Archives November 2009

Q&A Playlist
  • Are You Ready Eddy? – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
  • Ready an’ Willin – Whitesnake
  • Are You Receiving Me? – XTC
  • Talking Loud and Clear – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
  • So What Happens Now? – Art of Noise
  • We All Stand – New Order
  • What Time Is It? – Spin Doctors
  • 10:15 Saturday Night – The Cure
  • Where are the Prawns? – The Soft Boys
  • Down by the Sea – Men At Work
  • When Will I Awake? – Razed in Black
  • Wake Up (It’s 1984) – Oingo Boingo
  • Who’s Joe? – New Order
  • Just Call Me Joe – Sinead O’Connor
  • In the Flesh? – Pink Floyd
  • In the Flesh – Pink Floyd
  • You Know I Love You, Don’t You? – Howard Jones
  • I Believe – Tears for Fears
  • Why Don’t We Do It In the Road? – The Beatles
  • Because – The Beatles
  • Where Did Our Love Go? – Soft Cell
  • We Don’t Talk Anymore – Cliff Richard
  • Do You Want to Break Up? – Eurythmics
  • The Reason I Broke Up With You Is A Million Reasons You Psychotic Wang – Caustic
  • Who Was In My Room Last Night? – Butthole Surfers
  • Just A Girl – No Doubt
  • Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? – The Wedding Present
  • Don’t Ask Me Why – Eurythmics
  • Do You Like Boys? – Freezepop
  • I Like Boys – Missing Persons
  • How Rapid? – Art of Noise
  • 125 MPH – New Model Army
  • Who’s That Girl ? – Eurythmics
  • Pauline – The Durutti Column
  • How Long? – Eurythmics
  • Seventeen Seconds – The Cure
  • Do You Like My Wang? – Freezepop
  • In A Manner of Speaking – Tuxedomoon
  • Was ist das rock’n’roll? – H.F. Thiéfaine
  • Sex, Money, Freaks – Cabaret Voltaire
  • Fun with Drugs – Velvet Acid Christ
  • Where’s the Money? – Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit
  • In the Car – Barenaked Ladies
  • Going Somewhere? – Laurie Anderson
  • They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha! – Napoleon Bonaparte XIV
  • What Do I Get? – The Buzzcocks
  • Ten Turntables and a Slide Trombone – DJ Madson
  • What Do You Know? – KMFDM
  • Gravitational Constant: G=6.67×108cm3gm-1sec-2 – Type O Negative
  • Why Must I Be Sad? – They Might Be Giants
  • Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus
  • Who’s Laughing Now? – Skinny Puppy
  • That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore – The Smiths
  • Is That All? – U2
  • All of This and Nothing – The Psychedelic Furs
Thanks to No One

At this time of year, it’s traditional to say what you’re thankful for. And I’m thankful for a lot of things: that I know where my next meal is coming from, that I don’t have any debilitating diseases, that I have good friends and family… Heck, I’m thankful that the job I had to do after hours at work today didn’t turn into one of those nightmare jobs that wind up having you working all night.

But gratitude requires an object. To whom am I grateful? In some cases, it’s obvious: I’m grateful to my friends for putting up with me, and for doing all the things friends do. I’m grateful to my parents for raising me. I’m grateful to the nameless people who raised the food I’m going to enjoy tomorrow, the ones who hauled it here, and to the millions more who set up or aided the free market system that ensures that I have whatever food I want, whenever I want it.

What about the job tonight that went more or less according to plan? To a great extent, it went smoothly because I planned it carefully in advance. Should I feel grateful to myself, for having the foresight to solve a lot of problems before they came up, the experience to know what those problems are likely to be, and the knowledge to quickly diagnose and solve the snags that did come up?

Maybe. I’ve been known to do favors for my future self. But it still feels narcissistic.

And to whom should I feel grateful that I don’t have any debilitating genetic disorders? I suppose the obvious candidates are my parents. But they didn’t pick their genes, and didn’t decide how they would mix. They got lucky, as did I.

Shoud I thank the innumerable rocks flying around the solar system that none of them has decided to intersect Earth’s orbit and conk me on the noggin?

There’s an asymmetry here: on one hand, I can easily imagine an alternate universe in which I was born to parents who didn’t care about my upbringing and education, or one in which a stray C14 atom decayed at the wrong moment and gave me cancer at age five. And I’m glad for both. But in one case, there’s someone to thank, while in the other… the universe has failed to kill me, so far. It just worked out that way.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I have the same hyperactive agency detector as everyone else. Feeling grateful to some nebulous other for the random circumstances that went the way I like comes as naturally as seeing faces in clouds, and so I understand why people naturally believe in benevolent gods and spirits. And so I suppose there’s no harm in addressing thanks to someone or something for those things, as a way of satisfying an urge, long as it’s understood that that’s all it is. The universe. The flying spaghetti monster. Or, as George Carlin did, Joe Pesci, since he looks like a guy who can get things done.

So have a happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Don’t forget to thank the people — actual, living people — who have done something good for you, who matter to you. In fact, don’t wait until Thanksgiving, any more than you should wait until Valentine’s Day to tell your sweetheart you love him/her.

