“Dammit, there’s only 4 Sheryl Crows left on the roll.”
Archive for April, 2007
Carnival of the Vanities #240 follows hot on the heels of Carnival of the Vanities #239. The 239th edition was delayed for nearly a week while I searched for the time and energy to put it together. I promise to try harder to keep the carnivals on a more regular schedule but I can’t swear they’ll be here every Wednesday. I can barely even find time to call my momma much less feed this blog. Of course, sometimes I can feed the blog and communicate with mom all in one go. That’s always nice.
Where am I going with this? I dunno. Nowhere, I suppose. I usually try to combine a story with the carny for mom’s sake but I just got off the phone with her so I don’t have any stories to share. I guess that means we can get on with the carnival.
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Leading the pack this week is GrrlScientist with Chromosomal Chaos and Cancer. In it she examines the link between chromosomal decay and cancer. She also mentions the HIV-Aids connection. I bring it up because it’s apropos of the fact that I have recently made friends with at least two people who work for the CDC here in Atlanta. I find that to be extremely cool. Neither works in virology, but it’s still cool. Neither could get me to shut up about “The Hot Zone“.
Riversider presents an in-depth look at How the Ribble Works. It’s a long, muddy walk through the ecosystem of the river Ribble. Very thorough. Good job, Riversider.
Andrew Ian Dodge presents The Virginia Martyrdom Operation.
Leon Gettler correlates CEO mansions and company stock price. Guess what? The bigger the mansion, the worse the stock performance. Go figger.
Lisa presents Train birthday party ideas. Speaking of birthdays, there are several to celebrate this weekend. I want to send out birthday wishes to Nephew Ethan, Niece Taylor and That Girl, celebrating their 6th, 7th and 29th birthday’s this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Happy Birthday, all!
GrrlScientist talks about the Virginia Tech killer and says that Treating Mental Illness Defies Quick Fixes.
Andrew Ian Dodge shows the VT Killer terrorism link in The Virginia Martyrdom Operation.
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah presents Excellent Discussions and imagines a ficticious meeting between Muammar Gaddafi, Omar Al-Bashir and John Negroponte.
And, lastly, Madeleine Begun Kane gives us Sleepless In Geekdom, in which an on-call husband speaks in tongues.
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That’s all the carnys for this week, folks. If you want to be in one of next week’s carnys, submit your material to Blog Carnival. I’m for bed. G’night!
Okay, I’m a leetle late with this particular episode of the Carnival of the Vanities. I have no real excuse, I suppose. I mean, I know I probably could’ve found some time to throw something together last week. But I wouldn’t have been into it and I feel that the Carnival deserves only my best effort, so I delayed instead.
Really.
So I’m finally here with a few minutes to myself and a little extra energy to spare so I thought I’d catch up. Plus, I’ll have to put together episode #240 tomorrow night so I just have to do it tonight.
I’m just going to run through the list of entries and I apologize again for the lateness of the effort.
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The first entry comes from Mad Kane. She was sick. That was like two weeks ago. Hope she’s feeling better.
David Richeson asks Are You Sure You Know What You Really Want? He says what we think we want isn’t really what we want. That’s good because I am definitely not getting what I think I want. This is some panacea.
GrrlScientist walks throughA Mouse Model of Bipolar Disorder. I think the symptoms represent some people I know. I don’t think they know.
Paul also has a question: Free breast implants…what next! Free ogling, I assume.
Paul Sunstone talks about Young Love and suggests young love is more self-centered than more mature love. I guess this means I’m still young. Yippee!
Andrew Ian Dodge talks about PPP segmentation.
Madeleine Begun Kane gets a second entry into this week’s carny because I’m a bad carny shepherd and took a damned long time to put this up. She says Give Me A Break.
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah speaks of Bags and Stamps. Evidently Louis Vutton has been stealing ideas.
Jack Yoest saw Bush at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. Something in his post smacks of the situation in Northern Island.
Leon Gettler presents Wolfowitz and World Bank nepotism uproar. Evidently there’s a pattern of abuse at the World Bank.
Romeo Vitelli walks through what happened After Ford’s Theater.
Brandon Peele presents his Relationship to Truth.
Adam Graham give us The Purchasing of the Presidency. This one is near and dear to my heart. I remember reading how G.W. Bush had raised a record amount of money for a run to the Presidency and thinking how he was basically being foisted on America by a bunch of corporations and other wealthy individuals. That’s probably when I first started disliking the man. Now a bunch of wealthy types are trying to foist Hilary Clinton on us. These aren’t our candidates. These are the candidates those with wealth and power want in office. What should we do? Vote for the guy who hasn’t got all the money being given to him. That’s why I’ll probably vote John McCain.
Okay, Madeleine Kane gets three entries because I’m a crappy editor. But that’s it! No more! She gives us an ADD Ode (Limerick). I didn’t quite make it through the whole thing.
Wayne Hurlbert says we should Move away from the crowd.
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And that’s it until Wednesday. For those of you wanting to get an entry in, submit it through Blog Carnival before tomorrow evening. Talk to you then!
Okay, I’m sure some of you have noticed that the 239th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities did not appear in this space as scheduled.
Yeah. I’m working on it. I’m waaaay behind, obviously. As always, I plead a busy schedule. I haven’t had time to sit since…Monday of last week? Maybe?
A quick update for mom and whomever else is interested. Doctor’s visit on Friday for a problem I’ve been having with my left hip. He sent me for x-rays. They’re due tomorrow and I’ll know more then, I hope. Pray for good news. (Good news would be that I don’t have any bone leaching from that area and that I didn’t break it or anything stupid like that. Good news would be that it’s a muscle thing that will heal given enough time. It’s been something like 11 weeks so far.)
Friday night me and some of my guy friends from church went to feed and cloth the homeless in downtown Atlanta. That was humbling but uplifting at the same time. We all took our spare clothes and met with a ministry group that does this every Friday. We mingled with a group of about 50 homeless men and women, handed out food and then helped distribute clothing and passes to the shelter. It certainly helps reinforce the lesson that we should all count our blessings. One thing I heard repeated from the homeless group was how they tried to focus on the gifts God had given. They were also very appreciative just to have someone talk to them and treat the with a little respect and concern.
Tonight was “Do Justice” at Puritan Mill here in Atlanta. It was a party and singles mixer meant to raise awareness about slavery in America and the world. I didn’t realize this but evidently Atlanta is the number one city in the U.S. for the sex slave trade. Yippee. We’re number one. Also highlighted were the sex slave trade in Cambodia and the kidnapping of youths by rebel groups in Uganda. I got a t-shirt.
Anyway, lots is going on. I suspect I’m going to have to put a call out for someone willing to take over Carnival of the Vanities or perhaps send it out for rotation again. My life doesn’t appear to be too conducive to blogging these days. Too much going on.
That’s the update. I will have the Carny up soon. We might have one tomorrow and one on Wednesday, just to catch up.
Ma, I’ll call soon!
I pass along this email I received from my internet radio site of choice, Pandora.
Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,
I’m writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.
In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.
Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541
Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.
Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.
I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.
As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.
-Tim Westergren
If I wrote this badly, I might be a tad on edge as well.
As the unimaginable in Blacksburg continues to unfold, stories like these help you understand what makes a person’s character.
Not only are these deaths felt by friends and family, but the world as a whole will be much less of a place without Prof. Liviu Librescu, student Ryan Clark, and educator Christopher (Jamie) Bishop. That story of the professor especially touches me, since my own father is a professor. Librescu gave the ultimate sacrifice to his students.
Of course as the hours/days/weeks pass, more stories will become known of the wonderful people that we have lost.
Humans are hardwired to see patterns, even when those patterns probably don’t exist in the first place.
Jihad Watch
Global jihad alert: “Agents from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network made repeated visits to South Korea recently scouting for US targets, a lawmaker said, citing a closed-door intelligence briefing to parliament.” So says AFP.
“Ham Seung-Hui, a member of the Millennium Democratic Party, said that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) was now on anti-terrorism alert to respond to reported al-Qaeda activity in South Korea. ‘The NIS briefing said suspected al-Qaeda members had checked security of the US troops in South Korea on two or three occasions recently,’ Ham told AFP.
Any one of a number of News stories on the Virginia Tech shooter. This one’s from News10
The Virginia Tech Police Department is identifying the campus gunman as 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, a student and native of South Korea. The university says he was a senior at the school. Yesterday’s shootings ended with his suicide.
I wonder when Cho Seung-Hu first got his visa.
Update: In 1992, according to Reuters.