ralphyoung

iPhone simplifies what?

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:45:54 GMT

Need to simplify your life? Well, don't get an iPhone!

Circular Logic? Sure!

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:21:41 GMT

I love roundabouts! It's an elegant solution that works. Glad to see others agree! -ralph

Aug 9th 2007

IN DEEPEST Washington state, trooper Dusty Pierpont stands in front of a roundabout trying to persuade motorists to like them. Washington started building roundabouts in 1997. By 2001 there were 17; now there are over 100, according to Brian Walsh of the state's transport department. But trooper Pierpont is still needed to soothe those first-time (or even tenth-time) nerves.

America may be sluggardly on general road-building, but it is experiencing a boom in modern roundabouts, which (for those who have not yet met them) do the job of any ordinary four-way, stop-sign or traffic-light crossroads. They are more efficient and safer than the old traffic circles, such as Columbus Circle in Manhattan, which have been built in America for the past century. (Modern designs include mechanisms for slowing traffic down as it nears the roundabouts, for example, and do not allow pedestrians onto the centre of the circle).

Although exact statistics are hard to come by, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) estimates that America has 1,000 modern-style roundabouts. Britain has 10,000, Australia 15,000 and France 20,000. Nowadays America is adding perhaps 150 to 250 new roundabouts a year, not counting mini-ones in suburbs. Even the Alaskan town of North Pole is building three new roundabouts, one at the corner of Santa Claus Lane and St Nicholas Drive.

The arguments for roundabouts are strong. There are no costly traffic lights to build or maintain. Unless something is coming round, cars need not stop, so congestion is reduced and fuel is saved. Most important is safety. About 45% of all crashes in America occur at crossroads, often because of misjudged left turns. At a roundabout, outside Britain and other countries that drive on the left, drivers can only turn right. A 2001 study by the IIHS found that roundabouts have 80% fewer crashes with injuries than ordinary intersections. Other research also points to big reductions.

So roundabouts may be a small reason why America's roads are slowly getting safer. Last year injuries in motor-vehicle crashes were down an estimated 6%. Even so, drivers are often sceptical. “We lose far more roundabouts that could have been built, because of city councils or a trucking company,” says Mr Walsh. There are also plenty of doubts in North Pole, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. After all, who wants Rudolph prancing round in circles?

I agree with cheney?#!

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:01:03 GMT

So I awoke to the news karl rove gave notice and then I found the following on youtube. For once I agree with cheney. :)

Random Saturday Musings

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:28:26 GMT

Ken just called to remind me vertigo is playing at the alabama this weekend. It's a good thing too; I had remembered it was next week. It's on my short, short list of films that includes dr strangelove and brazil. Kennen and I love Vertigo and have used it as an excuse to visit many of the filming locations: Mission Dolores, Mission San Juan Bautista, Cypress Point, Coit Tower, etc. Needless to say I'm excited to see it projected.

This morning started strange. At 135 lbs and 32" waist I'm trim and yet kennen has the gaul to continually call me fat. I got fed-up with it last night and lashed back that he's vain, egotistical twit and I was tired of hearing about it. What he didn't know, and I'm now too frustrated to share, is for the past weeks been trying to schedule time with my company's staff trainer. The idea is introduce people to a healthy workout and provide encouragement. I had my first appointment this morning and it was ok. Perhaps he didn't work me hard but the soreness quickly faded. Probably the harder part is adjusting my own self image; I'm not a gym bunny.

So I've caught myself singing john denver thoughout this week. Monday was charity BAO BINGO and the DJ was spinning some good music. Along came "country road" and the entire room of some 200 people came to halt as we all sang along. Very odd because I thought my childhood complete with my parent's colorado worship was unique. Seems everyone knew the song. Odd timing too because my parents are in colorado again this month; vail last week and now breckenridge.

