Economics: John Maynard Keynes vs. Friedrich von Hayek

I heard about this video a while back, an education on the two economic theories that influence political decisions, that is John Maynard Keynes vs. Friedrich von Hayek theories. Adherence to one or the other falls along party lines: Democrats tend to be pro-Keynes, who theorized that too much saving makes for a stagnant economy and if the economy stalls, the government may have to intervene to stimulate it with spending; Republicans tend to line up behind Hayek, who thought the market would take care of itself, and so, the government should not intervene at all.

You can see how Hayek would fit with the Republican desire to shrink government and privatize services that have usually been provided by the government and also push for no regulation of industry, the mindset that gave us the foreclosure crisis. (Is it possible that this is why some banks have hoarded the money they received from the government rather than used it to lend money? Is it possible that proponents of laissez-faire capitalism wanted to sink Keynesian theory and Obama at the same time? Or maybe they see something horrible coming for which we should all be preparing but aren't?) The video explains these two economic theories via rapping.

A well-written, easy-to-understand piece "What is Keynesian Economics?" is posted at WiseGeeks.com. With the debt ceiling crisis and associated drama, I thought this would be a good time to post this video. You can watch part 2 here.

I tend to believe almost everything works best in moderation. It's wise to save for a rainy day, but all saving all the time is bad for the economy and enjoying life in general. However, living on credit is crazy as is making rotten loans to people--loans with balloon payments for instance--is also a crummy way to do business. Some of those bankers who made subprime loans should be in jail now and perhaps people who want to buy houses should take a one-hour course first on how to understand the fine print of loan documents. But who am to question the rich and powerful in America? Do those of us not in that club even matter in this country?

National Dance Day 2011 in New Orleans

So far the only event I've seen for New Orleans for National Dance Day 2011 is this one, which was posted at NOCCA's (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts) website.

July 5, 2011 – To celebrate the 2nd Annual National Dance Day (July 30), Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre is offering a free Zumba class at NOCCA. Launched by Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer and judge of “So You Think You Can Dance”, National Dance Day is “a grassroots initiative that encourages the nation, young and old, to move! Individuals, families, organizations and communities from across the nation come together through their creative expression in dance.” (http://dance.blogs.fox.com)

Zumba “is an exhilarating, effective, easy-to-follow, Latin-inspired, calorie-burning dance fitness-party™ that’s moving millions of people toward joy and health.” (http://www.zumba.com) The 1 ½ hour Zumba class will be taught by certified Zumba instructor, Jennifer Plauche. Following the class Jennifer and other members of Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre will teach the National Dance Day routines created by “So You Think You Can Dance” choreographers. Anyone can join the class. All ages and levels are welcome. There is no need for membership, fancy sneakers or expensive dancewear. Just wear something comfortable and come dance with us!

Where: New Orleans Center for Creative Arts
2800 Chartres St.
New Orleans, LA 70117

When: Saturday, July 30 @ 1pm-3pm

Cost: FREE

For more information please contact Chard at info@charddance.org or by calling (504) 939-2404.

If anyone's doing a flash mob here in NOLA, they're keeping it to themselves.

However, if you search the National Dance Day hashtag on Twitter, #nationaldanceday, something may pop up. Also, Sandy's Dance Center in Shreveport is having an event.

Looking for the three National Dance Day routines choreographed by SYTYCD choreographers? Click here.

Norway's Alleged Bomber and Shooter Reminds Me of Blue Eyes in Newark and Neil Simon's Line

The bombing and shootings in Norway made me remember an experience I had in 2003 when I worked at an airport kiosk and encountered a Norwegian man taking pictures of workers loading a passenger plane. I wrote about the incident at my old blog, Confessions of a Jersey Goddess, in 2007.

Here's my recollection as written then:

... I worked for a while at Newark International Airport and noticed a tall, well-dressed, blond-haired, blue-eyed man shooting video of baggage handlers putting bags on planes. I stood at my kiosk and observed him for a while and the thought crossed my mind, They keep telling us to report suspicious behavior. I bet nobody's questioning what he's doing because he doesn't look like he's of Arab descent. He's a white guy. So, I went up to him smiling and asked, "What are you doing?"

He told me he was shooting video for a television station in his country. I listened to his accent and said, "Cool. Your accent? Icelandic?" He said he was from Norway and started to look uncomfortable. I said, "Oh, don't worry about me. I work over there. I'm not with security. I'm in sales." We talked a few minutes more and then I left. I went back to my kiosk and started scanning the corridor for security.

When I told two police officers about the man they said, "It's not illegal to shoot video." I said I know but shooting video of how the baggage handlers put luggage on the plane seems like something someone should check out. Then one of the officers said, "I wonder if anyone's checked his press credentials. Show us." I turned around and looked toward my kiosk then spotted the man with his camera quickly hauling his butt down the corridor. The officers took off after him.

I don't know what happened and it was probably nothing. He could have been running for his flight. Nevertheless, a few days later Newark Airport was shut down for a while. Agents busted people involved in a weapons deal. The arrested were not of Arab descent. They were Europeans.

The old post at my old blog was about media revealing the shooter's race in the Virginia Tech massacre. I was discussing the pitfalls of racial profiling when deciding who or who may not be a terrorist or mass murderer. That discussion seems appropriate again given what's happened in Norway and especially if the New York Daily News and other sources have their facts straight and the picture the Daily News lifted from Facebook of shooting and bombing suspect Anders Behring Breivik is indeed his picture and not some professional model's face.

Breivik's face (if that's really him) reminds me of a line from Neil Simon's play God's Favorite spoken by the character Lipton:

Would you like to know what the devil looks like? Robert Redford. I swear on my mother's grave. Gorgeous. The man is gorgeous. Blond hair, a little bend in the nose ...

Breivik is being called Norway's version of Timothy McVeigh and the domestic terrorists behind America's Oklahoma City bombings:

The 32-year-old suspected of massacring at least 80 young people at a summer camp and setting off a bomb in downtown Oslo that killed at least seven is a mystery to investigators: a right-winger with anti-Muslim views but no known links to hardcore extremists.

"He just came out of nowhere," a police official told The Associated Press.

Angry people come in all shapes, colors, sizes, political shades, social class, and states of attractiveness because evil grows first in the soul.

Budget Fight Is Really About GOP Privatization Ideology

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What I'm about to say may sound like conspiracy theory talk, but it's not. In fact, to many people who study politics, nothing that I'm about to say will be news. But to most of the people who have been obsessing about the Debt Ceiling and deficit debates, the following may sound like crazy talk. I'm referring to the question of the week: "Why would House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, walk out of budget talks with the President of the United States of America or why are conservatives being so unreasonable?"

I could speculate about Boehner's motives. Everything from he's a natural born Drama King to he's trying to look like a man standing his ground to conservative voters could be behind his walk-out (to me he's like a spoiled brat taking his marbles to go home). But what I seriously submit to you is that the stand Republicans have taken--not just during these debt ceiling negotiations but pretty much ever since Barack Obama was sworn in as POTUS--has little to do with balancing the federal budget or doing what's best for America as a whole, and their stance has even less to do with concerns about raising the debt ceiling. What the constant drumbeat of "No taxes!" is really about is a desire to shrink government to the point of impotence: it's about ideology, namely privatization. (I mean this in terms of how Republicans view the big picture or their end goal.)

About two months ago I was driving through the 7th Ward in New Orleans down Leon C. Simon Boulevard, bouncing along in my little car over streets badly in need of repair, and as I drove I wondered what would it take to rebuild this city properly and why is it that only some parts of the city are rebuilding beautifully and not other parts. Unfortunately, the city is broke and the state of Louisiana is not much better off. Naturally we hear that part of the problem is a failure to attract new businesses, and since we can't get in more money from business owners, then we must make massive budget cuts to social programs such as education. And yet if anyone proposed raising taxes on citizens in any significant way, all hell would break loose. Louisiana is a conservative state, a G.O.P./Tea Party stronghold.

