Surprisingly Cool

Biked this morning 8:30 to 11:10. Surprisingly cool breezes even towards the end. 33.6 miles, top speed 35.9 mph (???). Delaney Ferry to James to McGee to Shannawood to Dry Ridge to Scott Ferry. Back in McCracken Pike, Huntertown, and Parkers Mill.

On Dry Ridge, saw a red-headed woodpecker. The white bar on their lower back and wings is really striking. Then I saw 3 of them in a tree, squabbling with 4 kingbirds. Both of these I've only seen further out in the countryside, and this was the first time I'd seen either species flocking. The bird book says that kingbirds get their name from being very territorial and aggressive and attacking larger birds, even crows -- the woodpeckers are slightly larger than they are.

Sin #4: Hampering The Use Of Birth Control Worldwide

Man, I started this series February 6 and here it is July 17 -- must be as boring to me as it is to you. Regardless, we have made it to the final installment.

It used to be mostly the catholic church, with its third world "breed, baby, breed" strategy for keeping its numbers up, that was the primary opponent of birth control.

But, the American neo-puritan/conservatives decided to get in on the act too. And, shocker, the Bush administration's decision to quit distributing condoms worldwide and instead distributing information on abstinence-based birth control (oxymoron?) has led to a resurgence of AIDS in Africa.

I also find the posters "We'll wait until we're married" that you see in Tennessee a hoot. Horny youngsters get married too young so they can have sex, greatly increasing their chances of divorce. Family values, my ass.

I've always found it interesting that the "Right to Breed" is so fundamental that it is nowhere in the constitution or law that I know of. The Chinese, with their one child per family policy of the last few decades, are the only case I know of a government limiting that right. We should probably make "Idiocracy" required viewing for all DINK yuppies. Actually, I think that there are enough genes for smartness spread throughout the gene pool that smart people will come from every economic strata, racial group, etc -- so I really don't worry about "Idiocracy". But, we all need to slow down before we pass the carrying capacity of the earth, if we haven't already (says the guy with 4 kids).

A couple of weeks ago I was at the catholic funeral mass for my mother's sister, the last of her generation. The priest was not a good speaker, and, increasingly, I find the religious blather dished out to be completely incomprehensible:

When she was alive, Ann loved you as a mother and as a wife. Now in heaven, she loves you as god loves you, with divine love. This is a much greater love than any earthly love. So she now loves you much more than she did when she was living.

????? Where the fuck do they get this stuff? Do they just completely pull it out of their ass? They take something real, human and wonderful -- motherly and wifely love, both probably based at least in part on the hormone oxytocin -- and render it meaningless by throwing in non sequitur assertions based on nonsense.

It is hard to lose loved ones. But we all die, and that's the end of it. They live on in us in our genes and/or in the lessons (memes) that they passed to us in their lives.

Mythos

Biking at 8:15, not quite as humid, but still got an earache and sore throat after 1/2 hour, so pollen must be bad. Finally went north, Van Meter to Redd to Old Frankfort to Browns Mill to Leestown to Weizenberger Mill (pic) to Payne's Depot to Pisgah and back in Military Pike. 29 miles, 2h20m, 1 stop. After cooldown and shower, in to Louisville for jambalaya at Joe's OK Bayou and then swimming with Uncle Bruce.

On Payne's Depot, saw some young turkey buzzards. Young because:

1. They let me get within 10 ft of them, and then they hopped off of the fence instead of flying away. Closest I've ever gotten to a turkey buzzard.
2. They were .60-.75 of the size of an adult turkey buzzard.
3. They still had pinfeathers on their heads, they weren't completely bald.

They're not as ugly as adult buzzards, but, they're getting there.

So on to the movie review. We saw "Winter's Bone" at the Kentucky Friday night. This was apparently the indie darling of Sundance, and, given that it's about crank cookers in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, one wonders why.

So the plot is, the unstoppable 17 YO heroine, who is taking care of her two younger siblings and her mostly catatonic mother, must find her crank-cooking father because he has used the family homestead as bond and if he misses his court date, they will lose it all -- and he appears to have gone missing.

So what is it about this movie? The acting is great -- the actress playing the 17 YO heroine is from Louisville, and she is unstoppable. And apparently, you don't have to have been in Eastern KY or the rural poverty center of your choice for it to have affected you, so here's my theory.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

This story is completely mythic. It could have been a Greek myth, a Norse myth, or a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. The young girl searches for her missing father to save her family. And the clannish, tribal nature of life out in in the Ozark hollers is completely wired into our lizard brains.

When the heroine gets beat up to discourage her from trying to talk to the pater familias of the head clan, the women do the damage. No man touches her, because that would require the men of her clan to seek retribution.

And when she finally gets to see the grandpa of the rival clan, he comes out, 70 YO, 6 ft tall, still barrel-chested, wearing a giant cowboy hat and a vest completely covered with badges, emblems and tokens!!! He is the tribal headman/shaman, completely channeling Odin the All-Father or Jehovah the Murderer of Children. I've got to see that scene again.

The poster for the movie in the lobby showed people in a boat. So it's getting towards the end of the movie, I'm wondering, where's the boat? But, of course, they save the crossing of the River Styx for the last.

This is The Old Ways. This is the clans of Scotland 500 years ago, or Scandinavia 1000 years ago, or the savannahs of Africa 100,000 years ago.

I really wonder if the writer and director realized they were tapping into such primal stuff, or if they were just telling the story as it came. I think the latter, but to me, they subconsciously must have opened a huge vein directly into the deep archetypes of our species. C.G. Jung would be proud! So, Joe Bob sez, check it out! I will second the 5 star rating it got in the Herald-Leader.

Random Paul: I R A Medical Certifying Board!

Per today's Herald-Leader, Random Paul doesn't like that The American Board of Ophthalmology is grandfathering in older diplomates (who were given undated certificates) such that they don't have to recertify (but he does).

I was Director of Information Systems at the American Board of Family Practice (now the American Board of Family Medicine) from 1980 to 1986. I acted as a computer consultant to the American Board of Radiology from 1984 to 1999. So I know something about this stuff.

The American Board of Family Medicine is one of newest -- I think that only the American Board of Emergency Medicine is newer. ABFM was founded here in Lexington in 1969. It was the first board to the require recertification. Diplomates -- those completing the certification procedure, which includes a multi-year residency program and written examination -- were given a dated certificate by ABFM, with an expiration date 7 years after the exam. The diplomates normally recertified on a 6 year cycle.

The older boards (some of whom also did oral examinations) have gradually added recertification, and pretty much all grandfathered in their diplomates who had originally been given an undated certificate. They really didn't have much choice in the matter, there were legal issues -- like if the state gave you a 4 year driver's license and then came back after 2 years and said "Sorry, you need to renew now."

The 20 something specialty boards are all members of the American Board of Medical Specialities (ABMS). They vigorously police their residency programs and their certification procedures, because they need to prove that they are a value-add -- which, from working with them, I believe they are.

So, Random Paul thinks it is SO unfair that he has to recertify, and older diplomates don't, that he founds his own medical certification board??? He's president, his wife's vice-president, his father-in-law's secretary??? As opposed to the medical boards I have worked with, there the board members and officers are all nationally recognized experts in the specialty.

And probably, this is some kind of "matter of principle" ??? In The Highest Libertarian Tradition???

The man is a nut-job. If he wants to form "The American Board of Nut-Jobs" and certify himself, I am totally behind that.

This is teabagger thinking at its finest: "I don't like it, I'm mad as hell, I don't care about reason, logic, or any kind of common sense. I'm going to take my ball and go home" -- good riddance.

Flame off ...

Back in the Saddle Again

Finally biked after a 2 month hiatus. 28 miles to Pauls Mill Rd prolly a little much. (Tiger)Lilies blooming everywhere, and, on US 33 just north of Troy, a Baltimore Oriole burst out of the foliage and paced me for a few seconds. Black and bright orange, amazing! I have only seem one of those once before, on Leestown Rd about 7-8 years ago, I think.

Orange tiger lilies and the oriole, I almost titled this "Orange" and dedicated it to my son.

I started at 8:45, it was already way humid. I did the 28 miles in ~2h20m, with a longish stop on Pauls Mill Rd. That is such a pretty road, and, when you first turn onto it off of US 33, it has a stretch where it looks flat, but you pick up speed coasting, so it's obviously downhill?!?!?

I made probably 15-20 shifting errors, but none of them were horrible. I guess that's to be expected after the long layoff.

I still haven't biked north and west -- when I was biking in April Keeneland was running so was biking south only. But can't bike south next week -- "Brains for Jebus - The Musical", aka the Icthyus Christian Music Festival, will be down that way next weekend. So next weekend I'll head north out Van Meter.

Second in a Series

Jebus is OK!!! He's in this guy's lung!!! Phew, what a relief!!!

The full story is available here.

May 28: Happy Birthday to Science!

From "What's New", the newsletter of Robert L. Park, professor emeritus at U of Maryland and noted skeptic:

1. BIRTH OF SCIENCE: NEXT FRIDAY, MAY 28, SCIENCE WILL BE 2,595 YEARS OLD.

On May 28, 585 B.C. the swath of a total solar eclipse passed over the Greek island of Miletus. The early Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, alone understood what was happening. The world's first recorded freethinker, Thales rejected all supernatural explanations, and used the occasion to state the first law of science: every observable effect has a physical cause. The 585 B.C. eclipse is now taken to mark the birth of science, and Thales is honored as the father. What troubles would be spared the world if the education of every child began with causality? We might, for example, have been spared the absurd cell phone/cancer myth.

