10 thoughts for February 17, 2014

These are a bit more sporadic, depending upon work and what I'm doing at the moment. :D

1. LIVE! Watch an asteroid -- 2000 EM26 -- the width of 3 football fields pass the planet!  Or not.  I watched the live YouTube streaming channel from the Slooh.  Nothing.  Listening to the speakers, it was made clear that the asteroid might not be where they've pointed the cameras at, because the last time it passed us it went missing, too.  Nothing worse than a lost asteroid flying along a path that crosses the Earth.  What cracks me up is that some news outlets are reporting this as future-tense (a fly-by), after the fact that the asteroid was supposed to have reached its closest approach to Earth.
2. Well, I've been ripping more of my CDs of late, but they're such a pain when it comes to improper automated tagging, as far as classical music goes.  Still, I've had a bunch of treasured CDs missing from my digital music lifestyle.  And, because my Audio-Visual system integrates a receiver, a pair of 3-way bookshelf speakers from Polk Audio, my TV with Chromecast attached and WiFi network, I can stream my uploaded music from Google Play Music and adjust the volume from my devices remotely.  Right now I'm listening to Gustav Holst's The Planets, one of the CDs I ripped last night.
3. I mentioned the other day about having six variations of Carmina Burana's O Fortuna (four CDs and two digital downloads from eMusic).  There are other titles that I have multiple recordings of, too.  Several different Mahler symphonies and Mozart horn concertos come to mind.  The horn concertos, if you didn't know, have various sections where the individual horn player has leeway to improvise, so no two instrumentalists will sound the same.
4. Teriyaki Spam.  Haven't tried it yet, but my parents mailed me a box of goodies and in it was a can of Teriyaki Spam.  Interestingly, the ingredients list sugar, not corn syrup.  Apparently Teriyaki Spam Musubi must be a really big thing in Hawai'i, or else Hormel wouldn't have bothered.  And yes, I do have the acrylic Spam Musubi maker.
5. You ever notice how many clocks are in your home?  They're on your phone, your tablet, your computer screen, your TV, practically all of your electronic kitchen appliances including your coffee maker.  This is why I consider watches an anachronism.  
6. "Medal count" search on Google.  That's about all the viewing I've done on the Winter Olympics.  For instance, I knew Bob Costas had a red eye, but I didn't know that he had taken time off for an eye infection.  
7. In some countries, the only Olympic medal that counts are the gold ones; I apply a points system where a gold medal = 3 points; silver = 2; bronze = 1.  If the other medals don't count, then don't award them; if they do count, then devise a system to properly count them, I say.
8. Why do movies about God and Christ, centered in the heart of the Middle East, have actors speaking with a British accent?  If you're so devoted to bringing Christ and God to the screen, as an actor, producer and writer, shouldn't you be using Aramaic, or at least the modern day equivalent dialect?  It's a bit ridiculous that such religious movies utilize modern British-English; why not Old English, thusly?
9. I've read that Republicans continue to insist that the stimulus was a waste of money.  That should strike the average person as amusing and insulting, because Republicans gave their own rebate checks directly to Americans, twice during the Bush years.  Also, a chunk of the stimulus bill included lowered taxes by way of short-term rules allowing for accelerated depreciation, as well as extending the Bush tax cuts.
10. All things get normalized.  Some methods of normalization are abrupt while others are slow and subtle.  QE over the short haul was abruptly effective (even if generally modest in total effect), but over time became normalized.  Had it not become normalized over a period of time, then the Feds could have abruptly ended QE without consequences.  QE tapering, therefore, is an attempt to normalize backwards to pre-QE times, without any immediate disruption.