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Spent the morning parking cars. The Island County Fair starts today and the South Whidbey Historical Society, which I belong to, has the parking concession on the lot across from the fairgrounds. Ran around (emphasis on *ran*) pointing at places for people to put their cars. My legs hurt.
More DSL web radio. BBC Radio 3
DSL web radio. A little DSL, a computer hooked up to a good stereo, topped off with real speakers on either side of the monitor. Throw away those computer speakers! A playlist: Bobby Blue Bland - Stormy Monday Blues, Psychograss - Big Monk, Jelly Roll Morton - Grandpa's Spells, Mercedes Sosa - Calle Angosta, Tito Puente - Ti Mon Bo. Hober does a cool thing. They use SMIL and list the song and album in the RealPlayer. My Amazon wish list is going to be growing. Hober webcasts in RealAudio with different bandwidths. No radio broadcast. Webcast only. A playlist: Sonia Dada-Never See Me Again, Stephen Bruton - Big Top Hat, Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed, John Lennon - Instant Karma!, Marshall Chapman - Booze in Your Blood, Seconds Flat - Dance On My Grave, Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put A Spell On You. KPIG is a radio station in Santa Cruz that simulcasts on the web. The webcast in a variety of formats including high quality MP3 via Shoutcast.
thanks to Doc Searls
I've become a speed demon. I have DSL. Hoo Boy! The only problem with the installation was installing the Ethernet card. The install software wouldn't load. Tech support said I needed to change the IRQ. When I called them back and told them I couldn't on Windows 2000 they said that changing the slot would change the IRQ setting. Well, changing the slot didn't change the IRQ setting but it did allow the install software to load. Then it was just plugging in wires and figuring out how to get the browser to connect. Fast!!!
The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer (see the RealVideo® clip below). It's quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid! In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel - so slowly that now, 72 years later, the eighth drop is only just about to fall.
thanks to Bruce Sterling
Robert Fisk: What drives a bomber to kill the innocent child?
If the idea of self-sacrifice is thus comprehensible, it is clearly not a natural phenomenon. In a normal society, in a community whose people feel they are treated equally and with justice, we regard suicide as a tragic aberration, a death produced – in the coroner's eloquent lexicon – when "the balance of the mind is disturbed". But what happens when the balance of a whole society's mind has been disturbed? Walking through the wreckage of the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut a few weeks ago – the same camps in which up to 2,000 civilians were massacred in 1982 and for which, on page 103 of its report, the Israeli Kahan Commission held Ariel Sharon "personally responsible" – I could only wonder at the stability of the survivors who still lived there amid the concrete huts and the garbage and the football-sized rats. If I lived here, I remember thinking, I would commit suicide. But I go back to my own first reaction when I reached the Sbarro pizza house. Unforgivable. What did that eyeless, dead Israeli child ever do to the Palestinians? Could not the Palestinian bomber, in his last moments on earth, recognise this child as his daughter, his baby sister, his youngest cousin? Alas, no. He was too far down the road to his own death, too buried in his own people's tragedy. His was not an act of "mindless terror", the words Israeli spokesmen use. He was the logical product of a people who have been crushed, dispossessed, tortured and killed in terrible numbers. The pressure cooker of the West Bank was his sauna. And he passed through the door. thanks to also not found in nature
Spinning A War To many reporters the notion that Israel is under siege is simply absurd. Palestinian children are shot by well-equipped Israeli soldiers; Palestinian leaders are systematically assassinated; Palestinian houses, orchards and fields are bulldozed by Israelis; and Palestinian cities are surrounded by Israeli military checkpoints that block even food and medical supplies. There is simply no comparison between the daily brutality Palestinians endure and the near-normal daily life experience of Israelis. thanks to The Electronic Intifada "Even the relatively better-informed mainstream accounts fail to convey the brutality of [Israel's apartheid policies]. There are a number of excellent news outlets for those who want unjaundiced reporting.... The Electronic Intifada... is trusted." -- Alexander Cockburn, The Nation, 11 December 2000 -- thanks to ali abunimah's bitter pill 13 July 2001 -- 13 July, Yatta, Palestine--Ahmad is seven years old. At night he sleeps with his family in Yatta, a sizeable rural community south of Hebron. During the day, Ahmad, his parents, and other relatives are staying in tents erected over the site where they used to live before Israeli bulldozers destroyed their makeshift homes, uprooted trees and grape vines and destroyed water wells, leaving five hundred Palestinians homeless. thanks to The Electronic Intifada
My sister reminds me that I have been remiss in blogging lately. Maybe it's better that she wants to read my blog instead of watching television. Maybe not. The last two weekends have been spent in arts and crafts fairs. My gratuitous grandchild picture is from the Anacortes fair.
 Pandas beat The Rock! thanks to rebecca's pocket Harris' 'firewall' is falling apart New facts are demolishing the "firewall" Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris' claims she built between party politics and her role as the state's top election official. I'm shocked! Who would have guessed? thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest Using the web as a medium. thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest No matter what happens in the short-term battle over rebates and price caps, however, the long-term problem in electricity markets remains, and not just in California. Two dozen states have put in place flawed deregulation schemes that essentially give producers the upper hand in determining what price consumers will pay to keep the lights on. If there's one thing we've learned from the California mess, it's that the price of electricity--at least in deregulated markets--will have little to do with the cost of producing this basic necessity. thanks to wood s lot I was even to busy to note my first anniversary for this blog.
Thursday, August 10, 2000 My first entry. Now I can recycle old links!
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