Folds. . .

. . . Ben Folds . . .


(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Folds)
". . . Ben Folds eventually got a music publishing deal with Nashville music executive Scott Siman who saw Folds open for musician Marc Silvey (as well as playing bass for Silvey's band Mass Confusion), and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue it in 1990. He played drums for a short stint in Jody's Power Bill, headed by Millard Powers, Will Owsley, and Jody Spence. Jody's Power Bill was later renamed The Semantics. Folds did not take a creative role in the band. He, again, attracted interest from major labels. He ended up playing drums there as a session musician.

"In Nashville, I was running eight miles a day, hanging out with my friends, walking around eating chocolate-chip cookies and playing a lot of drums, which I enjoyed. Life was easy. I was never frustrated – even though I wasn't fulfilling my contract obligations. If you are failing in Nashville, at least your standard of living is nice. Nashville is a nice way to fail."

Folds attended the University of Miami's Frost School of Music on a percussion scholarship, but dropped out with one credit to go before graduating. He devoted a lot of time to working on piano technique. "I spent maybe six months just running scales with a metronome like a freak," Folds said. "I suppose that did something."

Folds tells audiences about a jury recital when he was a student at the University of Miami’s music school. A jury recital consists of playing a prepared repertoire (and sometimes unprepared pieces from prior years of training) before faculty members who apply a grade for the entire semester. Folds, a drummer, showed up with a broken hand from defending his roommate from bullies the night before, but was required to play anyway. He ended up losing his scholarship and in desperation threw his drum kit into the campus' Lake Osceola.

After leaving Miami, Folds moved to Montclair, New Jersey and began to act in theater troupes in New York City. He enjoyed it in 1993 to the point where he didn't want to keep pursuing a musical career. He also played weekly gigs at Sin-é, famous for being the cafe which had helped start Jeff Buckley's career.

Soon after, Folds moved back to North Carolina. The trio of Folds, bassist Robert Sledge, and drummer Darren Jessee formed Ben Folds Five in 1994 in Chapel Hill. As Folds put it, “Jeff Buckley was being signed at that time by Columbia and I was talking to Steve, his A&R guy, and somehow we knew the same people or something."

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Unanswered. . .

. . . questions

(From bloggulator on Sun, 05/19/2013 - 2:04pm)
* why did VP Cheney make a request to Senator Tom Daschle "not to investigate 9/11?
* why the obfuscations and the 441 day delay in getting the Commission started,
* why was the Commission paced under severe time constraints?
* why was the Commission badly underfunded?
* why did the Bush White House demand that Commission's scope and its access were to be heavily restricted
* why did Bush and Cheney refuse to testify to the Commission under oath, and secretly, with no transcripts or reporting?
* why the constantly changing accounts by NORAD?
* why was 90% of the material presented to the Commission omitted in its final report?
* why the appointment of a Bush Administration insider (Zelikow) as the exec. director of an investigation publicly billed as "independent"?
* why the destruction of evidence and wholesale tampering with crime scenes without prosecution of such?
* why the initial appointment of Henry Kissinger of all people (who stepped down rather than reveal his client list)?
* why did CIA chief Tenet lie to the Commission in closed hearings?
* why were numerous 9/11 witnesses intimidated and harassed by government "minders"?
* why did so many of the senior Commissioners make statements trashing the findings of their own inquiry, including the two co-chairs?
* why did Zelikow bury the option of a criminal referral by the commission to the Justice Department for a perjury investigation?
* why did the 9/11 Commission wrongly describe the internal structure of the Twin Towers,
* why was there not even a mention of the demise of WTC7?

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Finger. . .

. . . lakes


(from http://www.priweb.org/ed/finger_lakes/nystate_geo3.html)
The Finger Lakes consist of 11 long, narrow, roughly parallel lakes, oriented north-south as fingers of a pair of outstretched hands. The southern ends have high walls, cut by steep gorges. Two of the lakes (Seneca and Cayuga) are among the deepest in North America and have bottoms below sea level. These lakes all formed over the last two million years by glacial carving of old stream valleys. Ithaca is located at the south end of Cayuga Lake, the longest and the second deepest of the Finger Lakes. Cayuga is 38.1 miles long and 435 feet deep (53 feet below sea level) at its deepest spot. The actual depth of carved rock is well over twice as deep, but it has been filled with sediments; there may be as much as 1000 feet of glacial sediment in the deep rock trough below the lakebed.

