Note: I understand that the Swine Flu outbreak is a potentially serious pandemic situation. However, I've already seen several of these types of situations inflated to a point way beyond a justifiable representation of reality. Therefore, this continual pattern of - potential problem -> 24/7 media saturation of coverage of potential problem -> overblown public panic -> problem not as bad as reported - is something that bothers me.
Who Needs Facts when You Have Twitter?
Apparently the first thing ever to be truly ruined by Twitter is the Centers for Disease Control and White House's attempts to keep people from needlessly panicking over Swine Flu. Currently, the twitter feed for the "#swineflu" topic is going crazy with news posts that may be factual and a ton of panicked worried statements from someone more likely to be dealing in the realm of hysteria rather than fact. Here is a link to a fantastic example of what I'm talking about. The third and smaller category is people who are already so fed up with the hype that they're already poking fun at it.
Perhaps the most odd thing is that the main criticism of the "twisteria" (which I could take credit for making that word up) is coming from the CNN Network...one of many news holes that have been vomiting up hype and getting people panicked, ostensibly because panic is great for ratings. Right now I'm watching panic-tinged comments from a guest on Larry King Live who is described as the "health expert from the Oprah Winfrey show", which I guess makes him more credible than a regular non-Oprah doctor with a sizable portion of the U.S. population. Then again, his name is "Dr. Oz".
"This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it's just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information," said Brennon Slattery, a contributing writer for PC World.
Interestingly enough, you could replace the word "Twitter" with "Fox News","CNN" or any other major network or internet news site and still take that statement seriously.
Here's what the mass-coverage and growing International panic over Swine Flu reminds me of:
Killer Bees: They were supposed to sting everyone in Texas and the rest of the Southwest to death according to some reports, forcing survivors to flee to Montana or another colder climate where the coming army of "Americanized Honey Bees" couldn't survive (and odd similarity to a zombie attack). The media coverage of the pending beepocalypse was inundating. Of course, the bees mated with regular bees and got more tranquil. There were a few scattered attacked in Texas and Arizona but, basically, they bred themselves out of their killer instinct We survived...somehow.
The "Four Corners Disease" Scare: Also known as, "the Haunta Virus", this epidemic was supposed to basically wipe out all life in the Southwestern United States, before spreading and causing the end of humanity. I'm being a little hyperbolic in describing the way this "outbreak" was covered...but sadly I'm not stretching it that much. I remember the stunned reactions of some my parents friends when they said we were driving to Colorado for a week. People looked as if we would die if we simply passed through Amarillo or Raton. Later, we wouldn't die or contract the disease, just like 99.99999% of the U.S. population. It's since been relegated to an overblown and overhyped something that happened between Killer Bees and Y2K.
Y2K: I don't feel a need to explain this one...except that it's the number one example I cite when I tell people I'm not as worried about [insert media and public panic driven "apocalypse" here] as they are. The few good things that came out of Y2K were a small fraction of the American population living a more environmentally sensible lifestyle (this was probably undone when they were told to consume as much as possible following the 9/11 attacks), one of the best Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" shorts ever made, as well as (in my opinion) my favorite Family Guy episode ("Kaboom").
Honorable mentions from this current decade include: SARS, Anthrax, Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola, Salmonella (at least four or five of these) and "dirty bombs". Remember when your parents or someone you knew made a mad dash to Home Depot to buy 500 rolls of duct tape because the Department of Homeland Security suggested they should?
Monday, April 27, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Punk Rock was my First Girl, She Left Me a Scar so I Have Her Still
Jordan Stewart's Punk Rock Summer Camp '09 initial lineup announcement. Sub-genres and related stuff included. This is just the stuff that I already have and already listen to:
- Punk Rock Summer Camp 2009
The Lineup:
-- Adolescents
-- Andrew WK
-- The Ataris
-- Autopilot Off
-- Bad Religion
-- Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution
-- The Bouncing Souls
-- Catch 22 (90's)
-- Champion
-- Comeback Kid
-- Daggermouth
-- Dead Kenedys
-- Dogwood
-- Five Iron Frenzy
-- Good Riddance
-- H2O
-- The Impossibles
-- The International Superheros of Hardcore
-- Lagwagon
-- Less than Jake (90's)
-- The Living End
-- The Mae Shi
-- Mighty Mighty Bosstones
-- Millencolin
-- Minor Threat
-- Mu330
-- Municipal Waste
-- Mustard Plug
-- MxPx
-- NoFX
-- No Trigger
-- Propaghandi
-- Rancid
-- RX Bandits
-- Saves the Day
-- Set Your Goals
-- Slick Shoes
-- Streetlight Manifesto
-- Strung Out
-- Suicide Machines
-- Take it Back!
