Friday, September 29, 2006

Little wall of prayer words

Greatest family friend Dorothy Little passed away last week. When Mrs. Little and Dr. Little had a celebration in 1999, they asked friends to contribute reminiscences. Which I did. And append here.

Thinking back, I guess my parents met the Littles due to the good grace of Grandma Maude Little. We lived a few doors down from her on Augusta Street -- we were new to Racine having come from Boston to work for Johnson’s. I was too young to know but I think Dorothy and Bill and Mary and Bill were just coming then to Racine having gotten out of the service. Maude thought that Dorothy and my mother Mary would find friendship together and this was exceptionally astute and true.

So ensued many years of wonderful friendship much due to Dorothy's bigness of heart. If my mother was on the phone in tears with laughter I knew she was talking to Mrs. Little. All the holidays -- Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas as I recall -- we had together. Billy and I would be out quickly after dinner (the kids ate at a separate table) and we would be playing rocket ship, recreating Flash Gordon, in the blue Pontiac with Chief Pontiac alit amber in some kind of acrylic on the hood. When it was Fourth of July my father would put a sheet on a wall in the yard and after dark everyone would watch home movies including films of volcanic eruptions we brought back from Hawaii. And when the film ran out, with the projector still going, flickering, Billy and the girls would act out silent movies -- 'you must pay the rent -- I cant pay the rent -- I'll pay the rent' said the hero. The kids would make fun of our Bostonian pronunciation of words like podaado chips, and cahh.

When my sister was sick Mrs. Little was there to help out. One Thanksgiving dinner I will always remember. Was somber because Kathy was not there -- she was in the hospital in a coma. She'd been hit by a car and thrown from her bike at Shorecrest shopping center. God it was scary. We worried, and at dinner it was just kids this time -- Doctor Bill and Dorothy naturally at the hospital. But we lit up in glee-ed relief when Mrs. Little came in late and said that Kathy was coming out of it. She'd spoken a word. It was as I recall "Cuba". This I think had been lately in the news.

We took vacation as families at least once together and once the Littles took me to join them on vacation -- I think near Lake Delevan. I still recall this brilliantly because I got to go go-karting. Great joy. When I went back home on Sunday, I recall the news in the newspaper and on the radio was that Marilynn Monroe died. -- so maybe it was 1962. Quiet Grandpa Bill drove me back to Racine and we stopped to inspect a bowling green. Lawn bowling -- a rarity. We looked at the surface grassed green, the boundaries hedged green, and wondered what the rules were.

Always there was Dr Little and the work. After dinner one Sunday night he took Billy and me to see Lawrence of Arabia. Fifteen minutes into the movie a page comes from an usher for Dr. Little down the aisles. T'was ever thus. He got back for the end of a movie -- which was not only in 120 mm technicolor but was also four hours long. So many calls to help so many people. So many dinners or backyarad picnics called away from. I remember so many times when the phone would ring and he's say "I'll be there." And Mrs. Little would say 'Isn't Doctor So-and-so on call?" And there'd be this long pause and some kind of mumble. And Dorothy would say I'll make a sandwich or something like that. This was part of life.

These are things from old times that happened as I recall. For me they hold oceans of meaning on which sail our lives.When Manson was on Life, or whatever, the natural stance among most was to see him as the devil. I can’t forget that Mrs. Little broke into a youths’ conversation to say ‘Well what do you expect from someone that was brought up without any love?’ Referring to Manson’s tenuous cathouse upbringing. For my family, strangers in the town in the 50s, if you will, all this great openness of the Littles meant that we had a bigger family although we were far from home. This more than anything was what made Racine home. And all this I hold as cherished remembrance. Which I offered in a snapshot 50th anniversary book. As well as prayers of thanks and my respectful best wishes. Jack Vaughan, 1999.