Only a few weeks before my drive I'd heard that some state representative had proposed doing away completely with state taxes. I don't recall the name, and the person may have even been a Democrat because down here being a Democrat only means that a lot of your constituents haven't taken the time to change parties on their voter registrations. If they don't vote technically Republican, however, they will vote for whoever sounds like a Republican and whoever denounces President Barack Obama.

But how do people who insist on "no new taxes" or "no tax increases" expect cities and states to run and serve citizens well? What is going on with this mindset that any attempt to provide services for the collective good is socialism and of the devil? Suddenly, an answer hit me: What's really going on here is not any love of common sense government, as we are so often told. What's at work here is a machine fueled by ideology, and that ideology is privatization with an inability to balance the desires of the individual with the needs of the group. Conservatives declare that they don't believe in what they call "big government." They seem to think the only purpose of government is to provide crime control and raise armies for protection in the most literal sense--law and order as defined by the traditional western hegemony.

As I drove, I considered how so many of what used to be city and state services have been taken over by private companies, not just in my neck of the woods but also in the rest of the country. Private companies have a foothold in providing clean water, garbage collection, prison administration, and more and more in managing "public" education. And then I contemplated what was going on in Washington, D.C. and around the nation, the fear mongering the GOP and the Tea Party have leveraged with charges that Obama is "a socialist" and even a misrepresentation that the country's founders believed in no taxes, that the American Revolution was a revolt against taxes in general rather than what I learned in elementary school was a revolt against a very specific injustice--"taxes with out representation."

I also thought about how conservatives (not all but many conservative activists) have in the last two years portrayed the federal government as an evil force. As many others have discussed, it's more than a coincidence that this notion of an evil federal government has gained prominence while a black man is in the Oval Office. Some conservative pundits have used this fact to manipulate people and stir the primal fear of many white voters, the fear that somehow people of color are going to take over the country and oppress white people (the way people of color have been oppressed for centuries).

And then I considered how conservative strategists have code switched and manipulated language. For instance, Affirmative Action has been relabeled "reverse discrimination," and government programs to help the poor are called "redistribution of wealth."

Next I recalled what I know of psychology and the way humans tend to project their own thoughts onto others, especially when they are in situations they can't control. Sometimes when people fear losing control, they accuse others of having the ugly motives they recognize in themselves. By projection then, those who ignore the history behind and reason for affirmative action policies and claim the policy is "discrimination" against them instead reveal that they know policies in the past from which they've benefited have been discriminatory. Humans don't necessarily follow the Golden Rule, but they do expect others to do unto them as they have done unto others. Therefore, if someone's stabbed you in the back, they reasonably think that if you get a knife, you'll do the same to them, or if they've fantasized stabbing you, they justify that fantasy by telling themselves you wish them harm as well.

To break it down to a less violent circumstance, in relationships often the partner who is constantly accusing the other partner of infidelity is revealing his or her own desire to cheat or even that they themselves are cheating. He or she is projecting his/her own behavior and personality onto the other person.

Psychological projection is most likely behind conservatives labeling programs to help the poor and elderly as "redistribution of wealth" policies. They recognize that their own desire to privatize what were formerly government services is a "redistribution of wealth." The money that should be collected for the commonwealth of all Americans via taxes is shifted to the wallets of private contractors who conservatives would like us to believe have the public interests at heart and not their profit margins.

When private companies take over what used to be government services such as providing water, the flip in the exchange is very obvious. You don't pay the city for water and sewerage service. You pay a private company. But a look at how private companies supply water in third world countries will quickly illustrate how this kind of privatization works against the community, against the commonwealth.

