Emerson and Lake setlist, May 14, 2010 - Stroudsburg, PA

Great show at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg.

• From the Beginning
• I Talk to the Wind
• Bitches Crystal
• The Barbarian
• Take a Pebble/Tarkus

[intermission]

• C'est la Vie
• Prelude to a Hope
• Milonga for Piano Op. 3
• Pirates
• [Question and Answer session]
• America

 Encore:

• Lucky Man

Living in the coal region...

Bruce Springsteen had a classic line in Thunder Road:

"It's a town full of losers
and I'm pulling out of here to win"

(the "and" is from the piano version on the live box set, for all of you nitpickers).

Anyway, growing up in Schuylkill County, I always thought that was a great line. It was only later when I realized what the region had to offer. I'm glad I found my way back (well, most of the time; there's still the modern-day coal barons to deal with, who peddle everything from culm and wind energy to prisons and river sludge to a populace grown too cynical to care, but that's another day's battle). There's a great article about what the area has to offer here, and something I needed to read today.

Half-naked run through Shops at Prudential Center (Boston)

For some odd reason, a throng of half-naked college kids (I presume this was some type of fraternity thing, or perhaps spring fever) ran through the Shops at Prudential Center in Boston this past Friday. At least this one wore a cape:

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I Cost More, but I’m a Specialist

What if newspaper columnists behaved like our health care system? (from the New York Times).

Logan's Run: Last Day link roundup

A roundup of links regarding the new Logan's Run: Last Day comic book published by BlueWater Comics:

• William F. Nolan Talks Logan’s Run: Last Day
• YouTube: Creator William F. Nolan's STORYTIME the reading of the new Logan's Run comic book
• A Comic Book Orange's video review
• Best Shots Advance Review: LOGAN'S RUN: LAST DAY #1
• Famous Monsters » Comic Review: Logan’s Run Last Day
• The World of Logan's Run: Bluewater Publishing's 'Logan's Run - Last Day' Comic Series
• Dueling Review: Logan’s Run #1

Previously: Logan's Run: Last Day covers

The Indymac Slap in our Face

The Indymac Slap in our Face, or your tax dollars at work. Like a reverse Robin Hood, our government continues to take from the poor and give to the rich.

The Known Universe

Leaked ACTA documents

Leaked documents concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement are available here. Some believe that the eventual adoption of these agreements could create "back-door" laws, imposing rules on citizens that were not written by their government. Link via boingboing.

Student killed by exploding chewing gum

I kid you not.

Via Warren Ellis (of course).

Hey Google: whatever happened to "don't be evil"?

From boingboing: Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. Google blacklists CNet for violating CEO's privacy. Disclaimer: This here blog is courtesy of Google's Blogger service. If they were really evil, they wouldn't let me

---[signal lost] ---

While we're on the "cat" theme...

Failed experiment.

Feline dietary preferences

Sure, I can blog about cats. Why? I'm not an old lady. Stop it.


see more Funny Graphs

Alice Cooper setlist - Sept 22, 2009 - Scranton, PA

So it only took me a month to post this:

• School's Out (part only)
• Eighteen
• Wicked Young Man
• Ballad of Dwight Fry
• Go To H*ll
• Guilty
• Welcome To My Nightmare
• Cold Ethyl
• Poison
• The Awakening
• From The Inside
• Nurse Rozetta
• Is It My Body
• Be My Lover
• Only Women Bleed
• I Never Cry
• The Black Widow (instrumental)
• Vengeance Is Mine
• Devil's Food
• Dirty Diamonds
• Billion Dollar Babies
• Killer
• I Love The Dead (part only)
• No More Mr. Nice Guy
• Under My Wheels

Encore:

• Schools Out (full version)

Logan's Run: Last Day covers

The MTV website has a look at all four covers from the new Logan's Run comic being put out by BlueWater. Looks like the release has been pushed back to January.

Some fun sites for today

• Garfield minus Garfield (it's so much funnier without the cat - kind of a weird, existential thing).
• FMyLife - Murphy's Law in a few hundred characters (it's antonym: MyLifeIsAverage).
• GraphJam - "For people who love charts."

My gift to you, InterWeb denizens.

Fun site for graphic designers

Your logo makes me barf. Heh.

Link via the Central Penn Adobe User Group.

