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Open thread 1/5/23

The New Neo Posted on by

Only a few of these qualify as among the hardest. But everything in ballet is hard to do well. I post this video because it has some nifty excerpts. I especially like the double cabrioles, which are truly hard:

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Open thread 1/5/23 — 73 Comments

  3. Then there’s this breathtaking piece by Daniel Oliver:
    “Courage Time in the House of Representatives;
    “After the new Congress convenes, the Republicans should announce that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling until the president and the vice president resign.”
    https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/03/courage-time-in-the-house-of-representatives/
    And so…Courage!…”to the sticking point”?
    H/T Instapundit.
    https://instapundit.com/the-house-gop-the-debt-ceiling-and-biden-daniel-oliver-was-chairman-of-the-federal-trade-commissio/

  4. I know that there seems to be diehard NO’s on McCarthy, but I think they have proved their point that he must take them into account in any future legislation and actions by the Speaker. Now that they have done that, vote to end the Extinction Rebellion.

  5. Not sure that’s “their” point Shirehome (take them into account in any future legislation and actions), but rather “their” point may simply be McCarthy must not become Speaker of the House. In which case, vote after failing vote is in order for such time as McCarthy requires to understand he is compelled to withdraw.

  6. So I’ve got the basics of my French learning kit together.

    “Easy French: Step by Step” is an Amazon bestseller. The first chapter is 20 pages of nouns, articles adjectives and getting them to place nice with each other gender-wise.

    OMG. I would have to have a gun to my head to learn that way.

    It’s not a bad book. I don’t doubt such a book can work for people. l’m sure it will be useful as a reference. But I find that detailed bottom-up approach slow, painful and a pure motivation killer.

  7. I need to be able to jump into a new subject with both feet and start getting results I find meaningful. Putting “the blue book” together (“le livre bleu”) doesn’t make it.

    So, aside from listening to Ye-ye and drilling with a couple decks of commercial vocabulary cards, I’m mainly working with the Michel Thomas approach, which focuses on learning to construct full sentences then progressively elaborate them. “I want/can/must repair the bicycle/car later.” That sort of thing.

    The Thomas method isn’t complete. You won’t learn to read, hear or pronounce French well. Nor will you get very far into verb tenses, deep vocabulary, all the exceptions or the advanced features of French.

    The idea is to get students up and running as speakers as painlessly as possible, then let them find their way to the rest. Which fits the way I learn.

    I was surprised how many language teachers on the web strongly disrecommend Thomas. He uses too much English in his instruction. He doesn’t teach the things he doesn’t teach. He emphasizes the responsibility of the teacher over the students’. They even criticize his war record based on a journalist’s smear! (Thomas has been cleared and awarded a Silver Star.)

    However, in the comments to such critical articles, a large number of Thomas students step forward to say his method worked for them.

    Well, there are many ways to learn a language.

  8. Love your posts on ballet. Old memories of dancing around college times. The cabrioles brought up a fun memory for me.

    I shared lead dancer with a guy names Paul Gilbert in a production of The Grand Duke by Gilbert and Sullivan (no relation).

    Our entrance was from opposite sides, he doing grand jetés , me cabrioles alternating front and rear. We passed center stage.

    One night he wasn’t paying enough attention and as we crossed I kicked him twice in the chin. Paul was a very muscular guy and just took it and went on.

    He thought it was funny.

  9. Some good news about Damar Hamlin: “Hamlin opened his eyes and can grip the hands of those close to him, two people with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports’ Tyler Dragon. The people requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about Hamlin’s health. . . . ‘Damar has made substantial improvement overnight,’ the agency that represents Hamlin, Agency 1 Sports, posted on Twitter. ‘We are so thankful for all the first responders, doctors, and hospital staff and every one who played a role in this process.’ Moments before the Bills’ update, teammate and cornerback Kaiir Elam tweeted: ‘Our boy is doing better, awake and showing signs of improvement.'”

    https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/2023/01/05/damar-hamlin-health-updates-what-we-know-thursday/10991034002/

  11. I know even less about figure skating than about classical ballet, but as figure skating is a sport that is (like ballet) technically difficult as well as graceful, I looked for a video on the most difficult moves in figure skating, and here is an interesting one:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U1-2vFTigM&ab_channel=Yuzutea

    It looks to me as if male figure skaters are shorter and wirier in build than their counterparts in classical ballet– but Neo may have more info. here.

