Flatlanders-Music for a Saturday Evening

The Flatlanders are a country band with considerable country-rock influence from Lubbock, Texas founded by singers/songwriters/guitaristsJimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock.

They garnered little attention during their brief original incarnation (1972-73), but when the band's three core members later found success in solo careers, interest in The Flatlanders was rekindled, and the band has reformed a few times since.

Monkey Brain Investors

This Week in Financial Sarcasm: Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab, Formula Capital & the SEC

Goldman Sachs issued a new corporate policy banning the use of all swear words and even the use of bleeped swear words such as f***k and s**t from corporate emails and texts sent on corporate issued cell phones. The new policy comes on the heels of recent embarrassing leaks of profanity-laced emails that were made public in Congressional testimony including Goldman executive Tom Montag’s email that stated about a then current $600 million Goldman issuance of Timberwolf CDOs: “Boy, that Timberwolf was one shitty deal.”  Within three weeks of selling Australian hedge fund Basis Capital $78 million of Timberwolf CDOs and assuring Basis Capital that the market for CDOs had stabilized, Goldman Sachs began making significant margin calls on these very securities. Next up for consideration, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein stated that he will be considering banning lying, cheating and stealing from Goldman activities as well.

In other news, the Obama administration’s record of “yes” means “no” and “more transparency”  really means “less transparency” continues................from zero hedge....................http://www.zerohedge.com/article/week-financial-sarcasm-goldman-sachs-charles-schwab-formula-capital-sec

Steffy: Can Dudley move BP beyond its past?

By LOREN STEFFY Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

July 27, 2010, 10:23PM

Associated Press

Outgoing CEO Tony Hayward, left, Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, center, and incoming CEO Bob Dudley are on the hot seat as BP grapples with its future.

For years, the company once known as British Petroleum vowed to move "beyond petroleum." Now, it's moving beyond British.

By naming American Bob Dudley as the new CEO Tuesday, BP's board has shifted the company's focus squarely on America, which remains the company's best hope and its biggest failure.

Dudley ran BP's nettlesome joint venture in Russia, and he was considered for the CEO job three years ago. At the time, BP's board, which once was required to have a certain number of directors who were British subjects, stuck with tradition and chose Tony Hayward instead.

Now, the board appears to have embraced the opposite philosophy: Only an American can save the company.

Two previous British CEOs, John Browne and Hayward, failed to manage the culture of BP's U.S. operations with fatal consequences.

Dudley's appointment underscores the cultural quagmire in which BP now finds itself. While he represents a change from BP tradition, it's not clear he represents the profound reform the company needs.

for the rest of the story, follow this link...http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7127659.html

...and for fun... the Tony Hayward greatest gaffes slide show....

http://blogs.chron.com/lorensteffy/2010/07/hayward_shares.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+houstonchronicle%2Florensteffy+%28Loren+Steffy%29

The Best Magazine Articles Ever

The following are suggestions for the best magazine articles (in English) ever. Arranged in chronological order. Stars denote how many times a correspondent has suggested it. Reader notes are in italics. For a great way to read long-form magazine articles on a tablet device see my review here.

* Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think." Atlantic Magazine, July 1945.
** John Updike, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." The New Yorker, October 22, 1960. About Ted Williams career framed by his last game. I read it every opening day without fail.
** Norman Mailer, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket." Esquire, November 1960.
* Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Harper's Magazine, November 1964.
** Tom Wolfe, "The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!" Esquire, March 1965.
**** Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Esquire, April 1966.
** John Sack, "M." Esquire, October 1966.
** Hunter Thompson, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." Scanlan's Monthly, June 1970.
* Tom Wolfe, "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers." New York Magazine, June 8, 1970.
*** Ron Rosenbaum, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe.
** Stewart Brand, "Space War: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Dearth Among Computer Bums." Rolling Stone, December 7, 1972. Written nearly 40 years ago, this account of virtual realities has all the classic props: midnight hours, geek humor, nerd hubris, and other worldliness.
* Howard Kohn and David Weir, "Tania's World: The Inside Story." Rolling Stone, October 23, 1975. About Patty Hearst's kidnapping.
** Edward Jay Epstein, "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?." Atlantic Magazine, February 1982. Diamonds, De Beers, monopoly & marketing.
* Frank Deford, "The Boxer and the Blonde." Sports Illustrated, June 17, 1985. Story of a hard Pittsburgh boxer and the woman who captured his heart.
** Richard Ben Cramer, "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" Esquire, June 1986.
* Bill Barol, "I Stayed Up With Jerry." Newsweek, September 1987.
* Gary Smith, "Shadow of a Nation." Sports Illustrated, February 18, 1991. Feature on the Crow Indians -- the story that won him his first National Magazine Award.
* Richard Preston, "The Mountains of Pi." The New Yorker, March 2, 1992. Two brothers build a supercomputer from mailorder parts in the New York apartment. All it does is compute new digits of Pi.
* Karl Taro Greenfeld, "The Incredibly Strange Mutant Creatures who Rule the Universe of Alienated Japanese Zombie Computer Nerds (Otaku to You)." Wired, March/April 1993.
* David Foster Wallace, "Ticket to the Fair." Harper's Magazine, July 1994.
** Gary Wolf, "The Curse of Xanadu." Wired, June 1995. The story of Ted's Nelson attempt to heal his personality with his invention of hypertext.
* Susan Orlean, "Orchid Fever." The New Yorker, January 23, 1995.
* Barry Lopez, "On the Wings of Commerce." Harper's, October 1995. An excellent view inside the hidden world of commercial air freight, which powers a big chunk of the global economy.  Think Neal Stevenson's glass necklace (see below), but airborne.
** David Foster Wallace, "Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise." Harper's Magazine, January 1996.
* David Foster Wallace, "The String Theory." Esquire, July 1996.
**** Neal Stephenson, "Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet." Wired, December 1996.
* John Gregory Dunne, "The Humbolt Murders." The New Yorker, January 13, 1997.
* Katie Hafner, "The Epic Saga of The Well." Wired, May 1997.
* Tom Junod, "Can you say- Hero?" Esquire, November 1998. A profile of Mr. Rogers.
* Robert Kurson, "My Favorite Teacher." Esquire, March 1, 2000.
* Malcolm Gladwell, "The Pitchman." The New Yorker, October 30, 2000. Part story teller and part sleuth, he gets beyond the simple sound bite to the core of what drives Popeil and his process. The fundamental takeaway is the inseparability of product design and product marketing in building products designed to be coveted by the customer they are target for.
* Rebecca Mead, “You’ve Got Blog.” The New Yorker, November 13, 2000. Profile of two bloggers before I knew what a blog was.
* David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage." Harper's Magazine, April 2001. A tome to the politics of language.
* Edward W. Said "The Clash of Ignorance." The Nation, October 22, 2001. In response to Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations."

* William Langewiesche, "The Crash of EgyptAir 990." Atlantic Magazine, November 2001.
* Steven Kotler, "Vision Quest: A Half Centure of Artificial-sigh Research has Succeeded. And Now This Blind Man Can See." Wired, September 2002.
* Calvin Tomkins, “His Body, Himself.” The New Yorker, January 27, 2003. Profile of Mathew Barney.
*** Tom Junod, "The Falling Man." Esquire, September 2003.
* Stephen Dubner, "The Silver Thief." The New Yorker, May 17, 2004.
**** David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster." Gourmet Magazine, Aug 2004.
* Chris Anderson, "The Long Tail." Wired, October 2004. See the Wikipedia article on Long Tail.
* Gene Weingarten, "The Peekaboo Paradox." The Washington Post, Sunday Magazine, January 22, 2006. Story about the weirdest clown, the Great Zucchini, you'll never want to meet. Keep reading....
* C.J. Chivers, "The School." Esquire, June 2006.
**** David Foster Wallace, "Federer As Religious Experience." The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006.
* Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." Harper's Magazine, February 2007.
* Gene Weingarten, "Pearls Before Breakfast." The Washington Post, Magazine, April 8, 2007. Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?
* Chris Anderson, "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete." Wired, June 23, 2008.
* Gene Weingarten, "Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?" The Washington Post, Magazine, March 8, 2009. Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.
* Mike Sager, "Todd Marinovich: The Man Who Never Was." Esquire, May 2009.
* Thomas Lake, "The Debtor." Atlanta Magazine, November 2009.
* Evan Ratliff, "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened." Wired, November 20, 2009.

