BunkBlog

Although my Galileoscopes (ordered in February) stubbornly refuse to arrive, I’m still digging the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Here’s a really amazing set of images – artistic, not photographic – of the planets. Consider it a graphic version of the Holst piece.

This is an artist’s concept of a cyclonic vortex on Venus. Much higher resolution available at the site.

Click for 1280x800

It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. – FDR

Best Buy not smart – Sansa Clip+ 4GB $50, original Sansa Clip 4GB $57. Look forward to the Clip clearance sales in a week or so.

Wouldn’t this have made the movie much more interesting?

We’ve had “czars” for over 60 years, and W had 26 czar positions, yet Obama’s 20 czar positions are new and alarming?

I had the vinyl of this, but all my vinyl disappeared when I joined the Army – it either ended up thrown away or in my brother’s house, and there’s no expectation I’ll see the licorice pizzas ever again.  But, the song is one I’ve been hoping to find digitally for years, and now I’m just giving up. It’s a 12 minute megamix of a crazy assortment of hip hop and rap from 1985, which was called (if I remember correctly) LA Beats Megamix or something like that. Not only is this classic of the era completely missing from any online store, it’s even missing from many people’s memories. Many of the songs which are part of the mix don’t seem to have been preserved even as lyrics on the web today.

The Knights of the Turntable section, from their classic Techno Scratch, is remembered fondly. But what about the section in vocoder that says, “don’t be afraid of these vicious beats” – where is the tribute to that band, whose name even I forget?  Let me up freak, get me some juice, indeed! You only came to the party to rock shock and dance… Ah, memories.

If you’re reading this anywhere but at my actual blog, the little streaming player won’t show up for you.

[podcast]http://www.andysocial.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/LA-Beats-Megamix.mp3[/podcast]

Inspired by the recent news article on Roxanne Shante, I got all old skool and looked at my stack of tapes, hunting for those obscure bits that I’ve not found on digital media yet. I was reminded of the strange and jarring hiccup in “La Di Da Di” at the 2:38 mark, which was not present in the original and kind of obscures the next phrase in complete non sequitur. Seriously, they didn’t try to record an alternate version of the song when they got smacked by the lawyers, they just clipped 10 seconds of expository story out of it. The listener ends up wondering why this girl is crying over Rick and feeling blue. Sure, you’d like to tell her not to cry and dry her eyes, but why in the world is she crying in the first place? So, I grabbed my trusty patch cord, and now I have the original, found only on cassette, full version of the classic Doug E Fresh song on my computer. Take that, sampling copyright violations!

Now, to see what else I’ve got hiding out. Ooh, the LA Beats megamix…

KFC’s new sandwich seems like a joke you’d find on This is Why You’re Fat.

They’re actually selling this in some markets right now – a sandwich made of breaded chicken, bacon, and cheese. I can feel my arteries hardening just looking at it.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. Thomas Paine

The intro to the original Battlestar Galactica said, “There are those who believe that life here began out there…”

OK, so this discovery is not in any way going to support the rather outre hypothesis of panspermia, but it’s interesting nonetheless, to see that perhaps amino acid creation is not as rare as some would have us believe. Unless, of course, this comet was once part of our planet, and then somehow achieved escape velocity without destroying all the delicate biological bits stuck in it? I’ll take Occam’s Razor for $1000, Alex.

Science is cool.

Supermajority doesn’t mean they can accomplish anything. http://tinyurl.com/qg2kbo Still not an organized party. Surprised?

I’m not sure why so many people on the Right seem to confuse issues and conflate things which are separate and completely unrelated to one another. For instance, during our local Tea Party II this July (Tea Party II, Electric Boogaloo?), instead of sticking to the point of the group (Taxed Enough Already), and only discussing tax-related issues, they wandered off into the fringe areas of Birthers and illegal aliens and any number of other things. The birthers are insane, and the other issues, even if legitimate points to discuss, are just clouding the waters of their own rally. Want to protest high taxes, ignoring the lower taxes on all but the very rich?  Go for it. Bring up birth certificates and migrant workers and NAFTA and every other John Birch Society conspiracy theory?  Not helping your case, buddy.