  14. I keep reading people suggesting the 20 hold outs should just give in, but I haven’t heard any good arguments for why. The notion that they can’t win works equally as well for McCarthy giving in.

  15. I have a young friend, a male ballet dancer, who will probably win a fellowship to train somewhere in Europe next year. According to these comments, he may be a bit too tall, at 5’9″ or 5’10”.

  16. I try to stay on top of the latest sex trends. Reporting them is half the fun. Well, at my age, maybe it’s closer to all the fun.

    Welcome to the world of transmaxxers:

    “Today, in a whirlwind of incel men becoming girls and dating each other, androgen treatments as a defense against a man’s own sex drive and ‘the power of women,’ and the use of sissy hypno porn to ‘force’ men into womanhood, Sanjana Friedman guests for Pirate Wires with a wild foray into America’s strangest and most wondrous new creature: the incel transmaxxer.”

    Here’s a link: https://tinyurl.com/4yt69wxn

  17. Leland,

    The main arguments I’ve heard is 1) they are embarrassing the GOP brand, 2) Giving the Ds plenty of propo ammo on GOP disunity, and the Ds are loving all this 3) Not doing what they were elected to do which is start working as reps, 4) wasting taxpayer’s money with nonsense. 5) Who else will take the job?

    Note, I really haven’t heard much about how wonderfully qualified McCarthy is to hold the position.

    As I recently stated, this particular GOP House is not going to accomplish much as it is hamstringed by the D majority Senate and a Dem in the WH. Any legislative initiatives are going nowhere. The one power they might be able to exercise is monetary issues. Any investigations/hearings will be useless as the MSM will ignore or downplay. So why not try to rein in the GOPe at this time? It’s not like the GOP has great majorities in all the Congress and controls the WH with much work to be done.

  18. This is just an [off the cuff] comment:

    I have read an article [about the 4 murders in Idaho].

    The article was by a forensic expert, I think.

    He said that-

    a LOT of the reporters are calling the murder suspect, Mr. B K, ” a very smart guy”, but I think the way he did his suspected murder was really dumb.

    (this is me, TR, I’m paraphrasing what the expert said):

    If he is the killer,

    -he used a knife as his murder weapon, which is really hard to use,

    -he talked on web forums about how he could do theoretical killings…[police + the FBI like to check suspects for behavior like that],

    -and he did his killings INSIDE A HOUSE/SOMEONE ELSE’S BUILDING, where he risked dropping all kinds of evidence, like- getting caught on security cameras, leaving your blood, or hair, or other DNA, or your footprints, behind.

    Sure, the guy is a law student, + maybe is attempting an I-will-do-a-murder-and-do-it-so-the-cops-can’t-trace-me-game with the police, but by the way this guy took risks to leave his evidence everywhere, a “super, genius criminal”, he is not.

    Well, that’s the end of my paraphrasing the guy’s article.

    I think the Idaho murders-case will make for lots of news stories, but it sounds like this guy messed up a lot, if he did this crime.

  19. Something to consider about McCarthy is the astounding level of incompetence being demonstrated to the entire world. McCarthy either…

    A. Didn’t count the votes heading into the most important election of his life, or…

    B. Knew he didn’t have the votes and the humiliating debacle of the past few days is the best plan he could come up with, and…

    C. If he becomes Speaker, it will be because of a deal he probably could have made before this whole mess started.

    Is THAT the guy you want as the most important Republican in Congress?

    Mike

  20. physicsguy said, “Note, I really haven’t heard much about how wonderfully qualified McCarthy is to hold the position.”

    I did get a chuckle out of Scott Walker’s tweet: “Out of respect for the privacy of his family, Prince Harry has announced that he is a candidate for Speaker of the House.” https://twitter.com/ScottWalker

    BTW, if Cornflour is still interested in the latest sex trends, he should beg or burgle a copy of Mr. Meghan Markle’s new book, Spare. Contains details of the poor boy’s seduction by an older woman as well as a fight with older brother William in which Harry’s necklace (!) was broken– after which Harry called his therapist. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up.