The artist behind the Flash, Star Wars, Adam Strange

Here's an interview with comics great Carmine Infantino, a former teacher of mine (really!) and a wonderful artist. I still love his work on Marvel's Star Wars adaptions (with Gene Day inking). He of course also had the great runs on Adam Strange and the Flash.

Health care stories

Health care horror stories collected by a blogger at The Atlantic. The system is in serious need of reform. Hopefully the Obama administration gets it, and doesn't just give in to the insurance companies like they did with the drug companies.

Pencils review?

I recently purchased some Pencils at Staples. Specifically, Staples(R) number 2, Yellow pencils, Dozen. A few days later, Staples sent me an e-mail, thanking me for my purchase of said pencils, maybe I'd be interested in some pink erasers (as if they foresee many mistakes ahead...)? They also wondered if I would care to write a review -- I can even check off such things as "Easy to sharpen" and "Great lead capacity" (what?!).

Shades of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz...

Google Satellite Captures First Image

Google has a new high-res satellite. It's first pic? Kutztown University.

How Internet Gatekeepers Stifle Progress

Here's a great article by Cory Doctorow on monopolies and copyright, DRM, and the like. Basically, a few "gatekeepers" make the rules, even on the Internet, and once again, the creatives get screwed.

Drug company deal with White House

Does anyone else get the feeling when reading of a deal like this -- where the drug companies are only going to make ten trillion dollars instead of eleven trillion dollars (by overcharging poor people) -- that the drug companies are laughing at us as they get richer and richer while pretending to be good guys? Is everything spin anymore?

New Logan's Run comic!

Bluewater Productions is making a new Logan's Run comic starting this fall. Logan's Run was a novel (first of a trilogy that included Logan's World and Logan's Search, plus a later short story) about a dystopian future where the law proscribed death at 21 (a 70's movie adaption changed that age to 30; a remake has been talked about for years, but doesn't seem to be able to get off the ground).

Word balloons in old ads

Here's a neat article featuring old-time ads that used word balloons to get their message across.

Handling charge for website

DailyINK is a website that offers access to daily comics, among other things such as interactive puzzles, from King Features Syndicate. The annual access cost of $15.00 includes a $3.00 handling charge. Does that strike anyone else as strange -- a handling charge for a website?

Great Simon and Kirby comic: "The Woman in the Tower"

Thanks to boingboing, who reprint a neat Joe Simon and Jack Kirby interpretation of a woman's dream, from the 1950's series Strange World of your Dreams.

Today's topic

Today's topic is
apophenia. Discuss.
I'll be here, waiting.

Frog haiku

Came across this list
of many translations of
frog haiku. Enjoy!

Senator Ben Nelson is angry

Via Mr. Lessig. When public figures, like Senator Nelson from Nebraska, receive a ton of money from special interests, you gotta question their motives, hold them accountable for their actions, and put the pressure on. Remember, government exists to serve the people, not corporations.

Classic XKCD SQL injection

This is a classic XKCD, which despite it's stick figure drawings is one of the funniest web comics out there (but only if you're a computer geek).

Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?

This is verrrry scary. The Federal Reserve has been looted, and the level of incompetence displayed by the Federal Reserve Inspector General is shocking. Spread this far and wide. Every person in this country who isn't distracted by Britney, Paris, and whatever other diversions are being thrown your way: someone is stealing from you. Our government is evidently colluding with thieves; I'm not sure how else to explain it. Why this isn't the top story on every news station and newspaper in this country, I'm at a loss to explain.

The Big Takeover: Why We're Screwed

This Rolling Stone article has already made the rounds of the blogosphere but is definitely worth a read for those of you who want to understand how we got into this bailout mess. Warning: you will be outraged after reading this.

Another great explanation of the scenarios that caused the crisis can be found in a PBS This American Life show from May 2008 called The Giant Pool of Money.

1 in 50 U.S. children face homelessness

Key quote: "As we bail out the rest of our nation, it is also time to come to their aid." Link.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers setlist - House of Blues, Atlantic City - March 21, 2009

The usual overpriced drinks and some annoying drunks, but overall a good show. Setlist follows:

• House of Blue Lights
• Who Do You Love?
• The Fixer
• Night Time
• I Drink Alone
• One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
• Born Lover
• Bad to the Bone
• Gear Jammer
• Move It On Over

Encore I:

• What a Price
• You Talk Too Much

Encore II:

• Treat Her Right
• Madison Blues

They could have at least called it "es-ef"...

The Sci-Fi channel is renaming itself Syfy.

Morons.

From the mouth of a child...

