mister Sugar writes:

I’ve posted the details of tomorrow’s State of Things show on WUNC. Listen in on 91.5 FM at noon to hear a discussion about diaries, journals and blogging. I’ll be on in the third part of the show to explain how blogging is similar to and different from written diaries.

It’s a call-in show so call in with smart questions.

You can listen on the net, thanks to ibiblio, at WUNC.org and even pick up the show as a podcast or from the archives (also on ibiblio), but you can only call in if you listen whilst it’s happenin’.

AsheCivility

Car – Saturn place here cleaned out the carbon left over from before the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve was replaced. You would think that the replacers would have done that. It works great now.

Politics – nice chats this morning with local Council people. Mostly by Sally. While David McConville, Tucker and I talked about computer visualization and electronic story telling and the like.

Food – Last night Zambra‘s wonderful tapas. Breakfast – City bakery. Lunch – Indian buffet at Mela’s with black and white Bollywood playing soundlessly on a large plasma screen.

Break from the heat – An Inconvenient Truth. David has put together a panel of experts to talk about the movie and solutions for next weekend. Lots of people were picking up his flyer about the panel today at the Fine Arts Theatre.

New Books on My Shelf

I’ve been reading good literary novels up til lately. Now I’ve picked up the first two “Read Or Die” manga and Vernor Vinge‘s new “Rainbows End.” Any manga that has as its hero, a librarian with special powers over paper is fine by me. And Vinge’s new book, dedicated to Wikipedia, Google and eBay is described, in part, this way on the flap:

As Robert becomes more deeply involved in the conspiracy, he is shocked to learn if a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist.

Isolation? What Isolation?

Barry Wellman gives the inside story on the study that has been widely misquoted in the press about social isolation including this one in the Washington Post Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen by Shankar Vedantam published on Friday, June 23, 2006.

Wellman writes to the Association of Internet Researchers (quoted in full with permission):

Re the Washington Post story below [I have noted and linked that story above – pj] (and a similar USA Today story):

To my mind, it’s an interesting case of media distortion.

The good news: the accounts are based on a high-quality survey (US General Social Survey) by first-class reseachers (Lynn Smith-Lovin & Miller McPherson) + Matthew Brashaers whom I don’t know, in sociology’s leading journal, American Sociological Review. I was a referee on this paper, btw, and revealed myself at appropriate time to the authors.

The study replicates one stimulus Q from the General Social Survey 20 years ago about who do you have to discuss important matters with. It finds a mean of about 2 in 2004, down from 3 in 1984 (or was it 1985)?

Here’s the problem:

Based on this, the 2 newspapers have created a huge social isolation spin on this, when it’s well known that people have lotsa ties, not just 2 or 3. See our data from Pew Internet, Connected Lives study) + lotsa others. Indeed, altho we are not as parallel as the US GSS, comparing Connected Lives (3rd East York study, 2004) with the second East York study (1979 data) shows more active ties now, both intimate and significant ties.

Thus the media spin is a huge inferential leap from a decline in the super-core ties to saying Americans are socially isolated.

If you read further in the Washington Post and USA Today articles, you’ll see me quoted as suggesting that we now have more ties — and more contact with ties — but that relationships are differentiated. In other words, the relative decline in discussion partners shouldn’t be generalized to either absolute isolation or even growing isolation.

Of course, YMMV.


Update:
Barry Wellman writes again “FYI, the Wa Post is probably going to run a followup editorial in next day or 2 by Sebastian Mellaby.”

Should be Sebastian Mallaby who writes on Mondays. So keep an eye open for that. pj

Apple Store Opening Tomorrow

Randall Greg of the Raleigh Chronicle made me an offer I can’t refuse. He’ll give me his press pass to the Raleigh Crabtree Apple Store pre-opening tomorrow, if I act like a journalist and write a little for him and the Chronicle about the experience having taken some pictures and asked some questions.

What questions would you ask at an Apple Store opening? Like why has the store opening been delayed for 6 months and what are they doing to prepare for flooding and is it true that Apple tries to keep their openings secret until the last minute to generate interest via viral publicity?

Randall has a pre-opening story in today’s Chronicle.

McGuinn on GuitarPlayerTV

McGuinn
ibiblio contributor and world’s greatest 12 and 7 string guitar player Roger McGuinn is subject of a multipart video interview on GuitarPlayerTV. Roger explains his various roots, describes/shows how he records, he plays 6 string, 7 string, 12 string, 12 string Ric, and banjo, and you get a peek at his transistor radio collection too. A bunch of asides that give insight to the music business are also included. Great stuff. Begin here.
Thanks to Mike Conway for the alert.

Where’s Paul?


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