Bob Dylan & Norah Jones Concert

Amazon.com is having a concert featuring the above named on their website this afternoon. They are also running a sort of lottery wherein they give a customer everything on that person's wishlist. So go put a bunch of goodness on your wishlist while you are waiting to hear the best living voices do their thing.

We can't help but note that this is exactly the sort of thing rich, evil empires have always done to keep the masses happy, but this time the circus's not too shabby and the bread ain't stale.

Diet Coke

We have a one-a-day Diet Coke habit. As habits go, it is relatively easy to fund and socially acceptable enough that it need not be hidden.

For the past 3-4 months, every one of our daily Diet Cokes has proclaimed on its cap, "1 in 12 wins free Coke!" And the inside of every lid, where the token entitling the drinker to a free Coke product promises to live, has greeted us, "Drink Coke. Play Again."

So to all the people who have won a free Coke for every 11 I bought and paid for, You're welcome.

Tristram Shandy

We have always suspected that is an anagram for something, perhaps his father's cruel joke of naming the boy after an old girlfriend right under his mother's nose. Be that as it may, Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is an old friend. Read his stuff.

The Church & Evolution

The other day, Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna and principle author of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, wrote in a NYTimes op-ed that the current scientific theory of evolution is not compatible with Catholic faith. [We'd link you to the op-ed, but you'll need a subscription to read it by the end of the week. HeraldTribune.com has a reprint of the NYTimes response.]

Back in the 1990s, John Paul II made a vague statement the human mind has all the faculties necessary to discern our origins and that to accept a passage from Genesis as the totality of knowledge of origins that we will ever possess is an insult to our common intellects, especially given that modern science can reveal so much more. He went on to say that Truth cannot contradict Truth, meaning that when/if Science elucidates the actual mechanisms by which life originated, those mechanisms will add to, not detract from, the religious truth about the origin of life, which we Catholics believe to be the simple fact that God wants men and women to be here.

This vague statement has often been used to make the case that the Catholic Church "believes in evolution." First, "belief in evolution" is absurd. Scientific fact is a matter of data, NOT a matter of faith. Second this statement NOT an endorsement of evolution. It is an endorsement of the notion that scientific inquiry has already learned more about the mechanistic origins of life than Genesis revealed to us and will continue to learn more. The Church, we estimate, has a need to defend itself from those who would quote it to support the advancement of a particular scientific theory, which is not only bad science but also dangerous to the Church.

As a theory, evolution is currently messy. Scientists are certain that life has changed since it first showed up on this Earth, but the understanding of the mechanisms and nature of that change is imperfect at best, although it is better than what Darwin put forth a hundred years ago. A hundred years more research, and there will be better data to produce a better theory, which won't be as messy. If the Church were to tie itself to what turns out to be an early draft of a theory, it would have a huge problem: When the final edit of the theory is available, the Church would have to re-edit theology to fit. Now, although theology may need to be edited and the theory of evolution may need to be edited, they do not need edited because of each other.

And that is the mistake in Cardinal Schonborn's essay. He tries to edit the current draft of the theory of evolution. If he were a researcher with some new data, that would be the right thing to do. But he isn't. He is a theologian who would like to point out that while earlier drafts of the theory left some room open to a design under all of the changes in living things, the current draft (which we equate roughly with Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory) doesn't. To which we'd respond, Tough Sh*t, Your Imminence. But then again, he was trained as a theologian, not a scientist, so he is much more interested in pointing out inconsistencies than in explaining data.

And we think that is the crux of the issue: Until Science has an infinite data set, the Infinite will not make sense to Scientists, and until Science has consistently explained every data point in an infinite data set, the theologians will be untrustful of it.

Tags: Science, Religion

A Note & A Link On London 7/7

We heard about the bombing on the way in to work yesterday a.m. The BBC blathered on for 8-10 minutes about the "import and ramifications of this morning's events" before spitting out the simple fact that several bombs had gone off throughout the London Underground, killing several and wounding many. Almost as obnoxious as the US newsmedia, although they did not overestimate the casualty counts.

Random Acts of Reality has several good posts and comments both from Londoners and outsiders. Since this is the day after, start with Normality.

We are particularly amused at the contrast between the British and American responses. The British are saying, "Eh, after 20 years of the IRA, we can cope." Meanwhile, the US Dept of Homeland Security, despite Chertoff's best efforts to keep his head, has its panties all in a wad.

Hollywood Subverting the Will of the People Through Judicial Activism

Fred Thompson, former Republican senator and current TV actor on Law and Order, has been appointed to hold hands with whomever Bush appoints to take Sandra Day O'Connor's SCOTUS seat.