Watch. Listen.

Prelude to the Road Warrior scenario

There's an interesting post over at boingboing entitled "How are you coping with collapse-anxiety?" We live in interesting times (like the old Chinese curse says) and it is an anxiety-ridden moment in history. How did we get here? Did the military-industrial complex spiral out of control, much too large for any one person, group, or country to manage? Or was it simply the bad policies of George Bush post-9/11, when he took an enormous amount of political momentum and used it to run the country into the ground, looting the treasury for his buddies on the way out the door?

Sorry if I sound cynical. Hopefully Mr. Obama can use his political momentum to take us in the other direction, but the critical mass of extremism in Washington looks to be a serious impediment to real progress.

Does Visual Studio rot the mind?

If you're not a programmer, stop reading now.

Everyone who's still with me, this article, while a little dated, is a fascinating read. The premise is how some tools dictate how you approach a problem (like the old adage "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"). Taken a step further, if you learn to think a certain way because you've been using a certain tool for a long time, it can change your way of thinking so that you can't see other ways of tackling the problem. And that's dangerous.

State of the Union

"The New Hampshire state legislature took an unbelievably bold step Monday by introducing a resolution to declare certain actions by the federal government ... totally void and warning that certain future acts will be viewed as a 'breach of peace' with the states themselves that risks 'nullifying the Constitution.'" link (via digg).

As for the latest bailout: Let the Wall St. "Talent" Walk.

Evidently the universe may be a hologram

Evidently the universe may be a hologram. Huh. And I thought we were living in the Matrix (or is it the same thing)?

The myth of "clean coal"

The disingenuously-named American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity spent $45 million last year touting "clean coal," while in just nine months, coal and energy companies spent $125 million lobbying against federal regulations promoting clean energy. Something doesn't pass the smell test. More....

Would big pharmaceutical companies choose profits over human lives?

A scientist believed he'd found a possible cure for Diabetes and asked pharmaceutical companies to sponsor clinical trials. From the article:

One example is Weissman’s mid-’90s research on type I diabetes, in which he demonstrated the ability to fully cure type I diabetes in mice using stem cells ... Weissman implied that the pharmaceutical companies had put profit over principle, preferring to keep diabetes sufferers dependent on costly insulin than to cure them once and for all.

Via digg.

Fascinating Adobe Illustrator demo

Via boingboing.

Notes From the Chairman, in the High Life

Reading Bono's guest column for the New York times entitled Notes from the Chairman. Am struck by Bono's observation on listening to two versions of My Way: one, recorded when Sinatra was a younger man, full of bravado, the spit and vinegar of youth, "embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere." And then the version recorded when Sinatra was much older, now a song of defeat, and the duality this implies.

It made me remember Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life Again, a song brimming with optimism. A few years back, Warren Zevon did a cover of High Life on his Life'll Kill Ya album. Zevon turned this wildly optimistic song into a moving dirge by a defeated man. I'm still amazed that this song can go through these extremes, from optimism to defeat without changing a lyric. That's the brilliance of these artists, bringing that duality to the song.

Geek proof

This may prove that I'm a geek, but I found this hilarious.

American Banking's Shameful Double Standard

Says it all. What is the recourse of the average taxpayer against blatant corruption and theft by government and the banking industry?

Banks won't disclose how they're spending bailout money

Here's my favorite quote:

Heine, the New York Mellon Corp. spokesman who said he wouldn't share spending specifics, added: "I just would prefer if you wouldn't say that we're not going to discuss those details."

Link

Drug firms block cheap medicine

As if we needed yet another reason to despise big business, drug companies use various legal (though maybe not ethical) measures to keep profits high by preventing the introduction of generics in Europe. At least the European Commission sounds like they're willing to go after them if they break the law in the process; in the U.S., we just shovel more money at them through Medicare Part D and call it progress.

Cars Sliding Down Icy Hill

Winter is here. Sigh.

Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion

Think about that headline for a moment. Remember we're a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Not for the rich. Not for the politicians. For the people. The Federal Reserve has no right to withhold how they gave away two trillion dollars. Outrage, anyone?

Proof of time travel?

A Swiss watch is found in a 400-year-old tomb. Reality is weird sometimes.

EPA makes it harder to build coal plants

The Environmental Protection Agency has blocked a coal plant in Utah, starting a rulemaking process that will likely result in greater carbon dioxide emission regulations. Hopefully, this will help prevent the environmental disaster that was proposed for construction outside Frackville. While the mislabeled "coal to clean fuel" plant has been dying a slow death for many years, hopefully increased regulation of CO2 emissions will kill the thing once and for all.

