For the 30th anniversary of 5/8/77 Ithaca's Mayor says it all :
Proclamation from the Mayor of the City of Ithaca
Whereas, the Grateful Dead have been recognized by many highly credible organizations, individuals and entities including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as significantly important and integral to the
musical and social fabric of our contemporary culture, and whereas, on May 8th, 1977 the Grateful Dead performed in Barton Hall on the campus of Cornell University in the city of Ithaca New York, a concert that is widely acknowledged and regarded as a defining and transcendent occasion and example of the art of contemporary musical improvisation, collaboration, musicianship, and performance, and whereas, many tens of thousands of individuals who were not in attendance that night in Barton Hall, have become knowledgeable & familiar with the extraordinary nature of the performance on May 8th 1977 through the trading and sharing of recordings of the show, and whereas, the cultural identity and perceptions of Ithaca as a community, have been informed and bolstered by the widespread acknowledgement of the magic of May 8th, 1977, and whereas, it has been said many times by many people that, “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.”
Nope, there is nothing like a Grateful Dead Concert. Though, Railroad Earth may make a run at them if they keep at it for a few more years and continue to develop their improvisational capabilities and evolve their ability to weave songs together.
If you live near Ithaca check out Dark Star Orchestra performing a 30th anniversary version of 5/8/77. DSO is, imho, the best Grateful Dead cover band around. They do a wonderful job of recreating complete GD concerts!
In the meantime, You will not go wrong giving a listen to this MP3 stream of a 5-8-77 audience recording. Do put your head phones on if possible!
Via the GD Hour Log Blog.
It is tax freedom day 2007:
Tax Freedom Day® will fall on April 30 in 2007, according to the Tax Foundation's annual calculation using the latest government data on income and taxes. (Click here to read the full study)."Tax freedom will come two days later in 2007 than it did in 2006," said Tax Foundation President Scott A. Hodge, "and fully 12 days later than in 2003, when tax cuts caused Tax Freedom Day to arrive comparatively early, on April 18."
However, 2007's Tax Freedom Day is still slightly arlier than it was in 2000, when the economic boom, the tech bubble and higher tax rates pushed tax burdens to a record high, and Tax Freedom Day was postponed until May 5.
Ahhhh..., it feels as though a yoke has been lifted from my shoulders. Now, if only the withholdings would stop.
Via Fergie.
If you can't concentrate you may not win your next light sword battle or make your next put:
Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user's forehead and reads the brain's electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.Read the rest of the article for the beginnings of what could be an interesting debate over both intended and unintended benefits of bringing biofeedback to the popular market.
...Technology from NeuroSky and other startups could make video games more mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but their thoughts.
Adding biofeedback to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour," for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put. In the popular action game "Grand Theft Auto," players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.
NeuroSky's prototype measures a person's baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.
Will learning to keep a light sword bright improve our ability to focus on other tasks?
Update: Here is a picture of Neurosky's prototype and here is NeuroSky's homepage.<.p>
Oh, I won't be buying or reading his new book.
We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?
Do link to the Ark every week!
You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.
Cats
Dogs
Birds
Invertebrates
Other Vertebrates
In Memoriam
Didn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 161th edition , 4/22, is up at The Scratching Post. The 162nd edition will be hosted on 4/29 by Catymology . There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging #98 hosted on 4/28-29 by S'kat and the Food . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.
Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 47th edition is up and hosted by Bell Tower Birding. The 48th edition will be hosted on 5/3 by Greg Laden.
For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 19th edition is up and hosted by Burning Silo. The 20th edition will be hosted at the end of April by, well, it xxxxx could be you.
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival
Note for Haloscan Users:Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.
Note for Typepad Users:
Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.
The 24th Cavalcade of Risk is up at The Digerati Life.
What's a Cavalcade of Risk, you ask. Well, here you go:
Welcome to the Carnival of Risk #24, where we showcase articles that discuss risk in all its forms, particularly touching on the subjects of risk management, insurance, investing and other articles on business and financial risk.
Just basic stuff we should all understand a bit about.
Chris has a list of 60 who are to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre.
At Cafe Hayek Don Boudreaux reacts to a New York Review of Books review by singing the praises of globalization :
I doubt that McKibben knows what he's talking about. That is, I doubt that he has any real appreciation for just how much our lives depend upon global commerce and industry. I doubt that he understands that each of us daily depends for our standards of living -- indeed, for our very lives -- on the creativity and efforts of tens of millions of people worldwide.The good folks at Catallarchy pick up the drum beat:
It’s illuminating how expensive these experiments in buying local-only turn out to be. You never seem to hear about “working class” people rejecting global capitalism to prove some sort of ecopolitical holier-than-thou point. Maybe because they are too busy shopping at WalMart just trying to get by. Eliminating or reducing global trade would make their lives unbearably more difficult, if not impossible.This is true enough. Pull the plug now on today's global economy and things would look pretty bleak for anyone not currently "living locally."
