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"There's no hidden secrets. It's not like we're keeping anything from anyone. We've just got a good group of guys." A great playoff intensity game with Cleveland last night. Mariners won 2-1. They move up on the all time baseball record. At 109 games:
TIME 100: Artist & Entertainers - Louis Armstrong
4 August 1901 "You can't play anything on the horn that Louis hasn't played...even modern." - Miles Davis "Louis Armstrong's station in the history of jazz is umimpeachable. If it weren't for him, there wouldn't be any of us." - Dizzy Gillespie, 1971 Happy birthday Pops.
Tonight is the third anniversary of the first Internet webcast of TestingTesting. August 3, 1998, Derek Parrott, Jim Freeman and I set up in my living room (3 living rooms ago) and had Steve Showell and Joanne Rouse as our first special guest. We used Derek's old Peavy mixer amp and two mics. Monday, Aug 6, will be our 114th show. Jim Bernhard will be our special guest and this will be Jim's third appearance on TT. TT has brought a lot magic musical moments. Way to many to mention. Just listen to the shows. And it just keeps getting better. The most important thing for me in these three years? A guestbook comment on our 16th show (the Rio de Janiero Rhythm Kings), 11-16-98, from Zoe. She became my LOML (Love Of My Life). And when the expenses (time and money) were overwhelming she was the one that gave me the most encouragement to keep with it. If it hadn't been for Zoe there would be no TT today. Thank you for everything Zoe. Monday night we will have ice cream and cake and celebrate 3 years of TT. We will also have a great show with Jim. And Brent may show up too. If you can't be here in person click on in for some good blues and virtual birthday cake.
My friend Scott, from Minneapolis, called up and wonder what was going on with the Mariners. They had just swept the Twins 7 games in two series. "Have they no mercy?" The Mariners have been a joy to watch and, with the addition of pitcher Joel Pinero, they only seem to be getting stonger. They haven't slowed down and they haven't even been playing with Edgar. What can I say? They are leading their division by 20 games and leading the second best team in baseball, the Evil Empire, by 13 games. Hard to believe. Now they are comparing them to the best teams in baseball. Ever. At 108 games:
This site has wonderful pictures of a Sparkler Bomb going off.
This page, however, is unusual. Here you will learn the essentials of making an improvised firework which, while spectacular, is also both as predictable and as safe as something that blasts a mighty shower of sparks 50 feet into the air can reasonably be expected to be. I have made many of these things. I have been quite close to them when they went off. I have never so much as lost any hair, which is more than I can say about the results of some of my other half-baked pyrotechnic experiments. Once the plinth is formed, flip the bomb the right way up, insert the fuse sparkler in the middle of the top so that a couple of inches stick out, show the bomb to the crowd and set off for the firing zone. The qualities a firing zone should have are as follows: 1. No groundcover you’re very attached to. The bomb will scorch a circle about a foot across on the ground, so it is impolite to set one off on, say, the local putting green. The bomb will also leave an indelible white blast-mark on non-flammable surfaces, so don't set one off on priceless mosaic tiling. 2. No overhanging trees, power wires or anything else. Make no assumptions about the height the spark blast will reach. If there’s something between ground zero and the sky within a 20 foot radius, find a new site. 3. Nothing nearby that can’t stand a falling spark or two. Most of the sparks go out before they make it back down to the ground, but not all do. Priceless Lamborghinis, high-strung Chihuahuas and piles of dry leaves should not be in the area. It is also quite possible for a spark to fall into the eye of a too-close spectator, so keep ‘em back. If a breeze is blowing, it will blow the sparks; bear this in mind and stand upwind. 4. No law-abiding neighbours who will get prodigiously alarmed and call out the National Guard when a Bloody Great Tower Of Flame erupts outside their bedroom window. This is not an unreasonable response. If you’re doing Weird Things, have the decency to do them in unpopulated areas where there’s nothing of value. This makes it much harder for anybody to complain. thanks to Making Light This reminded me of a site that was one of the first ones I saw on the web. It was late 1995 methinks. I went to Google and typed in "liquid oxygen barbecue" and it was still there! George Goble (GHG) [EXTENDED HOME PAGE] Still photo or an MPEG MOVIE of lighting of the grill with 3 gallons of liquid oxygen. Started with 60 lbs of charcoal, and burnt up 40 lbs of it in 3 seconds. Result is a grill ready to cook in about 3 seconds, and all the old grease, etc burned off. Don't try this at home. Great pictures! Which reminds me of a camping trip about the same time. It was at Second Beach at La Push on the Washington coast. It was with a number of friends. The were all male and in their late 20s. I had my three kids with me. They must have been between 12 and 15 at the time. It was a cool overcast day but we had a great time exploring up and down the beach. That night we built a large bonfire on the beach. One of my friends put a no. 10 can in the fire and put a bunch of old candles in the can. After a while the candle wax was melted and there were flames on the top of the melted candle wax. At this point everyone moved way back and upwind. On of my friends was downwind from the fire, and the can of melted wax, with a cup of water. He jogged towards the can and, as he came up to the can, dumped the water into the burning candle wax and ran like hell. The wax was superheated. The water, being heavier than the liquid burning candle wax, went right to the bottom of the no. 10 can. As quickly as the water went to the bottom of the can, because of the intense heat, it turned to steam and blew the burning liquid candle wax into the air where it quickly oxidized forming a 30 foot fireball. Physics. Isn't it wonderful?