Extremist conservative ideology does not allow for the concept of "commonwealth," not really, "commonwealth" being equated with "common good." The pooling of resources to create a national wealth apparent through public health services and better education programs, a good that we all have in common, is for some reason abhorrent to some who declare themselves "no taxes, economic conservatives." Consequently, they push for the elimination of taxes in the name of the kind of economic growth that benefits individuals first and foremost and tumbles downward from the most successful to the least successful like crumbs to dogs. However, this ideology is really greed in a corporate suit or cloaked in Christian family values language or patriotic doublespeak. (I don't have time to address how this thinking conflicts with first century "Christian" beliefs.)

So, I landed on these ideas during my drive, but not being the kind the of person who assumes my thoughts are valid just because they spring from me, I decided that when I got home I would do some research. As it turns out, a Princeton professor, Paul Starr, sounded an alarm of sorts on this topic back in 1988 with his paper "The Meaning of Privatization."

When I read his paper two months ago, I was going to write about it then, but I was in the middle of graduate studies. Also, I was pretty sure nobody would read that post. Perhaps no one will read it now, but I had to speak my mind.

I was surprised to find that Starr had more than 20 years ago and after a great deal of scholarship drawn some of the same conclusions I felt intuitively as I drove through the streets of New Orleans in 2011. More recently he gave a thumbs down to a Republican proposal for Medicare. He called it simply a proposal that would let the government wash its hands of providing public health services.

I've watched Republicans eying Medicare myself with the Tea Party's enthusiastic support. Aren't these the same people who had senior citizens protesting in the streets in 2009 afraid that Obama was going to take away their Medicare? It's all part of the plan to "take back America," I suppose.

Many have asked, however, "take America back to what" or take back America from whom"? I suggests the people who want to take back what they perceive to be "their country" mean to take it back to the pre-FDR New Deal policies that gave us the Great Depression and from people who pursue social justice and narrowing the gap between the haves and the have nots. I suggest that the "take back America" people are hiding from the truth that the world has changed and that we are now part of a global economy. They don't realize that a return to what our great-grandparents would have done is not the way to go unless we are speaking of cooking meals at home and growing our own vegetables. But since these people also believe going green is another anti-American idea then, well ...

Back to discussing privatization--Starr is not totally opposed to privatization (and neither am I in some cases). He writes in his 1988 paper:

This Article attempts to clarify the meaning of privatization as an idea, as theory and rhetoric, and as a political practice. In the process I hope to explain why I generally oppose privatization, even though I favor some specific proposals that privatization covers. But apart from this political judgment, I take privatization seriously as a policy movement and as a process that show every sign of reconstituting major institutional domains of contemporary society.

I added emphasis on the word "rhetoric" because rhetoric involves persuasion, and if there's one thing the privatization camp has done well is persuade Americans to swallow privatization as some kind of cure to big government even when it's in bottles marked by a skull and crossbones. As you will see if you read Starr's paper, a lot of this persuasion has been accomplished through redefining public vs. private.

He also discusses in the paper how privatization becomes a redistribution of wealth.

I do not wish to misrepresent Starr's thinking. For instance, he probably does not see as thick a plot to privatize America as I do. I mainly offer his paper as a resource to people in hopes that they will evaluate his argument in light of what we've seen unfolding with this conservative hard nose stand against raising taxes in any form. Seems to me we are dupes in a wag the dog scenario, and our mainstream media are not looking at he big picture. Is it possible that conservatives hope to demolish the current government under President Barack Obama because it's easy to tap into voting public distrust of a "the first black president"? Believe me, they would have done the same to Hillary Clinton.

Anyway, Boehner's walked out on the budget talks. WOW! What timing. He managed to stage that on a Friday when the markets couldn't react and signal to conservative Americans that something's wrong about his action. But it's all a show, people. The fallout from a default or even the potential for default is not going to hurt Republicans' real constituency, the wealthy.

