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The summer that came out, we were staying in a small town in the Santa Cruz mountains. My older sister, who turned a cool 14 that summer, wanted this album for her birthday, so my dad drove her into town to the tiny hippie record store. She wanted it on cassette (no record player in the country!), but they only had vinyl, so the owner told them to come back the next day. When they went back, he'd taped the album and hand-written the label, and we listened to that tape all the rest of that summer.

A Neko Case/Kelly Hogan/Carolyn Mark show from many years ago was probably the high-point in stage banter that I've witnessed.

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120828&content_id=37495954&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf Sandoval and Crawford will be competing in Beach Volleyball in Rio 2016.

Nels was playing with Carla Bozulich, opening for Wilco and promoting their Red Headed Stranger album. If I recall, Carla and Nels joined Wilco a couple of times on that tour (Jeff and Carla doing a duet on Forget the Flowers). I'm guessing the other Wilcos were familiar with Nels' work before that, but if I recall correctly, it was immediately following that tour that Nels was asked to join.

At least it's not another Giant!

I'm not even talking about the poverty angle, although that's part of it, certainly. But part of what J.T. Snow is saying there is that for a player like Melky, this isn't his home, he doesn't necessarily have any interest in protecting the integrity of the Great American Pastime, or whatever. Yes, no doubt he could have made plenty of money without doping, but for every game he got away with it, he was increasing his chances of an even bigger payoff down the line. Again: not defending Melky, I have no interest in seeing in back anywhere near AT&T Park. Just an interesting perspectiv

Yeah, that nonsense gets into completely ridiculous territory. I'm not trying to excuse Cabrera in any way, but J.T. Snow did have a perspective on this that I'd not heard before: http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Giants-J-T-Snow-reflects-on-Cabrera-3798925.php The people I feel most sorry for are the "Melk Men".

Ha! I believe most (all?) states have some form of disability insurance. So that's generally another/separate form of payroll tax. I think SS also covers permanent disability retirement, but disability isn't necessarily coming out of social security.

But the idea behind Social Security (socialism! in the best possible way!) is that nobody keeps their own money (or, not that bit of it, anyway). Everyone pays into a system that eventually does more for the people who need more. Nobody's getting their own money back. My thoughts on social security definitely would include raising the amount that we pay into it. Not the base rate, but keep on applying that rate all the way up the line, don't cap it at an upper wage limit (or, substantially raise that limit).

I was there, and at least three other VCers that I can recall. Wilco was great, Jeff's obviously selling them short. But yeah, Arcade Fire tore the place up. Their live performance was insane, totally over-the-top (in a good way). There was no following them, and Wilco's choice to open with Muzzle of Bees (which I totally love love love, but maybe wasn't quite right for the moment) probably didn't help. (A columnist in the SF Chronicle once described Arcade Fire as "a cluster of unemployed math tutors clanging pots and science-room skeletons together", and he's not entirely wrong. But s

Not a lot. If I recall, Biden's experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was considered one of his strengths, he bolstered the ticket in that way.

Remember folks, this was the one that we were going to keep respectful and civilized.

Oddly enough... Katie Taylor looks like a nice girl. So, no relative of mine! Paddy Barnes, on the other hand... is a cousin of a cousin. He handled himself badly in Beijing. It looked like he'd been robbed of some points in his match; he wasn't expected to win it, but the result was 15-0, which didn't seem quite right, either. But he gave a few interviews after where he mouthed off a bit about the refs and the judges. He ended up with a bronze, the Chinese boxer who beat him ended up winning the final and getting the gold. Coming into this Olympics, he's made an effort to sound li

Haven't booked my flights yet, but probably arriving Monday evening and leaving Wednesday morning. I'll check with my hosts on what they're planning, but at the very least, we should plan to meet for a drink before the show (one of the perks of a seated show! ).

While I was out of town (without phone or internet access) in June, my two favorite men in the world, who live in Santa Fe, bought three tickets for this show. Even though they couldn't get in touch with me, they were hoping I'd be able to join them, and I can! Very much looking forward to this one. I haven't been to Santa Fe, but the city and venue look gorgeous. Also, just found this: http://santafe.org/Calendar/index.html

I'm DVRing today's game. Should probably try to avoid the internet for the next 10 hours, until I can get home from work to watch...

I think Reid's probably OK with that, though. He's willing to take whatever heat comes his way, because in the long run keeping the thought in voters' minds is worth it.

Ironically enough, it was George Romney in 1968: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/mitt-romney-father-george-romney-_n_1688215.html What that article points out, that many don't, is that Romney released his not publicly, but to a journalist who was writing about him, and was known to be friendly. The journalist summarized Romney's returns and said they looked kosher to him. Apparently Romney knew that his tax returns would be less embarassing than LBJ's, so it seemed like no big deal at the time. What's also interesting is that the reporter writing about George Romney only asked

I don't know that I agree with this. I think McCain thought he had to go with a game-changer (I know, i didn't exactly coin that term!), and a woman seemed like the most obvious choice. It's likely that Palin just wasn't vetted enough. Kind of odd to imagine, if Romney had been McCain's VP candidate, how might the campaign have gone differently? It would have been a lot more boring, probably, and it's entirely possible that the outcome would have been different.

Yeah, this thread is almost a perfect little time capsule, isn't it? Really fascinating to re-visit. And Sir Stewart still makes me laugh.

And, we're done.

We're back to "I don't care who started this one, I'm finishing it". Next posts in this thread need to be constructive and show some legitimate reasoning behind them (there have been plenty of those in this thread already, so I know you're all capable). Or we'll lock it and start again, with much more heavy-handed moderation.

I also loved the bit about how the men who worked at the brewery and were given an allotment of beer each day drank less water, and therefore were less likely to get cholera! