Not So Fast

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Cry, Cry Christmas – The Sweptaways
Last Christmas – Jimmy Eat World
Happy Christmas – Street Drum Corps
Fairy Tale of New York – The Pogues
Christmas Is Going To The Dogs – Eels
Feliz Navidad – Emperor Norton
I Want An Alien For Christmas – Fountains of Wayne
12 Days of Christmas – Reliant K
Sleigh Ride- Persephone’s Bees
Deck the Halls – Los Straightjackets
White Christmas – Trophy Fire
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Jars of Clay
A Holly, Jolly Christmas – Scissors For Lefty
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day – Jars of Clay
Jesus Christ – Elephant Micah
Silent Night – House of Heroes
Love Came Down At Christmas – Jars of Clay
I Saw Three Ships – Sufjan Stevens
Silent Night, Holy Night – Mahalia Jackson
O Holy Night – Weezer
Handel’s Messiah – Reliant K
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Weezer
If You Were Born Today – Low
Rock of Ages – Ben Kweller
The Coventry Carol – Mediaeval Baebes
Greensleeves – Vince Guaraldi Trio

FWIW, you’ll find some of these available for free on Amazon.

You can download a seven hour train trip in Norway in HD. Bonus: it’s Creative Commons licensed, so you can use it too.

The AV Club presents the least essential albums of the year. I was blissfully unaware of most of them, thankfully.

The stuff from the future doesn’t qualify. Of course they’ll have infinitely resolute(?) cameras, mind-boggling storage space for security footage, hyper-fast computers and the advanced algorithms needed then.

The top 8 gadget screwups of the decade. We’ve come a long way, baby.

The top 100 stories of the year, as chosen by Digg, so you know it’s good. Choice user comments too…

Unfortunately, they skipped the crucial dilithium. And something about Efimov trimers, which would be a good name for a band.

eMusic’s Top 100 albums of the decade.

I’m not a person who gets poetry, but every once in a while I find a poem that makes sense.  I just found this poem, Renasence by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It starts like this:

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.

and it has a great ending;

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

The stuff in between isn’t too bad either.

Well, rich and delicious note, why not?

Google may or may not be using quantum computers to power their new image recognition stuff.

Top 20 sci-fi movies of the last decade. A significant portion of which aren’t actually sci-fi, of course. I’m really surprised by Pitch Black because, while I liked it, I didn’t think anyone else had even seen it, much less appreciated it.

Pictures of classic computers.

Agh, the constant hiss. And then MP3s came along and saved us from having to buy entire albums at a time. God bless the Future.

Play Guitar Hero on your garage door.

How come all we got was a week of freezing cold?

This Avatar review includes the this awesome line.

Sully quickly falls for the non-specific mystical rabbitings of the tribe, involving memory-harbouring trees, intimate relationships with flying lizards, and other such prog-rock-influenced stylings.

I’m intrigued by it, but really, really don’t want to go see a movie where the evil, greedy American industrial-military complex ruin a pristine nature preserve and try to force the primitive natives onto a reservation with indoor plumbing.  Could you find another punching bag please. If it ends up like that, I’m out.

Also, the animated parts of the trailer looks like a video game cutscreen.

Related: I’m torn about the M. Night Shyamalan Avatar movie. If they don’t let him ruin it with one of his horrible stupid “twist” endings, it could be a beautiful film.

Cool new pictures of Cassini’s wacky hexagon.

Thank God it’s them instead of Jews. [nsfw]

A chart of who holds America’s debt. Suckers.

This guy doesn’t bother taking into account that prosperity gospel preachers and predatory lenders both prey on the poor. Are prosperity preachers useless leeches leading way too many people astray from actual Christianity? Yes. Did they cause the bubble to pop? I doubt it.

I also love the “Clinton and Obama are our true hope” conclusion. And by love I mean, my eyes hurt from rolling so far back in my head.

Really cool pictures from under the Antartic.

One of my fondest memories of high school (the part that happened at school anyway) was chipping out dead animals from a science class freezer that look very similar to the one in this list. It was mostly fish, some small mammals, btw.

