Hey! You wanna buy a bass guitar? One that has hardly been touched? It's a Dean Edge 4 string, red, and Ima gonna throw in an amp that has also hardly been touched. Except that my cats used it as a scratching post, so it looks like shit. The bass comes with strings and a soft carry bag, an automatic bass tuner thingy, and the amp is a Kustom KBA10.

Here's a picture of the bass from the Dean website: http://www.deanguitars.com/bnds_v1/edge_1_transred.htm


And here's the amp (only ours looks like shit) http://bass-guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Kustom-KBA10-10Watt-Bass-Amp-with-8-Speaker?sku=481234#new

So anyway, I got it a few years ago and like a tool, I never used it. Because I'm lame. But now you can! So buy it from me! $250 for the whole shebang, OBO.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=bc0a5699e7082f5f060f376e1c94d6c3

A new framework for reducing carbon emissions takes a crack at the knottiest dilemma confronting a global climate solution: how to divvy cuts between rich and poor nations.

A new study published Monday attempts to sidestep the rancor, finding that virtually every country has a class of individuals - the so-called "high emitters" - enjoying a rich, carbon-intensive lifestyle. If those individuals, no matter their locale, are forced to take responsibility for their emissions, a great swath of countries become participants in the climate effort, the study claims.

[More]

GOP Pols Losing Control Of Tea Party Movement?
What if the NeoConClownCarCrew really were always RINOs, as they said, since they were always psuedoConservatives first. Thus the NeoConClownCarCrew were so good at using that RINO Meme, because they were speaking from their core value. That they had not intention of allowing their movement degenerate into a mere republic.

This of course raises the Fuggly that the TeaBaggers are merely expressing that facet of the post surrealists.

Can they be recovered? Is there a place for them to re-enter the rational discourse? Or will they only entertain that option AFTER their civil war?

http://idefix.net/~koos/newsitem.cgi/1246913049

Afgelopen weekend zijn we op Cycle
Vision 2009 geweest. Een evenement van de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Human Powered Vehicles.
Ik ging daar vooral heen om te fotograferen. Een internationaal gezelschap
van ligfietsers die in diverse evenementen competitie streden leek me wel
kans te geven op mooie plaatjes. Na een strenge selectie uit de overvloed
die op de geheugenkaarten stond:
Cycle Vision 2009 Tilburg

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot/0-4-16/Yovani-Gallardo--not-an-All-Star-.html

Xtreme Blog's got a candidate for biggest All-Star snub, and it might be a guy you haven't heard about already:

Gallardo

There are many players deserving to be an all-star this season, but no bigger then Milwaukee Brewers ace Yovani Gallardo. With free agent C.C Sabathia leaving the Brew Crew in the offseason, there were a ton of questions regarding the Brewers pitching rotation. Everyone knows the Brewers have the bats with Prince Fielder & Ryan Braun, but the pitching was the main concern coming into the season. Gallardo is not only the ace of this staff, I feel like he is one of the best young pitchers in the majors. Gallardo for the season is currently 8-5 with a 2.75 ERA and almost 10 K/9.

I'm mentioning this only because Keith Law, who did a great job in reviewing the All-Star rosters yesterday, didn't mention Gallardo. I'm sure he had his reasons. But it's worth noting that Gallardo has eight wins, the sixth-best ERA in the National League and is fifth in strikeouts. The only semi-blot on his record is his relative lack of durability; he's just 21st in the league in innings.

Whether Gallardo gets to pitch one inning in the middle of July is inconsequential. What's consequential is that Gallardo, who missed nearly all of last season with a serious knee injury, has now established himself as one of the best pitchers in the league. If Gallardo were getting any help at all from his rotation-mates, the Brewers might be running away with the NL Central.

1. On "Attack of the Show", Kevin and Olivia left the premire after 30 mins to "get some air" (Kevin later added "...in a restaurant where we had dinner")

2. Ebert panned it.

3. This great synopsis.

4. This interesting take on the film.

5. Still getting the after-taste of the first epilepsy-inducing film out of my head.

6. Shia!

7. Megan Fox is hot, but she is starting to look like an odd combination of high-maintenance and skanky.

8. Directed by Michael Bay: even he is getting tired of his own crap.

9. I still haven't seen all the films I actually want to see.

(Number 10 removed for trademark reasons)

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/whered_the_money_go.php

The New York Times today offers a dispatch on the health care debate from Maine, home of an endangered species: moderate Republican senators. The piece offers a solid look at the debate playing out among different constituencies to win the hearts and minds of Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, whose votes may determine whether key features of...

