schmevil | When place names become unfortunate...

Emo, Ontario. Emo is known for its stockcar races - not very emo. Man, the citizens of this town, all 1300 of them, must be pissed.

In the news...

Sleep-deprived? You might sound drunk

Lack of sleep alters the brain to such a degree that it can be heard in the way a person speaks, according to a new study that found sleep-deprived people sound almost drunk.

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
July 14, 2008

I am this article. I've been a hardcore insomniac for over ten years now, and the change in my demeanor when I've actually slept? More than dramatic. Astonishing. I've been loving the push to have sleep-deprived driving classified as equal in naughtiness to drunk-driving, because that means I get to claim over ten years of intoxication. Retcon for my stupidity!

I don't really have much to say about this next story, except that I read it with interest.

Island Dreams

The history of popular music is, among other things, a history of magical buildings. There is Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins cut early records. There is the Beatles’ Abbey Road, as well as Motown’s Studio A and dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark studio. Blackwell had long wanted just such a studio, where a distinctive sound could emerge based on the perfect combination of session players, engineers, equipment and atmosphere, all guided by a label boss’s omniscient hand.

Richard Poplek
CBC News
July 9, 2008

If you couldn't tell, I love pop culture history.

The Outquisition

We were talking about the slow-motion collapse here in America, the looming climate crisis,the futility of survivalism; and we began to play with the thought, what kinds of heroes would actually do some good for the communities that get hit hard?

Because if the ruins of the unsustainable are the new frontier, and if, as is already happening, the various economic and environmental transitions we face will leave many people unmoored from their familiar assumptions at the very least and, at the worst, cut loose from their jobs or driven from their homes, a huge number of people are going to need help forging new ways of life.

Alex Steffen
World Changing
July 12, 2008

Read for the article and for the comments.

Now, I can has coffee?

When place names become unfortunate...

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