Today is Vinyl Record Day, Supposedly

Supposedly, one hundred and thirty years today, Edison made his first recording. Edison was however so closed-minded that he imagined recording as an office efficiency device and not a music carrier. Indeed, when recorded music did come into fashion -- just showing how pigheaded he was -- he personally surveyed every singer that came by his door dismissing them if they even deviated once from what he considered good singing out to be. Some of these recordings are now known to have survived. Fortunately, cooler (and less anti-semitic) heads prevailed and a music industry was born. While there are those that still play and collect vinyl -- for god knows what reason --the lowly CD is most probably on its way out too. I don't however think people should get too upset about the diminished sound quality of the MP3 -- they really can be that good and you need good equipment to hear the differences of recordings made below 160 kps -- memory and bandwidth will be so cheap that all will be delivered without loss. I'll be sure to spin an lp or two today.
Yours in PVC.

See. I told you so!

NASA has discovered a chunk missing from the underside of the space shuttle Endeavour. It was discovered after the shuttle docked with the ISS earlier today. Technicians theorize it may have been caused by ice ripping free of a fuel take during takeoff. From the article:'The gouge — about 3 inches square — was spotted in zoom-in photography taken by the space station crew shortly before Endeavour delivered teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her six crewmates to the orbiting outpost ... On Sunday, the astronauts will inspect the area, using Endeavour's 100-foot robot arm and extension beam. Lasers on the end of the beam will gauge the exact size and depth of the gouge, Shannon said, and then engineering analyses will determine whether the damage is severe enough to warrant repairs. Radar images show a white spray or streak coming off Endeavour 58 seconds after liftoff. Engineers theorize that if the debris was ice, it pierced the tile and then broke up, scraping the area downwind. Pictures from Friday's photo inspection show downwind scrapes."

The Beastie Boys' Mix Up

Beastie Boys: The Mix Up

Original Release Date: June 26, 2007

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Capitol

ASIN: B000PY32CE

Last week I was feeling a little blue so popped into the big HMV on Yonge Street in Toronto for a little retail therapy. While the selection of vinyl at HMV (Toronto’s largest record store!) I thought I would try my luck. I came out with the Beastie Boys new LP of instrumentals, The Mix-UP. As ‘Groove Holmes,’ named after the great organist, from Check Your Head is one of my all time favorite pop instrumentals, I plunked down my $20 (only marginally more than it would have cost on CD) and took my treasure home.

On placing the marginally warped record on the table and lowering the needle, I found the LP to be more than aptly named. There is not a great song on it, the whole thing is a mix-up, and sonics are nothing to write home about. Indeed, the whole thing sounds like outtakes, bad-ones at that. Indeed, there is little original or fresh here. And those great Beastie lyrics (and the amazing delivery of them) is conspicuously absent. I’d like to say more, but just don’t have that much to say. In writing this note, I did learn a little about Groove (nown and verb) Holmes and look forward to hearing more. I recommend that fans of the Beastie Boys give this one a miss. If you need Beastie fix, go Check Your Head.

A to Nowhere? Why?

Well. After yesterday’s successful launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour into space yesterday evening, this is the latest news from NASA,

‘Endeavour Undergoes Heat Shield Inspection.’

The article goes on:

‘Pilot Charles Hobaugh, and mission specialists Tracy Caldwell and Rick Mastracchio are using the shuttle’s robotic arm to unberth the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) to take an extensive and detailed look at the orbiter’s thermal protection system. Mission specialists Dave Williams and Barbara Morgan join Mastracchio for the latter part of the survey.’

No doubt they will find a missing tile or three, or a rip in the foam, and there will be much hand-wringing as to whether the Space Shuttle is safe to return. Amidst the parade of Astronaut Wannabes spokesmen and experts opining about the dangers of the lucky 7 returning to terra firma, and though the astronauts may fix the broken gyroscope and install the truss on the outdated space station, and replace a few tiles, few will ask that most jejune of questions: ‘With such risks and costs, why go in the first place?’ Trips are supposed to be from A to B, not A to nowhere (for is that not what space is, nothing).

