Dowbrigade

Doncha
hate it when you read a review of something in your area you wish you
had know about before it happened, so you could
of had a chance to actually go? Especially if its something weird, and
free, and in a beautiful venue?
Well, heads up….

CAMBRIDGE — The Harvard University Saxophone Quartet
will perform "Three
American Dances" by composer Edward P. Mascari of Hudson. The performance,
called Sax Talk, is part of Harvard University’s Arts First weekend and
will take place at Memorial Church, Harvard Yard, Harvard University,
Cambridge, on Saturday, May 7 at 4 p.m.

Admission is free. The facility is handicapped accessible.

Mascari’s composition, which was premiered and recorded by the Berlin
Saxophone Quartet, has been performed by many professional and college
ensembles in its eight year history.

In addition to the Mascari composition, the program will include works
by Carson Cooman, Andy Weiner and Daniel Dorf

from the Marlboro
Enterprise Online

Falcarius
utahensis was adapted for both ripping up plants and chasing down prey.
image from PaleoForms LLC, Provo, Utah

The fossil record seems so clear and convincing to the Dowbrigade
that current mainstream doubt about its veracity threatens the very foundations
of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. Even Galileo would
have a tough time these days.  Can you see him on Court TV, accused
of teaching Godless theory as fact?

Fossil-hunters working in the dusty Utah desert have caught a dinosaur
in the act of going vegetarian. The newly discovered species, which
lived about 130
million years ago, displays the hallmarks of adapting to a leafy diet.

The creature’s teeth have a shape that seems to be adapted to leaf shredding,
the researchers report. Similar teeth can be found in modern iguanas, for
example, a reptilian family that also has a varied diet.

Very like the Dowbrigade. Between our garden and health mania we are adapting
to leaf shredding, and our resemblance to an iguana has been oft remarked
upon.

Falcarius utahensis also has a slightly widened pelvis, Kirkland’s team
points out, which would have been necessary to accommodate the longer
gut needed to extract nutrients from plants.

That’s us! That explains our changing contours! We are evolving into a
Falcarius!

But the dinosaur’s legs reveal that it still has adaptations suited
for meat eating as well. The creature’s thigh bones were longer
than its
shin bones, suggesting that it could run at an impressive pace. "The legs
are still adapted for running after prey," says Kirkland.

Or tennis balls.

from the Journal Nature Online

Evolution article from the New York Times

The Hollywood Studios are starting to position the Big Guns for the
blockbuster summer movie season, when hordes of Americans crowd into
theaters to beat the heat and the boredom of summer reruns on TV.

One of those we are eagerly awaiting, and may actually pay to see on
the big screen, is the Fox Fantastic
Four movie. One of the original,
and most popular, Marvel title, it is one of the last to make it to the
movies.

This may be because of the technical challenges of convincingly recreating
a group consisting of a teenager who flies around in a comet-like ball
of flame, a guy with elastic
limbs that can stretch out hundreds of feet, a 400-lb guy who looks
like he’s covered with shards of cheap orange flowerpots, and a token
sexy
Babe you can’t even see, because she’s the Invisible Girl.

Well, given the state of special effects today, we are all expecting
something special out of this one. Apple’s Quick Time movie
trailer page has some tantilizing tastes.  Opens July 8.

from Fox, via Apple

Alex Beam has a funny/scary column in the Boston
Globe today on what he sees in the future for the Globe, and old-line
journalism in general…

It’s true, we dug our own grave. Can you imagine, we were still writing
about boring stuff like Social Security right up until just a couple
of years ago, when President Bush eliminated the program? Just because
she went to the University of Texas doesn’t mean she didn’t inherit Dad’s
political savvy. Jenna dynamited all those bleeding-heart Democratic
entitlements — welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, you name ’em. ”Want a handout?
Go to Sweden!" I have to admit, that was a pretty clever campaign
slogan. Karl Rove would have been proud.

We at the Globe were lucky, in retrospect, to have been part of The New
York Times Co. When blogtrepreneur Nick Denton bought out the Times in
2010, some of us were fortunate to land jobs in the Gawker Media empire.
Maureen Dowd makes sure that Wonkette’s cellphone batteries are always
charged…

from the Boston Globe

These stories just keep on coming. The number of people
in our society with the knowledge to take advantage of these gaffes is
growing exponentially as the young conscienceless whippersnappers who
grew up with this stuff acquire the skills.

In this area, the only defense is a chaotic life. Good luck to anyone
who tries to steal the Dowbrigade’s identify, they have no idea what
they’re getting in for…

Arbella
Mutual Insurance Co. of Quincy was offering unrestricted access to
the Registry
of Motor
Vehicles
database
through
its own website
until a Salem man noticed the security breach and raised concerns
about the potential for identity theft.

