Dave Mancuso dot Com

I sent a message to a number of people about this website. So I got an error message and tried to send it four times before I found the address that caused the problem. I may have ended up sending the message to several people four times over, but my email client doesn’t let me know this at all. So I may have spammed someone, but maybe not.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

This is why I can’t read a book nowadays. If it’s good, I have trouble putting it down. And I’m not as fast as I used to be. I just finished the Saturday Night Live book– 600 pages in 24 hours is good, but not as fast as I used to be (just can’t drop everything and read a book with kids, although Denise would tell you that’s just what I did). 🙂

40 is creeping up on me…

This one is one of the cornerstones of my personal philosophy (especially in dealing with people). I made it up ten years ago. Aristotle said “Man is the rational animal.” I say “Man is the rationalizing animal.”

This is really good news. Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites announced a new spacecraft almost ready for testing. This thing will be carried up by a specially designed plane and then launched to reach space.

The government space programs seem to be stagnating. It’s great to see private firms get into the mix. I’ve seen a few announcements in the last few years for privately run space programs; I’ve wondered if any of them were partially funded by Robert Heinlein’s estate. He’s been a prime mover and shaker in the space program–you’d be surprised how many people in spaceflight he’s inspired and influenced. Regardless, I’m glad to see someone making progress on spaceflight. Arthur C. Clarke said that we were 50 years ahead of our time with Apollo, but even if that were true, our time is still coming for a greater presence in the solar neighborhood.

You can find the Rutan spacecraft story here.

Not to be obtuse, but I’m reading a book on the inside story of Saturday Night Live and I noticed a name partway into the story. I never knew that Howard Shore, who has graced The Lord Of The Rings movies with such breathtaking soundtracks, was also the music director for Saturday Night Live for the first five years of the show’s run.

Robert Atkins died today in New York. Rumors will probably start that he died of his diet, but he actually slipped on ice outside his clinic two weeks ago. He hit his head and never recovered.

I can honestly say that I’ve never felt as good as when I’m on the Atkins diet. Contrary to popular belief, I eat more salad and vegetables on the low carb diet in two weeks than I eat on a normal diet in six months. You never know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, though. I hope I’ll have at least as long a life as Atkins did, accidents notwithstanding.

Yep, Brad was right. The Moody Blues is the group who put out Octave. Their most famous album was probably Days of Future Passed (because of the song “Nights in White Satin”), but I think their best album was In Search of the Lost Chord.

By the way, The Moody Blues is one of Drew’s favorite bands, although his favorite song at the moment is “The American Pie Song.” Alyssa likes Sheryl Crow and the “Car Wash song” (yes, that “Car Wash”).

Here’s another trivia question, maybe easy, maybe not. Which Beatles song was titled “Scrambled Eggs” when it was being written?

And another, because I feel bad about not including (late) ’80s music: which band had a great hit called “Break Out” (their only hit ever)?

I changed the item body text. I didn’t like the serif I tried, so I changed it back to sans-serif, but a little smaller. It look small in Safari, not so small in Camino, not so small in IE. The top bar and side bar are next. Maybe over the weekend…

No one guessed, but that’s likely because the band Steel Breeze was too obscure to note. I’ve heard of the band, but I’ve never heard their hit song “You Don’t Want Me Anymore.”

And the lyric from the Pink Floyd song? It’s from “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)” (“Blown on the steel breeze”).

This one may be a bit less obscure: which longtime rock band released their eighth album with the name Octave in 1978?