It’s true that there are certain trips that do not have a set destination and are for the pleasure of enjoying the journey but not the joys of the destination. A Sunday Drive or hoot through the back roads on a Motorcycle, for example, that Starts at A and ends at A are both fine examples of journeys that take do not have destinations, but I don’t think we can scale these examples to that of the folly sending 7 astronauts in an asymmetrical vehicle to nowhere where they will primarily engage in preparing to return to somewhere at enormous cost and risk to human lives broadcast on the NASA channel like a reality show, but this is a reality show with a body count.

(Werner Von Braun, incidentally, warned years ago that the only safe vehicle for going to space was a rocket symmetrical all the way down. With wings, external tanks, and all manners of eccentricities, at speeds more than Mach 7, something is bound to come loose.)

Kennedy may or may not have had his reasons for starting the space race, but surely they must be over by now.

Postscript:

The launch went well, but a problem developed when the craft reached orbit. The Block A central core booster did not separate properly, and it tore away thermal insulation. The cylinder containing Laika became subjected to vast extremes of temperature as it orbited Earth, passing from light to shadow and back to daylight. Laika soon died of heat related ailments. The capsule eventually reentered the Earth’s atmosphere on April 14, 1958, 162 days later.
--www.astropof.com

Neat: A MAC 128 On A Stick

Very soon we will see the launch of VMWARE’s IPO.

VMWARE, which started out pretty much as a science project of EMC (EMC-N) the Network Attached Storage Kings, makes software that allows large computers to run many smaller computers virtually.

It’s a neat trick and I remember running Windows 98 through VMWARE under Linux a few years back. It was very slow and on the hardware I had there was not much point and it seemed, very, very difficult to exchange data from the computer’s principal Linux OS to the virtual Windows 98 PC running within a window. It was useless – to me anyhow – but neat.

I would like, however, to point out that virtualization is just a short step from emulation and that bright nostalgic geeks have been writing emulators (sometimes with legal ROMS, sometimes without—their status is somewhat vague) for years. Mame, the 80s Arcade Simulator, is probably the best known, but there are also ones available for PDP-8s, Commodore 64s, and of course Apples. One great one I just came across is called ‘Apple-on-a-stick’ where you emulate an early 128k Apple MacIntosh off a USB key. You can find all you need to know about how to run an Apple off a USB stick or in my case an IPOD (now there’s an irony) here: http://nothickmanuals.info/doku.php?id=minivmac

Scroll to the bottom for the easy way. Voila!!! What can you do with it? Pretty much what you could with an old Mac 128 running OS7 – not much, but what was Shakespeare able to do with only pen and paper? – but I think that’s beside the point unless someone can find me a copy of Risk.

There’s a sweet geek nostalgia to all this that the principals of VMWARE will do very well by. No one of course has any spare time, but if you should happen to want to revel in a bit of eighties Mac nostalgia, I can think of no better way. It is, really, pretty cool. Perhaps not as cool or useful as an Iphone. But certainly cheaper?

I love these words....

Mock Turtle
Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!


I'd like to say that reading M2s Mock Turtle Blog at http://blog.snappingturtle.net/ reminded of these fine words of Lewis Carroll, but that would be telling an untruth. A little research into these words that have been recently rolling around my head (from Wikipedia) reveals:

'Traditionally, mock turtle soup takes the parts of a calf that were not frequently used and often discarded, including the head, hooves, and tail; and uses the non-muscular meat to imitate turtle meat. Tenniel's illustration [shown above] shows the Mock Turtle with the body of a turtle, and the head, hooves, and tail of a calf. The complicated pun, then, is both word-play and picture-play, and is quite as satisfying in a literary sense as the soup presumably was in the culinary.'

Mock Turtle Soup, I imagine is more satisfying in the literary rather than the culinary sense, but I have been mistaken before.

Anyone need any stock?

If it was good enough for 1775, what can over two centuries of submarine design add?

