BREAKING: After 168 Years, Britain's News Of The World Vomits Its Last Edition

Mr. Murdoch and his son discussing the British phone hacking matter with Paul McMullan. 

Egypt

…as it ever was:

Four months after the fall of Hosni Mubarek, the winners have begun to take shape. The military averted the prospect of a Gamal Mubarek succession and maintained the power it has held since Nasser’s coup d’état of 1956. The Moslem Brotherhood has emerged from decades of persecution to potentially become new Egypt’s new powerbrokers, and the Salifist groups, once outlawed, are now organizing political parties. So far, Egypt’s revolution has bolstered the standing of all parties, except the young, secular, progressive activists whose dreams and courage first ignited it.
—Christian Vachon at The Rumpus

Independence Day, Almost

The Half-Life Of Other News

“Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska…and maybe for more than one state. Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway – but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it’s going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray.”

—Tom Burnett on the underreported story of Nebraska's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, currrently submerged beneath a national wave of weiner jokes. Presumably Burnett is concerned that the flooding Missouri River, adjacent to the plant, will wash away some, or even lots, of the spent nuclear fuel stored in outdoor pools around the plant, where an electrical fire in the control room interrupted the regular order of business a week ago.

Bloomsday! For Reals!

It's all aligned now, you see, the proper anniversary of Bloomsday, when the calendar comes round as it will from time to time, with the day of the week, Thursday, and the month, June, and its sixteenth day, all three essential components matched up once more, identical to those canonically given in the famous book "Ulysses" by James Joyce.

Here's the fabulous RTÉ Radio dramatization, courtesy of the Internet Archive:

I'll be over here leafing through the thing as is my way on Bloomsday.

Flag Day Observed

Argumentum ad Tabula

 

 
— via Kieran Healy
 

Gil Scott-Heron, April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011

 





 

Thanks, Bob

 

 

He Walk On Gilded Splinters

Dave Bry at The Awl posts "13 other songs about Voodoo, Juju, Mojo, and Witchcraft" to go with a video by Random Axe called "The Hex" and fails to include a song by Dr. John. Specifically, this song, "Walk on Gilded Splinters," a seven-and-a-half minute discursus on just those matters.

Buildings Facing West in Davenport, California, March 2011

DOM

Homegrown in Davenport

Yep

A List of Analogies

 
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
 

Happy Computus

Putting Easter where it belongs was as grave and momentous a battle as the Roman-inspired calendar has ever experienced, with the class of those who cared to note the event eventually splintered into factions which continue to this day to maintain their own prescription for dating each year's Easter.

To say "Happy Easter" today of all days perhaps inadvertently endorses an argument that had them shouting from the lecterns all over Christendom some time ago and hasn't ended yet. To say "Happy Computus" is much more even-handed.

Hazel Dickens, June 1, 1935-April 22, 2011

Daddy died a miner and grandpa he did too,
I'll bet this coal will kill me before my working days is through
And a hole this dark and dirty an early grave I find
And I plan to make a union for the ones I leave behind

Stand up boys, let the bosses know
Turn you buckets over, turn your lanterns low
There's fire in our hearts and fire in our soul
but there ain't gonna be no fire in the hole

tl;dr

Self-fullingness from sfgate:

Human minds evolved to constantly scan for novelty, lest we miss any sign of food, danger or, on a good day, mating opportunities. But the modern world bombards us with stimuli, a nonstop stream of e-mails, chats, texts,...

Closely Watched Flowers

Technically A Gaze

Dogview

What mockery of Louis Quatorze could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 furniture hardware

With Sufficient Cowbell

Sunlit

Still Life with Tomatoes

Some Last Notes Before Leaving

 
I see more than one site pointing to this video of of LCD Soundsystem's last show, performed awhile back at Madison Square Garden, almost four hours of that kind of music. Here they are more briefly on the Colbert Show in their very last television appearance:
 

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
LCD Soundsystem - I Can Change
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

 

Recorded Yesterday

Capital Crime

 
People are subject to the death penatly for some crimes. Not infrequently, innocent people are convicted of capital crimes, and if the Supreme Court is any judge, they are not entitled to any recompense should prosecutors proactively interfered with their right to a fair trial.

Not all people are subject to the death penalty, which in theory should weigh upon every person equally. Corporations are a class of persons who can do anything they choose without fear of extirpation. But if it makes sense for other people, it makes sense for them. There are some crimes they should be made to die for. To be fair.

Rueful emoticon goes here

 
This past weekend Talk of the multiverse by Brian Greene on C-SPAN [rebroadcast tomorrow, April 2, 8a.m. PDT] lit on the notion of a great set of universes expressing all possible paths of physical progress emanating from whatever beginning we may choose to assign. Each outcome has a range of possibilities (built on the existential premise that something will eventually happen) and each probability, in a suitably ergodic setting, is eventually expressed, each leading off into its own range of possible universes in turn. Probablities collapse around some value in the event, and off each universe goes from there on its own peculiar way.

Something will eventually happen is the existential premise of baseball, too.*

So, for example, Edgar Renteria's home run in the deciding game of the 2010 World Series had a probability of occuring before the fact, along with the more or less knowable likelihood of each and every other possible outcome of his at-bat as well. In the event, in our universe, he hit a home run, I'm pleased to note, and in that moment of decoherence denied every other universe where some other probable outcome obtains, where Renteria is not even a baseball player, or hits into a double play instead. All possible alternate iterations of universes are counter to our fact, since he did hit that thing, we know for sure, a home run once improbable improbable no more, forever, for us.

Our universe is the universe in which redoubtable Renteria did so stroke that decisive shot. All those other universes are all well and good in theory, but in practice, in the universe we've got, that homer is the done deal, I'll have you know. Such knowledge emerges from the well-recorded resolution of a set of probabilities into that singularity of a stroke put on the ball by Renteria. We must believe that anything probable may well occur in the future. It is the nature of probabilities to probably happen at their naturally given rate, and we can know that any of them might naturally occur, without being able to do more than believe in the likeliest outcome with any certainty at all. Nevertheless we can rightfully put aside impertinent universes that do not carry us along with Renteria's known home run to our present state.

*The highlight of Opening Day for the Giants was the play of Brandon Belt in his first game in the majors, who played a highly credible first base and went 1 for 3 with a base on balls at the plate, battling Dodgers closer Broxton through an eight-pitch at-bat that ended the unfortunate game with a liner to third.

[In many universes it is said catcher Posey does not make the rookie mistake of trying to force a play with bases loaded and two outs. He's got Tim Lincecum out there on the mound in all pertinent universes up til then. Insert for crying out loud here. All he needs to do is corral the ball and get it back out to his pitcher. A flub on Posey's part, pure and simple, leading us to the present sad state of our known universe…]