OSHI – SORRY

I haven’t done one of these in, like, forever!

So, like, ENJOY!

I’ve actually been feeding on Tumblr lately, which is where I find most of my TT stuff.

This is a broomstick taking a parking spot for some Harry Potter advertisement by Warner Bros.

My idol, Mr. Burton, for his exhibit currently at the MoMa. I really really really want to go see !!!! Probably won’t be able to, though D:

Remember real-life Jasmine? Here’s real-life Rocahontas for you.

The Phelps twins! Awhh.

Poke-planes for Nippon Airlines !

The most adorable cat in the world. Looks like Cumulus!

Robert Downey Jr. Who else can’t wait for Sherlock Holmes?

Human candles.

“Stephen Wiltshire draws an 18-foot panorama of New York from memory, after he took a 20-minute helicopter ride over the city last week.”

Berita Hari ini

lt br gt

Apakah Anda sedang mencari daftar semua rekor dunia Michael Phelps Yah tidak terlihat lagi karena di sini adalah berita terbaru tentang Michael Phelps.

Stroke kupu-kupu merupakan salah satu yang paling sulit berenang stroke.

Tampaknya bukan untuk perenang Olimpiade – Michael Phelps yang selesai dengan medali emas di Olimpiade Beijing.

Catatan berenang Nya terus memperbaiki sendiri tahunan. Phelps performa pada Olimpiade merupakan yang paling efektif Rekam Olimpiade Berita Hari ini sejauh ini.

Berikut adalah menghancurkan semua peristiwa yang Michael Phelps rekor dunia terbaru diperoleh

Tanggal di Beijing – Event – Hasil – Sisa

August – m gaya individual – Gold Medal World Record – .
Agustus – x m freestyle relay – Gold Medal World Record – .
Agustus – m gaya bebas – Gold Medal World Record – .
Agustus – m kupu-kupu – Gold Medal World Record – .
Agustus – x m freestyle relay – Gold Medal World Record – .
Agustus – m gaya individual Medali Emas World Record – .
August – m butterfly – Gold Medal Olympic Record – .
Agustus – x m medley relay-Gold Medal World Record – .

Michael Phelps takes 200m individual medley silver at the short-course World Cup but fails to qualify for the 200m freestyle…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: the fashion industry. The blog is also related to: 80s fashion.

With the college basketball season starting this week, here is another video of Digger Phelps dancing with college cheerleaders.  We had a similar video back in March, but it is always great to see Digger busting some moves.

Michael Phelps comes second in the 200m medley final at the short-course World Cup, while Britain’s Fran Halsall wins the 100m freestyle…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: fashion for men. The blog is also related to: fashions.

Swimming legend Michael Phelps fails to make it past the 100m freestyle heats in Stockholm after finishing the 16th fastest…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: fashion books. The blog is also related to: 1960’s fashion.

TO FIND TRUE CHARACTER RUN YOUR HARDEST AGAINST THE WIND.

Since I started swimming again I have been focusing on technique only. I’m not worrying about pace times, just looking at times, counting strokes and thinking way more than I did during a university lecture. I feel this is a perfect time to completely change my stroke and develop optimal technique and efficiency. Today I was really working on getting a good body roll and locking in on each side. To initiate the pull I was working on using my lats and core, which I haven’t been very good at in the past. I could only make it 45mins in the pool this morning because my lats began to give out. I couldn’t get the pull I needed and then got lazy on the roll. So, that meant it was time to get out of the pool and go home.

I was looking online at some videos this morning about swim technique and found some excellent footage on youtube. There are great underwater videos of swimmers like Thorpe and Phelps that you should check out. I just finished watching a 25min analysis of Aleksandr Popov, one of the great freestyle sprinters of all time. Check out this video.

I spent the weekend in Edmonton running on some fresh trails and visiting Blake and Julianna. I also got to watch the Universities battle it out in the annual Stewart Cup cross country race. The weekend just got me even more psyched about running. So, that’s what I’m going to do in about 30mins.

Happy Swimming,

Grant

Just checked out their blog on their MySpace and I have to post it up here.  I hope they get on tour in the U.S. again soon.

