I must thank my friend Copernicus for reminding me of MuteMath’s recent release of their new music video for Spotlight off their Spotlight EP.  It was release last week and is a marvelous video for marvelous music.  I personally love how MuteMath in their videos like to do things that kind of mess with the flow of time, their videos are simple and not too fancy but very entertaining and make you wonder how they did it.  They also don’t detract from the fantastic music.  I would highly recommend all their music to you, as Copernicus would put it, their style is “electro-synth-jam-improv-soundscape rock” and is amazing, as are their live shows which are incredibly energetic and well done!  Check them out.

MUTEMATH - Spotlight

Here is their first music video for their song “Typical,” it to is a wonderful song and music video.

This is a sweet video about the making of Typical.

Enjoy,

Hopps

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Tea Party!

Today, April 15th, is the dreaded day of the year on which you must have sent in your income tax returns or have filed for an extension.  However, on this day in 2009 there will also be a large number of “Tea Parties” across the nation that have been organized to protest the rampant spending and taxing by the Federal Government.

The idea of a Tea Party and what sort of kickstarted this all is the rant by Rick Santelli on the Chicago trading floor in February live on CNBC.  He was talking of the Feds using the bailouts to rewards bad decisions and greed and he mentioned teh original Boston Tea Party that was a protest of the British taxing shipping and Tea in the colonies, partly to help the foundering East India Company.  He said we need to have another Tea Party, more or less figuratively, but the idea took off and there were numerous “Tea Parties” around the shortly thereafter where people gathered and often dumped tea into rivers and had peaceful protests.

A large effort has been made to combine efforts and “Tea Parties” all aroudn the nation on April 15th, Tax day.  This is largely being headed up by the AFA and their Taxed Enough Aready(TEA) Party initiative.  They are currently scheduled to happen in over 2,000 cities today around noon.  The actual parties though are all grassroots organizers.

ACORN, the infamous community group that is under scrutiny for massive voter fraud in the last elections, is also helping organize rallies on the same day in support of President Obama’s budget; they deny that they are going to try to interrupt the Tea Parties.  Most Tea Party organizers aren’t worried though.  Story

Anyways, I would encourage you to check it out.  If you are interested you can find one in your area by going to http://www.teapartyday.com/.  If you believe in it, even if you think it won’t be hardly noticed or make any difference, still attend!  If you are only talking about it you will make even less difference!  Remember though, this is a peaceful protest, as citizens have the right to have their voice heard, but they don’t need to be violent and disruptive.

I must say it would be pretty neat if this ended up being really big! :-D

Hopps

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Somali Pirate Incident

As you are probably aware if you have been following the news at all there was an American ship off the Eastern coast of Africa that was attacked by Somali pirates last week.  The pirates boarded and then the crew fought them off for awhile.  Eventually the Captain gave himself up as a hostage so crew could go free.  The captain was held hostage in a lifeboat surrounded by the US Navy for nearly 5 days before being rescued when his life was deemed in immediate danger and Navy snipers took out 3 of the pirates while one had already surrundered earlier for medical treatment after his hand, which had been wounded inthe inital vessel capture, had become infected.  The goal was not to kill the pirates, but to capture them unharmed as was made abundantly clear numerous times.  However, if Captain Phillip’s life was in danger they were authorized, by President Obama, to use lethal force.  The pirates were being very threatening to Phillips, one of them pointing their weapon at him and they were talking very aggressively so the order was given to the SEAL snipers to shoot the pirates.  They made 3 shots that were quite precise taking all 3  out.

