I don't get a whole lot of comments here, but when I do get them they are generally well worth sharing. I thought this one was worth elevating to the level of its own post.

Comment on post 4343 on 8/10/04 by mrG. Woody had more than a sense of humour, he actually lived what he preached, and as yet another proof, here's a story I first heard from Utah Phillips and later had it confirmed from someone who had toured with and heard it from Steve Goodman: The story goes Woody and Huddie (Leadbelly) walked into a NYC music publisher's office to sell a new song they'd written. The publisher heard their song and knew it would be a hit, so he started fumbling through his desk to find a standard contract. Woody and Huddie said, "No need for all that. Gentleman's deal: You pay us $50 cash, we shake on it, the song is yours." You can imagine. The NYC bigshot music publisher's eyes lit up with dollar signs. He peeled $50 out of his own wallet, gave it to those yokels and they gave him the sheet music, and they shook hands and parted. The NYC bigshot music publisher was ecstatic: He'd just bought a sure-fire chart-topping double-platinum hit for $50. Woody and Huddie were pretty happy too: That was the fifth NYC bigshot publishing company they'd sold it to that morning ... By the time the lawyers were through with it, nobody owned the song, it became public domain, free for all, part of the artistic commons to be freely sung and resung by anyone with a mind to sing it. the song was "Goodnight Irene".

9:14:39 PM •  • comment  

I would happily contribute to bribing this fellow to do more reviews of any movies where Hollywood butchers anything to do with science or logical thought, which ought to cover most films.

The day After Tomorrow - Best Review. Here is the review written by a paleontologist who bet the world that he would not see the film unless he was bribed $100 Another Gem by Jason... [Robert Paterson's Weblog]

We need more reviews like this. A grassroots-derived review system. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

9:04:15 PM •  • comment  

Aren't you just a little bit curious about what is hiding on the back of those credit cards in your wallet? I see some soldering iron time in my future.

• Stripe Snoop Homepage.

  Stripe Snoop is a suite of research tools that captures, modifies, validates, generates, analyzes, and shares data from magstripe cards. The data is captured through different hardware interfaces (or stdin), the contents decoded into the correct character set, and then a CDDB-like database attempts to figure out what the contents mean.

  Originally a proof of concept for an interfacing project, and then a spin off from a research project, Stripe Snoop has matured in the definitive software for accessing and understanding magstripes.

  [Privacy Digest]

8:57:04 PM •  • comment  

Just the ticket to refocus on a warm afternoon in Boston. Go check it out.

Friday Fun: A One-Minute Vacation -- In case you can't manage 2 1/2 weeks, the quiet american: one-minute vacation might help...

Surely you can spare a minute to clean your ears? Take a one-minute vacation from the life you are living. One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else.

Stick your earbuds into the audio out on your internet reading machine and try out this mp3...

may 24, 2004 - 800 KB -- The recording was made in the back garden of my house in Manchester, UK, on the first of June, 2003, at around 9:30 p.m., when it was still light. This is one of those rare, fortuitous moments which will probably never happen again, at least to me. I had just switched on the MD and gone out of the back door to record the birdsong, when just at that very moment it started to rain. So I stood underneath our oaktree and kept recording. You can hear, amongst other things, blackbird, swifts, starlings, blue tits, and of course the rain on the leaves, gradually getting heavier. The equipment used: a Sony MD Walkman MZ-R700 and a Sony ECM-MS907 stereo mic. You must believe in spring indeed.

Chill out in these dog days of summer. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance]

1:01:52 PM •  • comment