But, it is surprising to hear such supposedly strong free market supporters praising so loudly a structure so substantially built and maintained by the force of the state.
Boudreaux goes on to say:
...McKibben's prescription would ironcially also likely require a vast, global government possessing awesome powers to force we humans to live -- and to keep living -- in local economies.Right.
Just like our current version of a global economy is subsidized and maintained by vast government structures possessing awesome powers.
It seems pretty straight forward that if you increase the rate of human interaction the opportunity for wealth creation will also increase. Now there has been some additional quantification of this phenomena:
Cities have an almost magical ability, spurred by increased human interaction, to stimulate innovation and increase wealth.If this is the case it would seem appropriate for state and local governments to focus their energies* on infrastructure elements that will increase human interaction. Instead they seem to spend a massive amount of effort on building more roads (an oft failed commons), on allegedly decreasing the time it takes to get from place to place.
Shouldn't they, rather, be focusing on eliminating cars from large segments of cities so that barriers to interaction such as autococoons, freeways, ever lengthening trips to the store, and commutes are minimized?
Via Speedmaster.
Update: See this article on commuting in the New Yorker. Via Buzz Anderson.
*To the extent it is appropriate for them to focus on anything beyond public safety and maintaining a judicial system.
The Feline Theocracy is hosting this week's Carnival of the Cats and Pet's Garden Blog is hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #98.
Eric found Alanis Morissette's answer to the Black Eyed Peas.
We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?
Do link to the Ark every week!
You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.
For social bookmarking click on the Socialize This Link at the bottom of this post.
Cats
Dogs
Other Vertebrates
Birds
Invertebrates
In Memoriam
Didn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 160th edition , 4/15, is up at Books for Israel. The 161st edition will be hosted on 4/22 by The Scratching Post . There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging #98 hosted on 4/21-22 by Pet's Garden Blog . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.
Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 47th edition is up and hosted by Bell Tower Birding. The 48th edition will be hosted on 5/3 by Greg Laden.
For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 19th edition is up and hosted by Burning Silo. The 20th edition will be hosted at the end of April by, well, it xxxxx could be you.
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival
Note for Haloscan Users:Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.
Note for Typepad Users:
Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.
I and the Bird #47 is up at Bell Tower Birding.
Lots of good stuff about names, identification, range, migration, habitat, food, behavior and, yes, sex.
A guy who spends $400/haircut has got his priorities awry. I'd be happy to take him to a barber that will take care of him for $15-20.
Perhaps his campaign committee can donate the difference to the charity of his choice.
Question for those of you who donated to his campaign committee: is this really how you expected your money to be spent?
Via the big mattress.
Books for Israel has the 160th Carnival of the Cats up and A Byootaful Life has Weekend Cat Blogging.
As usual, go skritch'm.
We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?
Do link to the Ark every week!
You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.
Alert: As we are riding the rails updates will be intermittant and frequently delayed for long periods...Especially after 6:00 PM GMT Friday.
Cats
Other Vertebrates
Invertebrates
Dogs
Birds
In Memoriam
Didn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 158th edition , 4/8, is up at Bad Kitty Cats. The 160th edition will be hosted on 4/15 by Books For Israel . There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging #97 hosted on 4/14-15 by A Byootaful Life . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.
Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 46th edition is up and hosted by lovely dark and deep. The 47th edition will be hosted on 4/19 by Bell Tower Birding.
For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 19th edition is up and hosted by Burning Silo. The 20th edition will be hosted at the end of April by, well, it could be you.
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival
Note for Haloscan Users:Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.
Note for Typepad Users:
Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.
....across that Railroad Earth.
Modulator staff, family and friends will be joining throngs of Hobos in Seattle tonight, Portland Friday night and Eugene Saturday night.
Join us and/or join in later on the tour.
Tangled Bank #77 is up at Aetiology. Tara has a bunch of material on mammals and the KT-Extinction, sex, medical issues, climate change and more.
Enough to use up all your spare time and more this weekend.
I guess this goes in the category of if you don't ask for it you for sure won't get it:
...Gary -- who calls himself ''the Brioni man'' because he favors the Italian designer's suits -- is asking Circuit Court Judge Leroy Moe to approve at least $11,000 an hour, for a total of $24.3 million.
.....
Gary's proposed $11,000 hourly fee, for 2,211.5 hours of work, is 11 times more than any other lawyer on the case is seeking. Manuel Socias, Gary's co-lead counsel, billed 2,920 hours at a rate of $1,000 an hour. Paul Finizio, of Finizio & Finizio in Fort Lauderdale, billed 1,743 hours at $750 an hour.Gary took the case after SPS agreed to pay him an undisclosed portion of any award, or a contingency fee. He says he deserves more because he was in effect financing a case that might bring him nothing.
Had he won, Gary would have gotten $3.3 billion at a standard contingency-fee rate. That's $1.5 million an hour.
Let's be glad that he did not win! Even $1,000 an hour seems pretty damned high to me.
