chapter 2

the timesheet i'm keeping for my studying is definitely paying off. finally finished chapter 1 of the maths book this evening. i don't know exactly how many hours i've pit into it, but it's a lot..yesterday was the first day in over a month with zero study time. aim to finish working through the book by the end of the year.

tiernan played a great set at the lounge on sunday night. beautiful weather and good people made it a great night. most i've danced since miami. rebecca showed up fresh in from new orleans. we both had a day off doing nothing yesterday. it was great.

fridge

cleaning a fridge has got to be the worst job in the home. this means battling a foot and a half long piece of pack ice that has taken up residence in our ice box.

yesterday star wars, today the fridge.....

star wars

went to see star wars with case at the uptown. miserable, cold, wet day here in d.c, so a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

new york times & manchester united

To the Editor:

So ManU has more fans in Asia than in Manchester. Comparing a city of approx. 6 million with a continent of some 3.8 billion is hardly fair. Citing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an example of success of foreign ownership has nothing to do with international competition. World Champions? how about letting the rest of the world participate in your so-called World Series/World Championship sporting events? You end with a quip about Arizona being a lot nicer in winter than Manchester. I can hardly dispute that, but for all the true soccer fans that have put up with the miserable british weather, week in week out to support their local team..I have two questions for you; when did that last happen in Arizona? and how many fans in Asia do they have?

Mark A. Solomon

whatever happened to good sports commentators?

watched the orioles beat the white sox last night - in high def, of course. great game, but unbelievably bad commentary from the white sox station. i expect them to lean towards the home team, but at least call a decent game from the box. if you're going to question the umpire, and express your own interpretation on a play, then show the tv viewers the whole play! perhaps then all viewers tuning into the broadcast can decide whether to agree or not with your blatantly biased assessment. apart from that, the two guys in the boothe were boring, inarticulate, and downright crass.

i don't care about 12 year old jimmy's birthday (someone sent a letter in - possibly the boy's parents) "we're all thinking of ya, buddy" i do care that the people in charge of letting me know about the game unfolding have something better to say than the diatribe these guys came up with. "go on, you can do it"; ""5-2 to the good guys"- you'ld never get this on the bbc....or even on the orioles coverage. made "our guys" look consumately professional, which they are, even when a play goes against the home team, and that's what good commentating is all about!

we got a screen

yep. baseball and football will not be the same (thank goodness). got a jvc 32" flat panel yesterday - very nice. hd box delivered today. watching the orioles in high definition. playing chicago white sox at the moment. two best records in baseball.

i'm happy. so's rebecca. i don't have to bug her to get off the computer so i can watch baseball. changes the space, but at least it looks decent and now the xbox is properly hooked up...:)

scope be gone!

couldn't take it anymore.

saturn was there right out of our bedroom window. glorious. dave's telescope was wheeled into action (sic) once again. this time, though, no matter what i did, it took me 10 mins to finally get saturn to stay in the eyepiece. showed rebecca and that was it. another 10 mins to look at the brightest thing in the sky. ridiculous. everything moves that shouldn't. imagine typing an e-mail message with a screen that keeps jumping around and the cursor moving at will and you'll get some idea of what it was like. gonna have to save up and break down and get a replacement that i can actually use and enjoy instead of grimace.

as rebecca would say: it's not my fault.... :)

let's send our kids to kansas

i just sent a letter to the editor of the new york times.

here it is:

Let’s send our kids to Kansas,

State Board Wants Evolution Challenged.

I have no children, nor do I live in Kansas. I am also an atheist. What does that make me?

Trick question. It doesn’t make me anything, except that I don’t subscribe to Christianity’s view of how I and the world I live in got to exist.

Kansas State Board wants to adopt new standards allowing challenges to the theory of evolution. Really? What is then the purpose and desired role of a State Board of Education? .When it comes to the theory of evolution, allowing competing “alternate” theories suggests equal footing. To my knowledge, as a non-scientist, I can find no other competent theory that has stood the test of time. Do the proponents of these alternate theories embrace or ignore the scientific method? This is an important question. Let’s see their models. Let’s read their papers. Exactly what criteria are they using in their challenge to one of sciences most exhaustively studied subjects? In other words, on what grounds do they insist that the existing current standards are failing the children of Kansas?

I feel for all the educated science teachers, but not half as much as I feel for the children of Kansas and other states that have adopted ‘new’ standards that adhere to the beliefs of just one single religion. Why not since they’re so intent on alternate theories then teach all religious views of how our universe came to be?

I call on all scientists and teachers, regardless of position and state, irrespective of personal beliefs, to join forces and unite, and declare publicly that allowing a state board to shoe-horn in teaching practices not based on science is just plain wrong. A full page advertisement in the New York Times and every other published daily newspaper would be an excellent place to start.

