Rockers (1978)

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Where am I?

What just happened?

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“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Team Romney’s polling cluelessness comes after years of conservatives demonizing pointy-headed academics, including scientists. On subjects like evolution, global warming, the biology of human conception, and even macroeconomics, conservatives have been increasingly bold about rejecting the consensus of scientific experts in favor of ideologically self-serving pronouncements. That attitude may have contributed to their loss of the White House in 2012. It will be much more costly for the country as a whole if it doesn’t change before the GOP next captures the White House.

...The conservative movement seems to have adopted the same attitude toward Nate Silver. The world is messy and complicated, and understanding it often requires years of study and a willingness to consider evidence objectively regardless of where it comes from. Yet the conservative movement has increasingly become a hostile place for people who think for themselves, no matter how deeply they understand their subjects."

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{Conservative's Reality Problem | Forbes}

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1. Process Matters: Sharp data analysis beats squishy feelings. The accuracy of a handful of statisticians versus the bloviating punditry is for me, the single most dramatic storyline of the election.  Nate Silver showed data, logical reasoning and mathematics outperform “gut feel” and instinct.

2. Think Deeply Before You Speak: Grand pronouncements with limited upside but immense downside are suicidal in every field. The Romney OpEd about letting Detroit go bankrupt may have doomed his candidacy in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

3. Be True to Yourself: Romney is a former moderate, pro choice governor who worked as bipartisan chief executive in Massachusetts creating a state wide healthcare program. He ran away from that, first tacking hard to the right to win over the base, then shifting to the middle during the election. He should have ran on his credentials instead of trying to please every one.

4. Planning and Execution Matter: The blocking and tackling in states like Ohio Florida and Virginia were a huge advantage to the incumbent. His team executed well, where as Romney team (apparently) came up short. Being able to put together a smart plan and then execute on it is crucial.

5. Choose Your Business Partners Well: The VP choice is a major decision a Presidential candidate makes, and Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan added nothing to his chances. If you are trying to shore up your base at your convention, you have not done the requisite planning. Ryan could not even deliver his home state and fumbled his debate to a grinning goofy Biden. All told, a net negative for the Romney campaign.

6. Dont Live in a Bubble: Large swaths of the conservative movement live in an alternative universe where facts don’t matter and science is irrelevant. The selective perception of bubble people who never venture beyond Fox News and Drudge and UnskewedPolls is self reinforcing. If you spend most of your time rationalizing why the polls are inaccurate and the media is biased, don’t be surprised at what happens next.

{The Big Picture | Continue}

Haha

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"Karina Sengupta, College and Wharton senior, said the announcement is “the best thing that has happened to investment banking. Sengupta had an internship in asset management at Goldman over the summer. She is participating in on-campus recruiting for a variety of careers including banking. “Goldman Sachs has a fantastic HR division that really knows how to keep talent,” Sengupta said. “This termination would let the firm keep people who are actually passionate about finance instead of just being in it for the money."

{A Bump in the Path to Wall Street | WSJ}

The Common Touch

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"Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners."

-Romney, when asked by the AP reporter if he follows NASCAR

"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love."

-Romney

Psych

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Bigger than Hip Hop

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He gets a little agitated when the subject of Zuccotti Park comes up: "What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?” He says he told Russell Simmons, the rap mogul, the same: “I’m not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?”

“I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly. Because when you just say that ‘the 1 percent is that,’ that’s not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. You know what's worse? Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”

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{The House That Hova Built | NY Times Magazine}

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“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald 

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Dear Alabama, 

We're going to kick your ass this year. Did y'all watch last weekend? Did you see us wilding all over the place? Gangtackling like banshees and scoring on huge huge 60+ plays? We've got the best receivers in the league this year and y'all've found a pretty good running back from somewhere near Obalaska county, okay okay roll tide, but your secondary is younger than Simba and ripe for a scorching. Beware, for on the third Saturday in October, the red moon will rise fast after a blazing orange sunset....

