- Today we have a first: an all-music Odd Lots. The idea is to make a few worthy songs (worthy in my view; YMMV) more visible. Where they can be purchased online, I’ll provide a link. Some are only on CDs. And a few may well be unobtainium. Not sure what to suggest about that. I’ve mentioned a few of these before and even linked to some. Where relevant, I’ll mention why I think they’re worthy.
- Rayburn Wright’s “Shaker Suite” (here, by the Canadian Brass) is a short compendium of three Shaker melodies: The well known “Simple Gifts” plus two very obscure tunes: the somber “We Will Walk with Mother and Mourn” and the marvelously energetic “I’ve Set My Face for Zion’s Kingdom,” which (assuming Carol isn’t in the car with me) I blast whenever it comes up on the mix SD.
- It was never a single, but the Monkees’ cover of “Shades of Gray” is in my view the best song they ever did. I’ve mentioned the song here before, and yes, I’m biased for personal reasons (read the entry) but still: When did 60s pop ever have a lyric that sane and subtle?
- I have always had a fraught relationship with religion, but one thing I discovered when I returned to Catholicism in the ’90s was that there were actually hymns that weren’t 350 years old. Marty Haugen has written quite a few, but none serves my energetic spirit so well as “Send Down the Fire.”
- Energetic? Punch in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Running Set,” dial it up to eleven, and you’ll know what “manic” means.
- Is it a sendup of Fifties political paranoia? Or is it just a silly beer-hall march? Jim Lowe’s “Close the Door” defies analysis…which doesn’t mean it isn’t great fun.
- A lot of people have covered “Sweets for My Sweet,” but I don’t think it’s ever been done better than a local Chicago band called The Riddles. I heard it live at a church Teen Club dance in 1968, and eventually found a slightly crufty 45 rip on the peer-to-peer networks ten years ago. It’s now on YouTube, though you have to either listen to or FF past the flipside.
- One of the best (and perhaps weirdest) soundtrack cuts I’ve heard in the last 20 years is “Building the Crate” from Chicken Run. It’s not available as an MP3 single, but you can buy the full soundtrack CD, or listen to the song on YouTube. Klezmer, kazoos, and a full orchestra with a strong tuba line–what more could you ask for?
- Although rougher than I generally like my music, there’s just something inexplicably likeable about “You Don’t Want Me Anymore” by Steel Breeze, which hit #16 on Billboard in 1982. Energetic, well, yeah.
- This is probably my favorite TV series theme song ever, from what is almost certainly the first steampunk western. Lee Anne down the street had it bad for Artemis Gordon, and I’m betting a lot of other girl geeks did too. Yeah, the giant steam-powered tarantula in the movie was cool, but nothing will ever beat the original series.
- My high school turned down Styx’s bid to play for the 1972 senior prom because they were…too obscure. Heh. Bad call. And this is what I consider their best song, a terrific waltz that is almost a hymn: “Show Me the Way.”
- Another soundtrack cut that I don’t think ever got the recognition it deserved: “Through Heaven’s Eyes” from Prince of Egypt.
- From the same soundtrack, the item that gave me the idea for the scene in The Cunning Blood where Sahan Grusa destroys Sophia Gorganis’s pirate colony by simulating the biblical plagues using nanotech.
- Well. This was fun. I have to remember to do another one at some point. Let me know what you think.
music
Odd (Musical) Lots
I Should’ve Been a Jedi
Hey, country music fans, find yourself an overripe banana (or in Sarah Hoyt’s universe, a ten-pound carp) and get your swingin’ arm ready. I used to write a lot of filk songs but got out of the habit twenty or thirty years ago. Well…guess what?
Just in case you’re not familiar with the original, it’s on YouTube.
I Should’ve Been a Jedi
(By Jeff Duntemann; to Toby Keith’s “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy”)
I’ll bet you never heard ol’ Luke Skywalker say:
“Princess Leia, have you ever thought of runnin’ away?
Settlin’ down, would ya marry me?
(or at least get me the hell away from Tatooine..)”
She’d’ve said “yukkh!” in a New York minute;
Incest’s against the law; there’s no future in it.
She just stole a kiss as they swung away;
Luke never let his hormones…get out of place.
