Twenty foot high on Blackpool promenade

I recently put together a two hour runner's playlist for a friend who is going for a half-marathon.

Then this week I decided I needed to put together a mood-shifter to reverse my negative mood of late. My go to for emotional connection with music is Manic Street Preachers, so here's an energy boosting mix of Manicness (I like the chronological order, so sue me). While these are all songs I love Faster is probably my favorite song of all time, though Condemned to Rock and Roll has a lyric that's almost as good and the riffs are stunning. I've been playing most of these on the acoustic off and on for a few years. I may even end up recording my own version if I get motivated. Lyrical excerpts ahead.

Motown Junk (single, 1991)

 Motown junk a lifetime of ...




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Posted on February 3, 2010 |  0 comments so far.
		
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The loneliness of the long distance runner

I recently put together a running playlist for a good friend who is training for a half marathon. Which I could never do. I wanted to have a mix of tempos but all pretty energetic with a variety of styles. After a warmup track it starts with some gritty guitar driven indie rock and transitions to R&B and hip hop with a focus on beat. The breather section is a bit lighter and brighter to help distract from the muscle pain. The final stretch is very anthem-ish to help push through to the end. Finally there is a cool down period to walk down to.

She said her young teen kids love the mix as well, referring to "Beat the my heart skipped" in particular as 'totally badass', 'not failcats' and 'beast'. I'm familiar with the phrase 'totally badass'. But the other two I've never heard before. ...

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The facts are with science

Items of interest in the world of science and skepticism:

For Good Reason, the new podcast from the James Randi Educational Foundation is hosted by none other than the erudite and insightful D.J. Groethe. He is a really great interviewer and one of the sharpest people in the skeptical movement.

Andrew Wakefield is officially a fraud. The man who created the modern anti-vax movement in order to try to get rich has been found guilty of fraudulent and unethical behavior by the General Medical Council. Wakefield failed to disclose multiple major conflicts of interest (e.g. he was trying to patent a competing vaccine, he was being paid by lawyers who were hoping to file class action suits against vaccine manufacturers) and not only engaged in poor research methodology (cherry picking his findings, hiring case studies out of the class action group) ...

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And if you've come this far mister maybe we're one and the same

Eric Michael Johnson has a nice memorial on Howard Zinn.

I have been a fan of Zinn since my freshman year of college. I was taking History 101, a required course. I'd always liked history, but not the history taught in school . I liked biographies, and adult history books where they explored the complexities and nuances of events and people rather than the jingoistic whitewash we were given in high school. I was dreading the class.

The first day he talked about all the housekeeping like syllabus, grading, attendance, etc. And then he said "Now, I know you're all 19 or 20 and you've had 12 years of history classes in school and you're thinking 'Why am I wasting my time going over all this again, I already know it all and it's boring.' Well, in this class we're going to ...

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Life in plastic, it's fantastic

Am I the only one who finds this incredibly inappropriate?




Also, does anyone know how to copy a picture directly from the iPhone to a server (e.g. ftp it or scp it rather than email it to myself, save it, and upload it). Yes, I know I should finish that moblogging interface. It hasn't happened yet. I've got a terminal app on the phone, I just don't know the path to the photos to be able to grab it and put it. And yes, if you think that doing work in the terminal on an iPhone sounds a bit too geeky then you're right.

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