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.