Last time, we watched the first stage of the Mirror Blaze teardown. Today, we witness the second part of the teardown, and some of the (very very very sooty) effects of having flame effect equipment in an enclosed tube for a week.
Next time, the rest of the Mirror Blaze tear down!
Today, we follow them as they start the teardown of the Charnival.
First, to set the scene, we have a pic of Evan working on the ‘big top’ outer casing of Mirror Blaze:
Then an important montage of S showing how a mirror is supposed to be detached from the posts:
(Last time with our intrepid heroes…)
Midnight Poutine. There is nothing quite like it. You would think that the time of day would make no difference in the taste of a food, but you would be wrong[1].
[1]It could also be the temperature, or the altitude, or the (lack of) humidity, 
Moving on from Midnight Poutine, our trusty crew traveled back to the installation, spotting some friends along the way:
Climbing up on top of a shipping container, the crew watched for the signal that the Man was about to burn. And there it was! The arms were raised!:
After the Man burned, it was time to make a little fire of our own!
S went up to the top of the lifeguard stand to test the Blaze part of Mirror Blaze, blowing a fiery kiss:
We then went into the maze, to celebrate a final *FOOM* before teardown and cleanup:
Join us next time, when we start teardown and cleanup, the most important parts of any installation!
When we last saw our intrepid crew, they had just finished researching and learning about MOOP.
Today, we follow them as they explore more of the wild (and not so woolly) camps.
(Note that this post is many pictures and fewer words. With all the distracting things happening in the world right now, I’m finding it difficult to find the mental space to form and create. This is my way of getting that process restarted. Thank you all for your continued support.)
Today, their journey starts at Mazu, Goddess of the Empty Sea (Or rather, the skeleton left after the previous evening’s burn):
Then they played our (beep-filled) theme song:
Stay tuned for next time, when we visit Sunlight Poutine, and see our heroes run Mirror Blaze for the last evening of The Burn. Stay tuned!
Art Rosenfeld passed away two weeks ago. Most people would not remember him, but they have been affected by his simple observation in 1976 that a “proposed nuclear power plant would not be needed if refrigerators were required to be more efficient.”
Here you can see the effects on the energy efficiency in the state of California:
Note how the energy expenditure per capita flatlines from the time he made the observation above. It was never one thing, but a lot of little things Turning off lights at night, higher efficiency furnaces and fridges and stoves. Higher efficiency lighting. Better windows.
These are the kinds of things which make a huge difference in aggregate (and he was a master at expressing how much of a difference each of them would make singularly, such as spending 20mins with light switches saves 100 gallons of gas over the weekend). These are the kinds of incremental changes which are slowly reducing the scourge of cancer[1]. These are the kinds of things which can reduce changes to the climate.
Thanks, Art. Let’s keep working and doing things a little more intelligently every day.
Art Rosenfeld, California’s Godfather of Energy Efficiency, Dies at 90
[1]This is a fascinating topic. Check out these graphs: https://www.google.ca/search?q=cancer+mortality+rate+historical
So, a friend of mine posted this video by Keith Olbermann:
“How the Media Needs to Respond to Trump Now | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ”
The video itself is interesting for a number of reasons, but I want to talk about their reaction to it.
They mentioned that they would greatly prefer to have their news fact-checked. I replied that this was already happening, just on comedy shows, that Jon Stewart started it[0], but now Trevor Noah, Rachel Maddow, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert do.
(Note that this is already starting to seep into ‘real news channels’ with Rachel Maddow and similar.)
But this got me thinking. Why is it that comedy shows can do this and ‘news’ cannot? Why did this start in comedy shows?
One could argue that the stock in trade of comedy is juxtaposition. Juxtaposition of people saying one thing and doing another, or even saying one thing and then saying the exact opposite lends itself very naturally to comedy based on political commentary.
Perhaps because comedy is built on using blunt verbal implements[1] to provoke an audience reaction, provoking audience reactions being their stock in trade. ‘News’ is not about provoking reactions, at least not as their primary goal[2].
Perhaps this blunt type of juxtaposition needed to be started on or as a comedy show, as news shows are used to being much more polite[3].
Perhaps, as Keith Olbermann suggests, the repeal of the ‘Fairness Doctrine‘ is related to all of this, where news organizations are still behaving as if the outside world is still trying to be fair, and that they can cover ‘both’ sides of an issue without checking too hard whether one of them is propaganda.
Perhaps it has to do with fact checking, perhaps it has to do with the proliferation of news coverage of politicians allowing greater opportunities for juxtaposition, perhaps it has to do with news organizations being afraid to offend their advertisers vs. comedy shows being afraid of not offending enough and thereby not getting enough attention…
Perhaps, just as only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only news comedy could start the juxtaposition fact checking.
[0]Some people say that this was started with SNL’s ‘Weekend Update‘ in 1985. I would argue that there are definite influences, but Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ took itself far more seriously, closer to how news shows take themselves seriously. An example from the Chevy Chase Show in 1993, 6 years before Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show (and 3 years before the Daily Show existed at all):
[1]Many comedians starting out will say offensive things to get attention (or for worse reasons). I’m talking about less verbally offensive methods of getting attention.
[2]I’m not sure what the primary motivation of news is. Perhaps to inform, perhaps to legitimize an otherwise illegitimate TV network, perhaps to sell advertising. I’d say on their best days, their primary motivation is to inform.
[3]#tonepolicing