Atom Feed (xml)
I was working in a nice, quiet neighborhood today when a tiny terrier-looking dog ran up behind me and yapped. Like my mother sometimes says, "I nearly came unglued." I mean my hair stood up so straight that I almost lost my hat. I started to swing my hook in a reflex I've developed from being jumped from behind by dogs, and managed to swing it a little too high at the last moment so I wouldn't take off that poor little guy's head.
Afterwards, I got to wondering why I was so jumpy. And then it came to me...
I watched Quarantine last night. Man, if we ever have a zombie apocalypse like that, forget about fighting back. It's over.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Jumpy today...
Lots more coming out of the CRU scandal
Brian Micklethwait has a lot to say about the CRU scandal at Samzidata. Click here:
Many scientists, commenting in recent days on blog postings, have been declaring themselves baffled. Why all the fuss? Is it some kind of big scandal that scientists are - shock - human? They sometimes use less than noble methods in their fights with one another, making their own opinions seems more solidly justified than they really are, their own data seem more precisely in accordance with their theories than they perhaps should, or would in a morally perfect world. And especially in what they thought were private emails to one another. So? That's science. It's a tough old world, and sometimes, yes, they do fight a bit dirty. As do we all. So, why this huge blogo-fuss about pretty nearly damn all?Further:
Why the fuss is because of the vast, globe-spanning policy conclusions that have been plucked from these in themselves rather minor deceptions. The fraud revealed isn't just in the fiddling of some numbers. There is also the faking of that precious scientific consensus that has so dominated public and official thinking about climate and climate policy during the last decade. The world is being sold a gigantic economic and political upheaval, backed by the claim that all this scientific rough-and-tumble, this slightly dodgy infighting, was in fact a blandly uniform scientific consensus. And the "scientists" (who more and more now look like politicos who have barged their way into science) are the engineers of this political fraud, not just the contrivers of the scientific opinions around which they have assembled their bogus consensus.
Bishop Hill provides several tasty tidbits.
Boy On a Bike reveals this beauty:
* the ruling by the Earth Court of Justice of the abolishment of the debt of the poor or developing nations as it is really a form of global tax to be paid annually by the rich or industrialized nations to the developing nationsI would recommend to especially take the time to read all of Micklethwaite's comments at the first link.
Monday, November 23, 2009
As long as I'm sort of on the subject...
From eternal darkness springs cast of angels and jellied jewels (17,000 new deep-ocean species discovered)
Marine marvels found in the darkness of the deep (more on the same topic)
Dumbo of the deep: Discovered in the ocean abyss, the elephant-eared octopod (some cool photos)
Black Acid Prophecy - A Trip Into Unknown Kadath
Found via H.P. Lovecraft and His Legacy is this (legal) free-to-download mp3 album inspired by Lovecraft. Black Acid Prophecy are Paul Allih and Curtis D. Cousins. I don't know exactly which sub-genre this music would fit into, so I'll call it industrial electronic metal. Yeah, that should work.
A Trip Into Unknown Kadath consists of 12 tracks, all named after/inspired by various Lovecraft stories. Some of the tracks have vocals, some are musical soundscapes. Dark and forboding, heavy, lurking...all the kinds of moods you might expect from music based on Lovecraft's works.
Track list:
1. The Doom That Came To Sarnath
2. Lurking Fear
3. Whisperer In The Darkness
4. Herbert West
5. From Beyond
6. Ex Oblivione
7. Cool Air
8. Shadow Over Innsmouth
9. Colour Out of Space
10. The Horror At Red Hook
11. At The Mountains of Madness
12. Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The full album plus artwork can be downloaded in one fell zip-file swoop from MegaUpload, or as individual files from Archive-dot-org. All mp3s are encoded at 320 kbps. Total playing time, slightly more than an hour.
Should make for some quite suitable background music if you're playing some Call of Cthulhu, or just good listening when you're in the mood for some Lovecraftian music.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Not Cthulhu but...
...still quite horrifying, I'd say.
To post a small-res version here would be an injustice, so go over to Martin Rajmund's site for all the details and click the link for high resolution.
