10 thoughts for February 21, 2014

1. I discovered a gem at the library the other day: The Verve / Philips Dizzy Gillespie Small Group Sessions CD Limited Edition Collection (only 10,000 copies).  The Multnomah County has 3 of the 10,000 limited edition copies.  Wow.  The collection comprises of 7 CDs of recordings from 1954 - 1964.  Jazz music so good, you need to use some decent headphones or speakers to listen to.
2. Did you miss it?  On Valentine's Day, De La Soul made their entire recording collection available for download for a day.  The catch: You had to sign up to receive their newsletter and they would send links to the music to download.  The second catch: You had to wait for forever to get those links; in my case, it was two days later that I received a follow-up email giving me the links to download.  I'd include those links here, but I'm quite sure that they're custom tracking links, so one link / one user.
3. Staying on music.  I've just completed uploading a bunch of my opera CDs, and now I can stream these operas: Cosi Fan Tutte, Die Zauberflote, La Clemenza Di Tito, La Traviata, Otello, La Force Du Destin, Carmen, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Boheme,  Pelléas et Mélisande, Turandot.  I have a few more opera CDs to scan.
4. And then there's the Mahler symphonies.  I've got most of them, but the ones that matter most are the odd-numbered symphonies, especially #1 and #9.  Boy, I hope I'm not turning into Frasier Crane.
5. Fukushima...the nuclear mess that will be with us for centuries.  Why?  Because they continue to have issues with leakage.  With leakage comes contamination.  With contamination comes extra cleanup.  With extra cleanup material comes the need for adequate storage of contaminated waste.  Ask the folks in Hanford Washington how the cleanup and storage is going.  
6. Speaking of nuclear waste, you might have already heard that the DOE approved a loan for a new nuclear power plant in Georgia.  Hot diggity.  Literally.
7. Staying on the topic of nuclear power, I actually visited the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant up in Ranier Oregon.  Even took some photos.  Of course, this was years after they had shut the plant operations down, following a leak of radioactive water, so the place was safe.
8. I actually kind of enjoy, in a masochistic way, watching people trip themselves up.  For instance, when Republicans and Republican states push bills to codify their bigotry into law, then, to their surprise, a big backlash follows and quashes them.  See Arizona SB 1062.  The outcome is so obvious, there's no point to offering a prediction as to the fate of these bills.
9. How do you know that Microsoft's ads attacking Chromebook are failing?  Microsoft has slashed its OEM license fee for Windows 8.1 on low-end devices.  But it's going to fail, because the appeal of Chromebooks is twofold: Price and simplicity.  Windows is the opposite of simplicity; it is the confounded !%*&!?! is the Start Menu and how the #$?!#*??! do I get back to that last thing I was doing?
10. Well I can understand this one: Cat bites and depression go hand in hand.  The solution? Get a dog.  Every time you come home your dog thinks you're the best dang thing ever.  Be sure to click through on that last bit about serious cat bites.  Knowing all this, there's no good reason to own a cat.