Fun with Global Warming

Being a teacher's assistant carries some interesting perks.  Aside from the opportunity to help teach geology, which is very fun, I get to grade tests and papers, which is mostly not so fun.  The perk here, though, is the occasional outrageous statements I run across.  Actually, they're not as occasional as they should be. I'm going to share the best of two semesters here.

Some quick background:  These are almost all papers written by Elementary Education majors, which is kind of frightening when you think about it.  So many of these people aren't very bright. When I have school-age kids, I will very carefully pay attention to what they're being taught at school, especially as I remember the crap they taught me.  We try to keep these future school-teachers on top of current issues that are likely to come up as they teach, but that they know next to nothing about.  In this case, they were required to watch *shudder* "An Inconvenient Truth" by the former next president of the United States, Algore. This is not a scientific film, but it somehow got him a Nobel Prize, and it's what everyone refers to. Then they watched the BBC's "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which is a well thought-out response to Algore's lies.

I worry, because it's like a straw-man argument, and I wonder what will happen when these people are confronted for the first time and have to defend their new opinion that anthropogenic global warming is false, based on a movie they were forced to see once years ago.  They'll probably start to doubt themselves, then go back to the irrational emotional argument and be convinced stronger than they used to be that driving SUVs is bad.

Oh, well, I'll stop boring you.  They had to write a two-page paper of their opinion after having watched these two movies, and here is a sample of the best excerpts from their papers:

“Global Warming:  Are Humans the cause, or is Al Gore just dumb?” [the title of a paper]

“Global warming often focuses on the temperature.”

“The Bronze Age happened three millennium ago and is called epsitherminals.”

“Clouds are controlled by climatic rays.  Climatic rays are controlled by the sun.”

“Astriphisisits.”

“For example, I live in an environment where the winters can be excruciating one year, and the next it could be completely normal.  Yes, we are going to get those hot and wicked summer days, but there will be a point when it will be nice and wonderful.”  [not all are badly-written or ignorant comments, just ones you'd only hear in Rexburg]

“Every day we have new technology that is being created us.  Some of those creations are cars, factories, trains, etc… There is smoke that is coming out of those things.  That smoke that is called man-made is dioxide.  Carbon dioxide is surrounding our earth and possibly the atmosphere today.”

“Now, thanks to education, I know my own opinion on global warming.” [I'm glad we could inform you what you think!]

“As it’s obviously to see….”

“bag wagon” [I assume they meant band wagon.]

“President Gore also offers us the compelling testimony of the world renowned climate scientist ‘My Friend’ to support his opinion.” [I really like this statement; however this student made a very serious mistake.... see if you can catch it.]

“what did we ever do to the sun to make it want to kill us?” [In response to the fact that the sun causes global warming, not CO₂]

“There was the halocene maximum, the medieval warming period, and then the little ice age.  That shows that even when people weren’t on the earth, the climate was changing." 

“mosquitoes are disappearing off into different regions.  This would be bad since some villages depend on the mosquitoes.”

“inexistent” [Another fun new word.]

“There is much debate about this subject.  The politicians are debating widely about this heated subjected.”

“Most of the warming that has occurred was before the 1940s when industrial production was relatively insufficient.”

“Maybe Al Gore should try to cool down hell so it’s more comfortable when he gets there!” [The opening statement of a paper.]

“Al Gore is going to hell!!!” [The closing statement of the same paper]

“Algore” [I use this spelling as a joke, taken from Rush Limbaugh.  I don't know if this student was doing the same or not.]

“the PTCC, or the International Governmental Panel of Climate Change”

“In the words of my father […] ‘I suspect the sequel will be “An Inconvenient Edge.”  It’ll be all about how the earth is really flat.’”

“It’s been prophesied that New York would someday be wiped out along with other wicked cities.  Who knows, san Francisco and New York could get destroyed like this in the last days.” [A statement you'd only hear at an LDS school.]

"The 'mid-evil' period of earth”

“So if CO2 does not affect the temperature, then what does?  Well even before I watched this movie, I knew, duh!  The sun!  The sun drives the climate change.”

“The sun is, to us, a life giving star that is bright and full of light.  But, at a closer look, as scientists have seen, it really is a raging ball of fire and explosion.”

“If humans cause CO2 levels to rise that much, we must be blowing out tops off like volcanoes.” [I think they meant that if volcanoes cause more pollution than humans, we must be causing volcanic eruptions if it's our fault.]

“The information always shows that the temperature rise began 1940; before cars.”

“When the Ozone layer is being broken down, that means more radiation is getting in.  Consequently that means the higher risk for cancer, which is already terrorizing the world.”

So those are the best of the quotes.  There are more, but they're not as funny.  Remember, these people may teach your kids someday!  Until then, we can have some fun with them.  For the record, there were a few good papers, but none of them were what should be expected from college students.

Rexburg Air Show

It's been just over a week, and I finally have pictures of the Rexburg Air Show to post.  This is the only non-school (non-field trip) event I look forward to regularly in Rexburg; it's really a surprisingly good show for a place this small.  The Legacy Flight Museum here in Rexburg has a very nice collection of World War II planes, including 3 (2 and 1/2, since one's wrecked) P-51 Mustangs, which are my favorite plane of all time.  The flight show also has some impressive stunt pilots, but for me the WWII planes are definitely the highlight.

I wish I could say I took these pictures, but sadly my camera sucks, so I had to depend on my dad to take good pictures.  He wasn't able to make it to the first bit, but he caught all the good stuff.  You can't really catch acrobatics in a picture, but these do a pretty good job:

Two planes playing chicken:

They do these stunts extremely low to the ground, just a few feet lower and there would be fewer planes next year.

This guy can land his plane on a tiny platform on top of a truck.  He can't actually see the platform, by the way.

This next guy was awesome, but the pictures don't do it justice.  By next year I'll have bought a video camera.

While he was doing that, the Jelly Belly plane was climbing and climbing, preparing to do his "deadstick" routine.  At a certain altitude, he cut power to his engine, and did aerobatic stunts while gliding.  The idea is that he has to very carefully use the energy he has due to gravity, to manage every planned stunt before having to land.

And when it's all done, he had exactly enough energy left to land and coast to a stop at exactly the point where his friend had been standing on the runway throughout the entire routine.

All the pilots are Idaho locals, but they perform and compete all over the U.S.

Now the historical planes!  First, an L-39 Albatros, a Czechoslovakian jet trainer from the 70s.  This plane burns all its fuel in an hour of flight.  Unfortunately I don't have a good one of it in the air, but here it is after its flight:

A bit older than that is the A-1 Skyraider, built right after WWII through the 50s.  It's a predecessor to my favorite modern plane, the A-10 Thunderbolt II (known as the Warthog), and was used through the 70s.  There were two at the air show, each a different variant:

Now WWII planes!  The next plane is the TBF Avenger torpedo bomber.  George Bush senior flew this one in the Pacific in WWII, and was shot down on September 2, 1944.  At the time he was the youngest navy pilot.  Here's the one at the flight museum:

The P-63 Kingcobra was developed by the U.S. but used by the Russians in WWII:

The B-25 Mitchell bomber was used after Pearl Harbor in the famous Doolittle Raid.  They show this raid pretty well at the end of that ridiculous Pearl Harbor movie, the only interesting part of the whole move.  They really did remove guns and all sorts of other things to make the bomber light enough to take off from an aircraft carrier.

They also had a WWII trainer plane (two, in fact) from 1938:  The T-6 Texan.  This plane had every conceivable quirk and difficulty imaginable, and they said if you could fly it from the back seat, you could fly any plane.  The pilot they had at the show was supposedly a master at flying from the back seat.

There were a few more planes, but I've hit on all the really interesting ones except the very best:  The P-51 Mustang.  Just to clarify, the car was named after the plane.

This is NOT a Mustang:

THIS is a Mustang:

They were kind of a disappointment when they were first developed, until the British got the idea to put in a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  The 1,695 horsepower made the Mustang more than a match for any Luftwaffe fighter (even their fancy new jet, with a good enough pilot, like Chuck Yeager), and it was a reliable plane with enough range to finally escort a fleet of bombers all the way to Germany and back to base.  It was the most successful fighter of WWII, and some say of all time.

The Legacy Flight Museum here has two and a half Mustangs, two owned and flown by John Bagley.  John actually wrecked one of them (hence the half) on Main Street a couple years ago, right in front of the air port.  He's crashed three planes, which you'd think means he's a bad pilot.  Actually, a bad pilot typically only crashes once.  A good pilot knows when there's trouble and brings the plane down on his own terms.  Bagley had just installed a new engine in this Mustang and it failed during the flight test, and he couldn't quite get it back to the runway so he tried to land between lanes on Highway 33 (Main Street).  Unfortunately, the wing clipped the ground just before the gear, and it rolled.  They're restoring it, and say it'll be ready next year.  John Bagley also owns this Mustang, which has been featured in over 1000 air shows in North America and holds the world speed record for a prop plane coast-to-coast from California to Florida in five hours and twenty minutes:

After each event, the pilots got a victory ride in this awesome Jeep.  Bonus points for anyone who can identify the retired BYU-I geology professor having a good time driving them around:

My own Jeep will look like that someday, but doesn't right now (those are my grandparents in the picture with me):

They had some other cool WWII ground vehicles:

And then to wrap it up, they flew the Missing Man Formation, to honor pilots who have died in combat.  During the maneuver, the awesome bagpipe player from my St. Patricks Day blog post played various tunes, including of course Amazing Grace.  The formation was flown by the two Skyraiders and the Avenger.

I'll finish by mentioning that I totally forgot sunscreen, but the show was well worth the horrible sunburn, and by adding more picture of the best plane ever, the Mustang:

Quick Follow-Up, More Iceland, and Dog Food

For a quick follow-up to my Wal-Mart post the yesterday, please read this short article.  I meant to include this before, to give more of a positive note to my rant, but I forgot.  It's an inspiring story, and illustrates why even in the best of intentions government should stand back and not interfere if at all possible, since no government can ever be as efficient as private industry.

You all know already how much I really want to visit Iceland, and I'm sorry to say you haven't heard the last of it yet.  I was reading the other day and found out that the record high temperature in Iceland was 86.9°F, on June 22, 1939.  Even better, in Reykjavik, the average high in July is 55°, and the average low in January is 27°.  I don't think there's any climate better tailored to my exact tastes.  Of course, you guys don't really care and think I'm crazy anyway, so I'll give you a pretty picture to look at:

This was taken from a NASA satellite on January 28, 2004.

Totally off-topic, here's a random thought:  Why do they always brag about the flavor, in highly descriptive terms, of dog food in commercials?  Dogs don't speak English, and don't know a dog food commercial when they see one, even if they were interested in TV.  Guess what?  This is really obvious, but I find it hilarious:  You can't market dog food to dogs, you have to market it to people.  So if people don't find dog food commercials appetizing, they won't buy delicious beef flavored dog food for their dog.  Think about it next time you see a commercial for Purina or whatever:  they're ringing a bell, and you're the one who's supposed to start salivating.  Not your dog. Subliminable?  I think so.

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart?

I was going to write about the air show last Saturday where I got super sunburned, but there's no point without pictures, and since my camera is a piece of .... it doesn't take good pictures, I had to rely on my dad taking good pictures.  Since he's out teaching a geology field camp for five more weeks, I'll have to grab the pictures from him over the weekend.  So that's coming up.

I had a conversation recently with some friends about Wal-Mart, where I was the only one who was not of the opinion that Wal-Mart is evil.  It kind of threw me off, since this is the kind of conversation I'm used to having with my crazy liberal hippie friends at Missouri State and my former  coworkers at Barnes & Noble.  I love defending conservative principles, but it's unsettling to have to defend them against other conservatives.

I actually wrote and rewrote a long essay on why Wal-Mart isn't evil, but I think something short would be more effective, especially considering the vast audience of my blog.  I've got to say something, though, since hearing people rip on Wal-Mart bugs me about as much as people who support high minimum wage or who aren't at least irritated by overtime laws.  Why is it so cool to hate Wal-Mart?  Because just like buying recycled paper or poison-filled compact fluorescent light bulbs (or driving a Prius for that matter), hating Wal-Mart makes people feel good about themselves.  The problem is the way Wal-Mart is portrayed by liberals in government and media.  Wal-Mart is an amazing success story, and just like McDonalds, Microsoft and Halliburton is a whipping boy for all of Big Business.

