Pat Condell (born November 1, 1951) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality. An outspoken atheist, Condell hosts a series of widely-viewed short video monologues denouncing religion.

(YouTube Video)

(YouTube video)

Playing the Building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

In this video interview, David Byrne describes and demonstrates the installation (warning: short commercials)

Additional video here.

From Wikipedia:

Koyaanisqatsi, also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by minimalist composer Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke.

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.

The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films: it is followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film. However, due to copyright issues, the film was out of print for most of the 1990s.[1]

In a fit of what seemed to be adolescent pique, Melanie Coe, aged 17, ran away from home in 1967 - and became part of pop music legend.

It was her story of sneaking out of her parents' comfortable North London home, which made front page news in those days, that inspired Paul McCartney and John Lennon to write one of their most beautiful ballads - She's Leaving Home...

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more...

Caught up in Spain's complex rural planning laws, she has been forced to demolish her home that was built illegally on protected parkland.

Amazingly, McCartney's reading of her escape in the newspapers was not the first time he had come across her.

"I first met Paul when I was 13 on the pop show Ready Steady Go!

"He presented me with first prize for miming to Brenda Lee's Let's Jump The Broomstick, which meant I danced on the show for a year," says Melanie.

YouTube video:

(link to full article)

The above is a PHP-generated dynamic image, which calculates the amount of time that has passed since the date you put in the image URL. This fun little coding idea, which I plan to steal, comes courtesy of Drew Myers, who has recently quit smoking, and was apparently looking for something to do with his hands...

"Oh, Pretty Woman", Ed Sullivan Show, 1964 (Google Video)

I was looking forward to the upgrade from my little Ryobi, but I'm beginning to wish I'd invested elsewhere. Anywho, here's the deal:

(1) Cast iron extension wing could not be made flush with centre table, I had to bore out the holes by about 1/8" to allow sufficient play to bring it up flush.

(2) The scale on the front wheel, showing the blade angle, is useless, since when the blade is at a perfect 90 degrees, the scale shows 2 degrees, even with the limited adjustment of the pointer all the way over.

(3) And now the final insult - the blade is not parallel to the miter slot, my first little test cuts (2x4 crosscut with miter gauge at 90) caused burning of the wood. The front of the blade is a full 1/16th" to the right compared to the rear. Apparently I'm supposed to loosen the 4 trunnion bolts ("in the rare event that this difficult adjustment should be neccessary") only two of which are accessible enough to illustrate in the manual. And I'm not the most "flexible" person for this kind of work. :)

This is very disheartening. :( I didn't sign up to be a table saw repairman, I just want to make some sawdust, maybe a birdhouse or two. I wonder if Welbeck Sawmill will take it back, or whether I'll just have similar grief with another brand.

Update: The local Delta authorized repair and warranty people, "Murray's Sharpening and Tool Repair", were able to take the thing apart in their shop, and re-assemble it the way it should have been assembled at the factory, i.e. in perfect alignment. Murray himself picked it up and dropped it off. So I'm a happy camper.