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-42-28/David-Thorpe-Livetweeting-from-Summer-League.html

David Thorpe has been on Twitter for a while, but hasn't done much with his account until today, when he is tweeting up a storm from the Orlando Pro Summer League.

##LIVETWEET##

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-42-27/Monday-Bullets.html

• Phil Jackson on Ron Artest's campaign to join the Lakers, which began in the showers more than a year ago, where Artest went to find Kobe Bryant to tell him he could help his team. And another Ron Artest video diary (with a little PG013 language near the end).
• A reaction to "hot hand" research, showing shooting is essentially random, from James Kwak on Baseline Scenario: "When it comes to stock prices, there is a very persuasive theory of why you can't beat the market consistently; beating the market requires information, and if you have the information, then the people you are trading with already have that information, too. When it comes to basketball, it strains belief to think that your ability to shoot the ball is a constant, day after day, play after play, all the time. For one thing, sometimes you are tired, or sick (and few of us can replicate Michael Jordan's 'flu game'), or injured, or distracted; the idea that this wouldn't affect your shooting seems preposterous. If your actual field goal attempts end up looking like random patterns, then I think that's more likely a result of the complex and un-modelable way in which you, your team, and the other team adapt to each other."
• Rodney Stuckey tries on the idea of Avery Johnson as Pistons coach, as has been rumored.
• The best moments of the past NBA season. A puke makes the list.
• In the early going from Orlando Summer League, Indiana's Josh McRoberts has a beard, a huge dunk, and a behind-the-back dribble. (As for the dunk, one of the commentators on OrlandoMagic.com says: "He's been saving that up his whole life!") Marreese Speights is killing.
• When you think about Rasheed Wallace playing Big Baby's minutes in Celtic green, two main thoughts come to mind for me: Big Baby's two-pointers could be Wallace's 3-pointers, and he's a better defender.
• What does Portland do now that they don't have Hedo Turkoglu? My main hope, as a Blazer fan, is that they don't spend the money just to spend the money. Rather have the cap space for lop-sided trades at the deadline.

Good piece at The Happiness Project on the dangers of drift.

Drift is the decision you make by not deciding, or by making a decision that unleashes consequences for which you don’t take responsibility.

Me, I don't drift. I paddle. I steer.

My husband? Is a drifter.

Makes it difficult, sometimes.

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot/0-4-15/A-s-swipe-Hairston-from-Padres.html

From where Dave Cameron sits, the A's just stole a player from the Padres ...

When I heard that the Padres had traded Scott Hairston for Craig Italiano, Ryan Webb, and a PTBNL, my first reaction was to wonder if they were trying to tank as quickly as possible to give themselves a shot at drafting Bryce Harper. There weren't too many other explanations that made much sense, given that Hairston was one of only two guys on the Padres roster hitting his weight and that he made a total of $1.25 million this year while not being eligible for free agency until after 2011.

After a night to think it over and do some more research on the deal, I don't have many more answers than I did last night. I still don't get it.

--snip--

Call me crazy, but I think low cost, above average major league players should command more than a potential back-end starter and a pair of bullpen arms. It's hard for me to fathom how the Padres could back away from really good deals for Jake Peavy over the winter, but then begin to sell off useful pieces like Hairston for spare parts.

From the A's perspective, this is a no-brainer deal. Hairston will replace the soon-to-be-traded Matt Holliday in the line-up, giving them a right-handed outfield bat that they lacked going forward, and they gave up no real parts of their future to acquire a guy who can fit into their near-term core.

Easy win for Oakland here. Can't say I'm a fan of whatever plan San Diego is putting in place.

My only problem with Hairston is that he's 29 and has a .313 career on-base percentage. Yes, this season it's .358 ... but last season it was .312 in significantly more plate appearances than he's got this season (so far). My only concern is that Hairston's been (roughly) a National League-average hitter, which means he'll be a less than American League-average hitter.

