Oil subsidies

This is a topic we covered ages ago. Kate Sheppard, writing at Ezra's WaPo blog, discusses the subsidies that flow to the exploiters of fossil fuels.

Even that [$39 billion over 10 years that would result from Obama-proposed cuts to subsidies] would only be a fraction of what we hand over to fossil fuels every year. The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks.

Testing the embedding of an audio player and audio file

Testing how to embed audio clips with an audio player. Here; have a bit of Slash talking about Adam:

Update: Cannot get this to work. Ought to be easier than embedding video, but it's not.

Update II:  As an unintended consequence of my efforts here, I may have turned the blog into a podcast.  Oy.  Why is this difficult when video is easy?  Back to the drawing board.

Go To FileFactory.com

Update III: OK. That's a huge and ugly player, but it works!!! I'll see if I can find a better looking one.

Update IV: Because it's so much easier to embed video, some user forums describe turning your audio file into a video by adding a picture, then uploading to youtube.



GRRRRR - doesn't work Test

Apparently, being a guitar tech for a band has its frustrations

Cute challenge

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find something cuter than this:

Winnie Cooper fantasy

She's in Maxim this month. Her clothing is not.

New music from Trent Reznor

Here. For LJ.

Did I mention...

I'm going to see Adam in concert on June 12?!!!!!!!!!!!

Glam Nation Tour

We have tickets to Adam's tour show June 12 at the Mystic Lake Casino, just a hop and a skip from Minneapolis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The shows that have been announced are at pretty small venues (2000-3000 people) which means demand exceeds supply.  (Scalper/reseller tickets are going for 2-4 times face value and they're not really even on sale yet to the general public.)  Small venues also mean that there's nothing but great seats and an amazing chance to hear his voice in a room with decent acoustics.

Allison Iraheta is one of his opening acts. 

So far, no tour dates announced in the South, but more dates and venues will be announced later.

I'm shocked...SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here

Roger Lowenstein's op-ed for NYT yesterday advocates for: 1) trading derivatives on exchanges and in standard contracts; and 2) banning or at least regulating credit default swaps. These seem like eminently reasonable suggestions.

Adam at River Rock

This is Adam singing Mad World at a concert Friday at River Rock Casino and Resort in Vancouver:
It's all great, but I'm particularly fond of the improv starting midway through. Lyrics are unnecessary.

"None of us is as smart as all of us"

I find this fascinating:

In one study, groups and individuals were given a complicated card game called the Wason selection task. Seventy-five percent of the groups solved it, but only 14 percent of individuals did.

From David Brooks' column yesterday.

I guess Winnie and I won't be getting married after all...

Wonder Years star expecting.

I've finally reached my breaking point

Not sure if anyone else has taken the time to delete spam comments we've been getting over the past several months. Doing so has been part of my morning internet routine and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm getting VERY tired from doing so. I also hate waking up to see 10+ comment emails in my in-box, knowing that more than likely they are all spam comments.

I've made some changes to the blog settings to see if that will stop them - the changes shouldn't affect anyone, other than a certain named ex-blogger. Sorry....

Adam on Nightline

Adam was on Nightline's Playlist last night (video here) talking about musical influences. I share since he mentioned Bowie.

In the past, Adam has identified the Hunky Dory cover as a reference for the cover art for his album.

Springtime behind the Pine Curtain

Haven't seen any dogwoods yet so these will have to do. First, my weekly hawk visit (a day late this week):

Then, the random pear trees at the baseball park:

Finally, something my mom calls a Tulip Tree:

Thomas Friedman gets it right

While I’ve obviously become fatigued with political postings, I still fear that “they are trying to kill us.” Thomas Friedman got it right, I think, in yesterday’s NYT (the first paragraph resonating with the right and the second, I hope, with everybody):

Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out. Personally, at this stage, I only care about one thing: that the outcome in Iraq be positive enough and forward-looking enough that those who have actually paid the price — in lost loved ones or injured bodies, in broken homes or broken lives, be they Iraqis or Americans or Brits — see Iraq evolve into something that will enable them to say that whatever the cost, it has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.

Poll archive: Adam Lambert for President

I'm wishing we'd archived all the polls.  Here's the latest one:

What kind of hawk visits me often?

This hawk (acually a pair of them) visits weekly:

He's there on the top of the swing. I have to take the pic from inside so I can't get a better shot.

The pair come in and scope the yard looking for insects and worms. My best guess is that they are Coopers Hawks. These are shots of Coopers that I snatched from the web:

The other possibility is Red Shouldered Hawk:

I think I have to go with Coopers.

House of Blues

C and I finally went to the House of Blues here in DFW on Saturday night. We've been wanting to go ever since it opened, but always had scheduling problems when there was someone we wanted to see performing. A few months ago, I was listening to one of the 3 FM stations I regularly frequent on-line (one from Austin, one from Seattle and one in Fayetteville, AR) when they played a 30 minute block from a band I had never heard of - Sound Tribe System 9 (or STS9 as most of their fans call them). I knew nothing about them and when I saw they were going to be at the HOB on a weekend night, I talked C into going. Only after I bought the tickets did I find out from C's college-aged niece that STS9 were a "stoner band". But, since we already had tickets, C and decided what the hell - if it were awful, we'd just check out the rest of HOB.

HOB was a very cool place and we will definitely go back. The performance space was intimate but has great sight-lines (we were in the balcony) and the sound quality was great. Next time we'll go a bit early and eat there and try to get the entire HOB experience.

As for the concert itself, I liked it, though after a bit the songs all sounded sorta similar. And I wouldn't label them as a "stoner" band - I'd call them a "rave" band. I've never been to a rave, but from what I know about them, this was like a mini-rave (lots of glow-sticks). Their light show was incredible and I was a bit nervous about that given my current medical state. Thankfully, nothing happened and other than my ears ringing from the sound, no other ill-effects. They played a little over an hour, then were taking a break and C had had enough.

One last thing - I was afraid I'd be the oldest person there and for awhile (at least in the balcony section), it seemed liked I would be. But as it filled up, there were a few folks that at least appeared older (some there with their kids).

Here is a video of STS9 playing the song that was our favorite:

Train snow plow

There are oodles of videos like these on youtube. I might watch them all.