Category Archives: Cool stuff

At the Edge of Our Solar System…

And far enough not to be impacted by our sun’s solar winds…

Voyager 1 is now at the edge of solar system. It is amazing to think that this ship has less computing power then my cell phone, and yet it has seen things and will continue to see things that we can only imagine.

I think that Carl Sagan summed up the Voyager mission best and it makes me happy that even though he is no longer with us, Voyager is…and will be long after we have gone.

Some Music Died January 4, 2011

One of the best bass players EVER to grace modern music passed away on Jan 4. Mick Karn. (Also see his profile on All Music Guide).

Mick Karn 1

He was the bass player for Japan, Rain Tree Crow, Dali’s Car, Gary Numan & Tubeway Army, No-Man and many others. I’m particularly fond of an album he did with Yoshihiro Hanno in 2000 called Liquid Glass. If you haven’t heard me play it once in a while, you probably aren’t listening. Mick Karn was heralded throughout music, even in the standard jazz genre’s as one of the best bass players around. He was also proficient with very odd (to my liking) implementation of woodwinds in rock music. He was very good at clarinet and bassoon. He used them a lot in the music he made in the 90’s with Jansen/Barbieri/Karn (or JBK) which was the instrumentalists from the band Japan.

Nobody sounds like this guy playing bass… NOBODY. If you don’t believe the power of this, try you tube’ing his name and look at all the people trying to play his bass lines.

This video is actually fun to watch and listen to. You can really hear the quality in the sound Mick Karn was driving at. Listen to this guy try to teach a Mick Karn bass line. He’s doing “Cantonese Boy” from Japan. Just the sound of the fretless bass played in this fashion gives me freakin goose bumps.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m gonna miss Mick Karn.

Here’s another good write up on him.

Merry Shitmas!

Merry Shitmas my friends 🙂

I love how Dunsworth is reading Christopher Hitchens book “God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything…” for a Christmas video.

Just in case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, Christmas is NOT Jesus’s birthday. It was to celebrate his conception. So, really, its a celebration about a rape that caused a pregnancy. Nice!

It was also a Roman holiday hijacked by the later Popes in order to get the waining Roman citizens to convert easier to Christianity because early Christians celebrated nothing and the Romans where ALL about their parties…

So Happy Birthday Sun! A tangible God made up of hot burning gas, which has the REAL influence in all of our lives.

Chronicles of the Absurd-Who Knew?

There is nothing like a door ding or a fall time kamikaze acorn bombardment to brighten the day of any car owner.  Saw this nifty little trick and thought I might pass it on.

I may even try it on my almost vintage Honda accord a.k.a. the Green Machine to see if it really works. The only problem is that if it does, I’m on the hook for a lot of computer cleaners…

What goes around, comes around.

In the early hours of this Tuesday, the earth will eclipse the moon. What makes this lunar eclipse so special, is that it is just happens to coincide the Winter Solstice.

While it may seem like no big deal, this event marks the longest day of winter. After this, the days will gradually get longer, and then next thing you know…its time to break out the tight black wife beaters. So if you are out or up, drunk or sober, take a peek out the window and see if you can spot that red moon and know that we are still spinning on a rock with a ball of its inners, orbiting around an immense ball of hot gas.