Cheneys young apprentice..

here's the thing: if John McCain does become President, he's likely to be just as lightweight in the job as our current president.

As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum, and what that means is that there will be a huge opportunity for Sarah Palin to fill the power void, and be as powerful a VP as Dick Cheney, if not more so. At the very least, you will see a continuation of the energy policies that the current VP has been pursuing, as he takes her under his wing to teach her all he can. Also, she'd be much more proactive in ensuring important positions get filled by Christianists.

The diss on Palin is that she'd have to build an entire team, but I don't think that's true. For one, she can inherit Cheneys, or quickly assemble a team from Dobsons organization. These people will be ready to go on day one. All she has to do is embrace the Dark Side, and she could do that in a heartbeat.

Scandals on the McCain side don't matter

Some time ago I thought McCains campaigns was dead, not because he was in involved in a scandal, but because he was involved in a scandal involving a woman on the side, Vicki Iseman. There's nothing more that the media likes, imho, than a fresh & juicy sex scandal. Or so I thought. But, McCain is still here, in part because the media gave him a total free pass on that scandal.

Similarly, the press is probably going to drop Palins Troopergate problem like 3rd period French once the convention gets going, and Gustav blows its way through Louisiana & Mississippi.

Unless, of course, they've come to the conclusion, as I have, that McCain is a complete and total nutcase. I wouldn't hold by breath for that particular epiphany to happen, btw.

I can tell you this, though: given all that has happened with the current administration, Troopergate and Babygate are nothing. The religious base won't care one iota and will forgive almost any sin of hers, because all they really care about is that she's one of them, and that is an extremely powerful meme, especially since many of them still think Barack is a Muslim. You shouldn't be fooled, either, by the fact that she's only the VP. With McCain, given his health and his dubious past, she's closer to the main chair than any recent VP, Cheney notwithstanding, and the base are a patient bunch.

What they see in Sarah Palin is the whole brass ring: the chance to turn this country into a provincialist, 19th century minded, fundamentalist theocracy, and that prospect more than anything else is what has fired them up. I know this because McCain just raised $7 million in 24 hrs, and the Democrats underestimate this at their peril.

If the rollers can get themselves a 50% or 60% turnout in the base, that in combination with all the dirty tricks the Republicans are likely to pull, could carry them over. And rest assured, the Republicans won't go down without a fight.

Half baked Alaska

All the talk has been about John McCains judgment in selecting Sarah Palin, and I myself have used a few strong words in that regard.

However, no-one has yet talked about Sarah Palin's faulty judgment in accepting the nomination for VP. Clearly, she is unqualified, right now, to serve either in that capacity, or as the President. In my view, she should know better and declined the offer, particularly in light of her on-going troubles in her state. That she didn't tells you a couple of things: either Sarah Palin is too vain, naive or stupid to realize her predicament; or she thinks John McCains campaign is stone cold dead, right now, and is using the opportunity to earn some chits with the rest of the Republican Party that she can redeem in the future, say 2016.

The difficulty for her is that she's a fringe player, both geographically and politically, and not close to the Republicans central power base. It's a play, if she's not careful, that could split the Republican Party for years to come, between the social/religious conservatives, and the fiscal/constitutional conservatives.

How far we've come in HPC.

GPUs represent a revolution in the way HPC will get done in the future, but something obvious but important needs to be said.

For $550, I can now buy a single graphics card that can do 2.4 TFlops single precision, and almost 1/2 TFlop in double precision. That's more floating point performance on a single card than existed in total on the entire planet in 1984, in either single or double precision, and about 100x over the performance of a desktop or laptop PC. Similar scaling is happening in other places (you can now buy a single TByte disk for $300). Moores Law is a wonderful thing.

But this has an important consequence: the Pandora's box of technology has not just been opened, but finally and irreversably shredded apart. Any attempt to prevent enemy or terrorist nations or mad supervillains from using computer technology is pointless. Any laptop, even from Frys, has more than enough power and memory to do the job, whatever job. Malevolence is not tempered or regulated by elegance or efficiency.

None of you know who this man was

Henri Cartan has just passed away at the age of 104.

He was a co-founder of the Bourbaki group, who were the philosophical leaders of the French school of 20th century mathematics, and who had a profound influence worldwide. His father, Elie Cartan, was a giant in the field, working on Lie groups and Differential Geometry.

Johnny Too Bad

John Martyn is a huge influence on my playing, doing the Echoplex call and reply interplay a good decade before Edge. This is kind of Prog-Reggae and a little strange.

Given how much I've been ranting at the old geezer, and the title of this song, I had to share.

In the end we get the president we deserve.