Of course, he is cheap and he does play well in the outfield, so he's still worth a roster spot for sure. Oh, one more concern: the A's have three young outfielders who have failed miserably to this point, but still deserve chances to play and probably need them because the A's need some great players (at the moment they don't have even one). In the long run, who loses playing time to Hairston? Ryan Sweeney? Travis Buck? Aaron Cunningham?

Perhaps none of them. Ken Rosenthal says the A's aren't going to flip Hairston. I'm not so sure. They could trade him soon, when his value's at its highest. Or they could trade him a year from now, when he's got a .298 on-base percentage and suddenly their young outfielders are looking pretty good by comparison. But I don't see Hairston in the lineup when the A's get back into the playoffs.

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot/0-4-14/Tim-Wakefield--All-Star-.html

The Red Sox are probably the best team in the majors, so it shouldn't be all that surprising that they've got six All-Stars. It's the identity of one of them that's a bit of a surprise. Red Sox Monster:

Wakefield

The good news is that Major League Baseball announced its 2009 All-Star selections today, and six members of the Boston Red Sox were named to the team. Even better, the list includes Tim Wakefield, 42, who becomes the second oldest player ever to make the All-Star team for the first time (The first? The legendary Satchel Paige).

--snip--

On the weekend when Wakefield started his 383rd game with the Red Sox (breaking Roger Clemens' team record), Timmay was chosen for an All-Star game over Jeff Weaver, Kevin Milwood and dozens of other pitchers in the AL.

Should he have been? In a normal year, there are plenty of folks who would point to Wakefield's miniscule strikeout numbers (53 in 102 2/3 innings) and his relatively high ERA (4.30) and call him a fluke.

But flukes don't last nearly two decades in the major leagues, nearly pitch the 2003 Red Sox to an American League Championship Series win or swing back and forth between starting and relief as needs dictate. They also don't tie for the league lead in wins (10) or carry the Red Sox during the month of April, when everyone from Josh Beckett to Jon Lester to Daisuke Matsuzaka all nuked leads with [regularity].

So, in a word, it's time.

With apologies to Weaver and Millwood, Wakefield has earned this spot and all the national recognition that goes with it.

Is the All-Star Game the place for Lifetime Achievement Awards?

Oh, I don't know. There's certainly a precedent for future Hall of Famers; Ozzie Smith somehow garnered that honor three times. I think it's not a bad idea for a player who might have deserved All-Star nods over the years but somehow never got one. Tim Wakefield, though? Has he ever been great? Ever deserved to be an All-Star?

Wakefield's best seasons were a long time ago: 1992, his first season in the majors; and 1995, his first season with the Red Sox.

In 1992, he didn't debut in the majors (with the Pirates) until after the All-Star Game. In 1995, he didn't debut with the Red Sox until late May because he'd opened the season in the International League. Thus, at the All-Star break in 1995, Wakefield was 7-1 with a 1.61 ERA but he'd started only 10 games. Looking at his other seasons, it's possible that he had All-Star-worthy stats at some point, but pretty unlikely.

And this season? He's tied for the American League lead with 10 wins, but ranks just 28th in ERA, 19th in innings, and 40th in strikeouts. It's pretty hard to argue that he's been one of the dozen best starters in the league. Or two-dozen best.

All of which leaves me thoughtful but unwavering: I want to see Tim Wakefield pitch in the All-Star Game. He's a good guy, and historically unique, and I've been avidly following the ups and downs of his career since he arrived in the majors 17 years ago. I think an All-Star Game that has room for Tim Wakefield is a better All-Star Game. Even if it does count.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1555

Last Thursday morning's little project was tracing the word linguablog ('blog about matters related to language and linguistics') and the related nouns linguablogger and linguablogging. As so often happens with such projects, it turned out to be fairly challenging and developed an offshoot, on innovative ling- vocabulary.