The fallout is going to hurt the middle class and the poor, but those Republicans who are middle class or poor will most likely not see this is their own party's doing. They won't realize that they've been thrown under the bus. No. They'll be angry and scared and ripe for the message that it's all the incompetent black president's fault. They'll be eager to hear how Republican and Tea Party leaders tried the best they could to fight a big, scary federal government with a "socialist" and "arrogant" "covert Muslim" in charge. They will believe exactly what they've always feared.

The Social Media Diet

As I work at putting my life in order, which means doing the things I've always said I would do before my time runs out on this planet, I realize that I'm spending less time online. That's a good thing, but it's also a strange thing given how much time I've put into the Internet since 2002 and even earlier. I should probably elaborate, but I've got someplace to go right now and later it's exercise, thesis research on Marcus B. Christian, and more work on the novel. :-)

That's Life with Alexander and Sasha: SYTYCD

Here are Sasha and Alexander dancing to Aretha Franklin's "That's Life" during the Top 12 episode of So You Think You Can Dance on Fox. I agreed with the judges on their performance. Beautiful. Sasha nailed it and Alexander was fantastic. So, I was surprised to see the pair in the bottom three.

Unfortunately Alexander was voted off during results Thursday night and so was Ryan, who the judges said seemed depressed lately. She did seem to be putting that light that shone so brightly at the beginning of the season under a bushel. I could tell, during Wednesday night's competition, however, that the judges were gearing up to eliminate her from the show if she and Ricky ended up in the bottom three.

This year's top 10 is very talented, and the season has been brutal due to the number of gifted dancers. I'm rooting for Sasha and Melanie. I think they shine the most, but really, I like everyone in the Top 10. Dancers seem to have much better attitudes than singers, such as the ones who audition for American Idol, and that's probably a good reason to buy a "Dance 4 Your Life" T-shirts that Nigel Lythgoe had on last night. I guess it's the endorphins.

Becker Pulls a Bobbitt: Cuts Off Husband's Penis (Video)

I was married and in my early 30s when Lorena Bobbitt, age 24, cut off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis in Virginia. What level of rage does it take to do that to a man? Today I learned another woman has done it again, Catherine Kieu Becker, 48, of Southern, California.

CBS News reports that she "drugged her estranged husband, tied him to a bed, cut off his penis and put it through a garbage disposal." I guess she didn't want it collected and reattached, which is what happened in the Bobbitt case. (Lorena threw the organ from a car window on a road. Surgeons successfully reattached John's penis during a 9-hour surgery.)

He (Becker) was conscious when his penis was removed," said Garden Grove police Lt. Jeff Nightengale.

Nightengale says Becker put the penis in the garbage disposal and turned it on.

According to CBS station KCBS, Becker called 911 and told responding officers that her husband, whose name has not been released, "deserved it."

That's hate beyond hate, and it's also possible she is mentally ill.

Despite going through one of the world's most bitter divorces, I never contemplated mutilating my ex. No man is worth bringing yourself so low or the jail time. But maybe for Becker, the pain she felt he caused her was too much too bear.

Bobbitt now Becker, is it a letter "B" thing? Apparently not. Kim Tran, 35, committed the same crime in 2005 against her boyfriend, 44, in Anchorage, Alaska. She flushed it down the toilet.

Naturally, the husband in the Becker case, who is recovering in the hospital, is in shock. She invited him to dinner and cooked for him. I guess he thought that meant all was forgiven. (See, my mother told me to never eat anything an estranged spouse cooks.) Becker faces charges of "aggressive mayhem."

Lorena Bobbitt was charged with "malicious wounding," and later a jury found her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

But oh, updating for poetry. Hat tip to a friend who points us to Lucille Clifton's poem "Lorena." I add it not to condone carving up men, but to give a nod to poetics and the politics of being female. Lorena Bobbitt said John, who was a notorious womanizer and unfaithful, sexually assaulted her and that's why she cut off his penis. He was not convicted of spousal abuse charges against him, however.

A Brand New Camaro for $5.28?