Dorothy A. Little

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Defining software architecture roles

TSS.COM editor Joseph Ottinger has posted a summary of Marty Andrews' reflection on defining software architecture roles. There are architects and there are architects. And then, one might add, there are architects.

read more | digg story

Monday, September 25, 2006

I'm gonna find Search

moloch

“The Search” by John Battelle is a casual and mostly entertaining walk through the last 10 or so years of digital search, mostly but not entirely centered around the phenomenon of Google.
Search technology as contrived today is the act of continually applying better and better algorithms as new patterns are unearthed in the large body of data that is the Web. The first result is a several-billion-dollar advertising business that flattened print and brand advertising.

As the algorithms are still young, there is still room for Search to grow. It is even, notes Battelle, reshaping our “cultural grammar.” Disembodied terms. We search to find information, to locate things to buy, to find a shorter route to what we knows exist, but also, he chides in an aside, to secure our immortality. We search for what we know exists, and we search to discover what we have a feeling may exist.


Battelle mentions Melvil Dewey, of the dreary Dewey Decimal System. But he assigns mathematician Gerald Salton – inventor of Salton’s Magical Automatic Retriever of Text [SMART] in the late 1960s -- as the father of the digital search.


“Salton introduced many of the seminal concepts commonly used in search today, including concept identification based on statistical weighting, and relevance algorithms based on feedback from queries,” he writes, noting how Salton’s work spurred an annual searchers’ get-together [between 1980 and the mid-1990s] knows as the Text Retrieval Conference.


Battelle rightly lingers on Alta Vista, for many the first home page they set. Beginning life as a demonstration of DEC’s Alpha chip and server meant that it held from the start the seed of its downfall. IBM, DEC, Microsoft .. no established tech company, no matter how grand its heuristics hardware or queries .. was likely to successfully start a whole new search-oriented business outside its mainstream business. That Google, with a somewhat defiant non-commercial stance (at the time), emerged as the big kahuna of text retrieval, is in large part ironic, and good fodder for story telling like Bagtetelle’s.


Conclusion – The story has brilliant pacing at the outset and then begins to suffer from the ‘first take on history” syndrome. In the end it’s a collection of magazine stories, or web postings – journalism between hard covers, really. The book would be too offputting, no doubt, if he really devoted a lot of time to ‘splaining’ what goes on in that big-little box called Google. But you can’t fault the author for pushing. The book came out in late 2005, just as Google – Google as Manna, or Google as Moloch, take your pick – reached an initial apogee.

http://www.amazon.com/Search-Rewrote-Business-Transformed-Culture/dp/1591840880

Friday, September 15, 2006

Well this week is another Dylan week, no question. Gordon Thomas - the man who not only played keyboards at my wedding but also took the photos as well -- pulled our coat to a New York Times story that uncovers the half suspected story of grafting done on Modern Times. We went through this with the Yazuka book and Love and Theft too..



Gordon Writes ... On Modern Times, Dylan sings:

More frailer than flowers, these precious hours/That keep us so tightly bound
On hearing these lines, I thought, well, that’s like something from an old poem, isn’t it, and, now, this just in from the NYTimes (9/14/06): Dylan’s lines are from an old poem. More precisely from Henry Timrod’s Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night:

A round of precious hours/Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked/And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers

No big surprise, not after hearing of the borrowings, on Love & Theft, from an obscure, but recent and copyrighted, Japanese book on the Yakuza culture. Timrod died in 1867, and Dylan uses at least five more of his lines in When the Deal Goes Down without any need to sweat plagiarism charges.

But what manner of plagiarism is Dylan’s, anyway? It’s all cut and paste. In Timrod’s poem, it’s the poet’s logic that’s frailer than the flowers, not the hours. The lines from the Yakuza book were hammered into the song Floater, the persona of which appears to be a disaffected tobacco farmer down South, a concoction fairly distant from a Japanese gangster. Dylan has no designs on the actual expressive content of his sources. When he wants the feel of archaic, flowery poeticism, he rips lines from an archaic, flowery poem, but the song itself is all late-in-the-day Bob Dylan, sad and kooky.