Strange Portal Connects Earth to Sun

No, really. Every eight minutes, magnetic portals open up and connect the Earth to the sun. Weird.

Alice Cooper - House of Blues, Atlantic City - Nov. 1, 2008

Great show, as always. While the setlist hasn't varied much in the past few years, Alice is still a fantastic performer (at age 60, no less).

While we waited to enter the House of Blues, we were, of course, searched. The huge guy in front of us was told he couldn't enter with the chain attached to his wallet, so he tore it off and handed it to the woman. Heh. While they searched people thoroughly, they didn't bother to take our tickets, and everyone just shuffled in. Weird.

Opening act was Z02 out of Brooklyn, NY. Their sound was alright, though they were much too, I don't know, Hannah Montana-ish to be opening for Alice Cooper. They didn't even start playing until 45 minutes after the doors opened, so we knew it was going to be a long night. And then the drunk woman next to me spilled her beer on the back of my pants. Sigh. I always seem to get stuck next to idiots.

Alice made it worthwhile, though, and even played two songs off the new album (Along Came A Spider), along with a number of hits. Setlist (I think this is correct):

• It's Hot Tonight
• No More Mr. Nice Guy
• Under My Wheels
• I'm Eighteen
• Is It My Body?
• Woman Of Mass Distraction
• Lost In America
• Feed My Frankenstein
• Be My Lover
• (In Touch With Your) Feminine Side
• Dirty Diamonds
• Vengeance Is Mine
• Halo Of Flies
• Welcome To My Nightmare
• Cold Ethyl
• Only Women Bleed
• Steven
• Dead Babies
• Ballad Of Dwight Fry
• Devils Food/I Love The Dead
• School's Out

Encore:

• Billion Dollar Babies
• Poison
• Elected

Fascist America?

Think about how reality has changed in the last seven years. Our civil liberties are quietly eroded, under the guise of keeping us safe from the invisible terrorist threat, while we're happily distracted by Britney and Paris. This is getting past tinfoil hat territory; the collapse of America is actually happening while we look the other way. This article, written over a year ago, is chilling in its implications.

The Rich Are Staging a Coup

Read it. Spread the word.

John McCain Kicks Librarian Out of Town Hall Event

This is evidently the state of free speech in the United States...

McCain = Bush = Loss of Freedom.

Add your voice to ONE

Bruce Springsteen - Hershey, PA - Aug. 19, 2008

Great show. Beautiful summer evening. Bad seats. Expensive beer. Cool t-shirt. Setlist:

• Summertime Blues
• Radio Nowhere
• Out in the Street
• Spirit in the Night
• Promised Land
• (sign collection):
  
  • Boom Boom (John Lee Hooker cover)
  • Darlington County
  • Waitin on a Sunny Day
  • Reason To Believe
• Prove It All Night
• No Surrender
• Because the Night
• She's The One
• Living In The Future
• Mary's Place
• Workin On The Highway
• Part Man Part Monkey
• The Rising
• Last To Die
• Long Walk Home
• Badlands

Encore:

• Thunder Road
• Jungleland
• Seven Nights to Rock
• Born To Run
• Rosalita
• Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
• American Land
• Gloria

The last great rock-n-roll album

There has not been a great rock and roll album since 1987's The Joshua Tree.

There, I said it.

Sure, there have been notable albums - Elephant by The White Stripes, or Robert Plant's Mighty Rearranger, maybe. But has there been anything truly memorable - an entire album where you just went "wow"? And no, I don't count Nirvana - quick, name me five great Nirvana songs. How about three? I'm not trolling here, but I'd really like to know if anyone can recommend a great rock and roll album in the last 20 years. Even U2's later efforts prompt a "meh" reaction, and I'm a huge U2 fan.

So, prove me wrong.

Glass wing butterflies

Very pretty.

How your Senator voted on the FISA Amendments Act

Just so we're clear on who we need to vote out of office....

More at EFF: Senate Joins House in Caving to White House Immunity Demands

artist's block

I have artist's block. What's worse, I'm practicing avoidance in order to, well, avoid dealing with it. That's not working so well. I'm told (by the venerable Joe Kubert, no less) that the best way to deal with artist's block is to get to work. Sigh.

