@terrysimpson Definitely no fava beans. Broiling may be suitable. Lime juice & fresh oregano. A montepulciano would pair well.>•<Think on this a little while.>•<28 minutes ago
"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, May 31, 2012
“Doc” Watson was proof that no matter the difficulties, trials or tribulations that life throws your way, if you put your heart and soul to whatever your hand finds to do, you can excel.
May his memory be blessed.
—
Doc Watson, Blind Guitar Wizard Who Influenced Generations, Dies at 89
May 29, 2012
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Doc Watson, the guitarist and folk singer whose flat-picking style elevated the acoustic guitar to solo status in bluegrass and country music, and whose interpretations of traditional American music profoundly influenced generations of folk and rock guitarists, died on Tuesday in Winston-Salem, N.C. He was 89.
Doc Watson performing in New York in 2005. (Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos)
Mr. Watson, who had been blind since he was a baby, died in a hospital after recently undergoing abdominal surgery, The Associated Press quoted a hospital spokesman as saying. On Thursday his daughter, Nancy Ellen Watson, said he had been hospitalized after falling at his home in Deep Gap, N.C., adding that he did not break any bones but was very ill.
Mr. Watson, who came to national attention during the folk music revival of the early 1960s, injected a note of authenticity into a movement awash in protest songs and bland renditions of traditional tunes. In a sweetly resonant, slightly husky baritone, he sang old hymns, ballads and country blues he had learned growing up in the northwestern corner of North Carolina, which has produced fiddlers, banjo pickers and folk singers for generations.
A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.
In previousarticles, I have asserted that if sex did not naturally lead to children, no one would ever have conceived the idea of marriage. My claim may be obvious to most people, but we live in a world in which people who never intend to have children get married; so, of course, do some people who want children but are infertile. In generations past, we felt compassion for those who married but did not have children, because it was presumed that they wanted children, since, after all, they married one another. No longer can we presume this. The era of contraception and surgical sterilization has altered the face, so to speak, of the childless couple, and consequently the face of the married couple.
The quest for same-sex marriage begins here. In a world where seeking marriage is seeking a community-endorsed way to have sex and bear children, the idea of same-sex marriage is like the idea of a square circle. The very idea of same-sex marriage is conceivable only in a world that is using the term “marriage” in a completely different way, to refer to something of a completely different nature.
Allow me, then, to make a case for my assertion about sex, children, and marriage through a “thought experiment”—a scenario in which human beings have no word for, no concept of, marriage.
Imagine a colony of young men who have no memory of ever having lived anywhere else. Properly speaking, the men do not even know that they are men, but only that they are different from all the other creatures they encounter. They hunt and gather. They are naturally social beings who care about each other, form friendships, try to please one another, generally Read the rest of this entry »
A brew and a bro — it’s the classic pairing, right? Not necessarily.
From the rise of female brew masters to the growth of women’s tasting groups, women are becoming much more than a pint-sized part of the brewing world.
The emergence of women as both beer-lovers and brewers happened as the craft beer scene grew overall by leaps and bounds, and that’s no coincidence, said Lisa Morrison, Oregon-based writer, blogger and author of “Craft Beers of the Pacific Northwest.”
“I think that women are finally discovering, thanks to craft beer, that beer has flavor,” she said.
“When we start getting into the artisan stuff you start realizing that there’s an entire rainbow of flavors that you can enjoy. And because of that Read the rest of this entry »
Recall that “bastard” can have several meanings. One, is as it applies to a type of milled file. Two, is as it applies to the child born to an unwed mother. And there certainly seems to be no shortage of those these days. Of course, it’s not the child’s fault, but words describe things, and like it or not, a child of an unwed mother is a bastard.
I guess next up, they’ll have to remove the French Fat Bastardwine, too. It’s been sold in Alabama for quite some time.
Cycles Gladiator wine label, an 1895 poster promoting the Gladiator brand bicycle.
Of course, the astute readers will recall the last international fiasco with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board with the Cycles Gladiator wine.