“so..  while jamming to a song my dear friend Jade and I are working on..  a couple of us started talking about how great CDs used to be..   going to get one from the record store.. putting it in the cd player, looking at the insert, reading the lyrics, taping the bonus poster to your locker.. bedroom wall.. or where ever you taped shit up at.  The whole experience was banannas.. but somewhere down the line people started clowning the CD.  Music stores closed, album sales tanked, everyone put their faith in the online music supermarket…. Personally im so smitten by my childhood, i havent gotten over the fact that certain things are over.  Rap city, Tower Records, the fact MTV doesnt play a Video anymore… and most importantly holding the music i bought and being able to collect it.. so i can stunt on niggas with my overzealous music collection. Now i gotta put my ipod on shuffle at someone elses crib to put kids on game, or i gottta open my laptop up everywhere i go.  I remember when kids i went to high school with would have CD folders the size of dictionaries.. the shit would be in alphabetical order, the cover art would be on the front of every disk, and if you took something out, you had to put it back or get delt with.  I miss the days where we would own the music we bought…..   i mean..  thats if you buy music (not hating if you dont)  some shit is just weak and you want to hear it .. just to see how weak it is.  I feel you.. trust me.

I’m not writing this to bitch..   that was just the prequel to the sequal (sorry Martin… i had to borrow that)

I just want to know whats next.. who will develop the new “CD” the new musical format. what do you want to buy from the stores from your favorite band or…are you satisfied with what you have?

For the record, I love all you guys..   we appreciate the support more than you know..     We are 92% done with “When Fish Ride Bicycles”and it sounds like silver back gorillas playing full contact beach volleyball.  (yeah..  forreal)

right now we are working on “Gone Fishing” the pre record with Don Cannon
AND! plotting, planning, and putting togther a super tour with The Cool Kids and “friends” (not gonna speak on the details yet)  .. but your favorite rappers new favorite rapper might have signed on to be apart of the livest event since the Olympics..   word to Mike Phelps (keep ur head up cuz..)

-Chuck “

So sick.

Saints and Sinners at All Things Art

 ALL THINGS ART   presents the premiere of an Original Drama: Saints and Sinners: Woman Maligned in History  written and  performed by Kathy Morris and Patricia Assumpta.  Hear each woman present her plight as she interacts with another across the centuries to expose commonality.  This unique production will be presented 3 times in 3 different locations. 

October 23, 2009 at 7 PM ~ All Things Art in Canandaigua

October 24, 2009 at 7 PM  ~ South Bristol Cultural Center in Bristol

October 30, 2009 at 7 PM ~ Phelps Art Center in Phelps

Tickets are on sale  now:  $7 for one; $12 for two and can be purchased online and at the door. 

Performances are sponsored by NYSCA grant.

The Big Picture c/o FRED

I started the big lecture in macroeconomics on unemployment with a very out of date textbook. It isn’t even that old in terms of textbook cycles. It’s just the world economy has changed; really changed. The last unemployment data I was looking at came from 2007 and a world of hurt and CHANGE (TM) stands between that year and today.

One of my students noticed that the overall pattern of unemployment (and you can see it in the FRED graph above) showed a drift up of the central tendency or mean from a lower looking central tendency in the 1950s and 1960s to a higher one in the 1970s and 1980s. I did the happy dance because I really like it when students actually notice these things. It makes my life a lot easier when I don’t have to point every little thing like that out. The deal is if you look around the 1990s it seems to drift a little downwards again before that last gray bar representing this last recession dated by the NBER. That would be our current Great Recession. Notice how the downward drift in the series could potentially have stopped and it appears there could be a slight updrift? Again, that’s in the central tendency or what you might call the mean, the median, or the mode depending on how you want to measure the statistic.

That momentum and drift around that central tendency in the unemployment series represents flows above and around what we call the Natural Rate of Unemployment. People used to set up all kinds of policy goals after the Great Depression to get to a zero unemployment rate. Actually, they did it with the Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment bill in the 1970s too because the wish was to get every one unemployed into a job. We’ve learned quite a bit more about what is and isn’t possible now.

