Friday, May 27, 2005

Meat Beat Manifesto?

Silence Is A Rhythm Too

So, I bought the new DJ Spooky/Dave Lombardo CD recently and was caught wondering...who is Jack Dangers?

turns out he's Meat Beat Manifesto...

My first exposure to MBM was in college...
I was running sound for some band down in the Cougar Den,
and playing Public Enemy loudly before they started...
some guy I didn't much care for came over and started looking through my CD's...

"Where's your Meat Beat Manifesto, dude?"

Laugh, "Uh, Nowhere..."

and I avoided listening to them for years...
up until now really...
now they are on the list of things to go back and check out...
and here's some new stuff, from the blue series...

btw, I dig the spooky/lombardo CD much...there are 4 or 5 tracks with Chuck D reprising old PE songs...so the PE/MBM connection comes around for me 15 yrs later...
go figure.

Achewood - Ray's Place - Doggs here is my advice for the week. - May 17, 2005

Achewood - Ray's Place - Doggs here is my advice for the week. - May 17, 2005:
"* A Gentle Reminder (“Disclaimer”): This is advice from a cartoon cat, and should not be taken seriously. We are not responsible for anything you do based on what Ray says, or otherwise. Do not commit suicide or otherwise interrupt the lives of others. Continue on with your life as though you had never read this column. Erase your browser history. Not for readers under 18 years of age. "

He gives better advice than I would.

I give two kinds of advice...
there's good advice,
and there's what I would do...

Ray however has the smarts for real.
Now I know how to prepare whale meat,
and so much more...

I'm glad I'm not an advice columnist.
People and their problems generally bore me.

Off the Kuff: Report from the Grand Parkway meeting in Spring

Off the Kuff: Report from the Grand Parkway meeting in Spring:
"This 'regional mobility' crap is the same stuff that's been fed to residents and businesses currently displaced by the Katy Freeway boondoggle, and to residents and businesses threatened by the proposed I-45 widening. The subtext is that the need of some people to get from where they live to where they work faster than they are currently able to do is more important than the inconvenience that accomodating them would cause to the people in between. I'm sorry, but my neighborhood is not an impediment to your mobility. I refuse to have my quality of life suffer so you can shave ten minutes off your commute. You made your choice about where to live, you can live with the consequences of that choice. Maybe it's time we looked at alternatives, such as figuring out ways to reduce traffic on overburdened roads, instead of automatically drawing lines on maps and thus rewarding one kind of lifestyle over another."

Right on!
Huzzah!
Bravo!
Etc!

If it takes people in Tomball 1 hour to get to I-45 maybe we should work on public transport that gets them all the way to the city,
maybe they should move closer...
All I know is that building roads that will be mostly empty after the oil peak seems like a real waste.

The Return of the Friday Stunt - Send your picture to Warren

Warren wants you to take a picture of yourself and send it to him.
He's posting them all.

Warrenellis.com

The Stakeholder :: Don't Do It, Tom

The Stakeholder :: Don't Do It, Tom:
"In the episode, a police officer investigating the murder of a federal judge suggested 'put[ting] out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay t-shirt.'"
I don't watch Law & Order anymore,
in fact I probably wouldn't have heard about this at all
had not Mr. Delay felt the need to respond.
Now that I have heard about it,
I think it's funny.

p.s. I got this and the Krugman from Atrios...

Running Out of Bubbles - New York Times

Running Out of Bubbles - New York Times:
"But these aren't tiny regions; they're big and wealthy, so that the national housing market as a whole looks pretty bubbly. Many home purchases are speculative; the National Association of Realtors estimates that 23 percent of the homes sold last year were bought for investment, not to live in. According to Business Week, 31 percent of new mortgages are interest only, a sign that people are stretching to their financial limits. "

You know I'm not a big believer in sin,
but if I was I'd be pretty sure that buying a home for investment
would be one...
at least while there are homeless folks...

So I say bring on the bubble bursting...

Arrest Rummy!

Dewey Dell:
"'If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,' he added. 'The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as (former Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.'"

I'd love to see it,
but c'mon if they haven't grabbed Kissinger yet
I think it's safe to say this particular band of international
criminals will probably enjoy the same kind of immunity.

