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Flashback Friday: Weezer – “Undone — The Sweater Song”
I still remember the night in 1994 when I first saw this video. I ran out and got the album the next day, and have been a huge Weezer fan ever since. -
Newest ebook: Paranormality
Over the weekend I downloaded a new book that I can’t wait to read — Paranormality: Why we see what isn’t there. I’ve been a Richard Wiseman fan for some time. He is actually self publishing his latest book in the US because he hasn’t been able to find a publisher in the US despite the book selling well in the UK and a few other countries. Some publishers even suggested that he re-write it to suggest that ghosts and psychics were real. Imagine that, in a country where probably 75% of the people believe in the paranormal, a book that disproves it can’t be published.
Thanks to the internet, and ebooks it is easy to self publish these days. I love it when authors self publish their books. It was a no-brainer for $8.99. I bet the book is going to do well in the US. It’s gotten some pretty good reviews. I can’t wait to read it.
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They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba
via avclub.com -
Casey Anthony? Who cares?
So Casey Anthony was found not guilty. Who the hell cares? Apparently everybody. I honestly first heard of her just this past weekend. Frankly I avoid all exploitive news like this.
Personally I feel happy for Casey Anthony. Now I know nothing about her, or the trial, but obviously there must have been some doubt. I would rather see our judicial system fail this way, rather than filling prisons with innocent people that couldn’t prove they were innocent. She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police, which was probably much easier to prove, and will do time for that.
Maybe Casey Anthony is guilty and got off, but realistically she isn’t a threat to society. She will have to live with whatever she did for the rest of her life. It may haunt her, it may not, but chances are she isn’t going to end up killing anybody else. My personal belief is that prisons should be used more to protect society from crazy people and less of a punishment. Obviously most people don’t have this opinion and our prisons are overflowing with inmates costing out country millions of dollars, but that’s another issue.
What really makes me sick is everybody making money off of this. Because of the coverage this case has gotten, chances are that Casey Anthony herself is going to be able to cash in also. With out the coverage she wouldn’t be able to. Now I don’t really blame the media companies because they are just broadcasting what people want to see and watch. We just live in a sick society that just wants to see revenge. People want to see people punished and put to death. I don’t get it. Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to this kind of news. I find it sad when people are found guilty. I was even sad when Timothy McVeigh was put to death, even though he deserved it. I would never celebrate somebody being incarcerated or put to death. I’m just not that kind of person.
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Happy aphelion
From time to time I ask people when they think Earth is closest to the Sun. They almost always say in the summer. That isn’t true. We are furthest from the Sun in the summer (in the northern hemisphere), and closest in January. I never really knew when we were the furthest, but thanks to Phil Plait, I know that day is today, and it’s called aphelion. Perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the Sun, and it’s in early January with aphelion happening six months later.
Many people don’t realize that our seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth, not by the distance from the sun. That is why the southern hemisphere has just the opposite seasons. It’s a pretty basic fact that if a person just stops and thinks about it for a bit, make perfect sense, yet people often miss it. And now you shouldn’t.
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Flashback Friday: That Dog – “Never Say Never”
This Friday’s Flashback is “Never Say Never” by That Dog. I always wanted more from them, but sadly they only released three albums. They are however getting back together for at least one more show, too bad I don’t live anywhere near LA.
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eBook pricing out of wack
The other day I went to buy some of the books in my Amazon wish list. I probably have 20 books ready to read on my iPad, but I thought I would pick up a few more to clean out my wish list some. What drove me crazy, and prevented me from buying many books was the crazy Kindle pricing. Why do most kindle books cost $12? On many occasions the paper edition was cheaper, and for a few even a hardcover book was cheaper than the kindle edition. Why? You can’t tell me it’s cheaper to chop down a bunch of trees, make some paper, print out the books, fill up the truck with gas, and ship the books across the country; than it is to send a 2 meg file max over the internet to anybody in the world in seconds.
Ebook publishers need to wake up. They need to look at the app store model. If an app is under $3 I pretty much buy it without thinking about it. When apps are priced higher, I think about it, and often don’t purchase them. Books to me have more entertainment value, and my no thinking purchase barrier is probably in the $5 to $8 range. At $12 I think about it, and often don’t make the purchase. If I see I can get the paper version cheaper I don’t just buy the paper one. It pisses me off and I don’t buy either, and will probably never buy it. I bet I’m not alone. Ebook publishers would make a killing just by passing some of their savings onto the customer.
I did end up only buying two ebooks. I bought two Scott Sigler books. I bought The Rookie for $4.99 and The Starter for $2.99. They were priced in that “no think” zone. Scott gets it, and hopefully ebook publishers realize how many more sales they will make just buy getting into that “no think” price zone.
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Great easy to read science books
I just finished reading Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries. It’s such a great book. I think it would go a long way in science education to require reading such book, or maybe Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy, in high school. Maybe it’s just me and my interests, but those two book really get me interested in science, and wanting to learn more. I know science classes are probably too busy teaching their curriculum to require students to read books, but science is more about a way of thinking then actual facts. It’s about the process, and both of these books stress that.
When I was in high school I had no interest in most of the required reading books, and they made me hate reading. I enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird and really loved In Cold Blood, but couldn’t even tell you what else I had to read in high school. Once I was done with school it was probably ten years before I picked up another book. School taught me to hate reading. Nowadays I’m not a hugely prolific reader, but I manage to read 20 or so books a year.
Having students read a variety of books in high school may encourage more reading and better overall education, but then again a lot of kids are just lazy. It’s tough to teach the lazy.
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Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever
via youtube.com -
Link blog down
My link blog that’s usually over there —> is currently down, and has been for a few days. I use Pinboard.in to run the link blog, and some of their servers are down because they just happen to be on some racks that were pulled by a FBI raid. They say it should be back up this weekend. The only reason I am mentioning this is that when it comes back online I’m expecting all my links from the past few days to spam Twitter, and I’m just apologizing a head of time.