chandra

It looks very cool. As others have pointed out, it is the flash based replacement for the Mini and should find more uses like jogging and exercising. I was hoping that Apple would come up with an iPod with removable flash storage. Those prices are falling and I can add more capacity if I want to... but otherwise it sounds like Apple once again excelled in design and beat its flash competitors to the market in terms of slimness and weight/gig.

The real interesting thing about this kind of obtuse lyrics is, there is no way to critique good obtuse stuff and bad obtuse stuff as long as it is sufficiently obtuse. Ghostface is right in one sense that this is no different from other abstract art, good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. Articles on philosophy tend to be very ununderstandable and frequently contains a string of words only a few people understand. Taking advantage of that, someone wrote a computer program that constructed sentences from frequently used words and it was hilarious. A fun thing to do would be to have a software program write obtuse rap lyrics and see how many people think it is great art!! I can take a shot at that if you all can give me a good list of words...

Nostalgia can only take you so far If you want personality, seek out and watch what happened between Coria and Massu today. You may not like what Coria puts out as personality but he sure has personality!! Then there is this girl Vaidisova who threw some temper tantrums yesterday and everyone is down on her big time. What she did was immature but think about this. When Johnny Mac threw some tantrums, he was glorified for that and he had since cashed in on that. But a girl shows some spunk, however immature, she is a bitch.

Agreed Dan. I am very much with Blake. I knew about his story and I am so glad he has brought himself to the level of reaching atleast the quarter finals of the U.S. Open. Let us see what he does against Agassi. I am looking forward to that match. I am rooting for Blake.

I was not making that point and I agree that not everyone can rap. But, if I consider just the act of rapping ( and not the background music or beats or lyrics ), I can't tell a good rapper from another one a notch below. A friend of mine tells me that Eminem is super great because he can rap with lyrics that don't even rhyme. And I guess another criteria is how many words you can actually fit in a few beat intervals. I am not a rap hater. I will characterize myself as 'rap can't-relater'. I think I understand in theory what you mean by the representation of rap, but would you agree that vast majority of the popular rap lyrics out there are gutter level women-hating stuff, that is what defines rap today? Thanks. This is what I was trying to glean as to where the appeal for rap is. I agree that 'having a few good things to say and finding creative ways to get them across' is not easy and I may appreciate that creativity. Can you cite some examples of such lyrics? I did not know that rappers invent new and original beats. Some of what I hear sound very catchy ( even 50 cent ) and I thought they sample existing music through the production process. I like beats and I am a sucker for the hook that a catchy beat creates. Like the point you made 'having to say something interesting and finding a creative way to say that', I would like to know if there are other attributes in the actual act of 'rapping' and the background music where one can discriminate between good and not so good. I can't really spend lot of time to investigate thoroughly but I would be interested in getting some recommendations of what is considered good rap whose lyrics don't use racist overtones or demeaning women.

Can I ask an admittedly dumb question? If rap is a combination of street smart lyrics plus fast spoken word, what distinguishes good rap from bad rap? What I am thinking is, there are obviously people outside of the rap artist scene who can write kick-ass lyrics along the same vein, and there are rappers who can rap many words a second, and there are producers dime a dozen who can sample someone else's song as a background, if you combine these three, it should be a no-brainer to come up with a damn good sounding rap song, isn't it? I am not trying to simplify the making of a rap song, but there does not seem to be much 'music' there. It is obviously a rhetorical question, but the real question in my mind is, if the above is not that far from the truth, how does one discriminate between a good rap song and a bad one? Is Kanye considered good because his lyrics are not gutter-level crap that other rappers employ? If that is the criterian, then there are thousand others who can write lyrics that are better than the gutter level crap. So there has got to be more than that to consider Kanye to be better than others. May be, there is a completely different gestalt at play here, like street-cred, which I don't know much about.

I am new to Jazz and am still learning to be a good listener. Based on what I have listened and learnt so far, I have the following reaction and I would like to know what you think of that. Given that the soul of Jazz is in improvisation and that too harmonic improvisation, instrumental jazz fits that well. Vocalists can improvise on the melody but can they improvise on the harmony? ( I don't know ). If they can't, then to me what we call as Vocal Jazz is sort of a different discipline. At a gut level for this novice listener, when I listen to NPR late evening Jazz, when they play an instrumental piece followed by a vocal piece, they sound quite different. Not that they sound completely unrelated but the instrumental Jazz right sounds like 'Jazz' where as with a vocal piece, I need to hear the instrumental sections to kick in to sound like 'Jazz'. Again, it may just be me. This is not to say my preference is instrumental jazz over vocal jazz. Piano solos are too abstract for me to appreciate and enjoy but if I had heard a vocal version of the same melody before, then I have found myself enjoying that piano solo a lot better. My question then is: If vocal 'jazz' is different enough in the improvisional context specifically, given that is a significant thing that defines Jazz, then does it qualify to be categorized under Jazz? If they belong in the same category, what is common between them, musically, to justify that.