I’m not saying I disagree with the conclusion of this article, but I am saying that just because in a nation as large as China there is poverty, even lots of it, doesn’t mean that China can’t kick our butts economically.  Vast, economically powerful empires have been built on slave labor. Just not in the last 100 years (well, USSR did okay for a short while…), so for some reason  maybe they don’t count.

In that big a country there’s lots of room for economic disparity, especially with their communism and all. Will that disparity decrease as China grows economically? My capitalistic heart likes to think so, but to the degree that it has in the US and Europe? Not without a democratic revolution of some sort. Can China contain the explosion into some sort of democracy in a relatively non-violent revolution? I hope so.

His Nobel prize argument is different. Does a large economy necessitate Nobel science prize winners? That’s a very modern (in the not postmodern sense), Western way of thinking. I like it because I agree with it, but I’m not used to seeing that in the media.

I would totally go for the Seven Samurai in Space. It could be awesome. If Kurisawa or possibly Speilberg were directing.  As it is, I’ll probably be disappointed by the writing, directing and acting, but I’d pay to see it anyway. I’m kinda stupid like that.

Jon Stewart points out a few problems in Washington.

Some MST3k is on Hulu!

Not only do they now have bionic fingers, you can choose the skin covering. I would go with the industrial robot look. Gizmodo has video.

Materialism vs Teleologism vs Obama.

I’m not completely convinced, but it does make you stop and think. I do believe we should ascribe people’s actions to stupidity before malice, so I like to think it is true.

Ebooks are tools of the devil, according to this guy. He has some valid points, but his grasp on some basic concepts is, I think, flawed and undercuts his concerns.

I am hoping that all the ebook competition causes someone to un-DRM their books, because that’s when I’ll buy a reader.  And know what? I can already download books illegally. I don’t bother because it’s not worth it. If I like an author I realize they need money to keep making more books that I’ll like so I buy them.

Props to Baen Books for being years ahead of the curve. I buy their ebooks all the time because I know I can use them on whatever machine I want and in perpetuity. Plus, they’re instantly available. I don’t have to go to the store or wait 3 days to 3 weeks for them to ship to me.

Tree attacks man(‘s car), man cuts it up and uses it for Christmas tree.

Bill Whittle on Climategate.

Furthermore, you will note that I have not denied that AGW is real, or that it is serious. But the POLITICAL intersection of science has ruined the scientific method — which is a way of thinking — at least at that installation. You don’t think that’s important? I think it is CRITICAL. You cannot wield the sword of science as a politician. POLICY is separate from THEORY, RESULTS and DATA. When scientists become involved in policy decisions, you get Climategate. And you DESERVE Climategate.

Except our access to it. A flame war about food from 1872 New York Times.

The Handy Cereal Chart.

The only A Christmas Carol manuscript in Dickens’ hand, online for your reading convenience.

Pictures of the US (formerly) secret plane.

The world is overcrowded, there isn’t enough food and resources for everyone, farming is ruining the earth, save the small bugs and rainforests, why are people still having children, we’re ruining the planet. Oh noes, global warming will solve these issues!

One president takes action and sticks with it and he’s a cowboy, a renegade, he doesn’t listen and is ruining our standing with the world; the next president speaks softly and doesn’t do anything and he’s weak, talks too much and is ruining our standing in the world community. What exactly do you want, you jabberous poo-flinging simians?

The Shatner scene that wasn’t.

CERN managed to collide the beams.

Those unwilling to go into debt for Christmas presents are Scrooges with stress problems, who hate America and want it to fail. I’m looking at you Dave Ramsey.

You mean we have to pay back the money we borrow? Who knew? Where was this article any time in the last, oh, 10 years?

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

I’m glad to see there are about 275 anti- Kick a Ginger Day facebook groups now.  One for every redhead on Facebook, no doubt. And I’m pretty sure that Trey and Matt are chargable under the new hate crimes bill, right?

A look at the Google Chrome browser.

Hackers released some stolen emails and documents in which scientists say they will use the “trick of adding in the real temps” to “hide the decline”.  That’s no way to do science, son. Great way to do politics though.

