Archive for Life - page 8

I have decided to embark on a journey of discovery to determine my Peak Music year, which you may remember me discussing in an earlier post, “What Does My Taste In Music Say About Me?” Initially I was at a loss as to how this could be accomplished, and after some thought I decided that there would be no truly scientific way to study this, that there would be a large measure of subjectivity involved.  Since we’re talking about my taste in music, which is really just my opinion, I figured subjectivity would be OK.  In some of my Music Friday posts where I give background on the songs I’ve chosen; I often reference where the song placed on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in a certain year.  With that in mind I decided the measurement of a song’s popularity as measured by the BillBoard Hot 100 chart could form a basis of information to determine what year is my “Peak Music” year.  Fortunately, all the Billboard charts going back to 1958 are archived online at the Billboard Magazine website.  1958 is plenty far enough for my purposes, since I was only born in 1956 and have decided arbitrarily that I would start my search at 1965 anyway.  Side note:  in addition to viewing the weekly charts, you can listen to the songs through Spotify.  If you don’t have a Spotify account you can set one up for free, you just need to provide your e-mail address.

This is going to be a process.  Since I’ve decided that my peak music year is likely to fall between 1965 and 1975, I will research those years first.  If I am unsatisfied with the end result, I will expand the survey to earlier and later years.  Since the BillBoard Hot 100 chart is released weekly, there are 52 charts per given year, each chart with 100 songs on it.  Yikes!  I have decided, again arbitrarily, to review only the #1 songs from each weekly chart and determine which artist or group had the most #1’s.  The artist or group with the most #1 songs in a given year I will deem the “most popular” of that year.  Then based on that I will decide which of those ten artists or groups are my favorite and that year they were the “most popular” will be my “Peak Music” year.  Make sense?  Probably not, but I’m going with it anyway.

Oh…and once I determine the winner for a given year, I will feature that artist’s #1 song (or songs) on that Music Friday.

So…the 1965 Billboard Hot 100.  Winner:  The Beatles with five #1’s – I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week, Ticket to Ride, Help! and Yesterday.

Runners up were The Supremes with four #1’s.  The only other groups with multiple #1’s were The Rolling Stones and Herman’s Hermits with two apiece.

So Here are the Beatle’s #1 songs from 1965.  Since I just featured Eight Days a Week last Friday, follow this link for that song.  The others follow now.

Next week – 1966!  See ya!

New Hotness: If you build it they will go

Since the advent of one party rule, the effort to build the California People’s Republic of Zen Utopia continues apace.  The California Republic part was built a long time ago by Men Who Matched Her Mountains.  The Zen Utopia part is being manifested today by Persons Who Can’t Think Straight.

California was built and they did come.  It is the most populous state in the union, and was at one time the 9th largest economy on the planet.  We had industry, agriculture and infrastructure, good jobs and a vibrant economy.  Our public education system, K-12, State Colleges and Universities was the envy of the world, much less the Nation.  We had it made.

How can you improve on that?  What’s missing?  Well, we need some liberal fascism for sure.  What else?  Utopia ain’t cheap and people need to pay their fair share, so we’ll need high taxes and burdensome regulations to keep those evil businessmen and The Rich in line.  And don’t forget!  We need some good old idiotic feel good legislation.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a bad idea, as long as it sounds good.  And a train.  A giant money sucking hole of a train to nowhere.  No utopia can be complete without a train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, north and south utopia.

Can Utopia be built?  Well, California certainly has the scenery for it.  But if Utopia is a perfect community or society, can that be achieved in light of the fact that one man’s perfection is another man’s oppression?  Do you force everyone into groupthink?  If so, what becomes of our sacred “Diversity®”?  I thought it was to be celebrated as our greatest strength?  What’s that you say?  Diversity through conformity?  Oh.  OK.

California’s population has doubled since the 1970’s.  So we could probably use some new highways.  Or some new reservoirs so agriculture and our thirsty cities have more stable water supplies.  Oh…here’s an idea.  Let’s bring more power plants online so we have cheap and plentiful energy for industry and the population at large.  D’oh!  What am I thinking?  I took off my Birkenstocks for a minute and stopped thinking like a burnt out Haight-Ashbury refugee.  There can be no highways, dams or power plants in Utopia.  Utopians will not drive, shower or irrigate, nor use electricity.

So, it’s being built and… they’re leaving.  We’re leaving.

Well, nice try.  As my mother used to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  When everything you know is wrong and you set out to build utopia, what you may end up with is likely to be something quite different.  Judging by all the good intentions bandied about the Capitol, we must surely be on the road to hell.  We haven’t quite got there yet…but you can see it from here.

You know…vicissitudes… the changes or variations occurring in the course of life.  Well, are you?  I’m not.  But if you are, maybe you’d like to consider a virtual presence device.  Like this:

Don’t laugh.  I mean, yes, laugh becasue that’s supposed to be funny.  But don’t laugh at this – apparently this is becoming a thing – see this article at PC Mag.  The geeks are the ones who decide what becomes a thing and what doesn’t.  And the Geeks are telling us This Will Be a Thing!   Meh.  Might not be so bad.  Harder to catch Ebola, I suppose.  But it will probably lead to something like this:

Now can you tell me just how in the heck that thing is supposed to get in and out of the litter box?

Huh Wha…..?  The Earth’s magnetic poles could reverse?  And sooner than we thought?  To the barricades! Break out the survival gear!

