Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte has become the seventh paying visitor to space. The cost? A cool $35 million.
Unlike most other visitors though, there’s a series of cirque-related festivities lined up and next week, Laliberte will be hosting “Moving Stars and Earth for Water”, a show with a water conservation theme from the orbiting lab.
This is way cooler than the Segway for ‘personal mobility’, as Honda puts it (we don’t know what it means either). The press have dubbed this an electric unicycle although it moves in all directions and not just back and forth. I’d have compared this to a moveable office chair but that’s just me.
Like the Segway, you move by adjusting your body weight – leaning in a direction makes it move with you. I can see this being a less space-consuming method of moving around than with an electric scooter but really, without handlebars, I doubt if many will want to try these on slopes. After all, we’ve heard the excuses people give for declining to try out unicycling haven’t we?
A video of the device at work here -
Reuters has an article about joggling.
“The advantage of joggling is on the side of people who started out as jugglers alone,” he said. “Joggling adds a level of aerobic fitness to juggling.”
On a related note, I joggled for the first time early this week and I have to say it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I had to slow to almost 3/4 of my regular speed and strangely enough, after almost 3km, it didn’t feel tiring at all. I had expected the arm motions to wear me out faster despite the more leisurely pace.
Read the full Reuters article here.
Vaudeville in Chicago is the unofficial name of a new Cirque du Soleil production directed by David Shiner – accomplished comedic actor, Broadway creator and director of KOOZA from Cirque du Soleil.
Here, he explains the concept of Vaudeville and also offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the rehearsals.
The official show name, if you’re wondering, will be announced in September.
Old news article really but this is the first I’ve read it!
Humor comes from testosterone according to Professor Sam Shuster of Norfolk.
The unicycling doctor observed how the genders reacted to his “amusing” hobby.Women tended to make encouraging, praising comments, while men jeered. The most aggressive were young men, he told the British Medical Journal.
Now when people tell me that I’ve a great sense of humor, I’d know what they really mean to say is that I’m kind of really manly.
Jerks.
Pictures from the European Juggling Convention 2009 are now online at various sources. Check out first the ongoing thread at JugglingDB. The picture above is taken from a more extensive collection here.
Thought I’d draw your attention to a sale item at Neon Husky. The red and yellow K8 Prophecy clubs are on sale now at US$150 for a set of THREE with a charger thrown in. Instant buy for me if shipping to my part of the world didn’t cost about as much as that.
Two years after its initial launch, Juggling.tv has been revamped: JTV2.
Organizers of the juggling video site claim they’ve listened to suggestions and added new features, including:
:: A new video player with re-encoding on all existing videos.
:: Capacity for 300MB files
:: Slow-motion capabilities
:: Choices for video downloads, including original files and “iPod-friendly.”
:: iPhone browsing.
:: Widescreen support
:: Member following with e-mail alert.
:: Video stills previews.
:: New color and … more rounded corners
:: Prop-specific channels
Direct questions to the Quality Controller at qc[at]juggling[dot]tv.
What’s The Ball Passing Project about?
It involves people passing balls around in a synchronized fashion. Make that a lot of people. It’s poetry in motion. Browse the site and watch the documentary and you’ll understand.
‘Ok so I’ve said before I won’t cover anything circus-related but this made me smile so I had to share.
Chances are you haven’t heard that Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus collaborated and had a Nintendo Wii game made. This angered – guess who – PETA which sent a strong word to the developers telling them about animal abuse and the like at the circus. They were ignored and now there’s a Help Stop New Ringling Bros Wii Game petition going on.
I’m frankly amused because when people play the game, won’t they have more incentive NOT to visit the circus? I’d join in the petition the moment a ‘Juggle like Bozo the Clown’ minigame starts making its rounds. That’s cruelty.
