Category: Uncategorized

The best article I’ve seen on the guy with the new jawbone is Jaw transplant allows man to chew after nine years – New Scientist, but this one has a picture.

Here’s a good article on the language of politics: Linguistics prof. George Lakoff dissects the “war on terror” and other conservative catchphrases.

There was a cartoon in the Auburn Journal a few days ago, and I believe there is a tiny but exciting little caricature of me in it.

Over at MoveOn, they’ve got a pretty good new ad about “True Republican Values”. Check it out.

I stayed up late to watch a very cool show on PBS – it was conductor Michael Tilson Thomas going through the details of how the San Francisco Symphony prepares to play a piece like Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony. When he talks about his feelings on how certain passages should be interpretted, the passion he feels for the music is awesome and obvious.

I’ve always liked that piece, and I’ve had a soft spot for MTT ever since I saw him conduct when I was a student 22 years ago at Iowa State – I think he was with the Los Angeles Symphony back then.

They’re playing the show again this afternoon at 4:00, so we’re taping it. You can find out all about it here: Great Performances . Keeping Score: MTT on Music – there’s a well done Flash presentation there as well that’s worth playing with that includes an interactive score of one of the movements.

So I’m talking with The Lady Janet this morning about my campaign for the local school board, and I said, “You know, maybe we should both just vote for these other two people and forget it,” and she said, “Let’s wait and see. I’m still planning to vote for you unless you’re splitting off this other person’s vote and you’re a Nader.” (Heh, heh, heh. She said “urinator.”)

At my office, I subscribe to a moderated listserv forum hosted by the Audio Publishers Association. There was a thread going about abridgement, and one of the participants, Barry Marks, wrote a broad response about art and the realities of the marketplace that I found surprisingly insightful, so I’ve asked Barry’s permission to use his essay as a guest column. Please take a moment to read But Is It Art?.

This just in from today’s Excite.com Poll:

Results of a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland released on Friday indicate that 54% of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Evidence of such weapons has not been found. (AP) Do you think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or a program to develop WMD, before the United States invaded last year?

Yes 62% => 8296 votes

No 33% => 4423 votes

I’m not sure 3% => 475 votes

I don’t care 0% => 93 votes

Current number of voters: 13287

© *The Excite Poll is provided by Rosner Interactive Services. It is a voluntary poll for our users, and is not scientifically projectable to any other population. We present these polls to give Excite users an opportunity to share their opinions on particular topics. Individual answers are not collected.

I wasn’t aware that this was a trick question – did 62% of the people who took this poll overlook that last line that says “Evidence of such weapons has not been found.”? If the Bush Administration could find even a shred of evidence, they’d be all over it. Is this mass hysteria, mass hypnosis, or am I missing something?

This is the amazing mailbox that The Lady Janet constructed for us to hold all the big stacks of mail and catalogs we get almost every day. It’s been our mailbox for over 8 years now, and it’s perfect – it almost always holds it all, it matches our house perfectly, it’s very sturdy, it’s well-made, and it’s cuter than a bug’s ear, even if the bug’s crawling on a kitten who looks perplexed.

But now our new mailman has decided that despite years of flawlessly enjoyable mail delivery and receipt, it comes up short on several counts of USPS standards for what constitutes a mailbox, and we’ve received a form asking us to correct the problems. Brother.

If we don’t ignore it, or they pursue it, we need to provide a door and a flag and make it waterproof. Stay tuned…

OK, I’m jazzed, I admit it. I’m a huge Jason Mraz fan, and on August 31st, Dave Matthews Band is closing for Jason Mraz at the Sleeptrain Amphitheater, and we’re going. It’s been a bit of a challenge already because our only child started kindergarten last week, so it’s the first time we’ve had to deal with “going out on a school night.” This is also the first “real” concert we’ve tried to go to since we got stuck in traffic and missed the first half of Pink Floyd at the Oakland Colliseum, circa 1991, so I’m gonna be there and heaven help anyone who tries to stand in our way.

I’m also a bit peeved at Ticketmaster or Sleeptrain or Dave Matthews.com or whoever is responsible for the fact that when I ordered tickets a month ago, they didn’t have any good seats, so I paid less for crappy seats up behind “Nosebleed” in the “Egypt” section of the lawn, and now they have a block of good seats up in the “Behind the People with Connections” section but there’s no way to trade up now that they’re bought and paid for.

If you’ve got Winamp, there are some great live videos of Jason Mraz in their media library, like this live solo version of You and I Both. If you don’t have Winamp, it’s non-evil and free, so it’s probably worth your while to download it now.