pop music is IMPORTANT

via miss_geek, this pass-it-on-thing-not-meme: the ten bands that got me through high school. which were, roughly, those below. Please note that I'm not convinced I actually got through high school.

1. The Clash

2. Joy Division

3. Gang of Four

4. The Dream Syndicate

5. Pere Ubu

6. Devo

7. X

9. The Adolescents

10. Public Image, Ltd.




...i forgot what 8 was for

I hope my crashdump dumper doesn't crashdump, too.

My complication had a little complication.

May 24 02:28:43 abe crashdump[15091]: crashdump crashed
May 24 02:28:45 abe crashdump[15091]: crash report written to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/crashdump.crash.log

This is how it will look, folks.

Pete gave me the update on that crazy "let's simulate a pandemic including all the creepy quarantine arrests" story. The best paragraph in the new story:

Walsh said the drill didn’t apparently alarm area residents because county officials didn’t receive any calls, but she added that the investigators reported that small groups of curious people gathered to watch the actors be cuffed with plastic handcuffs and taken away in unmarked cars.

Oh hey great. When they take me to Camp Halliburton, there will be a small group of curious people watching.

http://www.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2006/05/24/drill1.html

Winners.

I've never been a sports fan, but I'm a huge fan of the revolution in women's sports in the U.S. Title IX went in about when I was in junior high school, and the result has been a huge increase in the respect, encouragement, and resources girls get in the athletic world growing up. Not just women's sports, but women crashing men's sports.

The effect on our culture is huge.

I have a special place in my heart for women auto racers, because I am a car nut and because it's a boy's club where women can excel. What's required is endurance, precision, and courage.

GO DANICA!


Also, inexpicable picture of Danica having a toy car race apparently supervised by Madeline Albright on FOX News. ?

Reverse engineer your brain

More than 40 years ago, my father wrote a short story called "Dr. Pettigott's Face." The eponymous doctor of the story has a theory that pushing the face into happy expressions will make people happy, and has constructed a machine to do this. I remember that for years he had a correspondence with some neuro researcher who was interested in facial expressions because the guy liked the story so much. The title has been a shorthand in our family for people trying to reverse engineer things in weird ways.

The polyvagal theory and some of its implications suggest that there may be a grain of truth in this. The connections between emotion and facial expression are very tight and it's possible that it "goes both ways". This story from the LA Times on Sunday is fascinating:

( botox for a better brain? )

The Cuteness Unto Death

pogue

The Pogues are touring with Shane.

http://www.pogues.com/

I just got two tickets for one of the L.A. shows. They's goin fast.