W’s iPod Playlist Part 2

Follow-up: A while ago I made a post speculating about W’s iPod playlist, with some nice suggestions ;-p. Well, the White House has finally seen fit to let us in on a few of the tunes that aides have uploaded to W’s iPod:

John Fogerty: Centerfield
Van Morrison: Brown-Eyed Girl
Stevie Ray Vaughan: The House is Rockin’
The Knack: My Sharona
Blackie and the Rodeo Kings: Swinging from the Chains of Love
Country stars Alan Jackson, George Jones, Kenny Chesney
Classic rockers Eric Clapton, Robert Palmer, Bryan Adams

My Sharona?! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song, but considering the subject matter, I’m surprised they made a point of mentioning it. Interesting… In any case, you should definitely visit the BBC page to see some more appropriate suggestions… πŸ˜‰

Science vs. Norse Mythology

The Pain has a comic entitled Science vs. Norse Mythology on Creation which compares the “scientific” explanation for the creation of the Universe with Norse beliefs found in the Edda. I especially like the cartoonist’s disclaimer at the end of the strip:

I would like to issue an official apology to any believers in the Norse faith. I certainly have no wish to get on the wrong side of any Vikings, who historically have not expressed their grievances through letters-to-the-editor. As my friend John Patton pointed out to me, it’s a little foolhardy of me to insult the religion of a seafaring warrior people when I live right on the water.

Experimental Film

I haven’t been keeping up with Homestar Runner, so this is probably somewhat old, but I just saw the video for They Might Be Giants’ song Experimental Film, which stars Strong Sad and some of the other Homestar Runner characters.

Childhood Memories Via Satellite

memory mappingI first stumbled upon the phenomena of “memory mapping,” the combination of Google Map’s new satellite photo feature with Flickr’s annotation capabilities, at mathowie’s flickr page. I was inspired enough to try my hand at it, coming up with a pretty nice view of my neighborhood in Columbia, MD with some (hopefully) fun notes. There are a lot of others that have done the same; check out the googlemaps and memorymaps tags at Flickr for more. And here’s the link to the Google Maps satellite view I used if you want to play around or explore further…..

Taxation Without Representation Field at RFK Stadium

For those of you who haven’t heard, the Washington D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission is selling out soliciting bids for corporations to buy the naming rights to RFK Memorial Stadium, the former home of the Washington Redskins and current home of the D.C. United and Washington Nationals. As of this post, the deadline for formal bid submission has past, but that hasn’t stopped one organization from throwing its hat in the ring. A “grassroots effort to buy the rights to name the grass” is taking pledges, with the goal of naming the stadium Taxation Without Representation Field at RFK Stadium.

I doubt this effort will actually succeed, but I was still happy to hear that they got some publicity out of it. For more information on the controversy over Washington D.C. voting rights take a look at this article.