Actual script of a television ad I just saw:
“In the real world, there is no spokesperson to prevent reckless driving; there’s only you.”
Do these folks not realize they’re saying this on television? Why do public service announcements always sound like the government thinks we’re all in preschool?
I reserve any opinion on NASA head Mike Griffin. I’m linking this satire because I find it amusing, but I take no position on its merits. Still, it’s a diverting read.
From out and about on the internet.
Colonary cuisine. I love how they magnanimously allow you to use it either as a side dish or a main dish.
Harmonic harm.
Spirit and Phoenix.
Let’s take a break from our regular programming (such as it is), and introduce one of my favorite new music albums in years. In September, Scottish “post-rock” artists Mogwai released their sixth studio album, The Hawk is Howling. It is available in its entirety at their Myspace page. (I think Myspace is good for exactly one thing: distributing legal free music.) I encourage you, of course, to support the artists with a purchase if you like the album. I’ll add that Mogwai is my favorite band in the world, so this “review” is less an effort at critical objectivity than at at encouraging everyone to go listen to them by describing the album.
While there are no drastic departures from the melodic, brooding, hopeful sound of previous Mogwai works, there are a few minor changes that add up. First of all, The Hawk is Howling contains no vocal elements at all. Also missing are most of the electronic dubbing and sampling of previous works, resulting in some of their most organic tracks to date. Perhaps most importantly, this album seems much more direct than their other offerings. Each song, excepting perhaps “Batcat,” has an immediately apparent, gripping melody that could be played by one or two peole on keyboards without losing too much vitality. These tunes are relatively simple and memorable, compared with 2001’s Rock Action or even 2006’s Mr. Beast. There’s plenty of somber, crystalline beauty here, but there’s also a newfound willingness to write tunes you can hum or stomp along to. The melodies are as sophisticated as ever, but a little more aggressive and less complex, without losing depth.
There’s also quite a lot of stylistic variety on this album. The strangely named opener “I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead,” with it’s shimmering piano and angular guitars, sounds like what might happen if Mr. Spock wrote a Klingon opera. On the other hand, “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is upbeat, even danceable, conveying a sense of enjoyment with the emotive force most artists in this genre sadly reserve for melancholy. “Scotland’s Shame” is a straightforward, driving anthem that will immediately setup housekeeping in your hippocampus. “Danphe and the Brain” and “Thank You Space Expert” are catchy numbers that sound like somebody bouncing wordless poems off the sky. “The Precipice” is the thing you jump off of at the end, wondering if you can fly.
One thing that sets Mogwai apart from most of their post-rock brethren/followers is that their hard rock roots are deep and healthy. With the barely-bridled malice of tracks like “Batcat” and “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School,” Mogwai not only invite the space invasion, but threaten to beat it back as well. At once meditative and gripping, The Hawk is Howling has as much in common with Tool’s Lateralus as with the latest from Explosions In The Sky or GY!BE. Imagine your favorite hard rock band had a spiritual epiphany and spent a few years in a secluded monastery; Mogwai is what they’d sound like when they came back down the mountainside and found you worshiping a golden calf.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it is post-rock, and indeed music, at its very best. The world is a better place with The Hawk is Howling in it.
No blog is complete without cute pictures of kittens and lemon sharks. So, here.
I think greenhouse warming is a serious problem to be addressed over the coming years. Nonetheless, some of the proclamations of environmentalists, and even scientists, make me want to throw things at a TV screen, monitor, or journal (though this last option lacks the satisfying smash of the others). Among the worst offenders in this category is the use of hellish surface conditions on Venus as a worst-case-scenario, allegedly demonstrating what can happen when greenhouse gasses get out of control. In honor of these alarmists, here are a few of the ways we could make Earth a little more like Venus:
Besides this, the idea of a “runaway greenhouse effect” on Earth is quite unsupportable. During past interglacial periods, Earth has had higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations than even the most aggressive climate models are predicting for the next century. If such a tipping point existed in Earth’s radiation balance, we would already have tipped. Yes, the notion that some such tipping point could exist makes theoretical sense. No, we’re not anywhere near such a point.