  21. We’ll probably find out the psycho has been fascinated by Hitchcock’s Rope and felt like he’s the one who could really pull it off.

  22. huxley,

    I absolutely agree the best way to become conversant in a foreign language is to start conversing with others in that language. In order to do that you have to have some, minimum vocabulary. I found substitution drills extremely useful. Get to know 30 basic verbs and then have fun with nouns.
    Learn clauses. Then substitute different nouns, adjectives and adverbs in the clauses.
    If you can find recordings of native speakers speaking the clauses that is ideal. Listen to them over and over and try to match them. Then, as you wrote, play, have fun.
    If you don’t have a native speaker handy who has an hour or two to waste with you each week you can hire them online. Maybe 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week to start. After introductions, insist you both only speak in the language you are trying to learn.

    Bon chance!

  23. I guess the main thing that the House can do is conduct investigations into the wide variety of malfeasances that’ve been going on over the past few years (stuff like the Hunter Biden Laptop, the true origins of Covid, all the revelations of the Twitter files, the Afganistan withdrawal, the border ect.). Now in the real world this might not accomplish much other than perhaps raising the general awareness of normal voters of some of this stuff, but I think it needs to happen. The more people that are at least aware of this stuff the better.

  24. How many votes are needed to select the Speaker of the House? N + 1.

    Revenge and spitefullness.

    Is there another point?

    Nancy and the Dems are not the focus any longer.

    After 2 years of Dem tyranny revenge and spitefullness is the focus of the 20. The other stuff is hard.

  25. MBunge’s point is the biggest issue with the vote for Speaker.
    The GOP is never prepared for anything.

    The facts on the ground have not changed in months.
    Yet, the day for the vote came and they didn’t have the votes.

    Feckless. Complete and utterly devoid of feck.

  26. The odd thing is that, although McCarthy is not universally popular, and never has been, no one else seems to want the job. I am worried that McCarthy will make a deal with a few Dems.

  27. “no one else seems to want the job.”

    This actually gets at one of the fundamental things causing our political process to break down. Our system is designed to work by utilizing competing self-interest, but that system fails when the only thing our elected representatives want is to maintain their spot at the GOP money trough.

    This is the greatest political opportunity most of the House GOP will ever see…and what are they doing? Whatever they’re told in order to not anger the GOP donor class.

    Mike

  28. Physicsguy; you know what they say about identifying genius
    why not try to rein in the GOPe at this time?

    That’s the question on my mind too.

    Every day, I learn one more thing about McCarthy’s style of governance. While I understand the power the Speaker wields, and thus get that Jeffries is worse; I’m quickly losing the understanding of how much worse.

    On another note; back during the primaries, I voiced support for my own Representative Dan Crenshaw. I apologize and won’t make that mistake again. He’s my Representative, but I have no ideas who he represents these days. I keep seeing more and more videos by fellow neighbors that ask him what I think are easy questions that he doesn’t want to answer. On his latest remarks calling the 20 opposition Republicans “terrorists”, he told his constituents to “get over it” and “it is just a figure of speech”. No Dan. It is inflammatory and inappropriate and since you refuse to apologize; I have gotten over having you as a Rep.

  29. Ok, have the Die Hards put forth a viable candidate? If Daniels viable? Can he run the House? Who else? Jordan would be a great Speaker, but he knows he has more direct power being the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. No, The DH’s now are shooting themselves in the foot.

  30. RTF–

    If you want to wish huxley good luck in learning French, it helps to get the gender of “chance” correct. It’s a feminine noun in French, therefore “Bonne chance!” is the correct form.