Freedom of the Associated Press

The Associated Press now wants you to pay a fee to post an excerpt (as little as five words) of an AP article in your blog. So much for fair use, freedom of the press, and all of that nonsense. Via Boing Boing.

Great folk podcast about Pete Seeger

The Smithsonian has a podcast about Folkways Records. There's a great one about Pete Seeger that I'm currently listening to. You can really hear the influence Seeger had on Bob Dylan. Links: iTunes MP3

Lou Reed - Electric Factory - Philadelphia PA - April 19, 2008

Through one of those simple twists of fate, I was heading to Philly for the weekend and found out Lou Reed was playing at the Electric Factory. Now, I'm a huge fan of Lou for many years and haven't seen him in concert since 1986, I think, so of course I had to go. We arrived early and headed to a local diner for something to eat; when we returned, the line was across the front of the building and down the block; it was general admission, so we thought we'd be back a ways when we got in, but we got right to the front (first row in front of the stage! It seems Lou's aging audience prefers seats to proximity these days - poor bastards).

Around 8:40 PM Lou takes the stage, greeting us with "Hello, Cleveland," which got a laugh. The band started with "Mad," from the Ecstasy album. Throughout the song, Lou was the conductor, telling the bass player to bring it up, the lead guitar to bring it down -- it was nice to watch a veteran rocker (as Rolling Stone dubbed him so many years ago) fine-tuning his show. A surprise was the great Steve Hunter (who played on Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome to my Nightmare, and The Alice Cooper Show) on lead guitar. He and Lou played off each other all evening, and it was truly a joy to hear.

Next up was the Velvet Underground classic "Sweet Jane." And it rocked.

Lou introduced the next song by saying it was about divorce, "something most of you won't have to deal with" (note: most quotes are paraphrased, as my memory's not what it once was). He then launched into "Baton Rouge," haunting with its refrain "so helpless."

He said the next song was from the movie Juno, and launched into "I'm Set Free." Later he corrects himself about the Juno reference.

"Ecstasy" followed, with Lou drumming his chest to get started. It was evident that this was a song he enjoyed playing.

Following came his explanation that he got it wrong, and this song was from Juno; the keyboard player began singing "I'm Sticking With You."

A few songs later, Lou introduced Laurie Anderson on electric violin, and began playing "Talking Book." About halfway through the song, he got a little miffed with the audience, who were talking a bit too much for his taste (and mine too, especially the drunk women next to me), and he asked the audience "Do you want to keep talking or do you want me to finish this song?" He finished it, though he and Laurie seemed to share a disappointed look at the end. Perhaps they wanted to do more with the song, but the audience wanted to move on...

Next up were "Halloween Parade," from New York, followed by a song introduced with "This is a song you probably don't know," then launching into "Video Violence" from the 1986 album Mistrial. And yes, Lou, I knew the song, anyway.

After "Guardian Angel," the closing song was "Magic and Loss," which was a treat. I've always loved the line "there's a little magic in everything, and some loss to even things out." For an encore, we got "Perfect Day," and it was.

Full set list (as listed on the Lou Reed forum here; the comment from moderndance is me, btw):

• Mad
• Sweet Jane
• Baton Rouge
• I'm Set Free
• Ecstasy
• I'm Sticking With You
• Power of the Heart (is this new? anyone know?)
• I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)
• Talking Book
• Halloween Parade
• Video Violence
• Guardian Angel
• Magic and Loss

Encore:

• Perfect Day

And will someone please explain to me what the guy playing, as Lou put it, "electronics, the computer, and who knows what else" was doing with the Apple MacBook? Was he using Garage Band or something?

Earth in crisis, warns NASA's top climate scientist

What if there were a global warming crisis and the fossil fuels industry tried to hide it? Speculate no more, as a NASA scientist says that's exactly the case. How about that? Are you still so sure we need another coal plant in Schuylkill County?

Via Digg.

Asia - Kirby Center, Wilkes-Barre PA, April 4, 2008

Asia rocked the Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre last Friday evening and it was fantastic. This is the original lineup, including the legendary Steve Howe (of Yes) on guitar, Carl Palmer (of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) on drums, Geoff Downes (of Yes and the Buggles) on keyboards, and John Wetton (of King Crimson) on bass and vocals.

