From WFLA: Here’s how many Floridians have ordered the new Jimmy Buffett license plate TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida lawmakers this year approved a new Jimmy Buffett-inspired specialty license plate to honor the late musician. …

From the Tennessean: Jimmy Buffett, Fairfield Four among quartet inducted at Music City Walk of Fame ceremony Nashville’s 2024 Music City Walk of Fame ceremony highlighted all corners and eras of the city’s multitude of …

When I worked as a respiratory therapist part of my responsibilities was to keep flowsheets for the mechanical ventilators I worked on. That’s a record of what the machine was doing with a time log. And when I gave a breathing treatment to an asthma patient I recorded the details of that treatment, the time,...

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In 2016 the morning after the election I went to work early. Looking back at my camera roll from that day, here’s Batman, with a reminder. DON’T BELIEVE THOSE CRACKPOT LIES ABOUT PEOPLE WHO WORSHIP DIFFERENTLY, OR WHOSE SKIN IS OF A DIFFERENT COLOR, OR WHOSE PARENTS COME FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY. REMEMBER OUR AMERICAN HERITAGE...

My father James Crawford was interviewed about his experiences in the service particularly during Vietnam and around the Battle of Firebase Ripcord. I am so proud of him sharing his oral history with the GVSU Veterans History Project. The video go his oral history is on YouTube and will be stored in the archives of...

If history is going to rhyme, then I’m going to remember the prior verses. One of them was http://neveragain.tech which I signed as a matter of conscience 8 years ago. I am still in strong agreement with the aims of that pledge I signed. And it is my duty to spread the word to my...

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What a week. I can’t capture the totality of the current moment. In times like this I appreciate being able to read the thoughts of Mark Evanier. He’s a reliable attendee of San Diego Comic-Con. I remember seeing him host panels back when SDCC was held at the San Diego Civic Center at First and...

First published by @burn_all_books in Sundays Quarterly 5 in May 2020

What do Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Harry Styles, Alicia Keys, Sting, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Ice-T, Queen Latifah, and Taylor Swift all have in common?

(C’mon, actually think about the question for a bit, don’t immediately jump to the answer. While there is a tendency for people to want immediate gratification, in fact, that whole quick shot of info, be it trivial, made-up, useful, or even critical, is predicated on things like websites, there is something to be said for the satisfaction that can be derived from figuring things out, whether this is solving Wordle or answering the question above.)

(At this point I figure that there may have been a sufficient amount of physical distance on this page between the question and the answer, and certainly if you’ve read through this parenthetical material you’ve had a time gap which, as we are at words right now, that’s about 30 seconds of silent reading time or just under a minute if you’re annunciating it, so. . . .)

They are all members of SAG-AFTRA, the trade union for actors.

As such, they are all potentially affected by a recent agreement between SAG-AFTRA and Narrativ, which describes itself as “A Marketplace for Advertisers to Buy Talent Likeness.”

Note, not “Talent.” But a similitude of talent.

Read more at Glorious Noise...

Video: The Hives – “Rigor Mortis Radio”

Directed by Filip Nilsson. From The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, out now.

Remember when CGI was just CGI and not A.I.?

Or maybe the Hives are just really good dancers. It’s possible. Things are very groovy in Sweden and the people are very healthy and nimble. So you never know.

(Journalistic integrity spoiler: You, in fact, do know. The actual dancers — Alex Brown, Tom Hardiman, Connor Pearson, Reece Woodier, and Jacob Whawell — are credited in the video.)

I’ve seen the Hives in concert several times and their natural moves are impressive enough. Do they really need to employ deepfake technology to impress us even more? Maybe they do, because this video is fun and hilarious. And of course the song is great too.

But, like with all computer generated imagery, you find yourself looking for the glitches and cruising down the uncanny valley. It’s real looking enough, but not totally convincing, which makes it a little creepy. And, unsurprisingly, that creepiness factor works with the song’s lyrics.

You’ve never seen me look so good before
This silver lining and this golden glow
This shine, all mine
Looking like I’m fresh off an assembly line.

Read more at Glorious Noise...

Video: Spring Silver – “It’s Imperative”

From Don’t You Think It’s Strange?, out now.

I don’t know anything about this artist but I somehow stumbled across this song and it’s too great to keep it to myself. Their little bandcamp bio says they’re from Silver Spring, Maryland and that the album was “written, performed, produced, and mixed by K Nkanza.” Well alright. What more do you need to know? They also offer thanks “to Mom for letting me record at her house.” It’s nice to see kids be grateful to their parents!

