Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nick Drake and the power of distribution

Nick Drake

Upon completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old.

Drake's music remained available through the mid-1970s but the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree caused his back catalogue to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith and Peter Buck. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of 'doomed romantic' musician in the UK music press, and was frequently cited by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller and The Black Crowes. Drake's first biography was written in 1997, and was followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us. In 2000, Volkswagen featured the title track from Pink Moon in a television advertisement, and within a month Drake had sold more records than he had in the previous thirty years.

Count me among those. My CD of "Pink Moon" had a big sticker on it that said "As seen on the Volkswagen Cabrio commercial!"

The rich, they're just better than you.

While trying to make the case for keeping taxes on the rich as low as possible, Reihan Salam reminds us who's really important:

The U.S. is a country rich in amenities that Dubai, Doha, and Singapore can't really match. So many of the ultrarich will pay a premium to live here, just as wealthy individuals pay a premium to live in California or Paris. But how big a premium will they pay? And how long will our edge in amenities last?

It's useful to assume that the answer is not that big and not that long. Because if we're wrong, a trickle of adventure-seeking emigrants could become a cascade of our best and brightest.

Ultrarich = best and brightest. "Conservatism" in a nutshell.

System Crash

MSNBC:

Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware.

An internal report issued by the airline revealed the infected computer failed to detect three technical problems with the aircraft, which if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off, according to reports in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais.

What kind of OS are these planes running that they're susceptible to malware? Please don't tell me commercial planes are controlled with Windows.