Now, we have the 2nd Amendment folks coming to protest health care reform. Huh? I’m a great fan of the Constitution, with all its amendments. It is the supreme law of the land, and is able to be modified through force of great will by the citizenry, so reflects the ideals of the country to a great degree. Those ideals include the government not infringing on our rights in the areas of speech, religion, gathering, trials, and yes even bearing arms. I spent 12 years defending the Constitution; good for anyone who follows its guidelines. When a photographer gets treated as a terrorist for taking a picture of a public structure from a public place, I am thrilled to see people rise up and proclaim that photographer’s rights – defending others keeps our own rights intact as well.

But, why are these people bringing weapons to a health care reform protest (leaving aside why anyone not employed by insurance companies or already on government-subsidized health care would protest the minor and remarkably toothless reforms that will likely get passed)? Are these just normal citizens, who normally take their weapons wherever they go? That seems unlikely. I doubt the fellow in the tie with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder will be taking that rifle to work with him. He deliberately brought it to this event. If it’s not an implicit threat of violence, what is it? I may be looking at things rather simplistically, but this sure looks like someone saying, “if you don’t do what I say, I’ll shoot someone.”

As of this school year, Texas public schools will be required to teach the Bible. In public schools. After our illustrious Governor appointed the second creationist loon in a row to head the state Board of Education.

Why does the GOP want other people to laugh at Texas?

HEB waterproof SPF 50 sunscreen is either not waterproof or not sunscreen…discuss.

We’re spending a long weekend in Corpus Christi, concentrating on kayaking activities, but doing other touristy things as well. This morning was our introduction to kayak surfing, in an area known for relatively low surf because we’re big wimps. As I’m paddling out to hit some nice swells after a half hour or so, Kat yells, “FIN!” I turned to see a nice fin surfacing about 20 yards away. Fortunately, we recognized the fin as a dolphin relatively quickly (the constant diving and surfacing was another indicator), and then we watched and hoped there were other pod members nearby to entertain us, but to no avail.

This afternoon we watched some other dolphins at the aquarium, but even though we were quite amused by the near-constant pooing those critters were doing, they were not anywhere as memorable as the close encounter in the ocean off Padre Island.

Tomorrow is a paddling trail excursion at Port Aransas; wish us luck – there is a common recomendation to take a waterproof GPS with you. 🙂

Microsoft, which recently applied for a patent on XML documents (how one can patent an open standard that was written by others remains a mystery), has lost a $200 million lawsuit for violating someone’s patent on XML documents. Now, MS is ordered to cease selling any copies of Microsoft Word that work with XML. That would be Office 2007 and the upcoming Office 2010 or Word V13 or whatever they’re calling it.

Software patents are good why?

Once again, a Democrat finds a new and entertaining way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. For want of a signature…

It’s just so easy.

RIP John Hughes.

How do I reconcile not trusting the cloud with using Gmail as a universal inbox? I’m a complicated man. As Lewis Carroll said, sometimes I’ve believed six impossible things before breakfast.

I consider email to be essentially ephemeral to begin with, so if Gmail were to suddenly disappear, it wouldn’t really kill me. Also, it seems that webmail is one cloud service that has staying power, as contrasted with the vast litany of failed and gone sites I listed previously. Basically, I consider the convenience of having my email easily accessible everywhere to be more important than the slight possibility of an outage.

Of course, I’m also a paranoid geek. I copy all my email from Gmail and put it into an Mbox file in Eudora, then back that up. So, if Gmail were to die, I’d still be able to bring my email into Thunderbird or the seemingly-mythical Eudora 8 or Pegasus or Mutt or any number of Mbox-based email clients. This seems to be a decent compromise – I don’t trust the cloud, but email isn’t really permanent anyway. It is quite funky to see email from 1998 in my Gmail listing, though.  🙂