Joel P. McNamee, 22, said he received some paperwork from his insurance
agent over the weekend and noticed a website address at the bottom
of one of the pages. The website, www.arbella.com
gave him
access to the Registry of Motor vehicles database.

He said he was able to look up anyone by name and obtain their address,
date of birth, license number, and driving history. In most cases,
he said, he was also able to obtain the driver’s Social Security number
by looking
at their historical records.

”Once you had the license number you could cross-reference it to get
all sorts of different things," he said. He said the personal
information contained on the database would be a treasure trove for
identity thieves.

from the Boston Globe

Burgled shopkeeper Neil Primett was dumbfounded to spot a passer-by
dressed from collar to ankle in striking but uncoordinated designs –
exactly like those stolen three weeks ago from his store in Bedford.

"I couldn’t believe it – he was wearing such a mismatch," he said,
after ringing police and then tailing the luridly dressed suspect whose outfit
was topped off with a T-shirt vividly stamped with the word "Criminal".

Article continues "That’s a sleeveless summer item which we haven’t even
put on sale yet," said Mr Primett, who compared the man’s overall look to
Rupert Bear’s.

Although local streets were busy, the suspect’s clashing combination of green
check elasticated trousers (last fashionable two years ago), a jazzy tracksuit
top and the electric blue sleeveless T-shirt with "Criminal" in luminous
yellow made him hard to lose.

"The top really stood out," said Mr Primett, after the man was taken
away in a patrol car equally clearly labelled "police". "He may
have thought he was being fashionable but the clothes didn’t go together at all.
You certainly couldn’t call him a trendsetter."

If poor fashion sense were a crime, the Dowbrigade News would be a prison
blog. As to "Neil Primett", see "Who
makes up these names?"

from The
Guardian

A face moisturiser
made out of semen has been launched in Mexico.

Porn star Lyn May, who is in her sixties, is behind the company producing
the cream.

Mrs May swears that the Semen moisturizer is capable of erasing wrinkles
and leaves skin soft.

She told Las Ultimas Noticias: "I select attractive young man and
pay them for their semen that is mixed with honey and oats to create the
moisturiser."

This is appearantly widespread folk wisdom in Latin America, undoubtedly
spread by voracious depraved Latin Machistos. Years ago, we were
delighted to discover that Norma Yvonne beieved semen cured acne scars.

Much more
agreeable than our first wife, the Peruvian Princess, who wouldn’t
drink mineral water because she believed that all those minerals were
showing
up when she weighed herself…

from Ananova

This afternoon we found ourselves flying up route 128 towards Glouster,
past that
inexplicable stretch where you are simultaneously going North
on 93 and SOUTH on 128, with Norma Yvonne riding shotgun and dark clouds
gathering on the horizon, promising spring showers.

"Tell me again why you want to drive for an hour to buy a little piece
of plastic you could get five minutes from the house?’ she coyly inquired.

"What I need is not a ‘piece of plastic’. It’s a highly specialized
piece of medical equipment." We have been suffering of late from an
acute case of tennis  elbow, tendonitis to the medically inclined,
and besides keeping us up at night, the stabbing pain was starting to
affect out game.  A fellow member of the "Just Don’t Suck" Tennis
Club, a doctor of some kind, swears by a gel and velcro contraption.  He
says there is no medical reason it should work, but it does.

"This place I want to go is the most complete sporting goods store in
the area.  When
something as important as physical mobility is at stake, you want to
go where they have the best products, and the best variety. You want
to have choices."

Actually, what we had was a coupon.  Norma was along because, well,
it WAS shopping, after all, and she knew stores are like the cracked
brakes on Amtrak’s
Acela Express – when you find one, there are sure to be hundreds of others
nearby.

As we parked she spotted a Pier 1 Imports across the tarmac and we
arranged to meet back at the car. We were headed for the brand new, three
story
Sports
MegaStore,
Dick’s Sporting Good, a mammoth silo featuring several complete campgrounds,
four and eight man sculls hanging from the ceiling, and a 50-foot climbing
wall.

The only other place we knew that had the brace we wanted for sure was
the hoity toity overpriced specialty store on Mt. Auburn St. in Harvard
Square. We refused to shop there on general principle. If
anybody besides the Harvard Tennis and Squash Club had the elbow braces,
it would
be
Dick.

We wandered in and ambled over to Tennis, feeling old and decrepit among
so many buff bodies and gen whatever sporsters. We found hundreds of
tennis racquets, Prince and Head and Dunlop and Wilson.  Balls galore.
Strings, and vibration absorbers, and tape and grips and gloves and visors.  But
no elbow braces, or any other kind of palative aids.  We started
looking around for a special section of sports medicine or braces, but
nothing!