Or at least, the president we collectively think we deserve.

I've had a little more time to ponder the Palin selection, and while I understand the tactical and strategic thinking behind it, I can't help but think that John McCain must be clinically insane. Not Ron Paul, eccentric uncle crazy, but full-blown Sterling Heyden in Strangelove, Martin Sheen in Dead Zone, Heath Ledger as the Joker, batshit deranged psychosis.

After Friday, the stark contrast between him and Barack has never been clearer. The only question in my mind, now, is whether the conservative media will come to their collective senses, and start to understand how dangerous this guy is, stop covering for him, and stop acting as the Republican Party's ventriloquist's dummy.

Look, the rollers will vote for McCain in any event, especially given his VP pick, and they don't care about anything except making the Rapture happen as soon as possible. But the rest of us (actually, the rest of you since I can't vote yet) have a decision to make.

From my point of view, it's an easy choice.

Jumping sharks and the Palin pick

McCain has just shifted the goalposts in the national debate from experience to judgment, and in the process it looks like he scored a huge own goal.

Now, I don't know anything about Sarah Palin (and that's problem #1), she could be the sweetest, most capable and most decent person on the planet, and if George W Bush is qualified to be President, then Sarah Palin is certainly qualified to be Vice President (actually she might be too nice for the job).

However, she's involved in an active and ongoing scandal, and has *strong* associations with Ted Stevens.

For McCain to choose her, after Obama selected Biden, must call his judgment into serious question, and only reflects the bind he's in in trying to maintain his base while wooing disaffected Hillary supporters. It also shows that McCain is not a serious man, when it comes to the presidency, and that he's trying to win this election through the political equivalent of branding, rather than through a substantive campaign of issues.

The prospect of McCain as president now has my attention. Seriously. The guy is a lunatic, and I can't wait to see what happens.

All the nightmares came today, and it looks as though they're here to stay.

Sure, he was probably reading way too much Edward Bulwer-Lytton, but the whole spaceman, human evolution shtick made Bowie an interesting and original artist up to & including the Ziggy Stardust years

Late night chick asskickery

Along with post-Genesis Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, she was part of the British Prog-Pop movement, and became a highly experimental musician in a pop context, doing pioneering work with the Fairlight sampling keyboard.

From a musical point of view, and taking into account her amazing singing, if I were to compare her to another female musician, it would be Joni Mitchell. Not because of styles, because Joni's is rooted in folk-rock via LA studio/country/jazz, but because of how profoundly she influenced the musicians that followed her.

Bear in mind that Kate was also the first rock/pop artist to combine dance and music in a live show, presaging Madonna and the others by a good 10 years.

Anyway, the amazing thing about this song is that Kate wrote it when she was 14. In fact, it was part of the demo she put together for Dave Gilmour (of the Floyd) who discovered her.

What's even more amazing is how presciently in control of her early career she was, refusing to put this song out as her first single, instead choosing Wuthering Heights.

The virtue of Blind Faith

Blind Faith were the first "Supergroup", yada, yada.

Important for two reasons: firstly in the 60's there were 4 great rock drummers: Ringo, Moon, Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker (John Bonham really didn't arrive until the 70s), and Ginger might have been the most Jazz oriented of the lot. Unfortunately, this was his last good recording until 1986.

Second, with Blind Faith, Clapton made the transition to Fenders from Gibsons. Here he's playing a Telecaster like Muddy Waters. He would end up being forever associated with Stratocasters (Blackie), even though his most important recordings with Mayall & Cream were all done with Gibsons.

Anyway, it's amazing to me that an album with only 2 great songs ("Find my way home" and "Presence of the Lord"), was so lauded, but as I mentioned before with the Zappa clip, it was a time when Rock musicians were starting to be treated as artists, and encouraged to experiment and collaborate, even if their milieu was based on a more traditional form (in this case Blues). It's a shame they only recorded one album together.

Political campaigns and guitar solos

Keith Moon once said that the most important thing about a guitar solo is how you start, and how you finish. I think the same thing holds true of political campaigns.

Tonight, Barack Obama gave one of the great speeches in American political history, the opening phrase, I guess, of the last part of his guitar solo. Even I was impressed, and you get the feeling that even better speeches are yet to come.

In the words of Bill Murray: "He came, he saw, he kicked ass"

Premature adulation

This made me laugh out loud.

Knowing Steve Jobs, though, I'd bet money that he'll get some people together to make sure his obituary is *just right*, ensuring a dignified and elegant shuffling off of these mortal coils. After all, the man is legendary for his refined good taste.

The only issue is his control freak nature. The Pearly Gates might be too much for him. Heaven would probably have to rename them to the Pearly Lasseters or something to keep him happy in the afterlife.

