It's a dark day in Syracuse

The Syracuse Symphony is no longer. This was to have been their 50th season.

Along with the Syracuse Symphony goes the 150-member strong Syracuse Symphony Youth Orchestra, an important resource for aspiring musicians. The Syracuse Symphony is just the latest cultural institution to go silent. Symphony orchestras all across the country are reeling and most of them are in serious financial trouble.

It's not just smaller market symphonies either. The 110-year-old Philadelphia Orchestra has been flirting with bankruptcy all year and it's one of the world's most celebrated cultural institutions.

The arts are in trouble in this great land, the symphonic arts in particular. Art and music are vital to a healthy society and as go the arts, so goes everything else.

If you live in an area with a symphony, go. Go and then keep going. Once they're gone they don't come back.

Who's ready for an Onion?

Danish manufacturer Verpan has brought back their 1970s iconic Onion lamp for a new generation.

This time around they've added a table lamp to the collection.

What do we think? Are some things better left in the past or is this a lamp that needs to be seen again?

If I could stop the world for one day: A Blog Off Post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "If you could stop the world for one day, what would you take the time to do?"

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What would I do with the time? I'd take a page from Modern English.

What would I do? That's easy, I'd melt with you.










Hah! As soon as this topic surfaced last week my mind went back to 1982 and that song immediately. Some influences just can't be undone and early '80s British New Wave is definitely an indelible influence.

But back to the topic at hand. What would I do if I could stop the world for a day? I'd probably not stop the world in the first place. If that weren't an option, I'd spend the time looking for a way to start it again.

I may be alone in this, but I enjoy the passage of time. I like getting older (and wiser) and I love being able to look back across a landscape of lessons learned. Further, with those lessons learned, I'm better equipped to enjoy my life as a move forward.

I'm a busy guy. My days are pretty tightly scheduled and if there's something I really want to do I rearrange my priorities and do it. If the thing I want to do isn't important enough for a priority rearrangement then it's probably not very important in the first place.

So if somebody wants to stop the world, please find a way to do so that my world keeps spinning.

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Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "If you could stop the world for one day, what would you take the time to do?"

Want to be a hero every morning?

This is the new Spider shower head from Italian manufacturer Visentin.

It can be ceiling or wall mounted and each the the mini shower heads can be positioned independently. Visentin is not the first manufacturer to play around with this shower configuration. I find them to be interesting but not for the reasons Visentin wants me to.

When I see these shower heads, I see the head of Medusa.

Head of Medusa by Caravaggio, 1595

Medusa was a Gorgon, one of three terrifying sisters who wreaked havoc across the the landscape of classical antiquity.

Medusa started out as a ravishing beauty and a priestess in Athena's temple. She had a lot of luck with gentlemen callers but pressed her luck too far by bedding down Poseidon in the temple itself. This enraged Athena (who wouldn't be enraged?) so Athena turned Medusa into a hag and transformed her glorious hair to snakes.

Enter Perseus. Perseus was a hero-in-the-making and his mother was about to be wed against her wishes to King Polydectes of Seriphos. Polydectes send Perseus to go retrieve Medusa's head because he wanted to give it as a gift. Perseus enlisted the help of Anthena and Hermes who gave him a Cap of Invisibility, a sword, a mirrored shield and a pair of winged sandals; and off to work he went. By using the cap of invisibility and the mirrored shield, Perseus got close enough to Medusa to behead her without ever having to look at her.

Perseus holding the head of Medusa, a photo I took on an archeological dig in Castellamare della Stabia in southern Italy.

Once he had the head, Perseus flew back to Seriphos, showed the head to Polydectes and turned him to stone, thus saving his mother from a marriage she didn't want to go through with. He later gave the head to Athena who attached it to her shield and ended up with the ultimate revenge on the fornicating Medusa.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini, 1554. Perseus looks poised to take a shower in this statue or am I just imagining things?

The moral of the story? Take your pick. Never fool around with a god in another god's temple, no matter how good he looks or the kinds of promises he makes. He's going to get away Scot free and you're going to have to deal with some kind of divine wrath. Another good one to remember is to be careful of sending the son of the woman you want to marry against her will on a heroic labor. Overall, just like any classical myth, the overriding lesson is always "behave yourself."

That's a lot of work to go through just to take a shower in the morning. Heaven knows I love Classical Mythology, but sometimes I want to just start my day with a conventional shower that doesn't inspire me to think so much.

What about you? Do these many-serpent-headed showers move you in any particular direction? Would you take a shower with a Gorgon?

Can we let this one die?

This is our president, Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate.

The state of Hawaii calls that certificate a "Certification of Live Birth." That it's not labeled a "birth certificate" has given the feeble-minded a hobby for the last three years. As we gear up for the 2012 General Election, I want to know:

Why does this idiot,

or this idiot,

or any other idiot who can't deal with that get a national audience to spread their irrational lunacy?

Is having a black man, an Other, in the Oval Office so frightening that there has to be a conspiracy to explain it? Once again, here's a dismissal of the whole make-believe issue from Snopes and from the Anneneberg Foundation. Even the folks at Fox News have to admit that there's no there there even as they leave the door open for more there.

If you have an issue with the President (and I have more than a few), isn't it enough to present a counter argument? After you present a counter argument, it's incumbent on you to sell that counter argument to your fellow citizens and then to you representatives in congress. Proclaiming your opposition's illegitimacy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary doesn't make you smart or more involved, it makes you an idiot.

The United States' political system can't work without dissent and if you have a problem with the President then by all means dissent! It's not only your right, it's your responsibility. Dissent doesn't make you a traitor, it makes you a participant. That's true no matter who's in office. Neither side has a lock on political truth and despite what the pundits say, compromise and consensus building are what makes our system work.

However, once your dissent leaves the realm of reason you lose your credibility. As much as I hated the Bush administration, my disagreements remained intellectual. George Bush and his administration represented a vision of the country I disagreed with. Period. End of story. Barack Obama presented an argument that most of the country agreed with and he won the presidency in 2008. Period. End of story. Maybe he'll present another convincing argument in 2012 and maybe a member of the opposition party will. In any case, we'll figure that out next year.

In the meantime though, we have a duly-elected, legitimate President. Deal with it.

 The US is in serious trouble. Making up stuff against the party or politician whose views run counter to yours does nothing more than make that trouble worse.

Get involved, stay rational and by all means vote. And stop paying attention to the idiots.