When I saw on the news the curious pomegranate of a submariner vessel that had the temerity to approach the Queen Mary II in New York's harbour, a curious bell rang. Hadn't I seen just such a boat before while reading books to my son before bed the night before last. A quick consult of my son's bedside table and the bell authenticated itself. Sure enough, the basic design of this week's unterseafruitboat was taken from a hand operated (and by this I mean also hand propelled) vessel that had last been used in the United State's so-called War of Independence!

Just compare exhibit A from CNN and exhibit B from the very good Wikipedia entry on the history of submarines.

Although the US undoubtedly won their divorce from the surly Brits in 1776, their success had very little to do with this imbecilic submersible. And it is still more than a bit unclear what in fact the three morons arrested for approaching the QM in a ship that had more to do with the family Punicaceae than that of Nimitz had in mind before donning their swim trunks. They were certainly not of the same class of those behind the attack on the USS Cole.

Among my strange obsessions, we can also add the sea. Indeed, if I had the chance to go to University all over again, I'd like to have become a marine biologist.

Who's the Odd One Out?

It's the Cimabue of course, and my personal favourite, and I suppose it's rather a banal observation following the transformation of the women in white from driven snow through come up and see me sometime on to friends with JFK, but I still find it remarkable. I have deliberately left out the material girl (though own more than a few records by her) because of her, unlike the others, very materiality.

An Island of Bliss in a Sea of Buffet Hell

To those who know me it should come as no surprise that when I am hungry I like my food.

Those who know me even better know how much I hate buffets, particularly Chinese ones. The very idea of an all you can buffet sends over me waves of nausea as I imagine the weird, ugly heat of the hot lamps, the stainless steel trays full of rice and unidentifiable meats in unidentifiable sauces, that insult to hens everywhere, chicken balls, and of course those Homerics jostling among us at the steam tables looking for you to nod in agreement when they say ‘You can go up as many times as you want and you won’t have to have dinner either. Just look at all these Egg Rolls.’

Thai Island, in the basement of First Canadian Place, appears on first look to be just such a place. Buffet Hades. You could not be more wrong. Just adjacent to the revolting steam counter with its revolting ‘sneeze guard’ there is another cashier with a small window behind. From a board you choose a Vietnamese (I believe) bowl of delicious soup. The restaurant maintains it is Thai and has a massive orange tray of stuck together Pad Thai cooking under an artificial sun. But sitting in a mild vegetable broth -- if and only if you order from the other order taker, after a small wait holding your number, you find an island of translucent vermicelli noodles, shredded lettuce and carrot (I know the bowls are bespoke as I have often asked them to hold the lettuce), wonderful barbecued strips of pork, great and crunchy spring rolls. Unlike Pizza Pizza there are set combos. How are the noodles? They are so good as to beggar belief, even Dylan Y agrees. Indeed, Thai Island (which Louise first discovered, though knowing her I believe she hit the buffet for the green curry—which may be great, but I’ll never know). I won't be going there today, but we will not long be apart.

(China not quite as shown.)

Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That

I just finished reading my wife's copy of Robert Graves Goodbye to All That, one of those books that you always plan to read but never do. Indeed, the book has been kicking around the various places where we have lived over the years. I finally did read the work with a great long plane ride -- delayed by 30 hours!!! -- to finish it. I had thought it would simply be a war memoriam of a war that I know little about. It was that, but as well a picture of an age of Britain long since gone. And I think, in part, that is what the title implies, Good-Bye to All That. For on Graves' return -- far younger than me -- and the failure of his marriage, he quite simply says, Good-Bye to All That and moves to Spain. The country has changed, so has he, and there is only one option, to leave. The prose is as unfamiliar as is the England and Europe Graves depicts with Graves somehow letting life pass by (and coming home from the war relatively unscathed) as that life passes and the world finds itself another place. I dare not count up all the dead on this text, 3 and 4 on a page at times. Countering the horror, there are also lovely portraits of George Mallory -- who ascended Everest in hob nailed boots and tweeds -- and T. E. Lawrence.
In summary, highly recommended. I don't believe I have ever quite read a book like it.

