Apopheniac

We'd been exchanging jokes at work when boss John observed how laughter broke the stress and sameness of a workday and said, "What we need is a 'Joke of the Day.'" I responded that I could do that and have since been mining my memory and the web to come up with one decent joke a day.

It has been fun because I have rediscovered a number of my favorites and found a good bit of fresh meat. I think I'll post some here too. Everyone can use a good chuckle. We'll begin with:

What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?

Rottweiler.

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Lifehacker is sponsoring a contest to win a neat new Nokia blogging picture phone. Click here for info on how to enter.

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I try to schedule my days off to give me a 3 day weekend every few weeks and it had been over 2 months since the last one so I was overdue. Though I took care of some projects requiring attention, most of the weekend was reserved for deep rest and renewal.

With time to take in the news and searching for the deep patterns as an apopheniac must, I was pleased to find a positive result of the backlash to the Harriet Miers nomination. George W. Bush did not nominate his accountant to head the Federal Reserve.

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Graham Flint has tinkered together a four-gigapixel camera using his technological expertise, hand ground lenses and parts from old U2 spyplane cameras. The resolution is simply amazing. You can see samples in the image gallery at The Gigapxl Project.

Note the circled area right, center. Below is a cropped image of this section of the photo.

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Lubbock has plenty of wind and is home to the American Wind Power Museum which sports the only large wind generator located inside city limits.

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When I said the cotton was ready for picking I had no idea how ready. The next morning the machines rolled through the field and the crop was harvested.

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The field across from Cingular is ready for picking.

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The Common Census Map Project is an interesting site that is mapping America by where people feel they are culturally centered, rather than political boundaries. It is interesting to see how people locate themselves and you can contribute.

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Technorati Profile
Just a note to put his new location on Technorati.

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Most evenings I get home between 9:30 and 9:45 and have dinner. I had watched a little tv while I visited with Jean and wound down before bed. It used to be catching an episode of Friends and occasionally hanging on for a Seinfeld rerun. But our local Fox outlet is now running back-to-back Seinfeld episodes at 10 and they are the same episodes they just got through running at 10:30. This is just way too much Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer for me so I am polishing up my VCR skills to tape something else to veg out in front of. Public television seems to look like my best bet.

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We went to the Lubbock Music Festival last night. It was great. The Coasters, the Platters and the Drifters played opened by some local artists doing 50's and 60's. It might have been somewhat reminiscent of Woodstock but besides the beer, this crowd's drugs were Lipitor and Celebrex.

The bands hung around to autograph CD's. Here are the Coasters.

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Frontline did an good piece on the verdict in the OJ Simpson murder trial this week. (Its the 10th anniversary.) The program did an excellent job of reviewing the prosecution, defence, media coverage, public reaction and what they revealed about the racial faultlines in American Society. (The Frontline website for the program is here. You can even watch it online.)

I didn't expressly follow the coverage at the time, but you couldn't turn on a television or pick up a newspaper then without being exposed to it. As always, Frontline did a good job on teaching me more about something I was somewhat aware of, helping me understand additional perspectives and causing me to think.

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Kirk and I are off to see "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit". I'll report back later.

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Well, we closed all the storm windows last night as yesterday's cold front dropped it into the low 40s. The weather is supposed to warm back up again for the weeked, which is good because this is the Lubbock Music Festival. It was supposed to be the Buddy Holly Music Festival but his widow wanted too much money to use his name. The Drifters and the Platters play for free Saturday night.

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I watched the second half of the Scorcese film on Bob Dylan Monday night and have been haunted by it since.

I knew Dylan had left the music scene in the late 60's and had not returned for some time but what I didn't know was that he had been driven away by fans who "boo-ed" him away when he switched from acoustic solo performing to an electric rock and roll style with backup by Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. The hardcore "folkies" just couldn't handle the change. Pete Seger even went looking for an ax to cut the power cables to Dylan's amps at the 65 Newport Folk Festival. This was done in spite of the fact that Dylan still did the first half of his concerts acoustic solo and did some of his best work (Like a Rolling Stone etc.) with electric backup

I have been both fascinated and haunted by this new knowledge and its implications.

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One of the disadvantages of working nights is that much of the best television has to be taped and watched later. Last week PBS broadcast Martin Scorcese's biography of Bob Dylan. I missed it Monday and Tuesday nights but it was re-broadcast in the wee hours of Sunday morning and I set it up to record. This afternoon I took the time to watch the first 2 of its 4 hours. It appears to be well done.

The first section was done without narration. It is interviews with Dylan and those who knew him or were of those times and places. There is film and photos and news footage from that time, well edited and impactful. This section ends with the 1963 Newport Folk Festival.

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We went to see the new film Serenity today. The special effects were enjoyable but what carried the film was the writing. I heartily recommend it.

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