Either Bush is planning on appointing a spineless cry baby who just needs lots of handholding, or Hollywood needs to make sure that the next SCOTUS Justice is at least as much of an activist as Clarence Thomas.

Feel free to contribute alternate headlines for this assinine appointment under comments.

Tags: News and politics

Whose Sons Are Dying in Iraq?

The Palm Beach Post has an interactive map of the hometowns of GIs killed in Bush's War on Iraq. Not surprisingly, big dots loom over Texas, but most of the GIs BushCheneyRoveInc sent to death were from the East side of the Mississippi and a good number from above the Mason-Dixon line. The Chicago area seems unfairly represented among the casualties, too.

Good Beer.

A couple of weeks back, BoingBoing linked us to Flying Dog Ales out of Denver, CO. So we found a mixed case and man, is this good beer. This afternoon, to celebrate the 4th, we are drinking another case or so. Hope you are doing the same!

Ligeti

Way, WAY back in May Madpercolator mentioned her love of Satie's atmospheric music and, in the same post, brought attention to some really cool classically-trained kids in South Africa playing folk music on violins and violas. This made me want to send her to buy Ligeti's African Rhythms disc, but I have been lazy and put off writing even a blurb.

So, over the break I picked up some more Ligeti and enjoyed it on the drive home. Ligeti's atmospheric stuff, like the piano etudes, is more thoughtful than Satie's. Satie has a Vivaldi-like way of making noise serve as the atmosphere. Vivaldi occassionally gave us a melody on top of the noise, but Satie just gives us the noise. Ligeti is noisy, too, but his noise is more than a piano or violin approximating 5 minutes of a bubbling stream or similar. Each part contributing to the noise has a plan and its own polyphonic harmony, creating what Ligeti calls "cloudiness" as his harmonies blend into one another and into the next.

Rhythm, though, fascinates Ligeti more than texture, and so even though the atmospheric quality is what brought him to mind when Perc mentioned Satie, the rhythms of his music are what make the stuff great. Rhythm is also what sent him to hang out with the Pygmies in Africa, which became the source of the Africa Rhythms cd.

Good stuff.

Tags: music

Back from Vacation, Almost

We've been in the Red States this past week, enjoying surprisingly good food in Chattanooga, TN, and witnessing the alarming passion with which the rebels still fight the War of Northern Aggression at the Stone Mountain Laser Show near Atlanta.

Two observations about Red States that must be published: 1) The number of half-dressed high school girls who have painted their faces to look like Britney Spears that you'll see in a mall or outside a movie theater down South is disgusting. We assume they are high school girls, btw, because once they turn 19 down South, they get married and pregnant, not necessarily in that order. 2) The Home of Faith and Family Values is also the Home of Strip Clubs. Driving down any given corridor of I-95 or I-85 south of the Mason-Dixon line, you will see LOTS of signs advertising, "WE BARE ALL!", "CAFE RISQUE!", "TOPLESS GIRLS 24 HOURS A DAY!", and the like. The actual strip clubs and adult video stores are found every 20 miles or so. The adult entertainment disappears just outside of cities like Richmond and Atlanta, an area corresponding to the sprawling suburbs, but downtown, the "gentlemen's clubs" outnumber gas stations. Contrast Boston, that den of liberal corruption, where there are two strip clubs, total: one Chippendale's and one Glass Slipper.

We promise to catch up on blogging early next week.

Robbing the Poor to Feed the Rich

Kelo v. New London CT upheld; the government is now free to seize private property so that would-be real estate developers don't have to go through the trouble of like, buying property on the open market, which is, you know, a total pain in the ass. Real estate developers simply can't be expected to go through all that trouble, not when the government could just take what they want and give it to them for free.

As Justice O'Connor put it, "The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

Background, from NYTimes.FindLaw.com

Best Classical Music Magazine

Just can't believe nobody has told us about this before now. Worthless "friends."

Opus1Classical.com

Well, maybe not the absolute best. Gramophone still rules. But only about 1/3 of it is online and it is run by a bunch of Brits, which means their CD reviews almost all become over-priced Imports from our point of view.

Tags: music

Katie Holmes vs. Kirsten Dunst

Batman ROCKS!!! There was considerable fear that it wouldn't stack up to the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton masterpiece, but even with the bar set that high, Batman: Restarted is fkn impressive.

!Plot spoilers below!

The biggest problem we have with the movie is the so-called love interest. Katie Holmes plays a bitch. There is no other way to say it. Early in the story, she dumps Bruce Wayne because he won't do anything to fix the injustice in the world. When she should be warming up to Batman--especially in the scene where she learns his identity--she seems so cold that this franchise will never need an Iceman. And finally she rejects Bruce Wayne again while he is digging through the ashes of his parent's home, saying that maybe if he weren't so hung up on driving the criminals out of Gotham, she could love him. The next time a villain ties her to the proverbial train tracks, Batman should leave her to be run over.