And if I hear you thanking Joe Pesci for the fact that the biscuits came out all right after all, I’ll understand.

(Update, Oct. 11, 2010: s/one/none/.)

I Get Spam

I just saw this go by in the spam report.

Why hello associate forum people! I straight wanted to interpose myself here as this looks like a sheer attractive forum! I myself am provocative in things like writeing and computer revamping so if anyoune needs steal forgive me identify! I also Suffer from Sciatica so if you aslo have this infection allow in me have knowledge of so we can share some stretches!

I love the way that although it’s all over the map, as though written by a random sentence generator, it nonetheless manages to teeter on the edge of intelligibility.

Or maybe I’m just easily amused.

Google Criticized Over Name of Its New Language

Slashdot has a story entitled Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language “Go”.

I can certainly understand that: Go has got to be the least-googlable language name since C.

No Pr0n Policy at UMD

A while back, I mentioned that a student group at the University of Maryland was going to show a porn flick. A state legislator got bent out of shape at the thought that 18-20-year-olds might be thinking about sex, and threatened to cut off state funding to the university. Eventually, the university was told to come up with a policy regulating which movies can be shown on campus.

According to the Post,

Regents of Maryland’s state university system voted Wednesday to defy a legislative order to regulate pornography on campus, concluding that any such rules would be impossible to enforce.
…

The review found that pornographic materials generally have constitutional protection unless they are deemed obscene. But “there are few, if any, films that have been declared obscene by any court,” the report states. As a result, top legal minds “have not been able to draft a policy that is narrowly targeted toward ‘obscene’ films.”

A broader rule to govern pornography would probably be found unconstitutional, the report states, because governmental restrictions on speech must be “content and viewpoint neutral,” and cannot be confined to adult films.

So I guess the forces of reason and untwisted panties sometimes prevail.

The Sun Is A Miasma

They Might Be Giants’ new album Here Comes Science is all sorts of awesome. One of the things I like is the inclusion of both Why Does The Sun Shine? and a new song, Why Does the Sun Really Shine?.

The first one, a cover of Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans’s song, begins:

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

The second, on the other hand, tells us:

The sun is a miasma
Of incandescent plasma
The sun’s not simply made out of gas
No, no, no

The sun is a quagmire
It’s not made of fire
Forget what you’ve been told in the past

Why Does the Sun Shine? is a catchy tune, with a sciency theme that deserves to be included on the album. It’s also nice that They decided to record an updated version of the song.

But more importantly, aside from telling kids what plasma is, Why Does the Sun Really Shine? says that science isn’t static. New things get discovered, old ideas get discarded. And the fact that the old song is on the album is similar to the way that science doesn’t purge old ideas: there’s no heresy police whose job it is to raid libraries and rip out the pages of books and journals that talk about Lamarckism or phlogiston.

Rather, old ideas in science are like that 8 Gb drive I still have in my closet for some reason: yes, I used to use it: at the time, it was the best thing I had available. Then something better came along, and I stopped using it. And once I get over any residual sentimental attachment, I’ll eventually toss it.

(Well, there’s also the fact that since Why Does the Sun Really Shine? also says to “Forget that song”. So “that song” had to be included on the album to let people know what to forget.)

Colbert Endorses BillDo?

Secular Sabotage
This will not come as news to some of you, but ε-Clueful Reader Fez pointed out the blurbs on Bill Donohue’s new book, Secular Sabotage.

The most surprising one is the last one, by none other than über-pundit Stephen Colbert:

“Wake up, America! The secular minority has cut the brake cables on America’s In-God-We-Trust-Mobile™! Not even all 43 of our Christian presidents can save us now.”

Which raises a question: does BillDo not realize that Colbert’s act is just a act, or whether he’s catering to those of his readers who don’t realize that it’s just an act?

At any rate, BillDo hasn’t always been so friendly with Colbert: his 2005 Annual Report of Shit He Got Upset About includes:

February 17
New York, NY—The Comedy Central program, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," ran a segment entitled "This Week in God" that mocked the Catholic Church and its teachings, while poking gentle fun at Muslims and Orthodox Jews. For example, Stephen Colbert, the segment host, after reporting that the Vatican teaches that condom use is immoral, exclaimed, "What would high Catholic Church officials know about immoral sexual conduct?" The segment also featured a wheel with religious symbols on it, one of which was labeled "the Immaculate Contraption known as the God Machine."

(Actually, the segment aired Feb. 15, but who’s counting?)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
This Week in God – The Pope
www.thedailyshow.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:120257
Daily Show
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and

June 6
On "This Week in God," a recurring segment on the Comedy Central program "The Daily Show," Stephen Colbert commented that the Vatican traditionally waits five years after someone dies before the cause of sainthood commences. He noted, however, that Pope Benedict XVI waved it for Pope John Paul II, adding, "what are you going to do about that, bitch?" Colbert then said that the reason why Mother Teresa’s canonization has been held up was due to a film, "Mama T Goes Wild 6: Calcutta Nights." When he said this the program showed a picture of Mother Teresa made to look like she was flashing onlookers.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
This Week in God – The God Trough is Empty
www.thedailyshow.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:120703
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis