Reverse Sculpting

Man, these carvings are so cool:

ButtonBass Trap Cube

If you need to ROCK OUT and throw down some beats this buttonbass thing is really fun:

http://www.buttonbass.com/TrapCubePage.html

Old School Map

How many American Native tribes can you name? Six or Seven? How about 600? Here's a neat map of the Americas showing all the old tribes that used to be around.

soccer in a nutshell

From the New York Review of Books, I really liked this quote; it captures what I especially like about soccer:

Allow me to state the bleeding obvious: this is a tactical game. It is not about passion and individual genius, notwithstanding the relentless commodification of stars like Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar. No, soccer is about the use of reason and intelligence in order to construct a collective team formation that will contain and defeat the opposition. It requires discipline and relentless training, particularly in order to maintain the shape of the team and the way it occupies and controls space. This is the job of the coach, who tends to get reduced to some kind of either bizarrely animated comic character or casually disaffected bystander when games are televised. But he is the one who sets the team up to play a certain, clearly determined way, the prime mover although sometimes moved rather than unmoved.

Otherwise said, soccer is not about individual players. You can have great individual players in the wrong shape and the results can be tragi-comical, as with veteran English midfielder Steven Gerrard’s performances at this World Cup, where he ran around breathless, pink-faced, and making mistakes, like the one that led to Uruguay’s winning goal. This doesn’t happen (so much) when he plays for Liverpool because he is part of a rational system that he understands, which has a number of interconnected moving parts and which is defined by the ability to relax and rely on your teammates. Soccer is a collective game, a team game, and everyone has to play the part which has been assigned to them, which means they have to understand it spatially, positionally, and intelligently and make it effective. This is what Costa Rica has shown to great effect, without any star players. They know exactly what they are doing and play with admirable pride and trust in their coach.

great post-game boot room

Today's post-game boot room, makes me feel a little better...

Two versus an Army

The kids are impressively organized...

BIG AND TALL

Giant graphic of some of the biggest, tallest, longest structures humans have created.  The gold mine is my favorite.  Make sure you scroll down!

The Phoenix

Hey guys i put up the pictures i took of that Cathedral where your school is. Thought you might want to see them.

Then and Now

Since i've lived in Alaska i've seen the glaciers near my house have melted enormously.  Here are a bunch of before and after pictures of glaciers and valleys in Alaska as they appeared in the early 1900's and as they appear now. Some of the pictures are hard to believe. It's sad to seem them go but when they do you can go and walk around on rocks that no person has ever seen or touched.

quick note

I changed it so that only the 10 most recent posts will show up on the main page, because it was taking too long to load.  There should be buttons that allow you to go back to previous stuff.  Leave a comment if you dislike this change or have a suggestion!

ok, this is just totally sick

Playing with Polar Bears

You might not know that i have recurring nightmares about polar bears. When i lived in Montana i had nightmares about grizzly bears, but when i moved to Alaska and went to the Arctic Ocean the dreams changed to polar bears. Did you know that Eskimos have a "bear sentinels," or people who stand watch all night to make sure no polar bears come into their town?

Here is a well written account of an Eskimo high school student who had never seen polar bears until she went to visit her friend. She lived in a mountain village where there are only grizzly bears. About two years ago, for the first time ever witnessed by people, a polar bear was seen in a village south of the Brooks Range, the northern most mountains in the United States.

Did you know that if you come to my house again we can drive to the land of Polar Bears in just one day?