You can subscribe to "What's New" here:

http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1

Facebook = not

So if I post something fabulous to my blog and get no response, no problem.

But you post something fabulous to Facebook and get: 1 child, 1 sibling, 1 coworker. I don't know. I'm tempted to just go back to the blog.

So here it is:

I found Stonewall Jackson in the marble tile floor of our 1st floor bathroom.
What's he done with Jebus? I sure hope Jebus is ok ...

This is about as funny as I can get ...

Sin # 3: Hampering Scientific Research Re Stem Cells And Cloning

After some extemporaneous rants, we return to the extended, multi-part rant.

Religous opposition to stem cell and cloning research follows two themes:

1. The "all human cells are potential people and as such may have souls" magical thinking. As in the discussion of abortion, if we are going to do everything possible to protect back to the zygote stage, then clearly these cells are off limit to any research -- even if they are being held in storage at a fertility clinic and will be destroyed if the parent couple decides they don't need them. Meanwhile, what kind of controls and limitations are there on stem cell research in China, Japan and Korea? Pretty much none. We actually wound up effectively encouraging top foreign-born researchers in these areas to return to their home countries, where their work would be encouraged by the government rather than restricted.
   It says something for the zealotry of conservatives that even in the face of a direct, emotional plea by Nancy Reagan on behalf of her beloved Ronnie -- Ronald Reagan, probably the most beloved conservative of the last 50 years -- for stem cell research as a treatment for Alzheimer's Disease, she was turned down flat.
2. The "this is the affair of god, man has no business here" cant. Fear of the various genies that science can let out of their bottles dates back to Mary Shelley and "Frankenstein". Some legitimate fears here (re Bill Joy and "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us"), but, by and large, my feeling is, you can't keep technology advances bottled up. They will break out. The sooner you realize that and make realistic plans to deal with it, the better.

Here's a little song I made up. I think you can guess the tune:

[chorus]
Don't give me that old time religion.
Don't give me that old time religion.
Don't give me that old time religion.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 1]
It don't know about evolution.
It don't know about relativity.
It don't know about quantum mechanics.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 2]
It wasn't there when they split the atom.
It wasn't there for the double helix.
It wasn't there for the human genome.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 32,768]

And so on ...

The iPad is Here, the iPad is Here!

So, UPS dropped off an iPad here yesterday. I had ordered the cheapest one: 16GB, Wifi only, on the 1st day you could. I thought they started at $400, oops, $500. Oh well. Two reasons for ordering:

1. For a couple of years, I have been wanting a tablet computer that I hold in my hands and sit in a comfy chair and surf the web, read RSS feeds, read Web comics, maybe read eBooks. The iPad seemed to be just that.
2. My wife loves her iPhone. She has hated every other computer, including a mac, that the has ever had. She reads books on it, and browses the web for hours on it. An iPad seemed like a great idea for her as well.

So, it came, I hooked it up to my PC. My idea is this is a shared resource that lives in the family room -- an electronic magazine on the coffee table. I put all my pictures on it, and 7 kids movies. BTW, two features that I hadn't heard about:

1. a button that locks the screen orientation, I would presume for lying on your side and reading in bed.
2. a soft button next to the "slide to unlock" that makes it a digital picture frame. Just as the iPhone replaced many devices (it's a flashlight! it's a metronome! it's a guitar tuner! ...), you wonder what devices the iPad will replace.

So the movies and pix took about 2/3 of the 16GB. No music, I decided, Pandora and web only. Then downloaded apps -- besides the top 50 paid and free in the app store this link had some good suggestions. So far, less than two screens of apps, with the personal ones (mail, notes, contacts and calendar) moved to a (hopefully unused) third screen.

The apps so far:

• the free iBooks reader from Apple. I like this much better than the kindle. The contrast is so much better, and the larger size I also like much better. They give you one sample book, "Winnie the Pooh". The color illustrations are great. In portrait mode you read a single page, in landscape, two pages (the book is open). Tap the screen to get controls at the top for Table of Contents, and changing contrast, font size and font face, and a slider at the bottom for jumping to any page. But what I really liked was: you double tap a word, you get choices: dictionary gives you a dictionary entry; bookmark creates a bookmark there, which then shows up with the TOC; and Search will find all occurrences of the word in the book, or will search google or wikipedia! What a way to read non-fiction or scientific material, a true hyperbook.
• ABC player (free) to go with YouTube. Recent series episodes with limited commercials. I think everyone's fingers are crossed for Hulu to show up.
• Nat Geo World Atlas ($2) to go with Maps. Also free Weather Channel and WeatherBug. Maps look great.
• USA Today, NPR, NY Times Editors choice, Bloomberg financial app -- all free. Readers are very clear and easy to read. The Bloomberg app is beautiful.
• wikipanion, epicurious (recipes), pandora, free books (23,000 classics -- the reader is not near as nice as iBooks, no reason why it couldn't be), dragon dictation -- all free. Wolfram Alpha 1.99, Voice recorder 0.99.
• The Elements, my most expensive purchase at $13.99. An interactive coffee table book on the periodic table, with two pages per element. Tons of pictures and video, really cool.
• IMDb movie database; Adobe ideas and another free Draw program; all free.
• A bunch of games, $9.99 to free: crosswords, scrabble, sudoku, mahjong, labyrinth, magic piano. They all look great.
• A marvel comics reader (free) - guilty as charged.

I spent a total of $45 on apps.

Overall, viewing content on this thing is great. The downsides:

• it is definitely a little heavy. My left hand cramped a few times holding it yesterday.
• the typing is not great (I am a touch typist). In portrait mode, I can type OK with my thumbs like I do on the iPhone -- a person with smaller hands could not. In landscape, I was kind of touch typing the right hand keys and hunt and pecking the left hand keys with my right hand. After I went back to my iPhone, it was like "Wow, it's so light! And so easy to hold! And so much easier to type!". So, iPad is much better for reading, if you want to do serious input I would figure on getting the bluetooth keypad. I saw one review with the guy complaining how anti-web 2.0 -- the web of participation -- the iPad was, because input is hard.

All in all, tho, I think it will fill the roles that I bought it for. I think I probably won't use it much. (I might have used it to surf, read RSS, and do FB while a basketball game was on, but b-ball season is over :-<) My wife seems to definitely like it for web access from the family room. And, we actually had some kids in the house recently, I think it has stuff to keep kids occupied for a while. I've invited my older children (and spouse) to visit in the next month or so to see what apps (particularly games) they would add, because there are introductory low prices on stuff now that may go up later.

I will advise if it does wind up just being a paper weight.

Letters to the Editor

I had a letter to the editor in the Herald Leader a few weeks ago supporting health care reform. I sent this one in Friday night, in response to a letter writer justifying the Iraq war and naysaying the health care reform (which has passed!) with, "In the Bible, the story of the Good Samaritan is a classic example of non-governmental intrusion.". My response:

I would like to discuss a couple of the issues raised by Mr. J. D. Mackey in his letter of 4/2/10.

Firstly, with regard to the Iraq war, my recollection is that, although he was very belligerent and obstructionist, Sadam Hussein did finally agree to let the UN inspectors into Iraq. But, that wasn't enough for us, we decided to invade. I don't think we will ever really know why. My worst fear is that, we were too successful in Afghanistan in 2002, and Mr. Cheney and his friends at Haliburton and Blackwater had not obtained enough data on the possible profit margins of outsourcing war, and just wanted some more data.

Regardless, we invaded, and the blood of the 100,000 Iraqi civilians who died is on all of our hands. This is several dozen times the number of innocent deaths of 9/11. And, no Weapons of Mass Destruction or facilities to produce WMDs were found, and everyone agrees, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

That blood is on my hands, and on all of our hands.

Secondly, with regard to the bible, I would direct Mr. Mackey to Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-35.

"2:44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need."

"4:34 There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

A bit stronger than the trickle down economics of the good samaritan, yes?

Actually, it reminds me of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- Karl Marx, 1875. It's a good thing that The United States is NOT a christian country -- if it were, we'd have to change the system of government from democracy to communism!

I've been answering every teabagger post I see on Facebook, and any place where I normally comment. I try to be rational, stick to just the facts. But, it's so hard. Like the letter above, reading the verses, a christian might say "Maybe there's something to think about here". But, quoting Marx and comparing christianity to communism, although accurate, is basically a cheap shot, a finger in the eye (Stoogism rules!) -- your average christian is going to take offense. Maybe I just need to do this more often to where I can stay on point more easily.

Speaking of fingers in the eye, this NSFW Bill Maher clip also explores physical metaphors for how to deal with republicans.

Happy Bunny Day

In my capacity as Founder, Chief Elder, and Spokesperson for the Church of Holiday Movie Personages, it is my duty and pleasure to wish everyone a Happy Bunny Day! CHMP (pronounced chump) worships exclusively The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Santa's elves are included in the pantheon in a role similar to angels, but anyone attempting to add Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer to make a trinity is, of course, a dangerous heretic who will be excommunicated (following a lengthy ritual purification).