Should Bob be doing this? Is Dylan still a genius? I don’t know. Whether Bob wrote ‘em or not, my favorite lines from the album are these:
I’m as pale as a ghost/Holding a blossom on a stem/You ever seen a ghost? No/But you have heard of them
Now, that’s as funny as when, back in the day, the post office was stolen.

This all just doesnt bother me. I think it is pretty cool. A variation on the bluesman's method. Ofcourse, if he'd 'done this on a resarch paper' he'd be in big trouble. If you have seen the features on the Gods and Generals DVD [the best part], you see this as ever so possible.

Of interst is the fact that the uncovering was done via Google search [Moloch].

The fact that "mODeRN TIMes" includes the letters that spell TIMROD? Well that is up there with the Beatles in the Trees on John Wesley Harding no question.

All this has caused me to repost the press relase Gordon and I did a few years ago when the Yazuka scandle hit.... under the gnome du plume of Norman Clature...

Musician rocked by scandal

- Dylan, under pressure, drops post; ‘Poor Boy’ at issue -

By Norman Clature

[Laguna Seca, Calif./Sept. 2, 2003] - Singer songwriter Bob Dylan today gave up his formal position as ‘Spokesman for a Generation’ as investigations continued into the original sources of his poetic inspiration. Mr. Dylan has been under pressure to resign this post since the Wall Street Journal last month disclosed that much of the imagery in a recent CD was apparently taken from the work of an obscure Japanese novelist named Toshuro “Doc” Yakamora.

In the wake of today’s announcement, Woodstock performing artist Melanie took over interim duties as Spokesman for a Generation. The pope was described by a Vatican official as being "deeply saddened" by the whole affair, The Associated Press reported. But all eyes were on Dylan.

Following the Journal’s disclosures of questionable poetic practices, Dylan had been increasingly trailed by representatives of bluesmen whose work he had assumed, in parts, as his own, over a number of years. Lawyers for the estates of Mr. Sonny Boy Williamson, Mr. Elmore James, Mr. Jack “Champion” Dupree, and Mr. Eustis “Blind Boy” Fuller were some among those calling on the Spokesman for a Generation to provide extended depositions.

In a similar vein, an unexpected class action suit was filed just this week in connection with Mr. Dylan's Love and Theft. The plaintiffs, calling themselves The Descendants of Robert Johnson, claim the phrase "dust my broom" was coined by their forebear Johnson, an itinerant Depression-era musician whose scratchy old recordings are much beloved by latter day rock 'n roll musicians such as the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards. Dylan makes use of the expression, which may or may not be an elaborate sexual double entendre, in the song High Water. The erstwhile folk singer's legal team has stated publicly that they feel the suit is without merit. "These people don't even know what Diddie-Wah-Diddie means," suggested Blane Cummings, a paralegal working on the case.

Dylan was not available for comment. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Spokesman for a Generation refused to answer questions. "He is doing well considering the circumstances," a representative said. Sources close to Dylan said he was not looking forward to any fuller hearing in any public forum.

Dylan had appeared at first to weather the storm over purported Yakamora borrowings. But a string of allegations proved difficult to ignore. The most recent focused on the possibility that Dylan appropriated original work of Isaiah ‘Izzy” Horowitz, noted Borsht Belt comedian, and father of an also noted intellectual property lawyer.

“In “Poor Boy,” on Dylan’s latest Love and Theft CD,” said Horowitz’s son, Lance, “a character in a hotel “calls down to room service, and says, ‘Send up a room.’

That’s Izzy Horowitz all the way,” he said.

“That’s not Love and Theft, that’s just plain theft,” he continued.

Horowitz is not alone. Sheldon Adelstein, inventor of the knock-knock joke is ‘investigating all avenues’ of resort, according to people close to the matter. Again, the lines in question are in ‘Poor Boy.”

Knockin' on the door, I say, "Who is it and where are you from?"Man says, "Freddy!" I say, "Freddy who?" He says, "Freddy or not here I come."