As far as a return on his investment something equal to 10-20%/year should be quite equitable. Let's see, at a $1000/hour 20% would work out to around $400,000. Oh wait, he didn't even put in a full year's time.
This is not why the US has by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world (PDF) but perhaps some changes are in order to either reduce prison's popularity or enhance the workplace:
In Prison, At WorkJust in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should make things a little bit clearer.
IN PRISON……….you spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell.
AT WORK…………you spend the majority of your time in an 8X8 cubicle.IN PRISON………you get three meals a day.
AT WORK……….you get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.IN PRISON……….you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK…………you get more work for good behavior.IN PRISON………the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK………..you must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.IN PRISON……….you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK…………you could get fired for watching TV and playing games.IN PRISON………you get your own toilet.
AT WORK………..you have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.IN PRISON………..they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK………….you aren’t even supposed to speak to your family.IN PRISON………all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required.
AT WORK………..you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.IN PRISON……….you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK ………..you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.IN PRISON…….. .you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK…………they are called managers.
Blatantly lifted from ROFLs.
Mr. Fish presents The Decider:
Via fergie's tech blog.
There is a rumble at 159th Carnival of the Cats hosted by the Bad Kitty Cats.
After visiting there, refill at What Did You Eat? this weeks host of Weekend Cat Blogging.
Then go visit the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.
...but hasn't everyone noticed that television news is utterly useless at transmitting substantive information?
PZ Myers, I like ‘framing’ less and less; why are scientists the targets?
So a growth lamp (which can be used to grow just about anything indoors), "appearing nervous," and a secondhand claim of smelling burnt marijuana is enough for the police to storm into your house with their guns drawn.
Yea, Radley, in Pullman the thugs don't need much to motivate them to show their true colors.
We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?
Do link to the Ark every week!
You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.
Cats
Dogs
Birds
Other Vertebrates
Invertebrates
In Memoriam
Didn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 158th edition , 4/1, is up at IMAO. The 159th edition will be hosted on 4/8 by Bad Kitty Cats . There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging #96 hosted on 4/7-8 by What Did You Eat . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.
Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 46th edition is up and hosted by lovely dark and deep. The 47th edition will be hosted on 4/19 by Bell Tower Birding.
For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 19th edition is up and hosted by Burning Silo. The 20th edition will be hosted at the end of April by, well, it could be you.
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival
Note for Haloscan Users:Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.
Note for Typepad Users:
Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.
Slugs, bugs, moths, spiders and much, much more are waiting for your visit at the 19th Circus of the Spineless now reproducing at Burning Silo.
After a sunflower seed meal our intrepid Black-capped Chickadee heads off for some serious birdering at I and the Bird #46.
Or, how to get medications into your colon when needed.
Oral delivery of drugs to treat colon ailments is made problematic by the normal actions of the stomach and small intestine. There is a promising new approach to solving this problem:
Researchers at the University of Guadalajara, in Mexico, have discovered that fruit compounds taken from the blue-agave plant used to make tequila can be employed as an effective method of delivering drugs to the colon. ...It has been known for many years that the blue-agave plant contains a polysaccharide known as fructan, a polymer of fructose. The compound is not hydrolyzed in acidic environments, such as the upper digestive tract, and it's therefore able to reach the intestine fully intact.
They do not say whether the new medication delivery systems will work better with or without salt and lime.
Hmmm, and will increased demand for the blue-agave for medical purposes drive up the price of tequila?
You bet!
Most folks, with the notable exception of the bush administration, think it is wrong to incarcerate someone without filing legitimate criminal charges against them. It turns out that there may be others:
County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors’ instructions to wear a mask in public.
Radly Balko asks what we should make of a case where it appears that just such an injustice may have occurred:
Now this guy softened the hard question a bit by refusing to take what I'd say were relatively unobtrusive precautionary measures. But I'm curious, what do H&R readers make of the collision of individual rights and the state's arguable (I'd say convincing) duty to protect us from highly-communicable, untreatable fatal diseases?
The idea that someone who's done nothing wrong could be condemned to an isolation cell for the remainder of his life is pretty horrifying.
Nothing wrong? The guy has a drug resistant strain of tuberculosis and apparently will not take precautions to protect others from the disease.
His behavior appears to fall into a category like attempted assault, reckless endangerment, etc. If so, charge him, prosecute him and incarcerate him.
There needs to be a set of court vetted rules of law that apply in cases like this and due process needs to apply.
Once convicted and incarcerated then the normal rules of incarceration for this type of behavior need to apply. This may be a bit unacceptable:
He said sheriff’s deputies will not let him take a shower — he cleans himself with wet wipes — and have taken away his television, radio, personal phone and computer.
There is no reason to provide convicted felons televisions, phones, radios or computers. But this guy is not a convicted felon and there should likely be different rules in this type of public health case.
Access basic hygiene should be mandatory.
"Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."You know who....
The 158th Carnival of the Cats is up at IMAO; the 79th Weekend Dog Blogging is up at Sweetnicks; and the Carnival of the Dogs is up at Mickey's Musings.