Luna at the Fox Theater

On Monday evening I saw the band Luna perform in Boulder. Great show. Often at concerts I find myself thinking about what the next song will be before the current song is over. This time I was quite absorbed in the moment, enjoying the song in the present. They sounded great. No gimics. During an extended version of a song I realized that the drumming created a tension that reminded me of The Feelies, especially Track 4 (Forces At Work) on Crazy Rhythms, which I wrote about in my May 22 ’02 post. After the concert I read that their drummer, Stan Demeski, played for The Feelies. But … he joined them after Crazy Rhytms, and left Luna in ’97. So, uh, nevermind.

Last week I was at a party where the host played records instead of CDs. He has a nice collection, and claims that records do sound better. There’s a reason, too, and HowStuffWorks has a <a href="http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm”>good article on it. There’s also an article, somewhere on-line, where someone digitizes some songs from records, and the same ones from CDs, and compares their spectral content. It was pretty neat. The test for me is to hear the same song on vinyl and CD played at the same time, and switch from one to the other using the receiver. Next time I’m at that house I’ll bring my Talking Heads Remain in Light CD.

photo of the day

I should take time to appreciate such things more often. Again linked from the Intellectual Activist Daily, this photo.

Boulder, CO , where I live, flouridates its water. Regardless of any positive health effects, I’m not too keen on this. If someone wants to add something to his drinking water, he should do it himself. It’s easier to add that to remove. Murray Rothbard, a central figure in the modern libertarian movement, wrote a fine essay on the subject.

The Intellectual Activist

Last week I attended a meeting of CU-Boulder Objectivists, where Jeff, who had attended many Campus Libertarians events (the glory days are gone…) that I’d organized, recommended to me the “TIA Daily,” the daily e-mail from the The Intellectual Activist. We had been talking about meeting topics, and I expressed the desire for uplifting topics like science and art. The TIA Daily does just that. Here are three examples that were linked from the e-mail: Golden October, SnowCrystals.com. There were also mentioned of the Michael Faraday Museum and something about hypo-allergenic cats. That said, it’s nice to be reminded of the good things in life … especially in an election year.

Virtual images

I shaved off my goatee a couple days ago. The most unexpected outcome of having one is being mistaken for someone else. Somewhere, out there in Boulder, is a guy who apparently looks like me – with a facial hair. Before growing it, I can recall being mistaken for someone once, and that was four years ago, and the look-alike was in Europe (I was not.). But in just, say, two months, I’ve been mistaken for someone four times, and to my knowledge, someone has mistaken someone else for me at least once. So, I’d like to find this guy! I’ve probably seen him and thought nothing of it, as somewhere in all of our psyches is the idea that we are unique. Further, my image of myself is reversed, as it’s based on my mirror image. So perhaps I should walk around with a mirror on me and look at people’s reflections.

Real “Road Rage”

Yep, that’s right. The other night I was driving south on 28th Street in Boulder toward Colorado, and the light changed to red. “Damn you 28th Street! Just for that I’m turning here.” But then I realized that I’d encounter two more lights, just to spite the road. How silly. So I backed up to get out of the left-turn lane. And anyway, 28th Street might actually end at that intersection end become US-36, so my rage at that road would have gone for naught. As for conventional “road rage”, this Atlantic Monthly article is interesting.

A fine letter to the editor

And the winner for the best letter to the editor is from the October 21 Edition of The Daily Camera:

Um, bay leaves aren’t for eatingIn reference to Catherine Christiansen’s review of Lucca Lucca (Friday Magazine, Oct. 10), I’m puzzled by the comment made when describing the baked minestone soup, “the minestrone has a nice tomato broth, although the whole bay leaf was a little crunchy.”

Don’t most people know (especially a restaurant critic) that you’re not supposed to eat the bay leaf? Just curious.

SUSAN CHANDLER, Boulder

Cat Eye LD 170 R.I.P.

This morning the tail light to my bike, the Cat Eye LD 170 met a tragic end shortly after it fell off my bike as I crossed 30th Street. I heard something fall, got to the West side, turned around, and saw a late model white Honda Accord CRUSH it under its front driver’s side tire. I was so shocked that I did not bother to chase down the culprit, or get the license plate number. Grr. I waited for other cars to pass (and not run over it again…does this mean the Accord driver purposely ran over it?) before picking up the remains among the debris of red plastic and shattered light-emitting diodes. The rest of it was intact.

Why do I make such a big deal of this? Well, this is no ordinary economy tail light. See, most of them are just LAME. For some reason the manufactures think a good tail light has eight different blink patterns and one on/off button, so you have to press the button several times before turning it off. Not the LD 170. It has just three: on, off, and blinking. And if it’s off, you press the buttom once to switch to one on mode, and again to turn it off, and again to go to the other on mode. So, with the light in arms reach under the seat, you can press the button and know that it’s on, without looking.

It turns out that Cat Eye is in Boulder, so I called them – to ask about the warranty, and to commend their engineers. The customer service woman said that I could actually drop off the light and they would send me a new one. “We stand behind our products,” she said. I’m thinking: “It got run over by a car” I don’t think I can do that in good conscience, though. It was somewhat my fault – I’d had the bike in my car the day before, and the clip must have gotten lose from the seat-bag strap. Also, I like the prouct so much, shouldn’t I just buy another?

Turned a great double play, Bear Peak hike

Hiked Bear Peak today, and took some good photos, which should look something like this, but with a clearer sky. I also took a nice one of an airplane at eye-level, and pretty close.

Softball was great. A double-header, and I was not really looking forward to it. But both games were close, and, playing 3rd base, I turned a double play on a weak foul-ball pop-up. The guy, a good player who should have known better, was napping off of first base, and when I realized my throw would get him easily, I was so excited that I yelled out “yeah yeah!”. Fortunately, the other team did not take it the wrong way.