Money, Who need it? Not Jr. Walker. He only needs a toothbrush. He's a Roadrunner. Read all about it here. Walker was inspired by jump blues and early R&B, particularly players like Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic, and Illinois Jacquet. You can hear it in the opening blast. I don't know who else is playing on this, but it sure sounds like the Funk Brothers.

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers are in love with the modern world just like a Roadrunner. (lyrics) Who wouldn't be? They've got the radio, out on Rt. 128. Jerry Harrison, later of the Talking Heads, plays keyboards. I remember driving on Rt. 128 by the radio towers with this on the radio. According to Rolling Stone, Richman was obsessed with the Velvet Underground. When he started his own band, he rewrote the Velvets' "Sister Ray" into this song.

Moby takes the gospel tune Run On. Originally God's Gonna Cut You Down (lyrics) and adds a bit of instrumentation. Moby took the vocals from the 1943 version of Run On by Bill Landford and the Landfordaires and added piano, drums etc. Moby caught some flack for his use of the gospel vocals and the official video is just plain dumb. Look it up on Youtube. It's not the one I linked to. Listening to his version, you know Moby's god ain't really gonna cut you down. Johnny Cash's god, on the other hand, just might cut you deep.

Johnny has been running for a long time. He's been everywhere.

Kate Bush isn't - Running Up That Hill (lyrics) Bush wrote this with the title "Deal With God." Her label made her change it because they didn't think radio stations would play a song with god in the title.

And if I only could,
I'd make a deal with God,
And I'd get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
If I only could, oh


These lyrics have a very personal meaning for me. I remember listening to this song when my son David was so ill, on a ventilator in our living room. I wanted to make a deal with god so David would be running up that hill someday. I'm not sure what deal I made, but I don't think it was with Moby's god.

I've been reading Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff. It contains this quote from an interview with Coltrane:

I start from one point and go as far as possible. But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I say, unfortunately, because what would interest me greatly is to discover paths that I'm perhaps not aware of of.

Coltrane was speaking of his playing during the period after Giant Steps when the logical progression of harmonies dominated his compositions, but he might well have been speaking of his life in general. I have been thinking about that quote since I read it. I realize how afraid I am to lose my way. I want to know where I'm going, in work, in life; but knowing where you're going doesn't necessarily lead to anything interesting. It certainly won't lead to the discovery of new paths. I think I need to get lost more.

The quote also has me thinking about faith. You can't read the news or watch TV without some candidate yapping about his or her "faith". Faith seems have become a synonym for certainty. People claim to be led to do things, like run for office, by their faith. I know these are just public statements and as such are as meaningless as anything else a politician might say. However, faith language can be used to cut off questions - I believe it on faith, so you can't question it. It would be refreshing to hear someone in public life who was as brave as John Coltrane, and as willing to lose his or her way.

Rules of Thumb is just what it sounds like - a collection of general rules, heuristics, for all sorts of subjects. You can rate the rules IN or OUT so gradually the rules should improve in value over time. It's another eat application of the power of crowds.

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here. With the coming of the new year, I've decided to try again and maintain this blog. I'm really not much for resolutions, but a few things should be attempted in the coming year:

1. Blog more often and don't leave big gaps. This blog is mostly just a record of what has struck me as interesting at various times, so I should keep recording.

2. I need to learn more about the liver. My wife has an auto-immune liver disease called primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). There aren't any good treatments right now, but there are some new drugs under development. One thing that has been puzzling us is that one of the effects PBC is an elevated level of bile acids, but several of the drugs that seem to be effective are bile acids (Ursodiol) or target the bile acid synthesis system. I'd like to understand the mechanism and maybe we can contribute something.

3. More cowbell

Kiva lets you loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. You make a small loan of $25 and it goes to an entrepreneur in the third world. You get paid back and you can re-invest or withdraw the money. Kiva uses the power of the net to help people help other people. It's a great thing.

Kiva lets you loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. You make a small loan of $25 and it goes to an entrepreneur in the third world. You get paid back and you can re-invest or withdraw the money. Kiva uses the power of the net to help people help other people. It's a great thing.

I'm starting a campaign to have "You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog" made our National Anthem. The song was written by two Jewish guys from New York, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. They sold it to Johnny Otis, a white guy from Los Angeles who everyone thought was black. He recorded it with Big Momma Thornton, a black blues singer, who had an R&B hit with it. Elvis, a white guy from Mississippi, heard it on the radio and later had a big hit with it. Music doesn't get much more American than that. If there were an Asian and Native American in there somewhere, it would be perfect.

I don't really have anything the current anthem. I agree with Laurie Anderson. Some people complain that it's too hard to sing or too militaristic. However, it's just a bunch of questions. I think it goes something like: Hey, what's that over there? Is that a flag? Is it still there? It ends with the big question: Does that flag still fly over the land of the free and home of the brave? Well, it's still the same flag, but the rest is uncertain.

