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What do you expect when you pick up an autobiography of a rock musician? Sex? Drugs? Rock-n-roll exploits with a chainsaw and a gallon of baby oil at the Ramada? Scandalous stories of band-mates and sundry hangers-on? You get virtually none of that in Bill Bruford The Autobiography. It's much…

Master of the drum kit and poly-rhythmist Bill Bruford celebrates 60 years today. Well known among all manner of percussionists and drummers, Bruford's work spans 40 years from his early days with Yes, his tenure with several incarnations of King Crimson, and his own band, Earthworks, along with…

Under 200. That's the usual target for total cholesterol as reported in popular media. But are all 200s the same? I just received my profile from a recent blood test. Here's what it said. Total cholesterol: 204 LDL (bad cholesterol): 131.6 HDL (good cholesterol): 57 Triglycerides: 77 The total is…

Meseret Defar of Ethiopia ran 14:24.37 in Stockholm to break the women's 5000 meter indoor mark, lowering it by over 3 seconds. It is worth noting that this formidable run was performed on a track well short of the 200 meter indoor "standard" found in many colleges and universities, and thus…

Sad news for the drummers and jazz lovers on SciBlogs. Jazz drumming legend Louie Bellson passed away unexpectedly on Valentine's Day. Some details here. Update: Here's a short bio video with some nice bits of Louie playing and some rather unique kit layouts.

The other day, perennial political tool Rush Limbaugh was on CNBC defending his now infamous "I want Obama to fail" comment. His argument went something like this (paraphrasing): Yes, I want him to fail. His policies are liberal policies and I want liberal policies to fail. I want conservative…

From a recent ad spotted in Running Times magazine, we discover a way to get oxygen into the bloodstream of athletes without using the lungs. Yes, it's SportsOxy Shot from Scientific Solutions LLC. They're selling "super oxygenated" water that's supposed to drastically improve athletic performance…

And now for something almost completely different on The Refuge: How well can you count? No, not like in grade school. I wrote and recorded a tune the other day. It's called Timmy Umbwebwe Lights A Candle (yes, I have a thing for odd titles). The initial beat was composed on the drum kit. Not that…

Here's a wonderful rendition of 2 Kings 2:23 Who says the Bible can't be a source of hilarity? (hat tip to vdrums.com)

Well, at least Stevie Van Zandt and Britain's Youth Music seem to think so. A recent article in The Times refers to research by Youth Music indicating that the games have prompted upwards of 2.5 million children to take up musical instruments. I'm skeptical. No doubt the games are a lot of fun for…

Much has been written on the Refuge regarding what might be termed fine motor co-ordination experiments. That, and something to do with playing the drums in a manner that most drummers don't, you know, like backwards. Some might ask "What is the point of practicing a double paradiddle on a bunch of…

Today would've been Magritte's 110th birthday. The Google homepage has an homage to the Belgian surrealist painter, a combination of the works The Son of Man and Golconda. I've been attracted to his work for many years and have a reproduction of The Son of Man in my office and a lovely little…

There is some confusion as to precisely how a setback thermostat saves energy. In fact, because of misunderstandings I have heard a number of people proclaim that a setback doesn't save energy. There are two common arguments: 1. Although you save energy as the house is initially cooling during the…

Electronic Design has released their 2008 salary survey for electrical and electronic engineers. Average salary for design and development engineers is now $94k (base salary). Engineering management is up to $116k. The highest paying regions are Pacific and Mountain at $114k and $103k, respectively…

New from Audio Designline is this three page FAQ on class D audio amplifiers. Not extremely technical, but it answers many questions for the technically minded. I remember studying class D amplifiers many years ago in college. In those days the quality was decidedly not hi-fi and the reliability…

Norm Coleman never ceases to amaze me. No matter how much of a scoundrel you may think he is, he can always manage to go one better. For example, consider this story from CNN describing the election results. In an excruciatingly close election, we find Coleman barely ahead with 42 percent of the…

Here you go, from MSNBC: http://www.polls.newsvine.com/_question/2008/11/05/2074539-do-you-agree-with-the-gay-marriage-bans Currently at only 57% No.

If I hear one more person yammer on about Sarah Palin being positioned perfectly for a 2012 presidential bid, I'm going to scream. It's not going to happen for a couple of reasons. First, there is no historical precedent. Being the losing VP didn't help John Edwards or Joe Lieberman. It didn't help…

An article from the Buffalo News offers some fuel for the "elitism fire". From Ohio, we learn of voter George Pounder: Pounder looks at Obama and sees a Harvard-educated lawyer who talks in fancy words that don't necessarily resonate with the guys on the factory floor. "We're basically blue-collar…

I picked up the newspaper the other day and found a short article declaring that the news media have been biased toward Obama and against McCain. The article claims that reporting was favorable to the Democrats about 2/3rds of the time and that the only relatively "equal" outlet was Fox News. Hmmm…

So North Carolina Democratic hopeful Kay Hagan is suing Elizabeth Dole over a TV ad in the race for US Senate. I really have mixed feelings about this story. The implication is that Hagan is an atheist (or at the very least is strongly associated with atheists) and that's patently untrue as she is…

Given the same players, how would changing the presidential tickets influence your vote? For starters, consider swapping the president and vice-president seats. A Biden/Obama ticket probably wouldn't change my overall view of the ticket. That is, there are some things I like and dislike about Obama…

Maybe he could've considered another name for the business though.

Do your best to find a good caption for this picture. What is it about these blue and white signs? Hmmm, let me think...let me think.... There's a theme here.... Yes, the first thought into my head was "Ah, this must be the Fantasy Corner." You betcha!

A very interesting read in the Guardian today regarding the possibility of humans ever running a sub two hour marathon. This speculation always crops up when the marathon record is broken, most recently by the venerable Haile Gebrselassie who last week brought the mark down to 2:03:59. The…

Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia just broke his own world marathon best at Berlin this morning by being the first human being ever to traverse the 26.2 mile race distance in under 2 hours 4 minutes. Geb clocked 2:03:59 chopping nearly half of a minute off of his old record. This works out to 4:43.7…

No, not literally (yeow, there's an image I don't need). Harris had some wonderful commentary in Newsweek on the Republican VP candidate. Of particular worth is the following comment regarding "elitism" in US politics: Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There…

Michael Medved's speech at the "Values Voter" Summit in Washington was a wonderful example of lunacy and demagoguery. I'll bypass the entire concept of a "values voter" to begin with as it implies that there's a voting segment that has "no values" (even Adolf Hitler had values, just not ones that…

There's a great piece over on The Nation by Katha Pollitt regarding Sarah Palin. Pollitt offers a dozen questions that I'm sure will never be asked on a televised "debate" but should.

There have been some particularly inane comments regarding Sarah Palin's "experience" including this bit of craziness from Steve Doocy of Fox News (and echoed by Cindy McCain a short time later). Applying the same sort of logic, we naturally arrive at the following top-ten list. 10. Alaska is the…