We were outraged!  They had every conceivable piece of equipment
to play any possible sport you could think of, but absolutely nothing
to help you when you hurt yourself playing them!  Nothing to intimate
that participating in all these wonderful sports can cause painful, crippling
injuries.  No section for aging weekend warriors.

Our righteous indignation boiled up and so of course we immediately
started thinking of a blog post.  We would enumerate all of the
ridiculous and exotic equipment they have, and wind up with the one
thing they don’t.  We whipped an old receipt out of our wallet and
started scribbling.

They had a whole football field full of hunting and fishing gear, with
enough camouflage to outfit a third world insurrection, camouflaged pants
and
ponchos and
sleeping bags and tents,. They had guns of every variety and enough
survival gear to outlast the Apocalypse. They had a half dozen different
turkey decoys and a Terminator Elk System. We saw over 800 fishing poles,
and
a variety of lures including Got-ya Jig Heads, electronic fish finders
and freeze-dried pre-cooked Scrambled Eggs and Bacon in clever, self-heating
foil pouches. There were canoes, kayaks and sculls, bicycles, free weights,
treadmills, rowing
machines,
and additional rows of mean-looking machines of no obvious purpose.  They
had speed bags, heavy bags duffle bags and a whole section of whatever
you need to perform
Pilates, whatever that is.

In the
middle of the store was a huge island dedicated exclusively to sunglasses.
There were balls of everywhere: base, basket, soccer, tennis, ping pong, paddle, squash,
volley, dodge, hand, foot, golf, bowling, soft, billiard, playground, candlepin
and bocce. Not to mention pucks, birdies and stones.

But nothing for an aching tennis elbow.

We had circumnavigated both floors of the huge sports warehouse, and
were back where we started, in the tennis section. Disgusted, we looked
behind us before marching from the premesis – and there they were. Sportopedics
Nitro Armbands. $12.95 (with the coupon, half what they cost in Harvard Square).

In the words of the inestimable Rossana Rossanadana, "Never mind."

Now, for something a bit different, the Dowbrigade would like to dig out and dust off his Ethnographer’s pith helmet. The Paucity of postings during the past few days is due to our work putting the final touches on the web page of our son’s new Eco-tourism Hotel nestled in a valley high in the Andes mountains. While we cannot officially announce it until we get the OK from the boss, we can post a link to one part of the site: the continuing compilation of our translations of the legends of the region, one of the earliest inhabited spots on the entire Americn continent, North or South.

High in the Peruvian Andes lies an isolated valley, rich in history
and natural wonders, called the Callejon de Huaylas. It is home to some
of the oldest known human habitation in the New World – some 14,000 years
ago. Long before the reign of the Incas and the invasion of the Conquistadors,
this rich ecosystem was the center of the Chavin civilization, one of
the oldest in Peru. And thousands of years before that, the area was
inhabited by prehistoric, neolithic tribes.

In the 1980s a cave was discovered a few kilometers north of Carhuaz,
on the other side of the R?o Santa in the Cordillera Negra. The cave
contained bones of mastodons and llamas and suggested human occupation
dating from as far back as 12000 BC. Situated close to a natural rock
formation which looks vaguely like a guitar, the site is now known as
the cave of Hombre Guitarrera (Guitar Man).

The legends in this collection can trace their origins to the Chavin culture.
Reaching its height between 400 and 600 B.C., the Chavin civilization was known
for its intense design skill, fueled by ritual use of psychedelic snuff, especially
visible in their advanced textile and metal work. After a prolonged and gradual
decline, they were eventually conquered by the Incas less than a hundred years
before the arrival of the Spaniards.

This wide valley, some 200 km long, is split by the Santa River and fringed
by a picturesque group of towns and villages, among them Huaraz, Carhuaz, Yungay
and Caraz. Today, the Callejon is known as the "Switzerland of South America" and
is a center of mountain climbing and eco-tourism.

It is largely a land which time forgot. Wedged between two soaring mountain
chains -the Cordillera Negra and Cordillera Blanca- the Callejon de Huaylas
offers incomparable Andian vistas, an indigenous population living largely
as their ancestors did centuries ago, and easy access to snow-capped peaks,
pristine mountain lakes, and little-known ancient ruins.

It is here, in the still-under-construction "Eco-Hostal
Villa Maria", built and managed by our eldest son on land we bought
before he was born, a complete escape from the wired world and our normal concerns
and behavior patterns, holed up in a cozy adobe cabin, two simple rooms with
a hand-crafted fireplace, electricity but no phone or internet access, that
we came across a slim volume published by a tiny local press and titled "Legends
of Ancash."

It contained a charming and revealing collection of myths and legends, collected
over 20 years by Marcos Yauri Monteros and first published in 1961 by P.L.
Villanueva, Lima, ed. The stories were collected from three main sources throughout
the Callejon: 1) high school students, most of them living in towns and monolingual
in Spanish; older people from the town and villages, almost all bilingual Spanish-Quechua,
and 3) camposinos, nearly all monolingual Quechua speakers. Quechua is the
most widely-spoken indigenous language in the entire Andean region, a linguistic
descendent of the language of the Incas, and the second "official" language
of Peru.

