One year ago today: February 13, 2017, move that window.
Five years ago today: February 13,, 2013, Google’s target IQ.
Nine years ago today: February 13, 2009, from the top center.
Random years ago today: February 13, 2007, that stilted manner . . .
Moles. Not the kind in the White House, the kind in my front yard. The area has been neglected as I have been digging around and working on the house. It makes the ground spongy at spots. We are in the annual drought, which seems an odd thing to happen in a land that has huge swathes of swampland. But every winter there is a general dry stretch and it brings in the tourists. That’s my foot on the ground testing how soft it is. Agt. R says to get one of those mole thumpers, which is another new technology to me. I never had such a big yard of my own before.
Which brought the shop conversation to the Olympics. The room was evenly divided between those who actually think the games promote world peace and those who think it a monstrously blatant money-grabbing operation. One thing they wanted to know was how the USSR became OAR. After much lively and colorful speculation what OAR meant, I looked it up on the tablet. Being the only adult in the room who could do such things, I mean. “Olympic Athlete from Russia”. That caused a ruffle, because almost everyone present found the term offensive. What, they wanted to know, made the Russians so special.
But I was still reading up on evolution. The NG (Nat. Geo.) article from April 2017, a work that touches on many aspects, you might even say it wanders all over the place. (Careful of that magazine, as it has become infused with anti-white ‘ganda’.)
[Authors note: What, you haven’t heard the term ganda before? That’s likely because I just made it up, I think. Short for, you know, propaganda. When the magazine shows babies being genetically cured of birth defects, awwwww, who isn’t for that, notice there are no white babies in the illustration. Ha, NG, that is conveying exactly the opposite message than you think.
And, both the ‘scientists’ conducting the experiment were middle-aged women of color, one of them pregnant, but both had kept their figures, which we know always happens in real life, and both were wearing sensible shoes. No, I’m not posting a copy of any such thing.]
My research was concerning diet. I feel the human system has already diversified by itself, based on how the Incas can breathe the shallow air at altitude. If that can happen, the food supply has a much more immediate effect on evolution. The evidence bears me out. People who eat rice are better at digesting it. Inhabitants of the tropics have evolved to less salt in their perspiration. Eskimos can digest whale fat and Japanese can live on seaweed. Look what happens to first-generation Polynesians when they start eating at McDonalds. And what about lactose-tolerance and digesting wheat? It’s either diet affecting genetics or the other way around—without necessarily waiting for evolution to catch up.
As for the Olympics, there was another quip (Wolpoff) in the same article that, taken out of context, could explain why some races excel at certain sports. If you [were born with enough brains to] learn how to ride a horse, does it matter if you can run fast? Ominously, the same source points out that the purpose of HARPA and DARPA is not help people, but to design the super-weapons of the future.
Cowboy funeral.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I dunno. The rehearsal today was nearly great. The extra hours put in last Sunday had an immediate good effect. Now known as the Sunday music lab. There are still rough edges but we got through all kinds of material in good shape. While still behind schedule, the progress was remarkable. I’m not saying the source of the delay has been found or corrected, only that giving orders rather than making requests has accelerated pace back to normal. What’s more, the stumbling blocks are becoming more recognizable to me, for I had to break the same habits. It’s maddening, the brain says play it like so but the hands just will not obey.
Sure, I’ll give you a description of the strum, though in the form of instructions. There are two of them, actually. They are played in carefully rehearsed situations which may not match your needs. Consider the two strums as opposites. First, listen to generic Charlie Daniels and Waylon Jennings. They are the same, but different sounding musical phrases. Daniels is just perceptibly smoother, playing each phrase and starting it over again. Jennings is less technical and after the first phrase, begins to tack the ending of that phrase more onto the beginning of the next one. If you listen to ‘Long Haired Country Boy’ and ‘Good Hearted Woman’ with a critical ear now, you’ll hear the difference. It is subtle, but I’ve latched on to them for this project.
What happens is I’ve developed a bass line that syncopates into the spaces of those two guitar licks to produce a “super country” sound. Now comes the comical part. The strum and bass are learned separately, I insist both parties learn both parts. Why? Because when you put them together, it is rare to go more than a few measures before somebody messes up. When the laughing dies down, you go at it again and again because that is how important it is. Although we did not get through an entire song with it during this rehearsal, the sound is there and now she solidly acknowledges this is the single most valuable facet of what we are doing.
So the great news is the music lab works, we are back on track. It’s going to take a few more hours to get this combo sound adapted for most songs on our list. What was best was after hours of failure we went back and applied it to tunes she was desperately struggling with. And what a difference! Wow, what a sound. Yes, we made mistakes in every one, but the germ of the concept is there and will take over. Absolutely no solo guitarist can come close now, and that is precisely what I had planned. To glean the highest paying gigs away from solo guitar acts, if not to outright shunt aside the worst of them.
For the record, there is still plenty of work ahead and I do not think the problem is totally gone. Because the strum was so easy as to be tricky, we only practiced it in one key, namely G. So when we went through the list, it was only the tunes in G. ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Six Days On The Road’, and so on. But the improvement was beyond impressive. Note that the default strum is just a default. We already have a good southern swing and an acceptable Blues shuffle. This time, we are working on moving as far away from comping as she can get. Read my lips, "No comping."
Check back after next Sunday.
ADDENDUM
Back to the sketch book, there is a wasted space above the window in my washroom that might be an alternative to running a fan vent through the roof. If I box it in, there is enough space to run the vent out the side of the building, like a dryer. Anyway, once the sound wall is framed in, expect to hear about a lot of electrical wiring I’ll be getting into. A few tons of furniture and boxes remain to be shifted around. And I can’t find the tripod for my PA system. Next Sunday is scheduled for a dress rehearsal, including timing the setup and takedown of the equipment. I have the Behringer mixer, the one where the wall wart is heavier than the machine.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
