The Boston Brand
source: Blabbermouth.net
I mean, you have to picture the year 1975, and you being a cigar-chompin' studio exec and all, looking for The Next Big Thing. Maybe once every year or two, if you're lucky, you hit a big act. Here comes this tall, goofy-looking, banana-munching hippie-ten-years-late ... and he plugs a tape into your office's sound system? And out of the speakers comes what -- another kludgy Rollin' On The River riff? Or a heavily-distorted three chords' worth of heavy metal crunched out in somebody's garage? No, the music softly crescendoes into More Than A Feeling, a virtuoso masterpiece that will eventually revolutionize arena rock. You could have sworn he stuck a basement tape in that machine. Why are you hearing ... the state of the art, where the art will be 20 years from now? This stuff doesn't need to be remastered; it doesn't need to be polished; it doesn't need to be anything, other than put on the market to sell 10 million copies right out of the box. That studio exec, EVERY studio exec, loathed the very thought of a man who didn't need their help. One after another sent Scholz and his "weak" music packing. Picture 40+ executives ALL telling you that in their best professional judgment, the public didn't want what Boston was selling. Who was the genius who listened to Long Time, and said, sorry, has potential, but you need to go improve it? All of them were. The first few times, I have no doubt that Scholz politely asked, "Improve it like, how?" I'd have loved to have seen the responses... As Woody famously told Wesley, sort of: Boston man wanna win first, and get the ego stroked, second. LA music mogul gettin' the ego on first, and wantin' win second. Well, there go a million or thirty albums, Brainiac. Who knows what the public wants? Even the public doesn't know. One thing is for sure: you were right about that Boston band. They were more trouble than they were worth. ............................. Have you ever noticed that there are no female Eddie Van Halens? Ever noticed that there are no female Bobby Fischers? (No, Judit Polgar doesn't count; she's a well-balanced human being, and she doesn't own world chess.) Ever noticed that society is always trying to push females into research science and math, because there are never enough of them? It takes a certain kind of human being to sit in his bedroom, alone, for fifteen years, and become as good at one stupid little thing as Eddie Van Halen and Bobby Fischer were. The kind of human being who dreams about screaming fans, and adulation, and praise, and beer, and chicks. (Yes, Bobby too, him more than anybody.) Most of those kind of guys are stuck on 14 years old; it is their egoes that drive their obsession with greatness. Rock and roll guitar players were, at some point (probably at every point) overgrown 14-year-old boys. They want what 14-year-old boys want and they behave like 14-year-old boys do. Girls don't want that, don't think that and don't behave like that. ................... Tom Scholz is what happens when you mix the tonic of intelligence, rather than the soda pop of testosterone, into the syrup of heavy rock and roll. Boston's music has an interesting flavor to it. It's phasers, rather than photon torpedoes. Keep rockin', Tom, and keep rootin' Red Sox, Brad. The good guys win in the end. BABVA, jemanjiRupert Sheldrake and Animal Psi
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, in a peer-reviewed study, demonstrated scientifically that a dog had a psychic link with its owner.
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The methodology was simple, but controlled with great rigor. Dr. Sheldrake predicted (formed a hypothesis) that Pam Smart's dog, Jaytee, would go to the window and wait for her to come home, at those times that Ms. Smart decided to come home (from a remote location).
1. Dr. Sheldrake set up an objective definition as to what "counted" as being at the window. 2. He pre-defined the time window that "counted" as Ms. Smart -deciding- to begin her journey home. 3. Using cameras, he counted the percentage of the time that Jaytee was at the window, waiting for Ms. Smart, under normal, "non-returning," control conditions. 4. Using cameras, he counted the percentage of the time that Jaytee was at the window, waiting for Ms. Smart, under the "decide-to-return" conditions. 5. He found that Jaytee was only at the window 4% of the time in general, but at the window (looking out, waiting expectantly for Ms. Smart) a full 55% of the time when Ms. Smart was returning. 6. Using simple statistical analysis, he calculated that the probability of this deflection occurring by chance was less than 1 in 10,000.
