derek's video of the event.

here is a good article about the monday oct. 26 julian heicklen incident that goes into way more detail than i was able to provide here. good read, you should also check out his website!

if you live in nj this should be your vote for governor. lets get the government out of our lives and learn how to be responsible for ourselves. learned helplessness, people.

edit: at first i embedded it but it broke the layout and the audio is horrible and goddamn who does an interview in an office out of 1992? oh well, this is why the libertarian party struggles, they shoot themselves in the foot so often. you're not getting flashy wall art and twittering here folks, this is about properly run government, not gimmicks.

this sunspot seriously tickles my loins. it is about to rotate over the western limb, but i have a sneaking suspicion it may return in 33 days. it is absolutely enormous and a trifle unusual in terms of shape as far as sunspots go. they say cosmic rays are at an all time high, and sunspots are at an all time low. believe it or not these two sets of data may be linked. the last time we had this few sunspots in a solar maximum it was called the maunder minimum and during this time was something called the little ice age. could be interesting. i know people like toe yell about their carbon footprint and all this shit, but climate change may be happening in the whole solar system. its a fact jack.

check out some of these pictures. meditate on them a bit. see what you think.

one of my fellow political activists has been demonstrating recently because "[he] know[s] for a fact that it is the policy of [us district court of manhattan] to instruct the jurors that they must uphold the law as the judge gives it to them."

he has been passing out FIJA literature at the US District Court of Manhattan. he recently did this again on monday the 26th. here is how it went.

FIJA DEMONSTRATION OF 10/26/09

I arrived at he U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan at 11:45 am on Monday, October 26, 2009. The weather was perfect: about 60*F and sunny. I stood in the middle of the plaza in front of the courthouse.

I started to pass out the FIJA pamphlet entitled “A Primer for Prospective Jurors” along with my handout (see below). Immediately the three Department of Homeland Security Officers of last week approached me and told me that I could not pass out that material. I informed them that I could. They said that I could not and that I had quoted the wrong law in my e-mail distribution of last week. They had checked the FBI records to find my identity and accessed my web page. They said that if I distributed the FIJA pamphlets, I would be put under arrest.

I asked for the statute that they use. They said 41 CFR Sec 102–74.415(c). I asked them to identify themselves and they did. The officer in charge was C. Barnes #245. The other two were Wong #213 and Roomnd #234. They work for the Federal Protection Service of he Department of Homeland Security.

I started to distribute a pamphlet, but they seized it and my sign which read JURY INFO and placed me under arrest. I fell to the ground and remained motionless for several minutes. Nothing happened, so I got up and started to distribute literature again. They had called the ambulance. They and the ambulance personnel approached me and I read to them the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. I asked them what part of “Congress shall make no law” they did not understand. They said that I should take it up with the judge. They were arresting me under the rule that they had stated.

I started to pass out literature again, but they seized all of my pamphlets and placed me under arrest again. I fell to the ground. Officer C. Barnes #245 gave me two citations, one for Unlawful Distribution of Fliers on Federal Property 410 CFR, sub C Section 102–74.415(c) and one for Impeding/Opposing Federal Officer, 18 U.S.C. §111(A). Officer C. Barnes also gave me a property receipt for my two signs and the pamphlets that they had seized.

I was placed on a gurney and put in the ambulance. I was taken to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. I did not talk to any of the personnel, including the psychiatrist. They left me alone for awhile. The police left. After awhile the psychiatrist returned and read a copy of my flyer. His comment was that this was a free speech case and he agreed with me. He ordered that I be discharged.

I was fed lunch and after some paper work was released at 3:10 pm.

Below are the citations that were given. 18 U.S.C §111(a) deals with forcible resistance. It does not apply to me. I used no force whatever. Title 41 C.F.R. §102 is not a law. It is a regulation that applies only to employees of the GSA, not to the public. Failure to comply with those provisions is a violation of these regulations. Big deal. It is not a violation of law. The GSA cannot make laws. Only Congress can do that.

he will be doing the same thing on monday Nov. 2 if anyone is interested in going. derek demarco was at the one on monday and had this to say.

