Look & See – Rural America

I’ve written a number of harsh posts about those living in rural America, mostly based off the perception that is pushed by the Republican party, that is, rural Americans don’t understand, and resent urban Americans. That rural Americans are the god-fearing, backbone of America and urban and city dwellers are welfare dependents, and worse still, socialists. Certainly, the Republican party continue to push this agenda today, dividing sub-urban and rural communities from the cities. As shown here, rural Americans claiming benefits has sky rocketed between ’96 and 2015; increasingly, the programs getting cut, adversely hit rural America harder, as rural … Continue reading Look & See – Rural America

Your infrequent reminder, Facebook is evil

They figured out how do you tweak people’s vanities and their passions and their susceptibilities and their desires in order to keep them on the site. Source: The Central Question Behind Facebook: ‘What Does Mark Zuckerberg Believe In?’ : NPR If you have not heard it, the above NPR Fresh Air interview by Dave Davies with Evan Osnos, a New Yorker Staff writer is well worth the listen. Since that interview, we’ve had two more announcements of significance from Facebook. October 11th, the evil empire announced that they’d disabled some 66 accounts or what Facebook described as: dozens of accounts … Continue reading Your infrequent reminder, Facebook is evil

Music (was my first love)

was the title of a great John Miles track from a 1976 John Miles album called Rebel. Strangely although I loved that track, it was one of the many I for the most part gave away, or sold for next to nothing in the Spring of 1983 when I moved to New York. I can remember to this day renting an estate car for the day and loading up the vinyl I wasn’t going to keep, and driving down to Kentish Town in London and offloading it all at some used record shop. Of the some 2,000 albums I have … Continue reading Music (was my first love)

The State of American Immigration

The state of American immigration is misunderstood, misapplied and subject to a lot of hysteria. To me it continues to amaze that a country where you can drive for hours east and south in Colorado, west in Texas, and pass nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m sure there are other US States where you can do this, I’ve just not driven through them. America, with a number of Western countries, not least mine, the UK, have created massive disturbances and in some cases, wars persist as a direct result of our actions. Yet we have largely uninhabited geographic areas as big as … Continue reading The State of American Immigration

Happy Mork and Mindy Day!

“Na-Nu Na-Nu” Today is the 40th anniversary of the screening of the 1st Episode of Mork and Mindy. Tribune medias’ Antenna TV is broadcast a binge watch extravaganza. Mork and Mindy, at least for me, was my introduction to Robin Williams. He’d appeared on an episode of Happy Days as Mork, but he really became famous from the series. It ran for 4-years between 1978 and 1982, recording an incredible 94-episodes. Over the past 5-months or so I’ve had my Tablo DVR set to record any episodes of Mork and Mindy. Antenna has been playing them already. I have 53 recorded. … Continue reading Happy Mork and Mindy Day!

Kohl’s and Car Oriented Development

Back in July, @_anthonyhahn wrote an article which appeared in both the Daily Camera and the Colorado Hometown Weekly about a potential new Kohl’s store in Lafayette CO, and what that meant for the Louisville CO store. Kohl’s to open in #LafayetteCO, leaving future of department store’s #LouisvilleCO site in question https://t.co/aImC6qPMKF via @_anthonyhahn — Daily Camera (@dailycamera) July 9, 2018 While pitting the two adjacent cities against each other in a battle for sales tax is valid, it totally misses the point about all the new development around the 287 Corridor, north of Lafayette. At the time, I wrote … Continue reading Kohl’s and Car Oriented Development

How Funk went Swing

My vinyl to digital conversion effort has taken an involuntary pause as my NuWave Phone Converter and pre-amp has failed. Fortunately the makers, PS Audio, are only up in Boulder, so I drove it up there last Friday to drop it off for repair and will go collect it tomorrow. While tidying up some of my more recent conversions, it caused made me reflect on a few trends, and at least, as far as I can remember them happening. I wrote over 10-years ago about the Day that disco died(for me). One question has been answered with the discovery, and … Continue reading How Funk went Swing

The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI

“If things play out with AI the way that they have done with Facebook, we’re in a lot of trouble.” Jonathan Nolan Source: The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI, The Show’s Creators Say | Here & Now Continue reading The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI

Facebook walking the wrong side of the #GDPR line

Great thread from @johnnyryan – I am so glad I #deletefacebooknow – you should too! (sure you can all make excuses why, but they mostly always come down to #FOMO ) https://t.co/ypupS8feRp — Mark Cathcart (@cathcam) May 9, 2018 Facebook is confronting EU users a new “terms of service” dialogue that denies access until a user opt-ins to tracking for ad targeting, and various other data processing purposes… pic.twitter.com/MiYpfjZLLo — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) May 8, 2018 Continue reading Facebook walking the wrong side of the #GDPR line

Secret Agent: Top-10

I’ve spent the last year plus digitizing my vinyl collection for personal use. I’ve done all my general soul/jazz/jazz funk and disco artists from A-K. Which in total is only about 1/4 of the collection. My passion though is collecting albums made by, former A&M  producer/A&R manager Creed Taylor.  CTI was initially a sub-label on A&M Records in the late 1960’s. There were a number of classic albums released including Paul Desmond – Summertime We Montgomery – Road Song Soul Flutes – Trust In Me 10-Years earlier, a 28-year old Creed Taylor, was working with a small orchestra on a series … Continue reading Secret Agent: Top-10