We of CHMP believe that if we live good lives and follow the gold and silver rules, when we die we get to go either to Bunnyland, to help in the production of The Bunny's goodies, or The North Pole, to help Santa. (How did you think they got all that stuff made and organized?) In both places, you are allowed to snitch and eat as much as you want, and you never get fat!

We also recognize The Grinch in the role filled by the devil. But, happily, he gets converted from The Dark Side to The Light Side every year! We are working to adapt this process to republicans ...

Family History

I pulled some off-topic expansion from the last post on abortion: on

the whining WASPs still want those rights applied only to "real Americans" -- i.e., whining WASPs

and

patriarchal societies wanting to keep women in their place to bolster the fragile egos of a male mindset that deep down knows that it is losing its place in the world

Leonard Pitts, Jr. touched on this topic in his column today with regard to teabaggers (disagreeing with Keith Olbermann that it's all about race):

This is race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, "culture," and the fact that those who have always been on the right side, the "power-wielding" side, of one or more of those equations, now face the realization that that their days of dominance are numbered.

This story goes back through all of human history, and even though we left much of european feudalism behind us when we came to America, it still stays with us. It is pecking order, it is love of hierarchy, it is found in everything with a backbone.

I'm reminded of Martin Scorsese's movie "The Gangs of New York". Set in the 1860's this has the whining WASP "natives" opposing the (socialist, anarchist, catholic) Irish immigrants.

So why am I not a whining WASP? Because I grew up being told how my maternal great-grandmother had a cross burned in the front yard of her farmhouse outside Lagrange, KY by the Ku Klux Klan, I would guess in the 1920's. Why? Because they were Catholics and second generation German immigrants. And who were the klansmen doing the burning? That generation's crop of whining WASPs, who in this generation are teabaggers.

During the civil rights movement of the 60's, I was told in no uncertain terms by my mother which side we were on -- we were on the side that didn't burn crosses.

So when I see a sign at a tea party saying "We want our country back", I know that I'm one of the people that the whining WASPs want the country back from. And you know what? A lot of the teabaggers probably are too, but they've made enough money to become Republicans and think that they're WASPs. I've made enough money to become a Republican, but, you know what? Fuck that.

We can build a world where no one is hungry or homeless, but the ultra-rich aren't sure that they would still be rich enough if that happened, and the whining WASPs aren't sure who they would then get to look down on.

We have to put the conservative, patriarchal, backward-looking mindset of the teabaggers ("dumbass dupes descend on DC") behind us and get on to solving the world's real problems -- chief of which is, how do we contain human population growth and build an economy not based on growth?

Still, you gotta love the teabaggers opposing health care reform with "Keep your government hands off of my Medicare". I'm sure they are showing their opposition to "socialism" in the US by tearing up their social security checks and refusing to use Medicare --- yeah, right.

Sin #2: Interfering in Women's Reproductive Rights

So we're driving to Florida a couple of weeks ago. We saw several anti-abortion billboards, with two major messages:

Every day another 3600 children die.

We'll get to the "children" later, but first let's do some math. 3600 times 365 equals 1,314,000. So that's 1.3 million women per year whose intelligence, rights and moral decision-making the religious would like to trample. If breeding age women make up 1/6 of the population of the US, that's about 3% per year.

The second message (I wonder who or what is supposed to be saying this):

My heart is beating after 10 days.

This kind of reminds me of the ancient Egyptian views on the importance of the various body parts. They took great care in their embalming to preserve the heart, liver, and stomach. The brain was thought to be worthless; it was pulled out in shreds through the nostrils and discarded. Oops. A beating heart is a muscle. Enough of a brain to hold the beginnings of a thinking (or dreaming) human mind comes much later.

I had a book that listed the cultural universals of the human race -- the things that all of the hundreds of human cultures known to anthropologists have in common, like shrugging, incest taboos, dogs, and a couple of hundred other things. I couldn't find it to check, but I'm pretty sure that abortion was listed there -- it has been practiced by every known human culture. I read somewhere else that the general wisdom was that it was completely unrestricted up until the fetus could be observed externally, normally about half way through the pregnancy, after which restrictions were applied. So, not so dissimilar to the reasonable restrictions we have now: third trimester abortions only in dire circumstances.

Abortion rights opponents claim that abortion is murder -- taking the life of a human being. This usually is supported by arguments that a zygote is given a "soul" as soon as it forms, or that as soon as you have a zygote you have everything required to make a human being. This also leads to opposition to Plan B birth control -- morning after pills. But, Stephen Pinker pointed out in one of his books, the union of the genetic material of sperm and egg actually takes an indeterminate amount of time. So there is no "magic moment" that can be used to identify when the ensoulment happens. And even if the zygote does represent 50% of the nature vs. nurture that goes to make a human being, it is still not a human being, it is a potential human being. A substantial percentage of zygotes fail to implant into the uterine wall or are otherwise spontaneously aborted -- so nature doesn't put any magical significance on them.

The union of a particular sperm with an egg to form a zygote does represent a collapse of astronomical proportions in possibility space (see "Possibility Space and the Chopstick of Doom" blogged a few years ago). But, it's still just a possible human.

At times abortion rights opponents claim that they are representing the rights of the unborn. In general I do think that the more advanced a civilization is, the more it extends rights. When the founding fathers wrote that "all men are created equal", their worldview was such that "men" meant "white males who own land". Over the years, equal rights were granted to blacks and women (kind of) and non-landowners.

But, we can still see in the current culture wars the whining male WASPs trying to keep rights to themselves while denying them to others: immigrants and gays, and in the case of abortion rights, women. I find it funny that conservatives so strongly oppose the ACLU, which has a single stated purpose -- to uphold the bill of rights of the constitution. The problem is, the whining WASPs still want those rights applied only to "real Americans" -- i.e., whining WASPs.

PETA is another group that is trying to extend rights, to other species. I don't particularly agree with PETA, but I would say that they do represent advancement in our culture and civilization.

So is attempting to extend rights to the unborn not a sign of a more advanced and enlightened civilization? If this were really the thinking, they maybe. But, my gut tells me that this is really about denying women control over their own bodies. It is the same conservative mindset that manifests in other parts of the world as women being forced to wear veils; women being not allowed to drive; honor murders; and female genital mutilation. It is patriarchal societies wanting to keep women in their place to bolster the fragile egos of a male mindset that deep down knows that it is losing its place in the world.

The sad part about the cultures that repress women, the worst of which are probably the Islamic ones, is that they are sentencing themselves to being also-ran cultures. You can't compete in the world economy if you keep half of your most intelligent workers (i.e. the women) out of your workforce.

Abortion is probably the worst form of birth control. Women who have talked to me about it have said that's a very hard choice. And there is often regret later -- but who of us does not regret some possibility from earlier in our life that we decided not to pursue? The bottom line is, it is the woman's decision, and no one else's.

My friend David believes in "the 50 year rule". This is that if you disagree for 50 years, then both sides give up trying to convert the other and live and let live. There are some examples -- the Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants seem to have quit murdering each other. Roe v Wade was in 1973. Ugh, that means the 50 year rule doesn't kick in until 2023 -- 13 years from now. Oh well.

One final note. The authors of "Freakonomics" received major static for suggesting that a precipitous drop in crime rates in the early 90's was due to the fact that it occured 18 years -- when young male criminals enter the "work force" -- after Roe v Wade presumably greatly decreased the number of unwanted children born. Food for thought, I guess.

So the final conclusion: we have magical thinking, "souls" to the catholic church, and keeping women in their proper biblical state, i.e., subservient to males, in the religious right, making what should be a total no-brainer -- let the woman decide -- into a divisive issue that keeps us from solving real problems. For example, health care reform is having problems with house democrats because the senate version doesn't restrict abortion funding strongly enough. Abortion rights opponents say, they don't want their money spent on abortions. I didn't want my money spent on killing 100s of 1000s of Iraqi civilians -- but, I guess they're not as cute as babies, so it doesn't matter. Opposition to abortion rights is probably 99% religious-based. So, another reason to actively oppose religion.

Sin #1: Hampering Science Education re Evolution

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" -- Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973.

Evolution is one of the four great theories of modern science. The other three are special and general relativity; the standard model of elementary particles; and quantum chromodynamics. Thanks to christian academies, home schooling, and things like the creation anti-museum, we now have, what, maybe 10-20% of the students in the United States being taught creationism and intelligent design instead. 90% of the new scientists and engineers in the world are being created in China and India. They are not being taught that folk tales are rational alternatives to one the greatest theories in science. The current industrial might of the United States comes from the dominance of its science, technology, invention, and entrepreneurism since The Civil War. Our universities are still the best in the world, but we risk all this when we fill our children's heads with nonsense.

I often think that the main problem people have with evolution is that we just cannot conceive of how long millions and billions of year are. I have been thinking about a potential teaching aid, in the form of my official gigging t-shirt, shown below: Actually fairly accurate. Our solar system is 2/3 of the way out from the center of our beautiful spiral galaxy, the Milky Way: 26000 light years. It takes our solar system 250 million years to circle the galaxy. Let's call that a Galactic Year (GY). So 1 GY = 250 million years.

Our galaxy is probably almost as old as the universe: 13.7 billion years old -- that is ~55 GY old. Our solar system is ~4.5 billion years old => 18 GY old (time to register to vote!). Life in the form of bacteria and their precursors have been around maybe 3 billion years => 12 GY. Complex life has been around since the Cambrian Explosion of 530 million years ago -> 2.1 GY.

