The Beastie Boys have a Flickr feed where they post pics from the road as they tour with their new album, The Mix-Up, a funky all-instumental disc.

Check it here 

The marine biologist used a system of onshore solar panels and a pedal-powered generator to create electricity and recharge his water-proof laptop computer.

He kept an algae garden to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen for breathing.

A team of divers delivered food and drinking water to the sub through a manhole, including a homemade lasagna and freshly barbecued salmon.

For entertainment, Godson watched videos on his laptop and used a wireless Internet connection to communicate with schoolchildren around the world.

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So who killed the record industry as we knew it? “The record companies have created this situation themselves,” says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. While there are factors outside of the labels’ control — from the rise of the Internet to the popularity of video games and DVDs — many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels’ failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. “They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster — that was the moment that the labels killed themselves,” says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm. “The record business had an unbelievable opportunity there. They were all using the same service. It was as if everybody was listening to the same radio station. Then Napster shut down, and all those 30 or 40 million people went to other [file-sharing services].”It all could have been different: Seven years ago, the music industry’s top executives gathered for secret talks with Napster CEO Hank Barry. At a July 15th, 2000, meeting, the execs — including the CEO of Universal’s parent company, Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Corp. head Nobuyuki Idei; and Bertelsmann chief Thomas Middelhof — sat in a hotel in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Barry and told him that they wanted to strike licensing deals with Napster. “Mr. Idei started the meeting,” recalls Barry, now a director in the law firm Howard Rice. “He was talking about how Napster was something the customers wanted.”

Read More via Rolling Stone 

My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned because I couldn’t concentrate.

I studied a long time to become a doctor, but I didn’t have any patience.

Fancy yourself an aspiring rock star, but have no instrumental talent? That’s okay, thanks to this new gadget from Japan’s TakaraTomy.

The Air Guitar Pro starts out looking like the end of a guitar neck, but that’s where the resemblance ends. The rest of the guitar is nowhere to be found.

You play the Air Guitar by holding your fingers on chord buttons on the fretboard, and then strumming in the air. It works its magic by using infrared sensor in the neck of the guitar to detect your hand motions. While the battery-operated Air Guitar does have a built in speaker, you can also connect it to an external amplifier when you want to crank up the volume.

In addition to jamming out your own chords, the Air Guitar comes preloaded with ten tracks for beginners to play along with. Among the tunes: Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet), Walk This Way (Aerosmith), and Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple) among others.

Importer HimeyaShop is taking pre-orders now for $27 USD, and expects to start shipping them out around July 25.

(CBS) NEW YORK - Many people say there’s nothing like a cold beer on a hot day. But did you ever consider savoring a frozen beer? How about a frozen beer on a stick?

A chef in Washington, DC, is making what he calls a “hopsicle.”

The chef at Rustico’s says the frozen beer has been selling like, well, hotcakes.

He says that it started by accident when he put a beer in the freezer to get it cold quickly. Unfortunately — or in this case, fortunately — the brew froze solid.

He ended up eating it instead of drinking it (something that many of us have probably done, but have never tried to sell!).

Now, the restaurant patrons seem to enjoy the frozen treat, especially as the weather heats up.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

By Captain Beefheart. Remember……..By Captain Beefheart…………..mmkay?

1. LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.
2. YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.
3. PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn’t shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. WALK WITH THE DEVIL Old delta blues players referred to amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts demons and devils. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. IF YOU’RE GUILTY OF THINKING, YOU’RE OUT If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. NEVER POINT YOUR GUITAR AT ANYONE Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CHURCH KEY You must carry your key and use it when called upon. That’s your part of the bargain. Like One String Sam. He was a Detroit street musician in the fifties who played a homemade instrument. His song “I Need A Hundred Dollars” is warm pie. Another church key holder is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty making you want to look up her dress to see how he’s doing it.
8. DON’T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. KEEP YOUR GUITAR IN A DARK PLACE When you’re not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your guitar for more than a day, be sure to put a saucer of water in with it.
10. YOU GOTTA HAVE A HOOD FOR YOUR ENGINE Wear a hat when you play and keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a wet paper towel around it to make it grow.

According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s or even the early 80’s, probably shouldn’t have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren’t as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Do the make an adult version?

Click here to get the pattern.

So lately the wife and I have been watching alot of the A&E show “Intervention”. You know, the one where they film some whacked out meth head blowing people in the bushes for a nickle bag (is that what they call them?) and then trick them into an intervention. It’s kinda sad. Drug abuse is no joke. And it’s kinda sad that they film this persons f’ed up life for all to watch on T.V. “Who cares what happens as long as it’s good TV”.

I don’t know. Maybe the added pressure of the addict knowing that America is watching helps motivate them to stay in rehab. Of course it could also be the fact that they get sent to the best rehab places in America that the average person probably couldn’t afford.

