Having just found a few John Lennon songs to share, I’m reminded of John’s oldest son Julian. So here are a couple of my favorite Julian Lennon songs. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago I did a Happy Birthday post featuring Paul McCartney, and have been listening to Beatles tunes since. So I figured why not do a couple songs from the other half of the dynamic duo? Not Batman and Robin – Lennon and McCartney. That is, John Lennon. Lennon’s solo work is not as ubiquitous as McCartney’s, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t just as good. In my mind, McCartney was much more prolific and his music had more of a pop quality, while Lennon’s seemed more deliberative, introspective and artlike. No judgement, just an observation. Anyhoo… I picked a couple of my favorites here:
First up: “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” (with Elton John):
Whatever gets you to the light indeed. Next I give you “Watching the Wheels”
Finally, “Nobody Told Me”:
Most peculiar, Mama. Which may sum up the whole story, sad ending and all. Final fun fact: Lennon’s middle name is Winston, after the other famous British Winston – Churchill. RIP and THANKS!
It seems like the right time for this – this is fire season. All over the west, but in California…Northern California in particular. Since I live near an airfield with a long runway, the occasional large tanker flies over my house. So why not do a little post with some video of the largest air tanker in operation in the U.S.? That would be the DC-10 “Rainmaker”. The McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 is a wide-body airliner that is no longer used for commercial passenger flight. It’s three engine configuration, with two engines mounted on wing pylons and the third engine mounted at the base of the vertical stabilizer makes it easily identifiable whether on the ground or in flight. The DC-10 ended production in 1989.
Here’s a Modern Marvels segment that give you the basic facts:
Here’s some footage taken by a news crew that was in the drop zone:
There are only two of these flying, Tanker 910 and Tanker 911. Quite a machine. Glad we have ’em.
One way to make yourself miserable is to stay angry and agitated all the time. And one way to do that is to stay focused on politics all the time. Personally, I think that’s a bad idea and I say that as someone who is very interested in politics.
So, here comes the latest bad idea – Buypartisan. The app that helps “make every day election day” through “spending choices”. It lets you scan a product’s barcode to get information on which political party the company’s CEO, Board of Directors and employees donate to. Reviews of the app can be found here and here or at many places via google.
So this app should do two things to create more angry people – first there will be more people clogging the aisles at your favorite grocery outlet on their smartphones. That’s not gonna make anyone happy. Then, those people using the app will be ticked when they realize the CEO of the company that makes their favorite cornflakes donates money to the “wrong” party. I predict, chaos, mayhem and mass hysteria.
Politics is not unimportant, but we are all more than simply our political identity. At some point you have to distance yourself from political considerations and just live your life. Life is not a zero sum game. Money flows where money flows. Sometimes you just have to let it be.
Let the Liberal hand-wringing begin. Reuters: “California Breakup Plan Would Create Rich and Poor States: Report”. If there is one thing that cannot be tolerated in California – whether it is one California or Six – it is inequality.
In case you are wondering what I’m talking about, there is an initiative being considered for the California ballot called The Six Sates Initiative which would create six separate states out of California.
According to the Reuters story, the richest state would be Silicone Valley with a per Capita income of $63,288, and the poorest would be Central California with a per capita income of $46,477. The story also states that the plan has raised “bipartisan hackles”, but quotes no one. Near as I can tell, everyone outside of “Silicone Valley”, “West California” and “South California” thinks it’s a great idea because those areas are heavily populated and deeply liberal/Democratic while the rest of the state is more sparsely populated and leans Independent/Conservative/Republican and are tired of being force fed a liberal Democrat agenda. As far as the fiscal disparity, they are sure they can handle their own affairs.
Of course, the stated “inequality” exists even now, regardless of the initiative, but I doubt the concern is great enough for the rich to “redistribute” any of their wealth to their “poorer” bretheren. All that’s needed is to defeat the initiative, keep those people on the la-la liberal plantation and everything will be fine.
