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Goin' Down Slow as taught by Ernie Hawkins in his Mance Lipscomb DVD series. Been practicing this song for about two weeks and have down just the Intro and First Verse, there is also a Guitar Break and Ending to learn.

I'm seeking others who have experienced comment censorship at Huffington Post. Here is a youtube entry I created on the topic:

Below the fold, here is progress on learning Hey, Hey across seven months, four of which were inactive due to an injury.

Text of my letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, below the fold:

I started learning this song on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007. Here's the video entry created to mark the first problems I had to solve:

It took two weeks from that point to (almost) get all the fingering down very slowly in rhythm, which was recorded the morning after I thought I had finally worked through the last measures:

This is five days later, which goes to show that once you get the fingering down right practicing up to tempo can happen very fast:

All sorts of people ask me about that kitty plays with water blog post I did last year. So, I shot a short video of kitty jumping in the tub and letting a stream of water run down her back. She's a weirdo, all right.

All My Friends Are Gone as taught by Stefan Grossman in his Fingerpicking Country Blues Guitar DVD.

OK. I'm going through a Stefan Grossman instructional video on fingerpicking. One of the lessons is Reverend Gary Davis' Cocaine Blues, which I started learning about three weeks ago. Here is a recent video I shot with my macbook iSight to send to Mr. Grossman. BTW: These video lessons are great. Well worth the money.

And here's an updated version after five weeks of practice:

And here is yet another video after seven weeks of practice:

EDIT: This issue was resolved by Apple. A full explanation is available at my Slashdot journal entry on the subject.

Scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute working in collaboration have published a study in the peer reviewed journal Science showing that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-color vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colorblind. The scientists speculate that even mammalian brains from animals that have never evolved color vision are flexible enough to interpret new color sense information with just a simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-color vision in some women. From the article:

The experiments were designed to determine whether the brains of the genetically altered mice could efficiently process sensory information from the new photoreceptors in their eyes. Among mammals, this more complex type of color vision has only been observed in primates, and therefore the brains of mice did not need to evolve to make these discriminations.

[...]

The new abilities of the genetically engineered mice indicate that the mammalian brain possesses a flexibility that permits a nearly instantaneous upgrade in the complexity of color vision, say the study's senior authors, Gerald Jacobs and Jeremy Nathans.

About two weeks back, the ACLU hosted a one hour long televised debate between ACLU president Nadine Strossen and Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. C-SPAN has posted a podcast of the debate, however, unfortunately, no written transcript is available. I've hand transcribed about fifteen minutes of the program for my own project, and thought there might be some members who would appreciate the posting of it here. Transcript is below the fold:

Speaking at a New York City town hall meeting on corporate media consolidation and its deleterious impact on the expression of minority viewpoints, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, Democrat, stumped against greater local media concentration and instead argued for greater diversity of media outlets and voices. In 2003 the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, changed media ownership rules to favor greater corporate media consolidation at the expense of local owners.

Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack was invited to speak at a Council on Foreign Relations symposium on energy security. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, of The Economist, presided over the speech and question and answer session. An audio podcast of the event is available, as well as a rush transcript.

The BBC reports that Nicaragua has announced plans to dig a new canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in competition with the nearly one hundred year old Panama Canal. According to the report, if built, the new canal would cost roughly $18B, take 12 years to construct, and would carry so-called "super-ships," or ships "...up to 250,000 tonnes."

Only weeks before the November mid-term election, the Associated Press reports that in an advisory opinion by the Federal Election Commission, regulators set funding limits on vote recounts for both state parties in local elections as well as House and Senate federal elections.

External blog commentary, an AP story, and the official FEC pdf below the fold.

The rise of citizen journalism. Everyone is talking about it. Soon, the citizen journalist will rise up against The Man and eclipse those mainstream corporate media outlets, finally freeing the intellectual plebeian masses to "get the story out" and rock that vote!

Or maybe not.

Herein I examine two cases of citizen journalism on Dailykos and one on The Inquirer, the culmination of all which leaves me wondering if -- perhaps -- we ought to register and license journalists as we do physicians and attorneys.

The text below consists of a conversation between two individuals recorded surreptitiously. This recording took place at the main entrance to the Harvard Square MBTA stop.