Repeat after me, BBC, CNN, and scientists who’re trying way too hard to bring Americans around on climate change: Earth and Venus ARE NOT COMPARABLE! There are good reasons to bring greenhouse emissions under control. Fear of Earth becoming a completely uninhabitable wasteland is not one of them.
…for playing too well. A youth baseball league in the apparently bewitched town of New Haven, Connecticut, has banned young Jericho Scott and disbanded his 8-0 team. The reason? He throws too hard. The league’s lawyer says that it’s an instructional league, so a player who is too good makes the game unfair to everyone else. He also says opposing players’ parents expressed concern over the boy’s 40mph fastball, although he hasn’t hit anyone this season. Perhaps not coincidentally, Scott had apparently turned down an invitation join the defending champion team, sponsored by a league official.
When I was in little league I sometimes faced pitchers much bigger and stronger than me, who threw hard enough to terrify. I have no idea if it was 40 or 140 mph, but the pitches might as well have been laser beams to me. The struggle was good for me, and my parents had the good sense to help me practice and grow through the situation. That doesn’t mean getting better at baseball, it means learning to persevere through a little adversity. This league is ‘instructional,’ but life lessons are more valuable instruction than baseball lessons. When parents react to their child facing a good player by demanding that the player be banned or promoted out of the league, instead of taking advantage of a teachable moment, it makes me feel sorry for their kid.
Childhood isn’t just about having fun, it’s also about shaping character. The message this league and some parents are sending to these kids is: 1) we don’t believe in your ability to compete with the best, so we have to intercede for you, 2) when someone outperforms you, just have them punished instead of trying to rise to their level. That’s probably not the end of the world all by itself, but it’s a bad sign as to what ideas are being inculcated to young people in our culture.
Sometimes, if the police can’t think of a law to arrest you under, they’ll just arrest you anyway. Call it disorderly conduct! It may not be disorderly, per se, but it surely is conduct, at least.
I have no idea what event this man was photographing, but it must have been embarrassing or worse to warrant confiscation of the camera without a warrant. As Michael Silence points out at the link, the authorities will probably remove or delete the offending pictures even if the charges against the photographer are dropped. This sort of thing has become all too common, and a legislative solution is needed. Policemen who knowingly and blatantly violate civil rights should be liable to criminal penalties, and have their immunity from civil legal action revoked. Some measures to prevent the destruction of evidence, such as those photos, also need to be in place. Most policemen are decent people and respect the rights of citizens. But a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.
Kent Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death in Columbia, MO, on November 1, 2001. For three years, the murder remained unsolved. In March 2004, the police finally received a lead. A young man named Chuck Erickson turned himself in to police, saying he thought he may have been involved. He told police that he had recently dreamed that he and a friend, Ryan Ferguson, had committed the murder. He was unable to provide any specific information about the murder, did not know where the crime scene was, and repeatedly said that he may have dreamed up the whole thing.
Police, apparently desperate to solve the case, painstakingly furnished Erickson with the details he would need to convince a jury, although of course anyone present at the crime should already know these details. The astonishing video of Erickson’s interrogation reveals that the boy is far too confused to prove anyone’s guilt, and features police threatening him to get him to testify against Ferguson. The most striking part of the video comes when the interrogator, berating Erickson for his uncertainty, says to him, “your hind-end is what’s on this chopping block…what I want to hear is exactly what Ryan told you, because that’s the only thing that is gonna keep you in a position where you’re not gonna be the only individual out here responsible for what happened to Kent. I can’t be any more clear than that.”
No, of course you can’t be any more clear than that, because it would result in a mistrial. It is clear that the police handed Erickson testimony that he didn’t remember, and scared him into offering it at trial. If you think I’m overreacting here, watch the video. It could hardly be clearer.
Ferguson, a Columbia, MO, native and friend of friends of mine, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He adamantly maintains his innocence, and I think he’s telling the truth.