-- xLooking FowardX
-- Zero Down
-- 7 Seconds
** Additions likely ** Suggestions welcome **
Burned Like A Summer Home
Someone's house going up in flames isn't funny...but this oxymoronic twitter message from KXAN News gave me a chuckle when I first saw it...:
//KXAN_News Controlled fire spreads to home: http://tinyurl.com/cw8pxm//
...then I felt kinda bad when I realized I what I was laughing about.
At least, if the fire is still "controlled", then someone must be getting revenge or something like that.
In retrospect, a Fire Department doing a "controlled burn" on a day where 95+ degree temperatures and 15% humidity were forecast (and happened) wasn't a good call. Hindsight is...
For everyone keeping score at home: The current temperature is 97F with 18% humidity with a 21 MPH wind.
//KXAN_News Controlled fire spreads to home: http://tinyurl.com/cw8pxm/
...then I felt kinda bad when I realized I what I was laughing about.
At least, if the fire is still "controlled", then someone must be getting revenge or something like that.
In retrospect, a Fire Department doing a "controlled burn" on a day where 95+ degree temperatures and 15% humidity were forecast (and happened) wasn't a good call. Hindsight is...
For everyone keeping score at home: The current temperature is 97F with 18% humidity with a 21 MPH wind.
The Rising Sun Brings Little Change to this City with a Stolen Name
The average Texas county is about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and Texas has 254 of them.
In most counties, there are anywhere from a few to a couple of dozen municipalities. While some of these towns have typical American city names, such as Franklin, Vernon or Columbus, there are quite a few that are far more interesting. In almost any given Texas county, you can find a town or city whose name stands out...even in a state that has a significant share of towns with interesting, descriptive, or downright weird names.
The names I tend to notice and like the most seem to fall into specific categories. They're named after physical features in or near the town, they're in Spanish (and thus a reference to a settlement's age going back to the days of Spanish and Mexican settlement of the Southwest), or they have some kind of connection to a mythical character or story (and names like this, thus, have a story behind them).
Towns named after physical features have a connection through that name to their landscape. Two that I always think of are not even named after features that are all that impressive. Flower Mound, now a booming suburb of Dallas, is named after a small mound covered with flowers just to the east of the original settlement. Round Rock, now a similarly booming suburb of Austin that is transforming into a city in its own right, is named for a, well, round boulder that is found on the shore of Brushy Creek in the original part of town.
There are others, of course. One of my favorites is a small settlement that I've never actually been to called "Notrees" west of Midland. In an almost theological fashion, it's named not for something, but for the absence of it. According to legend, when a settler was picking a name for the place, the lack of trees in the surrounding landscape was so prominent that he found it to be the best description of the place. Apparently the town actually had one native tree before 100% of the community's trees were removed in the construction of a large gas plant.
I like names that are in Spanish because they sound cool, and they can be both a reference to history or to physical landscapes as well. There are plenty of them, especially in the south half of Texas. Spanish settlers only pushed so far before the landscape's difficulties became too much of a barrier for extensive settlement. The footprint they've left can be seen in the gradual transition of river and creek names in Texas from English to Spanish as you drive south in I-35, with the Brazos river (named for it's many arms in West Texas that collect to form the giant river) being the northernmost prominent one. From Waco south, every major stream crossed by I-35 has a spanish name (including the Leon River in Temple, which means "Lion" in Spanish). Many were named for patron saints by Roman Catholic Spanish and Latin-American settlers. Interestingly, the Colorado River and the Red River are both named the "Red River", just in different languages.
I mention the rivers, because almost each one has a town that gets its name from the river, San Antonio included. Some of these towns, such as San Marcos, are located near or around the springs that form the headwaters of their namesake stream. San Marcos is an interesting example of both a name that is derived from a landscape feature as well as a historical reference to when Franciscan settlers apparently found the springs on Saint Mark's day in 1755. Others examples include Blanco, west of San Marcos, which is named for the Blanco river which gets its name from the white limestone rocks that form the bed of the clear stream, and Seguin to the east, which is a historical nod to Texas revolutionary hero Juan N. Seguin. Others such as El Paso (located in a mountain pass), Presidio (named for the historic Spanish fort nearby) and Del Rio (which is next to the Rio Grande) are more self-explanatory. There are also a substantial number of settlements with German names given by German settlers, especially in Central and South-Central Texas. Conversely, in North Texas, there are a significant number of towns, such as Waxahachie, whose current names have Native American origins.