Super Mario My Ass

The Worst Heat Wave In Toronto History

Many things are world famous in Canada, but anyway you slice it, today was an infamous one.

'The Worst Heat Wave In Toronto History' is what the headlines read and I have no doubt that they are true. What I do not, however, understand is this continual refrain, lovely weather isn't it, said without detectable irony. Well I for one don't like it and it certainly doesn't give me that loving feeling. Downtown wearing a suit and tie, inhaling the revolting smells of street meat, I was not a happy bunny. Perhaps it is my Russian heritage, but I just don't believe I am made for this weather. I will take cool (and even wet) any day of the week.

Works for Me

There are worse restaurant goers than me, honest.

I Rather Feel We'll Be Seeing More of This

Anyone taking one of those clapped out cabs with 1/2 a million miles on the clock and a suspension more akin to a rent by the hour hotel than an automobile, can not fail to note the discrepancy between the cab, the broken down bridges and potholed roads upon which you are conveyed to New York, and the unmistakable fact that when the cab arrives, you will soon find yourself in the center of the known universe. The one place, Pirsig mentions in Lila, where you don't have to ask what they are doing in New York City because you are the one doing it. Compare this with a ride in from Orly. It is not news to anyone that North American (and Canada's Laval overpass was no different) infrastructure is falling apart and that little is being done to revive it. Road infrastructure collapses like the Minneapolis Bridge and the Laval Overpass will become more and more common.

Russian Sub Places Canister of Flag on Bottom of Ocean Floor Below Ice Cap?

(If you look very closely, you can see the set of Nasa's best ever April Fool's Joke.)

It would seem that the Hoax Moon landing of depicted in O. J. Simson's Capricorn One would be that much easier to verify -- telescope anyone -- than a bunch of submariners swearing on their copies of Moby Dick that they have placed a flag -- in a canister, mind you -- where the longitude lines join up and a polar bear has no other choice than to head South.






The Mir-I is one of two Russian craft diving to the Arctic floor
Submarine footage Two Russian mini-submarines have reached the seabed below the North Pole on a mission aimed at boosting Moscow's claims to the Arctic, reports say.

Explorers have planted a Russian flag in a metal capsule on the seabed 4,200m (14,000ft) below the pole, an official told the Itar-Tass news agency.

A Russian official said the "risky and heroic" mission was comparable to "putting a flag on the Moon".

Melting polar ice has led to competing claims over access to Arctic resources.

Russia's claim to a vast swathe of territory in the Arctic, thought to contain oil, gas and mineral reserves, has been challenged by other powers, including the US.

The mission's leader, explorer and parliamentarian Artur Chilingarov, told Itar-Tass news agency that Mir-I's landing on the seabed was "smooth".

"The yellowish ground is around us, no sea dwellers are seen," he said.

'Heroic mission'

The two mini-submarines, Mir-I and Mir-II were brought to the North Pole by the two ships in the Russian expedition - a nuclear-powered ice-breaker and a research vessel.

It's a very important move for Russia to demonstrate its potential in the Arctic... It's like putting a flag on the Moon Sergei Balyasnikov Russian Arctic and Antarctic Institute

The expedition set off last week from the port of Murmansk and is looking for geological evidence to back up Moscow's claims to the resource-rich Arctic seabed.

Scientists aboard the submarines also plan to collect samples of Arctic flora and fauna.

Russian media reported last week that the ships were briefly tailed by foreign aircraft, but this claim was played down by the expedition leader.

Itar-Tass reported on Wednesday that the expedition's ships had arrived at the North Pole.

The submarines' return from the seabed to the surface is regarded as the most dangerous part of the journey.

The vessels will have to navigate back to the exact point where they started from, or else risk being trapped beneath the Arctic ice.

"This is a risky and heroic mission," Sergei Balyasnikov, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute, told the RIA-Novosti news agency.