I showed up a little late, at 12:10, and Julian was already limp on the ground and I started to shoot video. I was approached and questioned by several officials and was told I cannot shooot video on ferderal property. I was questioned further and asked what information I knew about the "unnamed" man laying on the ground. I procceeded to answer their questions with vauge answers and avoided naming Julian. I told them i heard about a jury nullification protest and voluniteer to video and be a witness to this protest. I was asked to show my ID, which i did, and they vertified I was no threat and was asked to leave, my battery died after about 7 minutes anfter i arrived and I left. What should I do with the video? I created a youtube account to post this video, but iI don't want to post it until I hear from Julian.

One of the eleven American soldiers who died in yesterday's helicopter crashes was a good friend during the five years that I spent in Boston. Thinking about anyone from that period of my life being dead is difficult. Hell, most times I feel like that portion of my life is still the current portion of my life.

I'd recently snapped a photo of the house that he lived in for four years, along with many of my other good friends, on a trip to Boston. When I posted it on Facebook it became a bit of an online reunion hub, with thinly veiled references posted by many about the debauchery that went on there. We half-heartedly talked about renting it out for the weekend and recreating a typical day there just for the hell of it. It probably never would have been the same had we actually done it, but now is there no question that it could never, ever be the same.

This article from TechCrunch says everything that I've been thinking about mobile platforms since leaving CES last year. An environment in which RIM, Apple, Android, Palm, Symbian, and WinMo all exist together is too dysfunctional and can't be sustained forever. Fast-forward 6-8 years and I think you'll find this being a two, maybe three cart race in the US, with Apple and Android leading the pack. Quick reasoning?

- Does anyone even care about WinMo 7.0 anymore? I can't think of anyone who does this mobile thing more back asswards.
- RIM's heyday is over; their hardware is uninspiring (and in the case of the Storm straight-up terrible) and the "we do corporate email" well thing will lose its luster eventually.
- Symbian... hrmm, do you know anyone that has a Nokia phone in the US? Didn't think so.
- Palm is cute, and might find a niche as the cuddly third place platform for awhile, but as much as I'd like to root for them and think the Pre is a great device, I just don't seem them being able to fight back. They might be able to hang on the longest, but as mobile application development continues to become a major industry, the need to consolidate will eventually win out, and with that WebOS will disappear.

Good/bad. PC/MAC. Republican/Democrat. The world has a tendency to narrow ideologies down to as few alternatives as possible. I see mobile platforms going the same way.
--

Also, I want the 16-Bit Genesis one very badly.

Ga-damn it feels good to be strapped to the back of a beast.

The Get Up Kids and Braid, 3.1.98 vs. 10.21.09

Bob Nanna and Damon Atkinson of Braid and Hey Mercedes apparently have a new band called Certain People I Know that has posted four tunes up on their website. Only listened to the first one so far. It sounds very Hey Mercedesish to me, which is a-ok by me. Get listenin'.

I found newsmap the other day and think it's a pretty cool way to browse news. When I envisioned the newspaper of the future back when the intarnetz was young, it certainly looked more like newsmap than it did CNN.com, or even Google News, for that matter. While I like iGoogle for making some sense out of all of the stuff that I care about each day, I find that its limited to the amount of screen real-estate available, and that because I have to make choices about what information I want to see, I generally end up only seeing the stuff that I'd probably find trapsing around the web anyway. I like that newsmap displays news in a way that the world seems to be caring about. Combine it with the likes of Digg and Reddit, and you're able to dive into a lot of shit that's happening without having to, umm, trapse.

Yankees in 6.

Canon Digital Rebel XSi 12.2 MP Digital SLR ordered. Got it for $560 with employee discount. Psyched to take some ga-damn photos.

Baseball fan sites are generally pretty terrible. This one is no different, but it does contain the video of Mariano Rivera's alleged spitball. I watched the video twice, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing to it at all.

Owen's New Leaves showed up at my office today, which is exciting. Polyvinyl ships media mail. I'll forgive them for that. It's pretty much impossible to make any money off of vinyl since the price increase as it is. The good thing about waiting for something to ship is that I've usually forgotten ordering it by the time it arrives. I enjoy intentionally setting myself up for sorta-surprises. I also enjoy "Good Friends, Bad Habits", the best song from the album, as well as the accompanying video. Although that Wilde and Hemingway line is pretty cringe-inducing.

Machinarium looks beautiful. At first glance it looks like a playable version of the first half of Wall-E, although I'm sure it's not like that at all. I peeped the forums for the game and the creators sound like nice, humble guys. I'm not sure my PC is powerful enough to play any games other than Solitaire, but I'd like to give it a try at some point.

I wish I could have been able to easily click-thru to finish the rest of the article that Paul posted yesterday.

Yankee game starts at 4:17.. or 13, or some other weird time today. Safe to say that my mind will be checking out around then, and my body will be angled to the LCD screen that's about 25 feet to my right from there until packing up for the day.

Yo, Falcon. I'm really happy for you, and imma let you finish... but Anne Frank was the best kid hiding in an attic of all time!

Sonuvabitch. I basically picked PRX out of thin air based on its industry and its beta, and Barclays goes and upgrades the motherfucker a few days after I buy. Nice.

Taken from the iPhone Saturday night in Bristol, RI. Skies are always awesome this time of year:





Click-click.

Amazon has a Buy 2 Get 1 Free video game promo going on until Saturday, the 17th. Not a terrible selection at all...

I was jolted awake by an idiotic dream this morning around 4:15AM. Unfortunately I was unable to fall back asleep, so I headed upstairs to research electronic drum applications (decided on EZDrummer). Then I watched Baseball Tonight (kinda dull since there are no games until Thursday.. I mean, there was a segment on Curt Schilling when he was with the Phillies) and Sports Center, which had too much college football coveragefor my taste. Once the sun came up I headed to the gym and listened to loud music. I’m a little groggy now, but so far, it’s been a pretty good morning.

My idiotic dream involved a friend of mine telling me that he had Trent Reznor’s phone number, and that I should call him. He was saying that they were talking about my new songs and that Trent wanted to hear them. So I called. And Trent was mean… like “why the hell are you bothering me?” mean. I didn’t really know why I was bothering him, other than the fact that my friend had told me to call him, so I didn’t have much to say. When I woke up, I couldn’t stop going through all of the ways I should have approached the phone call but didn’t. I really just wanted to go back to sleep, though. At least the Trent Reznor thing reminded me what I’ve wanted to learn digital drum software for awhile.

Have an Aggregrate Economics midterm tomorrow night that I’m medium-stressing about. Professor is a bit whacky… he emailed last semester’s exam to us to use while studying and closed it with the following: “I would give you the answers, but they are too hard for me.”

Super.

Birds of a feather...

Now for something that’s not stupid bands and stupid video games. I’ve started day trading a little bit of stock. Backstory:

When you’re negotiating an initial salary or a raise at my current job the powers that be will always heavily harp on stock awards being the most fruitful part of your compensation. It was tough for me to get comfortable with at first. I was used to the standard “paycheck comes twice-per-month and by the end of the year we’ll have paid you your entire salary” thing. The occasional bonus was always nice, but it was never guaranteed (well, it sorta was when I was in investment banking, but we all know the problems that those practices have caused in the last 15 months …). Anyway, you get a whole fuck-ton of shares, which sounds great, but you don’t get them all at once. There’s a schedule. Each “award” you get is on a different schedule. When I was first hired, I got a schedule of 10% the first year, 15% the second year, and 75% the third year. When I got my first bonus I got a new award that was 50/50 over two years. When we got purchased by a large company I got a new award that was 33/33/33 over three years. I got another award last year that was 20/20/60. It’s a little bit confusing, but ultimately pretty cool to get an email every once in awhile that a whole bunch of stock was available for you to do whatever you wanted with. The effect of this kinda sucked at the beginning, because it generally came at the expense of a better salary and the awards weren't super substantial at the beginning. But now that they're becoming more significant, it’s great. I’ve essentially pretended that this stuff didn’t exist for awhile, and have learned how to live on the budget that my salary alone pays me. Now it’s like I have this whole other thing that makes me feel good about not saving as much as I would’ve liked to over the last few years.

Lots of boring details, I guess. But I’m in a place now in which I have this stock in a Schwab account with some cizash in it, don’t really need the money for anything, know enough about portfolio management to know that I need to diversify it, and have a little bit of free time at work. I’ve started small with some buys of GE and PRX, and am going to see how that goes before diving in much more. But it’s sort-of exciting. You know, like gambling is. I’d like to get to a place where I have long positions in about 30 companies, with a little extra cash to fuck around with some short stuff. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll put what’s left in a Bodog account and start betting on Football. My picks is naztee when there’s no real money on the line.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's Higher Than the Stars showed up at work this morning, which is great because I'd forgotten ordering it in the first place. I've been listening to it pretty regularly since I snagged a downloadable copy a few weeks back and think it's an awesome accompaniment to the self-titled and makes me super psyched for the follow-up, even if that's a bit pre-mature.

Doh, looks like blogger's been misinterpreting the links in my posts when I copy/paste them from outlook. I've fixed the last few posts and it shouldn't happen anymore.

I’ve been married for one year to the day. Hard to reflect back on much as it’s gone incredibly quickly. Having lived together for two years before being married, and having gone through a lot of the crap that other couples go through even before that, I’d say that Year 1 was pretty damn smooth. To reward ourselves for being awesome we’ll be picking up the Canon Digital Rebel XSi just in time for our early-November trip out to LA, Santa Barbara, and Paso Robles. Anniversaries rule!

Tracks 1 and 2 off of A Place to Bury Strangers’ Exploding Head are pretty bad ass. I’ve had the rest of it on in the background this morning and haven’t been as impressed, but it’s great to hear folks making this kind of music still. They’re a bit too influences-on-sleeve to be truly great, and they wouldn’t be the first ones to do that in 2009, but it’s still enjoyable.

Beneath a Steel Sky for iPhone seems interesting, but mostly just fuels my desire to have the old 90s Sierra games officially ported to the iPhone. Lucas Arts has already done it with Monkey Island… get with it Activision! For better or worse, there are few memories from my childhood that I remember as fondly as spending hours with games like King’s Quest and Space Quest. And while I’ve replayed them via the Collection re-issues a few years back, I’d absolutely love to be able to have them in my pocket. I can’t think of a better way to spend time at the airport than hitting up Daventry for a little King’s Quest 6 action.

Speaking of iPhone games, I’ve been playing a lot of Peggle lately, and I’ve really enjoyed it. Well worth the $5 price tag. It’s super addictive, and really easy to pick up and play when you have a few extra minutes. Not so easy to put down, though.

So, people still make music videos, apparently. That’s neat, although I must admit that my first two thoughts upon watching the new Modest Mouse video for “Whale Song” were “Man, Isaac sure has gotten larger than I remember him being” and “Where the hell is Johnny Marr?” Petty stuff. My less petty side thinks that it’s a cool video for a song that is super awkward to listen to, by design. It’s guitar parts like that that make Pandora liken Modest Mouse to bands like Les Savy Fav and Cursive, although most listeners that aren’t computers would probably not agree with the comparison.