Dear Paco: Nice composition and performance. Thanks.

Fungus May Be Having Sex Among Us http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=...avingsexamongus Do men taking Viagra have more asthma because of this?

LOL. Thanks Paco. It has got to be the sound system I found other hilarious stuff at the chilloutzone... here is another short one.. http://www.chilloutzone.de/files/05071303.html

Not sure if this has been posted here already... Japanese style make out interruptus.. sneaky guy with a camera spoiling other's fun at a makeout spot ( I think... ) http://www.chilloutzone.de/files/05062803.html

When Hewitt or Roddick play somebody else, I think who could beat these guys, they are so good. But when they play against Federer, they are reduced next to nothing. Federer's straight set victories against both of them should rank as one of the most dominant performances I have seen in a while. When I watch Federer, it looks like I am watching an artist rather than a player. He just rules the grass court. We are probably watching a great Tennis icon in the making.

That is got to be strange, to work with someone with a double life like that!! Was she open about that or just a secret the bandmates happened to know?

L. Ron Hubbard's autopsy showed that he was taking a psychotropic drug at the time of his death.

Right on!

Did you ask why, given its continued availability at less than half of that? That's the follow-up question! ← Yes and no reply yet. ← Rob replied: "if it is not widely available sooner or later it will sell for that price" He did not really answer my question, probably he does not want to. The implication is that he is just waiting for someone to bite...

Somewhere between Unlikely and Impossible. I think the effects are straightforward to calculate, if we know the speed and mass of the probe and speed and mass of the comets and the net momentum change after the impact. But there are some unknown quantities and that is why we have to skew it slightly towards 'unlikely'. For example, NASA does not know how much debris will fly off since they don't know how the matter of the comet is distributed ( figuring that out is part of the mission ). We can take solace from the fact that the collision is happening so far away from earth that even a change in orbital direction would not cause it to veer towards us. Atleast not right away. If I am wrong, I may not be alive to fess up to my misplaced faith in NASA

I took the time to read through Hayakawa's analysis. In addition to getting a true picture of scientology and its idiocy, I can't help compare it to Freud's psychoanalysis and his theory of the mind non-science and how that was tolerated by academicians for such a long time. I wish Hayakawa made that comparison to the extent it made sense. The Freudians and Scientologists have one similarity: They believe in it because it sometimes works. As Hayakawa clearly states, that does not necessarily mean these techniques caused the improvement. One thing that idiots like Tom Cruise exploit is that modern psychology and psychiatry operate under the umbrella of 'experimental science' without a sound and well established theory of the brain/mind. So, to some extent, they also fall under the category: 'it is considered a sound practice because it works without knowing exactly why it works.' This is true of psychiatric medicines as well. The scientists have hypotheses that chemical imbalances cause psychosis but they themselves admit they don't know the mechanisms of how the imbalance causes these problems. That is the hole these morons exploit to slam these medicines. But atleast these medicines are tested in double-blind studies to eliminate the plecebo effect ( which is what Scientology and Freudians techniques take advantage of ).

or Tom Cruise

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=...sc/comet_buster The story is about the Deep Impact spacecraft launching a probe to put a hole through the Tempel 1 comet and then standing by at a safe distance to take and send pictures of the impact before being destroyed by the debris 15 minutes later.... Cool stuff!! ---------- The real action starts in the early morning of July 3 (Eastern time) when the spacecraft separates, releasing an 820-pound copper probe called the "impactor" on a one-way trip straight into the path of the comet. During the next 22 hours, mission control at Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena will steer both craft toward Tempel 1. Two hours before the July 4 encounter, the impactor kicks into autopilot, relying on its self-navigating software and thrusters for the rest of the journey to steer toward the sunlit part of the comet's nucleus so that space and Earth-based telescopes can get the best view. Meanwhile, the spacecraft — with its high-resolution camera ready — will veer out of harm's way some 5,000 miles away, as it stakes out a ringside seat for recording the collision. The spacecraft will make its closest flyby minutes after impact, approaching within 310 miles.

I just saw the 2nd set replay on NBC. Craybas played a tight game but Serena was all over the place, some brief moments of brilliance but just way too many unforced errors. It is just unwatchable for me to see Serena cry in the post match interview. I am sure she is disappointed but I did not think it was 'cry worthy'. May be that is because she is not used to losing this early.. but still weird. On the other hand, hearing the Craybas story of being a journey woman for 9 years in professional tennis and getting her first breakthrough at 30+ age was great. And it was great to see her genuinely happy reaction... Craybas's next match is against Venus. I like Venus's game and it is really Venus' match to lose but I am going to root for the underdog.

Did you ask why, given its continued availability at less than half of that? That's the follow-up question! ← Yes and no reply yet.

As you would have heard by now, she is out of Wimbledon... S. Williams (4) lost to J. Craybas 3-6, 6-7

Rob from Harvey Auctions confirmed by email that the price is indeed $39.99 .