Author: Administrator

8.5 Tom Petty: Saving Grace

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A classic road song from his new Highway Companion CD, produced by Jeff Lynn. Also try “Big Weekend”, Travelling-Wilburys-style fun – takes me back a couple weeks to my trip down to see my brother Dan. We may have arrived at the LAN party place too late, but we saw “The Bodies” exhibit at MOSI in Tampa, fixed his computer (power supply was bad), ate 10 lbs of cookies dropped off by mom, visited Andrea’s dad in the ICU in St. Petersburg (he’s doing much better now), and played entire days of Empire At War.

He and Val and Bailey are in Germany right now, visiting Niki (congratulations, newlywed!), and having even BIGGER adventures. Whoop!

“The Bodies” exhibit was full of real human bodies, displayed right in front of you, a hundred or more, posed and dissected in different ways for better views. They are preserved by replacing water with acetone, then replacing the acetone with silicone. There were whole bodies, bodies made only of muscle or arteries or the nervous system or the digestive system, bodies cross-sectioned into a couple hundred “disks”, fetuses at every stage of development, etc. etc. Amazing AND creepy!

STRATFOR on target with terrorism analysis

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STRATFOR summarized my thoughts nicely, regarding how we are letting terrorists “win the war”, in their latest report. We need to shake it off and stop letting them call the shots (read: Impeach Bush Now). Excerpt:

Terrorism: Psychology as Force Multiplier

With that psychological component in mind, terrorist acts do not
have to be tremendously successful (in terms of physical casualties
or damage) in order to be terribly effective.

Continue reading “STRATFOR on target with terrorism analysis” →

9.5 V for Vendetta

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Effortlessly the best action movie of the year. You have to pay close attention to hear all the details of V’s pontifications, revealing how much we all lip-read without knowing it, but the quips are often worth a rewind. The best “big” movies have rich tapestries of backstory, introduced through classic novels, supporting short movies, cartoons and pulp fiction, or graphic novels (in The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Star Wars, and this one, respectively). And we need more commentary on the subject of terrorism vs. fascism, it’s the most relevant subject of our time.

V for Vendetta

“What went wrong” in Iraq according to STRATFOR

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Here‘s some pretty detailed analysis of the current situation in Iraq and the Middle East, from STRATFOR.

My nephew Tom pointed me to this site – he’s an Army pilot and commanding officer on the Apache, getting deployed to Iraq next month. So consider me just as mad as ever. Bush really screwed the pooch, and everyone involved in the war, including our men and women in uniform, are paying a heavy price.

I found it interesting in that you don’t hear this depth of analysis ANYwhere. Why is that? And I still am unsure of any bias of STRATFOR, they’re used by “military personnel and oil executives.” But it reads with authority.

Boom! There he was…

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Scritti is back, Green is on his game, I’m no longer rock-a-boy blue, look at all this goodness! Don’t miss the interview or the preview of the new album – you can hear the whole thing – links are on the blog. Happy day.

I’m actually behind a bit, there was a 1999 album I totally missed, lots of stuff to catch up on…

Electric Car update

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I’ve been waiting for my practical electric car forever. As a followup to “An Inconvenient Truth”, another movie I need to check out is “Who Killed The Electric Car?” In the meantime, there’s lots of great information at the EV World website. This story explains how Ovonics, through their Cobasys venture, holds a monopoly on the best battery technology (the kind used in the Prius), and rabidly protects it – to the point of slapping Toyota with a gag order and making it illegal for them to manufacture larger NiMH batteries (for use in, oh, say, ELECTRIC CARS). Ovonics has high-level people from GM and Texaco, and the company is all about making a profit, a real shocker there. This is from the front page of their website:

  • Our strong nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery intellectual property position has enabled us to license all NiMH major manufacturers and to protect high-profile markets, such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), for our Cobasys joint venture.

    • In Ovonics’ defense, Wikipedia states that “over a period of about 40 years, it is estimated that ECD (Ovonics) spent half a billion dollars before any profit was made.” Ouch. Not sure how to get the ball rolling faster on this one…

    This story explains why a plugin car is better, here’s the 2-second ballpark summary:

    20-Mile Drive
    20-mpg car takes 1 gallon = 24 lb co2
    20-mile-range plug-in hybrid takes 5kW hours = 5 lb of coal = 7 lb co2
    And the winner… my bike! 0 lb of co2, whoop! :P