Music for Your Winter

I’ve a few musical recommendations for your December – though not Christmas music.

After hearing the single, “Be A Man” on CBC Radio2, I’ve been enjoying Justin Rutledge’s album, “The Early Widows” (available DRM-free from Zunior). Turns out it was also produced by Hawksley Workman.

More recently, I discovered that some of the remnants of the band Pure were back together on a new project. Pure’s 1994 album Generation Six-Pack is a favourite (available on cassette from Amazon for $0.98). I recall the 1994 departure of keyboardist Mark Henning explained due to the keyboards becoming irrelevant in an increasingly guitar-driven sound (and I do love those guitars).

Henning is partnered up with Pure vocalist Jordy Birch on a new keyboard-driven project called Guilty About Girls. Their album The Very Best Of… is available DRM-free from their own site and can be streamed for free.

Oh, and if you are looking for Christmas music, Acts of Volition Radio Christmas from 2004 pretty much covers the state of the art. One update would include Sarah McLauchlan’s Wintersong. It includes an excellent cover of the Joni Mitchell classic, River.

 

Map of Nuclear Explosions

This animated map of nuclear explosions from 1945 to 1998 is remarkable to watch. Note how France and England both have extensive tests, but none on their own mainland. Watch through to the end to see an overlay of all explosions. Since this animation was compiled, North Korea has conducted two nuclear explosions.

According to an article from Scientific American about the idea of using a nuclear explosion to seal the Gulf of Mexico leak, the Soviet Union regularly used nuclear explosions for domestic projects:

The Soviet program, known as Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was launched in 1958. The project saw 124 nuclear explosions for such tasks as digging canals and reservoirs, creating underground storage caverns for natural gas and toxic waste, exploiting oil and gas deposits and sealing gas leaks. It was finally mothballed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

 

That Oil Was For Us

While lamenting the state of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, my wife pointed out that, as consumers of oil, we’re all a party to it. I seemed so obvious that I was embarrassed that it hadn’t occurred to me earlier. Most things in my life – the heat in my home and office, the gas in my car, and the plastics in so many of the good we consume – are all derived from petroleum products.

I don’t know if any of the oil I use (either directly or indirectly) comes from BP, or from the Gulf of Mexico. If anything, though, this lack of knowledge makes my role even worse.

Of course, if rules were broken (or the rules were inadequate), we should do our best to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen again. Still, we can’t eschew our own role in creating the type of economic and regulatory environment where this type of of disaster can happen. They were drilling that oil for us.

 

GM’s $1,600/car Health Tax

A recent episode of This American Life uses the story of NUMMI, a joint-venture auto plant between GM and Toyota in 1984, to help tell the larger story of why the American auto industry produced such poor quality cars for so many years.

Though it was peripheral to the main point of the story (how GM failed to learn from Toyota, despite amble opportunity), this quote stood out to me:

“Over the years General Motors negotiated contracts with the UAW with such generous health care coverage that by 2007 it amounted to more than $1,600 for each vehicle GM produced in North America.”

Emphasis mine.

 

Things I Didn’t Know: Liberal Arts

Why is a “Liberal Arts degree” is called “Liberal”. I had wondered if and how it might be related to political liberalism. It turns out, it’s not.

According to the Wikipedia, the Liberal Arts are so called because:

In classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education proper to a free man (Latin: liberus, “free”), unlike the education proper to a slave.

I did not know that.