First impressions: Steve Howe looked like my college poetry professor, which is to say, old (sorry, Harry). I mean really old. But boy can that man play guitar - throughout Roundabout (yes, the classic Yes song!), he was simply a joy to watch. The man has fingers like a spider, and he made playing some complicated sequences look effortless. If only he didn't dress like an elderly man, including those grey dress pants and shiny striped shirt...

Back to the age thing, they all looked fairly old, which I think my mind had a hard time wrapping itself around. The cognitive dissonance was disconcerting for a while (and still is, to some degree).

Carl Palmer was simply incredible, probably the second-greatest drum solo I've ever seen (the first being Neil Peart, of course).

Other highlights included In the Court of the Crimson King followed by the Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star which, while an unusual combination, was a great moment in rock and roll. I'm a big fan of King Crimson, so to see their signature song live was a thrill (though I would have preferred 21st Century Schizoid Man). The Buggles tune is a classic that I've listened to a lot recently.

Oh, they played some Asia songs too, including some great sounding tracks (Never Again, Extraordinary Life) from the new CD, Phoenix (I picked up a copy on the way out, which shows how much I liked the new stuff). Heat of the Moment was, of course, great to hear live, aided by the band encouraging the audience to sing along. And Don't Cry was the first encore; it's one of those songs that just makes you feel young. Setlist, as found here (seems right according to my recollection):

• Daylight
• Only Time Will Tell
• Wildest Dreams
• Never Again
• Roundabout
• Time Again
• Bolero from Cutting it Fine (Geoff Downes keyboard solo)
• Clap (Steve Howe acoustic solo)
• The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (acoustic)
• Ride Easy (acoustic)
• Voice of America (John Wetton acoustic solo)
• Open Your Eyes

(Intermission)

• Fanfare For The Common Man
• Without You
• An Extraordinary Life
• In the Court of the Crimson King
• Video Killed The Radio Star
• The Heat Goes On, w/Carl Palmer drum solo
• Heat of the Moment

Encore:

• Don't Cry
• Sole Survivor

World Water Day

Today is World Water Day, as designated by the United Nations. There's a good article on the ONE blog about creating safe drinking water.

Who knew that LCARS was based on Windows?

Mr. Data encounters an error. Heh.

Flash: Animator vs. animation

While this has made the rounds, it's a fun animation, especially if you're a Flash geek. Enjoy.

Nad shots

Yes, there's a website for just about everything.

Get Alice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

There's a MySpace group dedicated to getting Alice Cooper into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Stopping junk mail is good for the environment

Save time every day that you waste dealing with junk mail. Here's how to get off mailing lists, simplify your life, and stop wearing out your shredder. Link

Some local links

• Shenandoah Fish and Game Club Association
• Centralia's Mine Fire History
• Popalis Family History - Some interesting reading about Shenandoah
• Sweet Home Schuylkill County - funny stuff
  

Where Kurt Vonnegut got his ideas

Link.

Balance

Here's a wonderful interview about life/work balance.

Of course, to put it simpler, from Psalm 90:

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Fox News whisteblowers

What kind of world are we living in? Fox fires reporters because they refused to be quiet after discovering that an engineered growth hormone given to milk cows was linked to potential health problems. Fox is afraid that the corporate giant will sue them and drop advertising. My favorite line from this clip is that "falsifying news isn't actually against the law." Huh?

(via Reddit)

Happy new year

Now, enough of the pedantic and pedestrian. It's a new year - let's tell it like it is.

Analog vs. digital

My wife got me a good old-fashioned record player for Christmas (well, not old-fashioned, I guess, since I can evidently plug my iPod into it, but anyway...). I played a 45 I had of Patti Smith covering Lou Reed's Perfect Day. There's something about the sound an album produces - it's fuller, more there somehow. I then played the LP of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions (on 180 gram vinyl, a fat, heavy record) - at first it seemed like a different recording than the version I've listened to many times on CD. It's the same recording as the CD, but it seemed like Bruce was in the room.

No more Netscape

As reported all over the place, Netscape Navigator, the browser that made the web the Web, is kaput as of February 2008. I used Netscape until around the time AOL bought the company and started making a mess of things. These days, Firefox is my preferred browser, though I find myself using Safari a lot because it's just so fast. The last several versions of Navigator were really skinned versions of Firefox anyway, with a more confusing interface. It's a shame what happens when corporate interests get involved that have no idea what to do with a product.

Merry Christmas

May the spirit of this holiday season fill your heart, and may you find your way safely home.

