The KGB "Hot cat on a cold night edition"

OK, grab a warm spot and a cat! Lets see what's up among Kansas bloggers this past week.

First up Bruce Alderman over at It Seems to Me discusses the Kansas State Legislature's failure to pass a minimum age law. He notes that some of sharpest disagreement that a minimum wage is needed comes from one of the richest counties in the state and argues that "If we can't find a way to ensure a living wage for full time work, then we don't deserve to survive long as a society."


Mike Silverman continues the political theme with an analysis of the highly charged Lawrence City Commission race.

Another political development is the primary for Johnson County Community College's Board of Trustees and Mousie Cat over at Evolving in Kansas has made her endorsements. This race is extremely important since according to some counts the college is the third largest educational institution as a state. Mousie and I agree on our endorsements by the way.

Pat Hayes over at Red State Rabble notes that the recent ruling in Massachusetts that parental rights were not violated when schools exposed their children to ideas contrary to religious beliefs, might have implications here for the evolution battle.

Speaking of religion, Bill Tammeus(not a KGB member) in his Faith Matters Blog observes that couples spend more time on planning the wedding than on marriage preparation.

Kansas bloggers really are all over the political and religious map and I want to note that Christian blogger Jon Mason of Right Minded Thinking is now blogging from a new site where this week he has a meditation on what it means to be a Christian and whether the Church ought to be separate from the world.

For instance, he notes that from his perspective:

"This charismatic movement that wants to take the standards of holiness and separation out of the Church and replace it with a ‘cool’ and ‘trendy’ church is the work of hell. The devil knows what God is looking for in His bride and it ain’t what we are seeing all over our country in these worldly churches."


There has been a row over a chicken tossed onto the basketball court during KU's win over KSU according to Emawkc at Three O'Clock in the morning. He also reveals an adolescent hobby. Personally when I think Jayhawk, I think terror bird.

Jon Voisey, the normally Angry Astronomer celebrates his 300th post with a set of KU pictures-OK some are of the night sky but that's OK. But Jon can you prove those points of lights are really stars?

John B. who co-hosts KGB has been making really annoying scraping sounds against the bottom of the well of inspiration and manages to pull together some pithy commentary on some his favorite bloggers. Josh our other co-host is upset at goings on at the Smithsonian Institution.

Gwynne at the Shallow End has had a busy week amongst which she reports on the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at Union Station. Unfortunately, she was underwhelmed by the exhibit. Joel Mathas had mini cultural event of his own, meeting someone who was a major childhood inspiration-would that we would all be so lucky!

Just in case you don't have a cat-I leave you with a short poem and commentary titled A Mammal in Winter.

Next week, the kgb moves to Blog Meridian unless we hear otherwise!

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Delirium in Kansas City

Friday night we went to see Delirium, Cirque du Soleil's arena touring group, at Kemper arena in Kansas City. Delirium is Cirque du Soliel's attempt to bring some sort of tribal experience to a large arena and it is quite different from the more acrobatic Cirque du Soliel shows that the average person is familiar with. Rather than performing in the round, the audience is on one side of a large central stage flanked by two huge projection screens. The central stage is at various times curtained off by a very thin material that also can have images projected on it. The images, the music and the performers are very tightly integrated.

The choreography is stunning and Delirium shows what can be done with light to give texture. During part of the show a series of tribal dancers were hunched on a large moving mushroom complete with drums and as the lighting shifted the dancers became more like black and white poison arrow frogs clinging to the mushroom. I don't know if that specifically was the intent, but the effect was quite striking. At other times the effect was like peering into a large surreal water filled aquarium with human fish floating around, layers upon layers of texture built up entirely with lights.

We enjoyed Delirium but I don't think the audience as a whole got quite what they expected. A number of people left before the end and most of the rest of the people were somewhat reserved in their reactions. Part of the problem may simply have been the venue. We were way up in the third tier of seats-you know the seats where oxygen masks are required if the air pressure gets too low. We could see and hear the show fine-the problem is that the arena audience is so spread out that the audience members never were able to connect with each other in the sort of tribal way that it seems Delirium is trying to foster.

Probably those on the main floor got a better connection with each other and with the performers since performers did interact directly with them and it seemed that the producers are really trying to overcome the limitations of the sterile arena setting. They just can't quite pull it off yet- at least not for a tough Kansas audience. Maybe the producers can find some little trick or thing for those in the auditorium as a whole to do especially toward the end and their wonderful climax, even if only some of those big balloons that were bounced around on the arena floor made it to where we were.

Kansans get another chance to see Delirium at the Kansas Coliseum in Wichita March 12 through the 14th at 8:00 pm. If you go in expecting to see lots of exciting acrobatics you may be disappointed, but the show is stunning. By the way, the pictures on the Delirium web site do not do justice to the special effects. Also we took binoculars and while they were nice to have to see details of some of the costuming, they really were not needed as much of the action on the main stage is integrated into the imagery projected on the side panels.

Other Reviews:
Kansas City Star
Chicago Sun Times
Grand Rapids Press
Peoria Journal Star

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A Mammal in Winter

With a furnace of her own
She stalks into the night.
Her eyes, her lips
Are stars to which
I am drawn.
Her heat warms my
Wintered heart.

