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Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies: Ron Paul's candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America's Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it's one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.

Continued from the article:

"Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.

[...]

The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul's candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views."

It's New Years Eve (or already the first day of the new year, depending on where you are), and you may be looking for something other than the radio to play for a countdown. Head backwards, then, to cruise into the 80s with the Grateful Dead for the closing of Winterland. Or join the Janglers to say goodby to 1993 and hello to 1994 at Peabody's Downunder. You can check out twelve hours of Essential Mixing and relive the transition from 2000 to 2001. Get closer to the present day with some big band and swing into 2010 in style. Say hello to 2011 with B.A.G.S. (Bullman, Ashworth, Guggino, Sipe), spend an hour and a half with Blu Mar Ten or six and a half hours with Mr Scruff. And if you're looking for something new for tonight, try some mixes from Redondo, Montreal Funk Monkeys, and a countdown minimix from DJ Raymix.

Sinead O'Connor plays a concert in a church in Reykjavík at Iceland Airwaves last October. Icelandic state broadcaster, RÚV, recorded the concert and you can listen to it in full. There is some talking in Icelandic in the beginning, but the concert starts up at around three and a half minutes in. This concert was not long after her online jokes about her lack of companionship making her resort to bananas. She cracks many jokes about that and the fact that she's playing in a church. And she's in brilliant form as a performer and plays for almost two hours. As a bonus, here's not-very-high-quality video of that night's rendition of Nothing Compares to You, which includes a bit about bananas.

Minecraft was already pretty cool (previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6). Here's something that brings it closer to the real world: "With the Mineways program you can select from a Minecraft world map and render it, or send it to a 3D printer or 3D printing service such as Shapeways." Examples are within the link, and here are other real-life examples using the Mineways program. Here's something equally (if not more-so) impressive, using a somewhat different technique: an entire Minecraft village, rendered and printed in 3D on a Zprinter 650. [via reddit]

Shot-by-shot comparison of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" vs. scenes from 30 different adventure films made between 1919-1973

Boulet is a well-known cartoonist and illustrator in France, but I think he's pretty obscure in the English-speaking world. He's been posting a popular blog in comic form since 2004 (in French), but lately he's been going through the backlog and translating his comics into English, posting a new one every few days. He covers daily life, vacations, the work of a cartoonist, comics conventions, and random crap with cute illustrations and self-deprecating humor. Be sure to click the "REACT" or "Comments" link on each entry - he added a bonus comic to most of the entries at translation time. Happy New Year (2006)!

A few more favorites:
Geekette
Pixel quantum physics (with 8-bit Stephen Hawking!)
Parasites - excerpts from his work illustrating a science column for children
Bad kitty

Plus, some things I learned about by reading the translated blog:
Barbapapas, Donkey Skin, Cenovis (culinary uses thereof), Pucca and Shabadabada

Jamel Shabazz has been documenting the 'Urban Life', most famously, 80s Brooklyn, for over 30 years. His work has been featured in the New York Times and a documentary film as well as in a recently expanded and re-relased book. An interview and a few snaps from the book.

The Beatles vs Joan Jett vs Cypress Hill vs House of Pain vs RATM - Mash Together

Johnny Cash vs Jackson 5 vs Steve Miller Band - Folsom Prison Robin

Franz Ferdinand vs Stealers Wheel vs Nirvana vs Michael Jackson vs Def Cut –Franz Tranz

Ramones vs Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Blitzkrieg Girl

The Beatles vs LCD Soundsystem vs The Kinks –The Brits Are Coming To My House

These mashups – and many more – are the creations of DJ Faroff of Brazil. Other projects of his worth mentioning here are a samba version of the Star Wars theme and a klezmer remix of Lady Gaga.

Deaf guy goes shopping for high-end headphones and other tales of musical rediscovery from Lee Walker, a lifelong music-lover who lost most of his hearing in early adulthood. A cochlear implant restored usable but quite different hearing, which Walker put to use enjoying music by any means necessary – captioned music videos, giant DJ-quality cans worn over external implant hardware, plugging an iPod Touch directly into that hardware.

