cool new paper: Hainzl et al. show how rain can trigger earthquakes. stuff I wrote elsewhere: Wave in Alaska busts up iceberg off Antarctica (no big scoop here, every science writer with an angle has been doing this story, ’cause it’s so insanely cool) music: One of my favorite classic rock songs is Jim Hendrix’s …
My colleague Amy Miller had a hilarious (infuriating?) story in Saturday’s paper about young Zac Cornfield, a first-grader at Montezuma Elementary School who was not allowed to attend school with spiked blue hair. Zac said he doesn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He only wanted to look like the punk rockers he idolizes. …
A weird musical moment: I’m listening to this old scratchy bad Charlie Parker album I bought on a discount rack, and I realize I’m listening to the theme from Star Trek. It’s a song called “Out of Nowhere.” The CD box doesn’t say when it was recorded, but Charlie Parker died in 1955, so I’m …
YouTube is disruptive technology, even if this is about something that happened the year I was born:
reading: Linda Cordell’s Archaeology of the Southwest. This is one of those standards that you’re supposed to have lying around to refer to, but who actually reads these? (I am, actually. Great overview of what’s known.) music: Stevie Ray Vaughn and Dick Dale doing Pipeline. Do they have waves in Texas? bonus extra track: Don …
The PodGoober randomizer has just offered what may be the strangest mix I’ve ever heard: from the Kinks (All Day and All of the Night – what some might argue was the first punk song) to Benny Goodman. Bedlam.
phenology: The first couple of years after we moved to the neighborhood in 1993, we grew explosive, fantastic tomato crops. But in later years, they became increasingly disappointing. It was like a slot machine calibrated to pay off early and get you hooked, then suck the quarters out of you. I love fresh tomatoes in …
In which I spend my Fourth of July following the mayor of Albuquerque around backstage at a rock show: But there His Honor was Tuesday evening, with his rock star shades and a real roadie to plug in his borrowed red Peavey electric guitar, solo, banging out the opening chords to “Louie Louie”— the most …
Back in the day, we used to haunt the cutout bin in the record store at the mall in Walla Walla. One of us, I don’t remember who, picked up an album by Funkadelic because someone said they had some wicked guitar music. (I don’t think they actually said “wicked,” but you get the idea.) …
Discovered while adding album art to the podGoober, this non sequitur: Customers who bought Boulez conducting Stravinsky also seem to have an affinity for Sgt. Pepper. One wonders if Sgt. Pepper is one of those super-nodes, like Kevin Bacon or Paul Erdos.