None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me

Sometimes I really hate the human race, as a whole. This following quote from Watchmen really captures how I feel.

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach."

Plate or shrimp, or plate of shrimp.

"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are"

Late nite Zappa

Inca Roads, from the One Size fits All record.

There was a time when bands like this had an audience, because the music industry and specifically the music press were devoted both to the notion of rock music as a true artistic form, and to the nurturing of musical experimentation and diversity. Nowadays bands are judged more on how cool or street they are.

I don't think it's possible anymore for a band on a major label to deliver a record with this kind of sensibility.
Oh, and did I mention I have been hopelessly and eternally in love with Ruth Underwood, since I was 15.

The 2

If U2 are this generation's Beatles, then "New Years Day" is their "She loves you".

Like the Beatles, U2 started with a sound rooted in their own sensibility, and then later embraced a more straight rock & roll, black American influence. Edge continues to astonish and mesmerize me with the simplicity, soul and invention of his playing and sonic choices.

Late night Bach

There are some performers who can do no wrong, and Glenn Gould falls into that category, for me, when he's playing Bach. The Aria to the Goldberg Variations is one of my favorite pieces of music. Gould's performance is so sparse that it reveals an underlying and inherent beauty that other performances tend to miss.

Late night Cooder

"Bop till you drop" was the first digitally recorded album, back in 1978. It's interesting to me that a performer like Ry Cooder, who is so much about the feel and pulse of music, rather than any expression of technique, would be the first artist to cross that line. The album itself is, of course, amazing, and has in Cooder and David Lindley two of my all time favorite and biggest influential guitar players.

This song turned me onto Cooder when I was younger, and was the only thing of his I had heard until I went to college.

Handing over the Olympics..

2012 is the year the Apocalypse is supposed to arrive, according to the Mayans, and I can't think of a more appropriate place to hold the Olympics of that year than London.

I didn't watch the Olympics, because of how lousy and jingoistic NBC's coverage of that event is. I should remind the executives at the Peacock channel that the Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of humanity as a whole, and not an opportunity for internal reinforcement of your xenophobic views about the rest of the world.

I am amused, though, where every other country ranks the medal table according to gold medals won, the media in this country does it according to total medals won. I have to say, this country is becoming more like the old communist Soviet Union every day, and that's not a good thing

Anyway, since the Chinese have handed over the torch to the British, it seemed appropriate to show this old Steve Hackett tune.

The commoditization of spy hardware.

A UK company called QinetiQ has built a solar powered plane, that has been able to fly non-stop for nearly 84 hours, which is a significant achievement. QinetiQ's main market for this is supposedly UAV type aircraft for surveillance.

While the plane's current flight ceiling is 60,000 ft, it's pretty clear that 100,000 ft is not too far off, and what that means is a UAV that can fly above any territory without being shot down, since it will fly beyond the range of almost any air-to-air or surface-to-air missile. In essence this is a poor man's spy satellite, and in some respects superior since one can come close to the benefits of a geosynchronous orbit, without actually having to be in high orbit.

The Simpsons title sequence in real life

Saw this, had to share.

Frakking Sci-Fi Channel...

There was a time not too long ago, where the SciFi channel had SG1, Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica back to back to back on Friday nights, and it was ratings gold for that station. As of today, all three of those shows are set to conclude, with the cancellation of Atlantis.

I'm truly concerned for the future of the channel, and the original programming, especially given the way they've butchered Eureka. It doesn't look good.. If the current schedule is anything to go by, what we have to look forward to is an ongoing set of reruns of admittedly good shows (Star Trek NG, Stargate), lame-ass UK imports, ad-nauseam repeats of Ghost Hunters, crappy monster movies and wrestling.

This does not bode well, and moreover has the air of the SciFi channel execs basically telling their audience to go take a flying jump.

Let me make a clear point here. If the SciFi channel is going to abandon it's original programming, then there's no point to the channel's continued existence. None whatsoever. And it's a shortsighted policy in any case, from a business point of view, given how much the Stargate shows must surely make on syndication and in DVD sales. From NBC's (the parent company) point of view, the SciFi channel, when it's working properly should be an incubator or nursery of new, quirky and edgy shows, that push boundaries, while finding an audience. That Galactica doesn't have a 10pm slot sometime during the week or even the weekend, when shows like Heroes have proven that a significant audience exists for such programming, is an act of almost criminal negligence.

The real issue, imho, is that the executives at SciFi don't seem to understand or even like their audience, or how to market their product beyond basic cable and direct to video. They continually insult the intelligence of their audience. I say enough.

Mark Stern has a lot to answer for.