2012 & The End Of The World (SLYT)

EU copyright on Joyce works ends at midnight. From tomorrow, January 1st 2012, writings published during Joyce's lifetime – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – are available for publication and quotation without reference or payment to the James Joyce estate.

Relating SCIENCE! to everyday life, Ouch: A Year's Worth of Occasionally Disturbing Research on How to Get Ahead is comedic advice on how to excel in the new year (from the usually-more-serious Harvard Business Review's "The Daily Stat") - reminiscent of Barking Up The Wrong Tree, a blog of tongue-in-cheek nuggets of research by Eric Barker.

Yo-Yo Ma on the floor of a bathroom with Brookfield Zoo's Wilbur the Wombat. Photo by Peter Sagal host of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! (gratuitous bean-plating XKCD.) On YouTube: Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Sagal & a wombat (HD) Sun Times story: Yo-Yo Ma and a wombat meet on a bathroom floor. Seriously Previously

"It's 1993, I better wake up and be part of it. I'm sitting there, a 1977 punk watching Courtney Love talk about punk, watching Nirvana talk about punk, and this is my reply."

Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk was groundbreaking in the degree to which it saw a mainstream artist embrace digital music production, promotion and distribution. It was not, however, a great popular or critical success.

Of it's four singles – "Shock to the System" (above), "Adam in Chains, "Wasteland," and "Heroin" (called "one of the worst covers ever recorded" by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic), not one made a significant splash.

Idol was heavily personally invested in the album, producing it in his home studio so as to have complete creative control. Having become a recent but fervent convert to science fiction literature, Idol began posting on alt.cyberpunk and The WELL. He also retained Gareth Branwyn and Mark Frauenfelder as consultants.

But, as poorly as Cyberpunk was received among critics ("Least Essential Concept Album of the 1990s" - The AV Club), it was panned even worse by the cyberpunk community. To this day, the alt.cyberpunk FAQ has an entry dedicated to disowning the album.

William Gibson said: A London journalist told me when Billy did his Cyberpunk press junket over there, he made it a condition of getting an interview with him, that every journalist had to have read "Neuromancer"... Anyway, they all did but when they met with Billy, the first thing that became really apparent was that Billy hadn't read it. So they called him on it, and he said he didn't need to..he just absorbed it through a kinda osmosis. I don't know. I had lunch with Billy years ago in Hollywood and we were talking about the possiblilty of his acting in a film that someone was trying to make based on some piece of ficton of mine, and I thought he was a very likeable guy. He had a sense of humour about what he was doing that is not apparent in the product he puts out. If I run into him again, we can have a good laugh about what he's doing now! And Bruce Bethke, who coined the term "cyberpunk," dismissed Idol as well: This really needs to be said. While working on the story, I was having trouble visualizing one character: Rayno. I mean, I had a basic take on him; he was stylish and flashy, with hair peroxided to within an Angstrom unit of its life.

But the essence of his character was that he was a fraud. Rayno was a parasite, living off the skills of other people: a creature composed entirely of style, attitude, and image, with no actual talent to back it up.

As I said, I was having trouble visualizing him -- up until the moment I chanced to catch some early music video footage of Billy Idol. Then I jumped up, pointed at the TV, and shouted out, "That's him!" Billy Idol did not record another album for 13 years after the failure of Cyberpunk.

On October 22, 2011 I was arrested by the DEA for cultivation and distribution of psilocybin mushrooms.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawling's coup d'etat catapulting him into the crowded ranks of military dictators in Africa. Yet, Ghana chooses to celebrate this date and Rawlings' speech on this historic occasion has been shared and published, his words hearkened to (albeit) and his global standing only embellished by his [role]* as the African Union's envoy to Somalia. What manner of military dictatorship was this and what changes did the coup accomplish in democratic Ghana, today considered the fastest growing and stable Sub Saharan economy expected to be elevated to middle income status in the near future?