chapeau Kevin Kelly http://kk.org/

A Religious Experience - How Apple Stays Divine

"Here are the four narratives, as summarized by media csholar Texas A&M's Heidi Campbell, who distilled their work for her May paper "How the iPhone became divine":

1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment;
2. a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world;
3. a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
4. and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

The stories they identified aren't myths in the sense that they aren't true, but more in the Joseph Campbell sense of being a story that helps people make sense of their relationship with the world. These ideas are where consumers attach to attachment Apple, so we thought it would make sense to see whether what happened during the affair could undermine any of these key beliefs."

Tour de History

http://www.holgablog.com/2009/07/04/celebrating-the-tour-de-france-in-photography

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204556804574262460999937786.html

14:52 - The Longest Neutral Ride...

The peloton is sauntering to the site of the official start. The reason for the late start is RadioShack’s antics... a publicity stunt was conducted and now the riders have to remove their special-edition black jerseys, remove their race numbers and do a road-side swap with their official jerseys. The riders are now sitting in the gutter doing what the rule book says they should have done all along.

Saturday Evening Jazz

In the tradition of Friday Night Musical offerings I submit some Jazz to liven up a Saturday Evening.

This Monk tune is so melodically and harmonically sophisticated and interesting. O.K., I should have used a metronome, but I uploaded this video anyway. Part of the time I play "outside" or against the chord structure. I try not to go so far out that I get lonely, which I tend to do when I play for myself. Besides Monk, Bill Evans playing this is my favorite.

Tour de Bordeaux

Extraordinary event in extraordinary wine region of France.

Red Pill Blue Pull is Apolitical...

LA weighs in realistically, as usual

Armstrong does not want any gifts in final Tour

By:

Stephen Farrand

Published:

July 18, 19:57,

Updated:

July 18, 20:03

Race:

Tour de France, Stage 14

Lance Armstrong (RadioShack) had another dismal day
view thumbnail gallery

Texan to end career in Paris, tips Contador to win

Despite his string of crashes and losing time on every major climb, despite all the accusations and long-distance polemics with fellow US tour de France winner Greg Lemond, Lance Armstrong insists he is still trying to enjoy his last ever Tour de France.
Armstrong finished 70th on the stage to Ax-3 Domaines, 15:14 behind winner Christophe Riblon (AG2R-La Mondiale).
The seven-time Tour de France winner would love to win a stage as a final swan song but said he did not want any gifts, just as he always refused to gift any stage victories to his rivals during his seven-year reign at the Tour de France.
"It's as unique experience for me to ride up the Pailheres with no pressure at all and be able to look at the people and listen to people. I'm not going to win the Tour. There's not going to be an eighth Tour. That's not a news flash. But I'm going out having a good time," he said.
"I'd still like to get a stage victory but it's hard. They might not let me go early on, so you've got to have your climbing legs and obviously nobody is going to give it away."
"Back in our heyday, we didn’t give anything away, so I don’t want anybody to say 'Hey, let's let the old man have one,' That's not what this event is about. It's a hard sporting event and the strongest are supposed to win, on a daily basis and on a three-week basis."
"I've got 25 of them, I don't need someone handing me one. I'll do my best but as everyone knows, we're running out of chances."
When asked by French television if he will retire, Armstrong responded: "In Paris, yes. I came to the Tour to try and get a good result but I've never been a quitter and I won’t quit now."
On the fifteenth anniversary of the tragic death of Fabio Casartelli on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet, Armstrong said the loss of his then Motorola teammate was one of the moments that will stay with him after his final Tour de France. He also admitted he is now looking forward to reaching Paris.
"I'd rather be somewhere else but we've only got a week to go. I'm doing my best and I'll be surrounded by my family in Paris.
"After that I'll do what I did for four years ago: fight against cancer. There are lots of people who will carry this team on as pro riders."
Despite his differences with Alberto Contador last year when he rode together at Astana, Armstrong said the Spaniard was the favourite to win this year's race.
"I'm definitely an outside observer," he said. "Andy and Alberto are at the same level at the moment but Alberto has the advantage of the time trial. He will probably gain two and half minutes and that will difficult for Andy to get that. If I had a crystal ball, I'd say Alberto." 