Sincerely,

M. A. Solomon

P.S. I know that you will not publish this letter in full due to its length. Please feel free to edit.

the religious right and a balanced view of the world

is there a more disturbing bunch? i've yet to hear one say anything that wasn't laced with absurdity and rhetoric. at what point does a resonably intelligent child, who hasn't been brain-washed by parents abandon their own sense of self discovery and fall in line, like sheep, to the christian conservative pulpit? this 'proud' group is responsible, believe it or not, for public schools shying away from teaching evolution and science museums rejecting scientifically sound documentaries that may offend christian fundamentalists. i quote:

"Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.

these people aren't happy with anything that doesn't agree with the bible. the big bang, evolution, -very rational-

yes, sure. the earth was physically made in six days (gotta need that day off after all that) and is only 4,000 years old.

i'm sorry. i'm from a different country (england) i thought that this country (america) was founded by those that desired to keep church and state separate. seems that mr. frist and his cohorts would have us believe otherwise and urge the present 'faith-based" administration to abandon all checks and balances, turning the country's back on decades of first amendment law and civil rights protections. did i hear anyone say women's rights?

it's 2005. effective birth-control and aids prevention isn't viewed with the compassionate realism that's needed. these problems aren't going away, no matter how much abstinence the conservatives preach from their safe vantage points. this is, quite frankly, incredible.

the american media would much rather focus on a new pope and a roman catholic church that was quick to condemn the removal of terry schiavo's feeding tube, but stopped short of condemning the war in iraq when g.w. went over to kiss a hand. how many more hundreds of innocent civilian iraqis are going to die before this country and those that put george back in office has had enough of american lives lost. because if i want an update on the war in iraq from any of the major networks, it's the american dead that take top billing. each day this ugly tally is updated. how about one for the iraqis alongside or underneath, or don't we care about them?

formula 1

wow. haven't seen an f1 race in ages and i get to see a corker at imola. was flicking through the remote looking for the baseball and caught cbs broadcasting the grand prix. baseball took a very distant second place. great race. good to see schuey face some real opposition.
baltimore won. 'phone's working again. very mysterious. hope records get here tomorrow.

saturday

not going out tonight. rebecca needs a quiet weekend to get her head around the next four weeks. next weekend is campbell's wedding reception party, so that rules out saturday evening.

thursday

turns out our very annoyingly intermittent internet is a comcast problem. they're sending a techie out tomorrow to try and fix it. meanwhile, we have no home phone. the orioles can't seem to buy a run at the moment and it was a quiet night at blue last night.

wednesday

it's hot. feels like summer. went over to see if i could coax tiernan's computer into existence. looks pretty dead to me. we're having a few internet woes with ours, but i have no idea why. no virus is being reported and no spyware is being found...

going out to blue later on. be good to see some smiling social faces. it feels a quiet week.

environmental disaster...

it's rebecca's birthday today. happy birthday, honey :)
she's supposed to be helping with an outreach environmental clean-up program for the anacostia river. she announced that instead she's going to bag it and instead clean out her closet. i responded that "well, one's an environmental disaster, and two is also an environmental disaster.."

it's cold outside. 40f. outrageous. need some tea. see ya later.

design within reach

last night lasted forever. the good news is that the orange bookcase (sorry, cubes) from design within reach arrived. it's about the only thing we can afford from their catalogue - not a particularly appropiately named company. unpacking everything took a while. orange piece followed by orange piece, followed by more orange piesces. then came the instructions. think ikea gone mad and that's what it looked like. configuration a and configuration b diagrams, except that there was nothing labeled a or b......luckily, we managed to put it together a lot quicker than we thought possible. result.

felt too ill to go out to five to see john tejada, which was a bummer. at least the construction has finished outside, which has been going on for the best part of a year..

flu

can't shake this flu bug. probably have an infection and will need to get some antibiotics. very nasty. no energy.

records

got my records and cd's today.

cd: dj db - the secret art of science mix
cd: fabio/grooverider - drum & bass arena
vinyl: nu tone - brave new world lp
vinyl subfocus - x-ray/scarecrow (floor pleaser)

nice :)

playing again

playing at mantis tonight. haven't played out in what seems like a long time. rebecca is going to play the first hour, which will be good for her and me. she's very good to start off the evening. no beats, no mixing, just funk and soul. going to play some d&b later in the set. we'll see how the mantis crowd likes drum 'n' bass.....

records

ordered some records from breakbeat science and they came the next day on a standard delivery!
great, great service. only thing i'm not too happy about is the size of the sample files. 7- 12 seconds is not a sample, guys. if you know the track you want, then this is a great site.

high society - high society album (great buy)
calibre - drop it down/bleep
calibre - bluetop/gemini

after the wmc, i'm finding it very hard to play any deep house. this means that i probably won't be buying much more of the stuff i've always played out. can definitely see myself getting more into the d&b. interestingly, my first session on the decks last night i found i was already mixing differently....i blame t.dickens for all of this.......

science table

our science table got delivered today. now we can both have our own workspace; one in the bedroom with the computer and the other out in the main living room. the table works out much better than i thought. the room hasn't lost it's feel.

ordered more records from breakbeat science...