See what your senator knows about your state, for the ones brave enough to answer.

Wallpaper: it’s bombproof.  Kinda. Wonder what it would do in earthquakes?

Wil Wheaton says you should read this (free) book.

There is no chance it won’t snow tomorrow?

See, kids, to be awesome, the machine has to take energy and create matter, in whatever form desired, out of it. Taking matter and making other matter, while cool, is not Star Trek awesome.

Don’t Take Your Ones To Town

I knew there would be a Padres uniform in this list.

If only there was a way to easily search the internet, Google might have avoided this potential embarrassment.

Checking it out now. Very excited.

Can’t load non-Kindle books. Interest waning.

I was told to expect to have a bit of a hard time finding a taxi, have to deal with horrible traffic because of the Veteran’s Day Parade, and that it would cost a lot to get to the airport. Walked outside the hotel, got in a taxi that had just pulled up to drop someone off, there was no traffic and it cost relatively little. All of which made me about an hour early(ier) to the airport, but hey.

I recommend air travel during a recession. Most the flights were partially empty, everything was timely (5 of 6 flights landed early) and it was all generally enjoyable (for spending 12 hours in airports and planes).

Final thoughts on NY:

• Subways = genius
• Not even rock is a permanent surface there. Stone steps are worn down. They have to put metal over the curbs to keep them from falling apart. Amazing.
• A surprising number of people still smoke.
• The culture is surprisingly conformist and monolithic. At least from the outside.
• Apparently, there are no bad eating establishments. You could pick anywhere randomly and the food was good.
• Everything is small and crowded. Fun for a while, but it would drive me nuts after a while.

First off, the Empire State Building. It’s very tall.

Also, surrounded by annoying bus tour hawkers. It was pretty hazy, so the view wasn’t all it could have been.

Lunch was at the Shake Shack. Every time we walked by this week there was a huge line, so we stood in it.

30 minutes we stood in it to order. And it was a good burger, fries and shake; but for a 30 minute wait, I want a singing and dancing burger, fries and shake. Leaving we saw them setting up for a movie shoot, so we came back later. Turns out it is The Adjustment Bureau with <team america>Matt Damon</team america>.

yes, it's out of focus, my bad

Watched that for a while, went downtown  and walked by the COD: Modern Warfare 2 launch event. I saw the giveaway H2 earlier in the day and wondered what that was about, then I understood. Then dinner at some panini place we walked by.

Sunday morning, church of course at Trinity Grace Church. Then lunch at Mariella’s Pizza, which unbeknownst to us, Oprah really likes, so WIN. It was very good pizza. Then the Sony Wonder Technology Lab which is pretty cool. I particulary liked the interactive floor.

In the evening, Stomp at the Orpheum, which is a tiny theater. No pictures, of course.

Went to breakfast at at the Big Booty Bakery, had a chicken empenada. It was not too bad. Then we took the subway to Times Square. Or we would have, if the subway wasn’t 2o minutes  late. Some people were upset. It did eventually arrive and so did we. On the way by we saw Rockefeller Center which is waaaay smaller than it looks on the TV. Then, Times Square. It’s nothing but a very large, very crowded, outdoor mall with all the stores you see in any mall. I was underwhelmed. Lunch at Bubba Gumps, not bad.

Then the wedding at this cool looking Lutheran church. Pastor had a Australian? Scottish? accent, which automatically makes whatever he says cooler.

The reception had a hot dog cart for the authentic New York experience. There was also the obligatory painfully white dancing.

Dinner was sushi. Really good sushi, actually.

Today: A short subway ride up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Had breakfast at a place on Madison called The Nectar. It was very good, if typical diner, food.

The museum is too big to go through in one day. I stuck to the Asian and early stuff and skipped the European stuff for the most part, partly because I couldn’t find my way downstairs and partly because you see one 18th-century French/Netherlands portrait, you’ve seen 50.  I did see Rembrandt’s self-portrait and a passing glimpse of The Milkmaid, and I walked through the “Van Gogh on the left, Gauguin on the right and Seurat on the ends” room, too.

