From my Mac guru, neural:

So, I just had a fit of laughter such as I haven’t experienced in years.

Microsoft released a new product called “Songsmith”. You sing into your microphone, and it writes backing music automatically. Honestly, a clever idea, if executed well.

So, item 1. Microsoft’s commercial for this product, is itself atrocious. It demonstrates once again that Microsoft has completely lost touch with the concept of “cool factor”.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E

Item 2, you can run any vocal file into Songsmith, and it proceeds to write the backing music. So, some genius came up with the idea to run the David Lee Roth vocal track to “Runnin’ With the Devil” into Songsmith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgE5TKXWsA

Item 3, the resulting work of absolute genius:

http://music.metafilter.com/2943/Runnin-With-The-Songsmith

It’s so amazingly bad, it’s hilarious. I start laughing like a madman as soon as it starts to play.

I’m hoping this is the start of a whole new series of popular song vocal tracks run through Songsmith.

That would keep me entertained for ages.

From Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, pp. 1207f:

Euphrates

And now at last, the seventh seal is broken and one might expect the climax of the vision to approach, but it still doesn’t. Instead a new series of seven events begins in the form of seven angels, each of whom blows a trumpet in turn, with gruesome disasters following each trumpet sound. When the fifth angel blows his trumpet, hell itself opens:

Revelation 9:2.…and there arose a smoke out of the pit…

Revelation 9:3. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth…

….

Revelation 9:7. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle … and their faces were as the faces of men.

The picture being drawn by John here is clearly inspired by the great terror of the east — the Parthian cavalry, swooping in like a cloud of locusts, dealing their deadly strokes and fading away before they could be properly opposed. The Roman general, Crassus, was defeated in this manner in eastern Syria in 53 B.C. That defeat had never been properly avenged and it was never forgotten.

The characteristic weapons of the Parthian horsemen were their bows, which they could use with great effect. Even when retreating, they could rise in their saddles and shoot, in unison, one rapid volley of arrows back at their pursuers. This "Parthian shot" was often quite effective. It is to such tactics that Revelation may be referring, when they speak of the locusts as:

Revelation 9:10. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails…

When the sixth angel sounds his trumpet, the picture of the Parthian cavalry is continued. The sixth angel is instructed:

Revelation 9:14.…Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

The Euphrates was a boundary in a double sense. First it was the boundary of Israel in the great days of David and Solomon and had been the ideal boundary of Israel ever since. Second, it was the boundary of the Roman realm during most of the days of its empire. The "angels" bound in the Euphrates controlled the enemy hosts on the other side.

The army controlled by these angels of the Euphrates was made to seem unbelievably numerous — an impression made on the awed infantry when they were the object of the sudden onrush of a contingent of horsemen:

Revelation 9:16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand…

This is the number obtained if one makes use of the Greek "myrioi" as a synonym of unnumerability, emphasizes it by repetition ("an innumerable, innumerable quantity"), and then doubles it for good measure. If "myrioi" is taken as ten thousand, it becomes two myriad myriad or two hundred thousand thousand, or two hundred million — a number equal to the entire population of the United States.

From Mises.org:

How This Happened

January 12, 2009 8:20 AM

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

For years, many of us puzzled about how something so stupid and destructive as the New Deal could have happened. Now that we are living amidst this, it is easier to come to terms with how the New Deal came about. It is like watching a slow-moving train headed over a cliff. The problem is that the engineers have ear plugs in and blinders on.

Will this go on for ten years like the last time? Will it end in World War III, as if following some historical script? Is it possible that we will go the way of Germany in the 1920s, straight into the abyss of hyperinflation and into the hands of a ghastly dictator? It is unwise to rule it out. FULL ARTICLE

From FEE.org:

Obama Sees FDR as Model in Economic Crisis

“His aides said Mr. Obama had studied the way Franklin D. Roosevelt approached the first 100 days of his presidency, and in particular had seized on the notion of Roosevelt having a ‘conversation with the American public’ to try to prepare it for a difficult time. He has, aides said, even looked at the words Roosevelt used and the tone he struck.” (New York Times, Monday)

Let’s look at the real Roosevelt.

FEE Timely Classic
“The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal” by Robert Higgs