Refrain:
I should’ve been a Jedi
I should’ve learned there is no “try…”
Wavin’ my light saber, knockin’ the arms right off some ugly guy.
Blowin’ them Empire ships
Right out of the sky;
Nukin’ those Death Star cores;
Oh, I shoulda been a Jedi.
I mighta had a sidekick with a fuzzy mane,
Flyin’ blind by the Force, just like Ben explained.
Takin’ potshots at a Tusken Raider;
Givin’ a hand to your daddy Vader…
Blast off, young man, ain’tcha seen them flicks?
Outer space is full of rayguns, wookies, and chicks!
Sleepin out all night inside a tauntaun’s guts,
With my dreams in the stars instead of freezin’ my butt…
(Refrain X2)
I should’ve been a Jedi!
I should’ve been a Jedi!
Odd Lots
- This stuff has been piling up. And I’ve been tired and perhaps a little grouchy. It’s just a phase I’m going through.
- From the People-Whom-I-Had-Once-Known-About-But-Then-Forgot Department: Annie Jump Cannon, who mostly eclipsed Edward Pickering while helping to complete the Harvard Classification Scheme for stars. Annie made it into the slightly snotty but very entertaining Rejected Princesses site. (Thanks to R. K. Modena for reminding me of Annie and pointing me to Rejected Princesses.)
- Alas, it sounds a lot like Nook is circling the drain.
- Huh? A scientific expedition to the Arctic to study how global warming is melting Arctic ice had to be postponed because…there’s too much ice in the Arctic.
- And you wondered why we just bought a house in Arizona.
- Here’s how NASA keeps “new telescope smell” from destroying new space telescopes. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.) One can only speculate what garlic breath would do to them.
- A half-klick diameter radio telescope is under construction in China.
- The Supreme Court just ruled that the Feds can’t just take a raisin farmer’s raisins and give them to other people. That would be, like, theft or something. Government wouldn’t do that, right?
- So you can now keep your raisins. But watch out for your kids: The National School Lunch Program bans whole milk from school lunches but allows sugar-sweetened skim milk. Government always knows best, even if it kills you.
- Cool optical hack: Project the image of the full Moon from a telescope onto a ping-pong ball and get a 3-D model of the Moon.
- This has been around for awhile, but it’s worth bookmarking: a very big list of all the things (supposedly, if often ludicrously) caused by global warming. Science journalism makes climate science look silly and dishonest, and science generally look bad. I used to think I should have gone to journalism school. Now I’m glad I didn’t. It’s starting to sound like a dumping ground for failed Polly Sigh majors.
- Evidence? A scientist hoaxed the media by inventing a study showing that you can lose weight eating chocolate bars…and the media bought it.
- Here’s a database of POP songs used in TV commercials. It does not list (as best I can tell) commercials that were later morphed into pop songs, like “She Lets Her Hair Down” and “Come to the Sunshine,” both originally hair product ads.
- In the new film Pixels, Pac Man attacks Manhattan. The concept reminds me of a very old and really bad TV movie in which an airplane gets stuck between two days of the week, and its passengers have to confront titanic Pac-Man like monsters that eat each expired day’s reality so that the new day can be constructed on a clean backdrop. (Or something.) But damn if I can remember what movie that was.
Odd Lots
- Sony is shutting down its ebook reader business. Note the line that says with a straight face: “…the Librie was the first to use the e-ink display that makes long sessions headache free…” Headache-free? Headaches were why I stopped using the PRS-500.
- Here are the best shots I’ve seen of the first comet we’ve seen really close up. Y’know, I’ll bet we could make that into two comets if we really wanted to.
- According to Wired, there are Type 1 and Type 2 sockpuppets. I’ll bet there are others.
- Is luck really luck? Or is it some combination of skills and attitude?
- Here’s a detailed description of how rifle barrels are made. It’s a much more subtle business than I thought. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- In case you were too young to actually be part of the 60s muscle car culture and wondered what all the jargon was in the old Beach Boys’ song “Shut Down,” here’s a detailed discussion. I was crushed: The mighty Corvette was going up against a “413,” which was in fact a…Dodge Dart.