In the 1960s, Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps begun to study the unemployment rate carefully to see if there was any structural or natural rate of unemployment that was related to what was going on with an economy and more important, if the goal of 0% unemployment was ever going to be more than a great wish. They also wanted to study the relationship between inflation and unemployment. Well, it turns out that there is a hypothetical rate of unemployment associated with certain things going on in the economy, like inflation, recession, or a slow economic recovery. This natural rate corresponds to the best case scenario given the set of circumstances going on in the larger economy and we’ve found that the level can go up or down, depending on that set of circumstances.

That natural rate was pretty low in the 1950s and the 1960s because there were just a lot of things going on back then to keep it low. We didn’t really have a lot of competition as the world’s sole supplier at that time and the world was one great big market for our businesses. That’s sort’ve the oversimplified good news of the lower natural rate of unemployment during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Yes, we had some unemployment that got worse during the recessions. This is labeled cyclical unemployment!!! (Imagine that!) Fortunately, other things that can cause a lot of problems in the job market were not that big of a deal. There was lots of technology to use and lots of recent college graduates fresh from their G.I. bill funded educations to move into industry. Things were pretty hunky dory.

That changed a lot in the 1970s primarily due to the energy crisis, but also because by the 1980s, we were no longer the only industrialized nation on the planet. We had plenty of competition and we had some expensive and old technology and capital by then. That drove our natural rate of unemployment up too. Oh, that and the fact that we had lots of demographic changes like a lot of baby boomers and women coming into the job market. These factors pushed the central tendency of the unemployment rate up and along with that, we went to a higher natural rate. The 1990s were years of a lot of technology boosts and a pretty stable economy so we started drifting down again.

So, hopefully, this is enough background for you to understand the discussion among business economists about the possibility we could be back to the 1970s in terms of a higher structural or natural rate of unemployment. Okay, sit down, because this is one that will cause you to get light headed; especially if you’re worried about a job.

Economists since the mid-1990s have reckoned that full employment was equivalent to about a 5 percent unemployment rate, taking into account the time required to switch jobs. Now Nobel Prize winner Edmund Phelps and Pacific Investment Management Co. Chief Executive Officer Mohamed El-Erian say the fallout from the deepest recession in more than five decades is driving the so-called natural rate higher, perhaps to 7 percent.

“We are in the midst of a large and protracted increase in both actual unemployment and its natural rate,” said El-Erian, 51, whose Newport, California-based company manages the world’s largest bond fund. Even with the economy growing, “it will take at least a couple of years” for joblessness to fall to 7 percent from 9.7 percent now.

You read that right. Within about two years, the time for my textbook to become pretty worthless, we went from a natural rate of about 5 percent to “perhaps” 7 percent. That’s enough to make any president feel like Jimmy Carter. However, Jimmy Carter had it slightly better because he’d nearly balanced the budget by his last year in office and had some room for that infamous fiscal stimulus–tax cuts or more government spending– that Keynes prescribed to lick the bad unemployment from a very bad recession. Barrack Obama does not have that luxury.

That may keep the federal budget deficit near a record $1.6 trillion into next year and might prevent the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates in 2010, said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- largest U.S. bank. Elevated unemployment will also “dampen the recovery in consumption and economic growth,” El-Erian said.

President Barack Obama has highlighted job creation as the ultimate measure of the economy’s health, telling CNN television on Sept. 20 that it is “the single most important thing we can do.” By this measure, the U.S. is still coming up short, he added. That may hurt Obama’s Democratic Party in the November 2010 Congressional elections.

This is what you might call being between a big ol’ rock and a hard place. Once again, campaign rhetoric–like that over getting out of Iraq quickly, shutting down Guantanamo with in a year, or kicking ass in Afghanistan with out 40,000 additional tr00ps– meets the reality of facts and theory. For as much as you can talk about creating jobs with that wimpy little stimulus bill, it really doesn’t look like as many will be created as need to be. That’s because of another labor market term called permanent job destruction. It’s what makes Michigan’s unemployment nearly twice the national average. There are jobs in Detroit that simply aren’t coming back.

Kasman ties an increase in the full-employment rate to the permanent destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries from housing to finance.

