I took and edited this footage of The Raconteurs complete performance of the Bob Dylan Hurricane-esque song Carolina Drama that’s on their new album, Consolers of the Lonely.

Carolina Drama, Raconteurs, May 4th, 2008. JazzFest, New Orleans, LA

Half the pleasure of the song is figuring out the words, and thus figuring out the drama. But I posted them if you want to figure it out up front.

I’m not sure if there’s a point to this story
But I’m going to tell it again
So many other people try to tell the tale
Not one of them knows the end

It was a junk-house in South Carolina
Held a boy the age of ten
Along with his older brother Billy
And a mother and her boyfriend
Who was a triple loser with some blue tattoos
That were given to him when he was young
And a drunk temper that was easy to lose
And thank god he didn’t own a gun

Well, Billy woke up in the back of his truck
Took a minute to open his eyes
He took a peep into the back of the house
And found himself a big surprise
He didn’t see his brother but there was his mother
With her red-headed head in her hands
While the boyfriend had his gloves wrapped around an old priest
Trying to choke the man

Ah Ah Ahhh…

Billy looked up from the window to the truck
Threw up, and had to struggle to stand
He saw that red-necked bastard with a hammer
Turn the priest into a shell of a man
The priest was putting up the fight of his life
But he was old and he was bound to lose
The boyfriend hit as hard as he could
And knocked the priest right down to his shoes

Well, now Billy knew but never actually met
The preacher lying there in the room
He heard himself say, “That must be my daddy”
Then he knew what he was gonna do
Billy got up enough courage, took it up
And grabbed the first blunt thing he could find
It was a cold, glass bottle of milk
That got delivered every morning at nine

Ah Ah Ahhh…

Billy broke in and saw the blood on the floor, and
He turned around and put the lock on the door
He looked dead into the boyfriend’s eye
His mother was a ghost, too upset to cry, then
He took a step toward the man on the ground
From his mouth trickled out a little audible sound
He heard the boyfriend shout, “Get out!”
And Billy said, “Not till I know what this is all about”
“Well, this preacher here was attacking your mama”
But Billy knew just who was starting the drama
So Billy took dead aim at his face
And smashed the bottle on the man who left his dad in disgrace, and
The white milk dripped down with the blood, and the
Boyfriend fell down dead for good
Right next to the preacher who was gasping for air
And Billy shouted, “Daddy, why’d you have to come back here?”
His mama reached behind the sugar and honey, and
Pulled out an envelope filled with money
“Your daddy gave us this,” she collapsed in tears
“He’s been paying all the bills for years”
“Mama, let’s put this body underneath the trees
and put Daddy in the truck and head to Tennessee”
Just then, his little brother came in
Holding the milk man’s hat and a bottle of gin singing,

La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la, la la la…
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la, la la la…
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah
La la la la, la la la la, yeah

Well now you heard another side to the story
But you wanna know how it ends?
If you must know, the truth about the tale
Go and ask the milkman

My very old friend Leonid Oliker, and winner of the annual Super Computing top paper award more times than I can recall, just got awarded top honors again for a joint effort that demonstrates how to build a super-supercomputer based on low-power embedded microprocessors (i.e. what is used in modern cell phones and ipods) that could process data 1,000 times more powerfully than today’s best supercomputer.

Using traditional supercomputer technology would cost about $1bn and require 200 megawatts of electricity to operate. Their ‘ipod’ supercomputer would cost $75m require only 4 megawatts of power and achieve a peak performance of 200 petaflops.

Every time I hear blog blather about Ruby vs PHP or Mac vs. Windoze, I think, people we’re not thinking hard enough about this.

Fortunately for us, Lenny is. And Lenny (on the right here) rocks.

At the New Orleans JazzFest this year just one of the many standout acts we happened to catch (vs. all those we didn’t) was an adorable 17 year old firecracker of a violin player named Amanda Shaw. I took some video of her and her band, The Cute Guys, simply ripping up the Fais Do Do stage. World Music Central described her as “part of a new breed of young, roots-based musicians who have embraced both traditional and pop sounds.”

Molly, who played violin for years, pointed out how hard it is to dance and play a fiddle. “It’s not a marching band instrument,” she said.

