* The Music: Leo Kottke: My feet are smiling
This is arguably his best album. Recorded in 1972 at a show in Minneapolis, it’s probably the fastest played guitar I’ve ever heard in my life. Yes, it’s just him and the guitar, sounding like he’s playing for three. The playing… and singing, when he does… are all the more amazing given the guy lost most of the hearing in one ear, and all of it in the other.
The technique uses reminds me of what some of the more clever programmers used to do, while trying to compose music for the old, C=64; they tended to make use of harmonies and harmonics by striking to particular notes simultaneously to come up with a third. With that C=64, you only had four voices, though if you did it right, you could make it sound like much more. Kottke manages to do this with a 6 string… sounding like he’s playing two or three guitars at once. Amazing.
The CD, pictured here is longer than the original Wax copy (Capitol label) I have, containing a lot more in the way of banter with the crowd.
It still amazes me (And frankly, annoys me) that the man has never received the kind of notoriety that somebody of his talent should have. I suppose it the product of the times, where the rock and roll taste mongers were ruling the day, and Kottke was a little too folksy sounding.
The album is a favorite of mine, and I think you’ll find it worth having.
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* So now that they figured out who the father of this baby is, can we please stop with the 24*7 coverage of “Anna Nicole Simpson is still dead”? Please?
(Simpson? Yeah. I figure she’s the mental relation to Homer…. should have left the explanation in on the first draft. -Ed)
I don’t know which is driving me buggier…. That nonsense, or whether not Sanjaya whats-his-fur finally got his butt kicked off of “American idol”. I mean, don’t we have better things, more important things to occupy our time, particularly on a news channel? Like for example, the knife in the back of our troops, at the hands of congressional democrats?
This whole child custody case is a bloody circus, and nothing more. I mean, good lord… I’ve seen open bars that were less populated than the line under the “I’m the father” signs.
OK, granted, that she probably did sleep with every single one of them. And that’s telling, in itself. But how’d you like to be the child in that situation? Can you imagine the line of competing sperm donors being quite so long, if there wasn’t a few million dollars in the offing? After all; Drugged up bleached blondes that are fairly easy, are plentiful in any American city;. We call them “Street walkers”. The money, clearly, is the main attraction here.
The kid is going to spend its entire life trying to live down how it got started ; “Mom tended to sleep around, she died soon after I was born, because she was a druggie, too…and there was a big multibillion dollar court fight over who was my daddy”.
Yeah. Like the money the kid will eventually inherit, once daddy gets done spending it, is really gonna make up for that. Sure.
And we still haven’t dealt with the question about responsibility of the people around her, for her death. Are you really going to tell me that nobody understood the woman was drugging herself to death?
Between the two situations, I have to tell you, there’s some real love going on here. NOT. Believe me, as a rail fan, I know a train wreck when I see one. At the moment I’m looking at two. The mother, and the child. The former is beyond help, now, and the latter has a long hard life-long row ahead… and is likely beyond help given the people surrounding the situation. And frankly, I don’t much care about the rest of them. but, get them off my TV screen, would you please? When I turn on the news station, I would like news. This crap, doesn’t qualify.
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* Hume, least night:
The latest threat to planet Earth via climate change has been identified as — all those darn pine trees.A National Academy of Sciences report says the pine forests of Europe, Siberia and Canada may contribute to global warming because they trap sunlight reflected from snow — making the Earth warmer.Conventional wisdom is that trees help cool the Earth by absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off moisture that creates clouds. But the report says that is only true for tropical forests. It says some computer models suggest that cutting forests in higher altitudes may reduce global warming.
More proof that the global warming credit with us know what the world they’re talking about.
* Bill Theobald is reporting that Fred Thompson is making some serious waves:
WASHINGTON — Fred Thompson is by far the most popular potential presidential candidate among Tennessee Republican voters, with 45 percent of those surveyed making him their top choice, according to a poll released Monday.
That the former GOP senator would get top billing in his home state is not a surprise.
What’s surprising is his lead over possible opponents and the magnitude of support for a man who has only hinted at a run, said pollster Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage.
It’s really not that much of a surprise. Get somebody to stand up for conservative values (consistently, Mr McCain, Consistently) and you’ll do well.
