Entries Tagged 'updates' ↓

Fair Verona is Shakespeare as he never intended. Graham Jenner and Kerri Bojman have remixed and resampled Romeo and Juliet (with lines from other Shakespearean plays) to create the one-act tale of a community killing its most beautiful young people through an obsession with conformity and ritual. The text is pure Shakespeare, mashed up and rearranged. The themes of the play are not exactly foreign to the Bard’s work, but while they’re merely implicit in the original R&J, here they are explicit and a bit chilling.

The play is being put on at the McMaster University Summer Drama Festival (website here), a perennial celebration of theater completely by students. The budget is miniscule, the stage was built by volunteers, but the offerings at this festival are often amazing. McMaster has more than its share of talented actors, but it also produces skilled stage crew, directors, and (obviously) playwrights.

This festival is one of the best bangs for your theater buck anywhere. Talented young women and men come together every year to put it together from scratch, and their dedication always shows. The music was even composed by one of the actors, who is also an advanced music student.

Fair Verona starts this weekend, with three more performances next week. See the SDF website for more details. And here are some more shots from the rehearsals. Enjoy!

Fair Verona is coming along nicely. It’s a thoughtful, lovely piece about a nice, cohesive community crushing young love like a ladybug. Last night was the first rehearsal at the outdoor stage in The Hollow. Mosquitoes, volume issues, etc… but it’s still a great play. I’m loving it. There was far too little light to take decent crisp snapshot-type photos last night, but there was enough for some long-exposure crazy shots, so here is one. I like to think that Shakespeare would have approved of the ghostly apparitions strutting on the stage.

In some websurfing a week or two ago, I found this post, in which one Alan Wall, a blogger apparently living in Mexico (which sounds pretty cool, really), cited a Mexican official who said that the U.S. was deporting too many immigrants back to Mexico, 56% of whom were criminals convicted of crimes in the U.S. Okay, interesting stuff. But Mr. Wall begins his article,

“Open border promoters are fond of telling us that illegal aliens “aren’t criminals”. But just recently…”

That is, he established a position right away using this report as evidence that illegal aliens are criminals, in some generalized sense. This was annoying to me, and it’s untrue, as far as anyone currently knows. I couldn’t find a place to comment on Mr. Wall’s blog entry on Vdare.com, so I emailed him. My email said,

This article was pretty fascinating, in its core. However, in writing, you make two mistakes, one based on lack of knowledge of research, and one based on simple logic.

1. The reason people who study this issue (not all of them are “open
border promoters”) keep saying that [most] “illegal aliens ‘aren’t
criminals’” is simply because that is what the best research so
far tells us. It’s not mystery science; it’s the same kind of
research that tells us how many people we have in our country, and
what kind of crops are being grown in Kansas. By innuendo, you
place more faith in the expressed opinion of one Mexican official
than in dozens of scientific research projects, including the data
from tens of thousands of actual people. This decision on your
part seems to reveal your biases.

2. If this official’s numbers are correct (over 56% of re-deported
immigrants are convicted of crimes in the U.S.), this still does
not mean that a majority of those **entering** the U.S. in the
first place are criminals. In fact, the same research you seem
bent on ignoring shows that most Mexicans entering the U.S.
(legally or illegally) go to great pains not to break laws or
otherwise come to the attention of the authorities. All we can say
from Mr. Moreno’s data (assuming it’s accurate) is that a majority
of those the U.S. government catches and chooses to deport have
been convicted of a crime.

Another problem here is that I’m not sure (from your article) whether Mr. Moreno is talking about only illegal aliens (entirely possible), or all immigrants. It is likely that legal immigrants who have not yet obtained residency or citizenship could be disproportionately targeted for deportation, especially if deporting them would make beds available in overcrowded prisons and jails. If I were the government, I’d start sending back the immigrants who were committing crimes, and leave the law-abiding ones alone, wouldn’t you?

Or maybe you’re just in favor of keeping everyone out who’s not already here. The pattern of selective attention to only certain kinds of facts and logic in your blog post suggests as much.