The busloads of kids weren’t as annoying today as the teachers kept shushing them. The lighting was dark and no flash was allowed so grain and blur mar most of the pictures. Alas. And no pictures of the Samurai stuff was allowed at all. Alas.

It was very cool to see some of this stuff in real life after having seen it in books.

On the way back to the subway we walked across Central Park. It was nice to see trees, but as parks go, other than the location, it has nothing going for it.

Had dinner at The Trailer Park Lounge, which has a great burger and if you like (very) sweet potato fries, they have those. I stuck with the tots, though.  No picture as I was not brave enough to break out my camera in that small an area and take pictures of strangers eating.

Tomorrow: Times Square and, oh yeah, the wedding I came here to go to.

Today was the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and wandering up Broadway to Ground Zero. As an added bonus we went south instead of north on the subway and were briefly in Brooklyn. Then authentic NY pizza for dinner.

Ellis Island: It’s hard to make census data interesting and the painful efforts to minimize America’s awesomeness made it mildly aggravating. At least 3 classes of school kids on field trips didn’t help.

Then we walked up Broadway, past Wall Street, which is just an alley, something they never tell you in the stories.

Here’s Ground Zero:

Trinity Church:

Yes, my layover in Boise is long enough that I can post this. Yay, cheap flights!

Boise airport: it’s like Spokane, only 33% bigger. The guy sitting next to me in the boarding area sounds like some radio or TV guy, but I can’t place his voice. His daughter, having moved to NY had been putting on the pounds lately though.

Chicago: if only they provided enough seats so that all the people boarding the plane could actually sit down while waiting… I’ve sat on the floor in O’Hare before though, I can do it again. The domestic concourses are much nicer than the international one.

New York:  I took a cab, for the first time ever. It’s like a mild form of driving in a 3rd world country. Adventurous, but not actually life-threatening.

All my flights arrived early, the weather was nice and my luggage wasn’t lost. Having sat around all day, I’m tired. Tomorrow: the Statue of Liberty.

6 of the most inhospitable places on earth that people live. [NSFW, Cracked]

There’s a new ocean forming in the Ethiopian desert.

Thus nature provides a place to put all the melted ice cap waters and balance is maintained.

I’m not a huge fan of bluegrass/alt country/whatever this is classified as, but I did enjoy this.

the thread that brought it up

XKCD has a handy chart tracking the characters of Lord of the Rings, among other movies.

This time, Crapo has drawn a Democratic challenger well in advance of Idaho’s May 2010 primary election – but it’s a lawyer from New York who’s never been to Idaho.

For a Democrat to win in Idaho the Republican s/he’s running against has to be completely incompetent *coughbillsalicough*. And Mike Crapo, despite his ridiculous name, is not incompetent.

3 weeks ago. We lived.

Strong Sad does us all a favor.

Nothing at all. Move along.

Apparently the UN loves its fried chicken more than life itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, your new A-Team!

Think Geek leads the way in t-shirt technology.

I particularly like the first one.

Kindle for PC.  Now they have me. But, I so don’t want to get tied into a single nontransferable format. It sounds like a nightmare for licensing too.  I have 4 computers I might want to read on, and what happens when I upgrade them?

Hulu is going to start charging to watch in 2010. And die shortly thereafter, no doubt.

Not being European I’m not eligible. Also, unwillingness to quit my job for a couple years to sit around in a simulated space capsule.  Also, no appropriate skills.

Which is why we should have been doing this stuff for the last 40 years so we could get to the point that I could be going to Mars. From my apartment on the moon. I blame the fall of communism. And Jimmy Carter. And whoever decided that shuttles were the way to go.

Video shot at ISO 6400 on the new Canon.

Equal time: The new Nikon

Finally a reason for Microsoft Surface. Games.

The Barnes and Noble e-book, called Nook, lets you share books with another Nook for 14 days, which is very cool.

A handy video on how to migrated from XP to Windows 7.

Also, the handy chart which shows just how few people can actually just upgrade.

The Earth, Moon and Jupiter and some of her moons all framed up together, taken from Mars.

A plasma knife. The military has plasma knives… in use.