It's just the greatest

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{Foooooool's Gold}

Jungle Boogie

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{ The Counterintuitive Physics of Tarzan Swings | MIT Technology Review }

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"By hanging on beyond this point, Tarzan begins to convert some of this horizontal velocity into vertical speed, which sends him on an upwards parabolic trajectory that can increase his time in the air and therefore the distance he travels along the ground...."

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Tennessee News

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"In Lebanon, Tennessee, a town of less than 30,000 people, Mike Justice, the public safety coordinator, was so eager to accumulate military goods that he used to wake up at 3:00 a.m. so he was the first person logged in at the government’s first-come, first-serve online store. Thanks to his sleepless nights, since 2007, Lebanon has collected $4 million worth of stuff, including tanks, weapons and heavy equipment like bulldozers and truck loaders. Lebanon’s tank, an LAV 150, has been used only “five or six times” according to Justice, although it did help save a man who tried to commit suicide, spotting him with the tank’s infrared camera...."

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{Small Town Cops Pile Up Military Gear | Wired's Danger Room}

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{Snake pops head through AC vent of car heading down I40 | Tennessean}

* That's not the photo from the story but it had to be included

Hard Knocks

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(Ryan Tannehill, on why it’s important for him to work with the starters) – “Well, I want to be the guy. You don’t want to be a backup. It’s not a goal to be a backup. I want to play and I want to get in there. The more reps I can get with the ones, I feel like that’s more like a game situation as much as you’re going to get in practice.” 

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"Last year, I took a year off to give everybody else a chance to catch up.”

“Are you watching? You been out there? I’m fast as shit.I feel good. I look good. I feel like I’m moving. I feel like a cheetah. I feel…I feel black.”

-Chad Johnson, first media interview
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"Hey Coach, I’m going to go get arrested on my day off.”

-Chad Johnson, episode 1 of Hard Knocks

{Chad Johnson cut by Dolphins following arrest | Miami Herald}

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(Coach Joe Philban, on if tight end Les Brown looks like a football player or a basketball player playing football) – “At times. At times. I would say both. He’s certainly a young player. We all know he hasn’t been in pads. This is a new, kind of brave new world for him. You could probably watch a couple plays and say, ‘Boy this guy doesn’t fit in.’ Conversely, you could watch a couple plays and think he’s a five-year veteran. So I think there’s a little bit of both. I think how quickly he can eliminate those pictures or those film clips where he doesn’t look like an NFL player.)

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{Former College Basketball Player turned Accountant Gets Signed by the Dolphins | The Palms Beach Post}

I'm Amazed

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{ISS Star Trails by Dale Pettit | Continue}

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“Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable–those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To the men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of “moderation,” in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose.”

-William T Sherman

Get Free

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“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”

— Henry David Thoreau 

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"Parag Khanna’s contempt for democracy aside, he is simply an intellectual impostor, emitting such lethal doses of banalities, inanities, and generalizations that his books ought to carry advisory notices....

When the Khannas discuss the charms of their newly found profession in Hybrid Reality, the whole enterprise is revealed as a jargon-laden farce: “Futurism is a combination of long-term and long-tail, separating the trends from the trendy and the shocks from the shifts, and combining data, reportage, and scenarios.” It doesn’t sound like a very demanding job: “It helps to travel and be imaginative, but it is even more useful to observe children.” And why all this effort? So that we can better predict the apocalypse. “Avoiding civilizational collapse will require harnessing technologies that help us decipher complexity, overcome decision overload, and produce comprehensive strategies.” The Khannas have come to accomplish nothing less than the rescue of civilization....

The recipe is simple. Find some peculiar global trend—the more arcane, the better. Draw a straight line connecting it to the world of apps, electric cars, and Bay Area venture capital. Mention robots, Japan, and cyberwar. Use shiny slides that contain incomprehensible but impressive maps and visualizations. Stir well. Serve on multiple platforms. With their never-ending talk of Twitter revolutions and the like, techno-globalists such as Khanna have a bright future ahead of them.....

