"The increment of harm in this case bears no rational relationship to
the increment of punishment that I must impose," Hurd said at a
sentencing proceeding last week in Utica, N.Y. "This is what occurs when
Congress sets [a] mandatory minimum sentence which distorts the entire
judicial process... . As a result, I am obligated to and will now impose
this unfair and, more important, unjust sentence."
here
Test Results
I’ve gotten about 2/3rds of the tests graded from today and all I can say is this:
Good job, monkeys. No fails so far. Most tests scored quite well. No curve needed.
I’m pretty happy.
I really can’t get enough of Pandora.
The coolest thing about it, I now realize, is that you can just type in a band name–something you’ve never heard of–and chances are you’ll get a song of their’s to listen to lickety-split.
That sounds very mundane, I know. Still, consider your options: Muck around with bullshit like Yahoo Music and register, login, etc…; try Amazon, get a crappy quality 15 seconds…; try file sharing software (still not a bad option) and risk breaking the law, having to wait for who-knows-how-long for something that might not be what you were looking for…
Check it out. I put in queries for “Joanna Newsome” and “The Books”–both acts familiar to me but both also signed on rather obscure labels. They got it on tap. Yow! The caveat is that it doesn’t always work. “Sonny Sharrock”, for example, can only get you results of stuff that resembles Sonny–presumably due to licence issues.
And of course, don’t bother looking for the likes of Dude Dude Chick, Lord Bishop, the Beatsteaks, Robert and the Roboters, or Face about Face. None of us are signed on a label with any decent distribution as of yet.
It’s cold as balls outside. Minus 16 degrees (9 F).
Which brings us to our idiom of the day, “brass monkey”.
Pandora, an internet radio “station” resulting from the Musical Genome Project. Basically, the MGP “maps” the various intricacies of songs (i.e. vocal style, lyrical semantics, timbre of instruments etc) into genetic “codes”. Then you can take this info and, for instance, start with one group or song you like. The database then tries to find other tunes that might suit you. It isn’t perfect, and quite frankly kind of creepy –ala amazon’s “other people who bought this book” thing. Still, not a bad way to hear some new music.
Here’s an article.
BTW
See you on test day, lads.
Wine taster’s tip #154
Most people don’t realize that the foil seal on wine bottles comes right off whole with a little twist and tug.
So next time you and your guests are eagerly awaiting the uncorking of another merlot, just wrap your fist round the end of the bottle and nonchalantly pull the foil off–all the while looking jadedly upwards and to the left. Believe me: they’ll crap their pants.
Alternatively, while wringing the foil cap off, casually mention that “most people don’t realize that…” while you do it. Then you’ll earn extra SP (snotty prick) points. It’s even better when you do this and the foil doesn’t come off easily; then you can cattily observe that it of course doesn’t work on such an inferior vintage. Oh, how they will love you.
Happy wining, and ’till next uncorking!
Hoopla. We’ve missed the bus back to Dresden and have decided to stay in {{popup seinepan1.jpg seinepan1 2008×460}}Paris forever. I’ll have more pictures in a few hours.
So long suckers
I’m off to Paris for the week. Later.
