mcgees.org

Holy [something].  Or whatever the secular equivalent of holy is.  Majestic [something].

It’s not their Led Zeppelin IV — not an album for which each song could, individually, be coupled with fifty minutes of filler and still be historic — but it is amazing.  Yes, I’m saying this as a rabid PJ fan, but you might want to take my word this time anyway.

The single, World Wide Suicide, the mind-blowing Marker in the Sand, and Gone could each carry an album.  Severed Hand could carry a boxed set.  World Wide Suicide, Gone, and Severed Hand could top modern rock charts, and Marker in the Sand could top album rock charts.  Come Back may even be sadder than Thumbing My Way from Riot Act.  I was sobbing, and had to go wake up my wife, and it’s going to be a long time before I can listen to it without crying.  Big Wave is a wonderful, passionate Darwinian surfing song.

Unemployable and Army Reserve are both striking character portraits.  One wonders if Life Wasted is written to the same person as their previous works Save You and All Those Yesterdays, or if Ed has more than his fair share of self-destructive friends (either way, he, she, or they have my best wishes.)  Inside Job is a masterful, sprawling close to the album, and the band are unfathomably gracious, emotionally, not to make us end on Gone or Come Back, which they easily could have done.

The number of stylistic touches in Ed’s voice on the album, the range of musical influences inspiring the songs, the tightly woven unity of the different composers’ works — man, I’m rambling.  I cannot honestly say, “Even if you’ve never liked a Pearl Jam album, check this out.”  But I can certainly say, “If you’ve ever liked a Pearl Jam album, get it as soon as possible.”

And, as always, try to listen on good studio monitor headphones the first time.

If I don’t lose control
Explore and not explode
A preternatural other plane
With the power to maintain

Like a tear in all we know
Once dissolved, we are free to grow
“What is human, what is more?”
I’ll answer this when I get home.

Is there a date that you accidentally date intervals to, when you are determining how old something is, instead of using the current date?  For me, when I see something was produced in, say, 1976, I first think “That’s almost twenty years ago,” not “That was thirty years ago.”  Some part of my brain is still locked in the mid nineties.  Never to escape?

The Theocratic Inclinations of the Republican Electorate.  From The Nation.

I am ten thousand days old today.

Please click on the title of this post to go to the post page, and check the grey box under this very text.  It has date and time and some other stuff.  I think I’ve just made it easier to read.  Is there anything that could improve it, and are there any other links you would like?

Whale apparently thanks rescuers.  Is this too much anthropomorphizing?  I expect not.

For several years, I have had a primary, private intellectual guiding principle.  I have called it Joshua’s First Law.  It goes as follows: “Everything is more complicated than it first appears.”  Or, with a nod to Hofstadter’s Law, “Everything is more complicated than it first appears, even when Joshua’s First Law is taken into account.”  And I’ve sometimes attached the revision, known as Joshua’s First Anti-Corrolary, which reads “Except when it isn’t.”  But never have I seen this expressed by another.  Until I read a version of it on MJD’s Blog.  He wrote, “Advice to people wishing to become smarter: Get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine.”  Kudos to him.

I get tons of visits from USPS employees to my Postal Cancel Art pages.  That warms my heart.

Zxaxgr is right.  There is something wrong with our eyes.  Interesting article on yellow as a perceptual problem.  I’ll note that near the top of my reading list is Hardin’s Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, and I’m looking forward to it.

“You’re thirty years late to this party, George, so it pretty clear that the only reason you’re showing up now is because somebody paid you to attend.”

The Star Tribune published a filler piece by a reporter who informally surveyed scientists to ask for one science question that every high school grad should be able to answer.  Mark Dominus then tore it apart.  Really good response.  (via Adam Fields, via Kottke)

Gene for rare disease that turns muscles, tendons, and ligaments into bone found.  The disorder traps people within an exoskeleton, with bone locking the joints.  (via dwarf)

Well, we had a week of unfettered bliss, but now the spammers have found the website and have started spamming the Wordpress comment feature on this site.  Looks like I’m in for some work now, moderating things.