Now let's get down to our favorite topic: us. Homo sapiens sapiens (us) has been around ~200,000 years => 7 galactic hours. On the shirt, this would be around 1/4 of a degree, or .008 inches -- about the thickness of a thread.

Human civilization, in the form of agriculture and domestication of animals, is around 10,000 years old => 21 galactic minutes. On the shirt, it's .0004 inches or around 10 microns -- microscopic. The 70 years or so that is all any of us get to experience is about 9 galactic seconds. So it's awfully hard for us to comprehend the ~10 GY it look life to find its way from single-celled to multi-celled organisms, or the 2 GY since then.

Scientific theories are compression algorithms: they compress vast quantities of data and observations into as few equations as possible.

Imperfect Replication With Differential Survivability

Five words. That's all it takes to describe evolution. Just add galactic years of time, and it will produce all the life on earth, and the human mind and "soul". What a compression algorithm!

Snarky Blogging

After that last post, I find myself saying: "You know, you have friends and relatives who are religious, why not just live and let live? Do you have to keep doing these snarky posts?"

And the answer is, yes, I do. I used to be very much in agreement with John Lennon's "whatever gets you through the night, it's all right" and Del Hilgartner's "hey, take a look around, it's only people". But in recent years, the religious right in America and the catholic church worldwide both seem to be becoming more and more politically active, seeking to impose their repressive, backward-looking, and just plain wrong views on all of us. They are both dangerous, reactionary forces that must be opposed. Let's first list their sins, and then examine them in detail in subsequent posts. The list of sins:

1. Hampering science education re evolution.
2. Interfering in women's reproductive rights.
3. Hampering scientific research re stem cells and cloning.
4. Hampering the use of birth control worldwide.

Christian Football Players

I mean, come on, what can you imagine that's more of a self parody than christian football players. So picture Jebus Crisp -- The Prince of Peace -- putting the pads and the helmet on. Here's this 5 ft tall, 110 lb wiry Jewish guy taking the field with the 300 pounders. LOL.

What position would he play? I guess he has to be the quarterback -- who would want to be giving Jebus orders?

Point of fact, tho, the Judeao-Christian tradition doesn't have much in the way of an athletic underpinning. That's much more a product of the (pagan) Greco-Roman tradition. Numerous Greek myths involved contests and races. Well, we know that as the mental virus known as christianity spread, it wasn't shy about "borrowing" from other religions -- the christmas tree for instance.

Speaking of which, one of my brothers' family has been having their late december holiday observance, with a celebratory dinner and exchange of gifts, on the date of the Winter Solstice, rather than December 25. I think it's a great idea, my kids like it too, probably be more problematic getting buy-in from the wife. Still, the solstice is definitely something to celebrate (the days are getting longer! The days are getting longer!). And this past year I found it natural to dispense with "merry xmas" and to say "happy solstice" in addition "happy holidays".

Back on our initial topic, in case you missed it, this was of course an instant classic.

Evolution vs. Avatards

"Avatards" is courtesy of my favorite tech news source The Register -- pretty much Slashdot meets Monty Python, with Playmobil figures thrown in.

Anyway, my wife and I saw "Avatar" in 3d a couple of weeks ago. Very pretty movie, and the pacing was good. The 3d I found more of a distraction than a feature. Over 50 years of putting myself in movieland, I'm pretty good at it. I think we all are -- evidence of the youth and malleability of the human psyche. Having movieland come out of the screen at me seemed to break my concentration, to break the spell. I suspect that it wouldn't take much practice to get used to 3d tho. This was the 1st 3d I had seen since something at a (children's science?) museum years ago.

As many others have commented, the plot was nothing new: "Ferngully The Last Rain Forest", "Dances With Wolves", "The Last Samurai", etc. I found it interesting tho to examine the biology of the planet. If we're talking biology, we're talking evolution.

Q: How would a planet with a basically a single, interconnected nervous system evolve?

A: It wouldn't.

There had obviously been heavy duty evolution going on: look at the hunting packs (wolves), the large solitary predator (tiger), the large ruminants. When exactly would "nature red of fang and claw" have taken the time to let different species connect their nervous systems?

This guy totally nails the answer: Pandora is a post-singularity world. A global nervous system would have to be ... intelligently designed.

He's Back

So, after last week's (republican traitor) supreme court (where TF is Diana Ross when we need her?) decision that corporations no longer have to shake down their employees for contributions to their PACs -- no, way too much trouble, now the corporations can just use as much of their $10s of billions in profits to buy as many legislators as they need -- the end of democracy in America, replaced by corporatocracy ??? -- I have decided, that given that Dumbass 2.0 was a failure -- every time I stop drinking for an extended period, I start up again at 2-4x the prior volume -- it's time for Dumbass 3.0!!! Woo-hoo, happy days are here again, INCLUDING BLOGGING!!!

Note, this blog will remain the realm of drunken, republican and conservative-bashing, over-the-top SHOUTING WTF IS WRONG WITH ALL YOU DUMBASSES kind of content. My intention, tho, is of course to harvest the kinder, gentler portions of this and reach across the aisle to republicans and conservatives (so they can threaten me with their guns and/or banish me to gitmo).

So, here was my response to my oldest daughter Erica's (founder of www.yogoer.com and huffington post yoga blogger) post on "5 jokes for sissy democrats"

It hurts so bad. The republicans care about nothing but winning. They only care about making the rich richer, and enlist the single issue nut jobs (abortion, gay suppression, gun rights). Their cynicism is boundless. It's a national tragedy that it's so damn effective.

And here's my post to an article at Silicon Valley Insider

Software patents are 100% and completely ... crap. For a 10-15 year period after software patents were legislated into existence, the patent office checked them against their own internal database for prior art, but not against the outside world at all. So now there are 10s of 1000s of totally crap / bullshit patents on file. All software developer employees of large corporations are encouraged to file as many patents as possible. And then what happens? IBM and Microsoft both say "let's cross license" (i.e., we won't sue you if you don't sue us). And MS and Oracle. And CA and Progress. And so on ...

So occasionally someone gets left out of the grid, gets pissed, and sues (re Nokia vs Apple). But, by and large, software patents are about: the big boys making deals, and the startups who can't afford $5-10 million in legal fees getting squeezed out. (Note, that's the average $$$ amount that the legal parasites make on an IP suit).

Patents are supposed to foster and protect innovation. Software patents do the exact opposite. They stifle innovation, and serve only as a tool that lets the big boys squeeze the small innovators.

These people agree:

These too:

Software patents should be completely abolished.

Music-wise, I am totally kicking ass. More to come later. Last week, despite watching dozens of "Law and Order SVU" episodes, I somehow wound up playing the Grateful Dead version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" -- and rocking on ?!?!?

On a somber note, I am predicting that by 2012, Facebook will be gone. Their privacy policies are odious; their signal to noise ratio continues to decline. It has enabled me to get in touch with people (several of my cousins (luvya, Boemkers!) and a business associate of 20 years ago). But, I don't think that their infrastructure is scaling, I am anticipating running the FB suicide app this year.

But, meanwhile, BLOGGING RULES!!! Please subscribe to my RSS/Atom blog feed.

Chris

Vote Democratic

Pasted verbatim from Rudy Rucker's blog:

Tuesday is the big election day we’ve been waiting for. It’s finally our chance to be heard!

Help the Democrats take over the Presidency, the Senate and the House! Let’s get our country working again. Let’s heal the damages of the last eight years.

And don’t assume the Democrats can win without you. Remember 2000 and 2004? A close election can be stolen. If we’re going to win, we have to win by a landslide.

We can have a free country again—if we want it.

Vote Democratic on Tuesday.

TTFN: Dumbass v2.0 Released

Just got back from a 1.5 hr walk with the dog. After 2 blocks, I'm like, "this heat is brutal". No biking tomorrow, I don't think, maybe a short walk. The latest cold front from Canada is now stalled as an east-west stationary front over the Great Lakes. My prediction is we will be into drought for the rest of the summer. The cold fronts just can't fight their way south through the warm, moist Gulf air. The farthest south they get is Indianapolis.

Got 4 good CDs from a young coworker:

• "Blueberry Boat", The Fiery Furnaces, 2004. Nicely eclectic, might be changed to "unclassifiable", long narrative songs, I'm sure some 4 stars.
• "You Forgot It In People", Broken Social Scene, 2002. Again, nicely odd stuff.
• "At Mount Zoomer", Wolf Parade, 2008. Very nice stuff, like their 1st one.
• "Rubber Factory", The Black Keys, 2004. Cooper thought I would like this one the most because of a Captain Beefheart cover (I still haven't figured out which track). My least favorite of the 4, the most bluesy.

Read last weekend "Dark Integers and Other Stories", by Greg Egan. Five stories, I had already read three of them. His grasp of physics, particularly quantum and astro, and computing, makes him by far the best hard science fiction author out there.

I'm currently reading "Brasyl", by Ian McDonald. Not bad, but dragging a little.

I've started impulse buying movies on iTunes: "Jumper" (guilty); and for my future grandchildren (no jinx), "The Golden Compass" and "The Spiderwick Chronicle". All were OK films.