My earliest finds are from Enigmatic Mermaid's site (pombostrans.blogspot.com) in 2002, starting with

(4/7/02) Gregory Rabassa Gets a Beating and Other Tidbits from the NY Times. The New York Times is ripe with stories of interest for the readers of this linguablog. (link)

(and throughout that year, and thereafter, Linguabloggers is listed as a label on the site). Here are a few more cites from Enigmatic Mermaid:

(6/10/02) Les Coupes de Langue de la Grand Rousse. Cybercarnet d'une appassionata de la langue de Moliere. It's a linguablog. (link)

(6/15/02) Quasi-Linguablog. Pohadka is a linguablog of sorts, also covering Information Architecture, odds and ends. (link)

(6/23/02) ForeignWord Linguablogs. (link)

On to Language Hat the next year, early on in his blog:

(2/31/03) When I began, my readership could be counted on the fingers of both hands—and the fact that the second hand was needed was due entirely to Pat's and Merm's brilliant mutual-backscratching invention, Linguablogs. It rose steadily to an average of several dozen a day, then shot upward this month because of a combination of the excellent Pepys' Diary site, to which I quickly became addicted, and the Jan. 28 MSNBC recommendation ("One of the most exciting blogspotting finds I’ve made while judging Bloggies is the large and active community of linguabloggers…"). (link)

Hat used the vocabulary fairly often, as did other bloggers, for instance Melon Colonie in a posting about Language Log:

(11/9/03) AWE-INSPIRING LINGUABLOG (link)

As far as I can  tell, the vocabulary doesn't appear on Language Log itself until 2005, when Mark Liberman produced an entertaining portmanteau:

(2/5/05) Having a couple of minutes to spare, I thought I'd check out the latest that the linguablogosphere has to offer, … (link)

A few days later, Mark quoted this from Language Hat:

(2/9/05) It's the "else" that baffles me, and I'd love to hear one of the Language Log mavens or other linguabloggers try to account for how it got there. (link)

There's plenty more after that, from Mark and other Language Loggers (in particular, Ben Zimmer).

Now, there might well be occurrences in print before Enigmatic Mermaid in 2002, so I'm allowing comments. I welcome earlier sightings — but, please, these should be verifiable, not just recollections of what you said in the past.

On to the analysis of the word linguablog, which is clearly a combination of the elements lingua and blog, the second a word of ordinary English, the first not. The question is: what sort of a combination is it?

A clue to the answer comes from the wider world of naming blog types. One pattern that is always available in this world is the N + N compound: the second N is blog, the first N names the domain covered by the blog. Science blog is 'blog about science'; similarly, physics blog, chemistry blog, and many others. The pattern is productive; things like lexicostatistics blog and biochemistry blog are semantically transparent and unproblematic.

But ordinary people also like brevity, so as an alternative to astronomy blog, they're ready to jump to astroblog, with the first element shortened to astro, as in learnèd vocabulary like astrophysics and in more demotic student uses in "I'm majoring in astro" and "My astro professor is a bastard". (Such usages then leak out into other contexts — as with an astronomer friend of mine who's gone under the name Astroboy for some years, though he's no longer realistically describable as a boy.)

Sometimes there are clipped versions of the domain names already available: math for mathematics, giving mathblog. This particular clipping is available in a great many contexts ("Do the math!"), but other clippings are more restricted: chem for chemistry, for instance, which surfaces in student uses like "I'm majoring in chem" and "My chem professor is a bastard". Still, they are available for reference to blog domains: there are plenty of chemblogs (as well as chemistry blogs), plus statblogs (as well as statistics blogs). (There's more, of course; this is not an inventory of a universe, only a sampling of the phenomena in it.)

Meanwhile, a large number of academic-domain names are composites, with a learnèd base that's a bound element in Englsh (most commonly ending in a linking -o, derived from Ancient Greek — whether or not the base arises in Greek), plus a suffix (most commonly -logy): anthropology, geology, sociology (with the initial base from Latin), biology, etc.

The result is a "short form" astro, geo, socio, bio, usable not only in learnèd composites (like geophysics, sociolinguistics, and biochemistry) and collegiate clippings ("I'm a geo/socio/bio major"), but also in compound-like composites with blog: geoblog (both 'geology blog' and 'geography blog'), socioblog ('sociology blog'), bioblog ('biology blog'), and a ton of others. (The preferred pattern has alternating accent, so anthroblog 'anthropology blog', rather than anthropoblog.)