Presidential Hopefuls Talk

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:13:43 GMT

So kennen and I are fortunate and receive LOGO on our DirecTV. Last night we watched the Presidential Debate hosted by the Human Rights Campaign Fund and, thanks to tivo, the two hour program lasted four. Kept pausing and talking, then rewind, discuss candidate some more, etc. Tonight I've re-watched mostly straight-through without the commentary.

Hillary continues to impress. She keeps thing personal, engaging, and on-target. Obama somehow misses it for me although I love his "let each religion choose to call it marriage" because it's a brilliant compromise that america will stand behind. Edwards doesn't do anything for me and kennen isn't the only one to take offence to the repeated livestrong armband wearing. Kucinich is still a nut but for once he had a receptive audience. Richardson continues to perplex me. If only he had an ounce of charisma I'd vote for him; alas he's a talented bureaucrat. He'd make an excellent vice-president but I'd doubt he would ever make the ticket. Oh, about that "foot in mouth" comment about homosexuality being a choice: well, I don't think he knows what it's like to be gay because, duh, he's not gay. He's not pandering like most, his gubernatorial record proves he gets it, and he wants to grow further. So yea, cut him some slack.

I wanted to be an astronaut

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:37:26 GMT

So my retrospective mood continues. Today I awoke to npr and a story about space shuttle endeavor’s launch today (STS-118) and the return of the teacher in space program. This triggered even older memories back when I was a rocket geek. I was in sixth grade when challenger exploded and shortly thereafter I attended space camp. There I won the “right stuff” award; the first awarded following the accident. Still topical, tom brokaw did a “youth respond” piece and I was interviewed on national news. Funny how my fifteen-minutes came when I was only 13.

Once

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 05:46:39 GMT

Three movies in three days? Now that's entertainment. I'm sure everyone has seen the simpsons and hairspray so instead I'll focus on a little irish film called "Once." Let me start by saying i don't get people. Like many I live in my little world with personal hopes, fears and dreams; it's so easy to forget about other people. Well, have you every wondered about the guy you may have passed on the street? What gets him out of bed? Keeps him going? Is everyone's story interesting? Even a street performer?

Ok, first what this film isn't is a sappy love story where two kindred spirits find the other. Granted, the poster tag line reads: How often do you find the right person? Well, maybe it's good schmaltz but I took it for a love affair of another sort. So the protagonist repairs hoovers by day and at night sells his heart-felt songs on the street. Yes he meets a girl but somehow avoids cliches as they make sweet music. Literally.

For me the film's love affair was with creation; the birth of beautiful things. My mood is melancholy and I'm remembering back to high school and collage when I "did" something. I created art, synthesized idea, inspired the soul. Seems now all I do is make stuff happen, and sure it takes some creativity, but it's not beautiful. Guess where I'm going with this is the film for me was a mirror. I saw myself, decisions I've made, paths selected, and alternate outcomes. I'm curious if others have the same response.

Michael Gives Back

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 03:11:52 GMT

Great article and not just for Beatles fans. I Love/Hate the journal but they always have a great cover story! -ralph

August 2, 2007

Why Piano Owned
By John Lennon
Is Touring America

It Pops Up in Places Known
For Violence and Tragedy,
From Waco to Virginia Tech

By ANN ZIMMERMAN
August 2, 2007; Page A1

The piano on which John Lennon composed "Imagine," his famous ode to peace and healing, is on a yearlong magical mystery tour of the U.S. with a macabre twist.

The nutmeg-colored Steinway upright, believed to have been in Mr. Lennon's country home in Ascot, England, is crisscrossing the country to show up at some of the nation's most horrific sites of violence, death and destruction.

It has popped up here and there with little fanfare, transported by white-gloved attendants in a moving truck who carefully unload the instrument to display it in parking lots, grassy fields and on street corners.

British pop singer George Michael and his longtime partner, Kenny Goss, a Dallas gallery owner, are the force behind the tour. Mr. Michael bought the piano from a private collector at a Sotheby auction for $2.1 million in 2000. He had kept it at the couple's country home outside London, occasionally playing it for guests and using it to record some tracks on his 2004 "Patience" album.