It's true that after a Wal-Mart comes to a small town, many local businesses fail; but the missing factor in this story is the choice of the consumer.  What this means is that enough consumers decide that they can be better served by Wal-Mart than a local business that they change the way they shop.  This isn't the first time this has happened.  Cheap shipping provided by the invention of the railroad, combined with competitively priced mail order catalogues such as Sears Roebuck, threatened local retail business in the 1800s.  The invention of cars allowed people to travel to other cities for better products or better prices.  Shopping malls came in the 60s, and resulted in abandoned downtown areas, as the malls pulled consumers away from downtown stores.  Large retail chains such as Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Target appeared at about the same time.  These are all just new phases in the retail business, and like every other, stores that can adapt will survive and those that can't will provide a vacuum for new businesses that can.  Should we punish Wal-Mart for being more successful than small stores?  Maybe, if it was true that Wal-Mart was bad for a community.  If so, then the punishment should come from consumers, and not from government.

Government has tried (and continues to try) to stop the spread of Wal-Mart, and it always turns out to be a bad idea..  For example, in Chicago recently forbade Wal-Mart from opening any stores.  The result was that Wal-Mart opened a store just outside city limits in Evergreen Park in a very poor mostly black neighborhood, and received a record 25,000 applications for employment.  Most of these came from Chicago residents who were suffering from high unemployment caused by the city's anti-business policies.  Other residents were glad that they no longer had to drive many miles just to find prices they could afford.  What did Jesse Jackson have to say about this?  "It's Kool-Aid and cyanide. The Kool-Aid is the cheap prices. The cyanide is the cheap wages. The cyanide is the cheap health benefits."  Apparently 25,000 people were earning so little that even a job at Wal-Mart would be an improvement, had so little health benefits that even a Wal-Mart health plan would be an improvement.  The increased buying power that results from the lower prices is a benefit that is never factored into the story by the media.  The reason the government hates it is that a capitalist organization is succeeding where liberalism is failing.

A similar situation has happened in Vermont, which has fought for a long time to keep Wal-Mart out, and all the while Vermont residents take their business to Wal-Mart anyway, meaning a loss of tax revenue for Vermont.  Wal-Mart is a huge benefit to Evergreen Park, and could have been for Chicago.  Do they think that lower prices will mean lower tax revenue?  If so, they should think again; people don't spend less shopping at Wal-Mart, instead they get more for their money.  Even Rexburg suffers from this.  Wal-Mart has expressed interest in expanding to a Supercenter here, and met resistance from the anti-business city council (Walgreens has to struggle constantly against them as well), so we don't get a Supercenter.  Broulim's and Albertsons prices are such that when gas was $3/gallon (I need to revise this, now that it's $4) Kate and I estimated that if we planned to spend $90 or more on groceries the savings at Wal-Mart in Idaho Falls outweighed the cost of about three gallons of gas.  So Idaho Falls gets my sales tax money, instead of Rexburg.

What about quality?  Broulim's quality is the same as Wal-Mart's (especially produce, it's hit or miss whether the tomatoes will be rotten or perfect, and I haven't seen good avocados at Broulim's in forever), but the prices are higher, since it's a local chain.  Albertsons prices are even higher, but you get what you pay for.  $1.99 for a small avocado, but they're always excellent.  If I could afford to shop at Albertsons I would, but decent avocados for a decent price is better than perfect ones I can't afford.  Other than produce, Wal-Mart also has a much wider selection than other stores, and I rarely have complaints about the quality.

Of course there's still the complaint about local businesses failing, but the existence of Big Box Retailers is just another example of change.  We can never expect things to be static, we can only prepare for and adapt to change.  Small shops aren't capable of handling the needs of a large population, so instead they need to adapt to cater to the wants of small segments of population, those who can afford it.  Meanwhile, I'm glad I can afford anything at all, and it's only because of Wal-Mart.

Just a few more numbers before I end my rant.  A study by Global Insight (admittedly commissioned by Wal-Mart) estimates that Wal-Mart creates a net 210,000 jobs nationally and saves working families more than $2,500 per year.  That essentially turns a $20,000/year salary into a $22,500/year salary.  Another study done at the University of Missouri (not commissioned by Wal-Mart) estimates that in the short term a Wal-Mart adds 100 retail jobs at the county level, 50 of which disappear in the long term.  That's a net gain of 50 jobs, not a bad thing if you're having trouble finding a job.  The Washington Post stated that "Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion per year."

