Busy concert calendar, that is. Finally, the summer tours are getting going. And we've got tix for Gillian Welch, Adrian Belew, Wilco, Blondie, and the Pixies! Yay!
The Pixies did this weird thing with fan-club pre-orders: you buy the tickets, but they don't tell you where your seats are until you get there. What's up with that? Trying to foil scalpers?
I just recently moved to the University of Florida from Fort Myers. Six times in the last month BOA has put a hold on my debit card whenever I make a purchase over 50 dollars. I have called, all six times to clear up the situation and they told me that I should stop spending my money at an exuberant rate.
via The Consumerist
I just started reading "100 Years Of Solitude" (just started, first time, no spoilers!). On the 8th page is a bit of dialogue in which a speaker speaks these two phrases:
"Incredible things are happening in the world"
and
"Right across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments while we keep on living like donkeys."
As soon as I read them, bells went off in my head. Those are lyrics! Who...? Stereolab! Yay! One on my favorite Stereolab songs!
"Peng! 33"
Curiosity was far greater than our fear
It felt so simple and so prodigious at the same timeIncredible things are happening in the world
Magical things are happening in this worldAcross the river there are all kinds of magical instruments
While really we keep on living like monkeysIncredible things are happening in the world
Magical things are happening in this world
I'll go ahead and assume the first two lines are quotes from something, too - though maybe not from the same book ? The song title, the album title ("Peng!") and the cover are from an unrelated comic strip.
In this song, it sounds like they've swapped "monkeys" for "donkeys", but that's OK. Intrigued, I did a tiny bit of Googling to see if they were just fans of this one book, or if it's just quoting, or if there's a some deeper link between the two, etc., and I found this a blog thread where people listed all the literary and artistic references in Stereolab's work: List The Direct References of Stereolab. There are tons. Wow.
My kind of geeks!
What's more fun than waking up to find one of your cats' food bowls full of ants?
Name one thing.
The pathogen lobby may be about to get a big win!
At a time of rising concern over pathogens in produce, Congress is moving to eliminate the only national program that regularly screens U.S. fruits and vegetables for the type of E. coli that recently caused a deadly outbreak in Germany.
The House last month approved a bill that would end funding for the 10-year-old Microbiological Data Program, which tests about 15,000 annual samples of vulnerable produce such as sprouts, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cantaloupe and cilantro for pathogens including salmonella and E. coli.
Over the last two years, its findings have triggered at least 19 produce recalls, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
The commercial produce industry, which has long expressed concerns about the program, this spring suggested ending its $4.5 million funding. In a memo to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the USDA's Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee complained about "unnecessary recalls" and asked if the funds would be "better utilized elsewhere."
...
But defenders of the program note that no other agency tests the same breadth of produce for pathogens. For example, the FDA typically spot-checks about 1,000 samples a year, compared with 15,000 for the Microbiological Data Program. In addition, the only E. coli the FDA tests for is the O157 H7 strain, but the MDP also tests for non-O157 strains that include the increasingly mercurial and virulent Shiga toxin-carrying strains of E. coli that contaminated sprouts in Europe, killing more than 40 and sickening 4,100.
I just love the way the lens has distorted Callista Gingrich into some kind of Beavis-esque cardboard monster.
Special when-did-July-4th-become-Honor-The-Military-Day? edition:
Five songs, random, list and describe (linking to an on-line version of it is optional but appreciated):
OK, sparky, now you go!