    Two suggestions for learning French that might appeal to huxley: 1) Buy a copy of the Bible in French (makes no difference whether it’s a Catholic or Huguenot translation). The reason for this suggestion is that both Testaments use a lot of common words (“house,” “food,” “life,” “water,” etc.), so that even if you’re not a religious person, you can pick up a basic vocabulary fairly readily, and if you have any familiarity with the Bible in English, the French version will start to “click” in your mind. 2) Watch some French YT documentaries in a field that already interests you. One of my favorite channels is Secrets d’Histoire, hosted by Stéphane Bern. Some videos are short, others are an hour or longer. Bern covers a wide range of subjects– not just French rulers and artists, but people ranging from the Duchess of Windsor to Ragnar the Viking and Richard the Lionhearted. One reason I like to watch Bern’s presentations is that he is so enthusiastic during the tours he provides of the gardens, houses, or artworks associated with the subject of each video. He clearly enjoys what he’s doing, and he really draws the viewer in to the people and events he covers.

    https://www.youtube.com/@SecretsdHistoireOfficiel/videos

  31. SHIREHOME:

    I don’t think they’re shooting themselves in the foot. I think they’re shooting the other Republicans in the foot (feet?). And if this keeps going without a good resolution of some sort, they’re shooting the GOP voters in the foot as well.

  32. Leland:

    You’re losing the understanding of how much worse Jeffries would be? Are you kidding me? I have to say that if you truly mean that, you don’t understand the left and you don’t understand Jeffries.

    And as far as Crenshaw goes, have you bothered to actually read what he actually said, rather than just a sound bite or two? I wonder. I find that a lot of people don’t do this for themselves, and are therefore manipulated by others.

    If you haven’t, please take a look at my most recent post on this, where I excerpt what he said and discuss it. Then judge for yourself what he was saying and why.

  33. Ballet dancers tend to be much shorter than people think.

    Much shorter. The Utah Ballet gave a performance in our town and I ran into the lead dancer heading for the restroom at the Smith’s market after. She was tiny. Didn’t look like that on stage.

    Truly Hard? All those moves look hard to me.

  34. Jeffries would be MUCH worse. The Speaker controls what bills come up for votes, and when.

  36. If you are standing near a Liberal, you might want to back off a few steps: After Matt Gaetz stands up and votes Donald Trump for speaker, Steve Bannon Also Calls for President Trump for Speaker – RELIABLE SOURCE Says President Trump Would Do It!

  37. The most important, though largely unreported, news of the day is that a Nebraska state legislator has introduced a constitutional amendment that would replace the state’s nonpartisan Unicameral with the version found in all the other states: two legislative bodies analogous to the US Senate and House of Representatives.

    Although the amendment is supported by the GOP, it’s unlikely to pass. Nebraska would thus retain its unique status. However bad it may be for rural Nebraskans, I can’t resist the charm of the Unicameral.

    Here’s a link: https://tinyurl.com/5cyvn89m

  39. Re: Learning French

    Rufus, PA+Cat:

    Thanks for the suggestions!

    I haven’t yet figured my strategy for conversation practice. I may take a course at UNM in the spring. The web offers possibilities, such as italki, which allows one to practice with speakers all over the world for as little as $6-8/hr.

    I also realized that, strangely enough, here in Abq I happen to know five French speakers from the Caribbean and Africa through Kiki whom I met on this blog. Kiki herself has college French under her belt.

    A French Bible makes sense. Especially since my favorite English translation is the Jerusalem Bible, which is heavily influenced by the French Douay-Rheims translation.

    I’ve still got a long way to go with hearing French. Unless I’m looking at a transcription I can’t yet separate the words reliably in songs and children shows. I’ll have to work my way up to that.

    I keep hearing “me l’a dit” (“he said it to me”) as “melody”…

  41. Another gem from Joe Biden today.

    For example, since August of last year, Customs and Border Patrol have seized more than 20,000 pounds of deadly fentanyl. That’s enough to kill — kill as many as 1,000 people in this country. Twenty thousand pounds of fentanyl. It’s a killer. It’s a flat killer.

    Yes, ingesting 20 pounds of fentanyl would be bad for a person. Or 20 pounds of cocktails, or even water.

    I know that these things aren’t news anymore, but really … This level of innumeracy? Let’s just hope that some staffer didn’t write this up in exactly this manner.

  43. That’s why police often carry the fentanyl antidote; 20 pounds of the stuff is pretty hard to avoid. Almost impossible to protect yourself against it!

