Incessant Expressions

I can tell you they were at the beginning of the Coheed & Cambria show, when we arrived around 6:15PM to The Revolution. About 45 minutes later, we were inside. We haven’t been there in over a year, since we saw Gojira (that was a helluva show too). But tonight was special, tonight was a concert my girlfriend had been waiting months for and at the end of the night, she was majorly not disappointed. There were three bands on the bill total, including Coheed. First up was Russian Circles. These guys are phenoms of instrumetal (sic). They do not fuck around with their music and have toured with the likes of Daughters and Red Sparowes. I don’t know, or care, what they put in the water in Chicago to churn out quality instrumental bands like this but they have an amazing scene.

After that was The Secret Machines, who ended up getting booed half the time. They were forgettable in my book but they weren’t bad (an eclectic mix of shoegaze/crust with some drone-fuzz and their “space rock” along with “heavy” influences from other bands). Apparently, no one there even liked them but had to tolerate them anyway.

Eventually Coheed and Cambria came on and truth be told, they can rival Opeth in sheer set length; one Opeth show ended up running nearly 3 hours for them alone. The show was great, played like their studio recordings but completely upscaled with Claudio Sanchez’s showmanship. The man knows how to get a rise out of the fans. It was a great show even though I looked mad the whole time — standing around for 5+ hours in one spot sucks for sure but I was busy concentrating. The night ended with, I swear, a near 30 minute rendition of Welcome Home (which I think it was, I actually forgot what song it was once the solos ensued). Simply amazing. Their prog rock influences were blazing through during the solos. Travis Stever was simply shredding for a good 6-7 minutes with a voicebox while Claudio Sanchez ripped the stage apart before firing up….a THEREMIN. I posted this on Twitter but really, who the hell plays a Mellotron these days?! There’s a slow revival of theremin playing these days but you’d think Sanchez was an old hat at it, blazing through his own solo with it. It was a mix of guitar (and pedal malfunctions/overheating), theremin (played with hands, guitar, and hair), and shredding around on the stage. Very excellent. Then came Chris Pennie’s drum solo, I swear he was channeling Neil Pert. I’m glad he left Dillinger Escape Plan, Coheed fits his playing style much more closely. His solo was ripping about the 25 minute mark (yeah, I timed it) when he was the only one left on stage and the other members came back on to finish the song. Sanchez had donned an Imperial Stormtrooper helmet, I want to know how he fit it over all of his hair.

This was by far one of the best concerts we’ve ever witnessed in terms of musicality (ok, that’s just me) and enjoyment. I’m keeping my eye out for when Russian Circles come back down, they have most definitely piqued my interest in more Chi-town instrumental metal.

(Yeah, I’m now a fanboy)

Tags:   concertNo Comments.

Does anyone else find it, in the least bit, fishy as hell that Mary-Kate Olsen is requesting immunity from the DEA’s prosecution in discussions regarding Heath Ledger’s death? The reports state she’s told the investigators “everything” she knows. If that were even slightly true, why would she be so adamant about getting immunity for being innocent and forthcoming? Dead men tell no tales but innocent people don’t request immunity for being innocent either.

The gossip blogs have to be loving all of this. It’s like a goldmine of avenue-generating speculation for them.

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While thumbing through my shared RSS feeds in Google Reader, I came across this little gem: Knights Templar demanding “good name” and assets back from Vatican after 700 years. I’m not joking, this is a real article. Now, the fact that it’s from The Register makes it suspicious enough as they’re not only an IT site, they’re a bunch of wily prankster, treating everyday like April Fool’s Day.

I have a feeling this is another parody article but if it’s not, more power to the Templars! Not so much for sticking it to the Pope but for having the balls to go to court over 700 year old assets that may or may not have actually existed. I’m sure, locked somewhere in a dusty “Eyes only” vault, the Vatican does have some records of what assets they seized from the Order seven centuries ago but good luck getting it out of them. Suing for 100 billion Euros? Which one of them is doing the Dr. Evil pinky-to-mouth expression? There’s a part of me that wants this so very much to be real. A (now vaguely) religious and righteous fraternal Order suing the pants off the (now vaguely) relevant keepers of the coffers.

There’s just so many Monty Python jokes that can, and will, come of this.

Via Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins’ shared news items

Tags:   christianity · legalNo Comments.

In a statement at the 3rd annual Florida Farm to Fuel conference, Crist announces enhanced support for alternative energy sources. No doubt much of his new found environmentalism enthusiasm has been spurred by his recent visit to the UK, meeting with leaders in their country’s push to energy alternatives.