- Someone asked me what I think about the EmDrive. Answer: I don’t. And until it’s demonstrated as thrust against gravity rather than thrust against a torsion spring, I won’t.
- Why, Lord? WHY?
- I thought I was imagining it, but evidently not: There really was a book called Science Fun with Milk Cartons . Now, where did I see the line, “Fun with Giant Frogs”?
- This one was real too, and I saw it face-out at eye-level in Bookstar.
- Speaking of real things, there’s a hot drink (tea of some sort, by the looks of it) called Urinal. (Scroll down.) I can guess where that one’s going. (Thanks to Irene Smith for the link.)
- More of the same here, though you’ll have to scroll to the very end to see the can of Unicorn Meat.
Odd Lots
- I’ve been gone for two weeks, and the pile is still pretty high. So let’s get to work:
- There are now three million Raspberry Pi boards in the world, and counting.
- This chap has designed one into a tablet. Not too surprising, as the original SoC device was created for smartphones.
- Here’s Todd Johnson’s solar triple thermoacoustic engine. I immediately asked, “What’s the physics here?” and Todd, being the consummate physicist, provided the link. Spooky cool.
- From Craig’s Lost Chicago: Photos of many extinct Chicago restaurants, some famous, some very obscure. I’m a little surprised that I had been to so few.
- Which led directly to Craig’s Lost Toys. Doesn’t list Mr. Machine, but does have a photo of the Puffer Kite in its original packaging.
- Another look at Chicago’s past: How Chicago Rocked the 60s.
- If you have any interest in the pulps at all, definitely take a look at the Pulp Magazines Project, which has legal scans of a great many pulp mags, including lots in the SFF category.
- Here’s another, similar archive for comics, with the difference that, although free, you have to create an account to access the books. May still be worthwhile if you’re big on comics. (Thanks to Stuart Anderson for the link.)
- Sounds like Facebook echo chambers to me: Groups promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as ‘necessary for the greater good.’ (Thanks to Jonathan O’Neal for the link.)
Odd Lots
- Our new concrete gets its sealer coat tomorrow, and once it dries it’ll be (finally!) done. I’ll post a photo. So far we think it’s gorgeous.
- This article has been shared again and again and again on Facebook, and it caught my attention because it echoes something I wrote about in 2009: That because our stuff is lasting longer, we need less stuff, be it forks or cars. And the cars are piling up…or are they? Alas, the article is nonsense (it did smell a little funny to me) and here’s the point-by-point takedown.
- Here’s the best detailed article on bacteriophage therapy I’ve seen in quite awhile. It’s a hard read, but a good one. Sooner or later, as antibiotics fail us one by one, we’re going to have to go this way. (Phages look very cool, as well.)
- The scientific method wins again: We thought we knew the physics behind same-material static electricity. We were wrong. Doubt really does lie at the very heart of science, in that if we don’t doubt what we think we know, we have no chance of finding our mistakes.
- Now that eggs aren’t evil anymore, it’s worth exploring all the various ways to prepare them. If you like hard-boiled eggs, here’s the best explanation I’ve seen of how to boil them so that they’ll peel easily and without divots.
- Adobe’s Creative Cloud was down for some time. The issue’s been resolved, but it just confirms my ancient suspicion that putting everything on the cloud is a really bad idea. If I can’t access my software, I can’t work. Pretty much end of story.
- Blue light keeps you awake. Staying awake shortens your life. So as the day winds down, Turn the Damned Thing Off. Then read a book until you’re sleepy. I recommend any substantial history book, with a special nod to histories of the Byzantine Empire. (Thanks to Dermot Dobson for the link.)
- This is the company that makes the machines that play the songs on ice cream trucks. Or at least the ones in the UK.
Odd Lots
- Jim Strickland found a site with some of the guldurndest CP/M-80 programming tools from the 80s and maybe earlier. Most of them aren’t familiar to me, and I don’t have a machine to run them on anymore. However, if you want any of the four releases of JRT Pascal, or Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M, well, dinner is served.
- And for dessert, here’s the x86 DOS collection, including Turbo Pascal 3.02, Turbo C 2.01, and all of the original IBM PC slipcase compilers that I’ve ever seen.
