Author: wasswasswass

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Aging

The older you get, the more slowly you age.

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The Positions of the Human Form

360(shoulder) x 360 (shoulder) x 135(elbow) x 135(elbow) x 360 (wrist) x 360 (wrist) x 360 (spine) x 360 (hip) x 360 (hip) x 135(knee) x 135(knee) x 360 (ankle) x 360 (ankle) x 360 (head) =

12,143,953,109,659,430,000,000,000,000,000,000 body positions

Between 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 estimated number of stars in the universe.

Assuming 1 postion/sec (31,449,600 seconds in a year)

386,140,145,173,847,400,000,000,000 years for 1 person to do all positions.

These are rough calculations that do not take into account several factors. The fingers, the face, the wide range of mobility of the spine, the various sizes of circles that each rotation joint can do.

If you wanted to see how many possible positions there are in a duet, square the large number at the top. A trio – that number to the third power… a quartet that number to the fourth power etc.

Adding in costumes, lighting, repetition of movement, sound…there are an infinite number of dances possible.

Which leads me to a question of value. If so many dances are possible, how do we determine the good ones? Value and quantity usually have an inverse relationship – the greater the number of something, the less that something is valued. Take grains of sand and diamonds.

Are all of the dances that have been created of equal value because there are vastly fewer dances that have been created in comparison to dances that have not been created? Is every dance you will see in your lifetime of equal value?

 

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Tax Cuts vs. Food Stamps

From Harper’s Index:

Estimated amount by which the U.S. GDP increases for each additional dollar of tax cuts:
$1.03
Amount for each additional dollar of infrastructure spending and food stamps, respectively:
$1.59, $1.73

Are Republicans, supposedly the business minded and business friendly party, unaware of this fact? Maybe I don’t have such a great business acumen but I have always thought a 73% or even a meagrer 59% return on investment is much better than a 3% return. But then again, the Republicans were at the helm when the economy went into the toilet, so what do they know.

What are we waiting for, Obama? Let’s start feeding people and building bridges!!!

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Don’t candles also make greenhouses gases?

From an Antarctic research base to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and beyond, the world switched off the lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world’s most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change.

Sounds like a good idea. But I am not sure if everyone got the idea completely.

“In Australia, people attended candlelit speed-dating events…“

Candles burn oxygen creating carbon dioxide, a green house gas. Therefore they were still adding to the problem.

“A key 2010 football World Cup qualifier against Serbia posed a dilemma for Romanians. “Shall we watch the match or turn off the lights?,” the 7plus daily asked in its main front-page headline.“

Couldn’t they just play the game during the day time when there is carbon free light?

“McDonald’s Corp. planned to dim its arches at 500 locations around the U.S. Midwest“

Why not stop selling burgers for an hour? The consumption of meat adds more to global warming than transportation.

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Irish Police

Sounds like the police in Ireland could use the Rosetta Stone.

from the BBC –

“Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country’s most reckless driver have emerged.

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

Poles are Ireland’s largest immigrant population

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police’s rank and file had been looking for – a Mr Prawo Jazdy – wasn’t exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn’t even human.

Polish driving licence (generic)

“Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence,” read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda’s traffic division.

“Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.

“It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”

The officer added that the “mistake” needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.

In a bid to avoid similar mistakes being made in future relevant guidelines were also amended.

And if nothing else is learnt from this driving-related debacle, Irish police officers should now know at least two words of Polish.

As for the seemingly elusive Mr Prawo Jazdy, he has presumably become a cult hero among Ireland’s largest immigrant population”

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Solar Panels over Parking Lots

After seeing this on the news yesterday, I had one of those moments of – Duh, why didn’t I think of that? (a feeling that also happens when viewing contemporary art) In Sunnyvale, Ca, the parking lot of Applied Materials is covered in solar panels. Electric vehicles can charge up in that lot.

Why are we not covering every single parking lot south of San Francisco with such structures? I remember listening to a Science Friday on NPR that talked about solar panels and part of the problem is that there isn’t enough room for solar farms near where the power is needed, i.e. urban areas.

Well, doesn’t this just solve that problem? How many parking lots, huge parking lots, are there in L.A., in Pheonix, in Houston, that are just baking in the sun 300+ days of the year? Why are we not demanding these solar farms be built? They could be a revenue source by charging people to recharge their cars while they are at the mall or the movies or at Disneyland or the golf courses outside Palm Springs.

Why are we not doing this? Are projects like this in the Stimulus Package?

p.s. why are there golf courses in the desert?

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A piece of the Pi

3.
14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128
48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091
45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094
33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548
07446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912
98336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798
60943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132
00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872
14684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235
42019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960
51870721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859
50244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881
71010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303
59825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778
18577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989
38095257201065485863278865936153381827968230301952
03530185296899577362259941389124972177528347913151
55748572424541506959508295331168617278558890750983
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85836160356370766010471018194295559619894676783744
94482553797747268471040475346462080466842590694912
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56887671790494601653466804988627232791786085784383
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73929848960841284886269456042419652850222106611863
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46776465757396241389086583264599581339047802759009
94657640789512694683983525957098258226205224894077
26719478268482601476990902640136394437455305068203
49625245174939965143142980919065925093722169646151
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54285844479526586782105114135473573952311342716610
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Art = Science

“[Art] is what it is simply because it can break down fetishes and superstitions and is bold in explorations and because it opposes following the beaten path and dares to destroy outmoded conventions and bad customs.”

– Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The first word in his quote is “science”, but art works just as well, if not better. In many repressive regimes throughout history, art is suppressed. As is science.

Galileo, Degenerate Art, Evolution…just to name a few.

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Love Hurts With Frequency

Love hurts with frequency.

Drinking a lot of beer is what ails me.

The young lad wept loudly because he didn’t catch the ball.

Johnnie Carson was as good as a host as Jack Paar.

Hank always wore nylons when he went stalking

The geologist thought the coarsely foliated and crystallized rock was nice.

After a vigorous food fight, the Maitré d was gored by the spaghetti squash.

Hank spends much of his time looking at a book about reeds and other marsh flora.

He chewed in rhythm while eating a beet salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

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Insanity

“Hamas had it coming” read a sign I saw at a protest near the Oakland Farmer’s Market last Saturday. Did these children in Palestine have it coming?

Did Hamas think Israel would respond in any other way?

How can Israel not think that killing more wives, husbands, daughters and sons will make even more “terrorists”?

How can Hamas not think that Israel is going to pound the #^@% out of Gaza once they start firing rockets?


Insanity – doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.