I never thought much of Crist when he was elected, I knew I was just happy to have Jeb Bush no longer in office and in a position to plummet our state further away from progress. While there were some recent slip-ups with the proposed “I Believe” rights-infringing license plate and the push by legislators to “teach the controversy” in science classes — both of which failed — Charlie’s proven to be a pretty resilient guy in office. It seems not a week goes by when Gov. Crist isn’t making a statement about a support for or a push for developing alternative energy sources or trying to increase government-backed conversation efforts in the state. I applaud pushing for more alternative energy sources, especially in the way of solar and wind given that there are literally huge portions of this state completely unused. Putting up wind farms in central and coastal Florida can generate quite a bit of energy but one must be careful of ecological damage. The latter will be difficult to avoid with solar farms given how much room they need so I hope that Crist is taking it to his cabinet and underlings to vie for and research ecologically-sound and profitable solutions for us to use.

Maybe he’ll start taking hints from places like California that are offering huge incentives to install solar panels on homes and increase grants and incentives for businesses and developers to build more environmentally intelligent.

Tags:   environmentalismNo Comments.

While there isn’t much information coming out of the 3rd annual Florida Farm to Fuel conference, it was announced last week that Orlando’s LYNX bus lines will be switching to biofuels entirely by Fall 2009. The transport authority serves much of the Central Florida region but has its highest traffic in Orlando, no doubt due to both the University of Central Florida and the numerous theme parks in the town. I see dozens of these buses when we go to Orlando so this will help their local economy quite a bit and will help cut down on their growing smog problem.

It’s reported by LYNX’s CEO that they will not only be switching their buses to biodiesel, they’ll also be building their own manufacturing and processing plant for making the fuels. This will greatly cut down on external costs for LYNX and will create a number of green jobs in the area. Movements like this will undoubtedly help convince Gov. Crist and his cabinet that we, Floridians that is, don’t need any new off shore drilling projects to more imports to sustain transportation, especially in the larger cities. If this LYNX project proves successful, I’m almost positive that transport in other cities like Tampa, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Gainesville, and Jacksonville will want to convert to similar methods if not the identical ones using the same contractors. I know Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Gainesville could see huge savings in public transportation costs since two are huge college towns (Miami and Gainesville) and two have heavily trafficked bus systems as it is now (Miami and Ft. Lauderdale).

If this proves more successful than they realize, hopefully the cities can also convince their local cab companies to switch to alternative fuel sources as that would help immensely as well. With night life such a huge part in some of the larger cities in Florida, there are hundreds of cabs in use late at night and even more during the day, even here in Boca where more and more people are driving less. When I was living in Ft. Lauderdale, I would see a few dozen cabs on the way to school during the afternoon and I would only drive about 5 miles. I hope the savings accrued by LYNX will be a model to other transport systems both statewide and nationwide.

Tags:   biodiesel · environmentalismNo Comments.

Now, anyone that’s been reading this blog since some time last year, knows I like a lot. Apparently there’s this coffee place called Larry’s Coffee that now offers biodegradable bags that they ship their coffees in.

Yes, even though they’re still made from petroleum plastics, the vendor Larry’s gets these bags from say they biodegrade 100%, there’s even EPA-backed tests to prove it. This is a great change in the delivery of small batch coffee, I hope that more roasters start doing this. I really hope my current favorite roaster, Gorilla Brand Coffee (Blendimentosis is amazing), starts offering these soon. I’m always torn up about what I should do with my empty coffee bags. I can’t tell if they’re totally recyclable (foil inside, unknown ink outside) and I’ve yet to find a good use for them. Maybe I’ll start hauling out the cat poop in them like I do the paper bags we get.

I’m going to order a batch or two from Larry’s so I can fondle these fancy new bags in person. I like the sound of the Bean Martin Blend. Catchy name.

Via Treehugger

Tags:   coffee · environmentalism7 Comments

I’ve been mulling over this trite screed all day. I actually held off on posting earlier because I wanted to see what PZ would write. And rip it apart he did. This contrite piece of garbage is full of logical fallacies but they’re well worded, at least.

