Naked People on a Glacier

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Naked people on a glacier
In this image supplied by Greenpeace, U.S. artist Spencer Tunick and Greenpeace Switzerland present hundreds of naked people to symbolize the vulnerability of glaciers under climate change.

Is that what it’s supposed to symbolize?

What did it symbolize when he photographed hundreds of naked people in Venezuela, France, Britain, etc., etc., etc.

Isn’t anyone else bored out of their minds with this idiot yet? He’s like that miscreant who dresses up Weimaraners, and everyone else who has one limited idea and keeps repeating it over and over and over.

I don’t claim to be a great artist, but let me tell you how this glacier shoot should have been done:

You put the hundreds of people on the glacier, at which time they discover to their dismay that they’re stuck there like a tongue on a lamppost. You leave them there to slowly starve to death and decompose.

It reeks of symbolism . . .

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Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Just the Translator

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Lightning at the Dog Park

My son’s working on the computer when Lightning the pug jumps in his lap and lays down on his arm.

“How am I supposed to type with a dog laying on my arm?” the boy asks either me or the dog, I’m not sure which.

Lightning looks at me and pants a few times.

“He says you need to start thinking outside the bun,” I tell the boy.

“Ummmm . . .”

“Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either, but that’s what he said.”

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My Dog Explains His Name

by  on Lightning
 
Lightning on the bed

Sometimes when my owner takes me to the dog park, people ask him what my name is. When he says “Lightning,” they laugh, like it’s a joke, a bit of irony, like naming a Great Dane “Tiny.”

Look, people, I’m almost 4 years old now, but when I was a puppy, I was really fast — for a pug. That’s why my owners named me Lightning.

I’m still fast when I go full speed. I just don’t do it that much anymore.

Don’t underestimate the pug.

— Lightning paw

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Life in the OC Photos

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aloha!

Originally uploaded by debaird.

I’ve walked by this store dozens of times at the Irvine Spectrum and it never occurred to me that an extreme closeup of the sign would make an interesting photo.

I guess that’s why some of us are photographers and some of us are sitting around saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

More like this: The photo is from a Flickr set called .:life in “the oc”:.

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Dara Torres: The Best Sports Story You Never Heard

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In other sports news — “other” meaning something besides steroids, blood doping, dog fighting and point shaving — Dara Torres has won her 14th and 15th national swimming titles at the U.S. Nationals currently going on in Indianapolis.

Why is that worth mentioning?

Dara Torres and her daughter

Well, swimming is a young person’s sport and Torres is 40 years old. She won her first national title 25 years ago in 1982. She won Olympic medals in 1984 in Los Angeles, 1988 in Seoul and 1992 in Barcelona, then retired from competitive swimming at age 25.

After a 7-year layoff, she started training again and qualified for the 2000 Olympic team. She was 33 years old, the oldest swimmer on the team. She won 5 more medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, then retired again.

Four days ago, at age 40, and just 15 months after giving birth to her first child, she won gold in the 100m freestyle at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, her 14th national title.

“I just got in shape swimming with my daughter and I started swimming a couple of meets and I swam real fast,” she said. “A lot of master swimmers were encouraging me to swim, so I just decided to get back into it.”

Last night, she won her 15th title, swimming the 50m freestyle in 24.53 seconds, breaking her own American record of 24.63 set in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Lara Jackson placed second at 25.27, close to a full second behind, which is an absolute blowout in a 50m race.

Her goal is to qualify for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where she would be the oldest female Olympic swimmer ever at age 41.

I love this story, although it’s getting little to no play in any of the sports media I follow.

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Marcus Aurelius on Sean Penn

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The dictator and the useful idiot
The dictator and the useful idiot

Keep before you the swift onset of oblivion, and the abysses of eternity before us and behind; mark how hollow are the echoes of applause, how fickle and undiscerning the judgements of professed admirers, and how puny the arena of human fame. For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of our own habitation but a minute corner in it; and how many are therein who will praise you, and what sort of men are they?

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV.3

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Harry Potter Spoiler?

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POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows cover

I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For some reason, the publisher chose to give away the climax of the story in the dust cover illustration, although it does leave a few questions unanswered so as not to make it too obvious:

  • Is Voldemort falling backwards or just hovering mysteriously?
  • Why doesn’t he have a wand?
  • Potter appears about to catch something out of the air. What could it be?

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EppsNet Hotel Review: Santa Maria Resort, Fort Myers, FL

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I recently spent a week in Florida with my son for a roller hockey tournament. We stayed at the Santa Maria Resort on Fort Myers Beach.

Two-bedroom floorplan

The place was great, like a furnished 2-bedroom apartment with a fully appointed kitchen: oven, stove, microwave, fridge, freezer, plates, bowls, pots, pans, silverware, etc. We went to the local Publix grocery the first day and stocked the place up with food and beverages.

We got all this for about $50 a night less than we would have paid for a room at, say, the Embassy Suites. And when I say “room,” I mean that usually when I travel with the boy, the hotel room is in fact a room and we’re both in it together. That’s a problem because he likes to watch TV in hotel rooms and I’d rather read a book.

But with the 2-bedroom setup — each bedroom on opposite sides of the suite, separated by the main room — I didn’t even know he was there most of the time.

Rating: Four stars (out of four).

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UCLA Coach Makes a Home Visit

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USC Trojans

The Orange County Register has an update on last week’s arrest of UCLA assistant football coach Eric Scott on suspicion of felony burglary:

UCLA officials said Monday that the background check on receivers coach Eric Scott was conducted by the university and not an outside agency, as previously stated.

But, again, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero and Coach Karl Dorrell were unaware that Scott had been arrested four times between 1996 and 2005.

The Bruins coach, who was arrested for a fifth time last week on a charge of residential burglary, previously had pleaded guilty or was convicted of misdemeanor carrying a concealed weapon in 2005 and misdemeanor disturbing the peace in 2002.

OOPSIE!

UCLA: University of Coaches Looting Apartments.

Coach Scott is on administrative leave at this time. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions regarding his guilt or innocence based strictly on his extensive list of priors.

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Why Men Make More Money Than Women

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Another study quizzed graduating master’s degree students who had received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men — 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women — said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded — they got 7.4 percent more, on average — compared with those who did not negotiate.

— Washington Post

A Carnegie Mellon professor has figured out why men make more than women for the same job.

I actually figured that out myself the first time I heard about it. Salaries are negotiable. You can’t pay someone less than they’re willing to work for. Hence, women must be willing to work for less money. It’s the only possible explanation.

UPDATE: I should have emphasized that 7.4 percent is just the difference in starting salaries. If we make the reasonable assumption that men continue to be more aggressive in seeking raises and promotions throughout their careers, the monetary difference potentially becomes very large indeed.

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Free Ride

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Motorcycle

One thing I learned on my recent vacation is that Florida, unlike California, doesn’t have a helmet law for motorcycles.

If you’re wondering what percentage of riders will wear a helmet for safety reasons if they’re not required to by law, the answer appears to be zero, although more than half the riders I observed did take the precautionary measure of wearing a shirt.

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Hat Trick

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Ticket stub

My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament.

That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2.

We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up.

Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me.

The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot.

Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really sick of Harry Potter but I do want to find out how the whole thing wraps up . . .

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