Finally, there are plenty of names of towns in Texas that sound strange, or just are strange, and do not have a straightforward surface explanation. There are a couple I can think of that are simply literary references. Tarzan, Texas is a tiny speck of a place (population 80) on a flat highway west of Big Spring in West Texas. I remember it having a few buildings and a shop that repairs and services oil pump jacks. According to the Handbook of Texas: a settler by the name of Tant Lindsay "submitted a list of possible town names to the post office department. Postal officials chose Tarzan and made Lindsay the first postmaster."
Probably much more famous is Marfa located on a wide plateau in the mountainous Big Bend Region, a town that is well-known for its size due mainly to the presence of a continual community of artists from all over the world that have relocated (or spent time) there since Donald Judd moved there in 1971. The odd name is either derived from a character in the Jules Verne novel Michael Strogoff according to an article from the time in the Galveston Daily News, or Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which apparently the railroad director's wife was reading at the time the town was founded. Having her be the town's name-giver isn't so far fetched because apparently railroad builders in some cases liked to name towns after their wives.
There are plenty of other examples of oddly named cities in Texas such as perhaps the most Texan name of all: Gun Barrel City, as well as Muleshoe, Zorn (a little town between San Marcos and Seguin named for a settler whose name roughly translates to "Anger" in German), Oatmeal (in Burnet County) and Wink (near the New Mexico state line). Some cities were originally given names that are far different than they have today. Austin, for example, was originally called "Waterloo", which is why you see so many references to the name in the city today such as Waterloo Park and Waterloo Records.
Now if I could only figure out where the name Austin comes from.
In most counties, there are anywhere from a few to a couple of dozen municipalities. While some of these towns have typical American city names, such as Franklin, Vernon or Columbus, there are quite a few that are far more interesting. In almost any given Texas county, you can find a town or city whose name stands out...even in a state that has a significant share of towns with interesting, descriptive, or downright weird names.
The names I tend to notice and like the most seem to fall into specific categories. They're named after physical features in or near the town, they're in Spanish (and thus a reference to a settlement's age going back to the days of Spanish and Mexican settlement of the Southwest), or they have some kind of connection to a mythical character or story (and names like this, thus, have a story behind them).
Towns named after physical features have a connection through that name to their landscape. Two that I always think of are not even named after features that are all that impressive. Flower Mound, now a booming suburb of Dallas, is named after a small mound covered with flowers just to the east of the original settlement. Round Rock, now a similarly booming suburb of Austin that is transforming into a city in its own right, is named for a, well, round boulder that is found on the shore of Brushy Creek in the original part of town.
There are others, of course. One of my favorites is a small settlement that I've never actually been to called "Notrees" west of Midland. In an almost theological fashion, it's named not for something, but for the absence of it. According to legend, when a settler was picking a name for the place, the lack of trees in the surrounding landscape was so prominent that he found it to be the best description of the place. Apparently the town actually had one native tree before 100% of the community's trees were removed in the construction of a large gas plant.
I like names that are in Spanish because they sound cool, and they can be both a reference to history or to physical landscapes as well. There are plenty of them, especially in the south half of Texas. Spanish settlers only pushed so far before the landscape's difficulties became too much of a barrier for extensive settlement. The footprint they've left can be seen in the gradual transition of river and creek names in Texas from English to Spanish as you drive south in I-35, with the Brazos river (named for it's many arms in West Texas that collect to form the giant river) being the northernmost prominent one. From Waco south, every major stream crossed by I-35 has a spanish name (including the Leon River in Temple, which means "Lion" in Spanish). Many were named for patron saints by Roman Catholic Spanish and Latin-American settlers. Interestingly, the Colorado River and the Red River are both named the "Red River", just in different languages.
I mention the rivers, because almost each one has a town that gets its name from the river, San Antonio included. Some of these towns, such as San Marcos, are located near or around the springs that form the headwaters of their namesake stream. San Marcos is an interesting example of both a name that is derived from a landscape feature as well as a historical reference to when Franciscan settlers apparently found the springs on Saint Mark's day in 1755. Others examples include Blanco, west of San Marcos, which is named for the Blanco river which gets its name from the white limestone rocks that form the bed of the clear stream, and Seguin to the east, which is a historical nod to Texas revolutionary hero Juan N. Seguin. Others such as El Paso (located in a mountain pass), Presidio (named for the historic Spanish fort nearby) and Del Rio (which is next to the Rio Grande) are more self-explanatory. There are also a substantial number of settlements with German names given by German settlers, especially in Central and South-Central Texas. Conversely, in North Texas, there are a significant number of towns, such as Waxahachie, whose current names have Native American origins.