!Okay, done spoiling the plot!

Compare this cold bitch of a love interest to Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. Mary Jane has every right to kick Peter Parker square in the 'nads for his repeated insistence that he must chose fighting injustice over love and romance (because as we all know, the two are mutually exclusive), but she remains supportive and puts forth considerable energy to get into his head. Spider-Man and Mary Jane share several kisses that look much tastier than anything Katie Holmes's Rachel puts out. And Mary Jane never recites pablum from her high school civics classes.

So next time, we want to see some one smart, sexy, and warm-blooded opposite Christian Bale's Batman. How about Lauren Graham, who rocked in Bad Santa?

The Coolest Thing Since HotOrNot:

A Flickr color picker. "Wha?," you say? Colr Pickr is an interactive color wheel that shows you a sampling of Flickr pics matching any color you pick. You really have to go try it to see how entrancing it is--so what are you still doing here?

Thanks to Coding Horror for the link.

Summer Reading

Okay, folks, we are going to list the books we've been meaning to read at right. (By "been meaning to read," we mean these things have been piling up around the place.) That way, we will be reminded to read them, especially if you ask, "How is that random Ethan Coen paperback, anyway?"

Of course, there are piles of medical books begging to be read, too, but who wants to hear about that?

The Trendiest Banana Republic in the World

Around town the Department of Homeland Security has been doing some redecorating, a la Martha Stewart: The ubiquitous Jersey Barriers that obstruct the views of and access to the world's most recognizable monuments to freedom are being painted green. This makes us all safer because, as everyone knows, Jersey Barriers work better when painted green.

For anyone who doubts this last statement, let me point out some statistics: Number of jet planes flown into buildings back in the days of plain gray Jersey barriers: 2. Number of jet planes flown into buildings since park service guys started going around and spray painting all the Jersey barriers in DC: 0. Success!

Future campaigns in the war on terror will include upgrading all the X-ray screeners at the airports from beige plastic to iMac-like translucent white, and, in FY2006, changing those red blinking lights on the tops of buildings and antenna towers to bright blue LEDs.

Apple + Intel = Huh?

So Apple-whose website says that a pair of PPC G5s “blows away” a P4--has decided that a P4 running an emulator running OS X is “fast (enough).”

Disappointing, isn’t it? All weekend there was lots of speculation, including a great page at Wired about how Intel chips, with their talked-up DRM, would make a perfect iMac Mini-TiVo hybrid perfectly suited for a set-top box that would download DVD-quality [H.264] movies from iMovie Video Store with Hollywood’s blessings, but I kinda suspected that Jobs was irritated with IBM’s failure to get the G5 over 3 GHz and that he might take his OS X and walk away. And so he didn’t really promise anything big, other than the chip inside of Macs in 2007 will be from Intel, not IBM: This isn’t going to translate into any real performance gains, but it will require rewrites of some software, and it doesn’t add any features and may remove features, since Intel only makes 64-bit processors in its most expensive Xeons and has said it will not support x86-64bit across its line.

But my biggest question is, how long will it take someone to hack the x86 version of X to run on my DIY AMD box? Apple will never open the hardware platform—and besides, if X were to run on any Intel box, not just Intel boxes from Apple, M$ will stop making Office for MacOS X so fast Steve Jobs won’t be able to say iWork. We’ll see who manages to hack this so I can have a 64-bit, 2+ Ghz AMD "Mac" to OS X and maybe Windows when I have to do some chores.

New Coldplay: Soundtrack of Life

Life needs a soundtrack. We listen to so much music it is not funny--not only do we almost always have some music playing, we mean that we listen to lots of kinds of music. Johnny Cash, especially in his mid-90s renaissance fueled by Rick Rubin, is so good that his guitar and smoke-cured voice should be part of everyone's soundtrack. Garden State managed to have such a great soundtrack that some days, we can just queue it up and use it as our own. Coldplay, which opens the Garden State soundtrack, has been getting close to essential soundtrack status. Clocks, for example, was awesome at first, but after a few spins, looses its luster.

Enter their new X and Y. Speed of Sound picks up right where Clocks left off. The rest of the album is at least as good. Okay, okay so it isn't legal to have heard the album before June 7th in the USA, but come on. Anyone who keeps an eye out for Coldplay tracks has already heard Talk--someone leaked it to BitTorrent a few months ago, and of course Speed of Sound was at Coldplay's website earlier in the spring. So you've had a preview. And X and Y lives up to all expectations.