They’re up in arms trying to get PZ fired for something he did in his down time at home so it’s wholly — well, in this case, physically holey — unrelated to school. Can we all mail bomb write to your contrite brotherhood of buggerers and get you fired for being a gas bag? No and you’re not going to succeed in getting PZ usurped from his post at UM Morris either. The overall buffoonery from this whole ordeal is simply laughable and the lengths at which Bill Donahue and now these deacons and pastors are willing to go just to protect some crackers is amazing. Only if they would put their misplaced time towards something useful, like bringing the troops home or fighting climate change, they might lead happy lives like the rest of us secularists do. They drag out the Bill of Rights and how it offers them religious protection but only when it applies to those non-practitioners who choose to malign it, a point PZ also makes and drives home hard. They do not understand that freedom of speech also protects us non-believers and we’re free to verbally, and written, abuse your religion all we want to. I don’t use this blog as a soapbox against fairy tales any more but I sure as hell do out in public.

Lies and hate speech which incite contempt or violence are not protected under the law. Hence, inscribing Swastikas on Jewish synagogues or publicly burning copies of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, especially by a faculty member of a public university, are just as heinous and just as unconstitutional.

Being wholly ignorant of the law — just how they like it — they trot out the fact that this is a hate-inducing act of slamming a nail through a wafer. You’re right, it certainly was. PZ received a large number of death threats and gigs of hatemail (probably many gigabytes of it). Is this not heinous as well? Or is it OK that fellow God-fearing Catholics were threatening a man with death — and a castration or two — and asking him to desecrate the Qu’ran? Not only is that a faceplam-inducing piece of flaming crap, it’s contradictory. You can defame non-theists all you want but you think there’s some non-existent law that protects you from us doing the same? We’re not lawyers but we’re smarter than you apparently and we know that both sides can start flame wars until the end of time, the non-theist side will just laugh the whole time.

One fails to see the relevance of the desecration of a Catholic sacrament to the science of Biology.

One does fail to see a link that does not exist, no matter how hard you want it to. PZ teaches biology at school, he does whatever he wants to do at home. Just as you do.

A biologist has no business ‘dissing’ any religion, rather, they should be busy teaching the scientific discipline they were hired to teach.

He does and he does it at school. He could be out building a yurt behind his house after work for what it matters but that doesn’t concern this Catholic gathering of buggering windbags. Yurts have nothing to do with biology either but then again, he doesn’t teach yurt building in his genetics classes. The next line of the press release is a real clincher as it says “tolerating” this kind of behavior is “repugnant”. Really? Since when does a secular institution have to not tolerate someone not teaching fairy tales in a science classroom?

This whole ordeal shows how out of touch with reality Bill Donahue and the Catholic Confraternity are.

Tags:   crackergateNo Comments.

The 3rd annual Florida Farm to Fuel conference starts in about 9 hours in Orlando. According to Domestic Fuel it sounds like it’s going to be thoroughly interesting this year given Crist’s recent pushes for environmentalism in Florida. He and a few people from FAU recently returned from their ten day jaunt in the UK, gaining knowledge on what the Britons are doing in the fields of alternative fuel sources and how they’re working to educate consumers about eco-friendly choices.

From what I’ve found, there hasn’t been a lot of public talk about what they learned on their trip but I have a feeling that’s due to the fact that the conference was (is) right around the corner from their return date. Wouldn’t want to spoil all that green goodness before the conference! The conference lasts until August 1st at which time I’m sure Florida news websites will be clamoring to publish what happened in Orlando this week; at least I can dream that they will. No doubt Crist and Charles Bronson (not that Charles Bronson!) will be discussing FPL’s upcoming solar farm plans. I hope they’ll also be discussing some options regarding offshore wind turbine generator farms, rumors that have been floating around for about a year now. I know they’d probably get demolished by even light Category 2 hurricanes, it’d be nice if they were an option for us.

With all of the sugar cane production and waste produced from it, this will hopefully be discussed in a way to use that waste as biofuel, either through syngas or other means. There will be a panel discussing a number of different feedstocks for biofuels but I hope this is a discussion of feedstock waste for biofuel and not food-from-the-food-stream for biofuels. Unfortunately, these feedstock panels seem to constitute a huge portion of the panel time which can only mean the latter will more than likely be the topic of focus. Why can’t someone from Maker’s Mark be there to discuss how they’re turning biowaste into biofuel to fuel their distilleries? I know that’d be a lot more interesting than “oil feedstocks for biofuel” (whatever those would be).

I’m looking forward to it to say the least.

Tags:   conference · environmentalismNo Comments.

It’s up at Allie’s Answers! I need to submit to host already.

Tags:   carnival · cotg2 Comments

This is one of my favorite web comics, White Ninja. If you go on to read more of them, don’t worry, you’re not lost in the story because there’s not one. Each strip has no relation to the others besides White Ninja and ancillary characters.

Tags:   comicsNo Comments.