Great Guitar Solos – Heart Plays Even It Up

About time I included Nancy Wilson. She really is such a great guitarist. This solo here is, honestly, very short and quite simple. But I’m including it because it works. It’s absolutely perfect for the song, itself a short and simple song.

That’s the thing about great solos… what makes them great isn’t necessarily how complicated they are. You can have a great guitarist playing an amazing solo, but if the solo doesn’t fit with the song, then it’s just not going to sound good. And short, simple solos can sound pretty darn amazing when they fit perfectly into the song. This one is a great example of that.

So…

The solo starts at 2:34 and ends at 2:48…

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Astronomy Picture of the Week: Mimas Dwarfed

We continue with images from Cassini’s Grand Finale. This time, it’s an image from over Saturn’s north pole, with a teeny tiny dot, Mimas, in the upper right…

From high above Saturn’s northern hemisphere, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft gazes over the planet’s north pole, with its intriguing hexagon and bullseye-like central vortex.

Saturn’s moon Mimas is visible as a mere speck near upper right. At 246 miles (396 kilometers across) across, Mimas is considered a medium-sized moon. It is large enough for its own gravity to have made it round, but isn’t one of the really large moons in our solar system, like Titan. Even enormous Titan is tiny beside the mighty gas giant Saturn.

This view looks toward Saturn from the sunlit side of the rings, from about 27 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 27, 2017.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 617,000 miles (993,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 37 miles (59 kilometers) per pixel. Mimas’ brightness has been enhanced by a factor of 3 in this image to make it easier to see.

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When Social-Media Blocking Goes Political

I’ve talked about free speech often in the past. I even said, quite recently and quite angrily, that getting blocked on social media is not a violation of your free speech.

However… it would appear that some Twitter users have found an exception… and I’m not sure I can think up an argument against this…

President Donald Trump may be the nation’s tweeter-in-chief, but some Twitter users say he’s violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his feed after they posted scornful comments.

Lawyers for two Twitter users sent the White House a letter Tuesday demanding they be un-blocked from the Republican president’s @realDonaldTrump account.

“The viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional,” wrote attorneys at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Great Guitar Solos – Glen Campbell and Carl Jackson Play Dueling Banjos in 1973

Well, technically, guitar and banjo, but still…

I decided to include this, but I didn’t want to go for the clip from Deliverance because that would be too obvious and pretty much everyone’s seen it.

Instead, I want to highlight this performance from 1973. It features Carl Jackson on banjo and Glen Campbell on acoustic guitar, and it’s really, really good.

I’ve always enjoyed the song (no, I haven’t seen the movie, and I honestly don’t want to; that’s not a judgement call or anything, I’m just not interested), though sadly never really tried to play it because I’m really a terrible finger-picker (although hopefully that’ll be changing as I start learning Bron-Y-Aur Stomp).

Anyways… since this is an instrumental, just listen to, and watch the whole thing…

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Stop. Defending. Bigots. Even Liberal Ones.

Warning: This post is filled with even more strong language than usual. I’m angry, okay?

I get it.

I get that I cuss a lot, on Facebook, here on this blog… and I very often don’t do it in anger. I very often cuss in the routine of speaking. It’s part of my language… my voice. Some people think it’s crude. I get that. I also don’t care. But I am angry as hell, here. I’m sick and tired of this conversation.

So yes. More cussing than usual.

No. I’m not linking to it. I’m not going to bore you with the rehashed details of Bill Maher’s latest bigoted bullshit, when he a made a racist joke using the n-word in full.

You already know it all.

See, instead, what I want to talk about is all his defenders. All those supposedly “liberal” people who insist that “oh no! Bill Maher isn’t racist! He has black guests! He dates young black women! He’s the opposite of a racist!” and then absolutely demand that we must “allow differences of opinion! He has freedom of speech! Black people are allowed to say it! Why aren’t white people?!?”

So here’s the problem…

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That’s It. We’re Out. And the Earth is Dying.

(Warning… strong language)

h/t Caine…

First, from the Washington Post…

President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he is withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, an extraordinary move that dismayed America’s allies and set back the global effort to address the warming planet.

God fucking damnit. We’re really screwed.

Trump’s decision set off alarms worldwide, drawing swift and sharp condemnation from foreign leaders as well as top environmentalists and corporate titans, who decried the U.S. exit from the Paris accord as an irresponsible abdication of American leadership in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence.

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So This is Why Alamo Drafthouse is Doing a Women’s-Only Showing of Wonder Woman…

h/t PZ Myers…

This is likely what all those people angry that Alamo Drafthouse will be doing women-only showings of Wonder Woman on opening night believe is actually going to happen…

We at the Alamo Drafthouse would like to officially apologize for our role in the end of mankind as we knew it, and the ascendant Gynocracy that followed. We didn’t know our women-only screening of Wonder Woman would result in the overthrow of all world governments and the total subjugation of men, but in hindsight we probably should have seen it coming.

“Why can’t women have one night to enjoy a character that’s meant so much to them over the years?” asked the Shadowy Figure. The woman came into our offices in a cloak as black as the grave, followed by three wild-looking dogs. Her voice had no age, or every age, it was hard to tell. Sometimes it sounded like more than one woman was talking. The Shadowy Figure made good points about Representation Mattering and Safe Spaces as she idly flicked raw flesh to her dogs. Around her swirled plumes of sickly sweet incense from a source unknown, but this is Austin, so we figured she was just keeping it weird. How naive we were.

About halfway into the film, Gal Gadot put down her sword and shield and turned to the camera.

“Who has hurt you?” she asked. “Who denied you, violated your person? Who has defiled your temple? Name them now.”

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