When you were a kid did you ever see one of these illustrated maps of the United States … and want to walk into it. I daydreamed I could. The giggling marlins and dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico seemed as exotic as aliens yet as welcoming as old friend. I had never been south of Virginia and I didn’t know anyone who had swam in Gulf of Mexico. But in my head I would imagine I stayed next door to the kid in Flipper and we’d be in the water as much as we weren’t. We play outside until sunset and we’d go exploring first thing in the morning.

I’m an adult now, but Molly and I spent the last day in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico on one of the biggest and longest beaches I’ve ever seen. Dolphins, pelicans and herons roam the coast and rabbits, bobcats and alligators the swamps. And I know those giggling marlins are out there, just a couple miles out where the continental shelf drops off to the oceanic abyss. And the dolphins we saw, just 30 feet off the beach. Yes, this is Alabama (or America I should say) and the offshore oil rigs and the beachy tonks and condo high rises are off in the distance, but I’m in the painting and it would be okay if that didn’t ever change. Plus, there are beers and blender drinks in the adult version.

Click to see full-size pix.

Northern California nurtures a wealth of blue and purple blossoms (a phenomena that has led me in fruitless queries for some geographical or meteorological explanation), but my favorite is the Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans).

A migrant from the Portuguese island of Madeira off the coast of NW Africa, once a specimen establishes itself, the plant can withstand xeric (drought-like) conditions, blasting winds and sustained periods of rain. Most of the ones I see around the Bay Area grew naturally, though they make a superb addition to any sizable yard. If you live around here and haven’t paid much notice before you’ll see them all over the place. They are in bloom for another month but I believe they’ve already hit their peak for the year. Take time when checking out their massive bloom cone as also highly appreciated by hummingbirds and butterflies.

Photo credits: (all hosted by Flickr)
1. Madeira Walking
2. Kasey Kasey
3. Tigotigs
4. tzejen

The salmon population in the Pacific of the Wester U. S. is so decimated the Pacific Fishery Management Council has enacted a complete ban on all commercial and recreational chinook fishing.

This is not something that has happened before, ever. Since humans have lived in North America there have always been massive populations of chinook salmon. Now it’s in danger of collapsing altogether.

In September 1996 I was in Forks of Salmon at the confluence of the North and South branch of the Salmon River which dumps into the Klamath 100 miles south of the Oregon boarder. The 25 foot wide river was full of spawning and dying salmon. I just did some Googling and 2005 was the lowest salmon count to date (325 salmon came up the river vs. 6,000 the year I was last there) and in 2006 salmon fishing was halted in the entire Klamath system.

View Larger Map

There are only a handful of non-dammed rivers on the West Coast and the inland water ways, such as the Sacramento Delta is “a sewer.” Have you ever been to Los Baños off the I-5 near Fresno? It’s a dusty dry agri-business of seeming no redemption. I recently learned the San Joaquin River, the mighty river that roars out of the Souther Sierra supported huge salmon fishing operations all the down in Los Baños, now you wouldn’t even want to swim in the San Joaquin, it’s full of fertilizer/chemical runoff. Below is why the population of salmon on the San Joaquin is zero:

Today, the journey for that same fish is an impossibility. To reach its native spawning grounds, it must navigate a gauntlet of dams and reservoirs, pass by 11 power plants and circumvent 500 miles of canals. In two sections of the river that account for approximately 60 miles between Fresno and the San Joaquin River Delta, there is no water at all.

Here’s the state of the water quality as it approached Stockton, CA

A trip to Stockton, 40 miles east of San Francisco, reveals the seriousness of the San Joaquin’s “secondary” problems. The river here is a brew of fertilizer, algae, pesticides and sewage. In late October, the water is the color of chocolate milk.

It’s estimated it would take years years of major state works to clean up the river.

It should come as no surprise to any person that we have harvested fish like they were buffalo while we concurrently pollute, dilute and reduce their habitats. We all know we’re changing our world to benefit our lives in other ways. It’s just very important that we know the real cost/benefit equation and not delude ourselves to the real expense our existence is almost certainly costing the fragile little lifesource that is the planet earth.

If someone ever told me they have a photoshop face, I’d say “I know exactly what you mean!”

Somehow my face is frequently and inexplicably used, retouched, morphed, edited and re-represented for reasons beyond me. Recently a photo of me ended up being used along an article on how to become a police detective (it was CC). In 2006 there was the Fark photoshop contest.

Lately a Dogster member has gotten the bug.

I used to really enjoy the calm confidence of Bob Ross and I’ll honestly cherish this one for life.