A couple comments:

• Though I overall I disagree with a great many of President Obama’s policies and ideals, I think he made the right decision in this instance and I applaude him for that.  I personally was afraid he might pull a Carter and sort of commit, but not really, and cause a huge gaff.  However, he made a firm decision to use force to protect an American citizen and American shipping interests, interstingly the last time America attacked maritime maruaders was when Thomas Jefferson ordered the Marines to attack the Barbary Pirates at Tripoli in the early 19th century(Which ended up turning out well).
• I also am happy that, at least apparently, the way things were done the Navy was given authorization and allowed to make their own decision without to much meddling from “higher-ups”.
• There tend to be fewer ships flying an American flag, even if crewed by Americans and owned by an American company, than many other countries because of a large number, possibly excessive though I am not well versed in these things, of regulations and such that are costly and take a lot fo time.  This however is one very good reason to be flying an American flag, you have the United States Navy far more readily available and likely to help when things go wrong.
• This alone is by no means going to stop the pirate action along the Somali coast, that would require a mixture of more forces and a stable government in Somlia to crack down on the land that has been lawless for two decades and to allow for legitimate business operations so the people can support themselves.
• While it may not stop all pirating and attacks, I think this is very important to show that America means business and will fight to protect her shipping interests and citizens and that you don’t mess with America if you want to live.  It is that respect that has helped America in her wealth over the years.  This is also an extremely heavy factor in why the U.S. Dollar is the international currency that people and nations invest in when they want something that is incredibly stable and safe(or at least has been in the past).  The military might(and willingness) along with a stable economy and stable government are things that have made the U.S. Dollar accepted worldwide for years, hopefully that might continue though I fear that may not be the case.
• I think this ties in very closely with the War on Terror.  It was absolutely necessary to do something after 9/11 to show that you can’t blatantly attack America and get away with it, unfortunately through many things from many sides, that I will by no means attempt to discuss here, it has drug on for a long time and will probably still take some time to finish out in Iraq and Afghanistan satisfactorily.
• There is now talk of possible plans for more military action in the region, possibly helping the current Somali government.  While the violence there is bad, and might need military ships guarding things, I think any sort of broad military operation would not be good right now.  Besides the fact the military can’t handle it since they are stretched thin over Afghanistan and Iraq, partly because of huge budget cuts in the 90s, I don’t think the American public would like it, and it would turn into a long term commitment to help stabilize and rebuild the government that we honestly don’t need more of right at this time.

So those are some thoughts on this recent International incident that has so far ended happily and hopefully will not cause a large escalation in violence in that region.

For more information regarding the Somali pirate incident you can Google it or here are a few articles I found real quick:

Somali Pirate article from the LA Times.

Additional force in the area.

Hopps

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World of Goo

Over the past few months I have been kind of participating in an online game of sorts calledMacHeist.  It is a website that has different puzzles and missions that allow you to win free software.  At the end they have a bundle deal for $39 that has a ton of software worth like $900.  Anyways, I bought it and have been playing a game that came with it called World of Goo.  It is quite a fun and rather addicting game where your goal is to assemble structures out of the balls of goo that stick together to get to a pipe at the end of the puzzle where you have to have a certain number left over to get sucked in.  Here are a few screenshots of that game.

Granted it does look a little crazy, but it is a lot of fun.  The guy who made this started with the website ExperimentalGameplay which has a lot of free basic games that are fun to play.  Each was made in one week by one person, it started as a project for a graduate level computer science class at Carnegie Mellon University.

Another application that I got in the MacHeist bundle is called KineMac.  It is essentially a smaller version of Apple's Motion software, a 2D/3D animated graphics application.  I don't have much time right now, but I'm hoping this summer when I am just working a job that I can get some time to play around with it and post some stuff.

This may not have been a very exciting post, but I wanted to post something and I couldn't think of much.  So this is what I posted.

Hopps

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Music Blog-Copernicus

Music is an interesting and fascinating part of life.  It is something very unique to humans and is truly amazing in the way it can affect and touch the human soul and emotion.  There are so many different types and styles of music, some good, some bad, some different, some unique.  I personally have many different tastes and preferences concerning music, I try to have a broad taste in music, but keep it narrowed to good music.

The reason I am mentioning this is a friend, Copernicus, has started a very nice music blog called Copernicus the Music Connoisseur.   He typically posts a song of the week covering different varieties and tastes of music, but always "good music."  He will also occasionally post other things and information he feels is pertinent.  He is far more skilled in the world of music than I am so I would encourage you to check it out.  He is also in my site list on my blog sidebar.

Hopps

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