I couldn’t find a link to post this as a public comment on your blog. I hope you will see fit to do so.

I know, it was maybe just a tad bellicose. I should have been more conciliatory, perhaps. Also maybe I should have pointed out the questionable wisdom of taking mid-level bureaucrats’ assertions at face value. Alan Wall’s reply:

All illegal aliens, regardless of what else they do, are lawbreakers. However, a signficant proportion of them commit other crimes as well.

The Mexican government defends illegal aliens in the U.S., and will often use this phrase “they’re not criminals”. However, Mexican officials in less guarded moments point out that some of them are, even by Mexican standards.

Not exactly addressing the criticisms, so I wrote back:

So your defense to the criticism includes no consideration of actual data, no new thinking, and no acknowledgment of the main criticisms I presented. Brilliant. I’m sure you have a great audience who never questions such things. I still invite you to place my comment publicly on your blog post.

Yes, my irritation was showing (*blush*). I am a little ashamed, but perhaps you will also see that Mr. Wall didn’t even address any of the glaring (to me, anyway) flaws I suggested in his original post. He wrote back:

In your message, you never disproved one thing in my blog entry. But, if you’re really determined to see your name in print, send your message to the letters section at VDARE.COM, to jguzzardi@vdare.com

I did so.

Now, as a warning, I tell you that this conversation is about to become hopelessly juvenile. And my part is not much more mature than Mr. Wall’s:

Mr. Wall,

I referred to an entire body of research that casts major doubts on your blog entry (if you need them, I can get you several citations for the research I refer to), and I also pointed out serious errors in the thinking that went into it (I can also probably find a good textbook on logic, if you like). Replying that I haven’t “disproved” anything is not a convincing defense of your position. The more important point, in my opinion, is that your blog post didn’t *prove* anything. In fact, it used innuendo and implication to suggest something that is almost certainly not true. It’s not my job as a reader to prove things; however, it *is* your job, as a supposed journalist, to check your facts and think more carefully before publishing things.

At your suggestion, I have sent my original letter to the “letters” section. Thank you for the link.

Sinking lower…

You continue to rant on, yet you haven’t disproved one thing in my blog entry.

And lower…

Yes, I have. The fact that you can’t see it is a separate issue.

….aaaaaaaand rock bottom:

No you haven’t.

Once the dialogue is at the second-grade level, I don’t think there’s anywhere else to go except perhaps into the colorful world of profanity and “yo mama” jokes. So I’m stopping. Except, of course, to post the conversation here so my friends can mock us both. :D

Last week, I liberated an old Velo Sport from a neighbor’s yard. For Brad! For brad, I tell you! This week, I removed (almost) all the extra parts. No more shifters, rear derailleur, front derailleur, 6-speed Atom 77 freewheel, or very-long chain. Now it’s a nearly-respectable, very civilized single-speed bike.

Notes:

• The mtb pedal clips are a little too deep, though joyously wide and tall
• I still need to cut off the offending and extraneous outer chainring on the front (but I don’t have a dremel tool or angle grinder)
• The seat is pretty cheesy; after riding one of those pressure-relieving seats for a couple of years, this one feels like a golf ball is constantly being shoved up my wazoo
• The brakes are pretty awesome
• The steel wheels and Maillard hubs are perhaps not the lightest, but I like them. They both need cleaning.
• The beautiful aluminum sleeve in the center of the drop bars concealed a lousy steel bar under the tape. And the bar was not bilaterally symmetrical! Geez…
• This bike needs a serious bath, and probably everything repacked and lubed
• There is a definite clacking, possibly in the bottom bracket, with every pedal revolution; must diagnose and fix… someday
• The chain that was on this was too skinny to fit over the BMX freewheel, so I got an inexpensive BMX chain
• BMX chains don’t fit in regular chain tools

Anyhoo, I took it for its voyage of rebirth today, and that was fun. I went over to the Chedoke Golf Club and climbed the stairs, then rode along the ridge through the ritzy neighborhoods, then a bit on Bruce Trail, then back through Ancaster and down the mountain on Wilson St. Good ride. I like the bike.