* The BBC describes him as the AU's representative on Somalia but the AMISOM website has missing bits around this fact.

Scotch and Wry, Scotland's greatest comedy. As the rest of the world celebrates New year's Eve and bringing in 2012, there's the little matter of Hogmanay. You might think it's just a fancy scottish word for the start of a three day party (which it is), but it's a special time of year. And for those of us who watched the new year come in on TV, it's the point of year where we all miss Rikki Fulton's Scotch and Wry - a TV ritual for over twenty years that has never been equalled.

Scottish Music Hall and TV comedian Fulton (1924-2004) was already a star when he was given a sketch comedy series on BBC TV. Running for a full series in 1978 and 1979, it moved to a "once a year" slot from 1115pm to 1145pm, essentially the last program of the year (before a live broadcast from somewhere) from 1980 to 1992 (although one certain sketch continued to be a tradition until 1999).

It broke boundaries, it pushed the edge of the comedy envelope, but it was never cruel. Distinctly Scottish, and with a huge base in Glaswegian humour, it never really broke out of Scotland, but it had a wit and bite that was unsurpassed.

Take it's approach to sectarianism, mostly seen in the football games of Rangers v Celtic. The following sketch, in terms of Scotland, is the equal of the Carlin's Seven Dirty Words, as Fulton (playing the manager of Rangers), is introduced to a new signing.

Then there was Supercop, a traffic policeman who was far from super, but had a trademark way of loosing his goggles Which is enough to have any Scotch and Wry fan giggling and waiting for "Alright, Stirling,oot the car", before a noted guest star would emerge for some fun - Here's Mark McManus, famous for playing a Glaswegian detective, Taggart, being Taggart, as Supercop gets into all sorts of problems.

And he was never averse to a quickie sketch or two (headache, memory loss, weatherman, hangover, learner driver).

But probably the biggest contribution to Scottish culture from Fulton was "Last Call". Many have forgotten that this was a direct lampooning of "Late Call", a short show late at night where religious representative could talk directly to the audience before the nightly close down. Fulton would take to an almost identical sketch, and perform some of the greatest monologues in Scottish comedy history, and his greatest creation... The Reverend I. M. Jolly, the cheeriest man in the world (TV debut, 1978) and his trademark "Hullo, again". Here he is in action in 1979, re-telling of Joseph from the Old Testament (Last Call, 1995),

Jolly was not the only Man of the Church to be shown, Rev W. E. Free took to the airwaves in 1979 (and yes, a comic riposte to the Wee Free Church) - and then there was the master-class in "how to act every stage of being drunk in six minutes" as Rev David Goodchild made his only appearance at Last Call , where his water was substituted for gin, and Fulton performs arguably his finest comic moments (at least for me).

It was "Last Call" that continued beyond Scotch and Wry, before Fulton called time in this final broadcast of 1999, to the point of Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond taking to the airwaves for a charity telethon in the "Last Call" format, in the chair, and everyone got the joke straight away.

Scotch and Wry, a Scottish institution that is irreplaceable. While many shows have stepped into that time slot, none have the humour, the spirit, or able to reach to everyone in Scotland no matter their age, class, or taste.

For the non McMeFi's, meet one of the comedy greats as 2011 closes.

I miss Rikki Fulton.

5 minutes with Maurice Sendak.

Austraaaaaalia, Melbourne, kangaroos, didgeridoo, Austraaaaaalia, Olivia Newton John, Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson.

This morning's edition of Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme, was guest-edited by the comedian Stewart Lee. Highlights included Alan Moore's Glycon-inspired Thought For the Day (which comes at 1 hour and 22 minutes into the show) and a completely incomprehensible interview with The Fall's Mark E. Smith (at 1 hour 47 minutes in). All this plus an avant-garde trombonist too!