Although he looked haggard, Dylan clearly hoped hoped an August appearance on Fox’s Miss Teen America would help restore his standing. But threats of suits from survivors of dead vaudevillians have mounted.

In recent days, lawyers claiming to represent the estate of W.C Fields have raised questions about Dylan’s comment on “weather not fit for man or beast” in "Lonesome Day Blues". Fields made such a comment in his noted routine: “The Fatal Glass of Beer.”And a lawyer for another estate began to suggest that the Dylan character “looking in the window at the pecan pie” -- again in “Poor Boy” -- looked very much like Charlie “the Little Tramp” Chaplin as seen in numerous movies.


Despite his departure as Spokesman for a Generation, Dylan will continue to hold the titles of Stubborn Individualist, Troubled Troubadour and the arguably titular post of Half-Intelligible Old Fart.



What do you think?

Friday, September 08, 2006

Modern Times

Times change and don’t change.

So Dylan wrote in notes from his sole Egyptian Records release, a 1996 tribute to Jimmie Rodgers. That notion, that things change but don’t change, has been central to the set of records he began with Time Out of Mind [1997], continued with Love and Theft [2001], and adds to now with Modern Times.

As we out here in radioland tend to think of things as trilogies, it is now a trilogy. All and all, it’s been a grand return to form for Dylan. Modern Times stands with the previous two sessions like a Black Panther trackster at the Olympics - head down and fist up, getting a medal while the National Anthem plays. Maybe with an eye on the exit. The return to form is triadic.

Modern Times? Who knows? Maybe that’s the key. Have you noticed that what was pre-modern is now post-modern? But what about that Modern?! There is a rich sound here – and hell if it and its immediate antecedents aint likable to the rebirthed art Chaplin offered the world in his few sparse talkies, a resurge of genius long after his Silent Era heyday.

The sound of the Dylan group -- only the bassist, Tony Garnier, has carried through all the trilogy -- is incredibly tight and appropriate. Of the music -- he anchors and motivates all. J.J.Cale in old days had such a refined sense of blues rhythm, to try to give you an idea of the precise tightness. But the songs each have their own treatment and, blues, while the more dominant tone to Modern Times, is interspersed with variety light music, an old timey metier that has become a more integral part of the Dylan repertoire in these golden years.

Yet..

As they have most every one of them died -- hang in forever there B.B.!, Otis Rush! and ….. who else? -- Dylan has taken on and carried forward the underlying sentiment of the bluesman and the blues ethos. Thunder on the Mountain, Rollin’ and Tumblin’, Someday Baby, and The Levee’s Gonna Break are the core of this record, and they are all great numbers.

Cecelia has said about bands in general: “The further you get away from the blues the further you get into trouble.” The blues core is a key to the success of this record.

There are wistful and potent, Tin Pan Alley pop-style numbers too. Well Tin Pan Alley through the funnel, as Bob Wills might have had it. It’s actually hard to describe the style. It is Dylan’s. As he said of Jimmy Rodgers, “his refined style, an amalgamation of sources unknown, is too cryptic to pin down”. The critic will try, but these numbers can take a place ahead of some of their precursors on the previous two records. Beyond the Horizon moves me most.

Beyond the Horizon is a remake-remodel-revision of Red Sails in the Sunset, a popular one around the old home stead where I growed. Dylan has before paid omage to the popular song smiths of yore, starting with surprising appearances at public tributes to George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, flowing through the numbers on the Jimmie Rodgers tribute he produced, and his rendition of Tomorrow Night on Good As I Been to You, and reaching a flowering in the Time Out of Mind Trilogy.

Beyond the Horizon – beyond the blues horizon - is beyond Copper Kettle and Winterlude as this artist’s glimpse-depictions of heaven. But it is like Hello Hello or The Lovin Spoonful. The music is breezy. WhoodaThunkIt/ Ukes and Jazzmaster chords. Hawaii calls. He is a rhyming son of a bitch. The words go:

Beyond the horizon
at the end of the game
every step that you take
I’m walking the same.