Now to our title topic. Dumbass v1.5 is just not working out. The central existential feature of Dumbass v1.5 was, "stay drunk all all the time". Unfortunately, ever-increasing alcohol tolerance make this an unobtainable goal. I was averaging about 4 oz alcohol a day, and not getting a decent buzz on until I got to about 8-10 oz -- too much. And, no hangover, but about 6-7 the next evening, man would I be thirsty, my throat would be so parched, mildly headachy, and that 1st drink would really address these symptoms nicely -- not good.

So, in a fit of existential spontaneity, I have conceived Dumbass v2.0. The central feature, no alcohol. I have such an addictive personality, I really have a problem with moderation approaches. I was up to smoking 10 or cigarettes at O'Neills on Wednesday nights. No drinking implies the proscription of the following drinking-related activities:

• dining out in the evenings -- I have gone to cooking in the kitchen every 2-3 days, the old dishes I used to make when the kids were here;
• grilling out;
• entertaining (our minimal number of) friends; I have never been social. Stimulants always helped to lubricate interaction with others;
• playing music in public. Summed up nicely by "Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore", Van Morrison, "Keep It Simple" CD. Plus O'Neills has gotten successful to where it's down to 3 songs a night. Last time I was there, "One Way Out" got done 3 times (I played bass on one). I mean, I don't mind the song, but 3 times in one evening?
• blogging -- you knew half of the posts were drunken, right?
• travel, particularly long car trips. If anything makes you want a drink, it's the frustration of flying, or spending 10 hours in a car.

So Dumbass v2.0 was booted last Sunday. Day 7 w/o a drink. Still a little headachy and throat still parched, but no biggie. I canceled the August swing up east, I'll veg at home, my wife is talking about driving to Ithaca with her sister for one daughter, and then flying to NYC to visit our oldest.

What are the fun features of Dumbass v2.0, you might ask? Sounds pretty boring, doesn't it? But, I don't think it's inappropriate to be stop trying to be the coolest 57-year old in Lexington, KY. Instead, I will just enjoy the following Dumbass v2.0 features:

• reading -- my reading had gone way down;
• walking;
• cooking in the kitchen;
• playing music in the basement (I think);
• an occasional movie or sit-down concert;
• birdwatching;
• vegetable gardening (next year);
• getting more massages and variously reallocating the $1500 a month I've been spending of dining out, bars, and alcohol.

By February, I may feel secure enough to hazard going to St. Martin. Maybe my old "no drinking before 4 pm unless you're in the Caribbean" could morph into "no drinking unless you're in the Caribbean" -- or "on vacation" -- or "on vacation or on birthdays or holidays" so I am not totally a sober sad sack. We're also talking about returning to Manzanillo for my wife's birthday in mid-November.

As I get towards retirement, I also want to find some activity where I can give back to the community -- my rearing nags at me if I don't. My youngest has told me that the Fayette County public schools could find something for me to do. I also ran into Henry Wu ("Mr. Wu! Mr. Wu!") a few weeks ago. He was trying to recruit me to come back to soccer refereeing. He's 65, been retired a few years, and refereeing 80 high school games a year. Aubrey Cashman he said is 74 and still reffing. Well, I'm now down below 210 for the 1st time in maybe a year. If I can get down around 180, maybe I'll think about it. Nothing like some good old-fashioned referee abuse to imbue oneself with the love of one's fellow man.

Well, I guess we've come to the end. Those of you paying attention may have noticed that blogging is a proscribed activity under Dumbass v2.0. So this post, #150, a nice round number, is the last. As I mentioned last time, I think I'm out of piquant existential insights. I do think there have been some in the 5 year, 2 month history of this blog, but, again, I think they're mostly all there, not too many left in my brain only. And, there are plenty of higher-bandwith bloggers out there so who can give you music and book recommendations. I have nice point-to-point communication going with several family and friends, I will continue on private channels.

So, TTFN, and good luck to all!

Chris Heinz
Lexington Kentucky
July 19, 2008 12:10pm

Nice New Look ...

Thanks to my oldest daughter the graphic designer, the blog now has a snappy new header, woo-hoo! She has gone back to freelancing, so any of my multitudinous readers needing a fabulous graphic designer can check out her work and contact her here: www.energy7.com

Had an interesting music weekend last weekend. My wife was on third shift, so she left for work at 8pm and got home at 8am Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So 1st night sat at the bar at Azur and had the special (BBQed goat ribs, woo-hoo!) and listened to The Real Deal Willie Eames. Then Saturday, it was Internationally Renowed Guitarist, the Inimitable Ben Lacy. I sat with a musician / computer geek friend and his wife and 8-week old daughter; then some of my neighbors (Lacy fans) came in; then a young guy from work and his friend came in. Both nights I wound up getting to sleep 2:30-3:00am and sleeping in with the wife until noonish.

Finally, Sunday night went out to Lynagh's to see Willie Eames' 3 piece band, The Tall Boys. Great stuff, Hendrix meets Captain Beefheart, very eclectic drumming. Willie was playing an ES-335, a TubeScreamer, a Vox wah-wah, and a 1968 Super Reverb amp (like mine). Chatting with Willie, he mentioned after we had talked Friday, his wife had found the reference in an earlier post to Willie playing the Steinberger. Woo-hoo, another reader, welcome aboard to this wild ride!

Actually, seems like this blog is becoming all about music. I have hit a wall with cognitive science, until I get over my realization that music, language, large brains, basically all of human civilization, was sexually selected, i.e., primarily evolved because chicks dug it.

I have downloaded Python for doing some data work for Google Sky. I also signed up as a Google App developer. Maybe when I retire. After coding 8 hours at work most days, I don't feel much like coding in the evenings -- too many years of night consulting jobs, I guess.

I was supposed to be out of town Wednesday, so I'd told the gang at O'Neills I wouldn't be there. I wound up being in town, decided to take a night off and play and sing in the basement. I love my song book, it is great fun to be able to do songs that I really love: "Unfaithful Servant", "King Harvest", "Jawbone", "Such A Night", "Anna Begins" ...

I have a ton of new music:

• Van Morrison "Keep It Simple" has gone from 3 to 4 stars -- not a bad song on the album.
• Currently listening to Disc B of E of "The Carter Family -- 1927-1934". Special guest appearances by Jimmy Rodgers (yodelay-dee-hee). Around 125 tracks, I've listened to about 30. I surely prefer old-timey country to modern. This will be 3 stars maybe a few 4s. Too bad it's about 20-30% hymns ...
• Matt Sweeney and Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "Superwolf". This is Will Oldham who did the great vocal on the Bjork song "Gratitude" -- plus I had another recommendation of his work. Need more listens.
• Aimee Mann, "@#%&*! Smilers" -- at least it's not a @#%&*! Christmas album! Nothing real catchy, probably 3 stars.
• Delbert McClinton "Feelin' Alright" (1993) and "Cost of Living" (2005). The 1st one sounds like, Delbert needed some quick cash. The 2nd one has some good tunes. Probably both 3 stars.
• My Morning Jacket, "Still It Moves" (2003). Interesting stuff, 3.5 stars?
• Adele, "19". My oldest daughter pointed me at this. 4 stars, and 5 for the track 3, the ever so catchy "Chasing Pavements". I watched her perform this on YouTube on Letterman, then spotted the original video. Wait a minute, I've seen that video before -- I checked my piece of Hotel Russell stationary from when I was in London in March, and there it was, "Chasing Pavements". So, is the song really that catchy, or did I respond to it so strongly because it had planted a seed in my brain in March?
• John Mayer, "Millenium" -- haven't got around to listening to it yet.
• The Yardbirds, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, 1964-1968". After that live album I got, I had to hear the originals. So, 27 tracks for $19 from amazon.com. I did remember the timing on "I'm Not Talkin'" correctly, they do it differently on the live album. And, the guitar solo on "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is still one of my favorite of all time. I've probably listened to it 5 times since I got it.
• Hank Ballard, "Finger Poppin' Time" and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" (1960). So the prior Wednesday I saw Matt Knowles at Lynagh's playing with Johnny Roy and the Rub Tones. They did "Finger Poppin' Time" -- great song, probably hadn't heard it in 30 years. So I mentioned that to Willie Eame's chatting the following Friday, and he said, yeah, Hank Ballard, who wrote and originally recorded "The Twist", other big hit "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" -- also a great song. So I downloaded them both and worked up "Let's Go ...".
• The Tall Boys (of Kentucky), eponymous, 2007. The same eclectic stuff I heard Sunday at Lynagh's. More electric that what I usually listen to anymore, still, there may be a 4 star tune or two on it.
• Coldplay, "Viva La Vida" -- seems listenable, nothing jumping out after 2 listens, 3 stars.

Biked today, 31.3 miles, 2h35m, 1 stop, through Versailes.

The Three Sources of Coolth

So last Sunday did 26.4 miles in 2h10m, 1 stop.

This morning did 33 miles in 2h40m, 1 stop. Felt surprisingly good the last 5 miles. It really helps, the cooler weather we've been having. After my b-day weekend of 6/8, the 5-day forecast has looked the same -- high 78 to 84, partly cloudy, chance of storm. The storms are late afternoon, or 5 in the morning, and last about 10 minutes. Nice breezes, pretty much ideal weather. We fine-dined with friends at newly-opened Summit (the former site of Emmett's) with friends last night, air was fabulous, meal was very good.

There are three sources of coolth when biking:

1. The breeze, be it the wind or the relativistic one from going down a hill at 20-30 mph. The difference is indiscernable.
2. The shade of clouds.
3. The shade of trees. Normally deeper than the shade of clouds.