Since the nadir of the last recession in November 2001, the U.S. has lost 839,000 jobs in the private sector, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the first time that’s happened over the course of a business cycle since 1980-82. Manufacturing and construction were particularly hard hit.

Permanent layoffs — for workers who don’t expect to ever regain the same job — hit a record 53.9 percent of the unemployed in August, according to the bureau. Some 33.3 percent of the jobless had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer last month, down from a record 33.8 percent in July. And at 59.2 percent, the share of Americans who are employed is at its lowest level in 25 years.

“The labor market is showing signs of very considerable stress,” said Gramley, 82, a senior economic adviser for New York-based Soleil Securities.

There’s also some other factors you can read about at Bloomberg. Now Nobel Prize winning Economist Edmund Phelps thinks the Fed and other policy makers need to reconsider their estimates of what maybe possible in the near term for unemployment.

Many economists, including Gramley, don’t believe the natural rate has risen. Fed policy makers seem to be in that camp. They put the longer-run unemployment rate — a proxy for the NAIRU — at 4.8 percent to 5 percent, according to the minutes of their June 23-24 meeting.

That may be too optimistic, said Phelps, 76, a professor at Columbia University in New York who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2006 for his theories on the interplay between inflation expectations and employment.

“There’s a bit of whistling past the graveyard here,” he said.

They don’t call this the dismal science for nothing.

Oh, and NAIRU is another term for a different kind of structural unemployment rate. This one was Friedman’s work and it is related to taking the unemployment rate as low as you can go with out creating an inflation cycle. So cheer up, we don’t have the Jimmy Carter stagflation problem quite yet!! That’s when we had a 12% unemployment rate coupled with me paying a 16.7% rate of interest on my first fixed rate mortgage. See? Things could be worse!!! And then …we could be getting Ronald Reagan next too!!! (Unfortunately, Governor Charlie Crist already came up with that one before me but I think he thought that was good news. I guess that’s an even more dismal thought.)

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Hernandez struck out 11 Jays

Jay Buhner (of the infamous Ken Phelps trade fame) wasn’t in the lineup, but it didn’t make much of difference tonight as the Jays dropped the opener of their four-gamer with the Mariners, 5-4. Vernon Wells hit a three-run bomb off Felix Hernandez to tie things at three in the sixth, but a two-out, two-run Josh Wilson double off Jesse Carlson in the top of the eighth proved to be the difference.

This one looked like it would get out of hand early — Ricky Romero was his usual shaky self of late, giving up three runs through the first three innings and making the most of three double plays to limit the damage through four. King Felix cruised until Wells’ improbable homer in the sixth and gave up an RBI single to Wells in the eighth before David Aardsma put it away with a 1-2-3 ninth. Fun fact number one about Aardsma: He’s played for five teams in five seasons, and entering this year had a zero career saves and an ERA of 5.28. This season he has 36 saves and an ERA of 2.00. Fun fact number two: Alphabetically, Aardsma’s name is first amongst all players to have ever played in the big leagues.

The loss snaps a three-game win streak for the Jays, dropping them to 69-84 on the season. Roy Halladay and the unfortunately-named Doug Fister go in the second game Friday night.

The final home series of the season has arrived, and it’s with none other than Jay Buhner and the Seattle Mariners. Buhner, of course, is most famous for being featured in the greatest scene in Seinfeld history (that, and because he had over 30 home runs and 100 RBIs from 1995-1997 and had a rocket for an arm).

Ricky Romero gets the ball for Toronto in the opener, while the Mariners counter with King Felix Hernandez.

Ahh yes, the last time the A’s won the World Series. I love that it was against the Giants, and what makes it even sweeter is that they won in a four game sweep. That means the Giants didn’t even win one game of the series…Beautiful. AND it was the only Series where the losing team (Giants) never had the lead. Never.

Those of us living in the Bay Area at this time may remember this series from what happened during game 3. Things got a little bit shaky. The 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake put off the series for ten days.

Game 1: A’s win 5-0 at the Coliseum with Dave Stewart on the mound.

Game 2: A’s win 5-1 at the Coliseum with Mike Moore against Rick Reuschel.