There is another bike in our already-somewhat-small apartment. It’s a free bike that a lady nearby was giving away. It’s a 12-speed Velo Sport average-joe-grade road bike. The size is very nice for me and/or Brad, and everything works. I’m glad I didn’t take Brad’s bet last night, because I pumped up the tires and they’ve held 80 or so psi for several hours, now (I thought they would be punctured, but no). The frame has small bits of rust on it, not visible on casual inspection. There are nice little details, too, like Shimano quick releases on both wheels, lots of aluminum parts, those brake-release-thingies on the brakes, the gum hoods on the levers still intact. More details after the cut: Continue reading →

Billy of Dark Mean Lays down a groove

 Last night was a lot of fun. Constant K went well, and beforehand I realized that — now that I am no longer an actohr, I can hang out and watch the musicians play their sets before the shows. Dark Mean was completely great. I like their sound. It reminds me of The Ocean Blue, Radiohead, etc. Then, we wandered to the Spotted Pig pub in Hamilton, and hung out while a really excellent man named Ted regaled us with his tunes. Then he let us Play and sing, and then there was dancing and general good times… very  nice.

Pic of the day: Three people and a muppet. for some reason.

I’m supposed to be working. Right this minute. But I’ve just spent an hour reading through the (for me) interesting back columns on Measure for Measure, the NYT’s (thankfully non-subscription) blog about songwriting, by songwriters. Okay, so i went there just for Suzanne Vega’s recent piece, but I ended up reading a whole bunch of stuff. Yay! Songwriting! I should do some more of that, someday… my songs are getting stale, like cookies left in the cupboard too long. And I should write about something other than the ups and downs of dating, since I no longer have any dating ups or downs. I do have a song about a dead possum. And some snarky songs about politics. I could become this generation’s roadkill/protest singer. I shall get right to work on that.

Anyway, as I was saying, I have lots of work to do. None of it (sadly; so sadly) has anything at all to do with writing, singing, or even listening to songs.

Sigh. I think I need some Suzanne Vega, now. Yay, MP3s!

Alex’s latest play, The Constant K… etc. was housed in an awesome old 3-story building with an art gallery on the ground floor, a theater on the second floor, and a gorgeous massive loft on the top. The building is called “The Pearl Company.” I recently found out why. It used to be a jewelry factory. These pictures show leftover pearls still embedded between the floorboards in the art gallery. (one more photo after the cut). Continue reading →

Picture: Jeff Santa Barbara, Constant K Director, looks pleased, despite his dark and gloomy surroundings.

The Constant K Determines the Ultimate Fate of the Universe opened last night. It was rough in some places, but overall a success. It will just get better across performances, too :) I discovered that I am no longer the boy who could not get enough stage time, back in my early 20s: I was nothing but relieved when my 5 minutes of fame was over.

In other news, it occurred to me that we need a glossary for the show (no, I’m serious), so here it is.

Altruism

Performing a helpful act without any selfish motivations; helping purely to help the individual in need, or for helping’s sake alone.

Comet

(See Meteor/Meteorite, Tumbleweed)

Dawkins, Richard

Popular ethologist and evolutionary biologist, originally prominent for his book The Selfish Gene, a seminal text for sociobiology, and for developing and popularizing the theory memes. Although he was originally known for his scientific contributions, he is lately more famous for using his considerable intelligence and education to browbeat and humiliate less-educated religious people in public forums.

Continue reading →

Rakhee Totally rocks… not that you can tell from this picture.

Alex’s first play this summer is Lee Blessing’s Two rooms. It’s painfully, heart-wrenchingly horribly sad. It’s the story of a husband and wife. He is blindfolded, handcuffed and regularly beaten by his Lebanese terrorist captors. She, back home, lives in self-imposed isolation and austerity, to share the experience with him, since she can’t get him released.

