09.08.07
I am confirmed as the King of the Nerds
Have you taken the nerd test? It turns out reading makes you cool, and a nerd. The king in fact. Oh yeah!!!
Here is my score:
07.27.07
New Warring States Music - Memorium B-Sides
You want MORE Warring States!
There can never be enough!
Luckily, it never ends!!!
07.24.07
Las Vegas - Land of Boredom
Vegas is lame. Admit it. You know it’s true.
You walk a million miles in the heat between warehouses stuffed with people playing slots.
It’s like commuting to work in a Wal-Mart in Hell.
Don’t get me wrong. Sahar and I had a good time. But that’s because we can take a lame situation and enjoy it. Oh, and the shows helped.
Love was a blast. A fun filled dance extravaganza with some of the best Beatles songs, loved by even those people that don’t like the beatles. It will make you believe the Beatles used to rock, if you aren’t yet of that opinion.
Ka was like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets the Wiggles on Evil Kenieval’s Harley being pursued by the Mandarin or Yellow Claw from early Iron Man days. I loved it. It has an elobarate futuristic set that jutted out into the audience, but sadly performers only really took advantage of it as the show was getting started. The centerpiece of the show was a giant rotating board that served as a boat, a desert, ice covered mountains, and just about anything else you can imagine. Rods came out of the board, serving as handles for the performers to swing on when it was held at a right angle to the horizon.
The Blue Man group was the snooze of the lot. It moved to the Venetian from Luxor, and trust me, it was better at Luxor. It’s also just a lot better the first time you see it. Second time around it’s not so much blowing your mind as trying your patience.
Louie Anderson was a star. He performed as part of Ticket Summit and he was absolutely wonderful. I feel really bad for the guy, you can tell his career isn’t where it was. But oh man is he talented. The humor is darker and more adult these days, but he has family oriented jokes for the kids as well. (check him out here) He is playing regularly at the Excalibur, 2nd tackiest casino in the world (yet filled with stuff I want to do), and if you are there, I highly recommend you check him out. That is, if you can stand to pull yourself away from the Thunder Down Under!!! 
07.07.07
Sahar has a new job!
Sahar (love of my life) has accepted a position at Yale. I’m not sure of her exact titles (there are multiple of them) but they are mighty impressive, let me tell you. Sahar is now one of the big brains powering the ivory tower (or at least the porcelain throne).
Best of all . . . the vacation can now begin. She has some well deserved months off that will rise to the next level with the upcoming blow-out / trade show in Vegas (ticketsummit.com).
We’ve been looking at rings. Yes, that’s right, engagement rings. Oh won’t my parent be thrilled after such long “courtship”. it may be happening soon people (the wedding that is) so be on the lookout for a save the date sometime fairly soon.
Oh, and tons of new Warring States music. (Shame on all of you that have not yet returned your reviews of the new album). That’s what you really want, right?!?!
05.25.07
How to Steal an Election - Direct from Karl Rove
Step One: Read This article (click here)
Step Two: Continue . . .
How are we going to protect our future?
This is a question that bothers us too seldom. Instead, if you are like me, working too hard, trying too many things at once, worrying about the little things, you probably don’t even give it a thought.
But then you read something like Greg Palast’s report that 4.5 Million votes will be stolen in 2008. Just enough to keep the Republican machine rolling. Where does this information come from? Karl Rove’s emails. Emails that according to Palast came from John Wooden. Wooden was operating georgewbush.org, a spoof site about the presidency, when he received emails mistakenly sent to his domain instead of the georgewbush.com domain. According to Palast, the BBC verified the autenticity of these emails directly from GOP testimony. Watch Palast here (click me).
Palast is not a consipracy nut. He seems to have a ton of evidence about how the firings at the Justice Department are directly related to a larger plan to rig future elections, like they were tampered with in 2004. Just watch the video. He explains it well in his own funny style.
Step Three: Read Palast’s book, “Armed Madhouse”
It has most of the important documents he found in his long investigation of the plan behind Iraq and its relationship to election plannning for 2004 and 2008.
Step Four: Encourage your elected officials to investigate this further and punish all violations of voting laws
05.18.07
NickEve.com is banned in China
Since you are reading this, I know you aren’t living in China. Or, if you are, you are one of the sneaky ones that knows how to reach content that is otherwise restricted by the “Golden Shield” initiative of internet censorship.
How do I know this? Well because, as of today, NickEve.com seems to be banned in China.
I only noticed this because I was using internetsupervision.com today at work to check some of our sites, and looked at NickEve.com to compare stats. I noticed that this site was not being found from the data center in Beijing. At first, I thought nothing of it, but when I found I could reach my other websites hosted on the same server from Beijing, I became a bit suspicious. I had indeed written an Anti-War post the previous day, but there was nothing in there about China, so what was going on?
To check, I went to the greatFirewallOfChina.org website as well as a few other places where you can try to reach your sites from within China. Lo and behold, NickEve.com was inaccessible on all these sites.
In my mind, the big question is - why block me?
Do they not like primates? Do they not want people to wish my dad well on his exams? Was it blanket disapproval of the latest Warring States songs? Who knows?
My best guess is they somehow found the word Chinese in the bear farming article and connected this somehow to the language about war in the last post. Warring States, the name of my band, is also a period in Chinese history, but I doubt they would be looking for such subtle clues.
In any case, what is frightening is how quickly this happened. Yesterday I wrote a little post on the war, and and today I am banned. If this is how good the tracking technologies are going to be in our country someday, I shudder to think of how quiet we’ll all have to be to avoid the attention of the mob.
05.16.07
End the War!
Estimated Cost of the War in Iraq
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Enough already. How many more billions do we have to waste on a pointless conflict that is only making the world more dangerous?
It is very important right now to write to your representatives in Washington to get them to cut off funding to this senseless war.
If we keep funding it, it is never going to end.
Support the troops by letting them stop fighting this needless battle.
05.11.07
Warring States in Concert
New Warring States Songs!
walk away (.mp3 file - 4.7mb)
the end of the day (.mp3 file - 4.4mb)
turn (.mp3 - 5.2mb)
laughing loudly (.mp3 file - 8mb)
sit still and listen (.mp3 file - 5.2mb)
Action Figure Portrait Gallery
22Pages.com will be launching its Action Figure Portrait Gallery later this month. It’s a pretty fabulous collection of shots of contemporary action figures from every imaginable angle.
if you have you own action figure pictures, you will be able to post them to the collection as well.
Let’s face it. Everyone needs more dolls, er I mean action figures. Share those toys children!
05.04.07
Next of Kin by Roger Fouts
Nick Says
You Should Buy Next of Kin (click here)
You will learn many, many things from this book, but the two things you’ll never forget are that
1) Roger Fouts is a good man and a great writer
and
2) chimpanzees are amazing. Utterly amazing.
This book will make you want to learn American Sign Language so that you can converse with Washoe and the rest of her family at The Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute as well as with Chimpanzees and other primates all over the world.
It’s a very lively read, as Roger knows how to tell a story, and his story has its dramatic twists and curves with familiar characters we have all seen in our own lives (the insensitive boss, the mad scientist, the loving mother, the happy child). In brief, it is the story of Roger Fouts’ career working with chimpanzees that began almost by accident when he met Washoe in 1967 and went to work with Allen and Beatrix Gardener.
You’ll learn not only about chimps and people and their stories together, but also just how important Gestural Communication is to primates (including of course ourselves). I was glad to hear the other day that more research is being done regarding gestural language and Bonobos (you may have seen the recent NPR story about Primate Gestures).