Put all three together and it's like, ahhhh ...

Too Damn Hot

So, Memorial Day weekend in Lexington Ky (the highest carbon footprint per capita in the US! -- we're so proud !) was 3 days of gorgeous -- partly cloudy, bright sunshine, low 80's. Last weekend was also OK, I biked 30.1 miles in 2h50m with 2 stops.

Yesterday, 94 degrees with about 90% humidity -- I got to Old Frankfort Pike and said, time to head for home -- after 3 of the roller coaster hills on Old Frankfort, I pulled up in front of the Mason-Headley museum and let myself cool down for around 15 minutes. Wound up doing 19.3 miles in 1h50m.

Here is a post to KASES I wrote yesterday, re, "USAF inviting GhostBusters to investigate ghosts at Wright-Patterson AFB":

The U.S. Air Force Academy has also been noted recently as being practically a fundamentalist christian institution. I guess "all superstition = good superstition".

I think that you have to look at belief in ghosts from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology.

I once had a neighbor tell me how after being in the room during the death of a relative, she could "sense the presence of the departed spirit in the room for several minutes after the person passed away."

Was there a spirit in the room? No. So what that implies we have here is a cognitive or sensory illusion of some type.

Is there evolutionary value in being able to detect the presence of another human in a closed space with us? My guess, definitely yes.

Does that imply that one of the many subroutines that has evolved in the human (primate?) mind is one for detecting the presence in a closed space of another person (or animal)? Again, my guess is yes.

Do cognitive circuits such as this sometimes misfire, particularly when one is tired, stressed, etc? Again, my guess is yes.

A very similar perceptual illusion I think we all have probably experienced: you're driving on an interstate late at night, you're tired, you've been driving a while and may be slightly fugued out, you see an evergreen tree around 6 feet tall at the side of the road and think it's a person.

The same chain of logic applies -- there is clearly evolutionary value in being able to quickly identify other people so we have dedicated circuits to do so that misfire when we're tired, stressed, etc.

I think I may have referred before to the pretty good book on cognitive illusions "Inevitable Illusions", by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, 1994.

Was it this forum that had a link to the article about many "haunted" places being permeated with infrasound, which gives us the creaps?

Last Wednesday I thought I was due to be a rock star -- play at O'Neills, then go play at a 2nd jam at Lynagh's. But, I did not get to be a rock star, but the Steinberger did. I played it at O'Neills, it freaked the bass player out, "What the hell is that sound?" -- but, I got to Lynagh's, no sign of David Ponder / Matt Knowles. Instead, The Real Deal, Willie Eames, was playing. Willie plays mostly fingerpicking blues, with some Kinks or Bill Withers thown in, and is a wonderful musician. I'd seen him at Azur the week before and told him about the Steinberger. He was playing capoed at the 5th fret in A and I told him how the Steinberger baritone was tuned 7 frets below a normal guitar so that playing it open you would be in A, but an octave lower. So, Willie did two songs open in A, then capoed up to 7 and did 2 songs in E. The Steinberger sounded wicked growly and low with Willie finger-picking it in A, and the intonation was decent capoed up to the E. So, it totally rocked -- but me, somewhat less so.

Somehow wound up with a trade paper edition of "Voice of the Whirlwind", by Walter Jon Williams, originally 1987. I am sure I read at the time, it's very cyberpunk, and I totally remember a French-Canadian protagonist who says "d'accord" all the time, but the plot was like totally new to me. Still, good cyberpunk read.

Musicwise, my NYC daughter brought me 5 CD's of The Carter Family, 1927-1934. Somehow they are hanging my iTunes and PC. Damn, just when thought I didn't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Also listening to:

• T-Bone Burnett, "Tooth of Crime". A Walter Tunis recommendation. Kind of hard to get into. It's got some nasty low baritone guitar on it tho.
• Tony Joe White, "Baby Please Don't Go" -- for the 1969 hit "Poke Salad Annie", which I played at the jam and seemed to work. We've been to T.D.'s at 2nd and Elm Tree a couple of times in the last month. They play R&B DVDs before the music starts. They played Bobby "Blue" Bland (Turn on your live light) there, he does this odd snorting thing. Tony Joe is the grunt guy. 3 stars.

Had a very nice Heinz 57 birthday yesterday. My oldest came down from NYC, we went to an outdoor concert with her, meine frau, and my youngest at Equus Run on Saturday. Then on Sunday, I grilled corn-on-the-cob, asparagus, BBQ eggplant and tuna, my youngest made a great salad, they both made german chocolate cake with home-made mouss, tres delicious.

A Little Better

It was a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky, a little wind. I biked 21 miles in 1h50m. A little rough at first, but better towards the end. I think that's a good sign.

Walk This Way

Haven't biked after that first time. Our May has been rainy, cool and windy. I did walk 90 minutes yesterday and today with the dog tho.

Played guitar a while yesterday at LexJam. I would say an inferior product to our Wednesday jam at O'Neills. At one point a guy rather than saying "12 bar blues in A with a quick 4" proceded to call out all the chord changes for the 1st 3 go-rounds. People also seemed to be pretty challenged at catching stops. None of my band showed up.

The official band name is "King Chukka", in honor of our lead guitarist King William (Allen). I just set up a personal myspace page, so I could see some music videos that a young coworker had posted to their myspace page, I guess if King Chukka ever starts doing some gigs I will create one for the band. The online stuff seems to be more and more time consuming, with limited return for the time. Probably better off practicing music -- except, the osteoarthritis in my left hand has spread from the thumb into the first finger. Playing in public, the adrenaline rush pretty much blocks the pain of playing; practicing, usually not much in the way of adrenaline.

Re music in:

• The new Portishead, "Third", is anxiety-producing to the extent that it is hard to listen to. A few places I noticed riffs that sound exactly like Stereolab. 3 stars rather than 2.
• Elvis Costello, "Momofuku". Not doing much for me yet, probably 3 stars.
• The Yardbirds, "The Best". I got this off of eMusic after Amazon sent me an ad for a Yardbirds CD. As it's downloading, I notice the reviews "none of these are the tracks I expected, it's some kind of live tapes" -- and indeed it is. Very well done, but not what you expect. I think I'll go on and get the one from amazon as well. "I'm Not Talking" -- I'd forgotten what an odd, fun song that was. The Wikipedia page on the Yardbirds had some interesting stuff. Eric Clapton, their 1st lead guitarist, quit when they started doing more pop stuff -- he was a total blues purist at the time. He recommended Jimmy Page to replace him. Page was happy doing studio work so he recommended Jeff Beck. After their bass player quit, Page joined the band as bass player until the rhythm guitar player learned to play bass, so Page and Beck could play lead together. Beck was kicked out of the band while on tour in Texas??? Page then went on to Led Zeppelin. The 1st Led Zeppelin tapes were actually done as The Yardbirds, but then Chris Dreja, the rhythm/bass player, told them that he owned the name.

It Wasn't Pretty

Finally biked this morning. 11 miles in 50 minutes, much huffing and puffing, much use of low gears. And forgot to take water, which definitely doesn't help with the alcohol / dehydration.

Anti-grackle strategy seems somewhat successful. Removed bulk seed feeders, bulk feed available on a squirrel-proof feeder with small holes only, no sunflower seeds. They're still around, using the birdbaths, but, at least I ain't feeding them much. We have cardinals, sparrows in the small-hole feeder, finches, goldfinches, chickadees. We also have up to a dozen doves, who unfortunately like the safflower seed just fine.

Impulse bought a new guitar -- a baritone guitar! I did not know there was such a thing, so the purchase was clearly justified. It came in with light baritone strings tuned down a step to D. I tuned it down further to C and it sounded great. I have ordered standard baritone strings and want to tune it down to an A -- a fifth down.

Unfortunately, after consulting with two (clueless) support people, I sent it back, because the side dots on the neck don't match up with the main dots on the fretboard -- and just an hour ago, read an article saying this was by design. Hopefully I will get it back before too long. Here's a picture.

Music-in, I've been all over the place:

• "I.O.U" (1982) and "Atavachon" (1986), by Allen Holdsworth. From Guitar Player magazine, "the greatest prog-rock guitarist of the 80's and 90's". Pretty prog-jazzy stuff, 3 stars.
• "Shine" (2008), by Estelle, and her earlier effort "The 18th Day" (2005). She was one of 4 I brought home from London on my "check it out" list. Kind of reminiscent of Lauryn Hill, 4 stars.
• Sam Cook, "Keep On Movin", 1963. 23 tracks, pretty much none of his big hits, but some good stuff nonetheless. 3 stars.
• Mississippi John Hurt, "Library of Congress Recordings, Vol 2, Disk 2". I was looking for a version of "See See Rider" for the jam, really struck by his laid back voice. 3 stars.
• Portishead, "Third". Very aggressively innovative, just got today, needs more listen. I'm guessing 3.5 stars.

I downloaded all the colliding galaxy pictures mentioned in the last post. My favorite was this one. It reminds me of this picture of NGC 1275, my favorite galaxy, at the center of the Perseus cluster, Abell 426, 100Mpc distant and still the bright extragalactic X-ray source in the sky. I am seeing both of these as: an existing large elliptical galaxy with a large (10^5 or 6 solar masses) central black hole is being plowed into by a spiral galaxy whose plane intersects the black hole. As the spiral rotates, it feeds its spiral arms into the black hole. I'm wondering if there's any way this can cause the spiral's progress get seriously impeded, such that it is trapped and eaten more than you would expect. The NGC 1275 picture tho shows much less sign of the elliptical target -- but, it seems like something has to be there triggering the stuff to the west of the spiral shape -- so maybe the spiral is proportionately larger.