When they launched their publishing venture, the TED organizers dismissed any concern that their books’ slim size would be dumbing us down. “Actually, we suspect people reading TED Books will be trading up rather than down. They’ll be reading a short, compelling book instead of browsing a magazine or doing crossword puzzles. Our goal is to make ideas accessible in a way that matches modern attention spans.” But surely “modern attention spans” must be resisted, not celebrated. Brevity may be the soul of wit, or of lingerie, but it is not the soul of analysis. The TED ideal of thought is the ideal of the “takeaway”—the shrinkage of thought for people too busy to think."

{The Naked and the TED | Evgeny Morozov | The New Republic}

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Wut?

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Recently, the local tribe sent Rosolie and Duran to a place both legendary and ecologically marvelous: a massive lake with a "raft of vegetation and grass which supports a smaller dwarf forest," Rosolie says. The ecosystem is strong enough to walk on—at least in parts.

"Walking on the floating forest at night is a surreal and very spooky experience. The floating part isn’t very stable, one wrong step and you get plunged into the lake. It was an intimidating place but with careful navigation we found a completely alien environment. As we walked, we passed only the tops of the aguaje palms whose base lay rooted to the lake’s floor forty or fifty feet below," he says....


During their first expedition to the dwarf forest, Duran and Rosolie came upon the biggest anaconda they have ever encountered: "We spotted two tremendous anacondas. The largest was more than double the size of the largest anaconda [Duran] and I have ever measured (15ft 4 inches). She was so large it would have taken eight people to restrain her on land; on the floating forest there was no chance. When she saw us she started moving away. We both wrapped our arms around her and did our best to restrain her for measurements and documentation, but it was like trying to stop a bus, she was way too strong. She bolted for the water with us holding onto her. Hanging on longer would have meant following her into the water below the floating forest. We were left soaked and panting – in complete disbelief of what we had just seen."

Rosolie estimates that she was at least 25 feet long with a 70 inch girth—given the fact that his six foot arm-span could barely reach around her body. "From catching 15ft individuals on a fairly regular basis, we have a good frame of reference to verify that the female was saw that first night was significantly larger than double any we had previously encountered. The only actual measurement we have is that my arms barely touched around her body and I have a 6’ arm span. This means that the snake had a girth of something like 70 inches. We estimate her length to be easily upwards of 25ft. Snakes measuring over twenty feet are extremely rare; this one was a living legend. In future explorations, once again spotting her will be one of my primary goals."

{Secrets of the Amazon | Monga Bay}

What?

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Joey Crawford comes in there and his whistle falls out. I thought it was maybe a small bird sneaking out of Harden's beard.
-Steve Kerr

Wait....what did you just say?

-Reggie Miller

Jet Skiiidaddle

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Garrett McNamara will soon be listed by Guinness World Records as having ridden a larger wave than any other surfer, stealing that distinction from Mike Parsons.

A mere foot separates the 78-foot wave ridden by McNamara last November at Nazaré, Portugal (see top image), and the 77-footer conquered by Parsons in 2008 at Cortes Bank off Southern California.That was the verdict, anyway, issued Friday night by an expert panel that determined winners for the annual Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards, which honor surfers for various accomplishments during a 12-month period.  A spokeswoman for Guinness World Records said McNamara's record would be approved once documentation is received, and XXL contest director Bill Sharp submitted documentation Monday afternoon.

Said McNamara, after being named winner of the Biggest Wave category: "It's amazing we get to do what we do, I am so grateful. The world record doesn't mean as much to me, this is for the town of Nazaré and Portugal and for all my family and friends there. To be able to give them something to be proud of and inspire them... I didn't want to get caught up in it all, but I have to tell you the truth, when they announced my name I got a bigger rush than probably on all the waves I rode this year."

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"Before the crisis, if I had been a narrow-minded economist, I would have been very pleased to see that academics had a big impact on policy. But unfortunately that was bad for the world. After the crisis, you would have hoped that the academic profession had changed and that policy-making had changed with it and would become more skeptical and cautious. You would have expected that after all the wrong predictions of the past, politics would have demanded from academics a rethinking of their theories. I am broadly disappointed on all accounts."

