Upscale Criminals in Southwest Florida

I didn't want this item to escape our blog master's intense scrutiny of Florida.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2008/oct/28/breaking-news-bank-robbery-reported-fort-myers-rob/

Old Paint Paints

Now that I have branched out in my interests from fashion into art, I thought I'd point you at this AP article on a horse, Cholla, who paints. That would be interesting enough, but the art critic's response was even more interesting.

John Yimin, an art lover and critic, wrote on his Web site: "The brush stroke Cholla uses to get his vision down on paper ... the watercolor's dance ... and especially the fascinating completion of the works ... Cholla clearly grabs me and holds me as I watch him paint with the fire of Pollock and fixed gaze of Resnick."

Considering someone paid as much as $2200 for Chollo's artwork, training your horse to paint would seem like a more profitable venture than its close cousin, cow plop bingo.

initial contribution

Hey y'all,
Previous attempts to contribute led me to 'error'. I'm in now. What will be my first contribution? More later. How's that?
Aloha,
A.J.

Hell Freezes Over

Political posting alert...

Via the ongoing Editor and Publisher endorsement count, I see that liberal rag, the Naples Daily News, endorsed Obama. Must have made for some entertaining letters to the editor. I didn't have the stamina to sift through the more than 700 online comments.

Everybody Go Long

I'm not a football fan, but I thought the NYTimes article about the birth of the new "A-11 Offense" for high school football was interesting. Seems it started here in the SFBay area, as Piedmont High School coaches tried to figure out how their small school with smaller players would remain competitive against bigger teams.

Steve Humphries, the assistant, had an idea: What if the offense featured not one quarterback but two? Not bad, Bryan said, but things would really get interesting if all 11 players were potentially eligible to receive a pass.

Hence, the A-11 offense was born.

To its proponents, the A-11 represents the logical and inevitable evolution of a game that is becoming faster and more spread out at all levels. The alignment diminishes, or eliminates, the need for a traditional offensive line, where players can weigh 300 pounds even in high school. And, coaches say, it reduces injury because it involves glancing blows more than smash-mouth collisions.

To its detractors, the A-11 is a gimmick that cleverly but unfairly takes advantage of a loophole in the rules. To these critics, the offense places an inequitable burden on defenses to determine who is eligible for passes and makes the sport nearly impossible to referee.

I guess this won't work in Fantasy Football, but I wonder if it's happening out there in the east.

Belated Blog Birthday

I am as good at remembering the blog's birthday as I am my nephews' and nieces' birthdays. Um, on second thought: no, better. We won't mention Dara's birthday. Here's hoping for more blog activity in the coming year. Maybe AJ will help pick up the slack. Dara has been off in Houston visiting Tori, and I heard a rumor that Kyla and Josh made it to Naples. Where's the evidence!?!

Now This is a Library

Jay Walker's library is a much more interesting way to spend excessive amounts of money to my way of thinking than putting gold leaf around your swimming pool.

Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer ... is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II.

Maybe he will be having a garage sale in a few weeks. I'll let you know.

For Knotty Problems

Here's a great website I found with help from the local flotilla: animatedknots.com

Try the boating section and watch while it ties knots before your very eyes, as fast or slow as you want to go. Dad probably knew them all, anyway, but he would have been impressed with this website. My next class is on knots and lines so I've been brushing up.

I love their motto: Better to know a knot and not need it than to need a knot and not know it.