Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music (and tomorrow's, too) features Louis Jordan, one of the most popular musicians of his era in the genres of jazz, blues and r&b. Enjoy!
Louis Jordan feature on Nightmusic
"Everyone except the far right wing of the Republican Party realizes that oil, gas and coal burning are the main activities that have sent the climate into bigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, and El Ninos."
-- Donella Meadows
News
On Katrina’s 7th Anniversary, Tropical Storm Isaac Poses Biggest Test to NOLA’s Rebuilt Levees
Hurricane Isaac soaks Gulf Coast, tests New Orleans levees
Hurricane Isaac drove water over the top of a levee on the outskirts of New Orleans on Wednesday, but the multibillion-dollar barriers built to protect the city itself after the 2005 Katrina disaster were not breached, officials said. ...
Hurricane Isaac drove water over the top of a levee on the outskirts of New Orleans on Wednesday, but the multibillion-dollar barriers built to protect the city itself after the 2005 Katrina disaster were not breached, officials said. ...
"On the east bank right now, we have reports of people on their roofs and attics and 12 to 14 foot of water (in their homes)," Nungesser told CNN.
Entire Police Department Will Be Fired In Camden New Jersey
Rachel Corrie’s Parents Denounce Israeli Military Exoneration for 2003 Killing in Gaza
Why Pentagon's progress against sexual assault is so slow
The most effective way to decrease rates of rape would be to increase rates of prosecution for perpetrators, said troops in a 2011 Air Force survey, the Pentagon's most comprehensive sexual-assault survey to date.
But data show that while 40 percent of civilian sexual-assault allegations are prosecuted, "this number is a staggeringly low 8 percent in the military," according to a statement from Reps. Niki Tsongas (D) of Massachusetts and Michael Turner (R) of Ohio.
There are signs of progress, with the number of prosecutions inching upward and an increasing awareness of the military's tendency to antagonize accusers while failing to scrutinize the serial offenders.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu quits seminar in protest over presence of Tony Blair and his support for the Iraq war
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate and icon of the anti-apartheid struggle, has withdrawn from a seminar in South Africa in protest at the presence of Tony Blair and the former prime minister’s support for the 2003 Iraq war.
“The archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair’s decision to support the United States’ military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible,” said Roger Friedman, a spokesman for the cleric, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1984.
“Morality and leadership are indivisible. In this context, it would be inappropriate and untenable for the archbishop to share a platform with Mr Blair,” he added.
How Google and Apple’s smartphone mapping technology is mapping us
It is a testament to the rate of change in the world of mapping, though, that Liquid Galaxy is now essentially old hat. Google has much, much bigger plans. In June it revealed that it had already started using planes – “military-grade spy planes“, the New York senator Charles Schumer claimed – to provide more detailed 3D imagery of the world’s big cities. It also unveiled the Street View Trekker, a bulky backpack with several 15-megapixel cameras protruding on a stalk, so that operatives can capture “offroad” imagery from hiking trails, narrow alleyways or the forest floor. Almost every month, new kinds of data are incorporated into Google Maps: in June, it was 2,000 miles of British canal towpaths, complete with bridges and locks; it was bike lanes. And for the first time, Google’s dominance of digital mapping faces a credible threat: Apple has announced that it will no longer include Google Maps on iPhones or iPads, replacing it with an alternative that, an Apple source told the tech blog All Things D, “will blow your head off.” ...
Exactly what information the companies collect, and what they do with it, remains much debated. But it’s easy to grasp the basic commercial calculation. The more exactly your phone knows where you are, the more accurately you can be served with advertisements based on the places you’ll be passing. (Ads on Google are already geo-targeted.) There’s no technical reason why, perhaps in return for a cheaper phone bill, you mightn’t consent to be shown not the quickest route between two points, but the quickest route that passes at least one Starbucks. If you’re looking at the world through Google glasses, who determines which aspects of “augmented reality” data you see – and did they pay for the privilege? Combining GPS with the new Indoor Positioning System, which uses cellular and other phone data to track phones much more precisely, shops could easily track customers’ movements among the aisles, adjusting displays on a day-by-day basis for maximum revenue.
“The map is mapping us,” says Martin Dodge, a senior lecturer in human geography at Manchester University. “I’m not paranoid, but I am quite suspicious and cynical about products that appear to be innocent and neutral, but that are actually vacuuming up all kinds of behavioural and attitudinal data.”
New Mileage Standards Encourage More Gas-guzzling, Not Less: Report
The Obama administration finalized new fuel economy rules Tuesday, boasting new requirements that are slated to double fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks sold in the US over the next 13 years; however, environmental scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity warned Tuesday that the new numbers are misleading in the complex regulations. Due to loopholes in the plan, total greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks will actually increase from 2017 through 2025 and over the long term. ...
“Cars and trucks are the low-hanging fruit in the fight to get carbon pollution under control, and the technologies to reduce emissions exist or are on the drawing board,” said Vera Pardee, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “But the administration rejected a standard employing those technologies and instead incentivized SUVs and heavier trucks over cars. Automakers’ profits may improve, but the climate crisis will get worse...Setting fuel economy standards for 2025 that are lower than what we can achieve right now is not the kind of progress we urgently need,” said Pardee.
Hundreds of Quantico Emails Handed Over to Bradley Manning’s Defense
The government handed the defense for Pfc. Bradley Manning around six hundred emails between commanding officers at the Quantico Marine brig in Virginia, where Manning was held in pretrial confinement for nine months. The emails make up just less than half of a cache of emails in the government’s possession, 84 of which were already turned over to the defense.
The defense believes they contain further proof that the commanding general of the brig, Maj. Gen. George Flynn, was the key person who made sure Manning was kept in prevention of injury (POI) status. ...
Two separate trial counsels for the government made representations that they had disclosed all in their possession that was “material” to the defense. Coombs could have accepted this right there and all would have been said and done. But Coombs, suspecting shenanigans, filed a discovery request and emails that the government had not considered to be “material” were uncovered. There now were 1,290 additional emails that the government had.
People developing alternatives to corrupt, bankster-dominated monetary systems
At a time when the future of the euro is in doubt and millions are unemployed or underemployed with little cash to spare, a parallel economy is springing up in parts of Spain, allowing people to live outside the single currency.
In the city of Malaga, on the country’s southern Mediterranean coast just 80 miles from Africa, residents have set up an online site that allows them to earn money and buy products using a virtual currency. The Catalonian fishing town of Vilanova i la Geltru has launched a similar experiment but with a paper credit card of sorts. It implements a new currency worth slightly more than the euro when it is used at local stores.
In Barcelona, the country’s second-largest city after Madrid, the preferred model is time banks, which allow people to trade their services in hours without the involvement of money.
Similar projects are popping up in Greece, Portugal and other euro-zone countries with troubled economies.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Film highlights the temptations and perils of blind obedience to authority
A Little Night Music
Louis Jordan - Buzz me Baby
Louis Jordan - Caldonia
Louis Jordan - Let The Good Times Roll
Louis Jordan - Choo choo ch'boogie
Louis Jordan - Five Guys Named Moe
Louis Jordan & The Tympany Five - Beans and Cornbread
Louis Jordan - You Gotta have a Beat
Louis Jordan - Don't Worry 'Bout the Mule
Louis Jordan - Blue Lite Boogie
Louis Jordan - You Dyed Your Hair Chartreuse
Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five - Jumpin' At The Jubilee
Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five - School Days
Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five - The two little squirrels (Nuts to you)
Louis Jordan - Messy Bessy
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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