So far the exhibit has been greeted with a mixture of skepticism, reverence and queasiness. When Libra LaGrone, a music curator at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, was first approached in May about showing the piano in the hurricane ravaged city, she thought it was "creepy," she says.

She researched the project on the Internet to satisfy herself that it was legitimate. "Then I saw what it was doing for people," she said.

Lori Blanc, a Virginia Tech Ph.D. candidate in biological sciences, is a huge John Lennon fan, but she was still surprised at how she was drawn to the piano. "I am a scientist and not a sentimental person," said Ms. Blanc.

The piano was displayed on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., where 32 students were massacred by a lone gunman in April. People drove from as far away as Washington, D.C., on Memorial Day weekend to see it. Some wanted the chance to play "Imagine" or other songs on it. Others simply ran their fingers over the cigarette burns Mr. Lennon had left on it.

Ms. Blanc spent more than an hour with the piano, playing a song she had composed for a friend who was murdered a few years ago. "It was symbolic and healing," she said.

The piano hasn't always been welcomed. Administrators at Columbine High School outside Denver, still suffering from publicity fatigue eight years after two students killed 13 people there in 1999, refused to allow the piano on the school campus. And officials at Ford's Theater in Washington, where President Lincoln was assassinated, ignored requests that they play host to it. When it showed up anyway one morning on the sidewalk in front of the theater, actors rushed out to see it.

Messrs. Michael and Goss shipped the instrument to Dallas to appear at a Goss Gallery exhibit of war photography. "We thought the piano provided a great juxtaposition," Mr. Goss said in an email from Russia, where he was accompanying Mr. Michael on a world concert tour.

The success of the gallery appearance led to the countrywide tour of disquieting places, which Messrs. Michael and Goss call "The Imagine Piano Peace Project."

Messrs. Goss and Michael aren't making any appearances with the piano. They chose Caroline True, a veteran music-video producer from Britain, to choreograph the instrument's tour, which they hope to turn into a video and book with the proceeds going to a charity yet to be named.

"There is a sense of oddity about the whole thing," said Ms. True. "But it is odd in such a kind, quirky way."

In the past four months, the piano has been to more than 10 sites, from the Memphis motel -- now a museum -- where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 to a Texas prison on the eve of an execution. It showed up at a ceremony commemorating the lives lost during the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, then 12 hours later was unveiled in Waco, Texas, at a service for the 80 members of a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians who died in a 1993 blaze after a 51-day standoff with federal officials.

"It gives people a distraction from grief and it's been a silent peace protest of sorts," Ms. True said.

While planning the piano road trip, Ms. True also wanted to include lesser-known, though no less horrible, tragedies. She searched the words "violent crime" on Google along with the names of towns along their route. That's how the piano came to Texarkana, a city of about 60,000 on the Texas-Arkansas border that is still haunted by the 1946 unsolved murders of five young people by a man only known as the Phantom Killer.

The murders were the subject of a 1976 movie called "The Town that Dreaded Sundown." Ms. True planted the piano at a park near where the body of 16-year-old Paul Martin was found shot. A local musician played "Imagine" for a handful of spectators.

John Lennon's piano, at Virginia Tech in May.

When the piano arrived in New Orleans a few days later, Ms. True faced another quandary. "Where do you put the piano in this enormous amount of devastation?" she wondered. A local man suggested the Ogden Museum, one of the first cultural institutions to reopen after 2005's Hurricane Katrina. After overcoming her initial skepticism, Ms. LaGrone, the curator, arranged for the piano to share the stage with one of the performers at the museum's weekly concerts.

"We all had our pictures taken with the piano -- and we're not the type to take pictures with famous musicians," said Ms. LaGrone.