Ow. That Hurts. Quit.: Charty

Justin makes with the pretty pictures:
Ow. That Hurts. Quit.: Charty:
"Because I was feeling charty, I whipped up a graph to see just when and how long the various threat level changes were."

It is pretty amazing that more folks are putting these particular twos together...
NO terror alerts since the election.
MANY terror alerts before the election.

oh just go read what Justin has to say...
his version is illustrated.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Why Abortion Improves Society

NathanNewman.org:
"This change didn't happen because of 'anti-busybody' arguments but because feminists of both sexes stood up and declared that abortion -- however sad an option when used -- was necessary to improve the quality of life and equality of women in our society. In 1972, fifty-three prominent women published an open letter declaring that they had had an abortion to demonstrate that good people had good reasons to have abortions."

I should be reading Newman everyday...
This is important stuff, and I think most of us who are pro-choice understand it, but it isn't how we're taught to think about it anymore, even by our own organizations...

This summer... Teen angst comes in five shades of BLACK!

emorangers.com

this makes me laugh.
does that make me mean?
that makes me sad.
does that make me emo?
god,
I hope not.

News Hounds: Save The Date! Aliens Due To Land In Las Vegas Sometime Between June 1 and July 15th.

News Hounds: Save The Date! Aliens Due To Land In Las Vegas Sometime Between June 1 and July 15th.:
"This is the start of their domination."

I still think we've got till at least 2006, maybe 2008 before the aliens/reptiles/demons/cataclysmic climate change/whatever...
but I reckon it could start sooner and be a long and terrifying journey!
CHEERS!

Tips for getting good customer support - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Tips for getting good customer support - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals):
"Don’t write overly detailed, wordy support requests. The longer your email the more of a burden it puts on the customer support person. They have to read the entire thing (I’ve seen simple support requests balloon into two printed pages), sift through to find what’s meaningful, and spend more time figuring out exactly what’s wrong. Since they’re trying to help you, you want to reduce their burden. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to help you. So, be clear, concise, and brief. More words often confuses instead of clarifies the issue. Save the wordiness for the thank you email once the problem has been solved. "

Please stop sending me your full show tech with a message saying, "There's an error in here somewhere" or something like that...
send the whole file, we may need it...but please cut and paste your error message into the opening of the case...
PLEASE!

The American Street � Blog Archive � Chayes: “It’s a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article.”

The American Street � Blog Archive � Chayes: “It’s a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article.”: "In other words, it’s a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article as the cause of the recent demonstrations in Afghanistan. Instead, the reason was President Hamid Karzai’s May 8 announcement that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.”"

Is this the next play?

corrente / Leah, Lambert, Tresy, the farmer, Tom, Xan, RDF, and Riggsveda

whattaya think? We let Israel handle Iran (wow, that sounds like a horrible idea) while we hold down Syria? That's how Xan sees it...

Humanist Network News 25 May 2005

Humanist Network News 25 May 2005:
"The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: 'Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?'

Sartre replied, 'Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream.'

Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working.

A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, 'I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream -- how about with no milk?'"


found this from the Humanist Network News diary over at DailyKos...

lost of other good stuff there...
check it out...

Click opera - May 26th, 2005

Momus talks about the kind of guys I work with:

Click opera - May 26th, 2005: "You know, let's go for a malt whisky, but if you're a man you're going to drink as many as me, and be able to pay for them, and hold your drink and not pass out, right, and that's real because you're a real man, right? Hey, let's hang out and let's compete, for Pete's sake!

All my life I've been bored and frustrated by men. Don't get me wrong, men are brilliant, they achieve remarkable things, they master difficult skills, driven often, it's true, by ego and testosterone and sheer otaku obsession. Men want to win, to triumph, to vanquish, to hear their names resound. But these very traits also make them rather difficult people to spend time with. Men talk all through dinner, telling you their achievements or dazzling you with their deep knowledge of a subject. But at the end of it all you feel that no exchange has taken place, no conversation has been had. Superiority has been communicated, something has been vanquished, but it hasn't been pleasant. Like someone forced to a Macdonald's after an unsatisfying nouvelle cuisine meal, you're often tempted to make secret rendezvous with the other dinner guests to do some real talking at some future date."