Slightly more complicated: -o short forms for fields whose names end in -ics: econoblog 'economics blog' (cf. econometrics), politicoblog 'politics blog' (cf. politico-economic policy). And then there's biblioblog 'biblical studies blog'.

Which brings us back to languages/linguistics. On the basis of what I've just said, you'd expect a blog on these subjects to be a linguoblog, but in fact there's a very small handful of hits for linguo-blog and linguo blog. And a very small number for linguiblog and its variants, plus some for lingblog and its variants. But there are hundreds of hits for linguablog and its variants; this is clearly the predominant usage, probably because the Latin noun lingua has a sense 'language'.  (Perhaps it's also favored because it combines the lingu- of linguistics and the -ngua- of language.)

OED2 has an entry for linguo-, lingua- as combining forms of Latin lingua 'tongue', which notes that the correct combining form would be lingui-. All the cites involve reference to the anatomical organ rather than to language, but the dictionary also has entries for rare or obsolete items referring to language in some way, with various forms of the lingu- element:

in -a: linguacious 'talkative, loquacious', from 1651 on, but labeled "rare";

in -a: linguacity 'loquacity', cites from 1656 and 1721, labeled "obsolete";

in -i: linguipotence, a nonce word from Coleridge 1820, uncertainly glossed '?mastery of the tongue, or of languages';

in -o: linguosity 'talkativeness', one cite (1727), labeled "obsolete".

Inventiveness with the element ling- (in the sense 'language') continues. I spent some time last Thursday with friends, imagining possible ling- innovations; almost all of our candidates turned out to be attested. Here's a small sampling of what I found. Some of them are, like linguablog, compound-like; others look like portmanteaus; still others look like playful word formation, with recently minted suffixes like -tastic and -icious; a number are hard to categorize. (Some are spelled as two separate words, some as hyphenated, some as solid; I'm giving only one version here.)

linguabot / linguobot, LinguBot (automated question answering service), linguacide / linguicide 'language death' (whether by intentional annihilation or not), Lingua Mania (screensaver cum language instruction), Linguanaut (language instruction), linguaphile / linguiphile / linguophile, linguaphobe / linguiphobe / linguophobe, linguaphone (a musical instrument), LinguaScope (language teaching), Linguasphere Observatory (language research netwood)

Lingualicious (blog on learning and teaching foreign languages), linguilicious (adjective of praise, with reference to writing), linguatastic / linguitastic (ditto), Lingtastic (translation service)

among the suggested new names for JapanesePod101.com: Lingfinity, LingoLizard, Lingovation

The 'language' element appears as ling-, lingu-, lingua-, lingui-, and linguo-, but lingua- seems to be the most frequent variant.

In Ling World, invention abounds.

Russian Stalker cosplayers.

Russian Fallout cosplayers. (DANG. Nice armor. You can do Stalker with hoodies and gas masks and AK47s, but Brotherhood of Steel armor takes dedication.)

I totally want these guys to hang out. It'd be like the Pennsic of post-apocalyptic video game cosplay.

I don't feel all that overwhelmed, but I guess I must be - for the second week in a row, I missed the deadline for my Industry Management Perspectives class assignment.

I thought I had til 12 midnight; the actual deadline was 12 noon.

I felt stupid apologizing, AGAIN, to the prof. Why should he believe me when I say I'm not usually such a scatterbrain?

Ugh.

And now I am feeling pressure (more than usual) to make my work perfect.

Ugh.

I'll be running a session on Wednesday at GCDS to find out what desktop developers would like to see from the kernel. There's a lot of interest in making things easier for file indexers, but if anyone has other problems that could be made easier with some level of kernel support then please turn up. No precise time or location yet, but probably around 3PM at the university. More details forthcoming.

http://www.ibabuzz.com/raidersblog/2009/07/06/making-up-for-lost-time/

http://www.ibabuzz.com/raidersblog/?p=5339

With another 23 days to go before the Raiders report to Napa, I’ll play a little catch up after some time off during a slow news period:

– What to make of JaMarcus Russell’s reported absence from the last OTA practice? Former Raiders exec Mike Lombardi had the story in an item in his Sunday column awhile back, reporting Russell was “AWOL” from the final practice.

