Quartz City

Much like Carl Sagan, James Burke’s books and TV shows are things that I’ll always automatically stop for. Doesn’t matter what the topic is, if Burke is covering it - it’ll be worth your time. His famous Connections series are usually playing on the Science Channel, but his series The Day The Universe Changed is much harder to find. That is until now, as the series is now being podcasted.

In the long run, he’ll probably remembered as a Jeopardy answer but despite the Warren Commission, the odd quest to get William O. Douglas, the pardon, Chevy Chase, and being shot at by a Manson Kid, he was still a decent guy. I wish there were more politicians like him around now.

I hope he got some beer and nachos.

All the James Bond talk earlier got me wondering about who the guitarist was who played the famous theme music. The answer: Vic Flick. He’s still around and so is the guitar (a Clifford Essex Paragon DeLuxe played through a DeAmond Volume Pedal into a Vox 15 Watt Amplifier.)

Not surprisingly, his list of album credits is pretty full-on. I had no idea that he played on Serge and Jane’s “Je t’aime… moi non plus.”

(recentish interview here)

James Brown on stage at Boston Gardens. April 5th, 1968 - one day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. I can ‘t write anything more that could do justice to this clip.
[youtube]IeOSZryERqo[/youtube]

There’s a lot of YouTube clips and all are worthy, but one I always rather liked was Beat The Devil. Sure it’s a long hyperkinetic Tony Scott BMW commercial with Clive Owen and Gary Oldman, but it’s 100% James Brown.

[youtube]k-cbiYzlHOk[/youtube]

(a somewhat belated entry to the Carl Sagan blog-a-thon)

I have a vivid memory of the first time I saw Carl Sagan on television and it wasn’t Johnny Carson or Cosmos. It was during the 1971 Mariner 9 mission to Mars. A planet-wide dust storm was obscuring all the surface features which left everyone sitting around killing time while waiting for the dust to settle. Sagan was being interviewed about what the orbiter might see and he was asked about Percival Lowell, the Martian canals (sorry, “canale”), and Martian War Of The Worlds. Sagan took the guy’s question seriously and without any condescension offered that while there didn’t seem to be any Martians or water in the traditional 19th century sense, there could have been in the past. He added that if Martian climate could change dramatically, then Earth’s climate could change just as radically. Either way, further study is important because there’s only one Earth.

Heady stuff for a six year old, but he made it interesting and (most important) extraordinarily cool.

A couple years later there was a Cornell alumni event (both my parents are from Ithaca and my dad was a Cornell grad) in Los Angeles with Sagan and he talked about the then-recent Viking landings and what the ambiguous biological experiment readings meant - emphasizing that science shouldn’t allow itself to be tunnel-visioned into one particular belief while it’s trying to figure things out. A theme that runs constant through his subsequent writing.

I got to meet him afterward and he gave me a stack of Mars photos that he used in the presentation and autographed one to me. Thirty years later, I’m still kicking myself for losing track of it though it’s probably Out There Somewhere. I remember exactly what picture it was and what he wrote on it:

“To Chris - Hope you get to visit here. — Carl Sagan”

• DEA, National Clandestine Laboratory Register
  C’mon America, show us your meth labs! (intriguing data note: Orange County has three times as many as Ventura County)
  (tags: crime geography)

• Czech Book Covers of the 1920’s and 1930’s
  (tags: art design book)
• Flickeur - Every Picture Tells a Story
  Flickr randomization movie
  (tags: flickr photography effects)

• Jonny Crossbones: How to add stress marks to an image
  (tags: photoshop howto comics)
• The Budget Musician’s Setup on Squidoo
  (tags: audio)

How to tell the difference between the International Space Station and all the other air traffic overhead:

• The ISS might be visible immediately on the horizon, or it might wink into existence depending on the geometry between you and the sunlight reflecting off the solar panels.
• Airplanes have green and red navigation lights and may have flashing strobes.
• The ISS will suddenly fade from view before it reaches the far horizon as it passes into the earth’s shadow.
• The ISS will be above any clouds (at least I really hope so!)

Tonight’s pass over Los Angeles just now was one of the best I’ve seen. Amazingly clear sky this evening. So far, it seems that Heavens Above has slightly more accurate pass timings than NASA.

Following up on my earlier Tower Records post, I can now answer the question “When was the last time I bought something at Tower?” Answer: today!

I’ve reading about the great deals that people were getting at the Tower clearances, but apart from those few outrageous finds there wasn’t anything that motivated me enough to plow through the bins one last time. Frankly, I’m sick of CDs these days, but after reading Doug O.’s blog post today about his Tower finds I figured what the hell. This sentence in particular got me moving:

I bought 94 CDs, for a total of $448.25 including tax. At the bottom it says “You saved 1104.16 today!”

The Glendale Tower is down to its last three days of operation with everything at 70% off. I’ve been pretty critical about Tower’s selection which isn’t surprising at all if you’re standardized on Fingerprints and Amoeba, but I was rather shocked at what I was able to dredge up. Here’s today’s haul:

Top row:

• Jerry Yester & Judy Henske - Farewell Aldebaran (I know that this is a poor “needle drop” version of this. Worse, it’s the Radioactive Records issue, and given their pirate behavior with the Trees, et. al. reissues, I wouldn’t buy anything with their label on it. On the other hand, Judy is selling the Radioactive version on her website, so go figure. The rights on this are so bolluxed up that a fully legit version will probably never be available)
• Kate Bush - Aerial
• Northern Picture Library - Alaska (Go LTM Go!)

Middle row:

• Eszter Balint - Mud (probably best known as Eva in Stranger Than Paradise. I have one of her other avant-pop albums and kinda liked it.)
• Brightblack Morning Light - self-titled
• Sun Dial - Other Way Out (the new 2xCD reissue version. Sheesh, I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve bought this album. Yes, it’s that good.)

Bottom row:

• Cloudland Canyon - Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004
• Le Volume Courbe - I Killed My Best Friend (was only vaguely aware of this because of Kevin Shields and Mazzy Star trainspotters keep namechecking it)
• Dengue Fever - Escape From Dragon House

Total: $51.96 (I saved $104.92 today!)