Tea Party Politics: Introducing Rick Parry (or Rick Perry?)

Today's Fresh Air was as scary of program that has been aired on NPR, including earlier this year when Terry had a guest that described the insane Plumb-bob tests in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. This program was at least as scary because it described a planned religious war between Christians and Muslims. The first plank in their platform: tolerance is the greatest evil on planet Earth. You've been warned. Listen at your peril.

Download mp3.

Cached Audio:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Is a tablet form factor patentable?

Here is a misc. slashdot
headline. I'll have to rewatch that part of 2001 to see if they are using tablets. I remember for sure that Star Trek and Star Trek TNG made extensive use of handheld electronic devices. But even with all that futuristic hardware somehow Kirk still needed a yoeman to help with the ship's log.

Electric Guitar Tech

I heard part of Bob Edwards Weekend yesterday. The discussion was about developments and improvements to the electric guitar that made it possible to define new genres of music (rock and roll, bakersfield country, etc) They discuss the instruments played by the legends (Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Jimmy Page, George Harrison, etc.) Manufacturers discussed: Fender, Gibson, and Gretsch.

Update (2011-08-24): I guess the only option was to listen to this live. For whatever reason, the podcast has gone away.

Rosanne Cash interviewed on Fresh Air (rebroadcast)

This interview was very interesting. The interview centered on Cash's interpretation of songs on Johnny Cash's list of 100 essential American songs. Her interpretation of Patsy Cline's She's Got You does it justice. A lot of singers are afraid to touch Cline's music for fear of not measuring up.

Download audio (mp3)

This sparked the question in my mind of what songs would be on my list of 100 essential songs. Don't Fear the Reaper is going to be on that list. More cowbell! Going back to my childhood: Garry Lewis and the Playboys' This Diamond Ring, Bobby Vinton's Blue on Blue, Marty Robbins' El Paso, the Beatles' Hard Days Night are probably the first songs I remember.

Bye Bye Slashdot

Slashdot, if you're reading this, take notice! Yeah, right, as if they care about what I think! It could be I'm a drop in the bucket, but perhaps there are a lot of drops falling into the pail.

I'm quitting Slashdot because it is just too frustrating to try to read user comments, no matter how inciteful, using their interface. Their original interface (circa 1997) is better than the current offering! Compared to competitor reddit, it's interface is in the stone age. Slashdot is going to be a remnant of the early internet if they don't adapt. Their first competitor, digg, is a fading memory in the rear view mirror. reddit looks to be a long term survivor. It has interesting features, especially when using the greasemonkey based "reddit enhancement suite."

It also appears that reddit has dealt with crashes and downtime due to the cpu/storage intensive requirements of generating the website. I will probably continue to read the Slashdot headlines, out of habit, but I think I'm done commenting at all. The reddit board and its "subreddits" are poised to be another nail in the coffin of not only slashdot, but the venerable usenet protocol as well.

Update 2011-09-05: Wow! Taco Resigned within a couple of weeks after this post. Maybe, somebody is listening. ;) Yeah, right! original slashdot story

Interview with two leading economists on jobs

NPR's John Ydstie interviewed economists Joseph Stiglitz and John Taylor about ways to strengthen the economy.
NPR audio, mp3. Let me know if you'd like the audio cached.