  44. TommyJay and huxley: If you look closely at the text of Brandon’s remarks as posted on the WH website, it’s been edited– he initially referred to Kamala as “President Harris.” WASHINGTON — President Biden yet again referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as “President Harris” during Thursday remarks on immigration at the White House. “President Harris led this effort — led this effort to make things better in the countries from which they are leaving,” the 80-year-old president said.

    https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/biden-yet-again-calls-vice-president-president-harris/

    As for Brandon’s innumeracy re fentanyl, remember his 2020 claim that 200 million Americans died of COVID-19?

    https://nypost.com/2020/09/21/biden-mistakenly-says-millions-have-died-from-covid-19-in-us/

    IOW, there aren’t many of us left to die from fentanyl.

  45. BTW Google Translate is a miracle for language self-learning.

    You can enter a word, a phrase, a sentence or entire paragraphs and shazam! You get a reasonably useful translation from French to English or visa-versa. Plus just click a button and Google will pronounce either side.

    I find it surprisingly useful to speak the word(s) at the same time as the program.

    No more tedious poking around a word at a time in a dictionary and trying to locate the best fit definition or to figure out the pronunciation from some official linguistic glyphs.

  47. I agree with PA Cat’s suggestion on foreign language television. I know A LOT of people who credit that with getting them conversant in a language quickly. My wife and I watch German soap operas. It’s pretty easy to follow what’s going on so you pick up new words from visual queues. Also, it gets you used to hearing different speakers.

    I don’t necessarily agree with the Bible tip, however. A lot of arcane vocabulary in there. Knowing the French words for “cubit,” “Hittite,” or “smote” probably won’t help you buy a Stella Artois on the Champs de elysee. You can find translations of many novels where the facing page has the English. I found this helped with my reading when I got to a certain level of vocabulary.

  48. neo @3:45pm,

    But the GOP is already shooting the GOP voters in the feet. Look at the heinous act they just pulled voting in the Omnibus before the new delegates were sworn in.

    Democrat voters get things they want. Major things they want. Democrat politicians are also greedy, egocentric swamp dwellers, but they enrich themselves AND do their voters’ will. The GOP only does the first part.

    At some point Charlie Brown has to walk away and leave Lucy holding the football. Otherwise he is equally complicit in perpetuating the game.

  49. huxley,

    I recommend deciding very early in your learning if your goal is to converse with native French speakers, or if your goal is to perform at an academic level. There is no right answer, but a lot of courses, especially in the U.S., focus on the second.

    You know how some people can play an instrument if they are alone, with no one watching, and they have the music in front of them? And some people can pick up a guitar in a room full of people and start interacting with them?

    Two different things. Two different approaches. A lot of overlap, but two different things.

  50. Rufus T. Firefly:

    Say more about your German learning experience…

    I would like to hear from Tom Grey in Slovakia and his experiences. I assume he’s made some peace with the local language.

    I share your concern about Biblical vocabulary. However, I could see it being useful for passages dear to one’s heart like the Sermon on the Mount or the 23rd Psalm. Plus it would just be interesting to see the Bible in French.

    As to video, that’s a bridge too far as yet. It just sounds like a smear of French sounds.

    The French leave out too many letters and syllables. Furthermore if a word ends in a consonant and the next word begins with a vowel, the consonant slides over to start the next word.

    I have a theory the French people somehow made a collective unconscious choice over time to make their language sound special and beautiful.

  51. Rufus T. Firefly:

    DId you read this? You may not agree with the reasons they voted for the bill, but it’s my impression that most people don’t actually understand the reasons. To most people it seems just a wanton or completely corrupt act. It wasn’t.

  52. RTF–

    One caveat about foreign-language television: it helps to start out with standard-language broadcasts: dialects can be a whole ‘nother thing. Two examples, one French, one German. A couple years back, I started to watch a Canadian broadcast about the Royal 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Army, known as the “Van Doos” to Anglophone Canadians. The regiment was started during WWI, when a Montreal pharmaceutical manufacturer proposed the formation of an army unit exclusively for French-speaking Canadian volunteers. I ran into trouble with the documentary about the regiment within the first few sentences of the audio, because the present-day army officer was speaking français québécois, which is different enough from European French that I had to switch on the closed captioning (which was in standard French) to understand the documentary.

    German example: I started to watch a documentary about a runaway train disaster in Switzerland that was nearly unintelligible because Swiss German is a distinctive group of dialects that are difficult for mainstream German and Austrian speakers to understand. As a general rule, speakers of Swiss German who appear on German national television have their interviews supplied with subtitles. As with the Canadian example, I was able to understand the Swiss documentary once I switched on the standard German closed captioning.