Ah the fine art of dick-swinging...
it's amazing what men will use as a measure of manliness...
There are folks here on my team who like to turn EVERYTHING into a competition...not just work...
every conversation they have is about gaining the upper hand,
not communicating, sometimes not even proving a point...
Of course I'm sitting here thinking my dick's bigger cause I don't participate in all the dick-swinging...
so we're all infected with the man-thing...
But finding a job that is a little less male-dominated would be great!

Eschaton - File Under: Judges Gone Wild!

Eschaton

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

This judge is telling these parents that they can't raise their kid with their religion becuase the kid goes to Catholic school and the different teachings will confuse him...
It's bad enough the persecution us humanists have to endure...
I can't imagine what it would be like to be a pagan or wiccan right now, right here...
This is a clear case of a judge involving himself in family decisions...
judicial activism of the worst kind...

REAL ART (and politics and culture)

Ron talks about torture, Newsweek, etc...

REAL ART (and politics and culture):
"Look, this toilet flushing thing definitely happened, but for some odd reason Newsweek felt it had to retract the story. Public discourse is at the point such that it is virtually impossible to tell the truth without being dog-piled by the criminals who run this country. And the torture continues."

as usual he says a lot of things I wish I had...

When I was a kid my only thoughts of torture involved Nazi's...
No, I didn't fantasize about torturing Nazi's, but they were the only people I could imagine using torture...
"Ve have vays ov making you tahlk!"
Ya know what I'm saying?
People don't like you comparing Bush to Hitler
mostly cause that makes us like the German citizens who
went along to get along and all that,
but torture is not something you do in the name
of freedom, dignity, etc...
it's something you do because, well,
on some level you enjoy it...
it's not effective as an interrogation technique,
but I imagine in some twisted way it relieves tension
and allows folks to release misplaced anger...

I could go the conspiracy route and talk about the power Bush and his little coven get from sacrifices made in their name...
I could talk about the reptiles feeding off human pain...
I could talk about the cells at Abu Ghraib where the found evidence not of "torture" but ritual abuse...

but I know that when I talk about those things people tune out,
so let's just stick with the above and wonder what exactly WE are becoming....

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.:
"At a White House press briefing Monday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan, pressed by reporters and with Afghan President Karzai in disagreement, retreated on claims that Newsweek's retracted story on Koran abuse cost lives in Afghanistan.
He also claimed that he had never said it did, even though a check of transcripts disputes that. On May 16, for example, he said, 'people have lost their lives.' On May 17, he said, 'People did lose their lives,' and, 'People lost their lives' due to the Newsweek report.
McClellan also stated, 'As I said last week, and as President Karzai said today, and as General Myers had said previously, the protest may well have been pre-staged.'
In other words, Scott, and the White House, have had to back down on their charges against Newsweek because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the Afghani President, have stated that the charges are essentially wrong. The White House knew that the charges were lies, but made them anyway."

Daily Kos :: The Damnation of the United States by Amnesty International

Daily Kos :: The Damnation of the United States by Amnesty International:
"'Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time,' Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said as the London-based group launched its annual report. Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed. "

here's the deal...

I'm stressed
to the point
of paralysis

so many things
I have no
control over
that instead of
taking control
of the things I can
I am just sitting here
staring into space

I would like to crawl under my desk
or go back home
and to bed

Achewood - May 16, 2005

Achewood - May 16, 2005

if yr not reading Achewood there is something very wrong with you...
if yr reading Achewood there is probably something still very wrong with you...but at least yr laughing out loud...

start with the link above, or maybe even a few days before and enjoy the story of Trent Reznor's Volvo and the havoc it wreaks...

mathletes gig

Friday night at Super Happy Fun Land!

Cartwheels In Central Park
Take Another Way Home
The Dimes
Buxton
Basil the Mouse (from Alamo, Tx)
The Mathletes


Joe says Basil the Mouse is really good...
I have no idea who any of the other bands are cause I'm just a grumpy old man bass player...

if you need the details on Super Happy itself go to their website.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

umm....

so there won't be much posting over the next few days...
I'm trying to study for my CCNA and work has been really busy...

um...

go see Needful Creatures, and Night Just Before the Forests.

that is all.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

James Wolcott: I Wish I Could Be There for This

James Wolcott: I Wish I Could Be There for This:
"On June 25th, Patti Smith will perform 'Horses' in its entirety at the Meltdown Festival in London's South Bank Centre. It's the 30th anniversary of her LP debut, and all I can say is, time do fly."

damn...
that sounds amazing...