Null Hypothesis

Enough "silliness," Prez born in US

Why Michael Otterson Won't be Seeing The Book of Mormon Musical.

Lifted straight out of The Washington Post (because NYT cut me off on Safari, Chrome and Firefox).


Reviews of “The Book of Mormon” musical have been all over the entertainment media in the past few weeks. According to the reviews, the play sketches the journey of two Mormon missionaries from their sheltered life in Salt Lake City to Uganda, where their training and life experience proves wholly inadequate to the realities of a continent plagued by poverty, AIDS, genital mutilation and other horrors. While extolling the musical for its originality, most reviewers also make reference to the play’s over-the-top blasphemous and offensive language.


...


Somewhere I read that the show’s creators spent seven years writing and producing “The Book of Mormon” musical. As I reflected on all that time spent parodying this particular target, I also wondered what was really going on with Mormons in Africa during those same seven years.


So I checked.

•The World Health Organization estimates that 884 million people worldwide don’t have access to clean water. This is a huge problem in Africa, not only because of water-borne diseases but because kids who spend hours each day walking to and from the nearest well to fill old gasoline cans with water cannot attend school. According to church records, in the past seven years, more than four million Africans in 17 countries have gained access to clean drinking water through Mormon humanitarian efforts to sink or rehabilitate boreholes.

•More than 34,000 physically handicapped African kids now have wheelchairs through the same Mormon-sponsored humanitarian program. To see a legless child whose knuckles have become calloused through walking on his hands lifted into a wheelchair may be the best way to fully understand the liberation this brings.

•Millions of children, meanwhile, have now been vaccinated against killer diseases like measles as the church has sponsored or assisted with projects in 22 African countries.

•More than 126,000 Africans have had their sight restored or improved through Mormon partnership with African eye care professionals in providing training, equipment and supplies.

•Another 52,000 Africans have been trained to help newborns who otherwise would never take a first breath. Training in neonatal resuscitation has also been a big project for Mormons in Africa.

•Then, of course, there is the tragedy of AIDS. A couple of weeks ago I attended a dinner where the Utah AIDS Foundation honored James O. Mason, former United States Assistant Secretary of Health. When he was working for the Center for Disease Control in 1984, a project to research the epidemiology and treatment of AIDS was established at the Hospital Mama Yempo in Kinshasha, Zaire. After visiting the hospital and examining the children and adults with AIDS, Mason described the death rate and the associated infections from AIDS as “horrific.” Mason, a Mormon, knows quite a bit about AIDS and a great deal about Africa.

•None of this includes responses to multiple disasters, like the flooding in Niger, where the Church provided clothing, quits and hygiene items to 20,000 people in six inundated regions of the country.

Read more

VEGETARIAN BOUILLABAISSE

Lifted straight out of Genomic Gastronomy

Project Information

Vegetarian Bouillabaisse is a historical reenactment of Science. The goal of the project is to find and cook with the infamous but misunderstood frost-tolerant Fish Tomato genome. Although canonical in the history of Agriculture and Biotechnology, this ingredient has somehow slipped through the cracks of history, much like it’s original creator DNA Plant Technology.

The Center is currently documenting the history of this plant and is seeking information about whether any copies of the genetic material (seeds or cryogenically preserved plant tissue culture / germplasm) remain on the planet.

In the process of tracking down and cooking a transgenic Fish Tomato soup we hope to make public the processes that led to the creation, hype and abandonment of this genome and to dispel popular myths surrounding it. Cultural probes created as part of this process will be designed to engender debate about scientific production and communication, biotechnology, and cultural amnesia.

SEE: Will Eating Vegetarian Bouillabaisse Make Me Sick?

Making Vegetarian Bouillabaisse: What Happens to GMOs If They Fail?

Permit Number 91-079-01r (.pdf)

BBC article from 2003: GM Food (.pdf)

That also reminds me: Zaha Hadid (Another lady architect!)

Hadid was in the New York Times yesterday for her proposed civic center, somewhere in the Sacramento Valley:

Oh my god, ewww! It looks like a giant alien squid octopus. (I think it's pretty mint, but that's what people in Elk Grove are saying.)

Other work of hers:

Heeeeyyyyy... these ones look like the Gang/Gehry towers I put up below:

That reminds me...

Gehry has a new building going up, Beekman Tower. It will be the tallest residential tower in NYC, located at 8 Spruce Street:

The comparison made in my previous post should be salient at this point...

Crush: Jeanne Gang

In Chicago ~two Fridays ago. The city is renowned for its architecture. Downtown is like a who's who of the industry and I am told you aren't famous until you put up an edifice in the windy city. My favorite building was the Aqua tower:

Turns out this Gehry-like skyline-candy is the work of Jeanne Gang and it is the worlds highest building designed by a firm run by a woman:

She probably has a boyfriend...

Colbert PAC

I've been thinking about starting a PAC. Colbert beat me to the punch. But I can learn from him!

You can tell how power hungry Colbert is because he starts salivating at 3:00 when he realizes what a PAC can do.

Shirtless Sax Player Serenades Unwilling Audiences With ‘Careless Whisper'

Sexy Sax Man Sergio is a waaay better internet sensation than Rebecca Black






I wish I could find video of him on Jimmy Kimmel Live, that's how I found out about it. Oh well.