    I sometimes wonder what native speakers of French and German make of the wide variety of regional accents in American English, not to mention those in the UK and Ireland.

  53. Rufus T. Firefly:

    Plus there are plenty of things the Democrats wanted when they had the House, the Senate (because of Harris as tiebreaker), and the presidency that they didn’t get. You’re ignoring them, but the biggest things were (1) HR1 (2) ending the filibuster (3) packing the Court (4) “codifying” Roe (5) making states out of DC and Puerto Rico.

    There are probably more, but those immediately come to mind.

    And that was when the Democrats were completely in control. The GOP is neither in control of the presidency nor the Senate, and although the election of 2022 gave them a bare majority in the House, they lost a seat in the Senate and it was an important seat because in the new Congress the Democrats will control all the committees rather than sharing control as in the previous Congress.

    These are realities that I don’t see the critics facing or acknowledging.

  54. These are realities that I don’t see the critics facing or acknowledging.

    neo:

    I don’t get it either.

  55. I sometimes wonder what native speakers of French and German make of the wide variety of regional accents in American English, not to mention those in the UK and Ireland.

    PA+Cat:

    Count me as someone who has to turn on the subtitles for UK directors like Ken Loach.

    When I was in London I ordered an egg sandwich from a Cockney server, she kept asking, “Button paper?” No idea.

    It took three times before she slowed down enough for me to understand. “Butter and pepper?”

    As to Quebecois — I once was at a gathering with some Parisian French speakers and Canadian French speakers. After the Canadians left, lord, the Parisian speakers were scathing.

  56. Here’s a golden oldie:
    _______________________

    Those French have a different word for everything. You never appreciate your language until you go to a different country that doesn’t have the courtesy to speak English….

    French is not like Spanish. Spanish you can sound it out. Every vowel is a syllable. “Donde esta casa de pepe?” But in French it’s like “Donde le soir” … (followed by choking noises) .

    “What happened? What happened?”

    “He spoke French!”

    –Steve Martin, “French”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJDNChwgBw

  57. I recommend deciding very early in your learning if your goal is to converse with native French speakers, or if your goal is to perform at an academic level. There is no right answer, but a lot of courses, especially in the U.S., focus on the second.

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    Not really in either camp. Does swooning for … and understanding … French Ye-ye songs count?

    In my current Francophile mode I’ve noticed there are a fair number of people, often teenage girls, who fall in love with some aspect of French culture and are then moved to learn the language on their own.

    I grant that obsessing over Ye-ye music sixty years later is not a particularly noble or comprehensible reason to learn French.

    I’m not in charge on this one. Something grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and is making me do this.

  58. neo,

    I read your link to Scott Johnson. If that is a sincere reason most Republicans gave it also shows they don’t believe, even with a majority (albeit some rookies), they are strong enough to negotiate successfully with the Dems in the minority.

    It is still fair that many see the vote as a betrayal.

  63. My words-
    I think Linda Lee…Bruce Lee’s wife, in her non-fiction book about BL, “Bruce Lee: the only man I ever new”, (is it that title?), said that: “Bruce Lee loved the idea of taking a ballet dancer, + teaching them martial arts”.

    He thought that a ballet dancer would be great at a kung fu-like art, since a ballet dancer [already] knows how to do kicks.

    [I guess a ballet dancer would also have strong legs, + a strong body- which would also help in doing a martial art, as well.]

    I think, in a documentary show- a friend of B. Lee has talked about B. Lee’s ballet idea, as well.

  64. Are you from the same part of England as Dick Van Dyke?

    AesopFan:

    My favorite line from the lift sketch. Dick Van Dyke’s accent in “Mary Poppins” remains legendary in the UK and Ireland.

    Happily, at the age of 91 he has apologized. All in good fun.
    ___________________________

    Dick Van Dyke has apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” more than half a century after his role in the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins.

    The US actor played chimney-sweep Bert in the film, and has been the subject of much teasing from fans about his famously off-radar accent.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/21/dick-van-dyke-sorry-for-cockney-accent-mary-poppins-disney

  65. TR,

    Different sizes have different advantages for different physical activities and you see congregation around a mean everywhere you look, and, there are always outliers. At 6’5″ Usain Bolt is unusually tall for a sprinter.

