Bjork at the Olympics
Fantastic stuff. I did not watch much of this Olympiad, but wish I had seen this performance by Bjork. But even on the tiny screen she comes across beautifully. One of my favorite artists.
Treo 650 Pictures
Gizmodo has first pics of the new Treo!
Bluetooth – check
High Resolution screen – check
Totally Different Keyboard Backlighting System – check
Video Recording Built In – check
1.3 MP Camera – check
Where do I have to line up? Can I get one for the upcoming tour, please?
Montana Walking – Taking Requests cont.
This song title is not a reference to the state Montana, but the Mexican boot maker Montana. In 1994 we performed in Mexico City, in Guadalajara City and in Leon. We had a day off in Leon and were given a tour of the Montana boot factory and later in the day we visited the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato.
Two memories stand out:
At the Montana factory I was told I should pick out a pair boots for myself – a gift from the owners. Not wanting to grab a very expensive pair, and not liking the “louder” boots anyway, I selected a simple brown pair of boots that I thought were beautiful and practical. The owner of the company congratulated my on my selection and explained that this was actually one of their more expensive boots due to a new way to work the leather. Oops! I still have those boots. They fit perfectly and are very comfortable. They are a little more worn on one side from shifting my Harley.
While most faces at the Mummy Museum seem like normal death faces, there was one that looked quite horrific. Apparently the person had appeared dead and was burried – alive. The horror visible on the face was from the person coming to and trying to claw her way out of the grave, which was closed with bricks and mortar. I seem to remember it was a female corps and she had simply run out of air in that grave. All of her finger nails were broken. Aren’t you glad you asked, Eric?
Tricks of the Trade
Nurse:
Patients will occasionally pretend to be unconscious. A surefire way to find them out is to pick up their hand, hold it above their face, and let go. If they smack themselves, they are most likely unconscious; if not, they are faking.
via BoingBoing
Cruel, but effective… a list with a whole bunch of interesting tricks. I could have used the old potato trick before.
Victor
Nice work – looks like I only touched the tip of the iceberg! I think what the Google results show are sites that all display reviews from Amazon. Apparently since the review engine is web based some spammer figure out a way to automate entries into it. In fact this has been going on for at least a couple years because I found an entry from Oct. 2002 with the same title and text! What’s kind of funny is that it was for a Christmas album from “Jive Bunny” – whatever the heck that is! My point being that they didn’t even selectively target just “New Age” musicians – making their spam even more blatantly obvious!
Well, I don’t know anybody at Amazon but I sent a message through their “suggestion box” anyway. I asked them to both clean out the “reviews” in question and also not support artists who employ such tactics. I thought about writing to customer support at SoothingMusic.com, but, since it’s either them or their boy Mehdi who’s employing the spammers, I figured that’s just a piss into the wind at best.
No luck finding Mehdi himself either. Turns out that “Mehdi” is from Islamic theology meaning “divinely guided one”. (Ouch – don’t make me laugh so hard!!!)
Victor posted this comment and I busted out laughing. Thanks, man! Glad I have a simple name and not one like Mehdi, a name with so much potent meaning – that’s setting oneself up for failure, yes? I sent a message to amazon customer service as well and included my Google search with the exact phrase. I suggested adding a field called Suspected Spam underneath each Customer Review.
I am also wondering about this: couldn’t amazon have a flag pop up whenever the exact same headline is used more than, say 5 times in any Customer Review? Then they could investigate and quickly figure out whether that was spam.
