I finally found the full Marcus Miller concert that includes the song “Blast” which I linked to earlier. Unfortunately, the video has been removed from YouTube. Here it is from FabChannel.
UPDATE 3-17-2009: FabChannel is no longer around 
Click HERE to download a clip from another concert (*.mp4 file playable in QuickTime).
Click HERE to visit Marcus Miller’s website.
I like things that make sense. I’m definitely a pragmatist. Regardless of the principles behind the abortion debate, I’ve always had a problem with the inconsistent definitions of life and death. So I put this question to a friend (and fellow musician) who happens to work for Central California Right To Life.
Josh,
An important issue in the abortion debate is the argument over when life begins; at conception, at birth, or somewhere in between? I’ve heard many opinions over the years, but one (from a fellow engineer) has always struck me as a possible solution. The logic of the argument goes like this: ‘life’ and ‘death’ are inverse states of existence. Therefore, the set of criteria that define ‘life’ and ‘death’ should also be inverse quantities. Thus, we should define ‘life’ by the inverse of the criteria we use for ‘death’, since those criteria are pretty well accepted both legally and morally (of course there are always edge-cases). For example: if someone is pronounced dead when their heart and brain consciousness stop, then life is defined as conscious brain function and a heart beat (over-simplified of course).
This is a very pragmatic argument. It view’s the woman’s body as analogous to a life-support system, thus rendering null the argument that life begins when the baby can exist outside the mother’s womb. This is an important step, because technology renders this a moving target… at some point, an artificial womb may be able to carry an embryo to full term. I’d be interested to get your thoughts on this.
-Tom
Josh responded to my question on his video podcast LifeReport.
Thanks Josh for the response, but you are too gracious with the praise! 
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
I’ve been meaning to post this video for awhile (been busy). Stanley Clarke is one of the most amazing bass players I’ve seen. He really explores the instrument and is not afraid to push it to new sounds. This upright bass solo is just awesome!
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
So, we’ve been developing a slick cross-platform media framework to standardize or products on (proprietry, of course), and I couldn’t resist building an ASCII text renderer. It was surprisingly easy using our SDK and a free library called libcaca… seriously, that’s it’s name. It looks okay small, but of course it breaks down as you scale up. Anyways, now we can watch video using xterm via ssh… use case? Who cares!… it’s ASCII video
Okay, now the large size (video source: D1 MPEG-4 30 fps):
Okay, this is classic… a parody on Tickle-Me-Elmo. It’s hilarious if you’re familiar with the Emo movement. Enjoy!
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
James Duane, a professor at Regent University School of Law, gave an excellent talk in May about why you should never, under any circumstances, talk to the police… even if you are innocent. It sounds counter-intuitive at first, but it really does make sense.
In summary:
- Everything you tell the police can be used AGAINST you, but it can NEVER be used to help you (because it’s hear-say at that point).
- There is no way talking to the police can help you.
- You may admit guilt (even if innocent) with no benefit in return.
- Even if you are innocent, it is easy to get carried away and tell a small lie, which can destroy your credibility.
- Even if you are innocent, and only tell the truth, you will always give the police information that can help convict you.
- Even if you are innocent, only tell the truth, and say nothing incriminating, the police may not recall the conversation with 100% accuracy.
- Even if you are innocent, and only tell the truth, mistakes in your answers can incriminate you (either by misspeaking or drawing simple conclusions).
- Even truthful answers can be contradicted by mistaken or unreliable evidence, destroying you credibility.
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
I found the second part of the lecture especially interesting, where a veteran detective (George Bruch) backs up Duane’s arguments. Definitely recommend this one to friends.
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
We recently went and looked at the new Chevy Tahoes… of course with OnStar. Rob was nice enough to point out this video parody called BlondeStar
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
On February 20th, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was conducting flight operations in the Persian Gulf. Early that morning, the crew was preparing to launch an A-6 Intruder off the flight deck when things went terribly wrong for petty officer J.D. Bridges.
That morning, Mr. Bridges was training a new recruit. The recruit successfully secured the plane’s front landing gear to the catapult, and Mr. Bridges went in to verify the recruits work. However, in a momentary lapse in judgement, he got too close to the jet intake and was sucked inside. Luckily, he put his arm up which helped get him wedged into the intake for a few seconds… those few vital seconds it took for his helmet to damage the turbine blades after it was sucked off his head. His helmet caused the blades to slow down and lessen the pressure inside the intake long enough for the pilot to shut the engines down. Miraculously, he crawled out under his own power.
I’ve embedded 3 videos of the incident (in the following order): a quick clip of what happened, a longer segment from Spike TV, and a much more detailed segment from the History Channel. Enjoy!
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
This last video requires you to wait a few seconds for the person to change the channel
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
For every major event in the news, there’s someone who believes it’s a conspiracy… so why would the attack on the Death Star be any different? The guys over at Debunking911 have a great satiracal piece about this monumental Star Wars event; it was an inside job. It’s funniest if you (a) actually remember Star Wars, (b) are kind of a nerd, and (c) are familiar with “real” conspiracy theories (like the ones surrounding 9/11… video: 1, 2, 3, 4).
And so the Death Star conspiracy goes:
We’ve all heard the “official conspiracy theory” of the Death Star attack. We all know about Luke Skywalker and his ragtag bunch of rebels, how they mounted a foolhardy attack on the most powerful, well-defended battle station ever built. And we’ve all seen the video over, and over, and over, of the one-in-a-million shot that resulted in a massive chain reaction that not just damaged, but completely obliterated that massive technological wonder.
Like many, I was fed this story when I was growing up. But as I watched the video, I began to realize that all was not as it seemed. And the more I questioned the official story, the deeper into the rabbit hole I went.
Read the full story HERE.
High Scalability has a great link to a video TechTalk with Cuong Do, YouTube’s engineering manager. He talks about the challenges YouTube faces (past and present) to meet it’s skyrocketing user demand, as well as the infrastructure that allows them to scale. I enjoyed the anecdotes: especially the frantic email sent at 2am alerting the dev team that they only had 3 days of storage left… I always thought Google/YouTube would be immune to emergencies like that… ignorance on my part
(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)
I found this information interesting:
- The application code is written mostly in Python (the web app is not the bottleneck… the database RPC is)
- They use Apache for page content and lighttpd for serving video
- Thumbnails are now served by Google’s BigTable
- They’re running SuSE Linux with MySQL
- HW RAID-10 across multiple disks was too slow. HW RAID-1 with SW RAID-0 was faster because the Linux I/O scheduler could see the multiple volumes and would therefore schedule more I/O
You can read a good summary of the talk HERE from the High Scalability website.