Game 3: A’s win 13-7 at Candlestick in San Francisco with Dave Stewart pitching again. Dave Henderson almost hit 3 home runs, his first at bat bounced off the top of the wall for a double. This game set the record for most combined HR’s in a World Series game with 7 (5 from the A’s, 2 from the Giants).

Game 4: A’s win 9-6 at Candlestick with Mike Moore pitching, Eckersley closed it out for the victory. Rickey Henderson started off the game right with a lead off home run. Thata boy Rickey.

Roster:

A’s Manager: Tony La Russa

MVP: Dave Stewart winning two games and striking out 14 batters

Quotes :

…and he fails to get Dave Parker at second base, so the Oakland A’s take……take……..I’ll tell you what, we’re having an earth…

—ABC Sports color commentator Tim McCarver and play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, respectively. Michaels’ sentence was cut off to the television audience due to the loss of power during the earthquake

Ladies and gentlemen, we are postponing the game because there is no power in the stadium. We would like for you to leave in an orderly way. I don’t think there’s any grave danger, but we have no idea when the power’s going to be on and we have to get people out of here before it gets dark.

—Commissioner Fay Vincent on October 17.

It’s a ground ball to the right side, speared by Phillips, flips to Eckersley…YES!!! He’s there in time, and the A’s are the World Champions!

—Michaels calling the final out of the Series.

Está precioso Shaq con el gorrito rosa…parece que al final lo de que era el Phelps negro no era para tanto. Que tio.

El popular programa ‘Shaq Vs.’, en el que Shaquille O´Neal se enfrentaba a grandes estrellas del deporte en sus respectivas especialidades, ha llegado a su fin con un último ’show’ para la historia del deporte y de la televisión.

El pívot de los Cavaliers guardó el plato fuerte para el final, y tal como prometió, se enfrentó a Michael Phelps (el mejor nadador de la historia) en una piscina.

Los dos se vieron las caras en la pileta de la Universidad de Loyola.

En la primera prueba Phelps tenía que ganar el doble de distancia de Shaquille…. y ganó el mastodóntico pívot. En la segunda Phelps nadó 200 yardas y Shaquille, junto a algunas de las mejores nadadoras de Estados Unidos, recorrió su parte proporcional de esa distancia… En esta ocasión ganó ‘El Tiburón de Baltimore’. En la tercera y última Phelps nadó 75 yardas y Shaquille 50… con triunfo de Phelps.

2-1 para Phelps y Shaquille tuvo que cumplir su promesa de que si perdía tenía que ponerse un gorro de baño rosa para tirarse al estilo bomba desde un trampolín. Con lo que no cumplió fue con lo de ponerse a hacer natación sincronizada.

Fuente: Blog Fuera de Juego

The Scene: Wine and Beer Westpark Our weekly Thu tasting (8/27)

After a handsome bit of pestering from our favorite Luxembourgian we opened the Benegas Don Tiburcio (Argentina, $13), decanted it, and then presented the wine blind next to the 2003 Joseph Phelps Insignia (Napa, $$$).

Now there’s no arguing that the Don Tiburcio is an exceptional value at $13, as there was no pretending this would be a survey of merit. But, we’re a curious lot, and there was something remarkable in our customer’s reactions to the pair of decanters. Naturally suspicion arose that this was some kind of test to fail, but our novice tasters provided equal curiosity. Suffice it to say, close to an even split for the preferred decanter -  some admitted under reluctance, as well.

Then we did the unthinkable – we blended the two wines together.     Shock, and awe right? :0

Well, why not? Don Tiburcio’s rich Malbec played well in the smaller Insignia bringing more fruit and cocoa notes to the front, while the overall body of the Argentine blend was subdued by a touch of Napa elegance. Cuvee Don Signia was neither original, but, instead, quite an enjoyable wine all its own.

More importantly, our experiment – which evolved from the simple question “which do you prefer?” – became a deft lesson in the rules of engagement: enjoy wine first. Take pleasure in wine.

Don’t be afraid to have fun, and don’t worry about what other people like – your mouth is always the best judge of what’s best for you! The true luxury of wine is finding gems at every price point, and that’s something you can do everyday. Oh, and don’t be afraid if you spill a blend or two of your own, if the situation calls for it.

Cheers!