Here I am scrapping with Dogster Sammi

I don’t even know what’s going on here

And this one, well, it’s some hate mail from a teenager in Arkansas whose email username was ultimatedramaqueen2000. Can’t make everyone happy, I guess ;|

Scott Beale (via twitter of naturally), pointed me to a new cartoon by Hugh MacLeod that sums up the affect twitter has had on the method of message posting on the web since the year 2000.

Blogging (née web logging) was a phenomena that took hold after the turn of this century where people would compose their thoughts (some less so than others) into essay-style statements. While short messaging was popular with some (see LJ) many people provoked themselves to really dig deep into something that had grabbed a hold of their thoughts lately. While true writers complained blogging robbed them of the fire to work on their bigger projects, blogging motivated many non-authors to draw their line in the sand and share their perspectives with others.

Twittering, or tweeting or micro-blogging took hold in 2007 and was a way of send text messages to many friends at once. It quickly moved from the phone to the web but maintained it’s limited character format. If you ever paid to send a telegram instead of writing a letter, it’s like that. You have to distill your important message down to as few as characters as possible. This has it’s benefits in that you’d don’t need to labor through four paragraphs to know that someone is, say, displeased with their elected leaders. Yet, the down side is its allows one to share with many the impression of their thoughts without having to fully compose and explain them. So now I may know, for example, that my friend is quitting his job, they haven’t shared what precipitated the big decision. So even though my friend’s important message made it over the transom, I’m still mostly in the dark.

The ease of messaging in this format, interestingly, is taking the personal blog with it. While professional blogs still abound, the number of people sharing paragraphs of thoughts is dropping as furiously as it started. It’s obvious to explain why. It will take me 20 minutes to write this, another 10 to edit and rework it, and another 5 to decide if it’s really worth it - and this will be a quick entry. Or I could twitter ‘He he: this cartoon is right http://tinyurl.com/3er5ey‘ and have convey the same message.

But I’ve been missing my friends deeper thoughts. I’ve been living via 140 ascii character updates as if that sums up the wealth of their thoughts for that day (granted some people twitter each and every 140 character thought they have … which means I usually stop following them altogether.)

So without trying to squeeze my feelings into a single sentence I just wanted to share that I think people (and I’m talking about those people that once shared paragraphs of thoughts via blogs) are starting to sell themselves short. I wonder if people really think they are connecting with their friends when it’s more likely they are sending a smoke signal. I know people’s passions, as the cartoonist’s Gavin’s are, are much deeper than what you could share in a text message and I just wanted to say I’m missing it.

I still have all your blogs in my feed reader and if you ever want to tell me (as a web reading friend) why you’re looking for a new career or having children or going skiing or boycotting china or the best/worst hope for humankind, you know I’ll read it. I look forward to hearing more not less from you (well most of you, some of you I’m still looking for a bit more of a filter ;)

[Please note: this photo has nothing to do with the newly spotted wolverine living in the Tahoe National Forest. It's simply included here because the jubilant character is yelling out the word 'WOLVERINES' in this scene from the rather so-so 1980s movie, Red Dawn, which I simply could not resist including in this entry.]

So let’s say the entry begins here ….

I never knew much about Wolverines. I’ve never seen one. In fact no one has proven a sighting of a Wolverine in California since 1922 until a researchers remote camera captured a couple pictures of one in Tahoe National Forest east of Truckee.

“The sighting set off a near frenzy among giddy scientists and wildlife experts.” I think it’s pretty fracking cool too. Though I’ve hiked around those woods and I know I wouldn’t want to come across one. Ever since watch Red Dawn, I’ve known a Wolverine is a pretty fearsome foe.

The big question now is, where did it come from. Is it an elusive descendant of the original population? The nearest known population is 900 miles away in central Washington, did I walk that far? Did someone release it? It’s so important to know that volunteers have searched 150 mile area looking for fur, scat or other cast off from the animal to test it’s genetics against pelts from original California Wolverines. Planes have flown around trying to pick up signals in case the spotted animal has been tagged previously.

Here’s more info on the researcher and how the image was captured:

Katie Moriarty, a graduate student in OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, has been conducting research in the forest on the effects of landscape change on American martens. The project, funded primarily by the Pacific Southwest Research Station, uses a large array of cameras that remotely capture images of martens and other animals through the use of motion sensors or heat detectors.

link

Smells like an internet meme pose to me.

Could this be the next Lynndie England?