Jeff Lofton - Jazz Trumpet

The website for jazz trumpeter Jeff Lofton can be found here.

Roby "Supersax" Edwards

A world-class tenor sax player, who blows with feeling, by way of Pittsburgh and Paris. We're very fortunate to have him in Austin.

Dr. James Polk - Austin Jazz

The website for the Dean of the Austin jazz scene can be found here.

AustinJazz.net interview with Dr. Polk.

Blues Family Tree Project page on Dr. Polk.

Sonobeat Records page on James Polk and the Brothers.

James Polk and the Brothers - Just Plain Funk

artPad

A free and fun online painting program can be found here.

Dave Merrill at the TED conference

My good friend David Merrill presents at the TED conference on new human-computer interfaces, demonstrating the power and possibilities of "Siftables":

The Presidents: 5-10-15-20 (25-30 Years of Love)

Great song.

Doug Glanville on Privacy

Former professional baseball player Doug Glanville makes a very important point about privacy.

It is coming to light that many players were evidently juiced, harming themselves and doing violence to the American pastime in their chemical quest for an edge.

The manner in which some in baseball are addressing this issue is equally distressing, however, as they are violating individuals' privacy rights while grabbing headlines.

Perjuring oneself while being asked questions under oath is unconscionable. But not giving a person a chance to address those questions for themselves, reneging on the terms of one's original agreement in the process, is likewise despicable.

A few links on privacy follow:

1) Warren and Brandeis' famous essay: "The Right to Privacy," Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV, No. 5, Dec. 15, 1890.

2) Privacy: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Blogger links

"How can I do more with links?"

Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb

Two economic realists tell it like it is.

An overview of Taleb's "Black Swan" theory can be found here.

Roubini's Global EconoMonitor can be accessed here.

"I Was Sure I Could Do It"

Watch CBS Videos Online

To perform in this way under this sort of pressure is more than admirable.

Quotes from the interview with Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger follow:

"It was the worst sickening pit of your stomach, falling through the floor feeling I've ever felt in my life. I knew immediately it was very bad," Sullenberger told correspondent Katie Couric.

"Did you think, 'How are we gonna get ourselves out of this?'" Couric asked.

"No. My initial reaction was one of disbelief. 'I can't belief this is happening. This doesn't happen to me,'" he remembered.

Asked what he meant by that, Sullenberger said, "I meant that I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn't crash an airplane."

He said he realized right away that the engines were failing. "It was obvious to me from the moment that we lost the thrust that this was a critical situation. Losing thrust on both engines, at a low speed, at a low altitude, over one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Yes, I knew it was a very challenging situation."

The plane, Sullenberger explained, lost forward momentum almost completely. "The airplane stopped climbing and going forward, and began to rapidly slow down. That's when I knew I had to take control of the airplane."

"I put my hand on the side stick and I said, the protocol for the transfer of control, 'my aircraft,' and the first officer Jeff immediately answered, 'Your aircraft,'" Sullenberger, 58, remembered.

Asked what was going through his head, Sullenberger told Couric, "I knew immediately that this, unlike every other flight I'd had for 42 years, was probably not going to end with the airplane undamaged on the runway."

But the engines didn't start. "No luck. I mean, I got the AP running, I turned the ignition on, but still, no usable thrust. We were descending rapidly toward the water," he recalled. "The water was coming up at us fast."

"Do you think about the passengers at that moment?" Couric asked.

"Not specifically," Sullenberger said. "I mean, more abstractly, perhaps. I mean, knew I had to solve this problem. I knew I had to find a way out of this box I found myself in."

Asked if he at any point prayed, he told Couric, "I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane."

"My focus at that point was so intensely on the landing," he said. "I thought of nothing else."

"What were some of the things you had to do to make this landing successful?" Couric asked.

"I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level. I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously," he explained.

And he had to keep his cool. "The physiological reaction I had to this was strong, and I had to force myself to use my training and force calm on the situation," he said.

He told Couric that wasn't a hard thing to do. "It just took some concentration."

And he told Couric the three-and-a-half minute descent actually felt like three and a half minutes - there was no sensation of slow motion. "I wish it had been. I might've thought about more things on the way down."

Ninety seconds before hitting the water, Captain Sullenberger made an announcement to the passengers and crew. Three simple words: "brace for impact."

"I made the brace for impact announcement in the cabin and immediately, through the hardened cockpit door, I heard the flight attendants begin shouting their commands in response to my command to brace. 'Heads down. Stay down.' I could hear them clearly. They were chanting it in unison over and over again to the passengers, to warn them and instruct them. And I felt very comforted by that. I knew immediately that they were on the same page. That if I could land the airplane, that they could get them out safely," he remembered.

"But there was still a big if," Couric pointed out.

"I was sure I could do it," he replied.

There couldn’t have been a better man for the job: a former Air Force fighter pilot who spent nearly 30 years flying commercial aircraft, specialized in accident investigations, and instructed flight crews on how to respond to emergencies in the air.

"I think, in many ways, as it turned out, my entire life up to that moment had been a preparation to handle that particular moment," he said.

"When you landed, you and the first officer looked at each other," Couric said.

"And we said, 'Well, that wasn't as bad as I thought.' And then we quickly began doing our duties. He was running the evacuation check list while I opened the door and commanded evacuate," Sullenberger recalled.

"Did you give yourself even a few seconds though to acknowledge that you had averted disaster?" Couric asked.

"No, because I hadn't quite yet," he replied. "And I had business to attend to. I had a job to do."

Take a look at the video of Captain Sullenberger's homecoming speech in Danville, California, an example of the power of brevity and quiet understatement.

Captain Sullenberger stated, "Circumstance determined that it was this experienced crew that was scheduled to fly that particular plane on that particular day. But I know I can speak for the entire crew when I tell you we were simply doing the jobs we were trained to do."

The Wicked Pickett

Kay Ryan

Charlie Rose interviews the new Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan.

Ryan casts a wizened, wry eye on the world. An exemplar of her taut and thoughtful poetry can be found here.