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Archive for August, 2009

Disney buys Marvel!

Until not many years ago I would have thought the headline “Disney buys Marvel Comics” was a joke. But today, incredibly, it’s true.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/31/financial/f061010D47.DTL&tsp=1

3 comments August 31st, 2009

Richard Egan’s right to die

Richard Egan, co-founder of data storage technology leader EMC2, was a Republican fundraiser and a friend of Dick Cheney. Diagnosed in May with advanced lung cancer, a couple of days ago Egan killed himself with a shotgun.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/20608388/detail.html

Richard Egan, 73, was inside his Four Seasons condo on Boylston Street when he killed himself in a closet. His wife and visiting nurse were in the home at the time and heard the gunshot.

As a noted Republican, Richard Egan had a perfect opportunity to step forward and proclaim his right to die with dignity, and denounce the lies about the proposed health care legislation having a provision calling for “death panels.” He didn’t do that, but I think somebody should.

10 comments August 30th, 2009

Not my week

Work has been totally clobbered this week by a major outbreak of the Conficker-A worm. It got hold of some valid Windows Domain credentials and wrecked havoc. I was at the office until nine tonight, and we’re nowhere near the end of dealing with this mess. The XP desktops were relatively easy to take care of — get rid of server service, run the removal tool, then enable Automatic Updates. The Windows 2003 servers were much tougher to clean up, because DHCP client and RPC were clobbered. I’m sure you’re fascinated by this. But I had to leave the fun tonight because I promised Bismo I’d meet him at a bar, where a couple of other guys from work were playing in a band with a buddy of theirs.

Speaking of getting clobbered, Bismo and I found ourselves as reluctant participants in a bar brawl! By the time the pile of lunkhead steroid users plowed into us, the two guys who were actually throwing punches were being held down by others, so for me it was only a matter of pushing back, which was surprisingly easy to do. But there was no avoiding becoming involved. The fight broke up, but only temporarily, when the two antagonists started going at it again, apparently at the urging of some woman who either looks older than she is, or is trying to look younger than she is. Once things heated up again, the cops were called, and before they arrived the troublemakers cleared out.

Add comment August 29th, 2009

Ted Kennedy Dead

I met him only once, with a 20-minute one-on-one interview eight years after Chappaquiddick, three years before he lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter. No matter what you may have thought of him as a man, I have to stay that Ted Kennedy was very impressive in person. As a senator he knew his stuff.


P.S. Ted didn’t lose the nomination, of course, in 1980. He dropped out of the running.


See comments for why I added this post to the Beatles category.

8 comments August 26th, 2009

Dylan went electric … when?

Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan, 1963
Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan, 1963, © Jim Marshall

Bob Dylan famously “went electric” at the ‘65 Newport Folk Festival, to a somewhat mixed response.

When I first heard the “Biograph” set in ‘85, which I got on LP before buying my first CD player, I was stunned by the pairing of these two songs.

“Mixed Up Confusion” was recorded in 1962. ‘62! With “Tombstone Blues” Dylan was just picking up where he’d left off nearly three years before. When I first heard this I felt as though Dylan hadn’t caught up to Folk Rock, but that he had, in fact, secretly invented it.

5 comments August 25th, 2009

Dylan the tourist

Back in May, it was reported that Bob Dylan joined a Beatles tour in England, and went essentially unnoticed, to see John Lennon’s boyhood home.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/8046278.stm

But that wasn’t the first time Bob Dylan visited the hometown of the Beatles. Here he is in Liverpool in 1966, only a couple of months before his motorcycle crash.

Bob Dylan, Liverpool, England, 1966
© Barry Feinstein

5 comments August 23rd, 2009

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