"Former RNC head, chair of the
Republican Governor's Association, Bush
campaign local chair, close friend of
Our Fearless Leader and Connecticut
Governor John Rowland resigned over
casual corruption that would gag a goat"

WL-16 Biped Wheel Chair Chair

Xerox CEO Talks Up Services Push

W3C publishes choreography spec

Draft choreography spec published by W3C

Microsoft dips toe in choreography
waters

Tech Talks: Doug Purdy - Program
Manager, Microsoft XML Web Services
Team; Don Box - Indigo Architect

dancing with myself

"Dancing Alone"

Tom the Dancing Bug

Dancing with Wolves

If you dance with wolves, you will get bitten.  You can't blame the wolves for their nature.  Looks like BitKeeper didn't like getting bitten and kicked back. Unfortunately, that's making the wolf pack very angry.  Meanwhile, Monotone is an interesting distributed version control software.

ActiveGrid, another capitalist pig startup attempting to dance with communists wolves, just a nnounced an early-release.

The Dancing Plant

Dancing performance

But it's actually loads of fun: you get to feel again like a complete klutz when you can't do even simple transfers of your bodily weight. Kinda like when I first started martial arts. You also feel completely stupid because you can't recover from a simple mistake after missing rhythm. And also, you sweat like a pig after 30 minutes on it. Though frankly, I don't know whether pigs really sweat that much.

And in fact, the whole thing has rather little to do with dancing. Perhaps, with more practice, it might be possible to develop a knack for "improvisation in a confined space", but so far it feels more like an exercise routine. A pre-programmed performance, so to say.

But I ain't complaining. I can't dance (any teachers around?), but this sure is quite fun ;)

Hpoi Dancing

Dancing with DEFCON

I was a technical advisor for a Japanese movie called "The Negotiator" which will be opening here on May 7th. They recently did a press conference with the key stars including Prime Minister Koizumi's son who plays one of the cyber-police. They showed the laptops sporting the stickers that everyone sent me. Thanks again! The title of one of the stories about the press conference is, "The Negotiator Mashita, dancing with DEFCON?" The text is in Japanese, but there are some pictures of the actors and the laptops on display.

PlayStation 2 36 x 32 Dancing Pad

Dancing With Cats

But tonight was no ordinary night of snorting and hiding my face in the Feng Shui soy candle display. A little paperback gem was hiding on the shelf below that black velvet UFO portrait of The High Eck Master. I found a very special large-format book called Dancing With Cats (Chronicle Books, 1999). It's filled with pictures of humans fannying about in tights, striking "I-Wish-I-Were-Baryshnikov" poses -- together with cats who doing the same thing. The text is equally rich. Straightfaced talk of "multicat" interspecies dance ensembles as a tool for enlightenment, think Busby Berkeley with hairballs and chakras. What's so awesome about this book: (a) 100% irony-free, and (b) it HAS to be Photoshoppery. It's, like, straight out of Worth. As if someone positions the humans, shoots them, then goes back, someone else hurls a cat accross the room and photographs that, then everything's composited in a terpsichorean orgy of catpixels.

There's a website for this book with a teaser thumbnail gallery, some awesome MPEG movies, and online tips for would-be "catdancers" (The question to ask is not "Will my cat dance with me?" but rather "Will I dance with my cat?"). Dig the pre-dance exercises:

Before we can begin dancing with our cats, we must first make contact with them. We can't simply put on music and expect that our cats will dance with us. We have to first align our dynamic vibration systems with theirs and bring those systems into a kind of confluence before we can build the energy levels through the dance that are necessary to attain the higher vibrationary states which enable us to channel the infinite power of the universe.

You see, human beings and cats are not simply physical bodies confined within a barrier of skin or fur. We are also made up of dynamic energy systems which extend out, and interact with, every other energy system around us.

There's a simple exercise you can try right now as you sit in front of your computer. It's one of a number of what we call mirroring exercises that will allow you to bring your body into an energy-centered relationship with your cat and prepare you to dance with it... a simple purring technique. Remember that purring is the way a cat modulates its energy reserves in order to restore its psychic equilibrium.

"dancing" for a good cause

Barlow will be dancing in the streets

This just in from the BarlowFriendz mail list......

DANCING IN THE STREETS: REVOLUTION WITH A SMILE

I spent most of my political life as a Republican. While that's a little hard to imagine now, I have sufficient experience to know that the commonly held view that Republicans either can't dance or won't dance is inaccurate. When I was a Republican, I was as dedicated to dancing as I am now and there were others like me, as I recall.

Still, part of what drove me from the party - aside from a categorical repudiation by the current administration of most Republican principles - is a dour dancelessness that crept into Republican "culture." It seems increasingly ironic to call the GOP a party at all...

