While in Seattle, I stopped by Pike Place Market and snapped a few pictures. Then, on my way back to the ferry there was a protest going down 1st Ave. There were numerous police escorts to block traffic for the protesters who were against the war in Afghanistan.

Here are my pictures of the day (click on the photo below to view the gallery):

On the way home, I stopped by Sagelands Winery, in Yakima, for some wine tasting. As luck would have it, they were doing some barrel tasting, too.

On Religion

This book is a collection of works by Marx and Engels with regard to religion. That in itself is enough for me to pick it up, but what really piqued my interest was this:

Printed in the USSR

I appreciate the historical value of this work; a book written by the authors of the Communist Manifesto, and printed in the Soviet Union.

Nice venue, great setlist and good beer.

Try to learn a language?

Look at everything as if it were the first time – critically evaluate an object?

Develop new physical abilities?

Discover what a food that you’ve never had before tastes like?

Today is my daughter’s first birthday. Watching my child go through her first year is a reminder to me that there is so much to life, so much to learn and experience. It’s important not to get caught up in the day-to-day paying of the bills; we shouldn’t forget what it means to be human and to live life to the fullest.

Here is Maya at one year:

This exhibit featured art from the revolutionary war era and included several works by John Trumbull. One of the pieces on display was Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence:

This image can also be found on the reverse side of the $2 bill:

What I find most impressive about Trumbull’s art is that he did much research to capture the likeness of virtually every person depicted in the scenes of his art.

In order to dramatically increase my contribution to the Folding@Home project, I built a new computer that will be dedicated for this function.

Here are the geeky details:

• CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9600, 2.3Ghz
• Motherboard: MSI K9A2 Platinum
• Memory: Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB)
• Power Supply: Corsair 750w
• Hard Drive: Seagate 80GB
• Video: 4 MSI Nvidia 9800GTs
• Case: Thermaltake Spedo w/9 120mm fans

The reason for the 4 video cards is that the system will use them as co-processors; the CPU will feed the video cards massive amounts of data to crunch.

Each card is achieving about 390 GFlops, giving the system a total of 1.5+ TeraFlops.

Pictures:

Unless you live under a rock, you no doubt know that congress has passed legislation to bail out the financial institutions.

At this point, I’m not sure if we all just witnessed a train wreck, or a new New Deal. Knowing the U.S. government, it will probably just end up being a New Train Wreck.

My wildly popular questioning attitude leads me to one of the more fundamental questions about this situation: Is government intervention really required?

If there is any poetry to be had within this situation it is the long held believe by most conservatives that we should all let the free market take its course. After all, it will correct itself. Those same conservatives are now voting for government intervention. Now, that doesn’t mean they were wrong. On the contrary the current state of things proves that the market is self correcting; unsustainable business practices won’t, as the adjective implies, last. The irony, then, is that the free market conservatives were right all along, yet they chose to go against the free market values they have been promoting for years.

So, in typical government fashion, the tax payers will give a lot more money to the companies that couldn’t manage their own funds. Also typical, there won’t be any oversight, or any provisions to address the root cause of the situation we’re in. So, apparently, it doesn’t matter how we got here. What matters is that we slap a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage and hope for the best.

While my sarcasm could easily be interpreted as me being against any government intervention, but that wouldn’t necessarily be true. Government intervention has the potential to stave off disaster for millions of people. What’s lacking with the legislation is the following:

• Proper oversight
• Addressing the root cause of the problem
• Thorough transparency for the new investors – taxpayers
• Ensuring that the people who brought on this mess don’t profit from it

Since the approved bill doesn’t address any of these, I can’t be for it.

If you’re interested in seeing how your elected representatives voted, please click on the links below:

Senate – Roll Call No. 212 – $700 Billion Economic Recovery Rescue Bill

House – H. R. 1424 – Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

For a thorough analysis of the situation, I recommend watching this video from the Bill Moyers Journal

Specifically, I’m referring to the Film Score subcategory of soundtracks.

Take a moment and think about one of your favorite movies. Now, try to imagine it without any music. No doubt, after careful reflection, you will conclude that virtually any film will lose at least some of its quality or drama when not accompanied with music.

Also, it might be worth noting that the historical relevance of soundtracks can be traced back to stage plays, dances and operas. Without these scores, a good amount of what we today call classical music would not exist.

So, the next time you’re watching a movie, pay particular attention to how the music makes, or breaks a scene.

Here is s sample of my favorite movie score from The Fountain, by Clint Mansell: