I could buy the crutches…

… but I’ll never be able to dance like that.  If you haven’t seen a video of Luca "Lazylegs" Patuelli dancing, you owe it to yourself to do so.  The mere fact that he suffers from Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita and  Scoliosis doesn’t keep him from being a first class athlete and dancer.  And the story told by Joshua Selinger indicates that he goes beyond this to be an amazing person as well.

Check it out.

A fascinating post-Katrina observer

I just stumbled upon a very insightful post from a Mississippi clergywoman who has just returned to her home.  It begins:

After a damaging storm, I observe the following:

Survivors tell their stories even to strangers.

People try to make money from the misery.

and continues with a long list of very cogent insights taken from direct experience at ground zero.  St. Casserole seems like a very fascinating blogger in general, so I will be continuing to tune in to follow her stories, whether Katrina-related or otherwise.

Update: I had orignally mis-stated that St. Casserole was from Louisiana rather than Mississippi.  I should know better than to assume that everyone devastated by Katrina comes from Louisiana, but had not read thoroughly enough to determine her correct location.

I’ve been asked why I thought this particular post and blog were so noteworthy, and I had to stop and think about it.  Most of the coverage of Katrina that I have seen has involved "big picture" issues — dealing with thousands of people in the Superdome, or reconstruction of the city — or fairly superficial "man on the street" interviews.  I think I’ve had the sense that the recovery reporting is just filling time till the next big story comes along.  Here, however, I believe that I’m seeing through the eyes of a compassionate person who’s here for the duration and truly involved with the process.  It feels, in a way, like voyeurism — but it also means that I won’t forget that this is more than merely a long news cycle.  It’s real, and it’s not going away come Superbowl season.

Geekday link roundup

I have decided to arbitrarily label the middle day of the week to be Geekday, since the English speaking world has traditionally named it in honor of the Nerd of the Aesir.  In celebration, I hope to make a weekly ritual of compiling various links that I have ecoutered over the previous week (or two) that help glorify the wide world of geekdom.  So without further ado, I present the first installment of the geekday links:

• My hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has discovered that "geeks rule", and wrote a pretty nice article about the whole phenomenon.  (Thanks to Unspace for the pointer.)
• For serious geek science, I’m voting for the ultra-cool high-speed photos of popping balloons, posted by cdibona over on Flickr.  (A nod to Cory Doctorow at Boing-Boing for pointing these out.)
• For crafting geeks, my lady points out "wormspit.com".  Here we have a man who creates his own woven silk ribbons starting from the caterpillar, and will tell you all about it in great detail.  This is worth the link for the name alone.
• For fandom geeks, we have to go with the storytelling sensation that has swept the internet, Klingon Fairy Tales.  For the religiously inclined, I also have to point out "A Klingon Word from the Word".  This is, as best I can determine, serious bible study, using the lens of an alien language to examine the text of the bible in a new light.

And so I must end this geekday’s offerings, with less than minutes to spare before the end of the day.  With luck, I’ll have a larger bucket of links for next week.