While letting Ms. True run the show, Messrs. Michael and Goss did insist on one stop for the piano: the home of Gabi and Alec Clayton in Olympia, Wash., whose story they found while researching gay hate crimes on the Internet. Twelve years ago, the Claytons' 17-year-old son killed himself after suffering a beating at his high school by an antigay gang.

The tour has paused for now while Ms. True wraps up business in London and the piano rests in the home Messrs. Goss and Michael share in Dallas. It is to be displayed this summer at a local mall. Ms. True hopes to resume the tour with an appearance on 9/11 near the World Trade Center site. Ground Zero has special poignancy for Ms. True, who had arrived in New York just hours before the bombing and watched the second tower fall from the balcony of a SoHo hotel with singer Lenny Kravitz.

Fittingly, she expects to conclude the tour in December at the Dakota, the Manhattan building where John Lennon lived and died at the hands of Mark David Chapman in 1980. Mr. Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, was not consulted.

She researched the project on the Internet to satisfy herself that it was legitimate. "Then I saw what it was doing for people," she said.

Ms. Blanc spent more than an hour with the piano, playing a song she had composed for a friend who was murdered a few years ago. "It was symbolic and healing," she said.

The success of the gallery appearance led to the countrywide tour of disquieting places, which Messrs. Michael and Goss call "The Imagine Piano Peace Project."

"There is a sense of oddity about the whole thing," said Ms. True. "But it is odd in such a kind, quirky way."

"It gives people a distraction from grief and it's been a silent peace protest of sorts," Ms. True said.

John Lennon's piano, at Virginia Tech in May.

"We all had our pictures taken with the piano -- and we're not the type to take pictures with famous musicians," said Ms. LaGrone.

More stuff from around the world

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:49:49 GMT

So kennen just sent this; guess it's funny, or odd, or something:

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: kennen blanning
Subject: Fwd: India Cobra Snake

Kids know no fear!

What did I get myself into?

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:55:13 GMT

So ken and I went to this hendi film last night. Bollywood took the entertaining hollywood romantic comedy hitch and turned it into a pathetic, unwatchable nightmare called partner. It was filled with strange, silly subplots like this dancing short guy with guns or a kid's science project that happens to be a heat-guided missile. Oh my, it was awful! It's not often I leave in the middle of a film but after 1 1/2 hours and they call intermission, well, I figured I couldn't stomach anymore.

Debate WrapUp

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:13:56 GMT

Debate was fun. Hillary really did shine and that surprised me. Obama was ok but I did like how he sold gay unions: states should extend full privileges and it's up to each denomination to call it marriage. My hopes for richardson faded; the executive branch is mostly bureaucratic (where I'm sure he'll excel) but in the age of 24/7 media the presidency has taken the additional role of statesman. Richardson simply doesn't have the charisma. Oh, and kucinich is funny and far too direct.

YouTube grows-up and sports a suit!

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:11:43 GMT

Our weekend was slow; Art/Rocks friday and the potter movie sunday. If we did anything notable saturday I don't remember. I'm still chatting with marc (ex) but that's winding down from the heyday of two weeks ago. Reality is setting in: it was fun to catch-up and relive old events/emotions but things are very different now. Enough of that; kennen says I share too much.

So who is following the presidential "race?" The YouTube Democratic Presidential Debates are tonight. It's a new format hosted by Anderson Cooper where real people submit questions online (not some committee.) So I'll watch if only to see more of Bill Richardson. He's arguably the most qualified and I'm always interested to learn more about him. If you're interested it starts at 6p and can be viewed on YouTube and CNN.

