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Well, it’s better than The Ocho. Drum Corps now joins the ranks with the likes of cheerleading and other pseudo-sports. DCI World Championships will be aired on ESPN2 this year, finally getting away from PBS. Look for it on Saturday, September 6, from 9:00 to 11:00 pm.

Monty Python’s Spamalot won a Tony Award for Best Musical. This was on my list of shows to see. One day, I’ll get around to doing just that.

Napoleon Dynamite won an MTV Award for Best Movie. I guess I’m just not in touch with the MTV Generation any more. I didn’t think this movie was particularly good. While the characters were weird, I can’t even go so far as to call them interesting. It’s not a “plot movie” either, so what is left?

Speaking of movies, here are five movies [he] wishes people would stop quoting.

In my economics class, there’s a girl my age who uses the word indeed in every post. (She also marks every message as “urgent.”) Examples are plentiful indeed:

1. Iagree as I live in one of the richest and fastest growing counties in the US, Fairfax County, in McLean/Great Falls. My 1,000 sq. foot custom condo is worth 600,000 up from 350,000 which is what I paid for it in May 2003. You know I am riding that one to the bank but the prices are still stupid indeed.
2. You are correct as with the way the real estate market is right now, there really are no threats to it at the time. It can hold itself in fending off any things that could indeed happen.
3. I completely agree with your statement regardinmg that Alan Greenspan is the most powerful man in the United States indeed.
4. I think more over what allowed him to be reelected was his fasts witch to a focus on domestic iussues on the homefront which took away from the soldiers being killed for no reason overseas, not to mention he rides the Bible Belt crowd all the way to the office, and not to mention Kerry was a complete loser who should have let his wife run seeing as she wore the pants and the bank account in that relationship indeed.
5. I agree as lowering the interest rates would indeed help to increase the circulation of money in the states.
6. That is a good site regarding the measure of the unemployment rate as it is down to a low at the moment which is indeed good for the economy.
7. I agree as I did vote for Bush seeing as Kerry was a bigger moron who should have let his wife run seeing as she wore the pants and had the bank account of the two indeed.

There are many, many more examples in the first five weeks of this class. Do people really talk like that?

My photo gallery will now be located elsewhere as I am retiring the marchnow.com domain…

I finally got to see Stacey‘s new condo. (Happy birthday, Stacey!) It’s a really nice place. Unfortunately, I had a team paper due that night for my economics class. Since I was putting everyone’s portions together and creating a paper containing everyone’s sections with one voice, I had to be around when everyone finished their sections, two hours before the due time of midnight.

Some great musicians over time have contributed music for productions Shakespeare plays. Some of these include Felix Mendelssohn, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and now Barenaked Ladies. They’ve provided songs and incidental music for a production of As You Like It at the Stratford Festival in Canada.

Of course there are sound clips.

When I was younger, I used to read about space. I was interested in learning about what could possibly be around us, beyond the gravitational pull of our planet. I used to watch those astronomy and related science programs on PBS, as well. On trips to Florida, I would even catch Jack Horkheimer‘s Star Hustler (which is apparrently now called Star Gazer) late at night.

Something has changed since then; photographs of celestial objects have become much prettier and more colorful. Is this a result of better telescopes bringing out the natural color of these objects? Nope. If we were to “see” these objects with our unaided eyes or through a telescope, they would not be so colorful.

The apparent beauty of the NASA photographs is due to Photoshop. The process is described here. Most of what is shown in pictures is light with wavelengths beyond the range of human visibility. Someone then converts the wide range of wavelengths into our range of red to “blue” (or sort of purple-ish) to appeal to our senses.

I had a nice, long weekend. A couple of things: Pulp Fiction is still a great movie. So is L.A. Story (“THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH, HARRIS, THAN ARE DREAMT OF N YOUR PHILOSOPHY.”) Hamlet meets L.A. freeway signpost. I think this tops my list of “magical movies.” What are your favorite magical movies?

I met some distant cousins, both retired lawyers. They gave me an interesting perspective on some life choices I’m considering. I had a good time with family and friends despite Amy‘s observation that my father and I make each other uncomfortable. I don’t know. I want to be more of a family person.

It looks like it’s going to be great outside today. The high will be 77 degrees. I’m only working five hours today. This is a good thing because it will be less time that I have to listen to my cube neighbor’s radio that plays 80% annoying commercials, 10% annoying deejays and 10% a little less-annoying R&B.

When advocates for the arts talk about the benefits of education in this particular field, they often frame their discussion with respect to its instrumental benefits rather than intrinsic. People believe it will be easier to convince others if they show them how an arts education benefits an individual’s life in ways other than in the arts. A broad example of this would be the argument that studying music helps an individual to understand mathematical and physical constructs.

The RAND Organization put together a report last year that underlines some of the fallacies in this line of reasoning and pushes for a reframing of the benefits of an arts education. The bottom line is that arts should be studies for arts’ sake. Here is more information on the report and you can also download the report [pdf].

Conan O’Brien ruminates on the future of Television for Newsweek Magazine. His prediction involved production facilities on Mars (it’s cheaper than New York and Canada) and Broadway making a comeback.