“Balloon Boy” will soon be the theme of a South Park episode, probably before Thanksgiving, but maybe as early as next week. The big question is, which South Park character will play the part of Balloon Boy?
Butters seems to fit the character of Ballon Boy, but Butters’ dad isn’t as insane of a publicity hound as Balloon Boy’s dad. Since Balloon Boy is six years old, the character closest to that age would be Ike.
I could see Ike as Balloon Boy. What do you think?
We regret that our younger friends have missed out on the experience of looking out at the Moon early on a summer evening, knowing that there are a couple of guys standing there and looking back.
We also regret that they’ve missed out on spending mornings with Captain Kangaroo and having dinner with Walter Cronkite.
Forty years seems like a long time until you’ve lived a little bit longer than that.
The Beaver House was originally built as a farm house in the Kickapoo River valley north of La Farge in the early 20th century. As most houses built during that period, its wood frame was built from large, dense and durable wood… virgin timber indigenous to the region. Many homes from that era remain sturdier than similar homes of much more recent vintage.
The Beaver House was so solid that it survived a move of nearly 20 miles, over a ridge and into the next valley along steep and winding roads. In the late seventies, construction started on a dam that would have put the Beaver House at the bottom of a lake, so the house was picked up and deposited on a piece of land in the headwaters of the Pine River valley north of Yuba.
Something cool happened in the sky tonight.
When Venus is high in the sky after sunset, every month there is a chance that the passing crescent moon will pass close by.
But we are struggling to remember the last time we saw them this close.
Here’s the ‘wide’ look at the sky.
This next shot was taken at 6:30…
At about 8, I went out to get another picture, where you can see how much the Moon moves in an hour and a half…
Sorry if you missed it!
I could not believe this:
McCain and his wife arrived at the La Crosse Center under heavy security, including Secret Service protection and officers from the La Crosse Police Department and La Crosse County Sheriff’s Department.
McCain stepped out of a silver Chevrolet Suburban at about 10 a.m. The motorcade — which followed a short route from the Radisson — included about 20 vehicles. McCain entered the La Crosse Center on the far south end of the building, using a Jay Street entrance.
Here is the route of the 20-vehicle motorcade:
Now it’s hard to see from this picture, but there is a walkway that leads from the Radisson’s second floor to the second floor of the La Crosse Center, and it’s not that hard to find your way to the South Hall from there. I’ve been on that path several times, so it shouldn’t be too hard for a security person to show him the way.
The following map (it’s rotated a bit less than 90 degrees from the photo above) shows how to get from the walkway on the upper right to the stage at the left. The cluttered nature of the map makes the route look more difficult than it actually is.
Total walking distance: two blocks. Do we really want a president who can’t walk two blocks, and would prefer to drive TWENTY SUVs instead?
Presidents and their campaigns love to come to La Crosse. Every cycle, each campaign seems to come here at least once. Last week it was Barack Obama’s turn.
(click here for a youTube slide show)
The iPhone just went on sale a few hours ago. Judging by reports already out, irrational geeks and sleazy speculators are spinning a consumer frenzy reminicient of the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996.
We just read two very moving letters by Cindy Sheehan. The first, written this morning, was a message of disgust at the Dummycratic party and its inability to stand up to Emperor Bush and stop the war. Then as the day ground on, she apparently suffered from a lot of abuse from all directions, and threw in the towel on her activist efforts.
The political bureaucracy has done what it seems to be designed to do: it has taken another good-hearted person and worn her down to the point that she has nothing left to offer:
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.
Please read both letters. There’s a lot written between the lines that this country needs to learn.
A friend and reader writes…
I was wondering what you think about the 60 Minutes report in case you missed it
This story has been circulating in the geek press for over a year now. It goes something like this:
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is developing a rugged and inexpensive laptop to be distributed to schools around the world, and their goal is to bring the machines’ cost down to 100 dollars apiece. Here is the Wikipedia entry on it. Mainstream America was introduced to the program by a 60 Minutes segment last weekend.
This project is Really Cool for a lot or reasons that weren’t discussed in this report. In a way, it resembles the “put a man on the Moon” project in its stimulation of innovation.
I like the way they’re getting power from hand-cranked generators. I like the use of Open Source software (Imagine if Micro$oft were writing the software for this: it would be expensive and impossible to understand). I like the networking scheme, where the computers all communicate with each other directly, rather than thru a router or a hub.
I worry about what will happen to all of these machines once they get old and worn out. Will they be refurbished or recyled? Or will they end up in dumps, adding to the burden of toxic e-waste? I hope this team is thinking about that.
It can be amazing what people can build, create, or invent once they are provided with adequate tools. That’s why food aid groups hand out things like shovels as well as food. There will be many surprising benefits to come from the spread of these tools of communication, education and invention.
Five years later.
Our first “published” video is now out on YouTube. (An iPod-compatible version can be downloaded here.) The St. Stupid Day Parade is an annual event put on by the First Church of the Last Laugh, and it’s a colorful costumed spectacle that mocks consumer culture and the corporate power structure in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district.
Speaking of podcasts, RoZ has been producing a music show for about six weeks now. It’s called Whirling Rainbow, and if you like interesting music that’s new to your ears, you should check it out.