Great moments in Jaco history

This video, particularly this clip played a huge role in my younger years. I was a weird kid. I was so obsessed with certain musical performers/performances that I used to collect videos of them and carry them around with me, forcing others to watch as well. This clip is one of the worst offenders. Just a bit of magic captured and distilled to videotape. I guess I really liked the fact that what I felt were some of humankind’s best traits could be captured and represented so well in a few minutes of videotape. Here check this out, and wait until Jaco kicks in his little impromptu jam. High art.

Adventures in file sharing

Ok, I downloaded this same exact file off of gnutella in perhaps 2001. or was it Napster in 2000? An Audiobook of Sun Tzu’s art of war, that some shmoe ripped from a library book on tape.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/444655

You can tell that it’s probably from a library because the speed is horrible. It slows down and speeds up as if the tape decks spindles are laboring away against a tight and mis-treated tape. I couldn’t listen to it then, and it still sucks now. Sometimes the guy’s voice is so low that sounds like James Earl Jones at half-speed.

lesson to be learned here: that once you put something on the internet, it is very very very hard to fucking get rid of. This stupid-ass audio file is case in point. Because you download it before you know that it is messed up. Why people would put it up for download is a little murkier issue. Let’s say you are starting a file sharing site, then quickly, you want to have tens of thousands of quality files to attract users. Therefor you put it up there without even vetting whether it’s a piece of crap or not. It’s like venereal disease or something. once you got it it becomes next to impossible to get rid of.

I can vouch for this one http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4213286/The_Art_of_War_by_Sun_Tzu ;-p

Religion is bullshit

Just heard about George Carlin’s passing yesterday. He is one of the great wordsmiths of our time. I doubt that most of us understand the depths of precision that it takes to put together one of his yarns, much less be able to remember and recite the whole thing as flawlessly as is George’s trademark.

Barge hits Julian Dubuque bridge!

In the “crazy shit going on in Iowa in June” department. A barge hits the Julian Dubuque bridge and is caught on tape. Crazy ass flood.

barge

My Mom’s museum is flooded!

My mother’s museum, the Czech & Slovak museum in downtown Cedar Rapids is underwater.
Czech Museum

I scavenged a bunch of pictures for posterity behind the cut. Click to view.
[Read more →]

George Bush still talking tough over Iran

I figured it out. Finally, all the pieces clicked together. Now, I’ll preface this by stating that it is all conjecture, and that furthermore I am not going to do the research to backup my claim. But never-the-less, I am going to state that I believe to the depths of my soul that the following theory is true, and that history is almost certain to bare this out:

As of the most recent press, pres. Bush is still pushing a tough strategy against Iran. No surprise there. Now, here’s where the theory part comes in. Gas prices where I live are around $4.50/gal. They were $3.50/gal when I moved here when I moved here 6 months ago. The first gas price spike that I can remember ever being cognizant of happened in the second summer after George W. Bush’s entry into office, 6-7 years ago. It was highly unusual, anomalous even.

Then, we all learned of the Bush families ties with Saudi Arabian oil men. If you presume that the Bush family and some of the current whitehouse cabinet still have strong ties with secret Saudis, then it all begins to make sense. The current U.S. administration, which we all suspect is corrupt, is profiting by cohesion with saudis, to mysteriously boost gas prices during the summer driving peek. It’s a brilliant scheme. and none of the analysts can pin the price hike on them. I’ve heard 10+ stories/interviews on NPR where they ask the guy the reason for high gas prices, and the best I’ve heard them come up with is market speculation during times of a week dollar. Not bad, but Arab rigging is much more likely, I’d say.

What’s this have to do with Iran? The saudis hate Iran. Saudi’s are sunni, Iranians are shia. Iran is the one major stronghold of shia in the middle-east. and guess what, in total contrast to what Bush insists on telling us at the urgings of his secret saudi benefactors, Iranian people are just like us. They value family and go to church, raise kids and battle traffic, just like us.

Phoenix Lander Audio

check out the beginning of this podcast. It’s a bunch of scientists listening to the telemetry sent back by the Mars Phoenix lander. It’s pretty awesome. This is the first Rocket-assisted decent onto Mars’ surface. Everything sent to Mars up til’ now has been wrapped in airbags and just dropped onto the surface. This lander is actually smart enough to descend on rockets and steer itself. Science fiction marvel becomes real!

tomorrow

check out the title credits that Nasa lifted from Doom3. A game about Mars. heh.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/phoenix/phx20080327/

Parallels between Iraq and ‘Nam

I just heard a stunning speech given by Noam Chomsky on Alternative Radio. Unfortunately it costs $5 to download.

Once again Noam was a font, a sole stronghold of truth in a messy news-scape about our military engagement with Iraq, and US’s recent history with North Korea as well as Iran.

With Noam’s historical guidance we find out that there have been several times in the last 10 years where things could have been rectified completely with Iran as well as North Korea, and each time the U.S. President in power overturned it or forbade that a treaty be signed.

I did find another download-able audio that is free of cost on Democracy Now’s site of a Chomsky speech from Feb. 2008 to supplicate my need to hear what the latest formations of his thoughts are concerning our current predicaments.

I definitely encourage you to fast forward over the first 21 minutes of this mp3. I can’t believe how bad the Democracy Now title music is. Its like this light, spunky funk, and totally doesn’t fit with the subject matter. bad bad radio programmers, bad.

oberman goes off on bush

well, nothing new here, but you know, it’s nice for a member of the press to not kiss bush’s ass once in awhile.