Cross posted at Men Out of Work Blog
A minor internet kerfuffle has erupted over the introduction of an app called “Sketch Factor”. Sketch Factor is a crowd source app where users can upload information they find “sketchy” about their neighborhood or wherever they happen to be. This is then added to map data and can be used to avoid, or if you’re looking for sketchiness, to find certain neighborhoods. Some on the internet have declared the app “racist”. Here’s the logic:
Step 1: The app was created by two young white people,
Step 2: All smartphone users are affluent white people,
Step 3: All white people distrust black people and find them “sketchy”,
Step 4: Therefore white people will use the app to flag black neighborhoods and black people as “sketchy”.
Step 5: Racism!
I suppose that my labeling of some neighborhoods as “bad” is confirmation of my “racism”. I am a firm believer in situational awareness and minimizing risk, and so I would find this app usefull especially if I was in a strange town. I don’t see at all how that equates to racism. A lot of the discussion of the app seems centered on Washington, D.C. maybe because the Gawker writer lives there (I think). Anyway, a Washington D.C. news crew went out to do a story about one of the neighborhoods identified as “sketchy”, and while they were doing man on the street interviews with the residents there something happened: “but as folks were telling us that it was a good neighborhood, and that not much activity happens around there — as that was being told to us, our van was being robbed.”
So…Sketch Factor: 10 out of 10. I wonder if they reported the incident. Probably not, that would be racist.
I suppose I could make this a “real life irony” post. When the ACLU requested information from the Justice Department regarding the Government’s monitoring of citizen’s text messages without a warrant, they received in response a document that was completely redacted:
Totally Redacted FOIA response
Related: The Department of Education employs a FOIA Denial Officer. Perfect.
Cross posted at Men Out of Work Blog
Via The Volohk Conspiracy and other sundry sources I have forgotten, we have this story about a photographer, a macauqe monkey, a camera purloined by said monkey, a selfie taken by said monkey with the purloined camera and back to the photographer who wishes to assert copyright of the photo.
Since I have it on good authority that I can reproduce the photo without violation of any copyright:
Cowabunga, dude. Oh wait. That was a turtle. Never mind.
Seems like a pretty happy monkey. Anyhoo…the photographer himself is the source of the story that the photo was not taken by him, but by the monkey. Since the photo is not the photographer’s work, he cannot claim copyright over it. Since the monkey is non-human, he (it?) cannot claim copyright either. Therefore according to copyright law, the copyright belongs to no one. So…..monkey selfies for everyone!
…is not the title of one of the Lego Movie sequels. This is for real. Seventeen years ago in a storm off the coast of Cornwall, U.K. a huge wave knocked several containers off a ship. One of those containers held something like 4,800,000 pieces of Lego, and they have been washing up on the beaches of Cornwall ever since. The pieces that are washing up on shore are not the block type pieces but rather the small accessories , ironically many of them with maritime themes, such as life preservers, octopi, diver flippers and scuba apparatus. According to Tracey Williams who operates the Lego lost at Sea Facebook page, dragons and octopi are the rarest of finds in what has become the quite competitive pastime of Cornish beachcombing.
“These days the holy grail is an octopus or a dragon. I only know of three octopuses being found, and one was by me, in a cave in Challaborough, Devon. It’s quite competitive. If you heard that your neighbour had found a green dragon, you’d want to go out and find one yourself.”
Theoretically, the Lego pieces could end up anywhere in the world, however the only “verified” finds are on the north and south shores of the Cornwall Peninsula. Other Lego finds on beaches across the globe are attributed to children leaving their Lego behind after a day at the beach.
Here is your feel good story of the day: Entire ISIS Bomb Making Class Blown up by Instructor’s Mistake. Apparently the Bomb-Teacher had a class of 21 students who suddenly found themselves burning in hell when their instruction took a wrong turn.
Instructor: “So you see our bomb is complete. To detonate simply turn this swi…BOOM!
Students: “……..”
That’s some Instant Karma right there.
Hat Tip: Ace of Spades HQ
Cross Posted at Men Out of Work Blog