- Very nice if not especially new intro to Flash and SSDs, from AnandTech.
- Another, more recent piece on Flash over there. Remember that it’s a multiparter; read ’em all.
- Pete Albrecht sends word of a Death Star ball camera trending on IndieGogo right now. It’s a little like kite aerial photography without the kite.
- Amtrak has some new muscle: 8600 horses’ worth. I used to take Amtrak between Baltimore and NYC regularly when I worked for Ziff-Davis, and it was a wonderful thing. Now if I could only get a damned train between here and Denver… (Thanks to Bruce Baker for the link.)
- Wonderful volcano photo over at Wired, which again leads me to wonder what the trends are in volcanic activity over the past century or two. Are there really more eruptions, or are we just hearing more about the ones that happen? If you’ve ever seen a chart somewhere, please share.
- Ouch.
- Pertinent to my last Odd Lots: The correct term is “assortative,” according to linguist Michael Covington. “Preventive” and “assortative” are derived from the 4th principal parts of the Latin verbs “preventus” and “assortatus.” That’s actually more interesting, in a way, than assortative mating itself.
- The Great Lakes are now 88% covered in ice. We may not top the 1994 level (94%) nor 1979 (95%) this year, but unless things get a helluva lot warmer out east in the next month or so, we’re going to give them a very good run.
- Great perky guitar piece by Eric Johnson in the $1.29 MP3 pile over at Amazon.
- Also, my fourth favorite pop song evah, for only a buck.
- If you &*!## love science enough to believe the &*!## data, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that sugar will &*!## kill you. (Thanks to my very brilliant wife for the link.)
- The core of loving science, by the way, is questioning authority–and demanding that scientific authority be sane, calm, utterly honest, and absolutely without anger. (And so–need I say?–should the questioners.)
- Either red wine, aspirin, or both could help us beat certain types of cancer. The key may be not too much wine, and not too much aspirin.
- If this Onion piece makes you twitch even a little, well, good.
Odd Lots
- The very first magnetic hard drive had 50 platters, stored 5 megabytes, and weighed over a ton. IBM was so proud of the RAMAC system that included the hard drive that it would take a demo unit on tour, to show it to a skeptical business community. Must have been hard on the truck’s suspension.
- Compare that original hard drive to Intel’s Edison, which is an X86 Quark processor and associated logic in an SD card chassis. The comments to the story are cautionary: There’s not much hard information on Edison right now, and it’s not clear whether it adheres to the full SD card spec or the mechanical spec only. Rumor holds that it runs Linux, though what the connectivity is I’m not sure.
- Edison is targeted at the idiotically named “Internet-of-things,” which, given Bruce Schneier’s cautions, I’m not entirely sure I want to clutch uncritically to my oddly shaped ribcage.
- If Edison’s a little too small, consider Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) machine, which crams a non-gamer desktop into a box 4 1/2″ X 4 1/2″ X 1 1/2″. $700. As best I can tell, that would do pretty much whatever I do now on my quadcore, minus hard disk mobility.
- I don’t remember when I last saw a sunspot this big. I think 2003. Must … scan … 10… meters…
- If you’re under the illusion that TV news outlets actually write the news stories that they broadcast, well, watch Conan O’Brian’s video mashup of 23 newcasters saying precisely the same thing. And it’s a really dumb thing, too. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- Calling all pop music fans Of A Certain Age. (Like me.) This may interest you: Forgotten Hits has a collection of top 40 music surveys for various (mostly Midwestern) radio stations from 1956-1980.
- Talk about planned obsolecence. This truck is guaranteed not to rust…but it will melt within six months, tops.
- We could sure use a few of these right now.
Odd Lots
- I always hate to hand you two Odd Lots in a row, but I’ve been so burned out by the end of the day working on this book that there’s nothing left to craft a coherent essay with. I was going to write something insightful about Prohibition (which was repealed 80 years ago today) but about all I can muster is this: Prohibition was altogether evil and accomplished nothing. It was a cry of rage against Irish and southern European Catholic immigrants, and in one blow created organized crime and birthed a disrespect for the rule of law that afflicts us to this day. Of all the things our government has condoned, only slavery was more evil.