Freeze dride food? Check.  

Ammo? Check.  

Gas for the generator? Check.  

Big pile of gold bars? …….Dammit!

According to the fear mongers at Popular Science we are due for a reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles, the most recent of which was about 780,000 years ago.  The next one had not been expected to occur  for another million years or so, but now they say it could happen sooner than we thought!  I blame Obama.

Up until now, I was under the impression that our impending doom would arrive via the Robot Revolution.  Either that or  the Higgs Boson Doomsday, which we shouldn’t worry about because of it’s instantaneous nature.  Now we’re forced to sit and wait in horrible anticipation of yet another doom that may not come for two or three millenia.  That’s a long wait!  According to the article we can expect…hang on a sec, lemme find it….we can expect…

“Scientists haven’t found any evidence that previous reversals caused any major damage to inhabitants of the earth.”

Oh.  OK then.  Never Mind.

Yessss!

Guy plays the national anthem with a rifle.  A Ruger 10/22 to be exact, which I had previously only suspected was the most versatile of firearms.  Now I  am convinced of that fact.  If you have a hammer, a crescent wrench, two screwdrivers (phillips and common), a roll of duct tape and a Ruger 10/22 (with ammo) you can accomplish just about anything.

The tempo is a little suspect, but with some more practice and better target placement I’m sure that can be improved.

Hat Tip:  Ace of Spades HQ

Of course, it happened in Japan:

Tokyo Cops Bust School Girl Sniff Parlor

I’m still trying to decide if that’s for real or if it’s a hoax.  If it’s a hoax, someone put a lot of time into it.  Since truth is often stranger than fiction, I guess there’s a good chance it’s true.  On second thought, it’s Japan.  So it’s gotta be true.

Now this:

Once I start Beatle-ing I can’t stop.  So three more songs for you of the non-obscure variety, timeless and especially meanigful to me (and I hope you, too!).  Enjoy!

In my life, I get by with a little help from my friends eight days a week.

Here are a few un-deconstructed Beatles tunes.  I mean re-constructed.  Wait.  Constructed?  Skip it.  These are just a few of my favorite (and hopefully more obscure) Beatles tunes.

Tell me what you see.

Think for yourself.

And your bird can sing!

Tell me you’ve seen seven wonders indeed.  Now you’ve heard three.

As in deconstructing the Beatles.  This is a little about the music and a little about how it is was made, that is, performed and recorded.  Or at least how it was done in “the olden days”.  Here is a YouTube video that breaks down Sgt. Pepper’s Lonley Heart’s Club Band into the 4 tracks it was recorded on.  Yep, the analog tape machines of the day only recorded on 4 tracks, so the engineers had to get a little creative.  George Martin who produced and/or engineered many Beatles recordings is considered an early master at fitting everything onto the 4 available tracks, a practice known as “ping-ponging”.

Interesting, no?  I think it holds up well strictly as an instrumental.  And the harmonies seem all the more…harmonious when you hear them a capella.  Anyway, lots of Deconstructing The Beatles videos at YouTube if you’re interested.

Our Universities are asking the important questions.  Question is, are they asking the right people?

On a daily basis, studies are undertaken at our Institutions of Higher Learning so that we may better understand our puzzling existence.  These are all likely funded by our tax dollars, or at least by tuitions.  Today’s example comes to us courtesy of the University of Rochester in New York.  The study reveals that “Sex Over Food Is The Clear Choice For Some Males”.  OK.  At first glance I see that it does say some males, so  I guess that we’re not all sex crazed lunatics, or at least some of us would rather not…err…procreate on an empty stomach.  Let me look a little deeper into this study…oh…wait.  The males in question happen to be male Nematodes.  Nematodes are worms.  Worms.  That’s a cold shot.  They had to play the invertebrate card – insert spineless male joke here.  They could have at least studied Chimps or something.  Or a mammal of some kind.  Is that too much to ask?  So our basis of understanding the male of the human species is derived from the study of worm brains.  Close enough, I guess.  I suppose there are some days when I would lose a chess match with a nematode.  One of the smarter ones, sure.  But still.

What about women?  Did we study any female nematodes to find out if they would rather eat or…you know?  Apparently some research has been done on this.  For the result we turn to the lexicon of knowledge known as Glamour Magazine for a report on a poll done by Today.com and Match.com about whether females would rather give up sex or their favorite food for a year.  Spoiler: sex wins.  Thank God…I mean…never mind.  I assume they polled female humans and not nematodes or any other invertebrates.  It does say they asked 4,000 “people” and last I checked nematodes were not considered people unless there is some movement I haven’t heard about.  Lemme google that real quick…shit.  Apparently if they are not considered people yet, they may be soon.

We’re trying to better understand what our two most basic instincts may be – the need to survive and the need to reproduce in the modern context of assured survival and possible over-propagation of the species.  And apparently our best research choices are to study worm brains, or read Glamour magazine.  I guess the result couldn’t be any worse than if you just asked someone.  Once in a College Philosophy class discussion about reality, one of the guys posited “If you can’t chew it or screw it, it ain’t real”.  Yes, yes, we know.  But the question is chew first and screw later, or vice versa?

So our universities are asking the important questions, but are they asking the right…uhh…organisms?  Dunno.  Nobody asked me.  Anyway, I’m hungry.  But there’s something I gotta do first.