Dave Garrett

This has been circulating on Twitter, usually accompanied by the expressions of shock, horror, disbelief, outrage, etc., that one might expect. A bit of Googling reveals that this isn't a new development, and isn't limited to Arkansas:

I'm interested in this one as well. I'm both a Sinatra fan and a Dylan fan, but in my experience a lot of hardcore Sinatra fans seem to really dislike Dylan much more than Dylan fans seem to dislike Sinatra. I haven't been able to get motivated to check out the ongoing thread at the Hoffman forums yet, but there have already been negative comments about Dylan on the Sinatraphiles mailing list, solely in response to the album's announcement.

Gizmodo weighs in: http://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-what-neil-young-is-selling-1678446860

Interesting piece from the NYT earlier this week on why players that shine in college may not succeed in the pros: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/sports/ncaafootball/split-wide-from-nfl-the-college-game-is-no-minor-league-.html I think Jones would be better served by at least another year in college, but who could blame him for entering the draft after winning a national championship in his *fourth college start*. Absolutely unprecedented.

floccinaucinihilipilification http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/floccinaucinihilipilification

I've known Jews of a certain age who despised the show for depicting the Nazis as bumbling idiots and refused to watch it. The actors in the key German roles were all Jewish, and some of the actors were not only WWII vets but had been in concentration camps prior to the war themselves. From Wikipedia:

When I was much younger than I am now, that would have been a close approximation of my daily breakfast as well, frequently accompanied by pain au chocolat. Now it's usually a banana and a cup of Greek yogurt.

Spartans defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi was instrumental in their stunning comeback against Baylor yesterday when they won by one point, a fitting sendoff as he leaves to become Pitt head coach. Today, he gets to watch as UH mounts an equally stunning comeback against Pitt, scoring 22 points in the final 3:41 to win by, yep, one point. As a sidenote, Ohio State's offensive coordinator Tom Herman was just hired as UH's new head coach. He will remain with Ohio State until the end of their season, but has already begun working with UH as well. The UH AD's hiring of Herman is looking like quite a coup right about now.

How committed are you to Windows Media Player? There are other arguably superior programs that will queue up multiple FLAC files in a playlist. I like foobar2000 - it's very flexible and configurable, and it has a devoted following.

That's certainly the case now (or at least it was prior to Ms. Rice-Davies' death).

This is focused on low-priced surge protectors, but their comments regarding surge protection and higher-end HT line conditioners are worth reading, as are the comments after the article itself: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-surge-protector/ We used to have a lot of problems with power quality at our house - computers randomly rebooting multiple times every day, the TV shutting off by itself, and so on. I had the electric utility company out multiple times, and every time they'd check everything out from the pole down to the breaker box, but never seemed to be able to find anything obviously amiss. A couple of years ago, the power went out, and soon enough a crew was up on the pole in my neighbor's backyard checking out the transformer. I went out to talk to them, and when I mentioned the chronic power problems, the crew lead said the transformer up on the pole was likely at the end of its service life, and he was going to submit an internal service request to recommend its replacement with a new one. A couple of days later, several different work crews showed up, and within two hours they'd swapped out the old unit for a new one. The previous problems haven't recurred since then. Our house is almost 70 years old, and I'd guess the transformer was at least 35-40 years old, so as always, YMMV.

I got caught out by this the last time they had a 10% off coupon, but could only blame myself for waiting until the last minute to place an order and not paying close enough attention to the coupon details, as it's clearly stated (albeit in the fine print) that the discount expires at noon on the last day. This time around I was aware of the noon expiration. I had several CDs in my cart, but the inflated handling charges combined with the shipping made it not such a good deal even with the discount. I wound up getting the same CDs from Bull Moose instead - free economy shipping for orders over $25 and no handling charges meant that it came out to a couple of bucks cheaper than Import CDs, plus Bull Moose's customer service is a hell of a lot better than Import CDs if you have to contact them about an order.

I remember the Water Wiennie. Had one as a kid. Unbelievable that Oreo Barbie made it past the concept stage without anyone finding it objectionable. Were they planning on following it up with Banana Barbie and Coconut Barbie?

Horowitz - Complete Original Jacket Collection at Amazon for $116.19 (will be in stock on December 12): http://www.amazon.com/Vladimir-Horowitz--Complete-Original-Collection/dp/B002P3J3BW/

http://youtu.be/jvhap1vcLDw

Same at the one closest to my house. There have been several other Sears stores that have come and gone here over the years, but that one has been a fixture in the area for damn near 50 years and still keeps chugging along somehow despite not having nearly as much traffic as it did in its heyday. It's one of the stores with a multi-bay Auto Center, too, which also does a decent amount of business (although I gave up using them for anything except Diehards long ago, after the mechanics appeared to get less and less competent).

Reading this, I was reminded of Art Garfunkel, who has kept a list of every book he's read since 1968: http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html

http://youtu.be/6y8Xl7-oUpY

An interesting development that could have further ramifications: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/sirius-may-have-to-pay-up-for-pre-1972-songs-under-state-copyright/

Thanks for posting the pics - I've saved copies locally for future reference.

I have found trying to have a critical discussion with bashers of Apple products is not too fruitful. But that's generally the case with any sort of technology-specific religious wars. I'd suggest that anyone who finds Apple users intolerable needs to have a chat with a few Linux bigots to put things in perspective. About the only thing that I use iTunes for regularly (on a Windows box) is for local backups of my iDevices and iOS upgrades. I've ripped a few CDs with it, but when I finally get around to ripping all of my CDs, I'll almost certainly be managing that library with something other than iTunes. I prefer FLAC for archival/backup purposes, which can then be downsampled to mp3 for portable listening devices. I've never purchased any music through iTunes, and although I hesitate to say "never", it's unlikely that I will, absent a really compelling reason to do so.