Blogs

I got these really good pictures of Ian and Sg on Thanksgiving, where Sg is really fascinated by a mitten and Ian is trying to help her put it on. Here's one:

Here's another, all creepy perfume commercial styles:

Here's the fun stuff: this is an accident, where I thought I was in aperture priority mode when I was really in shutter priority mode and I ended up with a like 10 second exposure.

I kept it because I thought it looked like shoegazer album art:

And if you just hit "invert", you get a Boards of Canada album cover. (Ain't that always the way?) Voila.

They did finally get the mitten on.

There's a blog post below on a different topic, but first I have to ask: did anyone else hear Erran Baron Cohen on Fresh Air Thursday night? Oh man. If you liked Spinal Tap, you've got to hear it.

EBC thinks of himself as a keen musical talent who breaks new ground by weaving cultural influences into something new and "transformative." His pitch for his having a diverse musical background? He played trumpet in high school band, lived in Tel Aviv for a while, and has seen both Miles Davis and Afrika Bambaataa in concert. (By that standard, I am committing a great crime by hiding my blinding beacon of euterpean prowess beneath a bushel basket.) And the music! Clips from his band ZOHAR ("world fusion beat scientists") would have sounded interesting — but not more than interesting — in 1998. Today they sound like a Garage Band demo. And the album he was there to promote, a collection of original and "reimagined" Hannukah songs, is unintentional self-parody at its best. Witness (the rap begins at about 1:24):

Either that or Erran Baron Cohen is an even more dedicated comic genius than his brother.

Here's what I set out to post: we have gotten a whole lot out of the They Might Be Giants "Here Come the 123s" DVD. (Thanks for the tip, KT!) Sg likes it a lot, and asks to watch it. The thing is that the songs are mostly pretty good, and I find myself humming them during the day. Below the fold (click "continue reading" if this looks like the end of the post) are a couple of videos from the related podcast, along with the song on the DVD that is (I think) better without the video.

She's been modeling counting for some time, but only yesterday seemed to make the one-to-one correspondence connection between the words and the number of things being counted. Next stop: Gödel's incompleteness theorems!

(Please feel free to not comment on the stubbiness of my fingers or Sg's raging case of bedhead.)

In the void of space, no one
can hear Mike Duncan scream.
(Illustration by Gray Morrow)

Bob Edwards was intervieiwing Mike Duncan^* about a website the RNC set up to solicit from the public ideas about "what we have done well and what we can improve upon as we move forward". (You can listen to the piece from a link at the top of this Morning Edition page; the part I'm talking about starts at about 3:40 in from the beginning.)

Edwards read a submission to the website that said the Republican party needs to get some distance from the religious right, and asked Duncan what he thought about that. Mike gave an answer about how the Republican party was for everyone. Edwards pressed the point, asking whether the party could seem exclusive if it was too focused on one constituency. Duncan repeated and expanded on his boilerplate answer about inclusiveness.

And then: Edwards read the original letter again and asked whether there was an assumption the author of the letter was making that was mistaken.

Silence.

Edwards asked the question again, subbing "wrong" for "mistaken". Duncan finally (and testily) repeats that the Republican party is a big tent with room in it for all types.

It is rare to hear an A-list politician at a loss for words, especially when he is campaigning. I guess the religious right still — even in a time when the GOP is desperate for some kind of traction — holds enough sway in the party that party leaders are unwilling to say anything if they can't say anything nice.

^* Mike Duncan is running for re-election as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, which is the group that develops and promotes the GOP platform and is tasked with getting Republicans elected.

We got these cheapo plastic chairs from Ikea for the kids at Sg's birthday party to sit on. I've checked with AT to be sure, and she agrees that Sg has spent the vast majority of her discretionary free time over the past two day stacking and restacking these chairs. It's a funny passion, or a sign of serious mental illness, one.