Not actually a consistent feature of Duenos, This Week In Ridiculous Bands chronicles some of the more absurd, yet awesome, music groups to grace this fine planet. This installment features the notable bellowing of the hardcore Shakespearean band creatively titled (surprise!) Bardcore.
http://www.myspace.com/bardcore also mentions the fact that they are more than willing to play at your next BDSM club gathering--but you might be able to convince them to play at your beloved English major's graduation party as well.
Image courtesy of the amazing webcomic "Married to the Sea":http://www.marriedtothesea.com.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
House M.D. – Medical Reviews
I recently became completely hooked on the show “House”, which in my mind is extremely fascinating for the medical puzzles that drive the plot (and come on, the personality of Dr. House is awesome). The blog “Polite Dissent”:http://www.politedissent.com/ chronicles the veracity of medical elements in popular media, including television and comics.
In particular, the blog features some excellent “reviews”:http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html of the medicine practiced by the misanthropic Dr. House and his overly attractive group of doctors. Given the reviews it seems that, in general, the show does a reasonable job of featuring accurate medicine (though it most certainly remains a work of fiction).
VideoVets: interviews with veterans
http://moveon.org have teamed up to create a 30-second TV spot focusing on "bringing the troops home" from Iraq. The project, called "VideoVets":http://pol.moveon.org/videovets/ will be composed by Stone, himself a veteran, from the most popular interview voted on by the viewing public. My personal favorite interview is with Sgt Sam Schultz of the Indiana National Guard. When he arrived in Iraq, he was given a white Chevy pickup truck as his primary fighting vehicle which he later modified to carry a machine gun in the bed. Says Sgt Schultz: "It's important to end this war, because we are the wrong people to fight this war... we're doing more harm than good."
Thanks to the folks at “Truthdig”:http://www.truthdig.com/ for their “article”:http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/stone_moveonorg_join_forces/ about this project.
Watching from the skies
Caracas law enforcement officials, hoping to lower their world’s worst crime rates, have bought 3 mini-airships equipped with cameras to look down on the city. The 50-ft long (15 m) vessels will be operated by remote control from a brand-new zeppelin command center in downtown Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Apparently to further to deter crime, the floating camera platforms will be painted with phrases like “We watch over you for your security” in red letters. Big Brother references aside (it’s just too easy) maybe this will actually help the city to overcome its horrendous public safety records. The murder rates were so high that the government apparently stopped publishing the records last year.
More about the zeppelins at “the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6576413.stm. The picture is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Budgeting for Your New Job
If you’re nearing graduation and about to step into the work force, changing your job, or just plain curious of the available salaries out there, then try “Salary.com”:http://www.salary.com. This site gives you the median salaries of the jobs you’re interested from the place (zip code) you specify. If that’s still not enough for your budgeting purposes, use “this calculator”:http://www.surepayroll.com/calculator/calc_paycheck_netpay.asp to enter in information like your salary, deductions, and some other (clearly defined) stuff to get a rough estimate of your take home pay. For my whopping salary, the after tax estimator was only $50 off. Still not enough? With some quick info entered into turbotax (“here”:http://turbotax.intuit.com/tax_help/tax_calculators/tax_estimator.jhtml) you can generate an estimated tax return. If it works out that you’re just not making enough, learn the best ways “to get promoted”:http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Get-Yourself-Promoted&id=500734, “how to switch fields”:http://www.jobprofiles.org/library/guidance/switch-careers.htm or, contrarily, “how to get fired”:http://careerplanning.about.com/od/workplacesurvival/a/get_fired.htm.
Microsoft to offer Windows cheaply to developing nations
Despite Microsoft’s “criticisms”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/16/gates_hundred_dollar_pc/ of the 100 dollar PC that was being developed for denizens of developing nations, the megacorporation will begin to produce a special version of Windows to be sold for as low as three dollars.
This version, known as the Student Innovation Suite, contains the bare bones features of Windows XP, Microsoft Office, math tools, and other basics. This version will be targeted towards middle and low income families as determined by the World Bank by 2008. Read more about it “here”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/19/microsoft_windows_xp_starter/.
First aquanaut emerges from two weeks of underwater living
Lloyd Godson, an Australian marine biologist with the “BioSUB project”:http://www.biosub.com.au/ has been living underwater for two weeks. His home was this “underwater room”:http://www.biosub.com.au/Down%20under.htm fully-equipped with internet access, an electricity-generating exercise bike and an algae farm. Some of the stuff on board was pretty innovative, including the “‘biocoil'”:http://advbio.cascadeschools.org/Biocoil.html photosynthetic bioreactor developed by a high school in Idaho. From what I can gather, the point of the experiment was to show how people can create sustainable ecosystems underwater and live without bringing all their gases/needs with them. Now this is me thinking out loud, but could this be the key to living in similarly hostile environments like space?
There are a lot of interesting things to learn about this, so start out by reading this “TreeHugger post”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/man_underwater.php about the project before it started and “this one”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/man_resurfaces.php about the end of it. There’s also this “short report”:http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1900699.htm from ABC Australia.
Another problem with Ethanol
I’ve never been a big fan of ethanol-fueled cars because our system of growing commodity corn, the source of all ethanol, is so drenched in petroleum-based fertilizers and herbicides that I don’t think it actually changes our dependence on oil. As it turns out, there are other reasons to not immediately embrace ethanol, it makes our air less clean. According to a recent study out of Stanford, the air pollution effects of ethanol vs. gasoline emissions are actually worse and would cause more smog-related illnesses and deaths. There’s more on this “here”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_on_he_me/ethanol_health_risks;_ylt=AlksYcHSz0fQmP.hn.zzG7Ws0NUE or you can just read the report (“PDF”:http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_he_me/storytext/ethanol_health_risks/22684790/SIG=121piiffo/*http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf).
Ontario bans incandescent bulbs
They won’t be completely eliminated until 2012, but the legislation promises to save Ontarians six million megawatt hours per year, enough power to run 600,000 homes. It looks like the future will be full of CFLs, and no, I don’t mean the “Canadian Football League”:http://www.cfl.ca/.
More about the move (and a good look at the alternatives to incandescent bulbs) at “treehugger”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/ontario_governm.php and a more detailed/boring “piece”:http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2007/18/c6405.html at Canada Newswire.
Introducing Brian Giera
It’s always a good day when I can say that we’ve added a writer to the Duenos staff. Brian is a thoughtful, intelligent, and creative guy who promises to put a lot of interesting content out here on the site. For a number of years, Brian has been in and out of the corporate world while studying chemical engineering and working for a national additives company. His perspectives on American culture, the economy, and almost everything in between will be sure to produce some great articles and and I for one am very excited to read his posts.
Check out his “bio”:http://duenos.net/brian to learn more about Brian and be sure to check in regularly for his contributions.