SICKO

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:06:21 GMT

So i enjoyed SICKO and think perhaps it's michel's best. For one, he kept the grandstanding to a minimum. Second, it was well edited, never dull, and the "story" carried nicely. Why shouldn't a documentary (used lightly) be entertaining? ...after all a good sermon is. Third, he didn't just make noise that things are broken but presented viable alternatives that work in a range of cultures and economic systems. It's that last point that really distinguishes this film. Sure, columbine was a good attempt to illustrate alternatives ( detroit crime vs. widsor's unlocked doors) but the lasting image was of heston and that pointless "interview"

Frustrated

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:57:33 GMT

So I've been frustrated with our prez and how sept 11 has been overplayed. Just heard an npr story about chertoff and his "gut feeling" that something might happen. Ugg. I was discussing this with kennen yesterday and how I think history will view 9/11 as a minor footnote(1). He helped clarify my thoughts saying "remember the maine" not "pearl harbor." If anything, perhaps it'll be remembered correctly: a seminal event that triggered a very dark, unpatriotic period in america history. What's going on scares the crap out of me. We are so close to a tyranny of the so-called majority.

I'm just so frustrated with the media now. They have to invent enemies(2) to fill their 24/7 news cycle and they scare people. For example: last month my grandmother left her purse in the washroom. She returned and was so surprised that it was turned-in to security. My response was "of course it was. I would have as would you." I got some lecture then how "most people' would've (3) kept it. huh? I choose not to fear(4) because people are basically good. Am I just being idealistic?

===

(1)Maybe it's "guy fawkes" we'll see

(2)kennen's faviote example is bham's local news. during ratings sweeps they run little 5 sec spots with some inflammatory language like "your neighbor might be a pedophile. Watch the news at 10 to find out who." or kennen's favorite: "don't eat your window blinds!"

(3)morphious is something different. for one, you didn't know where to return the bag. second, you did return the crap to the rightful owners

(4)reasonable precautions are expected. Even good people can be tempted so don't be rude and lead them astray

For he was lost but now is found

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:53:09 GMT

So I've been melancholy lately and over the weekend decided to track-down my high school bf. Monday I left a message with his father and within a few hours, BAM, there he was calling me! We dated fifteen years ago and haven't spoken in ten so it was nice to catch-up. It really is great to have time to provide some perspective. We were the others first and I think the emotion of being gay overwhelmed everything else. Looking back we were narcissistic and too concerned about what "gay" is, is that who I am, etc. So he's been in a relationship now for six years and for the past four he's been living in manhattan. Still a writer and his bf is a hotel concierge. I was so happy yesterday I couldn't wipe the smile from my face. We've been trading little message today. It feels good.

Might as well be at the quest

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:23:49 GMT

So, we're doing this upgrade Friday night ...and four hours into the effort a part failed. It's warehoused over in oxmoor park but it took close to two hours to rouse someone out of bed and let us in. The short of it is we're really behind schedule and it look like I'll see a sunrise. Yea, I'll be leaving just in time to be run-over by those fleeing the quest!

Cinco de Durbo

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:13:23 GMT

Wow, what a weekend but I guess Mint Juleps make anyday special. You see we were invited to a derby party Saturday. A dozen old queens wearing hats (required attire), sipping cocktails, and making catty remarks about the queen’s green dress and red bow. I thought I was clever to wear a sombrero (cinco du mayo) but turns out everyone had the same idea. Our friend jane (and my “boss”) brought authentic tamales and Kathy was serving Corona beer. Prob my favorite part was “buying” horses by drawing names from a hat. Mine won and I walked away with $200! Royce won the “best hat” competition with his “cinco du durbo” themed creation complete with a pinata horse and jockey ken doll.

So my brother is visiting from Tampa and Sunday we drove to Florence ( North Alabama ) to visit family. We’re not together often so we played catch-up over a long lunch then took photos in the garden. He’s considering moving back to Birmingham so he has an interview scheduled today and was touring houses all weekend. Seems with the new hurricane insurance premiums it’s too expensive to live in florida .

Sunday evening saw the end of the Amazing Race All-Stars. Kris’s BF Rob is visiting from Singapore and they hosted a Finale Bash complete with my favorite: Homemade Guacamole. Eric & Danielle won; I would have preferred Oswald & Danny or Charla & Mirna but I don’t mind too much. I’m just glad that Rob & Amber didn’t win.