Of course, now the speculation is that his recent announcement about having cancer in remission, is going to screw up his chances. I honestly don’t see why; everybody else in the field is dealing with it, too.
* Perhaps if they’d only not been so STUPID….
A decision last month to ban the Easter Bunny from a Tiverton Middle School craft fair – allowing children to visit with Peter Rabbit instead – elicited thousands of e-mails to the superintendent’s office, some of which were so threatening that they were taken to the Police Department and a police officer was posted Tuesday night at the School Committee meeting.
The issue has gotten so nasty during the past few weeks that Superintendent William Rearick has considered quitting his job, according to School Committee Chairwoman Denise deMedeiros.“Many of the e-mails, phone calls, and many of the ways Mr. Rearick was attacked personally and professionally were horrendous,” School Committee Vice Chairman Michael Burk said. Many e-mails obviously were from “organized campaigns,” he said, including a neo-Nazi group. “It disturbs me highly. I’m sorry you had to put up with that sort of attack,” Burk said to Rearick.
That’s from The Newport Daily News.
It appears to me the anger being shown is more than justified. What kind of moron suggests the Easter Bunny is a religious symbol? It must take a hogher education in government schools to come to such a conclusion.
This is also about a lack of tolerance… something I thought we were all about teaching, these days. Apparently, Christianity isn’t on the official list of things to be tolerated. Indeed, only an over-active imagination and a fear of being in the smallest of fashions connected with Christianity can account for such nonsense.
Can you imagine that occurring with Jewish holidays? Can you imagine that happening with Islamic tradition? I can’t, either. Christianity though, is a fair target, apparently .
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* Some interesting news from the Journal of the AMA:
Autologous Nonmyeloablative Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in Newly Diagnosed Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
The translation: The doctors put together a small study, in which recently diagnosed type one diabetes was treated, and effectively reduced . In other words, this treatment supposedly, can prevent loss of insulin production following diagnosis and can reduce insulin needs in such patients.
Yes, this involves stem cell research. but note, that they are using not embryonic stem cells, but adult stem cells, harvested from the patient’s own blood. There’s going to be two angles in this discussion, I’m quite certain. But something that should not escape your attention is the idea that they’re not using embryonic stem cells here. Indeed, to my understanding embryonic stem cells have had no success in treating anything, thusfar…. it’s the adult stem cells that have been working so many wonders.
The results in this case?
During a 7- to 36-month follow-up (mean 18.8), 14 patients became insulin-free (1 for 35 months, 4 for at least 21 months, 7 for at least 6 months; and 2 with late response were insulin-free for 1 and 5 months, respectively). Among those, 1 patient resumed insulin use 1 year after AHST. At 6 months after AHST, mean total area under the C-peptide response curve was significantly greater than the pretreatment values, and at 12 and 24 months it did not change. Anti-glutamic acid decarboxylase antibody levels decreased after 6 months and stabilized at 12 and 24 months. Serum levels of hemoglobin A1c were maintained at less than 7% in 13 of 14 patients. The only acute severe adverse effect was culture-negative bilateral pneumonia in 1 patient and late endocrine dysfunction (hypothyroidism or hypogonadism) in 2 others. There was no mortality.
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This all sounds very impressive, and raises the possibility of a workable treatment for type 1 diabetics. however, there were a number of complications. For example, the treatment has a tendency to screw with your auto immune system. As a direct result of this, the subjects were kept in essentially a clean room environment, were otherwise excellent health. Sterility was also an issue as you would expect from radiation treatments. The doctors are saying that they need further testing, of course. But, all this is quite interesting, because it is the first time , understanding that anyone’s had treatment that even looked like it might work.
As of the issue of stem cells, adult, versus embryonic, McQ raises this point in the post of his own, this afternoon;
The results show that insulin-dependent diabetics can be freed from reliance on needles by an injection of their own stem cells.
Now, of course, I emphasize the last portion of the 3rd paragraph for a reason. That is how, reading this report, I discovered they were adult stem cells. Nowhere in the story is that made clear.
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But again, the reason I’m pointing out the type of stem cell used is because by not mentioning it, they were able to turn the news story of a great medical breakthrough into an opportunity to editorialize on a subject not even germane to the development:
But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.
Yet where was the actual breakthrough made? With adult stem cells.
Quite right.
Tags: BitsBlog, Nightly Ramble