I see you all
Etched in the vertical tiles of an office building
I see you all
Trapped in the virtual squares of an application.

Sounds like somebody’s sick of zoom meetings!

Spring Silver: web, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Read more at Glorious Noise...

From 1989 to 1994 there was a show with a prescient title and approach, a show that gave rise to people including Jon Stewart and Marc Maron: “Short Attention Span Theater.” It presented bits and clips, standup and skits. Quick takes in keeping with the short attention spans that were existing then and arguably shrinking even more so now.

Market research firm MIDiA has recently conducted its annual survey of independent labels and distributors to create what it describes as “the definitive view of the independent music economy.” Modesty notwithstanding, it has sliced, diced and riced data from 5,500 companies in that space—which represents $10.6-billion of recorded music revenue—so its assessment is undoubtedly substantive, especially as it adds in financials from major labels and artist distribution platforms, thereby achieving, it claims, 93% of all recorded music revenue on a global basis.

The big labels, of course, make big money. Universal Music Group reported its Q3 2024 earnings last week, which has it that for the first nine months of 2024 the company had revenues of €8,396 million, which is a 6.3% increase over the same period in 2023. Focusing just on the Recorded Music category, the revenues were €6,335 million, up 4.9% year-over-year—and last year wasn’t at all bad.

Read more at Glorious Noise...

Andrew Bowler, Academy Award nominated filmmaker and writer-director of Time Freak, sat down with DVD Talk writer and film...

DVDTalk.com staff writer and film critic Neil Lumbard has compiled a list of some of the best releases of...

This is a reasoned argument by Joanna (Why I Don't Vaccinate My Children) posted on Erwin Alber's VINE facebook page which was started in 2009, to help parents make an informed choice on behalf of their children. Image credit topnews.ae Joanna responds (below) to a lady who published an article saying that unvaccinated children are the cause of recent increased pertussis (whooping cough) outbreaks in areas where vaccination is actively pursued......

In this article, Beldeu Singh highlights some of the gross inconsistencies in our current approach to what is called the "AIDS epidemic". There has never, to this date, been a proper isolation and purification of the human immunodeficiency virus, and one might be justified in saying that there is no AIDS epidemic, but rather an iatrogenic (doctor caused) epidemic of drug-induced deaths and a lot of unnecessary fear and suffering, all based on very wonky science... but it all seems to make excellent business sense, if you are a drug company shareholder or one of the thousands of researchers who work "to find a cure" for AIDS. by Beldeu Singh INTRODUCTION In the early days neutropenia was one of the key parameters of AIDS. The clinical course of severe neutropenia, as described in the basic pathology textbook, “Pathologic Basis of Disease” by Robbins (5th Ed.), which is used in most medical schools to study pathology, describes what happens to people with severe neutropenia. The symptoms and signs of neutropenias are those of bacterial infections... Robbins also states, in italics, that "the most severe forms of neutropenias are produced by drugs." In severe agranulocytosis with virtual absence of neutrophils, "these infections may become so overwhelming as to cause death within a few days," (Robbins, p 631). This sounds disturbingly similar to a description of AIDS. Dr. Michael Lange, associate chief of infectious diseases at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York and one of the doctors the FDA consulted when evaluating AZT in 1987, says even he sometimes had trouble differentiating between AZT's toxic effects and AIDS itself. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine describes the muscle wasting caused by AZT and compared it to muscle wasting, called "myopathy", presumed to be caused by HIV. Their comments in the abstract are shocking: "We conclude that long-term therapy with Zidovudine can cause a toxic mitochondrial myopathy, which... is indistinguishable from the myopathy associated with primary HIV infection..." So, there is drug-induced immune suppression and drug-induced AIDS, and AZT can cause AIDS. Yet 5000 scientists signed a declaration that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS. The AIDS industry is built on paradoxes and misguided beliefs....

More and more evidence is coming to light that Dr. Wakefield was on the right track when he researched the connection between the MMR vaccine and intestinal inflammation in the vaccinated children. Was Dr. Andrew Wakefield Right After All? Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism But how did Dr. Wakefield first get into the sights of the UK vaccine industry and how was the campaign against him mounted? Martin Walker, the author of "Dirty Medicine" and a number of other books on health, closely followed the case that eventually resulted in Dr. Wakefield's exile from the UK. He describes how it all happened and how the vaccine manufacturers were able to bring down the full weight of government and the courts against both Wakefield and the many parents who were suing for recognition of the damage vaccines had done to their children. "As a campaigner of 40 years, I think that what surprises me most about Dr Wakefield’s case, is how easily and how completely we were defeated by the pharmaceutical companies, how over a thousand parents and children were written out of history together with their adverse drug reactions. Part of this defeat for the parents, the children and the doctors concerned was grounded in an unfortunate understanding that pharmaceutical company executives were decent people and humanitarians. In fact the pharmaceutical companies, their corporate structure and their relentless pursuit of profit, their fraudulent practices represent one of the last remaining shibboleths, in our society which need to be completely reformed, democratised, divested of vested interests and made public from top to bottom." We do learn from experience. That is why we should pay attention to how this case went so wrong and why the campaign to ruin those researchers and to leave the damaged children by the wayside was mounted in the first place. So it won't happen again. Here is Martin Walker's essay....