It used to be that if it sounds too good to be true, then it's probably not true, but today the story opens:

If it sounds too good to be true, welcome to the world of penny auctions. It isn't a scam, people actually win, but there are things you should know before you jump in." ... Jonathan Mason from Frankenmuth is the proud owner of a brand new $35K Chevrolet Camaro, and you're not going to believe what he paid for it: $5.28.

The car had only 123 miles when he won/bought it.

Penny Auctions? Every time I turn around there seems to be something new on the Web. Until I saw the CNN video about the guy winning the Camaro for five bucks, I had not heard of them, but they exist with names like SkoreIt and Quibids. In the video above, Kent Kerns from FastPennyCars.com explains how it works. If you watch the video, you'll also find out you can lose money on penny auction sites. The auctions sites themselves, however, make money.

Walter Mosley on Making America Great

I stumbled across this Booknotes TV interview with novelist Walter Mosley. It's fascinating. He's fascinating far beyond his novels. He talks about everything from the birth of Easy Rollins, to his growing up in Watts with an African-American father and Jewish mother, to his vision for making America better. The man is a deep thinker who considers how we can improve the world, which is how he ended up collaborating on the book Black Genius and writing Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History.

He also talks about how he has been stopped in restaurants and bookstores by people who question his right to be there because he is a black man.

I was in Beverly Hills two days ago and I had three experiences. I went to a jewelers with my mother because my mother needed to do something with a ring. I walked in and they looked at me and I said, `Who do I talk to?' And they said, `What do you want?' It's a jewelry store. What else would I want? You know, but I--I got over that and we did this thing. And then I went into a bookstore, and a woman came up to me and says, `What do you want?' So I said, `It's a bookstore.
What do I want?' And she followed me until I asked her could I sign my book? And then she stopped following me and she let me sign my book. And finally, I went to a restaurant at night, and I was stopped going into the restaurant. And they said, `What are you doing here?' I--I'm coming to meet somebody. You know? And, I mean, you know, it happened to be somebody that they knew. And so then they were nice to me.

My experience in America is that I'm a black man in America and that I get stopped, you know? It's not as bad as it used to be. But it's
still--you know, people--at first, they wonder--they say, `Well, we don't recognize you here,' you know? And so there--therefore, I'm a black man in America, but they define me, not me. You know, my definition is I'm Walter Mosley.

While he talks about race, he believes that race is not the biggest challenge that we will face in this millennium.

He used to be a computer programmer, and he didn't start writing fiction until he was 33 years old. He advocates people going 90 days without TV, radio, and electronic media, including the Internet. While he believes something is terribly wrong with capitalism, he is not a Marxist. He hopes we can come together and figure out something better for the common good. A perceptive and introspective man who says fiction is true while non fiction pretends to be true.

The interview was conducted in 2000. Watch here.

J. K. Rowling's Book Map is Cool

I just finished listening a Writer's Digest on-demand workshop with Cheryl Klein of the Arthur A. Levine imprint at Scholastic Books. She shared a great deal of wisdom, and I was happy to hear her say that while writers are told "show don't tell," the truth is you need both. The workshop was on plot structure, and she's also a believer in the book map. Klein was also the continuity editor for the Harry Potter series, and so she shared this treat, J. K. Rowling's book/plot map.

Click the image for a larger view.

I also found the image online here. Try Anita Nolan's article, "The End is Only the Beginning" for more about refining novel manuscripts. I enjoyed the workshop because Klein gets specific and practical.

Torchwood Miracle Day Gets Thumbs Up: Starts Tonight

Last night I went to an advance screening of Starz new Torchwood series, Mircale Day, at the AMC Elmwood theater in Harahan, Louisiana. The show's premise intrigued me the first day I saw the trailer on Starz, and with the exception of having to squint due to what seemed to be a bad print that was too dark for viewing, I really enjoyed the first episode. I will watch it again when premieres on TV tonight. (I may have to watch it on DVR b/c tonight's my monthly card game.) From what I've seen of the still shots of Episode One, the digital copy of the first episode is well-lighted. So, again, we must have had a bad film print last night.

