Toys for Boys

My friend went and bought himself a toy. Take a peek at Bob's Corvette

Read the page and you'll see some rambling about male menopause and mid-life crisis. I dunno, I just don't get the whole sports car thing. My concept of a suitable toy vehicle is more along the lines of something like this or maybe something in red. All to be able to get to places where going up stuff like this or down things like this is required to get there. That means you get to see way cool landscapes.

Is that your face?

The web site for Needle Sports in the UK has a curious page: rocks that look like faces. Well worth a look at Needle Sports - Rockfaces

Having Trouble Keeping Score?

I know. At this point it's getting pretty difficult. Here's something to ease your tracking burden. Don't forget to look at the other time periods.
The Wage Slave Journal: George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil

But It's A Dry Heat

From the NPS Morning Report today...
Death Valley National Park
Heat-Related Fatality


The park had its third heat-related fatality and second within the month on Wednesday, August 28th. Brett Kedish, 32, of Budd Lake, New Jersey, began a hike to Stovepipe Wells sand dunes with his wife around 10 a.m. that morning. The air temperature in the shade was 113 degrees; ground temperatures exceeded 150 degrees. Kedish’s wife, feeling hot and tired, decided to return to their vehicle after about an hour. At 1:50 p.m. she reported him as overdue. Three hasty search teams went to high observation points around the dunes while park pilot Ed Forner and maintenance worker Ron Giblin searched from the air. Ranger Aaron Shandor saw a person meeting Kedish’s description walking about a mile from the Stovepipe Ranger Station. Within moments, he’d disappeared again. Shandor and ranger Kyle Nelson found his tracks in the sand and followed them for about 100 yards, where they found Kedish lying unconscious on the ground. Basic life support was begun. The two rangers were soon joined by resource management employees Tim Croissant, Jim Roche and Ryan Taylor. Roche ran the half mile back to the ranger station and got a vehicle, then drove to meet the others, who were carrying Kedish out on their shoulders. Kedish was taken to a waiting ambulance, driven by visitor use assistant Bruce Casper. Roche and Nelson continued rescue breathing while Kedish was driven to Furnace Creek. He was transferred to a waiting helicopter, then flown to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he died the next day due to heat exposure. Shandor was IC for the incident.
[Submitted by Kyle Nelson, Park Ranger]

A Benefit Concert

It's nice to see Provo playing host to good works like this.....Neil Young Organizes Free the Mormons Concert

Hold Your Nose

A "friend" pointed me to this site. The Stinkymeat Project (TheSpark.com) Why did I look at that site? Why did I look at it after a Mexican dinner? I'm still deciding whether or not to sign him up for 450 random magazine subscriptions.

What Year Is This?

I had to take a second look to make sure this wasn't from The Onion or SatireWire. In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail - Tech News - CNET.com

A New Skiing Toy!

Perhaps a novel commuting vehicle? What happens if it can't keep up with you and you pass it on a steep downhill?
ZAP! Electric Vehicles

A Million Dollar Contract

So last night Kelly won a "million dollar recording contract" by winning the American Idol competition. What does that really mean? Basically, Kelly will get nothing. If she's really lucky and the record is a huge hit, she'll probably get a chance to make her 2nd and 3rd albums, from which she might actually get to keep some money. Where does this math come from? During the Napster/piracy/infringement debates and handwringing, Courtney Love gave an impassioned speech decrying the actual economics of the recording industry and how musicians are basically shafted. The complete speech is well worth the time to read. Here's a paraphrased excerpt from the first page that outlines what happens to a 4 person band:

What happens to that million dollars?

$500,000 - cost of recording their album.
$100,000 - paid to their manager for 20 percent commission.
$25,000 - lawyer fees
$25,000 - business manager.
$170,000 - taxes
Leaving $180,000, which comes out to $45,000 per person. That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

Let's say the record is a big hit and sells a million copies.

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band. Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record. Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make? About $6.6 million. Read the full speech to see how.

Ouch!

Tragedy amazingly averted, thanks in no small part to the athleticism of the rider. Besides watching the playback (includes narration), make sure to listen to the three audio clips as well.
MSNBC: The Week in Pictures, Aug. 22 - 29