Finally, there are plenty of names of towns in Texas that sound strange, or just are strange, and do not have a straightforward surface explanation. There are a couple I can think of that are simply literary references. Tarzan, Texas is a tiny speck of a place (population 80) on a flat highway west of Big Spring in West Texas. I remember it having a few buildings and a shop that repairs and services oil pump jacks. According to the Handbook of Texas: a settler by the name of Tant Lindsay "submitted a list of possible town names to the post office department. Postal officials chose Tarzan and made Lindsay the first postmaster."
Probably much more famous is Marfa located on a wide plateau in the mountainous Big Bend Region, a town that is well-known for its size due mainly to the presence of a continual community of artists from all over the world that have relocated (or spent time) there since Donald Judd moved there in 1971. The odd name is either derived from a character in the Jules Verne novel Michael Strogoff according to an article from the time in the Galveston Daily News, or Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which apparently the railroad director's wife was reading at the time the town was founded. Having her be the town's name-giver isn't so far fetched because apparently railroad builders in some cases liked to name towns after their wives.
There are plenty of other examples of oddly named cities in Texas such as perhaps the most Texan name of all: Gun Barrel City, as well as Muleshoe, Zorn (a little town between San Marcos and Seguin named for a settler whose name roughly translates to "Anger" in German), Oatmeal (in Burnet County) and Wink (near the New Mexico state line). Some cities were originally given names that are far different than they have today. Austin, for example, was originally called "Waterloo", which is why you see so many references to the name in the city today such as Waterloo Park and Waterloo Records.
Now if I could only figure out where the name Austin comes from.
Monday, April 20, 2009
So Sick, So Sick of being Tired...
The bro-bar next to the Coffee Pot (Dillinger's: a "killer club") is playing Taking Back Sunday's "Tell All Your Friends" album. This is confusing me on a number of levels. They usually play the kind of music that reminds you of why you stopped listening to the radio. At the moment, they're playing something that I used to listen to constantly, and is now relegated to semi-ironic nostalgic listenings in the car with other people who also listened to the album constantly 5 years ago.
But, aside from two specific establishments (the other one starts with the letter "N-" ends with "-ephew's"...the name says it all), I really like the San Marcos Square. Aside from being a classic Back to the Future style town square, it has other merits in that it's alive during the day (with regular activities) and at night with food and beverage (mostly beverage) consumption. Yeah, it's no 6th Street, but that means less vomit and horse poop. I'll talk more about 6th street in an upcoming post about the things that I actually *don't* like in Austin (unlike most things about the city, which I do like). I was reminded of how refreshingly nice our square is when I visited my old-stomping grounds of Temple (or driving grounds, more accurately, because you were chained to your car there). Downtown Temple has been renevated somewhat, but is still one of the most uninteresting places on Earth...desptie the fact that the city is significantly larger than San Marcos. See also: Bryan, Texas.
I guess my pain point is that cities large and small need to move back downtown...it's great to have stuff going on in the middle of town. No matter what town you're talking about. I think the health of a city is greatly tied too how healthy it is not just in the downtown area, but in the surrounding areas. This is one way in which Austin (on the large scale) and San Marcos (on the small scale) prove to be excellent.
Peace and queso,
- Jordan
But, aside from two specific establishments (the other one starts with the letter "N-" ends with "-ephew's"...the name says it all), I really like the San Marcos Square. Aside from being a classic Back to the Future style town square, it has other merits in that it's alive during the day (with regular activities) and at night with food and beverage (mostly beverage) consumption. Yeah, it's no 6th Street, but that means less vomit and horse poop. I'll talk more about 6th street in an upcoming post about the things that I actually *don't* like in Austin (unlike most things about the city, which I do like). I was reminded of how refreshingly nice our square is when I visited my old-stomping grounds of Temple (or driving grounds, more accurately, because you were chained to your car there). Downtown Temple has been renevated somewhat, but is still one of the most uninteresting places on Earth...desptie the fact that the city is significantly larger than San Marcos. See also: Bryan, Texas.
I guess my pain point is that cities large and small need to move back downtown...it's great to have stuff going on in the middle of town. No matter what town you're talking about. I think the health of a city is greatly tied too how healthy it is not just in the downtown area, but in the surrounding areas. This is one way in which Austin (on the large scale) and San Marcos (on the small scale) prove to be excellent.
Peace and queso,
- Jordan
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