Chuter de LA

The Great American Bubble Machine

..since FE was looking up who Lloyd Blankfein is on Wiki...the CEO of Goldman Sachs...which leads to the article by Matt Taibbi, where, in reference to GS, he writes the classic quote...

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"

Turbo Timmy's Desktop

Helicopter Ben's Screenshot

OK, we really need a daily post....

pretty low key day here, rode my bike 96 km (he, he, he 60 miles), typical sat and sun routine.

Judy is in FL for a month. Her Mother died on June 25th. She was 92 yo!

Le Tour is starting to get interesting, and the next few days in the alps should be fairly neutral - if any of the contenders are dislodged, i would be surprised...

TGIF Frozen Music

THEME TONIGHT IS MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE.

"I call architecture frozen music."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Arkwiz: Modern Architecture from Dino Villarica on Vimeo.

Le Tour de Chuter

...tomorrow will be the first day in the Alps and includes a mountain top finish, but, the race really starts on Sunday.

Cadel Evans is the best placed of the contenders and will probably wind up wearing the maillot juane after Saturday's stage. While there is a lot of up and down on Saturday including three Cat 2 climbs, none are steep enough for the top climbers to mount a serious attack to force a selection. And, Evans can handle this type of climb just fine - long, but not too brutally steep.

Sunday, on the other hand, we should see the first real selection. I think my top three pick will all finish more or less together atop the Cat 1 climb to Morzine-Avoriaz. Cadel should be able to hold on to the jersey, ~one minute ahead of Andy Schleck presently, but maybe not.

While the race starts Sunday, the real race will be in the Pyrenees, not the Alps, so next weekend will be the most exciting...I am getting pumped!

oh, btw, chuter in French means "to fall"...man has there been a lot guys hitting the pavement and pave this past week - total freakin' carnage

Chris Whalen - The Big Dog

...the clowns did not even interrupt him!

Vanity Fair’s World Architecture Survey

"We asked the world’s leading architects, critics, and deans of architecture schools two questions: what are the five most important buildings, bridges, or monuments constructed since 1980, and what is the greatest work of architecture thus far in the 21st century? Here are the answers from our 52 respondents, who are listed alphabetically." 

And the winner is....

...and, a close second....

“People say, ‘O.K., Renzo Piano is the opposite of Frank Gehry,’” says Piano. “I think all this is just silly.”

....The Menil...most noted...

Le Tour

Le Tour started on Saturday with the prologue in Rotterdam, which was won by Fabian Cancellera (aka Spartacus).  LA came in 4th and Contador 5 seconds behind LA. One small "psyche" in favor of LA.

Stage 1, Rotterdam - Brussels, was a crash fest, with Cavendish taking down Oscar Freire and few others when he mis-judged a tight corner within the last 3 km.  The whole finishing straight was blocked when a bunch went down 3/4 km from the finish including Fabian Cancellera in the yellow jersey going over the handlebars and winding up at the bottom of a pile of riders and bikes.  With Cavendish out, it looked like a great opportunity for Tyler Farrar to take the sprint, when another random rider went down just before the finish line clipping Tyler's derailuer, breaking it off - fortunately Tyler stayed upright. This left Alessandro Petachi to take the sprint for a win.

Estragon asked for my official predictions for the tour, which I give below without elaboration -

1.) Alberto Contador
2.) Lance Armstrong
3.) Andy Schleck

Charlie

A Marxist View of the Financial Crisis...

bp Macondo well blowout - more stories...