It’s the right time of the season
Someone there always cares
There’s always a reason
Why someone’s live has been spared

Beyond the horizon
The sky is so blue
Ive got more than a lifetime
to live loving you.

This is an eternal time. Yes, “everything can go black.” As it does on another number on this disk. It will and it has. This is our era in long view. Thank you, Bob. Sorry we screwed up your beer drinking tryst with Ginsberg and the Russian poets near 42nd St in 1972.

Yes, Beyond the Horizon is like Red Sails in the Sunset. Theft you say! Stealing, Stealing. Recall the controversy around Love and Theft, as Dylan influences and borrowings were unmasked and non-anonymous. But Picasso is unrepentant. This record says, ok I am going to take Rolling and Tumblin, put in a few of my verses, shake it up, come back to a verse from another classic, and do the same with Someday Baby and The Levee’s Gonna Break . One recalls Al Wilson’s instructions on writing blues…Use a number of traditional phrases put together in a new relationship.

Funny but I was playing Memphis Minnie LP and heard her pal Joe McCoy’s version of The Levee’s Gonna Break just perchance as Modern Times climbed into the CD gondola. PlunckPlunckPlunck no place to stay. It was there in the air. Like the best blues art.

Grab it. If Joe and Minnie could have heard Dylan do this at this year’s Jazz and Heritage Fest, whew! Dylan’s last studio record came out on Sept 11, 2001. This one came out on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. People on the road. Help us! We saw it. On CNN. And telethons that followed. Dylan got it down - big time. He acknowledged it in new art as no other. He is mindful, of art in the air or on the levee to be found.

If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break
If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break
Some of these people don’t know which road to take.

Some people carrying everything they own
Some people carrying everything they own

Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones.

Put on your cat clothes mama
Put on your evening dress
Put on your cat clothes mama
Put on your evening dress

If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break
If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break

Few more years of hard work and then they’ll be a hundred years of happiness

If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break
If it keeps on raining
The levee’s gonna break
I tried to get you to love me but I wont repeat that mistake.

Too much to get down here. From the guy who almost died and met Elvis after catching a congestive bug playing an outdoor event near a big batcave in Kentucky before this whole trilogy hit the road.


To hear him in a swell foop [Thunder on the Mountain] immortalize Alicia Keys [“Everybody’s got to wonder/whats the matter with this cruel world today”] , like Simon did DiMaggio, like Mailer did Monroe. Who is the thief, anyway?

To come on like a warped hillbilly hipster on down the road in a Cadillac with Chuck Berry, bringing the crazy St. Louis cat back to the fore of our culture [“I got the pork chops/She got the pie/She aint no angel/And neither am I”]. The songs are like story boards, and then he travels on.

To wit. It’s all good. For a lesson here I look to Dylan. Said the bard: “Times change and don’t change. The nature of humanity has stayed the same.”

Pen ultimately, I’d like to say that Rollin and a Tumblin [Now read: “This woman is so crazy/I swear I ain’t gonna touch another one for years.”] really tipped my boat when I first heard it from Canned Heat way back. 1967. When we were youths, this stuff seemed tied together somehow, Dylan and the blues, and we followed the picture on Bringing it All Back Home, the one that pointed to Robert Johnson. Greatly affecting to hear again the story of the Rollin and a Tumblin night where sleep eludes and the world is in a jug.

Finally, if you act now, you can get a bonus rendition of the Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour. The theme? Baseball. Includes Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Damn Yankees [not the Ted Nugent version] , Cowboy Copas, Sonny Rollins, Sister Wyonna Carr, more. Funnel on great vorticist! He recently swept through this area playing minor league parks in Pawtucket and Pittsfield. With Jimmy Vaughan and Junior Brown [and, I think, Elena Fereman]. The co-producer of Dylan’s Time Radio Hour disk is none other than Eddie Gorodetsky, who was a great college blues DJ [and Rainbow Rib Room chef] here in Boston back in the 70s.

bobdylan.com
http://radio.weblogs.com/0115044/stories/2003/09/02/musicianRockedByScandal.html

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Reale Wilde Childe

Some songs over their histories paint a real picture of a developed style. Hey Joe, Tip Toe Through the Tulips, White Christmas, My Way, The Train Kept a Rolling .. come to mind. Elements are abstracted; what I mean to say is new portions of the former gain prominence.