Here's the winner of the Old Chatham Monthly Meeting peace billboard contest. The billboard is now up in Chathham, NYon Route 66 just south of the Sunoco station.

It's been a long, long time since I blogged. I took a hiatus because I was tired of listening to myself whine about the current political situation in the US. It hasn't gotten any better, but this time around I'm going to try and stick more to programming, IP issues and hopefully more positive things. In addition, I've taken on the the job of clerk of our Quaker Meeting. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn focus and with the help of the assistant clerk, who is a totally amazing person, I'll try and muddle through. and serve the Meeting as best I can. I'll try and note how things go here.

In the meantime here me on my new horse.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York has been unable to find a sponsor for its new exhibition detailing the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin according to The Register. Apparently, American corporations, which depend on science, even biotechs which depend on evolutionary theory are too timid to support science.

William Dembski's blog Uncommon Descent contains an article from the Boston Globe about Michael Ruse's new book The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Ruse basically argues that evolutionary scientists are partly to blame for the current struggles between creationism and evolution for the minds of America by dragging non-scientific ideas such as social progress into the debate. I think social progress is a good thing, but I agree it has nothing to do with evolution. Still, it's not just the evolutionary side of the argument that drags extraneous issues into the argument. Certain fundamentalists have been blaming Darwin for everything from loss of religious faith to social breakdown. If this debate were really about science it would have been over long ago. It certainly wouldn't have made the news. Compared to the conservative end of the spectrum, the statements coming from scientists quoted in the article seem pretty tame (leaving aside Richard Dawkins, see yesterday's entry). However, there's a long history of bad thought by folks on both sides of the debate, for example social Darwinism or the Scopes trial.

While eating ramen noodles and reading the the NY Times Book Review (4/10/05), I ran across these two quotes:

When asked who owned the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk replied "Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

"The cold truth is that humanity has a large supply of people to waste, and in the calculus of evolution a bunch of troublemakers who come to no good are a fair price for a Meriwether Lewis or a Craig Ventner." John D. Gartner in The Hypomanic Edge.

The latter statement is the kind usually made by those believe they're in the crowd with Lewis and Ventner and not among the troublemakers who pay the fair price.

After reports last month that certain IMAX theatres refused to show the film Volcanoes of the Deep Sea after receiving complaints from creationists about its content, American Association for the Advancement of Science got into the act and now IMAX theatres in Fort Worth, TX, as well as Charlotte, NC will show the film. Score one for science for a change.

I'm glad to hear the president talking about a "Culture of Life". That mean he's joining the rest of us who place life above the culture of death and want to end war, capital punishment, torture, and needless suffering....Oh wait, you mean that's not what he wants. I guess it's the "Culture of some life", sort of like the "War on some drugs".

I've been trying to avoid the Terri Schiavo news avalanche, but this has me upset. Sun Hudson had been diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder called thanatophoric dysplasia, a condition characterized by a tiny chest and lungs too small to support life. He had been on a ventilator since birth. His mother fought to continue her son's medical care. Texas law, signed by George W. Bush, allows hospitals to end life support in cases like this but requires that families be given 10 days to find another facility to care for the patient. No hospital was found to take the baby. Where were the grandstanding evangelicals for this baby, where was Tom Delay, where was George W Bush?

The reason I find this so upsetting is that I was there. About 20 years ago, my son, then an infant, was diagnosed with several severe birth defects. We were told by the local hospital that they were not going to take "extraordinary means" to save his life. We rejected this and demanded that they treat him to full extent of their abilities. In the mean time, we arranged to have him moved to a top hospital for proper treatment. He's now a college sophmore.

I'm not comparing our case to the Schavio case. Personally, I think the parents and family should let her rest. I'm considering the poor family in Texas, who didn't have the ability to fight the system -- the system put in place by one of the persons now exploiting Terri Schavio. From the news, it's hard to know exactly what the Texas situation was Apparently, the mother wanted treatment continued. The hospital and a number of other hospitals decided the case was hopeless. I'm sure they tried to act honestly, but had the child been from a rich family with agressive legal counsel, the situation would have probably been resolved differently.

In our situation, we were young, white, educated, agressive and had insurance. Plus, we could find another hospital that would treat our son. The Shavio family is white, and has tons of evangelical money and hypocritical politicians fighting on their side. Life and death in modern medicine is often decided by such factors: family aggressiveness, money etc. Poor Terri has been dead for years, but the forces of fanaticism are using her and won't let her rest. I hope that had our situation been as hopeless as the Shavio case, we would have had the wisdom to walk away and not fight. I'm forever glad we did fight, but not all of these battles are winable. The problem with the fanatics is that they see no room for gray areas, no place for reflection. I guess, my only point to this rambling is that I feel that these life and death cases are often decided on factors other than the medical or moral dimensions.