No one is forcing anyone to shop at Wal-Mart, no one is forcing anyone to stop spending money on local business.  The idea that Wal-Mart (or Big Business in general) is evil is a premise of socialism, and we conservatives need to stop accepting the premises of the left.  This applies to Wal-Mart, global warming (hint hint, McCain), minimum wage, the role of government, the list goes on.  If you actually read this, sorry about the rant!  Go ahead and tell me how wrong I am, and why I should hate Wal-Mart, too.  I'll try to find something more positive to write about next time.

The Golden Compass and Sweeney Todd

How's that for a creative post title? I'll give you two guesses what this post is about; you'll need them both to cover it all. Also, this is a good news/bad news post.

The bad news is that despite how extra cool the promos were for The Golden Compass, that movie really sucks. Whatever else I say, the real reason I wanted to see it was because the girl riding the polar bear in the previews just made me want to ride one. The story looked okay, even though I knew going into it that it was the beginning of an anti-Christian trilogy that ends with the children essentially killing God. Kind of a response to Narnia. I was hoping to take that with the same grain of salt that allowed me to accept Gaia in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (which was surprisingly good). You always have to accept some premise in fiction, and I was willing to detach this world from our world.

First off, there was a PSA at the beginning of the DVD about polar bears being threatened by global warming and that "you are their only armor." Way to go, let's brainwash the children watching this movie that the cute polar bears, whose numbers have quintupled in the past 30 years, will die because their parents drive a Suburban. Shucks and other comments! Still, I kept an open mind.

The story could have been good, but since it was so poorly told it merely seemed derived from The Lord of the Rings and Narnia alternately. Keep in mind, I'm reviewing only the movie, maybe the book is much better. I'll read it eventually. The dialogue most of the time seemed written for a comic book. Every character was a stereotype, with no attempt to give them more depth. Every major character but one had an English accent, even though several of them had cool Scandinavian names and should have had accents to match. The one who didn't was a Texas man, and he was so stereotype western that I could not take him seriously even once. Every time a new character enters the story, they introduce themselves to the hero, ask what her quest is, recite their backstory from start to finish, then join her quest without any resistance because that's what their character is supposed to do. Each subplot is introduced and resolved in short order with few surprises. Major plot points are barely attended to, no doubt in a poor attempt at subtlety. Other than the bear, the animated animals look completely fake, and the big battle scene at the end looks more like a riot at a soccer game than an epic fight for the fate of multiple universes. The scenes look hastily pasted together and as if half a dozen different art teams worked on different bits and never communicated with each other. Also, there's a Star Wars type personal story twist in there at some point.

I can go on but that's enough. Here are the parts I liked: Dakota Blue Richards did a very good job in her first ever movie role as Lyra Belacqua, the hero of the story. The compass looks cool, as does Iorek Byrnison the bear. Iorek's fight with the king of the bears is pretty cool, too. The witches are very cool, and their special effects were done properly and subtly. I liked the idea of the demons, which in this movie are animal companions to every human, which contain their soul (though they should have had a mental link rather than speaking aloud). Also, there was one very effective bit after Iorek gives his obligatory backstory, extremely well delivered by Dakota, and the quote can be applied to my disappointment in this movie:

"Iorek Byrnison, you are the first Ice Bear I ever met. I was ever so excited, and scared, but now I'm just disappointed. I heard that bears lived to hunt, and to fight! Why are you wasting your time here, drinking whiskey?"

I was excited to see this movie, but it was a disappointing waste of time.

Good thing I rented another one....

I'm not a fan of musicals or horror, but I am a fan of cannibals, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, and I've been a major fan of Helena Bonham Carter ever since Fight Club. Sweeney Todd is a Burton film starring Depp and Carter about baking people into pies, so what's not to love? Of course, Stephen Sondheim deserves the real credit for this one, Burton just did an amazing job bringing it to the screen. The movie is rated R for one reason only: buckets and buckets of blood. Rivers of blood, in fact. Draining into the sewer. If blood makes you squeamish, don't see this movie.