My kids thought I had cool friends.
A couple of links concerning copyrights. This may appear to be a minor thing, certainly not something the newstainment anchors would concern themselves with, but it is another way the corporations are taking away our rights. They really don't wan't you to lend that book to a friend. They really feel that libraries are unAmerican.
IT'S Déjà Vu all over again. A Russian has been imprisoned for criticizing the ideology of a major state power. And, to compound his thought crimes, he's been helping people gain access to books. Is this a USSR horror story from the Stalin-era vaults? A cautionary tale from Ray Bradbury? –Nope. Unless you've been buried under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you know that it's taken directly from headlines in the good old USA. On July 15, Russian graduate student researcher Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested by the FBI shortly after leaving the DefCon hackers conference, where he'd delivered a fairly academic treatise on why Adobe's eBooks software isn't as secure as the company claims it is. Almost anyone with a bit of know-how could crack Adobe's encryption code. Obviously the implications of the DMCA for the publishing world are far broader than keeping rampant copyright violators at bay. What the Sklyarov arrest demonstrates is that anyone who defies the corporate control of books – whether that's control over their electronic form or their publishing-house-dictated content – can go to jail. And oddly enough for this digital age, the Sklyarov case reminds us that books are still a threat to state power, just as they have been for thousands of years. The following is a more detailed review of the current copyright situation.
Copyright Endurance and Change The fundamental concepts of copyright law have existed for two hundred years. Some of these basic copyright principles are likely to continue to endure: maintaining the intended purpose of copyright to fairly balance the rights of the public for access to information with the incentives for creation; providing authors with exclusive rights but limiting what copyright protects and the time period of copyright protection; and giving users certain rights, such as fair use, that restrict the owner's monopoly. The balance that copyright law has achieved between the interests of copyright owners and the interests of the public has evolved slowly and has been only periodically adjusted. Today, however, the pace and the magnitude of change threaten to skew this balance to the point of collapse. Some of these changes -- licenses, access controls, certain provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- have the potential to drastically undermine the public right to access information, to comment on events, and even to share information with others. both thanks to BookNotes
Found a new blog to follow, actually its follow me here.... The following is from following... Fighting Word It's time for the left to reclaim the term 'anarchy.' As it happens, it was during another protest, more than 100 years ago, that the word "anarchist" first made headlines. On May 1, 1886, an anarchist group called the Chicago Knights of Labor -- whose supporters included Mary Harris "Mother" Jones -- staged a peaceful march for an eight-hour workday. The event led to a days-long general strike involving thousands of workers; at one rally, police arrived and without provocation sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing at least one demonstrator. Laborers gathered the next day at the city's Haymarket Square to protest the violence. As the police chief shouted at the crowd to disperse, a bomb exploded nearby, killing one officer. Startled and angry, police shot into the crowd; seven more officers died in the melee, as did four striking workers. Requiem for the classical record
THE classical record is almost played out. The five big labels that command five-sixths of world sales have lost the will to produce. The minnows that swim between their cracks have lost the means to survive. This summer, it looks as if the game is up. Shrub Declares War on Public Information As I suggested before, though, the United States is just as interested in suppressing its own people as those in other countries. Late last week, Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT alleged that the Pentagon is threatening to defund a university laboratory because of his anti-missile defense views.
A couple of links about the Indonesian blood in the US's hands. US role in Indonesian massacres revealed in error thanks to BookNotes thanks to also not found in nature
Twas a busy day yesterday. I finished up a new e-commerce site and finished adding to another.
First Light Candle Art
Ace Leather Goods Now some things on a more serious note. The Kootenay School of Common Sense On June 3, 1935, the "On To Ottawa Trek" began in Vancouver. They would take their grievances to the capital and lay them at the door of the aloof Conservative government of Prime Minister R.B Bennett. Scrambling on freight trains, they "rode the rod" eastward, only to be met by an army of Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Regina city police assembled there by "Iron Heel" Bennett.