Technically, you can’t be “absent without leave” for a voluntary practice, but it was a breach of etiquette if Russell was a no-show without first informing the team. Players miss OTAs all the time, almost always with the team knowing about it beforehand so they can properly plan the day’s practice.

(I don’t doubt Lombardi’s assertion Russell was absent. He knows enough people in the organization to get that information. Left a couple of messages with players I trust which have not been returned, which isn’ t unusual for July when many are taking time off before gearing up for camp).

If the Raiders were informed of Russell’s absence, it’s not a big deal. He simply joins a list which includes Jeff Garcia, Nnamdi Asomugha, Derrick Burgess, Chris Johnson, Tommy Kelly, Terdell Sands and others.

Maybe he was busy planning his secret camp with the wide receivers, which is what Russell told reporters on the last day of media availability.

We’ll have a better idea in a month where Russell’s head is truly at if he seizes a leadership role and looks capable of building on his final six games of the 2008 season. If he looks sharp in Napa, all the “work ethic” issues recede into the background. If he is rusty and looks to be starting over, they take on significance.

– If the 49ers had managed to find a Malaysian airline for a new sponsorship agreement, maybe they wouldn’ t have had to give some employees unpaid furloughs.

Both local franchises could use better facilities, but notice that all Al Davis did was scale back his 80th birthday party to cut costs.

“Every fifth year, I’ve held a nice party in Las Vegas, but I felt this year, predicated on the economy, that we would just whittle it down to a few friends for dinner and hold off because we didn’t want to flaunt it when everyone else is having trouble financially,” Davis told Greg Papa.

For an NFL franchise to cry poor is reprehensible. The money the 49ers save in furloughs is couch change compared to the signing bonus they’ll be paying Michael Crabtree. The league is still essentially printing money, just not at the previous rate.

– Rookie linebacker Slade Norris won the “Ultimate Challenge” at the NFL Rookie Symposium, correctly answering more questions than any other rookie. Player are quizzed not only on trivia, but regarding presentations they’ve seen regarding behavior and lifestyle. It’s a game show format with electronic keypads.

Center Chris Morris won in his rookie year and got a leased Hummer for two years. The economy is hitting the symposium, because all Norris got was a flatscreen TV. Gets to keep it, though.

– So the Raiders rank No. 116 out of 122 according to ESPN’s ranking of professional franchises. I can hear the cries of “Haters” already, but that’s what you get for 24-72. Who can deny that Raiders fans are getting less for their money than most any team in professional sports over the last six years?

Start 3-0 or even 2-1, and it’s nothing but an amusing footnote.

– How involved is Davis in the routine, day-to-day operations?

So involved that he joined Tom Cable on the phone to tell an undrafted rookie free agent that it would be in his best interest to switch positions.

Chris O’Neill told the Idaho Statesman he had been moved from tight end to linebacker, and was informed in a phone conversation with Tom Cable and Davis.

O’Neill flashed during the Raiders mandatory minicamp as well as OTAs as a receiving tight end, but would seem unlikely to stick with Zach Miller filling that role and the second and possibly third spots going to block-first tight ends.

– O’Neill said he was told the Raiders would keep seven linebackers on the 53-man roster (plus two on the practice squad) and just two tight ends.

They could always change their mind, of course, and go with fewer than seven, but the leaders going into camp to fill those spots would be starters Kirk Morrison, Thomas Howard and Jon Alston, in addition to Isaiah Ekejiuba and Ricky Brown, who both were brought back a hefty salaries. That leaves Sam Williams, Norris and undrafted FAs David Nixon and Frantz Joseph competing for the final two spots.

Nixon and Joseph would be practice squad candidates, along with O’Neill. It’s unlikely that Norris, if cut, would go unclaimed on the waiver wire by virtue of his status as a fourth-round draft pick.

– Back in 2003, when Steve McNair was being booked for DUI, police found a 9 mm handgun under the seat of his car.

(Charges were later dismissed by a judge who ruled police didn’t have sufficient reason to pull over McNair).

While I understand the rationale of celebrities wanting to carry protection, when was the last time you read about a star athlete fending off an attacker with his firearm? I don’t know who owned the gun that killed McNair, but the whole culture of athletes and firearms makes for almost exclusively sad endings.

I wonder if a #moonfruit is any way like a moonfish?