Hey Ervin! Nice soundhole!

Update: More cool panoramas, this time of Reunion Island, in the Indian ocean. Particularly these aerial ones, and especially sunrise on Maido Peak.

Outstanding full-screen QTVR photography of a medieval castle. Huge image files, but worth being patient. If you’re on a dialup you might not enjoy yourself.

This castle is one of UNESCO’s world heritage sites. And, of course, there are plenty of QTVR tours of other heritage sites, as well.

I got there via panoramas.dk, which features a new full-screen QTVR every week.

Searching for some obscure arcana, I managed to come across Fidelitarean. It’s a ‘blog that hasn’t been updated since Christmas of last year, but I thought I’d mention it since whoever created it included a track list of a compilation CD of 50 versions of ‘Caravan.’

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here, but I also made a compilation CD of a bunch of covers of Caravan, called ‘Endless Caravan,’ and had assumed I was the only one. My CD is only 12 tracks long, so I might have to change the title, since ‘endless’ is a relative term. However, in all of those 50 tracks, the other guy managed to miss this one: Belmonte And His Afro-American Music. Also the Medeski, Martin, and Wood version, but it’s not such a rarity and you should buy it anyway.

And no, Tej, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just lazy.

Oh, and for the curious:

Caravanesque 7:18 Jon Hassell Fascinoma
Caravan 3:32 Bunny Berigan, His Orchestra Sweet and Lowdown
Caravan 6:18 Duke Ellington Soul Call
Caravan 2:51 The Three Suns The History Of Space Age Pop – Mallets In Wonderland: Vol. 2
Caravan 3:21 Chet Atkins and Les Paul Chester & Lester
La Caravane 3:25 Jazz A Saint Germain & Brigitte Fontaine Jazz A Saint Germain
Caravan 3:01 Thelonious Monk
Caravan 3:34 California Guitar Trio Rocks The West
Caravan 2:40 Belmonte And His Afro-American Music Music For A Bachelor’s Den – Volume 3
Caravan 3:55 Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington
Caravan 5:16 Medeski Martin and Wood
Caravan 2:25 Brian Setzer Orchestra Vavoom

The Mic Shop in Nashville.

I love old microphones. In another life I was a recording engineer, and I love running across a site like the above, which features the Neumann U-47 at the top of the page.

I was lucky enough to work in a studio that had a couple of 47s, a 57, and a whole raft of 87s. I once joked that our projects were being engineered by Nazi Germany, but no one laughed. Ahem.

I came to that link while searching for Reactive Sound, which sells little tiny cheap microphones useable for bootlegging concerts. I’m interested because I’m about to buy a minidisc recorder, and need some stuff to plug into it.

Excellent overview and commentary about the Bush administration’s position on illegal torture.

It’s some harsh reading, but it just goes to show you: Some conspiracy theories are true.

What are the most important two things about your area of expertise?

Through the grapevine, I found out that my brother’s step-son wants one thing for his 18th birthday: To change his last name to my brother’s last name.

This makes me happy.

Music:

Duke Ellington, ‘Digga Digga Do,’ one of Duke’s clever arrangements from his time as the musical director at the Cotton Club. Honkin’ trumpet and a very, very cool soprano sax solo.

Consider: I can upload a file to a web site, and subsequently you can listen to music recorded 70+ years ago. Any music the young Duke would have heard from 70+ years previous (140+ years before today) would have been performed in front of him.

Earlier tonight I watched a documentary on Duke, produced in the mid ’70s in the cinema-verité style. Here’s Duke ordering breakfast in a hotel. Here’s Duke rehearsing with some musicians. Here’s Duke at a recording session… All this serves as a context in which, in a few candid moments, he explains that, for instance, his skill at being a piano player in the 20s came from watching other piano players. He’d observe them warming up the crowd in bars, playing something strange to get their attention, and then easing off to keep them locked in. He said it’s not so much what you play, as how you sit.

So listening to music from 70+ years ago from a web server, how’s your posture?

Making Light asks a good question, with some good answers in the comments section:

3. Given that (a.) anyone who has any expertise in intensive interrogation knows that tortured prisoners will tell you anything they think will get you to stop hurting them; and (b.) given that it’s a disastrously stupid move to plan your operations and allocate your resources on the basis of such worse-than-nothing “intel”; and (c.) given that we have a fair number of experts who know all those things who are working in our government and military who know all those things in detail, what do you suppose was the actual point of getting advance permission to torture prisoners?

This is in reference to the Bush administration’s insistence that the law doesn’t apply to it.

‘What?’ you say. ‘The Bush administration thinks the law doesn’t apply to it? That’s left-wing conspiracy nonsense!’ you go on. But you are wrong. The administration’s lawyer wrote a memo about this very thing. And recently, Attorney General John Ashcroft basically told off Congress on this very topic, as reported by the only news show that matters any more: The Daily Show.

Anyone want to go to the new Science Fiction Museum?