Rakhee Sapra (above) plays the wife. Alex plays the State Department worker assigned to manage her. There are only four actors, but it’s very powerful. That means people (possibly including me… I admit nothing) cry. Last night, the show got a standing ovation. Yay! I didn’t even start it! Yay!

I must say that all four actors are outstanding, my wife most wholeheartedly included.

Sadly, the show right before it (it’s been double-billed) is, in my opinion, not so good. It’s an interesting effort by a student writer, but it seems to boil down to all the sexual, scatological and drug content of shows like Up in Smoke and Clerks, without any of the original or socially redeeming bits.

On the plus side, the people who aren’t frightened away by that tend to really appreciate something substantial and satisfying right afterward.

Go Alex!

Addendum:  after a sort of creepy anonymous comment on this post (hinting at the possibility of negative social consequences of my negative statements), I have decided to expand my review of the play preceding Two Rooms. I wouldn’t want people to think I just hated it, flat out. In fact, the first play had some strong points. There were several chuckles and a few belly laughs yanked from my abdomen, and some of the physical acting and comedic timing was especially humorous. The actors, most of the time, put forth solid efforts. Unfortunately, the writing seemed to me, as I have mentioned, a collection of clichéd comedic elements from a style of movies that have become ubiquitous and played-out in recent years. I had the distinct impression that the shock-value-humor element was overdone in the context of the other elements, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth and insufficient justification for having acquired it. Part of this bad taste involved a little gratuitous sexual prejudice and some probably-unintentional-but-still-problematic victim blaming and/or misogyny. However, I am still impressed by the fact that an undergrad wrote this. It flows nicely from moment to moment, it has coherent plotting, it has reasonably well-defined characters, and (as I said before), there are some genuinely funny moments. By the standards of professional scripts, it would not fare well, but by the standards of undergraduate work, I suspect it shines quite respectably.

So, all that annoying studying I did for the EPPP¹? It paid off! I got a 730, which means (if I have the scale right…?) that I KICKED A**!!!

The passing score for Texas is 500, and it’s a little higher for CA and some other places. I think (?) I got it all goin’ on, whichever state, province or territory I may wish to practice in. Course, I don’t wish to really practice (much) anywhere. But still. One more exam, and I can has license. The other exam is in July, in Austin². And the application and money are due tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. Poor planning. We’ll see. Otherwise, I’ll take Orals in January. Whatevah.

Now that I passed that suckah, there’s only a few things left to do:

1. Pass orals
2. Get my license
3. Sell my EPPP study materials to someone more desperate than I was when I bought them
4. Write a post detailing the picky annoyances of the test and the study materials
5. Oh, maybe get some kind of professional work opportunity or something, to try to pay back the stupid big expense of getting this far

1. the national licensure test for psychologists [↩]
2. reminder: I’m in Ontario [↩]

Still in IAH, had an hour conversation with a customer service lady, and another few minutes on the phone with another one. Final result: admission that I’m going to be late because Continental representatives made some very strange decisions, not because of weather. Yes, I’m going to be 2.5 hours late, but also, my next trip will be $100 cheaper. It’s not a full voucher, but it helps.

Also found out my luggage will probably not arrive today :(  The sucky things about that are not really the delay in luggage. They are (1) the line-waiting and delay and hassle of the claim process in the airport, and (2) the 6 hours of hanging around your house when the delivery folks call and say, “We have your luggage. We’ll be there sometime between 10 a.m. and 4 pm.”

Most important message: I’m not blown up, and I will see Alex tonight. Both of these things are Very Good.

The plane for our flight to Houston… is still in Houston. And is “not leaving anytime soon.” OK, so we’re about 2 hours behind schedule, now. It might still be possible to absorb this into the other layovers (e.g., Cleveland), but it’s best not to count on such things.

Here I is in the Mcallen International Airport (anything 3 miles from the Mexican border is international). I’m at gate 2 (there are now about 6 gates in all. In the whole airport). My friends Craig & Melinda (and their very cool daughter) drove me down here and accepted all the half-used bottles of condiments and probably-not-rotten vegetables from my fridge. I paid $25 extra for a second checked bag (Daddy, is it true that you used to be able to check two bags with no extra charge? And they would feed you on the plane?)