Here is a place that is doing it right, and they are in my back yard. They are a michigan drug rehab called Stine Hawk. They are staffed by former addicts, and is in a beautiful resort like setting. I know I do alot of joking around here, but if you need help call them now at 1-888-227-9193.

I THOUGHT I was pretty good about energy conservation, but it turns out that I’ve been a bit of a hypocrite. I drive a reasonably fuel-efficient car, I work at home so I don’t use fuel to commute and I am replacing incandescent bulbs in my home with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs.

But I am also a prodigious computer user, and it looks as if that makes me an energy hog. I started checking how much electricity my electronics were consuming when I wasn’t using them. I used a Kill A Watt EZ energy meter (available online for about $25) and began measuring. My PC was continuously drawing 134 watts all night.

The more devices I checked, the worse it got. My TiVo digital video recorder was sucking down about 30 watts when it was not playing or recording a show. A Comcast digital cable set-top box made by Motorola that I tested was drawing about 40 watts. My DVD player was drawing 26 watts while idle, and my audio system — which I rarely turned off — was using 47 watts. This was in addition to the numerous power adapters and chargers, each drawing 1 or 2 watts, not to mention several other devices sipping energy to keep clocks running or to be ready to turn on at the push of a button.

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Safari for the PC?

Although I’m not too sure of this, I think I can see where this is heading, and it’s hard to argue with Steve’s track record.

So get this. The video above is from a new service called The News Room. They gather up news highlights from various genres and mash them up into a video that you can easily embed into your website or blog. In fact it took me less than 3 minutes to not only sign up for the free account, but to also find a video I wanted to embed and then get the code.

They have a buttload of subjects to choose from. You will find the expected like World News, Finance,Entertainment, etc. But you can also get more specific. So say you want a sports video - they got hundreds. But say you want a Hockey video, they got them too.

So the killer part of all this besides the ease, variety and free-ness of it, is that they will PAY you for impressions. You earn a share of the advertising revenue each time mashed news is viewed on your site. TheNewsRoom has an innovative, viral payment model that can earn you up to $4 per thousand impressions . You’ll also earn money when someone mashes content from your site and it is viewed on theirs.

So go ahead and click - you’re contributing to my new iPhone. Better yet, go sign up for your own account.

So I’m watching the local news last night - and this is the lead story. Happened in my backyard. I say to the wife that this is going to hit all the national news by tommorow…..and sure enough.

Video and 911 audio after the jump at bottom

Man in wheelchair takes ride on semi’s grill

PAW PAW — A young man has quite the story to tell after his wheelchair got lodged in the grill of a semi truck, which dragged the chair and the man inside for five miles down a road.

Muscular dystrophy forced Ben Carpenter, 22, of Alamo into a wheelchair eight years ago. He was on one of his twice-weekly outings, this time in Paw Paw around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

As he crossed Red Arrow Highway in front of a semi truck, he didn’t make the traffic light. The truck driver apparently didn’t see Carpenter and a collision occurred, causing the wheelchair’s handles to become lodged in the truck’s grill.

Carpenter remembers the sound. “Kind of like train cars coming together, something like that,” he told 24 Hour News 8.

Unable to hear Carpenter’s cries for help over the hum of the diesel engine, the truck driver continued down Red Arrow Highway at speeds of approximately 50 mph.

“It was fast, I know that. Faster than this chair was made to go,” Carpenter said.

“I was thinking, the cars keep going by and nobody bothered to stop.”

But they were calling 911.

The Michigan State Police Paw Paw Post and Van Buren County Central Dispatch began receiving strange reports of the situation. Police initially thought the report might have been a prank until they started receiving more calls.

Time was running out on Carpenter as the dark streaks on the road were marks left by the smoking tires on his wheelchair.

“I was probably thinking that this is going to keep going and not stop anywhere, 50 or 60 miles somewhere. What if I end up in South Haven? I mean, I would have been dead way before that.”

Luckily for him, the truck driver stopped five miles down the road at Ralph Moyle Trucking Company, which owned the truck.

“If I had gone any more miles, the tires would have been gone all the way,” Carpenter said.

When troopers arrived at the scene they discovered Carpenter unharmed and unfazed by the incident.

“I was happy. Thank God it was over,” Carpenter said. “I thought it was kind of like a fair ride. I don’t remember feeling any bumps though. I must have, but the road must have been pretty smooth.”

Police approached the driver and advised him of what happened. The driver did not believe them until he stepped out of the truck and saw Carpenter still sitting in the chair.

One trooper on the scene said, “You could work another 90 years in law enforcement and never see something like this.”

Everybody said they are just glad no one was injured.

Authorities say no charges will be filed.

–From WOOD TV 8

So holy crap I’m thinking. I’m sure someone has got to have camera phone video of this or something. Here is the video interview of the kid.
And here are the 911 calls that came in.

A KKK Grand Wizard has come out of the closet and announced that he is gay. He aims to bring all the gay Klansmen out of the closet so that they do not need to live in fear.

HaHaHaHoHoHo!

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