It's the Great Old Pumpkin

Just finished watching the classic It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and it reminded me of the short story podcast on Escape Pod called The Great Old Pumpkin. It's a wonderful twist on the legend. Enjoy and have a Happy Halloween.

Woman takes hammer to Comcast

Are you sick of the inept, illiterate, uncaring, and incompetent fools that big business puts in front of you, under the guise of "customer service," to block you from dealing with their shenanigans while the corporate executives stuff their pockets with your cash and don't deliver? So was 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw. Priceless.

Alice snubbed again

This is almost turning into an all Alice Cooper blog lately. Anyway, once again, Alice was left out of the nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There is no justice sometimes.

Alice Cooper review

The Times-Leader reviews the Alice Cooper Kirby Center show. The reviewer also blogs about it.

Alice Cooper setlist - Wilkes-Barre, PA, Sept. 18, 2007

Fantastic show at the Kirby Center. Here's the setlist, though there might be some out of order. If you have any corrections, drop a note in the comments.

• It's Hot Tonight
  
• No More Mr Nice Guy
• Under My Wheels
• I'm Eighteen
• Is It My Body?
• Woman Of Mass Distraction
• Lost In America
• Feed My Frankenstein
• Be My Lover
• Raped And Freezin'
• Dirty Diamonds
  
• Muscle Of Love
• Desperado
• Halo Of Flies (inc.Drum Solo)
• Welcome To My Nightmare
• Cold Ethyl
• Only Women Bleed
• Steven
• Dead Babies
• Ballad Of Dwight Fry
• Medley: Devils Food - Killer - I Love The Dead
• School's Out

Encore:

• Billion Dollar Babies
• Poison
• Elected

No coal-to-oil in Schuylkill County

A letter I just wrote to the Pottsville Republican, in response to their insipid editorial. I doubt they'll publish it, but we'll see:

Editor,

I'm writing in response to your editorial supporting the coal-to-oil plant. Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but the people of Schuylkill County have spoken: we do not want this impending environmental disaster in our backyards. Sure, we all want alternative energy sources, but not ones that seriously worsen the effects of global warming.

There's no need to rehash the multiple environmental issues this plant will create - that information is readily available on the website of Schuylkill Taxpayers Opposed to Pollution at www.ultradirtyfuels.com. The effects of global warming are all over the news - maybe you've heard of the little hurricane that flooded New Orleans or those melting polar ice caps. Do you think the thousands of tons of carbon dioxide that the plant will emit will help that problem or push it further towards the edge?

You can deny the science all you want, but the effects of global warming are so blatant it's practically a shout. To pretend this plant actually helps the environment by clearing away waste coal is so disingenuous as to be laughable. I fail to see what part of this you fail to understand. The only thing that remains unclear is whether you have the journalistic integrity to print an opposing view.

Daryl Davis
Ringtown, PA

State of comics

There's an interesting essay on Salon called Comics fans, grow up!, excerpted from a book by Douglas Wolk. The author argues that comics readers continue to look for acceptance from the general public despite actually already receiving it, as evidenced by the strong showing of graphic novels in recent years and, presumably, the Hollywood success of Spider-Man, X-Men, etc., and the rise of Comic-Con. I don't know that, other than the big movies, comics themselves are on the mainstream radar as much as might be hoped for. Sales are still a fraction of previous heydays, and you still can't find many comics outside of specialty shops (ah, but for the return of the spinner rack!). Now, comics characters are big - in movies, cartoons, video games, etc. But the books are still a ways off from selling in the millions every month. How Marvel and DC failed to capitalize on the movie successes is a little perplexing.

Star with a comet's tail

NASA has a wonderful image of a star named Mira (after the Latin for "wonderful") with a tail 13 light-years long:


Full story (via Boing Boing)

Vista Prevents Users Playing High-Def Content

As mentioned previously, Microsoft Vista's DRM issues are finally getting some semi-mainstream attention (if you can call a computer mag mainstream, but it is PC World...). At the same time, there are protests at the BBC [via /.] over content that's only playable in a Microsoft OS. Between DRM and vendor lock-in, big business will do what it can to get as much of your money as they can grab. Again, I believe in paying for your content, but media companies seem to want to skirt fair-use and make you pay for your legally purchased content over and over.

Women in Art

Rush and Stevie Nicks, Montage Mountain, June 29/30, 2007

Two concerts this weekend - Rush and Stevie Nicks. Rush was the better show, though Stevie Nicks had some great moments (Rhianna, Landslide, If Anyone Falls). We arrived at Rush a little late, due to terrible traffic, so I missed the first song, which was Limelight. Of all the songs to miss! That one's gonna haunt me.