First pictures of the B&N e-reader and now, Google launching an e-book store. Which, hopefully, will break the Amazon stranglehold, lead to a price war and drop the prices to what I can afford.

Obama, Clinton health care speech writer tries out Massachusetts system and finds it lacking.

While the state has the lowest rate of uninsured, a report by the Commonwealth Fund states that Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the country. The state’s budget is a mess and lawmakers had to make deep cuts in services and increase the sales tax to close gaps. The number of people needing assistance has at times overwhelmed the state. The mandate means that some people who can’t afford insurance are now being slapped with a fine they also can’t afford. There is no “public option” in the way the president describes it, no inter-state competition, no pool for small businesses and self-employed individuals like me to buy into groups that negotiate cheaper rates. So far I haven’t found any “death panels,” but if I get sick and need a hospital, I sure hope I can find one and a feisty granny to pull my plug.

Don’t miss the “it’s the sleeves what does it” and “Ooh, swish!”.

The story is irrelevant, this line is gold:

Brown advised people to be vigilant and call authorities if approached by the snake, which is said to be unarmed.

If you want more puns, there are more, less awesome ones in the story.

The dollar is losing to the Euro and the Yen because of its horrible inflation lately, so Bernake can either strengthen the dollar by slowing the growth out of the recession or get us out of the recession by weakening the dollar internationally.

On a personal level, I’m all for increasing interest rates. I’d like to actually make some money on my savings. On a national level, I have no idea what help the most people over the longest period of time, because I’m not an economist. But someone should figure it out and do it.

Is there something the matter with .mkv that Apple has to go and introduce another video format?

We are now safe from relying on Cheerios to save us from clogged arteries. And potentially getting samonella from pistachios, even though no one has. Thank you, FDA!

Scientists speculate that God and/or linear time hates Higgs boson particles.

Right now, 27% of Americans are uninsured.

Under the current compromise Obamacare bill 17% of Americans will be uninsured. At a cost of: $463 billion. Which we all know will actually cost more when it comes down to it.

Argh, it keeps stripping the embed out.

Link.

Related. I’d put Spirited Away at No. 1 over My Neighbor Totoro. Maybe because I saw Spirited Away first though.

How to create a bootable USB thumb drive. This is mostly for my future reference.

128bit compatibility? In my Windows OS? It’s more likely than you think. Only one in 10 of the programs I have now takes advantage of the 64bits available, but why not more.

A roundup of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize links and quotes.

NASA added a crater to the moon, looking for ice.

They keep calling it “water ice”. Is there another kind of ice? Don’t we just call it frozen whatever-it-is if it’s not water?

Nuclear reactors: good for the environment. *environmentalists head explodes*

Also, since it’s in the same vein: ice caps are making a comeback because the climate is not as simple as Al Gore made it look.

We may end up killing plants in an effort to limit CO2.

Calling down Nemesis.

The Greeks remind us that when success and bounty arrive, then, especially, it is time to be self-effacing, modest, generous, and forgiving. If not, retribution follows—whether because human nature dictates that the crowd wishes misfortune upon the haughty, or, as I confess that I believe, there is a sort of divine force that seeks to remind us of our own folly and can only do that in appropriately dramatic and timely fashion.

Finally we’re getting somewhere. LASIK tuning eyes beyond what genetics gave you. I’d still prefer bionic eyes with internet connectivity, but at least they’re trying.

Wavefront technology, originally developed by Nasa to aid the focus of the Hubble Space Telescope on distant stars, measures up to 250 spots in the pupil to provide a precise map of the cornea and iris. This offers the potential to correct problems not addressed by glasses, such as halos around lights at night or glare.

Kindle drops its price again. But that Apple tablet looks sweet too. Still the DRM issue is killing my love of both of them. Not that I have money for either of them anyway, but hypothetically speaking…

A company in Great Britian plans to let you have someone monitor the CCTV cameras around your stuff all the time. And the monitors get money for reporting crimes. The government doing this would be bad, but since this is all volunteer, I don’t really have a problem with it. It’s just a distributed security system.

Congressional approval ratings on the decline again. Yet there are so many incumbents. Why?