This is a couple of years old, but it's new to me. Ann Marie Calhoun and her brother Joe Simpson play the old Grateful Dead tune Ripple. Her performance is remarkable.
I shouldn't be surprised. I'm pretty sure I've seen her work elsewhere. There's been lots of it and it looks like she'll be an interesting artist to watch.
Not least for how musically abandoned she is in her interpretation of what is one of my favorite tunes.
It's been a busy week or two lately. You may have noticed a lack of posting here, but be sure I was busy elsewhere.
Last week at this time I was starting a short midyear conference of the National State's Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), in Annapolis. I'm communications chair for that group and so spend the conference taking notes and developing an on-line, cloud-based repository of conference stuff.
And when I returned to the office, it was to a release of 2010 Census redistricting data for Delaware, which I am working my way through as lead staff (the entire staff, to be honest) of the Delaware Census state Data Center.
So I was looking forward to this weekend; to a nice dinner out with both our girls and to ferrying daughter #1 back north to Villanova after her mid-term break. But old-lady nature threw me a curve and hit me with a fast-moving sinus infection that settled over the roots of my upper left molars for an effect like an un-ending explosion.
I'm on the mend though. And this morning came across a pleasant surprise in my RSS Reader feed (took me a while to get here, didn't it?). Yesterday I added a new blog, that of the proprietor of a new bookstore that has just opened here in Lewes called biblion. reading back through her entries, I found one from a week ago that included, as a one-off gesture to a friend, an embedded performance by
Rodrigo y Gabriela of their guitar duet Tamacun.
I've been a fan of this pair ever since hearing them interviewed on NPR a few years back. They are from Mexico, where they played heavy-metal rock before dropping out of that scene and travelling around Ireland for a time, where they earned their living playing more traditional music. They play a fusion of folk musics with a rock and roll abandon that I quite like.
This tune is on my iPod and gets much use when I'm writing, the rhythms and fast pace seem to help my fingers keep up with my brain.
The news out of Wisconsin this past week has been fascinating for many reasons. It's been interesting to see the tensions of our political, social and economic challenges play out on a normally civil mid-western stage. And the turmoil in the middle east adds a depth that helps us keep it in some perspective.
That it's taking places in Madison adds personal interest. I was there in the fall of 2007 for a national GIS Conference and used the occasion to tour the state capitol. It's a lovely building and was fully open to the public when I visited.
This same spot has been filled with Wisconsin folks lately, exercising their right to speak. Here's a view from this weekend.
I got word from Google Maps today that they have accepted my correction to the location of the Judy V charter fishing boat. Google had shown it as a business located on the street outside our house, but it's actually based at the Indian River Inlet Marina, south east of here.
We live on Inlet Place, in Lewes. The Indian River Inlet Marina is on Inlet Road, south of Dewey Beach. Unfortunately, the road data that Google Maps has for Delaware doesn't include Inlet Road, so we tend to get identified as the location of things at the Inlet. For a short time, the offices of Delaware Seashore State Park were found (by Google, anyway) at our house. I think I sent a correction on that one as well.
I can't remember when I submitted the Judy V correction, but it's probably been less than a year. Back in April of last year, I gave a presentation on GIS and on-line mapping to a class of the Delaware academy of Lifelong Learning. I used my correction request as an example of what to be careful about with on-line maps.
It's not Google's fault, really. They are an aggregater of other data. They use state, federal or private sector aerial photography for their "satellite" view. They use crowd-sourced information for reviews of businesses and photos of places. And they use publicly available GIS data for roads, cities, waterways and the like. That Inlet Road is not on their maps yet speaks to a failure of what-ever mapping company they are using to provide road data to pick up Inlet Road.
For the record, the Delaware DataMIL, which serves statewide road data for Delaware, does have Inlet Road.
Let's start with a few basic facts. I am, and have been for a while, a fan of Stephen Fry. He's a hugely intelligent and terribly interesting writer, actor, director, etc. I first found him when he and his then performing partner Hugh Laurie (who I also really like) put together a TV series of PG Wodehouse stories (I love PG Wodehouse's writing too).
I also like quirky music, idiosyncratic singer-songwriters, and female vocalists. And I like real songs; too much of music these days is just an excuse for elaborate stage shows and dancers. There's nothing wrong with dance, but I like musicians and singers who play and sing songs.
So this evening I found this, by way of MetaFilter. It's by Molly Lewis and is a sung open letter to Stephen Fry, who is gay, proposing a combining of genetic material to improve the human genome.
I understand Mr. Fry heard this when it came out last spring and was charmed. I just think it's cool.
I spent part of Saturday afternoon walking around Killens Pond. Daughter #2 wanted to spend the day at Lake Forest High school, watching a high school swim meet (which her school won, I think). I decided to use that as an excuse to spend some time at Killens Pond State Park with my camera.
Afterwards, I spent some time at the new Kent County Library, working online via their free wifi (thanks, very much) until it was time to pick up my daughter again.
I'm a huge fan of Craig Ferguson and his Late, Late Show. Recently, as I was watching him do his twitter and e-mails segment, I found myself thinking about Mr. Bill, an early feature of the old Saturday Night Live.
Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for libel. I think she has a case. Breitbart was served papers during the Conservative Political Action Conference the other day, according to a story on the conference in the New York Times.
Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com.
The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.
Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”
Everyone has a right to free speech, but we also have a responsibility to speak truth. Libel is libel. It may certainly be spoken and you may certainly be sued for it.
Former Rehoboth Beach lifeguard Michael Scanlon was back in the news this week. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday for conspiracy in a hideously complicated case tied to the Jack Abramoff bribery and corruption scandal.
Scanlon had pleaded guilty back in November of 2005. I remember being struck by the local paper's headline, "Rehoboth Beach lifeguard pleads guilty to conspiracy." I thought it a sample of how a local newspaper -- all local media, really -- tried to keep a local focus on the news. I was a little charmed, if also scandalized, by the idea of a jet-setting lifeguard.
November 2005 seems a generation ago. Back then we were deep in the mire that was the Bush administration. The Abramoff scandal was the tip of an iceberg that only agonizingly slowly knocked some sense of how bad things had gotten into the public's mind.
It turns out that Scanlon has spent his time since then living up to the terms of a plea agreement that has seen him help bring the slow, but certain, tides of justice to bear on a collection of corrupt bastards. I guess it takes time.