Having a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Sheldrake is a fine researcher, and he was well aware that skeptics were going to work hard to find uncontrolled variables, and potential "wiggle room" allowing disbelief in such a paranormal investigation.
Professional skeptics fancy themselves as the unbiased among us. :- ) In reality, will you ever find a group of folks less likely to change their minds...
Healthy skepticism is cool. Sneering at something before I understand it is not cool. As is assuming that I understand, um, everything before we start.
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At any rate, Sheldrake had us outmaneuvered from the start. A few samples of Sheldrake's agility:
Q. Perhaps Ms. Smart was in the habit of returning at a routine time that Jaytee anticipated?
A. No, Ms. Smart was given randomized return times by pager.
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Q. Could Jaytee have heard the car coming down the street, earlier than humans could?
A. No, at times the dog's anticipation occurred when Ms. Smart got into her car ... 150 km away (!). In other words, Ms. Smart might be three cities away, shopping in a mall, and when Sheldrake's team paged her, Jaytee would go to the apartment window.
Sometimes this even happened before Ms. Smart herself knew that she was going to begin returning to her car. Jaytee would go to the window, Ms. Smart would get bored with shopping a few minutes later, and then she would decide to go home. Yowch.
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Q. Could people in the room with Jaytee have given subliminal cues to Jaytee?
A. The people in the room didn't know when Ms. Smart was returning, either; often she didn't know herself.
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The study is a great read. Check it out. Two interesting questions:
Q. If the phenomenon were valid -- and many intelligent, reasonable pet owners believe it is -- how does it occur?
A. I (jemanji) haven't the foggiest.
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Q. Why did Jaytee go to the window even more often, when Ms. Smart's parents were in the apartment, than when Jaytee was alone?
A. Apparently the doggy is interested in sharing this information with the people in the room.
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Q. Why would that be?
A. Hm. A desire to be helpful? I dunno.
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Q. If true ... that means What, to me?
A. I dunno. That you don't know everything?
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The fact that I can't explain something doesn't mean that I get to deny that it exists after somebody proves that it does. I'm not a believer in the paranormal, but Sheldrake's study is an interesting cognitive dissonance for me.
What is Sheldrake's own mechanical explanation for how the dog does it? The study's a good read. :- )
Cheers,
Jeff
Good Bye Bratz, You're Outta Here!
"The ruling, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Riverside, follows a federal jury's finding that Bratz doll designer Carter Bryant came up with the edgy concept while working for Mattel. The same jury later awarded Mattel $10 million for copyright infringement and $90 million for breach of contract after a lengthy trial that ended in August. Judge Stephen Larson on Wednesday ordered MGA to immediately stop manufacturing and selling the Bratz dolls and to deliver all its Bratz merchandise to Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls. Robert A. Eckert, Mattel's chief executive, said the ruling shows "MGA should not be allowed to profit from its wrongdoing."
And if anyone is familiar with the stealing of ideas it's Barbie. Of course this was back in the day before billion-dollar lawsuits and copyright infringement laws. As any true Barbie fanatic knows, Barbie was not the original concept of Ruth Handler. She did bring her to Mattel, but Barbie already had a life in Germany as the sassy, sexy, fashionable Bild Lilli. Bild Lilli was originally a cartoon character created by German cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien for filler on June 24, 1952, for the newspaper Bild Zeitung in Hamburg. By 1955 Lilli had been turned into a doll that was targeted at gentlemen and sold in tobacco stores as gag gifts. Lilli, the predecessor for Barbie, was an edgier type of woman, maybe it was her European roots that allowed her to be more overtly sexual, yet innocent at the same time. A contradiction that allowed her to avoid the pitfalls of having to uphold a wholesome image like Barbie has been subjected to since her inception. It's ironic that Barbie should be so adamant about destroying the Bratz, when she was the almost exact replica of Lilli. Despite their popularity the Bratz have never managed to dethrone the reigning queen of fashion dolls, Barbie. But maybe now that the puffy-lipped teen dolls will be retired, their collectible value will skyrocket. I know one thing, for the first time ever, I will be buying a Bratz doll, just in case that happens.
Classical Music for a Classy Friday Night
glossy charcoal semi-rearing mustang
Beer Growling
One of the interesting things about the brew pubs in Washington is that a number of them provide growler service.
A growler is a re-fillable gallon or half-gallon glass jug filled with draft beer and capped with either a screw-on lid or a hinged porcelain gasket lid. Usually you pay a fee for the glass jug, then from that point on you just pay for the beer. Essentially, the growler is a way of enjoying take-out draft microbrews. Yep; that's right, microbrew to go.
The ancestry of the word growler is a bit uncertain. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the 1888 N.Y. Herald of 29 July, under the byline Farmer: "The employment by hands in a number of factories of boys and girls, under ten and thirteen years, to fetch beer for them, or in other words to rush the growler."
There's another reference to a growler in an article Brander Matthews wrote in the July 1893 Harper’s Magazine: "In New York a can brought in filled with beer at a bar-room is called a growler, and the act of sending this can from the private house to the public-house and back is called working the growler." Modern Drunkard magazine theorizes that "growler" goes back to the good old days before Prohibition, when it was common to pick up a bucket of beer to bring home. The metal buckets "growled" when pushed across a bar top. It's worth noting too that the old phrase "rushing the growler" referred to a quick beer run, designed to get the beer home before the foamy head was lost.
The April 2008 issue of All about Beer contains "The Growler List: 125 Places to Have a Beer Before You Die," which, oddly, doesn't include a single Washington brewpub or brewery. I note, for example, that Rock Fish Grill/Anacortes Brewery features growlers of their local brews as well as of cider. Boundary Bay Brewing Company in Bellingham has growlers or "beer to go," as does Snoqualmie Falls Brewing, and Walking Man Brewing Company in Stevenson. And don't forget Oregon breweries with growler service.
Most growlers are plain, brown or amber glass, but some brewers silk screen a log on theirs. But for the true fan of takeout beer, you can get your own custom-made growler, and even a custom growler cozy.Cool Space Station Stuff
Sapporo, the Japanese beer-maker, has brewed "Space Beer" entirely from barley grown on the Space Station. The beer has a 5.5% alcohol content. There are only 100 liters of the special Space brew, so don't look for it in the U.S. anytime soon. There's something enormously fun about the fact that one of the first things humans do upon reaching space is figure out how to make beer.
Establishing a space station has preoccupied the minds of people looking up into the stars since at least the mid 1800s. The famous rocket scientist, Dr. Werner von Braun, published a proposed design in Collier magazine, in 1952. The design used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 1968, closely resembled von Braun's concept.
In 1971, Russia launched Salyut 1, Earth's first space station. Russia boosted two more space labs into orbit before America launched Skylab, in 1973—but both Salyut 2 and Cosmos 557 (a secret project) crashed before the cosmonaut crew arrived. America abandoned Skylab in 1974, because of the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of getting crew there and back. Mir ("peace" in Russian) was the first cooperative international space station effort before finally falling out of orbit in 2001.
The pioneers of those earlier Space Stations paved the way for International Space Station Alpha (ISS) where scientists and astronauts from participating countries combine efforts to establish an outpost in space (and grow barley for Space Beer.) ISS construction began in 1998, and is scheduled to be complete in 2011. The station has been continuously crewed since November of 2000, establishing a continuous, internationally-supported, human presence in space.
The next time you're outside, late at night and far from city lights, look up. ISS is visible to the naked eye from earth. There's even an ISS tracking site online, to let you know when and where to watch.
Finally, I leave you with a clip from "Delivering Destiny"— footage of Space Station history.