Welcome visitor from Samoa!  He or she was searching for a “Stamp Album from U.S.” on Google and found my Stamp Albums Page.

150 down, 114 to go.

My brother in law has written a review of the Silent Hill movie on his LiveJournal, but I don’t have a LJ account and I’m still working on getting OpenID running on this site, so I’ll post here. Maybe he’ll link back to me.  My review is as someone totally unfamiliar with the video game.

Great: Color timing, cinematography, Pyramid Head, Sean Bean, Jodelle Ferland, the cockroaches, certain in-camera shots (such as the camera descending to frame a character through a broken chair) and certain effects shots (such as the elevator descent).

Good: The score, Alice Krige, Deborah Unger, interior production design.

Bad: The legions of identical reveals of disfigured bodies, the fact that as a horror movie it failed to elevate my heartrate even once, exterior facades of main street, Laurie Holden.

Terrible: Radha Mitchell.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

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Client-side PHP - The Daily WTF.  Holy crap.  Why not just publish your password on your homepage?

Hello Associate,

We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer an order.

Yeah, thanks.  Rub it in, why don’t you.

It doesn’t really matter.  I didn’t expect it to be a revenue stream, I just thought it would be very helpful on my Recently Read Books page.  Check it out and let me know if you like it more than the old list.

I’d like to welcome our new visitor from the Isle of Man!  He or she visited the Review of www.[number].com page using Firefox.

149 down, 115 to go.

I’d love feedback on the new site design.

Pearl Jam on Letterman Thursday, May 4th.

There are 264 TLDs (top-level domains) that the analog log analysis software knows about. TLDs are things like “.com”, “.org”, “.us”, and “.uk” that you find at the end of domain names. And for several years I have been keeping track of the TLDs of visitors to mcgees.org. My goal is to have a visitor from each TLD, the internet equivalent of a ham’s “Worked All Countries”. This may not be feasible — some TLDs may be obsolete, and some will just be damned difficult, like “.kp”, North Korea — but I’m keeping track of it. You can follow the progress
of my domain visitors here.  As of yesterday, I knew of visits from 141 TLDs.

Today, though, I ran jdresolve on my log entries, which does lookups on unknown IP addresses, and nabbed seven more: Air Transport Industry, Bahrain, Kenya, Monaco, Maldives, Togo, and Tanzania! I’m now at 148. Stay tuned.

1. Find a wallet containing 1,000 euros.
2. Track down the owner and extort a 100 euro finder’s fee for the return of the wallet and money.
3. Profit!  I mean, jail!

Study Explains Evolution’s Molecular Advance: “Thus, it turned out that the receptor for aldosterone existed before aldosterone. Aldosterone is found just in land animals, which appeared tens of millions of years later.

‘It had a different function and was exploited to take part in a new complex system when the hormone came on the scene,’ Dr. Thornton said.”

“It sounds like a job for Wallace and Gromit. A ‘monster’ rabbit has apparently been rampaging through vegetable patches in a small village in northern England, ripping up leeks, munching turnips and infuriating local gardeners.

In an uncanny resemblance to the plot of the hit animated film ‘Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit,’ angry horticulturists in Felton, near Newcastle, have now mounted an armed guard to protect their prized cabbages and parsnips…

‘This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster,’ [local resident Jeff Smith] was quoted by newspapers as saying… ‘We have two lads here with guns who are trying to shoot it, but it is very clever.’”

Internet Explorer hit by new phishing flaw.  I hear a death knell.  Anyone not switched to Firefox yet?  You are missing out.

Pop-up Potpourri: Funny, funny error messages.

Truthdig - Reports - Robert Scheer: ‘Anti-Christian Conspirators’ Slay DeLay.  Ah, if only we could take credit for DeLay’s downfall. That would have been a major coup. Instead of, say, something akin to the laws of physics.

Journalism Payola.  And a really good discussion.

Grow a grass armchair: “The Grass Armchair is a kit to grow a seat in your yard… You will need about 240 litres of soil, to fill in the frame. First find the right spot, because once the armchair has grown you won’t be able to move it!!”