Apr 14, 2008 | 7:06 PM
Category:
Music
As part of its
“Girls Go Tech” campaign, the Girl Scouts of the USA placed this ad in the papers:
“By the 6th grade, many girls lose interest in math and
science, which they may need for future jobs. So next time your daughter asks
you to sing a lullaby, sing it in science…”
A popular nursery rhyme – resung in science – appears in the ad:
Twinkle, twinkle little star
You’re a ball of gas that’s very far.
32 light years in the sky
10 parsecs which is really high.
Helium, carbon and hy-dro-gen
Fuse to make our starry friend.
When it enters supernova stage
It explodes with bursts of rays.
And if the star’s mass is big and bold
It will become a black hole!
The
Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,
which consists of a very simple melody, is a science ballad – although it’s not
so much about astronomy as it is about chemistry. LSD.
How’s
that for a Day Tripper? Leery?
“Turn
on, tune in, drop out.” Leary!
Epilogue:
Timothy Francis Leary, an American writer, psychologist, and advocate of
psychedelic drug use, was one of the first people whose remains have been sent
into space.
Ah,
the unending bliss of
heaven…
“Up
above the world so high,
Like
a diamond in the sky!”
Apr 13, 2008 | 2:21 AM
Category:
Weather
In Glossary of Meteorology, tornado is defined as “a violently rotating column of air, pendant from a cumuliform cloud or underneath a cumuliform cloud, and often (but not always) visible as a funnel cloud.”
To the layman, it sounds like WAB. What A Bummer.
NOAA’s National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center says the classic belief that “warm moist Gulf air meets cold Canadian air and dry air from the Rockies” spawns a tornado is a gross oversimplification. To the shaman, it sounds like WAC. What A Crock.
“The truth,” according to the SPC, “is that we don't fully understand.”
But take it from the experts.
Else, we have to contend with such terms as convective, cycloidal, ground swirl, hook echo, mesocyclone, multiple-vortex, occlusion downdraft, and other tongue-twisters.
Tried and tested tongue-twisters, twisted sisters.
Torn the town without much ado,
that‘s the way of the tornado.
Four furious friends fought for the cellphone
while caught in the midst of a mesocyclone.
I know the two examples above sound more like doggerels than tongue-twisters. I just don’t know if the two examples below have identifiable inaudible infrasonic signatures:
A twister of twists once twisted a twist
and the twist that he twisted was a three twisted twist.
Now in twisting this twist, if a twist should untwist,
would the twist that untwisted untwist the twists?
What a terrible tongue twister.
What a terrible tongue twister.
What a terrible tongue twister.
Terrible twisters, indeed, that hit parts of North Texas last week. Images and footages of damages wrought by the tornadoes were all over the newspapers and television.
We can only commiserate with the victims. We cannot say they were unlucky for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. When you’re home, you’re always at the right place at the right time.
To us who do not have the benefit of a basement, we can only hope and pray that a tornado does not come our way. It’s hard to pick up the pieces. It’s hard literally – and even harder figuratively.
Still, tornadoes are the destructive forces of nature that we have to live with here. It goes with the territory. Tornado Alley.
Tornado touchdown is an in-your-face rim-rattling slam dunk – a la Phi Slamma Jamma, “Texas' Tallest Fraternity.”
If only we could stand our ground with hands akimbo or a la Dikembe Mutombo (with his signature taunt and transcendent move known as finger wag) and say, “No way, Jose” or “No way, Kobe.”
Not In My Back Yard. Not In Anyone’s Back Yard.
NOTE, Not Over There Either. NOPE, Not On Planet Earth.
If there would be another touchdown in our domination, let it be the kind that is capped by a popcorn celebration.
Apr 11, 2008 | 6:13 PM
Category:
Sports
“Nobody was
expecting billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to be a runaway surprise on the
ABC reality show Dancing with the Stars,” thus began a blog post of a
downtown Manhattanite who sounds like a McCarthyite.
Cuban “wiggled
his hips, snapped his fingers, (and) lip-synched” as he danced the foxtrot with
his partner, ending it with an odd little hop that prompted one of the judges
to characterize him as a “bouncing bionic billionaire.”
Cuban’s
performance earned a 7 from each of the three judges for a final score of 21.
“Blackjack, baby,” the “lean, mean dancing machine” responded heartlessly. (I figure
he’s got diamonds, clubs, and – am I thinking too swiftly?)
Talk about
geeks gone wild.
“Now can I get
an encore, do you want more…So for one last time I need y'all to roar…” (That’s
Jay-Z rapping – even as his New Jersey Nets are dropping. That’s ironic and
this is anachronistic – Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.)
Cookin’ raw
with the Brooklyn boy meets servin’ Blizzard at
the Dairy Queen.
While Cuban
danced with his partner from Down Under, his Dallas Mavericks struggled to
position itself up there.
After playing
musical chairs with the Nets, the Mavs were left out in the cold doing the
cha-cha while their Western Conference and in-state rivals two-stepped their
way to the playoffs. When its franchise player went down and out for about two weeks, the team was all set to fall off, fold up, and call it a
season.
Nobody was expecting them to survive the shootout in the Wild,
Wild West, much more to be a runaway surprise like a lean, mean dribbling machine or a bouncing bionic basketball team.
But, last
night, the Dallas Mavericks clinched a playoff berth. It took a walking wounded
to spearhead an end-game blitzkrieg attack on the Utah Jazz. Reigning MVP Dirk
Nowitzki, the Stuka ace himself, delivered the precision bomb that won the war.
Not only did
Dirk give the Mavs their 50th win of the season, a playoff berth for
the eighth consecutive year, and a second straight victory over an elite team,
but the wailing siren of his dive bomber is bound to scare stiff every Western
power.
To translate
the deathless and deadly words of the great German general Guderian, “Don't
fiddle, smash!”
Like geeks
gone wild, let’s get rowdy, let’s get loud,
let’s be proud!
Go, Mavs!
Apr 8, 2008 | 6:17 PM
Category:
Entertainment
American Idol is
a big, big hit, thanks to its motley crew
of contestants and flock of
faithful viewers.
Talk about collective nouns and the show has
bred a bevy of brave new words for our idolatrous world:
* a cowell of critics (the simon-pure variety)
* a paula of plaudits (acts of compassion a hundredfold)
* a randy of raiments
(a passion for fashion)
* a seacrest of showhosts (who do Ryan-errands -- omnipresent facilitator to the competitors and conscientious
objector to the jurors)
* a hung of heteroclites (offbeat contestants who she-bang their way to stardom, like who-else-but William Hung)
* a lapuz of live wires (electrifying performers like Renaldo “I am your brother, your best friend forever” Lapuz who out-Hung William Hung).
A confusion of collective nouns? Well, it's American Idol -- and it's just one of a
fox of favorite tv shows!