Astronomy Alert

A great set of 59 images of interacting galaxies has been posted by the European Hubble group:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0810.html

Galaxy wars!!! They shred each other, in many different configurations, until nothing is left of the original galaxies!!!

Finally

I finally finished "Sixty Days and Counting" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Very positive stuff, that to fix the earth we have to fix everything -- health care, economics, etc. Clearly a best of all possible outcomes scenario.

So, why did it take me so long to finish this book (540 pages)? I started it on my way home from England. I guess my time is being spent instead on:

• My project to enter the Abell Catalog of clusters of galaxies into google sky. The latest post is here -- it has links to the other ones. I'm now out to around 250 Mpc, so the numbers are going way up. My value add was to set the viewport to include the whole cluster. For the hundreds of more distant clusters, I will instead be writing some perl scripts to convert raw lists into the XML that Google Sky accepts.
  Google sky has some great images of clusters out to around 1000 Mpc, amazing. I'm looking forward to finishing my 1st pass and then coming back and doing a "best of" list -- all the ones with dozens of galaxies, and with the viewports set to emphasize the populous central regions of the cluster, rather than the whole cluster.
• Answering posts to the google sky message boards. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. The clueless factor is so high -- "look, it's a spaceship", or "this looks like the firefox logo". And as my son says, they always win in the end. Still, you hope that maybe you can help get a young person interested in Astronomy.
• Playing the stock market. Don't ask ...
• Playing music. Jams have been generally going well, my 4 piece band is doing OK, but needs a lot more work. We are to the point tho where we are trying to come up with some more unique arrangements, to make the material our own. I'm getting busted at the jams tho, for the old black man growl. I had thought it was working ...
• Spending quality time with my wife, when the good doctor is not working.

I'm two months behind on the magazine stack. I need to make more time to read. I have now decided I will retire at 62, five years from my birthday in June. I think I have enough going on to keep me busy.

Music-in wise, I am right now listening to a new pandora radio station I created from Man Man. Four songs by groups I have never heard of, and all quirky and good. Pandora kind of scares me. All the time I have spent collecting, collating, classifying music, unnecessary? This is only the 2nd station I have created there. The 1st was based on The Band, and it performed admirably.

Other new music I have gotten lately:

• Cosas en Común, by Juanito Pascual. He's a flamence guitarist out of Boston, we saw him at Woodsongs, show 479. He totally blew the other two (very excellent) guitarists away. 3.5 stars.
• This Is What Is, by Daniel Lanois. A studio pedal player, an interesting mix of music, 3.5 stars. I was pointed at this by the blog of the local music critic Walter Tunis. It seemed to me like he has been doing this forever, and per the profile, he's been the Herald Leader critic since 1980, we got here in 1981, so I guess that the local forever is true.
• Keep It Simple, by Van Morrison. Van The Man totally succeeds here by keeping it simple, there's not a bad song on the album. 3 stars.
• Life, by The Cardigans. Guilty as charged, 3 stars.

The blackbirds we have are common grackles. They are totally dominating the yard now, need to figure out a plan to maybe get rid of them. Maybe real restrictive small bird feeders, and safflower seed, which they don't like.

My oldest daughter says I should use this picture for my blog profile. I don't think so.

I am also undecided about putting my flying spaghetti monster car emblem on the black prius, which I now have back. There are currently no fish emblems in the parking lot at work, why should I cast the first stone?

Happy Zombie Jebus Day!

That was the subject of the e-mail I got from my younger brother the author this past Sunday. I liked it. And, it's shorter than "The First Sunday After The First Full Moon After The Vernal Equinox!"

In London I finished "Musicophilia : Tales of Music and the Brain" by Oliver Sacks, of "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", blogged earlier. I think I'm getting somewhat tired of reading this kind of stuff -- "The Singing Neanderthals" might have to wait awhile. FFTKAT:

• The brain of a musician is easily discernable in an autopsy?!?!? Enlarged corpus callosum (the large fiber that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) and fine motor control areas.
• Music has proven to be an effective therapy for stroke-induced aphasia (lack of speech) -- the music survives, patients who cannot speak can sing lyrics, which seems to help their speech recover.
• A couple of chapters talked about musical hallucinations -- people hearing music all the time. I think it's not like my hit parade -- or maybe it is, and they just don't have sufficient cycles to listen to the music and think or perform other mental activities.
• There as numerous documented cases of musical people with severe dementia who still retain most or all of their musical skills. So, my vision of ending life as "the human jukebox" has already been realized many, many times.

So I finished this shortly after starting the 8 hour flight from Bristol to Newark. I pulled out the other book I had to read, Kim Stanley Robinson's "Sixty Days and Counting". Looking through the intro pages, I realized I had read the 1st book of this trilogy, "Forty Signs of Rain", blogged September 16, 2004 -- but had not read the 2nd book, "Fifty Degrees Below Zero".

Crisis. Seven hours left on a transatlantic flight, and if I want to read something, I must skip a volume in a trilogy. I refuse to watch movies on airplanes, it has to be the worst imaginable movie-watching experience. So, I said, whatever, and started the book. I'm somewhat bogged around halfway through. There have been enough back-references to figure out what the plot of the 2nd book was, so I think it's burned. This one is good, but somewhat annoying in that the protagonist is a middle-aged man who in his spare time from the plot is juggling three girlfriends. Grrr, yeah right. I guess KSR is getting to that age.

I did get a good musical reference from it: Astor Piazzolla, who was apparently the god of tango music from around 1960 on. I'm listening "Piazzolla En Suite" now, pretty good stuff, 3 stars.

Jams have been going well. The Monday night jam at Goshin's Tavern appears to be dying out -- too annoying to the pool players. I've been up at least twice at the last two Wednesday O'Neill jams, playing and singing pretty well. Last week the jam overall was kind of off, some country people there, and a gay guy doing "At Last", "Summertime", and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" in a very high voice. He's not bad, but I don't think it's an appropriate venue for his material.

The Blackbirds Are Back

The blackbirds came back two weekends ago, at least a dozen of them. We currently also have doves, sparrows, goldfinches, house finches, juncos, chickadees (3) and a pair of cardinals. Over the winter, we also had titmouse (3), starlings, a downy woodpecker, and a carolina wren. I saw the cooper's hawk flying around a couple of blocks away a couple of days ago.

England Swings

Flew to England (London Heathrow) on March 9, leaving at 2pm and arriving in London at 11am on Monday. We were supposed to have had a 6-1/2 hour layover in Newark, and as planned, I took a taxi with my coworker/traveller to Landmarc restaurant in Tribecca in Manhattan for dinner with my oldest daughter. This place was only about 4 blocks from the Holland Tunnel exit, and the cab ride from Newark airport was still $80 each way, woo-hoo! Dinner was excellent, and it was great to see Erica. They had as an appetizer "Roasted Bone Marrow" -- I had to see it. Umbeeleebabul -- 3 pieces of bone on end, some caramelized onions, with bread to spread the greasy, marrowy mess on -- yum!

So we get back to the airport and our 10:30pm Virgin Atlantic flight has been delayed until 4:00am :-( They gave us an option to give us a voucher to take a cab to JFK for a 12 midnight flight on American -- which we did. It wound up leaving at 1am. But, in changing our tickets, Virgin managed to cancel our homeward leg from Newark to Lexington. So coming home on the 14th, we get to Newark and have no ticket to Lexington. By the time they straigtened it out we missed our connection and had to come home through Cleveland, getting in at 11:15pm rather than 6:00pm. Given that I'd been up since 1:40am, it was a long day. I am hoping my lower back is going to forgive me soon and stop hurting. I had a great massage Friday, she really did a great job on the lower back -- it still hurts but at least I could stand up straight.

So England was fun, my 1st time there, only my 2nd time in Europe. I was at the Hotel Russell on Russell Square from Monday through Thursday morning. Tuesday through Thursday, I got up at 7:00am, walked over to Russell Square and ate breakfast there, with a large cup of coffee, and then took a few laps around the square, then went back and showered. In the evenings I drank enough to fall asleep at 11:00p every night. They were only 4 hours ahead of us (not on daylight savings yet), so the jet lag was really minimal.

My meetings for Tuesday and Wednesday got cancelled so I spent both days sightseeing. Tuesday I took The Big Bus 4 hour tour of London. Wednesday I spent 3-4 hours in The British Museum (just off of Russell Square) -- man, did they score a bunch of loot. Many many mummies and cases, and 60% of the statuary from the Parthenon ("protecting it from acid rain and vandalism"). I think I'm getting too old for museums tho.

Then I walked north around 6 blocks to The British National Library. Saw the magna carta and lots of other old books. Didn't do too much for me -- it didn't help that the lights were real dim, making it hard to see. I did like that their central glass cage with the fire walls that drop down from which the air can be evacuated was 10 stories tall. I think the one we saw at the Princeton library (which had the really cool 1/4 inch thick white marble walls instead of windows) was only 5 stories.