Sometimes one finds a line that just begs to be used in a poem-the line here being the title of a wonderful article in a recent NY Times Science (Feb 20)section by Natalie Angier. The article is about the advantages and disadvantages of being warm blooded, something I often use as a case study about adaptations. In fact I just talked about this article as part of a discourse on thermodynamics to my introductory biology class.

The article's title is a real grabber and I just had to do something with it, hence this poem for my wife. The CAT though thinks it's for her.


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It's that time again?

That's right! Its time to submit your best Kansas blogging for the Kansas Guild of Bloggers "Hot cat on a cold night edition". So point me to your best blogging and pictures and poems, be you a Kansas blogger blogging about what ever, or a blogger where ever blogging about Kansas. We may not be posted until late Tuesday so you have a bit of slack. You can either submit your entries to the KGB carnival page or e-mail them to me directly at pdecell@sunflower.com. Oh and be sure to check out this week's KGB at Thoughts from Kansas.





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That Intricate Blindness

So much depends on a levee made of sand
Holding the sinking land from the river,
The water eating away at its base
As houses are built by the blind
And the deaf and the mute,
Houses like capsids amidst the lawns
Plated on petri dish earth.

So much depends on consequence delayed
And creaking pumps sucking what would be
As fast as it comes in like a blind snake
Hunting a mouse.
So much depends on those constructed things
Big and leaky on the edge of disaster.

And yet, surrounding each cell the mosaic assembles itself blindly
As lipids jostle each other and proteins
Shape themselves into pumps and channels,
A levee of sorts way beyond paper thin,
but that keeps at bay
What otherwise would be.

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt is 'The Body Knows' and that is reflected in this poem which contrasts our ability, or lack there of sometimes, to avert disaster and depend on our technology even though we use it in a shorted sighted almost blind way. And yet we depend on processes that are also blind in terms of the intricate operation of each of our cells. There is nothing mystical here. After all, the pumps and channels I refer to after all arise through the evolutionary process- the intricate blindness of the title.

So I am contrasting two types of blindness. The first type comes about because of our own political and analytical shortcomings which unless we recognize and account for them lead to disaster. The second type of blindness is that of the evolutionary process which has had 3.5 billion plus years to do what Daniel Dennett refers to as R and D or research and development leading to the marvelous adaptations exhibited by the body. This intricate blindness gives rise to the illusion that 'the body knows.'

The poem's first lines about levees are inspired by a discussion on NPR this morning about how ill prepared we are to deal with disasters, the example used being the fragility of the levee systems in the Sacramento California area. The discussion was with the author of a new book called The Edge of Disaster. See this link for another review.

The poem is also inspired by another interesting review of a book, this time on the limitations of mathematical models of natural phenomena:

The Problems in Modeling Nature, With Its Unruly Natural Tendencies

I have not read the book and I personally believe in the utility of mathematical models, but certainly there are severe limitations on the exactitude possible using standard modeling.

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When more is not enough...

Do you suffer from DSACDAD? There is hope!

http://www.havidol.com/index.php

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Problems can be avoided if you take HAVIDOL only when you are able to immediately benefit from its effects. To fully benefit from HAVIDOL patients are encouraged to engage in activities requiring exceptional mental, motor, and consumptive coordination. HAVIDOL is not for you if you have abruptly stopped using alcohol or sedatives. Havidol should be taken indefinitely. Side effects may include mood changes, muscle strain, extraordinary thinking, dermal gloss, impulsivity induced consumption, excessive salivation, hair growth, markedly delayed sexual climax, inter-species communication, taste perversion, terminal smile, and oral inflammation. Very rarely users may experience a need to change physicians. Talk to your doctor about HAVIDOL.

I expect a gene, probably on chromosome 2, is linked to this disorder.

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Some Kansas LGBT commentary

The Lawrence Journal World had an online clat with K. Ryan Jones a KU student whose documentary about Fred Phelps is attracting national attention. The transcript is here:
http://www2.ljworld.com/chats/2007/feb/15/k_ryan_jones/

Phelps is well known for his militant antihomosexuality. The sad thing is that it took Phelp's looney bin attempts to link gays to 9/11 and his picketing of military funerals to get people really upset at him.

Of course is Phelps really any worse than Carl Burkhead who hides his dislike of homosexuals and opposition to anti discrimination laws because he thinks he understands God's law and claims to hate the sin and not the person? Somehow the notion that employment is essential to the dignity of the person escapes Burkhead and to be fair many in my own Church who claim to be for human dignity.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/feb/13/gods_law/?letters_to_editor

At least Phelps is honest as is Tim Hardaway who allegedly said in a radio interview:

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people," he said. "I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

What I love is the 'new' antihomosexual position that blames gays for any discrimination they encounter. This came out the other day in the hearings related to a proposed state wide antidiscrimination law now stalled in committee. An opponent of this bill, Republican Janet Paul allegedly said in committee:

“Those of a different sexual orientation are not visible in our society unless they choose to be...”

Come to think of it...this position isn't so new after all.

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And this morning there was this...