The Rush setlist (courtesy cygweb):

• Limelight
• Digital Man
  
• Entre Nous
  
• Mission
  
• Freewill
• The Main Monkey Business
• The Larger Bowl
  
• Secret Touch
• Circumstances
  
• Between The Wheels
• Dreamline

Intermission

• Far Cry
• Workin’ Them Angels
• Armor And Sword
  
• Spindrift
• The Way The Wind Blows
• Subdivisions
• Natural Science
• Witch Hunt
  
• Malignant Narcissism
• Drum Solo
• Hope
• Summertime Blues
• The Spirit of Radio
• Tom Sawyer
  

Encore:

• One Little Victory
• A Passage to Bangkok
  
• YYZ

Stevie Nicks was chatty, with lengthy intros at a few spots (it was, after all, a retrospective tour, she reminded us, in support of her Crystal Visions release). Here's an approximate setlist:

• Stand Back
• Enchanted
• If Anyone Falls
• Rhiannon
• Dreams
• Sorcerer
• Gold Dust Woman
• I Need To Know (yes, the Tom Petty song)
  
• Landslide
• How Still My Love
• Edge of Seventeen

Encore:

• Rock and Roll
• Beauty and the Beast (not sure on this one, so if you were there and have a correction, drop it in the comments)
  

Top tips for the lazy environmentalist

Top tips. Also, stop ridiculous CO2-spewing projects like coal-to-oil.

Vista and content protection

If you're a tech geek like me and you haven't read A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection (also known as the Vista suicide note paper), you should (or, if you read far too much and want an easier method of absorbing it, again like me, Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing fame, released it as a podcast).

I'd like to make clear that I despise piracy - you should pay for your content when required, despite how you feel about the RIAA or whatever moral justification you might come up with. Content creators deserve to get paid when they follow a distribution model that expects payment.

But Windows Vista appears to expend inordinate overhead to prevent copying, even if copyright law specifically allows for it under fair use provisions. And since pirates inevitably find ways around DRM protections fairly quickly anyway, the net effect is denying non-technical home users their fair-use rights, while adding ridiculous CPU overhead to the operating system's normal operations (if I want excessive CPU usage, I'll install Norton or McAfee; sigh).

Get out your tinfoil hats

I don't know why this isn't stop-the-presses, we-interrupt-this-program, our-top-story-tonight news - maybe it's the whole X-Files feel of it. Anyway, honey bees are disappearing and nobody knows why. Maybe it's cell phone frequencies zapping their little brains. Maybe aliens are abducting bees for the honey farms on Tralfamadore. Maybe it's simply a beehole in the space-time continuum. So speculate away. Where are Scully and Mulder when we need them?

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut has passed on. He has been my favorite writer for many years and a huge influence. I'm actually currently reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, a novel that reminded me why I love his work so much. In the book,our protagonist, Eliot Rosewater, is a man born into affluence who prefers helping common people as opposed to living in wretched excess, and he's the one people consider insane. Imagine that.

This is really sad news. The man brought us such classics about the human condition:

• Slaughterhouse Five: The novel everyone first mentions when they talk about Vonnegut, and yet not his best work, IMHO.


• Breakfast of Champions: Absolutely one of his best. At the end, Vonnegut himself enters the story and reveals to his character that he, as the writer, controls the character's destiny. I still remember the scene, as the character runs after Vonnegut, yelling "Make me young."


• Cat's Cradle


• Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
  


• Timequake: Pure concept. Absolutely wonderful.


• Deadeye Dick


• Galapagos


• Sirens of Titan


• Palm Sunday

And so many others. Sigh. First Hunter Thompson, and now Kurt Vonnegut.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

Geography of religion

This is an interesting animation showing a geographical history of religion for the last five-thousand years. Note that it's a spatial representation; it might be interesting to determine a way to show the same data with the numbers represented (I guess some kind of an area diagram plotted over time, but I don't know if you can show the two views simultaneously; I'm thinking something along the lines of Tufte's famous chart showing Napolean's march into Russia in the War of 1812). Anyway, interesting presentation.

Alex Toth Model Sheets

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has some nice Alex Toth Model Sheets, including Herculoids and some things I haven't seen before. Toth had a very crisp, clean style, which I guess made him a natural for animation design. Via Boing Boing.