{Hugo Stiglitz | Austerity and a New Recession? | The New European Magazine}

You Can Fly

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At Oregon, there is a long tradition of players policing themselves. Several Ducks reference a "code" followed by teammates who handle weed-related matters in-house on a case-to-case basis. "Some guys who use marijuana go out and ball because they're relaxed," says former QB Akili Smith, "but if it affects his play, you sit him down and tell him, 'Yo, it's not for you.'?" Today, that code still stands. "If you're not hurting the team, everyone's cool with it," says a current Ducks player....


Recently, the researchers of a study in Sports Medicine wrote that athletes claim "smoking cannabis before play helps them focus better" and increases their creativity, and prior studies have found use among athletes to decrease anxiety, fear, depression and tension...


One senior NFL executive who interviewed players at the combine says about 70 percent confessed to smoking pot, likely on the advice of their agents. Their reasoning? Given the drug's popularity, if players deny having used weed, NFL teams will simply assume they're lying. One agent goes so far as to say that teams don't care about marijuana as much as character and integrity....


To ensure that one of college football's powerhouse programs stays on top, these Ducks will have to put in some work, starting in a few days when they play host to the nation's best prospects on their official recruiting visits. Then, after winter conditioning, there will be another reprieve and, this Duck hopes, more hazy, team- bonding sessions. "Some of us smoke," he says, "and then we went out and won the Rose Bowl. Know what I mean?"

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{Marijuana and Oregon go together like laces on a football | ESPN | Continue}

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.....

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        Yvonne: Where were you last night?

Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember.

Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?

Rick: I never make plans that far ahead. 

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Major Strasser: What is your nationality? 

Rick: I'm a drunkard. 

Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world. [all laugh] "

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Captain Renault: I've often speculated why you don't return to America. 

Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? 

I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.

Rick: It was a combination of all three. 

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Ilsa Hello Sam
Sam: Hello Ms. Ilsa. Never expect to see you again.
Ilsa It's been a long time.
Sam: Yes ma'am. Lot of water under the bridge.
Ilsa Play some of the old songs, Sam.
Sam: Yes ma'am.
(Nervously begins to play a number.)
Ilsa Where is Rick?
Sam: (evading) I don't know, I ain't seen him all night.
Ilsa: When will he be back?
Sam: Not tonight no more. He ain't coming-uh, he went home.
Ilsa: Does he always leave so early?
Sam: Oh, he never... well...(desperately) He's got a girl up at the Blue Parrot, goes up there all the time. 
Ilsa: You used to be a much better liar, Sam.
Sam: Leave him alone Ms. Ilsa. You're bad luck to him.
Ilsa: Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake.
Sam: [lying] I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
Ilsa: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."
Sam: [lying] Oh, I can't remember it, Miss Ilsa. I'm a little rusty on it.
Ilsa: I'll hum it for you. Da-dy-da-dy-da-dum.....
[Sam begins playing]
Ilsa: Sing it, Sam.
Sam: [singing] You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by. / And when two lovers woo, / They still say, "I love you" / On that you can rely / No matter what the future brings-...
Rick: [rushing up] Sam, I thought I told you never to play-...
[Sees Ilsa. Sam closes the piano &; roll it away] 

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Sam: Boss, ain't you going to bed? 

Rick: Not right now.

Sam: Ain't you planning on going to bed in the near future?

Rick: No.

Sam: You ever going to bed?

Rick: No!

Sam: Well, I ain't sleepy either. 

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"Ilsa: Who is Rick?
Captain Renault: Mamoiselle, you are in Rick's! And Rick is...
Ilsa: Who is he?
Captain Renault: Well, Rick is the kind of man that... well, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick. 

But what a fool I am talking to a beautiful woman about another man.

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Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? 

Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart. 

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Has the world lost it's class?