I find it quite disheartening to see that scientists have had to stoop so low to prove their theories instead of allowing the data to speak for it self. This is a black moment for all scientists, that will have long lasting effects across the aisle. It also makes one wonder where else in the science field is this sort of bending of the truth is occurring to support set a of beliefs to give power to a certain group of people over another group.
Ok so I was inspired after reading two posts over at the Steve Hoffman boards the last couple of days:
To sequence Sgt. Pepper, MMT, and Yellow Submarine, to attempt to make them even better albums. For the most part I took the baseline set in those two posts and made a couple of tweaks that seem to make the albums flow just a little better.
Now granted I will admit that my track-listing doesn’t follow the order they where recorded date wise. This was because I was focusing on flow, and attempting to keep a loose story structure, to fit with the progressive styles of these albums, to hopefully keep ones interest, by telling a story. The other thing I paid attention to was the limit of vinyl’s maximum playing length per side, which from what I understand is between 22-26 minutes, and yet still keep them as 2 single LP releases.
Another way to put this can be summed up in this question:
If the Beatles really did create two complete concept albums with a strong narrative story (as found in The Wall and Tommy) in each album, how would you do the track listing, keeping in mind that you are limited to 22-26 minutes per side?
With these limitations I was able to fit every song recorded during this time period except for Across the Universe, which I didn’t see as a lost as it does show up later on Let it Be.
So first off SGT Pepper:
Side A (24:53)
Side B (23:25)
Even though George Martin would have left Lovely Rita off in place for Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane. I think Thematically/Music style wise, Lovely Rita really fits SGT thematically. The other deviation is that I bounced Blue Jay Way from MMT to SGT Pepper to come after Lovely Rita but before Good Morning Good Morning. I did this because I felt from a lyrical standpoint it sets up the Good Morning Good Morning lyrics nicely due to the line in Blue Jay Way:
Soon will be the break of day
Sitting here in Blue Jay Way.
Now granted, I will admit that this wasn’t the original intent of the Beatles for Good Morning Good Morning to follow Blue Jay Way, but if you knew nothing about their intent or when things where written, you could re-interpret the lyrics to be seen as a story, that starts side B off with strawberry fields forever. This Story is about a person describing a trip through their town on their way to strawberry fields. While the following songs are about the places/people they meet along the way to strawberry fields.
Now for MMT+YS Track Listing:
Side A (24:35):
Side B (24:06):
For the most part I really liked the track listing found in the post above but I feel that the album works better with MMT starting the album and ending with All you need is love. I feel that it sort of gives a thread in which to interpret the other songs found on this what if album. I see MMT as being the intro to a morality tale, sort of the World’s sales pitch of supposed greatness of the world, the pursuit of fame/money/etc. But in the end we find that all that the world offers is meaningless without love (All You Need is Love).
Now, some may ask why I moved When I’m Sixty-Four to MMT, well the reason I did was because I was having a hard time putting that track anywhere that would make since as the Song just sounded so out of place on SGT. Pepper due to song sounding like a song from the past, I almost didn’t even place it on MMT+YS for the same reasons, until I realized that it works really great as a mini suite between Your Mother Should Know, and I Am The Walrus.
I see the song Your Mother Should Know, as the character’s inner conscience saying hey don’t buy what the world is selling you listen to what your mother taught you. I am the walrus can be interpreted as though the character is being scowled by their inner conscience, which continues the theme from Your Mother should know. Plus, at the end of I am the Walrus something interesting happens as it fades out, you hear what sounds like someone changing a radio station, which fits nicely with this line from Your Mother Should Know
Let’s all get up and dance to a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
When I’m Sixty-Four, song wise sounds like an old song that could have been a hit from before the character was born, which the character found as they where changing the radio station as heard at the end of I am the Walrus. At this point the Character is at a crossroads and starts to lean towards what their mother taught them, and they try to say goodbye to the world, but the world pulls them right back in again (Hello Goodbye).
