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NPR fail

Why is NPR interviewing a theoretical string physicist, someone as far removed from experiment as it’s possible to be and still in be in physics, about OPERA’s new experimental FTL neutrino results?  Arrgh.

This is how it looks

Source

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Everyone lives in NYC

I am definitely SOHO.

Starship trooper

Why do I feel like I’m living in a Robert A. Heinlein novel, and not one of the cool ones with moving walkways and moon colonies?

First they negated the fourth, now it’s the first

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Charles P. Pierce says it better than I:

Your right to peaceably assemble for the redress of grievances, and how you may do it, and what you may say, will be defined by the police power of the state, backed by its political establishment and the business elite. They will define “acceptable” forms of public protest, even (and especially) public protest against them. This is the way it is now[…] Public protest shall be polite, quiet, and invisible, and that is the way they will let us be free.

At least the second seems to be in reasonably good health.

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And then there was one…

Armistice day, 2011.

A bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes

Sidney Coleman, on his time at Caltech:

Caltech, at that time was (and still is) a much smaller school than this. There were something like a thousand students, graduate and undergraduate together when I was at Caltech. Also it was out in Pasadena so it was the Caltech students, the Caltech faculty and a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes.

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Climbing in the snow

Carpet Store Fence - in the snow

Kentucky road

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Physical media

OK, I’m a dinosaur. I still buy CDs rather than MP3s. I like the physical backup. Hard disks die with alarming regularity. I like having access to the original hi-fi mix, even though the first thing I do is rip it (to 256 kbps VBR AAC, a reasonable compromise between quality acceptable for most of my listening devices, and disk size). I could always go back and rip it lossless if I wanted. I still don’t have enough disk space to rip my whole CD library in either the original format or AIFF (>1k CDs). Heck, I still haven’t ripped my whole library into 256K!

In any case, I still buy CDs. I still find it odd, and annoying, that CDs ordered from Amazon come with the little celophane pull-tab that has to be pulled off, underneath the shrink wrap. Do physical music stores exist anymore? The Tower on Lake has been gone for years. Is the Virgin in Burbank still open? I guess Continental still is. But I only buy used CDs there.

With the ease of finding MP3s to download for free, do the record companies think that they’re 1) winning customers, or 2) losing them, by treating those T. Rex’s of us left who still pay $13.99 for physical media as potential thieves? And does that little annoying bit of tape make it any less easy for me to upload the music to a torrent? Does being treated like a potential thief make me more or less likely to do so?

It’s the same problem with movies, and TV. By far the highest quality, quickest, and most important, easiest way to get the latest TV show or movie is to torrent it. No FBI warnings, no previews that can’t be skipped, no commercials (I don’t even mind commercials if I don’t have to watch the same seven year old one six times during the Daily Show. I’m looking at you, Boxee. Really? The same old shampoo commercial six times?) And all the other methods in general aren’t even 720p HD. So why did I buy that 46 inch 1080p top of the line Samsung?.

I would happily do this legally if the content providers just didn’t make it so damn hard. It’s like they want me to be the criminal they treat me as.

Take time

Take Shelter: 30 minutes too long. I kept wanting to hit fast forward. I liked the idea, I liked the performances, the story was fine, I suspended disbelief. But it was too damn slow!

I am not speaking as a child of the internet and MTV, even though I am. Look, if Hitchcock could do a tale of horror, suspense, and uncertainty about possibly going mad in 90-100 minutes, then very few directors today should need 120. Tighten it up. Cut four scenes, and make all of them 1 minute shorter.

Welcome rock climbers

The beer trailer

SuperShuttle sucks

SuperShuttle. Never again. Three hours to the airport, an hour of which was within one mile of my house, sitting on a metal support sticking out of the seat. Three hours getting home, driving around the airport, Bell, South Gate, and Monterey Park. Neither time because of traffic. Just idiotic choices by the driver. Both times I was first on, last off, so had the longest trip of anyone.

Never again.

RRG 2011

Ware's Auto Sales

Mt. View drive-in

Davo Creature Feature (taken by Cover-boy)

Kentucky road

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Thirteen bits of OWS wisdom

If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard […]

Success requires hard work, but so does working three jobs just to keep your family fed, and the latter usually precludes the former. Lots of self-made people forget that there’s a fair amount of, well, not necessarily, good luck, but a lack of bad luck.

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Twin Palms 14 Oct 11

Mare's tails

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