This guy is a congressman. A representative. A public servant. I’m not sure what most of his colleagues are.
If impeachment is “off the table” as Nancy Pelosi says, then so is law itself.
When Nixon was impeached, it came from the people. The congress didn’t catch up at first. So Pelosi is mistaken. Impeachment is what is required and expected.
When Clinton was impeached, it was for lying about infidelity. Not for mass murder, kidnapping, war crimes, or outing an American spy.
Kucinich got it right. We should support his efforts, and those of his cosigners, such as Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL).
A note on Pelosi: I voted for her and was downright gleeful that they all had to call her “Madame Speaker” after the worst congress in American history came to a merciful end. I cannot know exactly what her motives are on this. Perhaps with Obama in the white house and both houses of congress, the Donkey grows a backbone? I can dream anyway.
Seems there’s a new supercomputer that can sustain a petaflop. I thought a petaflop was something my cat does when he’s happy. Turns out a petaflop is one thousand trillion floating point operations per second. Appropriately called Roadrunner, this beast was designed to run simulations of nuclear bomb explosions, presumably so they don’t have to blow up any real ones to see if they work. The processor was based on the Playstation 3 chip design. Not sure why I find this all so absurd.
Read a fascinating book last year called What The Dormouse Said, which details the role of the counterculture in the birth of the personal computer and computer networks. Much of the saga took place in Palo Alto and Berkeley, involving an unlikely spectrum of characters with vastly different motives, from the defense industry, academia, business and assorted eccentrics. Who would have thought LSD and the Grateful Dead had a hand in creating the instrument I’m using to type and publish this now?
Roadrunner takes up a lot of floor space.
If Moore’s law holds true, we’ll have petaflop laptops soon.
Some former members of Cake had a band called Deathray. Why they called their band Deathray I don’t know. It’s not deathly music. It’s some high brow bittersweet power pop and I like it. They used to have an mp3 of this up on their site but no more. Found it on imeem. Gorgeous track, brilliant lyrics. I recently have had some insight into what it means when people say love is blind. Then I realized why I love this song so much.
Today, I have a chance to reflect over a nice cuppa joe, and tap away on the laptop on my deck in the lovely Skalifornia sun. That is luxury, sirs and ladies, and a profoundly modern experience - to toss some ideas up online from a lawn chair, as text, audio, images or video, available instantly to the world, from a wireless network on a DSL at the end of a copper phone line, sharing random thoughts with friends and complete strangers from here to Timbuktu. What does that mean? What do I have to say? The number of things I think about sharing far exceeds the things I say here. It’s odd. Why have a blog? I enjoy it, that’s a good reason. But what is it for? Remains to be seen. Today I write free form.
Yesterday, I went for a walk through Berkeley without my cell phone. Not by choice - I left it somewhere after the gig on Friday night. As I meandered through the north side streets, I would occasionally reach into my pocket out of habit to grab my cell - see if there’s a text message, or maybe call a friend. And I realized that not having the phone with me, not having those options, actually provided me with a freedom that I had not noticed was missing. It was recognizable - it was the same as walking alone on a late spring evening in the days before cell phones. Back when the phone was something you had at home, and if you weren’t there, you simply missed calls. At least until answering machines came along, and then anyone could leave you a message, 24/7. Now, kids are growing up with phones they carry with them from a very early age, and they don’t know this sensation that I felt yesterday. It is hard to describe but all you have to do to see what I mean is go for a walk without your cell phone. Turning it off doesn’t count. Now I’m not a Luddite, and I do not vilify technology or its place in society, but I do know that the rate of change has increased steadily in the course of our lives, and it shows no sign of slowing soon. So we adjust as we can, excited by the new possibilities, but are we aware of what we may be losing in trade for these new avenues of expression and communication? I can’t imagine a day without Internet now. I mean, I don’t think I’ve had one, since.. 2002 maybe? That’s quite a run!
I foresee a backpacking trip, at least a week away from civilization, somewhere in the Sierras or on the north coast. On this trip I will swim in fresh water - as opposed to a chlorinated pool - and I will experience both bliss and laptop withdrawal, I’m sure of it. I look forward to it. What I do on this thing? Produce music, contribute to websites, write songs, blog, email, chat and skype and read and google things on tangents and research and write and learn and talk and talk and talk. It is my portal to the world. It is my jack into cyberspace, as William Gibson’s classic The Neuromancer predicted. But I don’t have to wait for the interface directly with my brain, that’s immaterial, it’s already a virtual world, I finally understand that. We are not in the room. The room is in us.
So, when it was just me, and no connection to any electronic network, walking alone, I felt like a kid. I was me, at 12 years old, on a weekend afternoon, strolling as my feet steered me, completely free. It was a different freedom from this digital one.
I do love the Internet. If it didn’t exist, and corporate media was the only mass communication available, then the Internet would have to be invented. So it was. So it is. And it is reinvented every day. I haven’t had a television in years. It is an obsolete and shrieking medium of unfettered stupidity. What does the world want? The Idiocracy is upon us, and beside it, a renaissance.
I hear there are more and more reality shows now. I believe Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.”
Having been there many times, I sympathize with the java junkies. I have a cup in the morning, every day, without fail. If I don’t, there is trouble. Anyone who has had the dreaded “coffee headache” knows what I mean. A debilitating throbbing inability to reason, manifested as pain. It happens if you’re a regular coffee drinker and you stop abruptly. Of all drugs, this is not one to go off of cold turkey, unless you have a vacation planned with nothing to do but roll around and moan for three days, a small crew of geishas, a shaman healer and opiates. But don’t despair, cut down, get a medium for a few weeks instead of a large, then drink a small for a while, eventually you can stop without a visit from the java devils. Inspired by this thread, I’ll be losing this monkey entirely soon. Out of curiosity as much as anything. I haven’t had a day without coffee since high school. Wish me luck. Meanwhile, here is a song to sooth the savage beans.
rach:
New York Magazine delves into why we love the jolt of morning coffee—and if that’s a good thing or not. Apparently we are all killing our insides and crashing like propellerless planes because of the stuff. But then, it’s also good for you. But not if you’re nursing. Or needing sleep. Or slightly crazy.
There is a certain art to making up band names that are inherently puerile and antisocial. It is another thing to get a band together to live up to that name. Here are two now legendary examples.
With song titles like ”Boltcutters & Beer” and “Fuckerbarf,” it’s easy to understand their appeal.
Naturally the first few Free Beer shows were packed, along with the expected mayhem and serious threat of violence against these intrepid young punks by big men in Skynerd shirts.
Got any more? Please post any band names that belong in this elite set. Or better yet, start a band called Hurling Dervish and send me progress reports.