"It's a very important move for Russia to demonstrate its potential in the Arctic," he said. "It's like putting a flag on the Moon."

Competing claims

President Vladimir Putin has already described the urgent need for Russia to secure its "strategic, economic, scientific and defence interests" in the Arctic.

Moscow argued before a UN commission in 2001 that waters off its northern coast were in fact an extension of its maritime territory.

The claim was based on the argument that an underwater feature, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, was an extension of its continental territory, but it was rejected and Russia told to resubmit with more evidence.

Several countries with territories bordering the Arctic - including Russia, the US, Canada and Denmark - have launched competing claims to the region.

The competition has intensified as melting polar ice caps have opened up the possibility of new shipping routes in the region.

Current laws grant countries an economic zone of 200 nautical miles beyond their land borders.

This zone can be extended where a country can prove that the structure of the continental shelf is similar to the geological structure within its territory.

The North Pole is not currently regarded as part of any single country's territory and is therefore administered by the International Seabed Authority.

RUSSIA'S ARCTIC CLAIM 1) North Pole: Russia plans to leave its flag on the seabed, 4km beneath the surface, as part of its claims for oil and gas reserves 2) Lomonosov Ridge: Russia argues that this underwater feature is an extension of its continental territory and is looking for evidence 3) 200-mile line: Shows how far countries' agreed economic area extends beyond their coastline. Often set from outlying islands 4) Russian claimed territory: The bid to claim a vast area is being closely watched by other countries. Some could follow suit

Eagle Eyed Reader Dylan Notes that Vonnegut Said Almost the Very Opposite of Dear Ludwig

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
--Kurt Vonnegut
(I feel Mr. Vonnegut may have been closer to the mark. I hope so anyway.)

Even Witters Would Eschew Debate with E. E. Coleman

A dear friend sends me this missive from Lincolnshire, England. What's unclear to me is whether this has been written in the spirit of good fun or not. I am also not entirely sure that dear Ludwig would disagree either.

SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARDS ARE USING GLOBAL WARMING AS A DISTRACTION

Date : 31.07.07

I Must say I wholeheartedly agree with E.C.Coleman (July 27).

I've long thought there's been some kind of massed rank conspiracy brewing for some time. Get everyone worrying about the weather then they take their eye of the ball.

Clearly it's a prelude to alien invasion. Let me explain.

For some considerable time switched on bods like myself and E.C.Coleman have been able to cut through the rubbish on the telly to what's really going on in Europe - Euro takeover by the back door.

Now I've gone even further - the leaders of the free world are actually shape-shifting lizards bent on world dominion.

They are altering our climate and melting the ice caps to distract us and get us squabbling over the cause.

It takes sensible people like us to fight for the truth. Greenhouse gases, as I've said before, are sucked up by a mini black hole in the upper atmosphere and flown off to Alpha Centauri - ironically where the alien lizards hail from.

JOHN KESTER, West End, Lincoln

&

FACT: SUN IS SMALLER THAN EARTH!

09:45 - 31 July 2007

E. C. Coleman states at one point in his missive "For the technically minded the climatic cycles correspond perfectly with the effects of the earth's spin known as the Milkanovitch Cycles" (July 27).

If Mr Coleman looks out of his window when the skies are clear at dusk or dawn during this midsummer time of year, he would see that the sun sets at about 20 degrees west of north and rises about 40 degrees east of north.

This indicates that the earth doesn't spin but the sun goes around the earth.

Furthermore, as the sun travels one foot across the sky every two hours and one foot corresponds to the distance of the object from the viewing point, it follows on through a perfectly straightforward mathematical equation that the sun's distance is 3,330 miles from the earth's surface and is roughly 70 miles in diameter.

I am well aware that this goes against all that is known as 'received wisdom'. As far as I am concerned the conclusions to be drawn from this observed evidence are incontrovertible.

MICHAEL R KEMSHALL, Wragby Road, Lincoln

Sub Specie Aeternitatis

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein

This is of course from the man who on learning he had cancer felt relieved at the fact that he no longer needed to consider suicide.