Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music is inspired by something I remember reading many years ago in a music magazine. I read an article that said that T Bone Walker and Charlie Christian had the same guitar teacher. I thought that was interesting and I think that I hear some similarities in their playing. See if you hear the same thing, and, well, even if you don't you'll hear some darned fine guitar playing. Enjoy!
T-Bone Walker - Woman You Must Be Crazy
"Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay."
-- Bill Stern
News
Bill Moyers - How to own an election
Thousands Hold Silent March to Mayor Bloomberg’s Home in Protest of NYPD’s "Stop-and-Frisk"
Greeks race to form government after weekend elections
Greece raced to form a coalition with broad support by the end of Monday after an election victory by pro-bailout parties which eased fears of a Greek eurozone exit and brought relief to world markets. ...
The anti-austerity leftist Syriza party and its firebrand leader Alexis Tsipras came second with 71 seats. It has ruled out joining a coalition, saying the harsh conditions for the bailout deal should be scrapped altogether. ...
Political analyst Yiannis Loulis said: “The government will be fragile, with a fragile popular base, and I do not think it is going to last very long.
“It was mainly a vote of fear against the exit from the euro, not a real support of the reforms,” he said.
Why Don't We Have Flying Cars? How Capitalism Steered Innovation Toward Social Control Rather Than Technological Wonders
A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. ... Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?
For the technologies that did emerge proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we’re constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. They have enabled a financialization of capital that has driven workers desperately into debt, and, at the same time, provided the means by which employers have created “flexible” work regimes that have both destroyed traditional job security and increased working hours for almost everyone. Along with the export of factory jobs, the new work regime has routed the union movement and destroyed any possibility of effective working-class politics.
Meanwhile, despite unprecedented investment in research on medicine and life sciences, we await cures for cancer and the common cold, and the most dramatic medical breakthroughs we have seen have taken the form of drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, or Ritalin—tailor-made to ensure that the new work demands don’t drive us completely, dysfunctionally crazy.
Major Design Flaws Uncovered at Calif. Nuclear Plant; Watchdog Groups Petition for Closure
Federal regulators have announced this week that major design flaws were the leading cause of a malfunction and radiation leak at California's San Onofre nuclear power plant in January. Nuclear Watchdog groups are now calling on officials to keep the reactors shut down.
The ocean-side twin-reactor plant north of L.A. has been idle since January, after a tube break in one of four steam generators released traces of radiation.
The federal regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have concluded that design flaws are the cause of excessive wear in tubing that carries radioactive water through the virtually brand new equipment.
Revealed: NY Governor Plans to Experiment with Fracking in Economically Struggling Areas
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is coming under increased criticism as his administration’s plan to begin fracking in economically depressed areas of the state was leaked. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on the reveal, which came from an anonymous senior official from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The plan is part of a demonstration project in which the DEC would issue permits for a limited number of wells in certain areas and then monitor the fracking to see if the process could be done safely. Critics are calling on the governor not to use the residents of these struggling territories as "guinea pigs."
Aboriginal rock art shown to Australian scientists dated at 28,000 years old
Aboriginal rock art found in remote Australia has been dated at 28,000 years old, experts said Monday, prompting new speculation that indigenous communities were among the world’s most advanced.
Archaeologists picked up the fragment in inaccessible wilderness in Arnhem Land in the country’s north a year ago, and recent carbon dating of its charcoal drawing has placed it among some of the oldest art on the planet. ...
“The fact remains that any rock art that is older than 20,000 years is very unique around the world,” said Barker, a professor at the University of Southern Queensland.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The brave new world of health insurance exchanges
Occupy Will Be Back - by Chris Hedges
"The Other America": 50 years ago and here we are!
A Little Night Music
T-Bone Walker - Goin' to Chicago
Charlie Christian - Stompin at the Savoy
T-Bone Walker - Someday Baby
Charlie Christian - Swing to Bop
T-Bone Walker - The Hustle Is On
Charlie Christian w/Benny Goodman Sextet - Roast Turkey Stomp
T-Bone Walker. T-Bone Shuffle
Charlie Christian w/Benny Goodman Sextet - Rose Room
T-Bone Walker - She Is Going To Ruin Me
Charlie Christian - As Long As I Live
T-Bone Walker - I Got A Break Baby
For further listening:
Charlie Christian - Waiting For Benny
Charlie Christian w/Benny Goodman Sextet - Shivers
T-Bone Walker - Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You
T-Bone Walker's first recording - Wichita Falls Blues (1929)