Space Invaders Sunk My Battleship

The oil spill in the Kalamazoo River has reached Galesburg. Booms are being placed at the end of my road. I hope the oil can be stopped prior to reaching Lake Michigan. I'm curious as to how this is going to affect local wells (since, you know, I use well water to shower and drink) and the river's health in general. It is pretty heartbreaking to see the wildlife affected. Hopefully we won't have to deal with rain on top of this, as the river is quite high.  More info below. 

www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/07/as_a_precaution_against_oil_sp.html
huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/michigan-oil-spill-among_n_661196.html

I'm off to surgery for this hernia. If I don't answer e-mails etc... very quickly it is due to sleeping and/or my parents couldn't figure out the wireless router in their house.

http://anthologyrecordings.com/

I've bought a few albums off of this site now, and I have to say that it runs really smoothly. I found quite a bit of interest in their library (particularly the Attileo Mineo album) and I can't wait to see the site continue to expand. Definitely worth a look. (Oh, I enjoy the Thai Beat compilation I downloaded as well)
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http://amiestreet.com/

The selection here is considerably broad. The pricing system is fantastic, and if you pay ahead you get free credits, a nice bonus. One of the best values I've seen is you can get Neu's albums for under $5. Also, Tadd Mullinix's "Winking Makes a Face" is $1.50 (this is possibly one of my all-time favorite albums).

The negative? I don't know if it is just because I am using firefox, but the site is sometimes slightly wonky. Once in a while purchasing a song hung up a bit longer than it should have, but in all cases I was able to download the track. Also, the nice thing? It keeps track of everything you've purchased and allows you to redownload it for no additional cost (at least this is the way it seemed to me when I redownloaded a track I accidentally deleted).

Overall, pretty kick ass. The infastructure needs slight work, but I actually found a LOT of stuff on here. Not only that, but I found a lot of small artists that I hadn't heard of that I actually ENJOY. That is rare. Give it a shot. If nothing else you can sample the hell out of music prior to buying it and that can make for a fun afternoon.

Note: I have yet to purchase anything from the below services.

I was hanging out at The Future last night and Jon A. mentioned a couple of music services that sounded interesting.
http://amiestreet.com  : Independent music. Pricing structure is basically like this. Everything starts out free, the more it is downloaded, the more valuable the track, the higher the price you pay (max price is capped at 98 cents/song). Some cool stuff from my initial browsing.


http://www.anthologyrecordings.com/ : Rarities and reissues. This site has a lot of buzz from places like Wired and NPR lately. I found some killer stuff here I plan to purchase later today. (Man in Space album here I come)


I just thought these might be of interest to some folks out there.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=stem-cells-without-cancer

Nice article on the recent breakthrough: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/89799.php

Abstract of the actual paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151526


Okay, I believe the American lab has a success rate of 1/10,000 in producing embryonic stem cells from non-embryo skin cells. The Japanese lab has a success rate of 1/5,000 but part of the process introduces a possible carcinogen (I think...I need to double-check this).

This is interesting. When I first heard about this I thought they simply were able to get differentiated cells out of skin cells, but it appears that the cells being generated are actually pluripotent (or to use the typical newspaper slang "embryonic"). Granted, there needs to be further research done to ensure that the cell lines being generated from this new process are actually clinically useful and are not unexpectedly different than actual pluripotent (embryonic) SCs, but this could be a huge step forward for SC research without the messiness of the ethical debate that typically centers on the moral status of embryos. Simply...oversimply in fact, put    Embryonic stem cells - Embryos = No principled religious problems that I can forsee (the Pontifical Academy's report on stem cell research actually encouraged research on "adult" stem cells since "human life" is not destroyed in the process of harvesting cells. If these methods, or something like them advance enough it would seem to meet the standards set forth by the Pontifical Academy. We'll see where this goes I guess.)

I definitely think this story is one worth keeping an eye on.

The Deuce Project Blog is hosted over on the free Blogger serves at blogspot.com . I have recently added a tutorial for how to download the podcast. However, it is taking up a rather large amount of space, and I would really love to do something similar to an LJ Cut with it and then sticky it as the first post on the blog.

Does anyone know what html tags or whatever I would need to include in order to make that happen?

Alright...I'm in the midst of outlining this comics paper. I'm pretty happy with the parallels I've found between parts of Civil War and the goals laid out by the Hastings Center for the aims of moral education in classrooms. I'm thinking I would like to expand a bit though, and thanks to Josh Dahl, I've been thinking a lot about the issues of identity and moral responsibility that can be found in Incredible Hulk stories. I'm trying to think of a classic story that deals with this in a clear way (in reality, probably most do) something where we see Banner talking about his responsibility for the Hulk's actions. Can anyone think of a solid (preferably older) story that is in a collection anywhere? I'm not looking for the new Pak Hulk with the Hulk himself being able to form rational arguments for his rage, I'm looking for Banner dealing with this other "person" or other part of his persona taking over.

Ideas are welcome. I heard there is a house of them out there somewhere that may be able to help...I should look into that.

A bit of info on that Johnny Harris Track/the performer
Note: Below is the officenaps.com bio

Inspired by the Apollo moon landings and subsequently used for the British ITV Network coverage of NASA’s lunar missions, “Footprints on the Moon” follows in the great tradition of Les Baxter’s Space Escapade or Dick Hyman and Mary Mayo’s Moon Gas, albums where the moon’s surface was imagined more as luminescent lovers’ playground than science's new frontier. Each reverberating piano note of “Footprints on the Moon” seems to bring the listener one gravity-defying step closer to their astrological love destiny. Careful, Libra, your love investments will soon pay off, but watch for a calculating Capricorn to step across your earth shadow.

Since 1972 Johnny Harris has lived in Los Angeles, working mostly in television composition, most famously for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Wonder Woman.

Trin lost half of his test. I don't want that to happen to me. Hence, all day today I am going to be pretty anal about backing up. This includes on lj...so just don't go past the jumps and I shouldn't clog things up too badly.