10 more albums #66
Various artists - Love in the 50's (2004, CD)
Various artists - 20th Century Masters: The Best of Bluegrass (The Millennium Collection) (2002, CD)
Donna Fargo - Good Old Country (2000, CD)
Don Gibson - Good Old Country (2000, CD)
Patty Loveless - When Fallen Angels Fly (1994, CD)
Various artists - Real Hot Jazz (1982, mp3)
Jimmy Smith - Straight Life (1961, CD)
Various artists - Anti Sampler, Fall (2009, mp3 download)
Various artists - Brushfire Records Fall Sampler (2009, mp3 download)
Various artists - Anti Fall Sampler (2009, mp3 download)
Love in the 50's is something my wife bought, as are many of these. A collection of pop songs from the 50s that included both more established as well as up-and-coming artists, and I deleted more than half the collection. The big score on this one is Sarah Vaughan singing "Misty," which is one of my favorite songs, regardless of artist or genre.
The Best of Bluegrass is another from the Millennium Collection series and was purchased from yourmusic.com. Not a spotless collection, but pretty good. My only minor gripes are with Ricky Skaggs on the first track (which is okay) and Vince Gill on the last track (which doesn't even sound like bluegrass to me). In between are more traditional bluegrass artists: Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, The Osborne Brothers, The Stanley Brothers and a couple of others. Has "Rocky Top" by The Osborne Brothers so that's a big plus. I always liked that song a lot when I was a kid, except when I was a kid I thought it was a woman singing it. The dude had a high voice.
The two Good Old Country albums are apparently part of a series of more "classic" country singers. I think the "greatest hits" tape I had of Donna Fargo when I was a kid was better than this CD. This one had one spoken-word piece which I deleted. Don Gibson was one of the true greats of country music who seems to me to be too-often overlooked. This disc has a lot of good songs on it, most notably "Sea of Heartbreak" which has been covered a multitude of times by other, often lesser artists. P.S. The first time I ever heard "Johnny B. Goode," it was sung by Donna Fargo (but it's not on this disc).
Patty Loveless was another of my wife's purchases. I'm not sure I'm going to keep it. It doesn't really do anything for me.
Real Hot Jazz is another of those very early digitally-recorded CDs from the very early years of the compact disc. It is out of print and I received an mp3 CD of it in trade for an mp3 CD of my out-of-print First Class Jazz. It's a great collection. Artists include Don Menza's 80s Big Band, Jack Sheldon's Late Show All-Stars, John Dentz Reunion Band and Freddie Hubbard.
Then we have yet another album by the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith. One more for the collection.
The last three are all free mp3 downloads from Amazon.com.
CMJ09 turned out to be pretty good. I give it 7 out of 16 for notable artists and an overall score of 2.4, which is pretty good for these samplers. It's a mix of various kinds of indie/alt rock with one reggae track thrown in. Notable artists/group are: The Antlers, The Depreciation Guild, La Strada, The Generationals, Still Flyin', The Two Man Gentleman Band and The Budos Band. This collection has The Antlers' "Two," which I recently posted the video of.
The Brushfire sampler isn't quite as good. I gave it a 2.2 overall with only one notable artist: Zee Avi. She has a great voice. One track, "Peace, Love and Happiness" by G. Love and Special Sauce, I would have given a 2 but had to minus 1 for stupid lyrics.
The Anti sampler is another pretty good one, 7 out of 16 for notable artists and an overall score of 2.5. A wide sampling of various musical styles from the Anti label. Notable artists/groups: The Swell Season, Alec Ounsworth, Dead Man's Bones, Joe Henry, Booker T., Frank Turner, Jason Lytle. The Booker T. piece, "Hey Ya," is an instrumental that is funky, jazzy rock all rolled into one. Nice.
It's dead, Jim
Global warming, that is. Of course the fanatics will still be flogging it since it gives them an excuse to exert control over others, so...if this turns out to be factual, and it looks like it will, be prepared to disseminate this information every chance you get.
From Andrew Bolt:
Hackers have broken into the data base of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit - one of the world’s leading alarmist centres - and put the files they stole on the Internet, on the grounds that the science is too important to be kept under wraps.Later...(same link as above):The ethics of this are dubious
, to say the least. But the files suggest, on a very preliminary glance, some other very dubious practices, too, and a lot of collusion - sometimes called “peer review”. Or even conspiracy.A warning, of course. We can only say with a 90 per cent confidence interval that these emails are real.
