Evolution

Finished reading a Gardner Dozois short story collection "One Million A.D.", which (duh) had the theme of the far future. The 1st and last stories I had already read in The Year's Best. The rest were all pretty readable. But, the Charles Stross story "Missile Gap" made me realize what the others were missing: evolution as a major part of their theme. I've mentioned before, Frank Herbert was always one of my favorites because his stories wound up being about evolution. As our knowledge of evolution progresses, it is good that science fiction continues to stretch it, as in the Stross story, or in Stephen Baxter's "Coalescent" (blogged 2/26/5), which touched on the same topic as the Stross story.

Accompanied keyboard man extraordinaire Bob Hopps at his Clay's Steakhouse gig last night from 6-9. I took Black Beauty out in public for the 1st time. The owner of Clay's commented on its beauty -- "A class guitar for a class joint" I told him. It was fun, played pretty well, but both thumbs hurt this morning.

Re music in, I have been listening to:

• Delbert McClinton, various albums. An interesting musician who's been around since 1962 (harmonica on "Hey Baby") playing blues, rock, country, honky-tonk, etc. My favorite is the song "You Were Never Mine" off of "One of the Fortunate Few", 1997.
• John Legend, "Get Lifted". West Coast R&B, could be a little catchier, 3 stars.
• The Jefferson Airplane, "After Bathing at Baxter's", 1967 -- I think this is the best psychedelic album made, 4 stars; 5 stars for "Watch Her Ride", maybe others.
• Tinariwen, "Aman Iman: Water Is Life" -- a Tuareg (North African nomad) group. Nicely odd, 3 stars. This came from a college friend/keyboard player Del, who spent his high school years in Tangier, Morocco. He set up this Virtual Tangier Web Site.
• Various blues (John Lee Hooker, Albert King) from eMusic.com, checking out songs for the Wednesday night blues jam. Last two weeks have been good. Getting to do 6 songs, numerous folks from Exstream have come out.

Speaking of Exstream, on Jan 22 it was announced that HP was acquiring it. Closing will be next month, April 1 is supposed to be Day One as an HP employee. Finally made the front page of the Herald-Leader, but no coverage in InfoWorld or Computer world -- of a > $500M acquisition?!?!?

My baby sister sent me a link to a fabulous collection of anti-Intelligent Design cartoons. I posted to KASES, and it was well received there, and everyone I have sent it too has really enjoyed it.

We had a mockingbird eating suet today. We used to have mockingbirds around all the time, but hadn't for the last few years, so I was glad to see one.

In 9 days at this time, I will be on St. Martin, woo-hoo!