Which brings us to Side B that starts off at the lowest point in the Character’s life. They have come to realize that even though they have gained fame and fortune, they have done it at the cost of others (Lady Madonna), and lost their since of passion they once had (Only a Nothern Song), as it doesn’t matter what they do, people still buy their products just because the character’s name is attached to it. Which the character finally realize that despite his/her Success they are now completely alone. This is when the character finally hears their conscience yelling at them “hey don’t forget about me I have the answers to your since of lost, listen to me!” (Hey Bulldog). So the character finally listens and learns what they are missing (The Inner Light). The the whole of life is meaningless without love. The character then finds true love (It’s all too much), and celebrates their finding of true love (All Togther Now), and then later in life passes the lessons they learned in life on to their children (all you need is love).
So what does everyone think? Any places where I could improve the order? or am I completely off my rocker?
I want to welcome all the IE 8 users that can finally see the site as it was designed. Since this site was launched I’ve had to hide the style sheets from IE users as the CSS engine just wasn’t able to render the design at all, even though it could be rendered 98% perfect by Netscape 6 (released November of 2000. The 2% of rendering issues, were that the fonts look bigger in Netscape 6 and the drop down menus are finicky. Netscape/Mozilla fixed the out standing issues in their CSS engine by Netscape 7.1 [aka Mozilla 1.4], and thus rendered this site 100% perfect since June of 2003). Hey at least you can say your browser of choice finally joined the party of being able to view our site as it was designed, even if it took Microsoft about 9 years to catch up with it’s CSS 2 support?
So last year was the 10 year anniversary of the film Gattaca. It’s an interesting film that questions whether science really has all the answers when it comes out smarting Nature. It puts us in a world where if you where not genetically enhanced you are a second class citizen divorced of all the rights we enjoy now, all because you are a health risk, since science can supposedly predict before birth exactly what you will die from. Have you ever sat back and thought about what if the technology shown in that film was available to us today, whether we should use it or it not?
I tend think about these things any time I watch a great Sci-fi film like Gattaca, and then find my self wondering if and when any of the films’ predictions will come true. Take blade runner for example, it predicted that by 2015 that we would have flying cars and so over run in pollution in LA that we would have Acid rain all of the time. Well we have the acid rain but still no flying cars, and LA is cleaner than it has been in years, mainly due to advances in energy efficient cars and machinery, granted we still have a ways to go, to really clean the City up for good, but it’s in a better position then what Blade Runner assumed we would be at by now.
Which brings me back to Gattaca…
As I’ve been pondering these questions lately, I found it weird that, today I happened to stumble upon something that excited me as much as it frightened me, at how close we really are to having a world just as Gattaca predicted it could be.
All I can say is that this is completely disturbing and deeply saddens me, that we have come this far. But this is just another step deeper bellow the line of despair. And as we move further away from God it can only get worse. :’(
For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse
–Mit The Destroyer
3 Years ago today, I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before due to my current job. That afternoon I had an interview in San Louis Obispo, as I was looking for a new job that wouldn’t take my entire life, as my current job was requiring me to work on average 7 days a week 12 hours a day (which didn’t mean I was working Saturday or Sunday). So I asked my mom if she would be willing to drive me up to the interview, as I felt I was in no condition to drive to San Louis Obispo and back, which was a 4 hour round trip from where I was living at the time. My mom obliged as she didn’t want any harm to come to me.
I arrived at the interview at about 2:30pm, with 30 minutes to spare, as my interview wasn’t until 3pm. The 45 minute interview went ok. I said my goodbyes to my interviewers, and promptly left, to merge with the rest of the Friday afternoon traffic, of the 101 freeway, to make our way home. Just as we left the city limits of San Louis Obispo I noticed that my mom began to veer off into the left soft shoulder of the 101 freeway. I softly spoke, “mom did you notice you just veered into the soft shoulder on your left.” Which startled her causing to over correct by yanking the steering wheel all the way to the right, causing her car to cross the entire 101 freeway and then to flip.