The Finger Lakes originated as a series of northward-flowing rivers that existed in what is now central New York State. Around two million years ago the first of numerous continental glaciers moved southward from the Hudson Bay area, initiating the Pleistocene glaciation, commonly known as the "Ice age."

The most obvious evidence left by the glaciers are the gravel deposits at the south ends of the Finger Lakes called moraines and streamlined elongated hills of glacial sediment called drumlins. Moraines are visible south of Ithaca at North Spencer, along Route 13 west of Newfield, and near Willseyville. Drumlins are visible northeast of Ithaca at the northern end of Cayuga and Seneca lakes in a broad band from Rochester to Syracuse.


Keuka
©2013 Raymond M. Jozwiak





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Two Things . . .

1.  The complicity of our sitting president in war crimes and in a disregard for human life through a  failure to allow the judicial system to provide justice to afflicted parties
2.  The failure of our news organizations to keep us truly informed


(from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/22/1233110/-DOJ-Asks-Court-to-Grant-Immunity-to-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-for-Iraq-War# by by David Harris Gershon)
A federal case in San Francisco, filed by an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, alleges that President Bush and much of his administration should be tried for violating international law in the execution of the Iraq War.

However, the Obama administration's Department of Justice has moved to request that such Bush-era officials, and the former President, be shielded with immunity.

    Per Inder Comar:
        In court papers filed today, the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted     procedural immunity in a case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law.

    Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II.

Saleh's suit alleges that President Bush and his administration falsified pretenses for the war, failed to get international approval, and began planning for the possibility of an invasion before 2000.

However, the Obama administration would like to shield the ex-President and his officials from such prosecution, arguing that everything done was performed within the scope of their various governmental roles.

Meanwhile, Bradley Manning – now Chelsea Manning – will be spending 35 years in prison for exposing U.S. war crimes.

Crimes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their ilk helped choreograph.

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Unbelievably . . .

. . . sad

(from http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19751-drone-strike-victims-tell-their-story-but-is-america-listening by Rania Khalek)
". . . Pakistani school teacher Rafiq ur Rehman traveled over 7,000 miles with his children - 13-year-old Zubair and 9-year-old Nabila - from a small, remote village in North Waziristan to tell lawmakers about the US drone strike that killed his 67-year-old mother, Mamana Bibi. It was a harrowing tale that brought many in the room to tears, including Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who was responsible for inviting the family to Capitol Hill for the briefing.

In the end, only five members of the US House of  Representatives bothered to attend. Grayson was joined by Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D- Ill.), Rush Holt (D-NJ), John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rick Nolan (D-Minn.).

Meanwhile, President Obama, according to his October 29 schedule, was meeting with the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, both of which manufacture drones. More importantly, Lockheed Martin manufactures hellfire missiles, the very weapon fired from the drone that killed Mamana Bibi.

Though Obama did not publicly acknowledge the briefing, his actions the next day suggest he was either unmoved or did not tune in. . ."

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Once. . .

. . . upon a time. . .


(from The HIDDEN HISTORY of 9-11 edited by Paul Zarembka)
". . . [A] wise prince," advises Machiavelli, must whenever he has the occasion, foster with cunning some hostility so that in stamping it out his greatness will increase as a result."  I introduce a theory of terrorism inspired by Machiavelli's observation.  September 11 may be an example of expedient destruction ordered from within the state, a macabre instance of a state protection racket.  What I call Machiavellian state terrorism is terror/assassination performed for reasons different from the publicized ones; often initiated by persons or groups other than those suspected of the act; and - most important - secretly perpetrated by, or on behalf, of the violated state itself.  Machiavellian state terror advances the ruling agenda while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the state's fundamental principles.  I present as an example, an obscure 1971 assassination in Paris that obliquely foreshadows some critical elements of the official story of 9-11.  I conclude with a discussion on the importance of oppositional theory for maintaining a lively and democratic public discourse. . .'

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Speaking. . .

. . . of time. . . 

(from wikipedia.com)
Indiana observes Eastern Time, except for twelve of its ninety-two counties, which observe Central Time. Six of these counties are in northwestern Indiana, near Chicago (which observes Central Time), and six are in southwestern Indiana, near Evansville, where the metro area includes portions of southeastern Illinois and western Kentucky, which also observe Central Time. The twelve counties are:

    Northwestern Indiana (Gary Metro Area):
        Jasper
        Lake
        LaPorte
        Newton
        Porter
        Starke

    Southwestern Indiana (Evansville Metro Area):
        Gibson
        Perry
        Posey
        Spencer
        Vanderburgh
        Warrick

Since April 2, 2006, all counties in Indiana observe daylight saving time.

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