Oh. A lady just walked by me with a cat carrier, but I think it contained parakeets. Interesting.

Anyway, the ticket agent uttered the dreaded word “weather.” I may miss my connection in Houston, Cleveland, or both. She said she’d try to pre-book me on alternate flights out of Cleveland, just in case.

This might be a long day. Or, I might arrive exactly when I was supposed to. I’m hoping for option B, of course.

a) this is a real sign just south of where I live. Is it not glorious?

b) in a few hours I go to see Alex. I get to stay there (probably) for the whole summer (at least most of it, even in the worst case assessment). This is a very good thing. I am even tentatively confident that I may have gotten nearly everything done to make this trip feasible. Yay. (?). And I am going to see my wif. Yay!!! (!).

I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr. Fiend

I love this photo, though it’s perhaps a little silly¹. I think Alex doesn’t like it much. She’s not a prima donna², I promise. There was context to this shot: she was getting makeup put on for her role as Lady MacBeth. That’s just how she has to have her face so the makeup person can do her thang.

In other news, our friends Craig and Melinda are likely going North before I get back from Canada. This saddens me greatly. I will miss them.

In other other news, a dream job opened up just last week at University of Waterloo. I’ve applied, and will be very, very fortunate if I get an interview (which I really don’t think is likely; I have a couple of strikes against me). However, if I get the job, then the travel/relocation crisis in our marriage shifts from the necessity of Alex leaving her home to the necessity of me leaving mine. Sigh.

Perversely, compromise doesn’t work in this situation. If we met each other halfway, we’d have to live here. And we’d both have to leave our homes and comfort zones. Nobody wins. Relashunships iz hard.

1. but also, you must admit, a little awesome! [↩]
2. in the colloquial sense [↩]

Weeeed in the wiiiiind…

well, not exactly, but I have spent a buttload of time on this stupid proposal. I mean the Department of Homeland Security proposal. After a furious re-submission period over the last few weeks (occupying lots and lots of time I would have preferred to spend doing other things), just this morning we were informed that funding had been “delayed.” For at least two years. So, feel free to do the research if you like, but on your own dime.

To recap:

Spring 2007 - Original proposal
Summer 2007 - Tweaking, re-submitting, etc.
Fall 2007 - see “Summer 2007″
February 2007 - Awarded $300,000 per year, for 6 years
March 2007 - Psych! Suckers! No money for you.
March 2007 - Re-awarded $75,000 per year for 3 years
April 2007 - Lots more frantic writing, rescaling projects to the smaller amount
May 2007 - Award reduced to $75,000 per year for 2 years
May 2007 - Award “delayed” until 2010
May 2007 - DHS can bite me

I took that insane test today. The EPPP. Was I ready? No. I should have been studying all year, but instead I was doing other things. I made a big push over the past six weeks or so, but half of that was interrupted by unforseen Very Bad Things that required all my time, and the other half was marked by my standard not-really-dedicated approach to things.

You are allocated 4 1/2 hours for the test, and I took all but about 15-2o min. of that. I went nice and slow, reading carefully, marking and revisiting confusing items, etc. The good news is that the test questions themselves aren’t (in general) nearly as poorly written as some of those in the Academic Review study materials I’ve been using. The bad news is that this probably didn’t matter. When you don’t got it… you don’t got it. I’m mentally preparing myself for the “you did not pass” letter. Which will arrive in “several weeks.” Most inconvenient.

I was a little too clever for my own good. I tried to keep track of how I was doing by putting little dots on the whiteboard-thing I was given for notes. I put a dot under a smiley face for every item I was almost certain I had answered correctly, a dot under a worried face for each item I figured I had about a 50/50 chance on (this is multiple choice) and a dot under a sad face for those I knew absolutely nothing about. The results:

:-) 113
:-S  70
:-(  38

I know that’s not 225, so I must have counted wrong, but it’s close enough for an estimate. I multiplied the “sure” total by .9, to account for being sure and also wrong (this happens with disconcerting frequency in my life); the “maybe” total by .5 (because I assumed that, overall, I might get half of those right), and the “no freaking clue” total by .25 (because I was just guessing on those).