    Here’s a relevant quote from Brian Epstein:

    Leonardo da Vinci’sVitruvian Man—the famous depiction of a man’s body inscribed in a circle and a square—is accompanied by text indicating the ideal proportions of the human body. “The length of a man’s outspread arms,” the translated caption declares, “is equal to his height.” Had Da Vinci been born about five centuries later and worked in an NBA front office instead of a Renaissance workshop, there’s no way his Vitruvian Man would fit in a square.

    Most people do indeed have a wingspan approximately equal to their height. But an analysis of measurements from NBA predraft combines shows that the average ratio of arms to height in the NBA is an astounding 1.06. (To put that in context, a ratio of greater than 1.05 is one of the diagnostic criteria for Marfan syndrome, a disorder of the body’s connective tissues that often results in elongated limbs.) Thus, an average NBA player, who stands about 6’7″, has a wingspan of seven feet.

    *The whole article is good, https://vault.si.com/vault/2012/11/05/the-case-for-wingspan As is his book, “The Sports Gene”

  66. TR,

    What happens, as competition gets more and more selective, it tends to select within narrower bands. There are only so many ways to get a body off the ground, limberly enough to do the types of leaps shown in the video. And absorb the impact of coming back down, and the joint flexibility…

    Mental toughness and “heart” and drive and desire are also critically important, but in all profitable physical pursuits there comes a point where a degree difference in foot arch can make a difference.

  67. Yes, ballet dancers are small. Especially females because we males have to *pick them up and carry them around* – whilst still looking graceful. Hard to look graceful while grunting with effort. I actually did that in one dance (I’ve forgotten the name of the move) when my opposite missed landing on my hip and hit my abdomen. OK, it was the impact, not her weight.

    My favorite partner was 5’1″ and a scant 95 or so pounds. I could literally huck her three or four feet vertically with ease.

    Males had it better. I’m 6’1″ and never had problems. That was around fifty years ago although height doesn’t completely deter even now as Fabrice Calmels is 6’6″.

  68. TR – I just read your last comment. My athletic endeavors were – fencing then ballet then martial arts. I’ve fenced (and other sword work) most of my life, ballet was a handful of years and martial arts until around age 60 (arthritis).

    BL was correct, especially on the withdrawal. I’ve seen too many MAs kick and stick.

  69. Thanks for the comments on [Bruce Lee + ballet ideas], everyone.
    🙂 🙂

    I have to go out of town, but I’ll try to write more about people’s replies, later.

    The Bruce Lee book, in the US, likely is available at libraries, and/or available for borrowing [through The Inter-Library Loan] program.

    The ISBN number for the book is- ISBN-10 ? : ? 0446894079 .

    The book’s title is- “Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew by Linda Lee”.

    Cheers. 🙂

  70. @Bauxite
    The late Todd Akin’s quote was “legitimate rape”, not “voluntary rape.”

    “Legitimate rape is a law enforcement term, it’s an abbreviation for ‘legitimate case of rape,’” he told Chuck Todd. “A woman calls a police station, the police investigate, she says ‘I’ve been raped,’ they investigate that. So before any of the facts are in, they call it a legitimate case of rape,” explained Aiken.

    https://time.com/3001785/todd-akin-legitimate-rape-msnbc-child-of-rape/

  71. Hi RTF,

    Thanks for the link to the article about athletes + “wingspan”.
    Thanks for the ideas on sports, + drive in sports, too. 🙂

  72. Hi Oligonicella,

    Thanks for the data about smaller-size dancers.
    Yeah, I can image someone colliding against my abs would throw off my routine.
    I hadn’t thought that smaller-size dancers would be handy for lifting + tossing up + down, during routines. 🙂

  73. Hi o,

    Thanks for telling me about your dancing, + martial arts, + swordfighting, endeavors. 🙂

    A guy who learned ballet, + then learned to do martial arts? WOW!

    I hope I can see a demonstration, or a youtube -like video- of a ballet dancer, that learned martial arts, + then shows him/that person, doing some martial arts. 🙂

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