The Hahn Family Wines company had to create an entirely different label specifically for Cycles Gladiator wine to be sold in the state. The label was an historic poster from 1895 – and that same year printer G. Massias unveiled one of the great Parisian art posters showcasing the stylish Gladiator bicycle.
Naturally, news of the rancorous decision by Alabama’a ABC drove sales for the wine through the roof, at home, and abroad.
However, I sincerely doubt it’s any complex marketing ploy.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — As Michigan craft brewers continue to expand their distribution footprint across the country, Founders Brewing Co. is running into some roadblocks in the South.
The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board is refusing to register two of Founders’ beers after the regulatory agency objected to the word ‘bastard’ on the labels.
“It’s one of those silly things,” said Dave Engbers, Founders vice president.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, May 26, 2012
Sure there are!
However, there are probably as many good reasons to stay.
And yet, for the good reasons to stay, there are genuine concerns, not only with governmental agencies worldwide, but with FaceBook itself.
It IS possible to almost wholesale “lock down” your FaceBook account, but one must decide if those actions are worth it, or not.
Further, another option is, that one could delete everything that could be deleted from FB – likes, comments, posts, etc. – and make invisible those things that cannot be deleted.
Of course, there’s no reason one could not have more than one FB account, either.
However, with all this, it might be wise to consider the ultimate in security, which was proposed several years ago: Public Key Encryption.
Welcome to FaceBookistan! You are now leaving FaceBookistan.
I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand “friends”—in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook’s community—for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend’s illness or life celebrations.Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism—and its commercial exploitation of these values—Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation’s social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month’s initial public offeringof stock—a chaotic and revealing event—which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.There are many reasons to be Read the rest of this entry »
(Reuters) – The Jackson, Mississippi, school district has agreed to stop shackling students to fixed objects, after it was sued for handcuffing pupils to railings and poles at a school for troubled children, officials said on Friday.
So, how have the Republicans managed to pursuade Americans to buy into the whole “Obama as big spender” narrative?
It might have something to do with the first year of the Obama presidency where the federal budget increased a whopping 17.9% —going from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. I’ll bet you think that this is the result of the Obama sponsored stimulus plan that is so frequently vilified by the conservatives…but you would be wrong.
The first year of any incoming president term is saddled—for better or for worse—with the budget set by the president whom immediately precedes the new occupant of the White House. Indeed, not only was the 2009 budget the property of George W. Bush—and passed by the 2008 Congress—it was in effect four months before Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 25, 2012
Huh?
You mean there’s a digital camera that CANNOT make color photographs?
Yup.
Not to worry.
You probably won’t buy it.
Besides… it’s nearly US$8000.
Unless you’re an artsy fartsy fancy schmancy pho-tograffer type… and in which case, you probably don’t have a lot of munny anyway. Fo-to-graffers don’t make a whole lot of munny.
You know… they’re the starving atisté kind.
But, on the upsid3… the REAL matter is the development of sensors, and how they perceive and are sensitive to light.
For all the bazillion-dollar cameras that can see in the dark, and blah, blah, blah… there has NEVER EVER been a camera that has EVER come close to the human eye.
Seriously.
Think about it.
Your $8000 Nikon or Canon, or Leica cannot in any way come close to accurately reproducing what your eye is capable of seeing.
Your eye can see detail in highlights AND in shadows… without PhotoShop.
Your Canon or Nikon or Leica cannot.
Try to take a “well-exposed” photograph in the dark.
FCC Is Expected to Vote to Open Up Spectrum, EasingPatientMonitoring and Making Product Development LessRisky
Hospitals are getting ready to cut the cord.
In place of knots of wires stuck to patients to monitor their blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and body temperature, doctors and the companies that supply them hope to use Band-Aid-like sensors to accomplish the same task wirelessly.
The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote Thursday to open up spectrum for wireless medical devices, raising the possibility of easier hospital-patient monitoring, fewer tubes in emergency rooms, and more remote monitoring at home.
The shift will make it easier to track patients’ conditions, improving the odds that health problems will be caught before they become an emergency, analysts and clinicians say.
Wireless Hospitals
While wireless technology has boomed for phones and computing, it has been slower to take hold in the medical sphere. Hospitals have Read the rest of this entry »