The result: My estimated score is 147. That sounds OK, until you realize that 158 is the cutoff.  So, I’m pretty sure I FAILD. It’s always possible (though, by definition, unlikely) that my crazy guessing was more successful than I realize, but that’s not a realistic hope.

Oh well. I can do this again in the Fall, I guess.

When you don’t clean your electric toaster oven for, say, 5 or 6 years, could this cause it to suddenly just stop functioning?

This is not a hypothetical question.

What it is with the completely irrelevant crap on the EPPP (the national licensure exam for psychology)? It makes no sense to me that (a) aspiring clinical psychologists have to know the details of Industrial-Organizational psychology, or (b) we should be required to have an intimate understanding of all the archaic psychotherapeutic missteps and quackery we know do NOT work and that nobody even practices anymore cough*FREUD*cough.
I figure, if AATBS (the folks who make the exam) were in charge of medical licensing, your family M.D. would have to answer questions like these before he or she would be allowed to see patients:

1. Which of the following is the most accurate representation of leech theory, as prominently endorsed in the 19th century?
a. Leechiotides are responsible for cleansing the patient’s ill humours
b. A goodly leech may purge a stout man’s augured spirits
c. The leech, if applied delicately, will remove all disease-prone impurities from the blood
d. Accurate leech placement is a feather in the cap of any competent physician

2. Galen’s humorific disease model would explain pancreatic cancer as:
a. A stygian compromise between black and yellow bile
b. A confluence of the miniature demons of the gastrointestinal tract, in the context of phlegm and bad blood
c. Unbalanced bilious secretions being overly cooled by the brain
d. The heart fire losing its steam before untimely extraction

3. Under the neoclassical Greek model of women’s medicine prevalent in the early 1900s, which of the following is sufficient reason for removing a woman’s uterus and ovaries, thus imparting better-than-even odds of condemning her to death by sepsis in the weeks of forced convalescence in a filth-ridden and psychopathology-inducing “hospital” following a horrifically nonsterile operation?
a. The wandering uterus is a threat to masculinity everywhere and must be stopped at all costs
b. Melancholy, unfeminine delusions of political equality, or a measurable sex drive are fates worse than death anyway
c. Ours is not to question why; ours is but to do what the only financially solvent member of the household — the husband — tells us to
d. She is a woman; no justification is required

4. Proper chiropractic alignment of the lumbar vertebrae and the sixth chakra will result in which of the following:
a. Improved posture, removal of bodily toxins, mental awakening and self-actualization
b. Improved posture, gait-balance correction, self-actualization and enlightenment
c. Self-actualization, aural cleansing, recovery from autoimmune diseases and viral resistance
d. None of the above; there are only five chakras

5. The ethical code for licensed massage therapists requires biannual:
a. Update of patient personal information and muscle tension profiles
b. Plea-bargain pre-agreements in the case of national or state-level congressional clients
c. Bloodborne pathogen screening and criminal background check
d. Cross-referencing of sex-offender registries with client lists

6. As a medical anthropologist, you are asked to evaluate the physical and mental health of a group of Quiche Maya in the highlands of Guatemala. Your first step should be:
a. Approach the village council and ask for your horoscope according to the Tzolkin
b. Build relationships with the women’s circles
c. Prescribe antibiotics and antiviral agents
d. Declare your allegiance to the traditional healing methods of the shaman

7. Consulting as a marine biologist for West coast fisheries, you encounter evidence of illegal commercial fishing in the salmon migration waters. The best course of action for maximum preservation of the endangered population is:
a. Geotagging a random sample of salmon
b. Relocation of at least 1,000 salmon breeding pairs to freshwater hatcheries
c. Political activism in the context of the Endangered Species Act
d. What the hell do inane questions like this have to do with becoming licensed as a medical doctor