We have previously published articles by the Australian AIDS-and-biology researcher Cal Crilly, and here is yet another installment. Cal is someone who digs into scientific studies. He does biological detective work and finds gems that hide in plain view, things we don't normally understand and that even the experts do not see as they are not trained to put discordant facts together and question basic assumptions. What this new article tells us is that retroviruses - the same kind that are thought to cause immune deficiency or AIDS - are useful and necessary for our immune system to function correctly. That of course tends to leave the hypothesis of a viral causation of AIDS in grave trouble. I say 'hypothesis' because no one has proven, or even come close to a coherent explanation for, the mechanism of AIDS causation by HIV. How does a retrovirus that is by nature a benign particle, cause devastation of the immune system? Here we have several scientific studies published in the world's finest journals, which attest to the fact that retroviruses are part and parcel of the human organism, that they are needed to provide certain defensive capabilities against invaders, and that they are not pathogenic. So we might ask ourselves why HIV tests (thought to indicate the presence of a retrovirus) are still performed, and why doctors are still recommending the use of toxic anti-retroviral drugs to kill what, rather than a foreign invader, appears to be part of normal human metabolic processes. Cal Crilly lays it out for you, citing and linking the sources......

After conducting "one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever undertaken", the European Food Safety Authority has released its verdict on 10 December 2013. The agency came to the conclusion that aspartame and its breakdown products are "safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure". The EFSA press release says that this was an important step forward in "strengthening consumer confidence in the scientific underpinning of the EU food safety system and the regulation of food additives". So the message seems to be that we should all just move on to other things. Leave aspartame alone and better yet - drink some of that "diet" Coke. But should we really? Could perhaps the power of money and influence behind big food have had a determining effect on that decision? We cannot be certain what exactly caused the EU regulator to give aspartame a clean bill of health rather than to acknowledge the sweetener's widely known dangers. Fact is - they disregarded every single study that showed aspartame to have adverse effects. Prof. Erik Millstone of the University of Sussex Science and Technology Policy Research Unit believes that EFSA has arrived at its conclusion by opportunistic interpretation of the studies that were reviewed. Most of the industry funded studies were given straight A's, while independent studies were - without exception - given an 'F' rating. Millstone says that "The EFSA Panel opportunistically accepted at face value almost all of the studies suggesting that aspartame is harmless, while entirely discounting every single study indicating that aspartame may be harmful, even though the quality, power and sensitivity of many of the studies that were discounted were markedly superior to those of the contrary studies deemed reliable."...

Multiple sclerosis is curable if recognised as Lyme disease. The cause is a cyst-forming bacterium, Borrelia Burgdorferi, which causes lesions that degrade brain and spinal cord tissue.

As promised, quotations from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are now available. Again, both German and English versions of each are reproduced, though the task was made considerably easier than in other cases by the fact that the edition I used was a dual-language edition.

I (like, I suspect, many others) find Wittgenstein simultaneously fascinating and annoying. On the one hand, he makes interesting and insightful observations on all sorts of phenomena; on the other, he never really synthesizes those observations into a single, coherent argument. For example, when he says that “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination” (I§6) or that “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language” (I§109) or that “The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to define it” (I§79) I find myself saying “Right on!”; but I also find myself frustrated by the fact that he can’t even decide on what, exactly, his purpose in writing this all down is. For example, at one point Wittgenstein claims that his “aim in philosophy” is “To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (I§309), while elsewhere he says: “My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense” (I§464) and still elsewhere he suggests that he’s merely making obvious remarks that presumably everybody already knows:

What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities, however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (I§415)

As I say, this can be frustrating, but, in a way, is also understandable. In one sense, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to provide answers, but rather to show that there aren’t really any problems (as he says in Philosophical Grammar: “While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems.”). And why aren’t there any problems? Because “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday” (I§38); our problems derive from an inability to properly express ourselves.