Maureen Dowd recently observed that the Republicans had become so obsessed with rejecting the 60's ethic of doing it if it feels good that they have taken up an ethic of doing it if it makes someone else feel bad. Moreover, the GOP strategy of basing their root-level organization on Hot Protestantism has infused their ranks with a lot of chilly Puritanism, which, as H.L. Mencken defined it, is "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time."

These were among the factors in mind recently as I turned my thoughts to what I might do to vex the Republicans when they gather in New York a month from now. Furious as I may be at their policies, conventional protest is not an option.

If it were peaceful protest, they would ignore it even if two million people turned up. They have a demonstrated capacity to do that. Indeed, the administration consists of such fervent God-anointed idealists that they would "stay the course" against any opposition short of a majority too overwhelming to rig their electronic voting machines against.

If the protests in New York should turn even a little violent, it will be to Bush's benefit. This is so much the case that I rather expect to see undercover agents provocateurs scattered among the ragtag disaffected who will shortly descend on Manhattan. And the NYPD, while generally my favorite police force on the planet, can get themselves in a froth when they feel spooked. One thrown bottle could result in days of riveting television, during which Bush would have plenty of opportunity to pretend, convincingly to some, that he was Gary Cooper.

Besides, anyone with an explicit intention to protest Republican policies, anyone carrying an anti-Bush sign, indeed, anyone wearing a neither a smile nor a Bush button, is likely to be corralled into one of the remote "Free Speech Zones" that Mayor Bloomberg will graciously provide his guests, there to vent his fury upon his fellow infuriated. None for me, thanks.

I have another idea, and you can help. Indeed, as wild, fun-loving BarlowFriendz, I'm counting on you to help.

I want to dance in the streets.

I don't want to confront the Republicans. I want to discombobulate them. I don't want to argue with them, which would only convince them further, I want to throw them off their game. I don't want to be aggressive in my discontent. God knows there's been plenty of that on all sides. I want to be genial. But disconcerting.

So, to that end, I propose the following: I want to organize a cadre of 20 to 50 of us. I want to dress us in suits and other plain pedestrian attire and salt us among the sidewalk multitudes in Republican-rich zones. At a predetermined moment, one of us will produce a boom-box and crank it up with something danceable. Suddenly, about a third of the people on the sidewalk, miscellaneously distributed in the general throng, will start dancing like crazy and continue to do so for for about a minute. Then we will stop, melt back into the pedestrian flow, and go to another location to erupt there.

Perhaps if we enlist enough troops, we can have several platoons simultaneously exploding into dance around Manhattan, so there will be absolutely no way to tell where we might strike next.

I promise you, this will make the Republicans uncomfortable. They will return to their partisan duties with a sense of disquiet that will slightly but surely fuzz the intensity of their focus. Besides, we'll enjoy it. That alone will irritate them. And we'll be doing nothing they can arrest us for. Nor, for that matter, televise us doing. By the time cameras arrive, we'll be gone.

I have to admit there's nothing terribly original about this idea. I'm talking about forming a standard smart mob, similar to the group my friend Reverend Billy convenes every Tuesday to wander around the WTC PATH station, muttering the 1st Amendment. But it's a start, and I think that once we get ourselves assembled, we will be able to cook up a number of other creative pranks we might inflict on our thin-lipped countrymen.

I may put up a web site that we can use to organize ourselves. In the meantime, I will start a mailing list of everyone who wants to participate. Furthermore, you can go to my blog http://blog.barlowfriendz.net where this will also be posted and participate in the discussion there.

Please e-mail me at once - at barlow at eff.org - if you're interested. And pass this invitation to others who might be.

I've been thinking for some time that the problem with politics is that doesn't know how to have a good time. And it certainly doesn't dance enough. This is your chance to address both of these deficiencies.

And remember the great Emma Goldman who said, "If I can't dance, I want no part of your revolution." What she knew is that dancing is itself a revolutionary act. Come revolt with us. And bring your smile.

Yippie-ti-yo,

John Perry Barlow

Dancing The Samba (part 2)

dancing in the deepest oceans

Just singing and dancing in the rain

Web Zen: Singing and Dancing, all day
long.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Frank!)

Guerrilla Dancing Update

Dancing The Samba (part 1)

Dancing goes to the dogs (Reuters)

"no Palestinians dancing joyously"

Dancing Around The Definition Of Spyware

Dancing almond optical illusion

Amazing Video of Dancing Humanoids (WMV)

pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/1218/sony_06.wmv
track this site | 7 links

Sun dancing SOA tune with Project Disco

BarlowFriendz: Guerrilla Dancing Update

barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/08/guerrilla_danci.htm l
track this site | 3 links

Dancing with Web services: W3C chair talks choreography