- ARM Holdings offers a free ARM and Thumb-2 instruction set reference in PDF format. I remember when these things folded up to fit in your shirt pocket. Not anymore.
- Somebody figured out how to hack Parrot quadricopters wirelessly, and it was done with a Raspberry Pi.
- Bill Meyer sent me a link to a nice comparison of various small under-$100 boards in the Arduino / Raspberry Pi class. The only serious omission I see are the Beagle boards, including the fascinating BeagleBone Black.
- But never fear: Make did a BBB vs RPi comparison back in August. Best I’ve seen so far. Gizmag’s is older but still worth a quick scan.
- You can evidently find out if your login or logins were stolen in the recent hack of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Adobe, and other sites. Here’s a multi-site lookup.
- Is there any article online about the “divided sleep” concept (our ancestors retired at nightfall, slept for three or four hours, awakened for an hour or two, and then slept again for three hours or so) that does not walk back to Roger Ekirch? I’ve read Ekirch’s book very carefully, and his evidence for this phenomenon is pretty damned slim. Yet…it shows up all over the place.
- Statins may not cause memory loss or confusion. However, their primary mission of reducing cholesterol levels may not do much to prevent heart disease in people who don’t already have it.
- Eau Crappe. Newsweek returns from the death that is the Cloud, and will resume a weekly print edition. Will the magazine be awright, Uncle Lar? Well guldurn, Little Tommy, I sure hope not! (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- There are currently 35 volcanoes erupting around the world. Here’s a great site summarizing where they are and what they’re doing. I’m still curious about what the active volcano trends have been over the past thousand years or so (within the limits of our ability to determine what was blowing up on Kamchatka in the 1300s) and if you’ve seen any trend reports like that, do drop a note.
- That poor llama is finally getting a rest. After fifteen years, AOL is shutting down the Winamp page and ceasing support of the product on December 20. Winamp was the first MP3 player I ever tried, way back in 1998. One of my colleagues had to send me an MP3 to test it with: Rosanne Cash’s “Seven-Year Ache.” The song didn’t impress me, but the concept made me think: This is gonna change a few things in the music business.
Odd Lots
- Blasting away on a book project that I’ll tell you about when the publisher announces it. One thing fersure, it’s certainly reminding me what I’d forgotten.
- Your brain takes out the toxic trash while you sleep. Short your brain on sleep, and the trash piles up. Let it pile up enough (particularly beta amyloids) and you could put yourself on the fast track for Alzheimer’s. (Thanks to Jonathan O’Neal for the link.)
- I described a coffee-station sized version of this, controlled by a hipster AI, in Ten Gentle Opportunities.
- Oh…and a blood-powered computer. Reminds me of another book I wrote once. Ok. It’s not blood. It’s “blood.” But still… (Thanks to Jim Strickland for the link.)
- Apple’s iCloud system has been cracked. It’s true that anything can be cracked. But I’m still convinced that it’s harder to crack stuff located down here than it is for stuff up there.
- Intel now has a competitor to the Raspberry Pi, the Galileo. It’s compatible with most Arduino shields and the Arduino software development environment. The board is based on the Quark microarchitecture, which is somewhere south of Atom and aimed squarely at the mobile device market. The board will be generally available to hobbyists by the end of November, for about $60. More on Ars. (Thanks to Bill Meyer for poking me about this; I knew but have been too busy to mention it here.)
- Very nice site on Earth’s cryosphere, which shows sea ice extent and much else. Antarctic ice is in good shape and growing. Arctic ice is a tougher call. It’s down from the 70s but looks to be coming back.
- There is a hoarder house so full of vinyl records that the collector ended up sleeping in his car. Hey, is there an undiscovered hoarder house full of variable capacitors somewhere?
- There are a number of reasons I don’t read Time Magazine. This may be most of them.
- Manshunyogger!
- Maybe it’s a triple-humped solar max. Or maybe Old Sol is just having some fun with us.
- Here’s why the Russians didn’t beat us to the Moon.
- Turbo Pascal as a Javascript browser window. Not complete (and it doesn’t understand Readln!) but still. Egad. (Thanks to Eric Bowersox for the link.)
- If you f&$!*!ing love science, you should f&$!*!ing hate how we do it in this country.