Sixty-six years ago, on July 1, in an action commonly described afterwards as a "police riot," the authorities ambushed the Regina protest rally with horses, tear gas, pistols and clubs; driving terrified indigent workers into a sports stadium; detaining them without food or water, behind a cordon of barbed wire and machine guns. As the titans of "turbo-capitalism" slam history's clock into reverse, returning us to the days of extreme class polarization, the pioneers are there with us, lighting the way forward, through clouds of cynical newspeak, toward community and social progress, the authentic Common Sense Revolution. thanks to wood s lot Lisa Sutton, suing Christian Coalition: "It's hard for somebody to believe that in [the year] 2001 people that are still entering through the back door ... That African-American people are still having to enter through the back door. They're having separate facilities." A dozen current and former employees are now suing the Coalition--alleging there is no difference between the Coalition today and the Jim Crow South of the 50s. thanks to wood s lot And on a lighter side: The Gallery Of "Misused" Quotation Marks You've "seen" them. Maybe on a sign at the "grocery" store, maybe in an ad in your "local" newspaper. Perhaps even in a "memo" that circulated throughout your company. They're quotation marks, and they turn up in the strangest of places. thanks to follow me here... both of the above thanks to weblog wannabe
The rigged missile defense test Bogus tests and bullied critics are the hallmarks of a defense establishment that fears facts. With billions in contracts at stake and bellicose ideologues in power, the salesmen for national missile defense must conceal the many defects in their dangerous product. And the press corps, reverting to the bad habits of the Cold War, has done little so far to penetrate the Pentagon's propaganda. So when the next "successful" missile-defense test is announced with fanfare and fireworks, don't necessarily believe what you hear. You are the buyers targeted by this massive sales effort -- and you should most certainly beware.
U.S. will borrow to pay those tax rebates; Social Security may be tapped The Treasury said yesterday that it will borrow the money needed for the tax rebates that are now going to U.S. taxpayers as part of President Bush's $1.35 billion tax cut.
And dipping into Social Security money may be next.
Instead of paying down $57 billion in debt, as the Treasury expected on April 30, the Treasury now plans to borrow $51 billion. "The change in borrowing reflects a number of factors, most significantly the shift in the September 15 corporate tax due date to October 1 and the need to finance in this quarter the tax rebates," the Treasury said in a statement.
Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg and Wilco. Woody Guthrie lives!
Mermaid Avenue
"Mermaid Avenue is the name of the street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that was home to Woody Guthrie and his wife, Marjorie and their kids in the years that followed World War II. Despite the fact that his recording career was more or less over by 1947, he carried on writing songs until he became too ill to hold a pencil. The last years of his life were spent in the Brooklyn State Hospital and when he died in 1967, the tunes that he had dreamt up for these hundreds of unrecorded songs, tunes he had carried in his head all his life were lost forever. The tunes may have been lost but the songs live. In 1995 Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora approached Billy Bragg on writing music to these lyrics. There are over 1,000 complete lyrics in the Woody Guthrie archive. Billy Bragg brought in Wilco to collaborate with him.
Billy Bragg's web site has pages with lyrics, liner notes, and RealAudio bits.
Mermaid Avenue The Amazon links where you can read more reviews.
Mermaid Avenue
Remember the Mountain Bed
Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky, And that's just the beginning of an incredible love song. There is so much on this CD. All you Fascists
I'm gonna tell all you fascists you may be surprised Some things don't change. Timeless.
Yes, one more Tour de France link. The race is over but this writer followed the the tour and shares his experiences.
Tour de Force: Three-time champion sets new standard The next day, in the uphill individual time trial from Grenoble to Chamrousse, he went so fast and close past the sidewalk cafe where we sat, I spilled my café au lait.
President Bush's World is Turning THE BUSH administration's alarming penchant for going it alone in world affairs could have one unintended and salutary effect: Europe, however reluctantly, is learning how to lead. And Europe could lead the way to a more balanced global order. thanks to wood s lot
Jail Time in the Digital Age Dmitri Sklyarov is a Russian programmer who, until recently, lived and worked in Moscow. He wrote a program that was legal in Russia, and in most of the world, a program his employer, ElcomSoft, then sold on the Internet. Adobe Corporation bought a copy and complained to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the program violated American law and that, by the way, Mr. Sklyarov was about to give a lecture in Las Vegas describing the weaknesses in Adobe's electronic book software. Two weeks ago, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Sklyarov. He still sits in a Las Vegas jail. Something is going terribly wrong with copyright law in America. Mr. Sklyarov himself did not violate any law, and his employer did not violate anyone's copyright.
thanks to Scripting News
I've added a new section: Music. (It's also in that navigation bar on the left which is new.) Craig, at BookNotes inspired me to do this. It's all his fault. I've brought the music postings I've made in the past into one location for easier access. I will do other things with this section. I have no idea what those other things might be at this point though. This site is like some of the houses here on Whidbey Island. It's just been added on to here and then added on to there. I finally had to bring a little more sense to the naviagation so I have the navigation bar is on the left now. I still need to redo the archives but they will have to wait. Other sections will be redoned as time permits.
I'm adding a new section to this site and doing some revisions to the site layout. So if things start looking a little wonky (more than usual) bear with me.
le Tour de France Stage 20 | Corbeil-Essonnes / Paris The 2001 Tour de France is over and Lance Armstrong wins the Tour. Three in a row. And this was his strongest ride yet. The sprinter's Green Jersey changed backs today with Zabel finally beating O'Grady on the last day. Final overall results
1 ARMSTRONG Lance USA at 86h 17' 28"
Yellow Jersey (overall)
Green Jersey (sprints)
Red Polka Dot Jersey (mountain climbs)
White Jersey (young riders)
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