To do this day I still don’t know how many times the car flipped as we both blacked out for a minute, and when we awoke we where both upside down, faces smashed into the mud of the soft shoulder on the far right side of the 101 freeway. By The grace of God he directed our car so that no other car hit us as we traveled from one side of the freeway to the other side and then kept our car from flipping until we arrived on the soft shoulder that was muddy, due to the rain from the last week or so. Had we flipped while on the freeway or had it not been raining the week before so that the soft shoulder was hard ground we would have surely died or at the very least been paralyzed from the neck down. On top of that there was an EMT that had just gotten off duty that witnessed the accident and help me out of the car as we waited for the paramedics to arrive; to get my mom out of the car, who was still trapped under the car, and take us to the emergency room.
Here are some pictures of what my mom’s car looked like after the accident:
About 2 1/2 years ago my CRT monitor died (went up in a puff of smoke), and so I decided it was time to finally upgrade to a nice 19 inch LCD. Unfortunately, my video editing machine would no longer boot into windows 2000 (except safe mode), because the last g550 matrox driver release, for windows 2000, doesn’t support LCD monitors. Thus, my only option to get support was to upgrade to windows XP which I didn’t have the money to do.
So I figured I would research to see if GNU/Linux could be a viable video editing platform. But everything I read at the time said no. So I just let the machine sit there for the last two years. About a couple of weeks ago I finally decided to take the plunge and installed Ubuntu on it, so I could at least backup the data that was there and then start clean. Luckily in this time frame GNU/Linux has gain the ability to mount NTFS drives, so I didn’t have to reformat my drives and thus was able to use GNU/Linux to backup the data that was there.
While I was backing up my data I discovered a folder on one of the NTFS drives I had never seen before called “RECYLER”. So I started poking around in the newly discovered folder to see what was in there. And low and behold I found a gold mine. I found the master print of my Camp Attitude video (ogg) I did 5 years ago, which I thought I had forever lost due to me accidentally deleting the wrong file, and not noticing until a year later. I can’t tell you how jubilated I am, this is the find of the century, as I thought I would never be able to make a DVD of this video, so I can show the video to friends and family on a TV instead of a poorly encoded postage stamp QuickTime video on my computer. Which, up to this point was my last remaining copy. So in celebration I’ve made a copy of the master in ogg theora, so you can view the Camp Attitude video (in ogg), here on the website.
Even though I’ve switched my party affiliation to the Libertarian recently, I was put on the trail of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul by a co-worker of mine, saying he ran a few years back as the Libertarian presidential candidate. As far as I can tell it seems he has always been a Republican except for the year he ran as a Libertarian president. Despite being a Republican from what I have gathered thus far he votes in line with libertarian ideals consistently. Anyways, the reason for this post is I was hoping someone out there knew where I can find the official voting records our Representatives, so I can confirm what I read so far at Wikipedia and his website.
But I was thinking you know what I should use that resource to look at every Representative, so I’m better informed on who is really telling the truth at campaign time. As words mean nothing my book. but actions do.
On the same token it would be nice to have the bills cross referenced with the bill it self so I can read and attempt to understand the implications and confirm that what the summary states, matches what is written in the bill.
While debugging some code on a site I work on. I discovered a new double class bug in IE7. The weird thing about it is the code that causes the double class bug to appear is not even related to it. Sample Test case:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>IE7 Uncle Double Class Selector Bug</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
p {
color: red;
}
.class1.class2 p {
color: green;
}
.foo + p { }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="class1 class2">
<p>I’m Green</p>
<p>I’m Green Too</p>
</div>
<p>I’m red</p>
</body>
</html>
I’ve set all paragraphs to default to the color red. However, due to the double class selector changing its children’s paragraphs to green, and also creating a select any element that has the class foo, whose siblings are paragraphs (doesn’t matter if you set styles or not in that selector, or if the .foo is changed to * or to an element selector that is the same element as the parent with the double class selector [e.g. * + p {}, or div + {}]) it will cause IE7 to create a symbiotic relationship between “.class1.class2 p:last-child” and “.class1.class2 + p:first-of-type”. Thus, if you set styles on “.class1.class2 + p:first-of-type” it will cause “.class1.class2 p:last-child” to get those same styles (and visa versa). Luckily there are a couple work a rounds (ordered by effectiveness).