Although our translation is imperfect and the last in a chain of oral
and written transition covering centuries and at least three languages,
we think the stories are poignant and revealing in their own right, and
offer a tantalizing glimpse into another world. Here is another of the
ten Legends of Ancash.

The War Between the Ancoillas and the Apuchallas

Back in the old times there were two gigantic mountains. One, Apuchallas,
extremely poor.

The other, Ancoillas, fabulously rich due to the gold and silver that
it possessed in
abundance.

The inhabitants of Apuchallas were afflicted with hunger and misery.
The people of
Ancoillas lived in luxury, their hands overflowing with riches. They
celebrated with
scandalous parties, which eventually corrupted them.

The people of Apuchallas occasionally came to the Ancoillas to plead
for aid.

"Give us a bit of food," they implored, or some of the gold and silver
that you have in
excess."

But the overbearing (ensobercidos) Ancoillas laughed at them, and threw
them out of their
palaces.

"Get out of here, fleas. There is nothing for you here!"

In this way they insulted and humiliated them, without an ounce of compassion.
It happened
then, that no longer able to bear the poverty, the Apuchallas decided
to declare war on their
greedy neighbors. The fight broke out, and the battle between the two
colossi was
ferocious.

Apuchallas attacked with their slings. But the giant stones he was flinging
did not hurt
Ancoillas. His aim was poor, for he was not a warrior, but just an old
laborer

Ancoillas, proud of his power and wealth, didn’t take Apuchallas seriously.
He mocked the
ancient Apuchallas.

"Your anger makes me laugh," he crowed, "You are angry because
you envy my wealth."

And for a long time things stayed that way, with Ancoillas ignoring his
feeble attacker.

A long time passed, and Apuchallas did not grow weary of his attack.
At last Ancoillas responded, and shot at Apuchallas with his golden sling. From that point
on the battle was
very bloody. The rivers and streams ran red with the blood of the combatants.

Both giants were now exhausted.

In the last battle, al rayar el crespeculo, Ancoillas burst the right
eye of brave Apuchallas.

Half blind, the ancient laborer could not extract his vengance. While
he crawled on the earth
looking for another stone, Ancoillas unleashed another shot with such
force and accuracy
that Apuchallas fell dead with a shattered head.

Ancoillas felt happy.

"Now I am the Sole Master of the Earth" he shouted repeatedly. But
as time passed, his
people began to lose their wealth and feel sorrow. The orgies no longer
fulfilled them.

On the other hand, the population of Apuchallas began to feel happier.
For their lands began to produce gold and silver, just as the lands of the Ancoillas had in
the past But they did not
waste the riches in vice, but instead bought tools, with which they worked
their fields, which
were now completely clean.

It seems that during the long war, Apuchallas had flung at his enemy
all of the rocks and
stones from their lands, and the Ancoillas had thrown all of the gold
and silver in their territory at the lands of their vanquished foe Apuchallas.

Links to all ten of the Legends

AMSTERDAM – American students traveling abroad confirm the findings of
a study indicating that Washington’s unilateral approach to foreign policy
has seriously undermined Americans’ chances of getting laid.

"I’ve been in Amsterdam for two months and have yet to begin a conversation
with a cute girl that hasn’t ended in a lecture about how big, evil America
is taking everyone’s oil," said college sophomore Brad Higgs, a participant
in Johns Hopkins University’s study-abroad program. "I offer to buy
them a drink, and they tell me I shouldn’t just stand by and watch Bush
destroy the world. Look, if I had that type of pull with the president,
I obviously wouldn’t be out trolling for anonymous Dutch pussy."

from the Onion

Among the most essential quests of modern astronomers, taking direct
images of planets outside of our solar system is certainly up there among
chart-toppers. Obtaining such images of a so-called exoplanet would enable
scientists to study in detail the physical nature of the object and,
in particular, to analyse the composition of its atmosphere.

The astronomers’
ultimate goal is of course to perform such analysis for earth-sized
planets, in the hope of detecting a telltale signature of extraterrestrial
life.

Such
an ultimate objective is still at least decades in the future, as
earth-size and even Jupiter-size planets around stars as old as the
Sun are too faint
to be detected by present-day technology.

Nevertheless, great progress can be achieved by taking images of
giant planets orbiting much younger objects. Because giant planets
a few tens of millions
of years old are much hotter and brighter than their older brethren, they
can be
much more easily detected

note: The lower image is the actual photgraph of the exo-planet.  The
other is an artist’s rendering.

from a European Southern Observatory press release