Anyway, I highly recommend this show if you like science fiction and fantasy. Like Dr. Who, Torchwood has skipped across the pond to America.

I don't want to give away anything. So, here is a summary straight from the Starz Torchwood: Miracle Day site:

One day, nobody dies. All across the world, nobody dies. And then the next day, and the next, and the next, people keep aging -- they get hurt and sick -- but they never die. The result: a population boom, overnight.

With all the extra people, resources are finite. It’s said that in four month's time, the human race will cease to be viable. But this can’t be a natural event – someone’s got to be behind it. It’s a race against time as C.I.A. agent Rex Matheson investigates a global conspiracy. The answers lie within an old, secret British institute. As Rex keeps asking “What is Torchwood?", he’s drawn into a world of adventure, and a threat to change what it means to be human, forever.

“Torchwood,” premiering July 8, stars John Barrowman (“Torchwood”, “Desperate Housewives”) as Captain Jack Harkness, Eve Myles (“Torchwood”, “Little Dorrit") as Gwen Cooper, Mekhi Phifer (“ER”, “Lie to Me”) as Rex Matheson and Bill Pullman (While You Were Sleeping, Independence Day) as Oswald Danes.

The show premieres tonight. Check your local listings.

National Dance Day 2011 Dance Routines

National Dance Day is July 30, 2011. As usual, it is promoted by Fox Network's So You Thank You Can Dance and the Dizzy Feet Foundation. The Larry King Cardiac Foundation is also a sponsor.

From the show's website:

NATIONAL DANCE DAY (is) a grassroots initiative that encourages the nation, young and old, to move! Individuals, families, organizations and communities from across the nation come together through their creative expression in dance. Any style of dance is welcome and imagination is recommended in order to get the most out of this celebratory day.

It's often a flash mob experience, you can meet with people at any Six Flags or anyplace else you like. Read more at Fox or DizzyFeet.

Nigel Lythgoe said on tonight's results show of SYTYCD that this year they have three routines of varying difficulty. Tabitha and Napoleon choreographed the most difficult routine, which is below, and it's a pretty fast HipHop number.



Mary Murphy choreographed the easy routine, a salsa. See below.



And Robin Antin choreographed the one of middle intensity.



Oh, and tonight on the results show, Ashley Rich and Chris Koehl went home.

Computer-Generated Stars: Yeats, The Center Unravels Still

So, Japan has digitized commercial spokespeople and holographic rock stars.

Creation
By Nordette N. Adams

The new world comes at us fast:
Unhuman creatures, made to last.
Pretty zombies of our minds—
not of flesh, born of time—
will count our days and nights
as we inject nanobots to spite
our blood. Desperate, we fight Death
or God to overcome the soiled breath
we have called life.
Dust mocks us to the grave.

Is this our brave new world
or the long song of decay,
Yeats? No. It does not hold.
The center still unfolds.

© 2011 Nordette N. Adams

Sexy America: Happy 4th of July!

Where is he now!

I can't remember this model's name. It started with a T. I keep thinking, Thunder. I don't know why.

Feel Good Video: World Flash Mob from Eurovision Song Contest 2010

After reading the depressing New York Times article this morning about recent developments in the DSK rape case, I was glad I found this video. It's called the "world's largest flash mob dance video" produced by Eurovision Song Contest 2010, and I really needed to see something to make me feel better about humanity, at least a way to look at the brighter side of the species.

However, I don't think the flash mob in the video, which includes clips from people dancing in unison from around Europe, is technically bigger than Oprah's flash mob with the Blackeyed Peas. It had 21,000 people.

As for the DSK case, I feel that it's just another case of money talks. The alleged victim's past is being used against her so she's the one on trial despite women in France who've come forward to say DSK has been sexually aggressive toward them as well.