Recently heard this to effect in a side-by-side playing of the original Real Wild Child by Johnny O’Keefe, which I’d never heard before – kind of a Eddie Cochrane-like band-orientedpure full-push 50s rocknroll rendition, hard to describe actually – and Jerry Allison AKA Ivan’s version. [There is also Iggy Pop’s ‘80s [?] version, which has a Devo or Ramone’s kind of incessant drone [but power chords and an almost disco beat], and Iggy’s droll delivery. That would fill out the evolution as far as I know.]

So I had to find out when Ivan’s version came from. It seems as if it could be from the Bubble Gum era, which, in my opinion, was a style that harkened back to rocknroll [albeit for youngsters] at a time when ‘rock’ was getting long in the tooth and slow. The Bubble Gum style was re-played ironically by the Velvet Underground during its post amphetamine era. And has some influence on punk. In fact Ivan’s Real Wild Child was recorded in 1958 by the Buddy Holly band!

Buddy Holly’s music never died. Certainly seminal rocknroll. The high degree of fun he could have with the genre is on display in Ivan’s Real Wild Child. [Gee, did Lou Reed do a song called Wild Child? It’s hard to remember..]

Buddy Holly Cricket band member Jerry Allison released two singles as “Ivan.” The first was “Real Wild Child/Oh You Beautiful Doll,” recorded February 19, 1958 at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, NM, according to buddyholly.com. People often refer to the song as Wild One. The session included Buddy Holly (guitar), Bo Clarke (drums), Joe B. Mauldin (bass), and The Roses sang backups. It was released as Coral 62017. The song Real Wild Child was doing well at the time for Johnny O’Keefe, who was also known as the Australian Elvis. When buddy and The Crickets toured Australia they heard the song. Upon returning to the US, the group recorded the song ‘as a joke.” It’s said they were parodying young Ricky Nelson [talk about the beautiful and laconic!] Jerry did not want his name on the record, so that is where Ivan came from. But he had looked into the future. An interesting novelty with a persistent rhythm wrote the promo people. And thus is traced a pattern of a musical joke with legs. Apparently Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Jett and, Josie and the Pussy Cats also did the number. It seems Johnny OKeefe was more than the short-hand Australian Elvis implies. He was a pioneer of Australian rNr.

Im a real wild oneAn I like a wild funIn a world gone crazyEverything seems hazyIm a wild oneOoh yeah Im a wild oneGotta break it looseGonna keep em movin wildGonna keep a swingin babyIm a real wild child.

------ ------ ------ ------ ------

It's hard to find this stuff. I suggest listening to WATD from Marshfield Mass. Oldies has gotten a bad name in recent years. In fact, stations that call themselves oldies stations generally work from a fragment of available music, most of which fit the narrowest band. Pop music in the 50s and 60s was full of creativity, surprise, genre hopping, and plenty of it, as most things that we called hits in those days only charted for a couple-three weeks.

Highly recommened Yesterday's Memories with Ed and George, 6pm to Midnight [Eastern Time] Saturday. http://www.959watd.com/Streaming.asp


http://www.amazon.com/Wild-One-Johnny-OKeefe/dp/B00006I904/
Johnny OKeefe on Amazon
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dcTSoaDaoPs
Iggy doing Real Wild child on You Tube

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Say it isnt noir

A DVD documentary on Film Noir I watched over the Labor Day Weekend informed that the genre is defined by deep shadows; strong angles; a wedding of style and content; a visualization of non harmonic space; stylized (angled) views of abstract concepts; presence of femme fatale; a mythic way of dealing with music as another character; music that evokes rain, dark, fear, lonely, ticking clock; flashback dreamy structure, laconic voice overs, peculiar narrative devices.

