Ultra-Cool Irish Lass

I just got myself a flocked white aluminum Christmas Tree.

Dear Santa

Will you please bring me a color wheel?

I've been very very good all year.

Love -- The Irish Lass.

Twelve Chicks of Christmas

Nancy Wilson

The Christmas Waltz
-Sammy Kahn

Frosted window panes
Candles gleaming inside
Painted candy canes on the tree
Santas on his way
He's filled his sleigh with things
Things for you and for me

Its that time of year
When the world fall in love
Every song you hear seems to say
"Merry Christmas, May your New Year Dreams come true"
And this song of mine
In three-quarter time
Wishes you and yours
The same thing too

Its that time of year
When the world fall in love
Every song you hear seems to say
"Merry Christmas, May your New Year Dreams come true"
And this song of mine
In three-quarter time
Wishes you and yours
The same thing too

-----------------------

Thanks to Diva Station for the photo and bio of Nancy Wilson

while in columbus, wilson came to know and perform with famed jazz musician, cannonball adderley, who introduced her to her future manager, john levy. wilson signed her first solo recording contract with capitol records, shortly thereafter, joining a roster that already included the likes of nat "king" cole, frank sinatra and peggy lee. wilson's first two singles with capitol—"like in love" and the adderley collaboration "save your love for me"—scored big with the public and set wilson on her way to establishing a devoted and enduring fan base. the following years would see wilson surpass labelmates such as the beach boys to become capitol's second highest selling artist (the beatles held the number one spot) and their highest selling female artist. in 1964, wilson won a grammy for "how glad am i".

Hear Nancy Wilson sing The Christmas Waltz on I-Tunes

Twelve Chicks of Christmas

Julie London sings

Warm December
I'll keep you warm in December
Warm when the cold breezes blow
My arms so lovin', a kind of oven
To melt the sleet and snow

This heart that glows like an ember
Longs to be loved just by you
If it could be so, then you'd keep me so
Warm in December, too

Hear Julie London sing Warm December on I-Tunes

Thanks to Jitter Buzz for the cool Julie London photo. Check them out for lindy hop and swing dancing in DC.

It's Beautiful, Brilliant Melanie's Birthday

Which one of these is she?






Nineteen years ago we met in a rally line at the CRP convention, parading around the room on behalf of Ed Zschau.

Love you Mel!

Need Christmas Gift Ideas?

Avoid the malls - there's something for everyone

Why Buy Designer Bags? Just Borrow Them!

Pamper someone special with the unique benefits of a spa experience – give a Spa Gift Certificate this holiday season

Marine Corps Gifts of Cigars

The Wine Messenger-The leading artisanal wine website offering customers unique and exclusive wines from small grower vineyards around the world.

The perfect gift for music lovers in your life & iTunes gift certificates

Cool Golf Stuff New, Used and Memorable

Luggage Online - The largest selection with the lowest prices, and FREE shipping*.

Twelve Chicks of Christmas

I'm going to start my annual Christmas songfest with jazz chicks to get you in the party mood.

Diana Krall's brand new Christmas CD has lots of great songs ...

Count Your Blessings

When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings
When my bankroll is getting small
I think of when I had none at all
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds
If you're worried and you can't sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings



Count Your Blessings on I-Tunes

CNN Should Apologize

The Corner at National Review thinks that CNN owes the Navy an apology and I agree!

CNN SINKS NAVY [Jim Robbins]
A person who was at Annapolis today sent me the following about the AP photo CNN ran on its web site of Midshipmen asleep in the auditorium before the President’s speech:
This is bias. The mids started arriving at 0630 in the auditorium. Most have barely gotten any sleep because it's Army-Navy week. Almost all the mids were using the down time to get some rest while they waited the several hours. They were clearly all awake by 9:30 as things started to happen and certain all were awake for the speech.
As everyone who has attended a service academy will tell you, there is nothing more cherished than rack time. But CNN does a disservice to the Naval Academy to imply the mids would sprawl out asleep in the presence of the Commander in Chief. I think CNN owes these fine young Americans an apology.

I Love Math Jokes

And apparently, so does John Derbyshire of National Review ...

Terms of art. I've been hanging out with mathematicians again. I love the way they talk. Speaking of a young lady of abundant charms (not Ms. Aniston), a mathematician observed to me appreciatively that: "She is nontrivially attractive."

That ought to lead naturally to this month's brainteaser. Instead of a brainteaser this month, though, I'm going to indulge myself in a math grumble. Hey, it's my diary, I can do what I like. Here comes the math grumble, with a dash of politics for seasoning.

How many sigmas? That the No Child Left Behind Act is degenerating into a massive nationwide cheat-a-thon will not be surprising to anyone who has followed the fate of this law, perhaps the stupidest piece of legislation enacted during the George W. Bush presidency, or possibly ever. In a nutshell: States get benefits from the feds if they can show that the test results of their students are improving, but they get to write the tests themselves. So guess what they do? Right. Or, as my ten-year-old would say: Duh.

My own beef about the tests my kids get, both the state tests and the less formal in-school ones, is that I have very little idea how well they have done on them.

Nellie Derbyshire: "Hey, Dad! I got 98 on my math test today!"

JD: "Really? Out of a possible thousand?"

ND: "Da-a-ad! Come on! A hundred, of course."

JD: "Well done, sweetheart. You're relieved of chores for a day."

But I am quietly thinking to myself: How many sigmas is that?

Let me explain. If you give a test to a disparate bunch of people, some will get high scores, some will get low scores, some will come out in the middle. The collection of all the scores is called by statisticians a distribution. The distribution has certain properties, measured by other numbers called statistics that you can derive by chewing up the original numbers in various ways. The best-known statistic is the average, officially called the mean. If you gave the test to five students and they scored 69, 56, 47, 53, and 55, that would be a mean score of 56. If you test another group of five students, and they score 84, 32, 41, 59, and 65, that would also be a mean score of 56. To get the mean, you just add up all your numbers and divide the total by how many there are — in this case, five.

However, while both groups got the same mean, the second group's scores are more "spread out," less "bunched together" than the first group's. There is another statistic you can work out to measure the spread-out-ness of the scores. This is the standard deviation. It would take too long to explain how to get it, but it's not hard, and I refer you to Google for the details. The standard deviation of that first test group is 8.062; of the second, 20.43. Yep, the second is more spread out — bigger standard deviation. Standard deviation is usually denoted by a lower-case Greek letter sigma.

So what I really want to know about my kids' test results is: How many sigmas away from the mean are they, and in which direction? If my daughter was the person in that first group who scored 47, she would have scored 9 points below the mean; that is, 1.12 sigmas below the mean (9 divided by 8.062), or "negative 1.12" for short. If, on the other hand, she was the person who scored 84 in that second group, she would have a sigma of +1.37.

With big groups and reasonably well-designed tests the distribution is the famous "bell-shaped curve," properly known as the normal, or Gaussian, distribution. In that distribution it is always the case that around two-thirds of the scores (to be precise, a shade over 68.2689492137 percent) will fall between negative one sigma and positive one sigma, 94.45 percent between negative two and positive two, 99.73 percent between negative three and positive three, and so on. In fact, you always know where you are with the normal distribution. If my daughter were to come home and announce: "Dad, we had a math test, and I scored one point three five sigma!" why, then, I should know that my princess was easily in the top ten percent of her peers, was in fact at the 91.15th percentile. And I would be happy.

Why can't schoolteachers do this for us? It's just elementary arithmetic. You don't even need a math package; Microsoft Excel will do sigmas for you perfectly well. The answer, I suspect, is that the average (not mean, average) American schoolteacher in this day and age would rather submit to an appendectomy without anesthetic than grade a student as "negative" anything.

Great News from The Corner

American ingenuity at it's very finest

"THE ROCK" SURVIVES IED BLAST [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
I've just learned that during an operation near Baghdad, this morning, one of our armored vehicles - a brand new one unofficially referred to as "The Rock" - was hit by an IED. The vehicle sustained no major damage, and - best of all - ZERO injuries were suffered by passengers or crew.

I first reported on "The Rock" earlier this month at NavySEALs.com and elsewhere. It is being manufactured by Kuwait-based Granite Global Services which was founded in the spring of 2004 by SEAL Reservist Chris Berman, then-working for Blackwater Security. Berman started the company after four of his Blackwater buddies were ambushed and killed in Fallajuh. After escorting all four bodies home, Berman decided to build a heavily armored, ultra-fast (the thing can cruise at 80 mph), gun-bristling, urban-warfare vehicle that would save passenger lives in combat. His first truck rolled off the line in June. It's been shot at a lot, but no ball-round ammunition can penetrate its armor. Today it was hit by an IED for the first time, and Berman emailed me saying, "I must brag when it is this good."

Military Personnel Ski For Free at Some Resorts

Northstar-at-Tahoe and Sierra-at-Tahoe invite all active duty military to grab their skis and snowboards and enjoy free skiing/riding at either resort every Sunday this winter (excluding Jan. 15 and Feb. 19).

To receive their free lift ticket, active duty personnel simply need to present their Common Access Card to the special tickets line at Northstar or Sierra's season pass office. Military personnel will receive one complimentary lift ticket, per person, per Sunday.

Members of the military who have never tried skiing or snowboarding shouldn't miss out on the fun. Sierra and Northstar's multiday lesson packages offer the perfect opportunity to take on a new snowsport. At Northstar, guests will learn to carve in no time with the resort's Passport Program.

-------------

reprinted from the Lake Tahoe Action - Your Free Guide to What to Do at Lake Tahoe!