(INTERPOLATION: This isn’t stated very well, so I want to expand just a bit. The idea, as I understand it, is that we ask too much of language; that is, we ignore the fact that “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (I§1), that, as quoted below, “language itself cannot be explained”, but, rather, that it can only be understood by its use. In failing to recognize this, we find ourselves unable to express the explanations we seek.)

Within this context, I think Wittgenstein’s thesis (to the extent that he even has one) boils down to the following:

What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday language-game, and to note false accounts of the matter as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected. (II.xi)

Or, from a different direction:

“So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?”—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. (I§241)

Viewed from this perspective, then, it is, perhaps, not so surprising that Wittgenstein has a tendency to be frustratingly vague at times; after all, as he himself says, “What is most difficult here is to put this indefiniteness, correctly and unfalsified, into words” (II.xi). Personally, I find his perspective compelling, but I can understand why some might find it rather superficial, especially since it can lead to seemingly-trivial statements like: “One wants to say: a significant sentence is one which one can not merely say, but also think” (I§511).

All this aside, though, there are two other things I really like about Wittgenstein. First, the fact that he has a real sense of humor and isn’t afraid to deploy it. For example, I couldn’t help laughing aloud at reading this:

Think of a picture of a landscape, an imaginary landscape with a house in it.—Someone asks “Whose house is that?”—The answer, by the way, might be “It belongs to the farmer who is sitting on the bench in front of it”. But then he cannot for example enter his house. (I§398)

Of course, it probably helps that his sense of humor has that bone-dry, literalistic bent that is characteristic of mathematicians (if you don’t see the humor in the above, re-read the last two sentences like a died-in-the-wool literalist). Which brings me to the second appeal Wittgenstein has for me: he has at least some understanding and awareness of mathematics. And, of course, I can’t help but be excited when someone seems to agree with my own quasi-Intuitionist perspective:

Of course, in one sense mathematics is a branch of knowledge,—but still it is also an activity. And ‘false moves’ can only exist as the exception. For if what we now call by that name became the rule, the game in which they were false moves would have been abrogated. (II.xi)

And, though it doesn’t explicitly refer to mathematics, Wittgenstein’s initial (or final, depending on how you look at it) conclusion has a distinctly mathematical feel to it (especially within the context of Russell’s paradox):

What is spoken can only be explained in language, and so in this sense language itself cannot be explained.

Language must speak for itself.

(Actually from Philosophical Grammar, but echoed throughout Philosophical Investigations)

Okay, enough book-reviewing; check out the quotations.

For any of you that may be reading this via RSS, the change from Movable Type to WordPress means that the RSS feed for selling waves is now located at http://www.sellingwaves.com/feed/

If you’re interested, that is.

So blöd, wie es auf den ersten Blick aussehen mag, war die Frau keineswegs, die am 19.9.2007 einen Ehescheidungsantrag beim Schleswig-Holsteinischen Verwaltungsgericht einreichte. Welches Ziel hatte sie wohl mit ihrer - laut OLG Schleswig rechtsmissbräuchlichen, im Ergebnis aber doch erfolgreichen - Aktion im Auge?

Lochen, Heften und Ablegen sind selbst für einen kleinen Beamten keine ernsthafte Herausforderung. Einen wahren Extremsport scheint hingegen das korrekte Inkraftsetzen eines Bebauungsplans darzustellen, zumindest in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Jedenfalls finde ich in der

In einer

Auch im Regierungsbezirk Detmold ist der Kalte Krieg vorbei, so dass die Bezirksregierung die früher mit öffentlichen Zuschüssen geförderten Schutzräume in Privathäusern nicht mehr für notwendig hält. Das (teilweise) Verbot, solche Räume baulich zu verändern, hat sie daher neulich durch eine

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AVG Clear eliminates all the parts of your AVG installation from your computer, including registry items, installation files, user files, etc. AVG Clear is provided by AVG and is the last resort to use if you have a problem removing your current AVG whether it's a failed repair, reinstall or complete removal. [License: Freeware | Requires: 11|10|8|7 | Size: 15 MB ]

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In a follow up to his story on the 2004 election, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen," Robert Kennedy brings us, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, specific details on how Diebold has rigged voting in Georgia, with the confessions of a Diebold employee, Chris Hood. "Will The Next Election Be Hacked," is a frightening article that shows exactly how far some corrupt politicians are willing to go to insure that they keep control of our government out of the hands of the people. Folks, our democracy is in danger.

To activate the Activate IAM Access setting, you must log in to your AWS account using the root user credentials, and then select the setting in the My Account page.

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select the check box that says "Activate IAM Access" in the section "IAM User and Role Access to Billing Information".