I then walked about 12 blocks south to Aldwyck, then west to Strand, past the Savoy Theatre and the Coal Hole Pub (out of the Gilbert & Sullivan movie "Topsy-Turvy" that my wife and I love) to Tralfagar Square. The bus tour the day before had shown me, the touristy parts of London, from Kensington Park in the west through Hyde Park, by Buckingham Palace, parliament, Big Ben, and finishing up with the financial district and the Tower of London, is only about 2 miles, very walkable.

Then Thursday morning we took the train west to Bristol, which is almost in Wales, I think around 1.5 hours. The English countryside was suitably quaint. The houses are all small, lots of tudor (shocker). I liked their streams with little boats and lots of swans.

I felt very comfortable there. I think that having a fondness for BBC series and English movies over the years helped make it feel relatively familiar. My coworker/traveller, who had lived in England, did me the solid of warning me about stepping off the curb -- the wrong-way traffic only almost ran me over once. They also have "Look Left" and "Look Right" on most pedestrian crosswalks through most of London. They also impede jaywalking where they don't want it by putting fences between the sidewalk and street.

It was also weird, the mimic in me so wanted to try a British accent. I was really conscious of the fact that anytime I opened my mouth anyone could tell I was an American. But, I never did. Two or three times, they spoke quickly and used terminology different from American English, I couldn't understand it at all.

I liked a lot of their different usages. I should have kept a list there, there were dozens of them:

• "brilliant", shortened to "brill", for "cool" or "outstanding"
• "way out" for "exit"

So anyway, after a meeting on Thursday in Bristol, home (interminably) on Friday. Food (pub, italian, chinese, indian) was generally OK -- except for a lambburger at "Mabel's Tavern" near the National Library where the "meat" patty was ???

Right now listening to "Here Is What Is", by Daniel Lanois, who is apparently a British pedal steel player studio musician. Very nice and quirky, 3.5 stars. I got it from Walter Tunis's blog. Walter is the Lexington Herald-Leader music critic, who I have pretty much always thought does a pretty good job. I have thought several times that it seems like he has been their critic pretty much forever. His blog says he started in 1980, and since we moved here April 1, 1981, I guess that makes sense.

Theocracy Sucks Even Worse Than Theism

All this foo going on in Tibet reminded me of this piece on Tibet when it was under the control of the monks, from Charlie Stross's blog. Here's a shocker: it ain't pretty.

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/mparen01.html

A Waking Dream? A Psychotic Break?

This happened when we were flying to St. Martin. I meant to blog it earlier and forgot.

Anyway, we're in the Lexington airport to leave, and as I'm walking to the gate, the standard security announcement comes on:

The Department of Homeland Security has raised the alert level to orange. Please blah blah blah ...

But then, after the standard announcement finished, the same voice continued on:

And when you're done with your traveling, why not unwind and relax at Blah resort? They know how to get rid of the stress of travelling.

??? Holy shit, I thought ... commercials on airport security announcements? As my friend David says, is irony dead? I couldn't believe I had heard it. I asked an airline employee how long they had been doing that, she said a couple of months. I sat down and remarked on it to my wife and another woman seated by us. I don't particularly remember their reaction, but I don't think they acted as if I was crazy.

But, that was around 5 weeks ago, I have been in airports 4-5 times since then, and I have not heard this again. And, when I think about it, I just can't believe that they would do that. So was this a dream, or what? I guess I will ask my wife what she remembers about it.

Putting my shoes back on at security a week ago on my way to London (more later), I asked a TSA guy if there were commercials attached to the security announcements. He kind of ignored the question -- maybe not the sharpest pencil in the box -- shocker -- but did comment on the fact that "the level has been raised to orange" for around 18 months. Maybe time to change from the past participle to the past tense ...

HNS

The official rating of the week in St. Martin was Highly Non-Suckish. Mostly just walking the beach, enjoying the panoramic views to the horizon and the many shades of blue in the ocean. We did hike to the top of Pic Paradis, the highest point on the island. I did learn a lesson tho. I did way too much gloating before we left and was punished by the laws of karma -- a smallish ice storm canceled our flight out on 2/12, so we were only there for 6 days rather than 7.

Got lots of reading in. I'm feeling lazy, I'm not going to hyperlink these, cut and paste to google please:

• "The Android's Dream", by John Scalzi. Nicely written and diverting, 3 stars.
• "Yhe Dog Said Bow-Wow", by Michael Swanwick. A good collection of stories, and not much evidence of Swanwick's sometime misogynism, 3 stars.
• "Rewired, the post-cyberpunk anthology", edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. A very good collection of stories. Unfortunately I had already read 3/4 of them. Still, 4 stars.
• "The Lightstone", by David Zindell. My friend Jon really liked Zindell's Neverness novels. I did too, enough to read them twice. Here he does high fantasy. I was kind of freaked, the thing just kind of ended. Wikipedia says there are 3 more in the series. I guess I have to read them now. 3 stars.
• "The Tin Roof Blowdown", by James Lee Burke. A Dave Robicheaux novel. Seemed appropriate to be reading the cajun cheap detective series in French St. Martin. This is set in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, and is very disturbing. 3 stars.
• "Quirkology -- How We Discover Big Truths In Small Things", by Richard Wiseman, Ph.D. Kind of a bible of Fun Facts To Know And Tell. A very fast and easy read on real-life experiments in social psychology, uncovering numerous quirks of human nature. 3 stars.

I took my ukulele to St. Martin, but it's not the same, I missed my guitars. Blues jam tonight, I'm ready.

Just upgraded my Apple TV. They really changed the UI, I guess we've gone from around v0.8 to v1.5. Kind of refreshing to see them hacking and burning -- agile software development rules, yeah!!!

Four Versions

So, I'm listening to the Oscar Peterson and Stephane Grappelli recommended by indogout (thanks again) -- 6 tracks, so far most excellent, 4 stars, and for jazz even! Track 3 is "Someone To Watch Over Me" -- and I noticed, I have 4 versions in 3 genres of this track in my iTunes:

• Art Tatum, jazz
• Frank Sinatra, pop
• Oscar Peterson and Stephane Grappelli, jazz
• Rickie Lee Jones, chick pop

Ain't life grand? (St. Martin in 5 days ...)

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!

Happy New Year

Holidays went well, good family visits and good loafing and reading.

But, have had a cold for the last 6 days. Not a bad one, but enough to make me spend all weekend under a blanket on the couch with football on reading. Missed music last week, probably will skip this week as well.

I was filing some of my youngest's textbooks on the basement and came across "The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution", by Luigi Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, 1995. A lot of stuff I already knew -- I thought about not reading it when I saw the 1995 publishing date, but, "diaspora" is such a great word, I went on and read it. There were some points interestingly presented:

• The Basques seem to be the last remnants of hunter-gatherer Cro-Magnons who were left as the rest of Europe was settled by farmers moving out from the Fertile Crescent;
• The evolution of language and genes follow similar paths across the globe;
• The words that tend to evolve most slowly are: the numbers 1, 2, and 3 and the names of parts of the body.
• Some of these are close to being the same in languages all around the world.

Still having fun with Google Sky and answering questions there. Had a scare when my local settings seemed to get screwed up, but I recovered from it OK. Still need to figure out how to post some of this stuff, if for nothing else but to get it backed up.

Got some cool stuff for christmas. Many new bird feeders. Somehow I think my wife prefers me watching birds out the kitchen windows to playing guitar in various bars and dives. Go figure. There was a hawk sitting in one of the arbor vitae on the left of the yard a week or so ago. It flew off, it had 3 dark bars across its tail. I think it's a Cooper's hawk. The bird book says they like to stake out bird feeders. Still getting juncos, sparrows, finches, chickadees, and doves, and still occasionally see the Carolina wren.

My in-laws gave me Apple TV for xmas. So, the iPod for your home entertainment system. It's pretty cool, can view the pictures on my hard drive, listen to my iTunes, watch YouTube videos (?!?!?). Not sure how to proceed with films tho. I bought "Tombstone" (of course) from iTunes for $9.95 to have something to play with. Quality is lovely, but an hour or so to download and then sync to the Apple TV seems highly non- spur-of-the-moment. I thought I would rip my few existing DVDs, but, you have to buy some third party software to do that and so far it doesn't work well: pixelation, slight pauses, vague slow-motion. Their (automated) tech support sent some suggestions, I need to play with it some more. But, at an hour a pop, it's an easy thing to put off.

So, not sure how to handle movies. We had started renting more movies OnDemand from the cable: $4, starts immediately, very convenient. But, not HD. They are offering a few HD movies, but for $6. The upsampling on my DVD player works great, so renting DVDs still seems the best way to go -- $4 for near HD quality.

I don't want to fool with NetFlix. I think iTunes is going to offer movie rentals. If they do that, and then will let you buy for an upcharge for a movie you really like, that might be the way to go.

I also for xmas got a beautiful nickel flute. I was pleased to find that I could blow about 2-1/3 of the 3 octaves available on a flute -- for about 5 minutes before my lips gave out. So, no problem, I figured I'd play for 5-10 minutes every day until my embouchure came back. Then, after around 5 days, tragedy. My left thumb is now screwed up from bending it back, on the neck of a guitar. Guess what you use to support a flute? Two bent back thumbs. I got a spot in the 2nd joint of my right thumb on the palm side that produces excruciating pain when pressed. And it seems to be spreading to the 1st and 3rd joints.

It ain't fair, getting old sucks!!!