I had no idea Johnny Depp was such a good singer! Carter is good, too, but not as good; in fact while I enjoyed her voice, I found her hard to understand. The real surprise, though, was Ed Sanders, a fifteen-year-old kid who's never been in anything before but who for me stole the show from Depp and Carter as he played the role of a server in the pie shop. This kid has an incredible voice, and will go very far in film and theater. As he plays his all-important role in the events at the end of the movie, he was so convincing, and had such intense rage and hatred on his face that I was more afraid of him at that moment than of Sweeney himself the whole film. I listened to the original Broadway soundtrack after seeing this movie, and the singers in the movie overall were much better by far than the original singers.

The story is cool, and presented as a horrific horror movie and a hilarious comedy at the same time. It's about a man so consumed by revenge that by the time he gets it he's lost everything through his actions. The end plays out like a Shakespearean tragedy where very few survive. The art is very surreal, and it's nice to see Tim Burton back on his game after that awful Willy Wonka garbage. Did I mention pies made of people and buckets of blood?

Since the story is told in music, let's talk about the music, with lots of lyrics quotes. I absolutely love the creepy orchestrations as well, but I can't quote those. Right at the beginning we're introduced to Sweeney's very optimistic opinion of London:

"There's a hole in the world, like a great black pit

And the vermin of the world inhabit it

And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit

And it goes by the name of London"

Later, as his first chance at real revenge is snatched from him, his cheery attitude gains an extra lift:

"There's a hole in the world, like a great black pit

And it's filled with people who are filled with shit

And the vermin of the world inhabit it

But not for long....

They all deserve to die!"

"We all deserve to die

Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.

Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief

For the rest of us death will be a relief

We all deserve to die."

So after Sweeney kills Sacha Baron Cohen (yes, Borat is his first victim), Mrs. Lovett (Carter) comes up with a great way to dispose of the body and give a boost to her business at the same time: cook them into her pies! This inspires a song where they discuss what type of person would taste best:

"Have a little Priest!"

"Is it really good?"

"Sir, it's too good, at least!

Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh,

So it's pretty fresh."

"Awful lot of fat."

"Only where it sat."

"Haven't you got poet, or something like that?"

"No, y'see, the trouble with poet is

How do you know it's deceased?

Try the Priest!"

I wasn't impressed by the looks or voice of Jayne Wisener, who played Todd's kidnapped daughter, and her love interest and Todd's friend is sure an ugly fellow. But for icing on the cake, Alan Rickman is the villain (of course), and his assistant is none other than Timothy Spall, who was Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter. He's just as greasy and rodent-like in this movie.

This is now my favorite musical after The Nightmare Before Christmas (ironically another Burton film), and I highly recommend it. Just don't watch it during dinner, like Kate and I did. Also, it'll be an interesting experience next time I get my hair cut....

That's not beef....

Also, take a look at my friend's Sweeny Todd fan art. I'm jealous of the sketching ability. There're also great sketches of Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean characters as well.

Aaarrgh!

Ok, so I was all excited because I'd found such a cool solution to two problems with the playlist on my blog. The biggest problem is that every so often a link to a song will go bad, and give an error message.  The other problem is that not every song I want is on Project Playlist.

The other day I accidentally stumbled on File Den, a site that offers not only free file sharing, but direct html links to each file.  So I set up a free account, passing up about a dozen offers for stuff (I'm not annoyed that there were so many ads, a free site has to make money somehow, right?), and I uploaded 100 of my favorite songs from my iTunes playlist.  The only tricky part was renaming a few files for my Icelandic music, since the Windows File Den server doesn't like odd characters in file names (while my Mac doesn't care what it's called).  Then I cut and pasted each link into Project Playlist, and had the perfect blog playlist.

It worked, too, for two days.  Apparently the monthly bandwidth limit of 5gb at File Den isn't nearly as much as it sounds.  In the middle of listening to the music, and chatting with a friend who was also enjoying the music, every song in the playlist simultaneously went red with an error message.  Since I'm not going to pay $4.95/month just so you guys can listen to my superior music, I'm going to have to find another solution.  Meanwhile, sadly, I'm putting my old playlist back.

So Scott, Rebekah, forget that thing I told you about yesterday, that I was so excited about, that I got a cool playlist going and you can, too.  You can't after all, dammit, but I'm looking into a new way to do it.