The only area of contention I found as I viewed this: That the hero must be drawn into the evil. That would make Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past a film noir hero [which he is] but not Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. The Film Noir commentators included some sick puppies. I don’t think even the French who came up with the term Film Noir meant it to be more than a depiction of color scheme .. in any case, I don’t think they would stipulate that the hero has to be a loser.

From the vaults: Genomic milestone

Computers helped drive breakthrough in human genome sequencing- ITworld.com 6/27/00

Distributed computing, database technology, search software and other technologies helped in mapping


At a White House press conference Monday, the Human Genome Project public consortium and Celera Genomics, a private firm, jointly reported that they had assembled working drafts of the human genome sequence. The two groups' presence on the same podium marked an apparent truce in what has been a desperate push to be first to announce a decoded human gene sequence.

While representing a breakthrough in scientific learning, the genome detective work also represents something of a breakthrough in modern computing techniques. Distributed computing and database technology as well as advanced search software and other technologies were employed to reach the goal of uncovering the basic plan for human life.

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/3494/ITW1237/pfindex.html

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Invaders from Earth to Return

The moon was the big beat for MoonTravellerHerald in our early days. So we got to take a look at the proposed return to the moon, and the vehicle to do it with. This week Lockheed Martin won the deal to create the US's next spaceship. Called Orion, the craft bears more resemblance to Apollo than Shuttle. Wisely, it includes an LEM-like escape capsule. The bid puts Boeing out of the future manned space business..for awhile at least. Lockheed failed in its attempt to create the first Shuttle follow-up, the x-33, after $900 M was spent on the the projectd
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14594789/

Friday, September 01, 2006

Lost Soul 45 Revue

Soul music and existentialism roll in the same sand box. Listen to old Soulville 45 rpm disks on the MoonTravellerHerald Podcast.

Trapped, just a prisoner, yearning. That was the wont of the girls of the soul music, Candi Station, Ann Peebles, Aretha Franklin, Carolyn Franklin, Betty Wright, Jackie Moore, Denise La Salle. That was soul with guitars crying as if playing underwater. It was a time of raw existentialism, as reality was down to the bone. Later came enhancements. Uggh.

Too far to walk. For me it was an existential chore, to climb up that Bascom Hill at 8 am when it was 20 below. To get to existential class, where the TA wore a turtleneck. I got my existentialism out of those spinning 45s. This is for the OneTwoMany Blues Band.

Summer Reading. Heard that Bush’s summer reading list included The Stranger by Camus. If he wanted to be existentially godsmacked, maybe he should take a phone call from Mahalia Jackson. It’s your dime, start talking.

[Off point: Got this quote out of Rumsfeld speech to Air Force group this week. He quotes Clemenceau, just like General Jack D. Ripper.

Says Rummy:

“War is, as Clemenceau said, a ‘series of catastrophes that results in victory.’”

Well it’s reassuring to know after all this time there is a plan, and that they are on plan.]

[My summer reading: American Prometheus - J. Robert Oppenheimer

http://pweb.netcom.com/~jvaughan/sound/lostSoul45ShortWeBVersion.mp3 Click to run this podcast in your browser, or right click to download it to your computer or MP3-ready devices.

[NOTE: For now, Podcasts will post and then remove in 1 month. If you access this page one month after publication, the podcast link will have expired .. sorry. ]

Podcast: Itchy and scratchy, that’s the way I like them

Lost Soul 45 Revue – Soul music and existentialism roll in the same sand box. Listen to old Soulville 45 rpm disks.
http://pweb.netcom.com/~jvaughan/sound/lostSoul45ShortWeBVersion.mp3


Click to run this podcast in your browser, or right click and select 'save target' to download it to your computer or MP3-ready devices.

[NOTE: For now, Podcasts will post and then remove in 1 month. If you access this page one month after publication, the podcast link will have expired .. sorry. ]