Two of my favorite bands that happen to be on major labels (the same label, in fact) have new releases spaced out by a few days from each other, Built to Spill and the Flaming Lips. After a few days of listening, I declare BTS’ There is No Enemy to be wonderful. I’ve been describing it as the album that should have followed up Keep It Like a Secret for a few days now, and stick by that assessment. Ancient Melodies of the Future was fine enough, I guess, and Secret would be tough for anyone to follow-up… but I’m fairly confident that over-time this will be the 00s BTS album that I pick more than any other. The other album, the Lips’, Embryonic, is insane. F’real. Blips, noises, weird samples. Not Kid-A shit, though. These songs sound even less like songs than those did. It sounds more like the soundtrack to the sequel to Christmas on Mars than it does a new record. But that said, I think I like it. I’m just not sure I’ve found the appropriate time and place to listen to it yet. (too distracting for work, too jarring for relaxing at home, too polarizing to listen to with someone else, too disorienting for the gym). The next time I take a solitary car ride at night should be ideal. Wayne Coyne talks a little bit about the record here, and essentially confirms that its creation was appropriately as weird as you’d guess upon listening to it.

”Expert Herder” by Lemuria is probably the best song you’ve heard this year. And if you’re not listening to Lemuria yet, they’re probably the best band you’ve heard in the last three years. And also, get fucking with it, man! Alex Kearns from Lemuria put up some demos of his solo stuff here, which is pretty damn good, too. I don’t think it’ll sell you on Lemuria, but if you’re clamoring for more, it might help you get through. Goddamn is that dude’s voice amazing.

One cup of rich hot chocolate. About 2 oz. of steamed skim milk. One shot of espresso. And one extremely loud listen through of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Automatic. I’m good to go this morning. Now that I’ve made the official transition from cold, caffeinated morning drinks to warm ones I’m ready to fully accept the end of summer and embrace the fall. I’ve got a thermal shirt on today. It’s comfortable, and I’d like to think that it’s happy to see me after 5 months of neglect. We’re friends again, and that means that the sweaters are soon to follow. I’m sure they’ve missed me, too.

I’d like to talk about the caffeinated beverages thing for a moment, though – not because there’s much of a point to it, but because I just glanced over at my office’s setup and thought to myself, “you are super fucking spoiled”. We have a great selection of beverages here at the office to choose from. We have a Starbucks machine that brews up two different blends and the aforementioned rich hot chocolate. We have a pod maker and a selection of at least 12 different blends, not including teas. We have a fridge filled with all kinds of fizzy drinks, both caffeinated and uncaffeinated. Orange Juice. Apple Juice. Milk. And then we have the espresso maker. She is my baby. I pet her softly and whisper sweet nothings into her ear as she brews me up delicious espresso every morning. We’ve had a rather large influx of new employees lately, and I’ve become the resident teacher on how to properly use it. Since I’m sort-of in between projects at work right now, I guess it’s better to be known as the guy who knows how to make a kick-ass cappuccino than the guy who wants to hook up the Wiis that we have for a lil’ afternoon bowling match, right? (oh yeah, I’m that guy, too). It’s cool, though. My period of calm here at work is only temporary and I’ve been informed that a rip-roaring project is coming my way in about two weeks.

I’ll make no mention of chiming in with a new blog post like I’d never stopped blogging in the first place. I’m missing something lately (I’d guessed it was a modern video game console that wasn’t the Wii, no time to read fiction like I used to, and the inability to loudly write songs in my super-quiet apartment building). But maybe it’s this.

Someone in my Marketing Communications class last night had a SlingBox stream for the Yankees game playing on his laptop. He was kind enough to turn his machine towards me, which pretty much meant that I got absolutely nothing out of the lecture. I used to take school very seriously, but lately I don’t care all that much. I’m just over two years removed from embarking down the MBA path, and with still over a year left, I’m just completely bored with it. I show up. Half-heartedly do my homework. Roll my eyes at my idiotic classmates. And occasionally buy the text book three days before the midterm. But that’s about all I’m giving these days. Le sigh.

I’ve been reading lots of Brendan Kelly’s Bad Sandwich Chronicles lately. It’s a shame I took a break from it for awhile, he’s hilarious.

Let’s do this again sometime.