(ALTERNATIVE link to the files. And another link.)
8.15 PM UPDATE: TheMore commentary and a roundup of links at Samizdata.HadleyUniversity of East Anglia CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine:The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight ..."It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."…
TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….
So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.
This is clearly not the work of some hacker, but of an insider who’s now blown the whistle.
Not surprising, then, that Steve McIntyre reports:
Earlier today, CRU cancelled all existing passwords. Actions speaking loudly.
Sorry about the weird formatting. Something was not totally kosher in the copy & paste.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday Night Video: The Raveonettes - "Dead Sound"
The Raveonettes are rapidly moving upward in my favorite groups list. I'm going to have to buy a couple of their CDs pretty soon. Here's another one from them, dark, spooky and sorrowful.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
I am giddy with delight
Untold eons ago, in internet relative terms, there was this website called The Gallery of the Absurd. Sometime in the mid-to-late 90s I came across it one Saturday--this was before either of the kids were born--while my wife was at work, and I sat here (actually there, in the old house) drinking Carlos Rossi red sangria and laughing hilariously for hours. Hours. Well, all good things must come to an end and eventually the guy who had put it together moved on to other things...
Having just caught up on all my blog reading and not being quite finished with my pipe, I decided to pass the time as usual...Scroogling my own name to see what turned up.
I do this fairly often, so I was surprised to see a new link turn up in the search results.
The Gallery of the Absurd is back, or has been back for a while, in blog form. And Derek has re-posted some of his old archives from the old site, which is how I found it because I had submitted a couple of things.
Boy, I can't wait to catch up.
P.S. And he's also still posting annoying J. Crew models.
P.P.S. And scary clowns.
Pumpkin Fluff recipe
This is a recipe that a co-worker gave me and which is very easy and quick to make. It's always a big hit. NOTE: according to the woman who gave it to me, this is a Weight Watchers approved recipe. Of course you can also use the non-lite versions of the ingredients if you want to make it really rich.
1 can pumpkin (15 ounces)
1 tub Cool Whip (12 ounces, sugar free)
1 small box vanilla pudding (4 serving size, sugar free)
Pumpkin pie spice to taste
Combine all ingredients in a big bowl and mix with your electric mixer. Chill 2 hours.
You can use this to fill a graham cracker pie crust or--my favorite method--just leave in the bowl and use as a dip with graham crackers.
Weight Watchers stats: 1 cup of fluff equals one point (whatever that means) not including the graham crackers.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Justice rides a Segway
I saw this guy patrolling the parking lot of the H.E.B. at the old McCreless Mall site and it just cracked me up. Like an elderly Captain America who can't handle a bike anymore.
It's closer than you think
Dork Tower comments on the "2012" hysteria.
(An extra joke is almost concealed in his post title).
Monday, November 16, 2009
A.A. Milne quote
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.Don't I know it.
Signs
I was going to post a work pic today but the glare from the sun was too harsh and it didn't come out, so the sign couldn't be read. But what the heck, this is something I've wanted to complain about in a public forum for a long time so here goes.
The sign which I attempted to photograph is at the intersection of Iowa and S. Mesquite streets. It says that the block numbers for that part of Iowa are 600 to the east and 500 to the west.
It's wrong. It should say that the block numbers are 500 to the east and 400 to the west.
Based on my experience over the past several years--and particularly when I had a job delivering final cutoff notices for the local electric & gas utility--I can say with some confidence that a good 1/3 of these block number signs are wrong. They are either: 1) on the wrong block, 2) facing the wrong direction, or 3) both.
This is probably not something that most people will ever notice, unless you have a job that entails knowing exactly where you are at all times.
After making more wrong turns than I can remember from looking at these signs, I quit paying attention to them except as a rough guide for an approximate idea of where I might be on any given street. If you really want to know which block you're on, you have to look at the house/building addresses.
If you don't believe me, just start paying attention to them as you drive around. I'm quite certain that you will eventually be dumbfounded at how inept the city of S.A. is at the seemingly simple task of putting up street signs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
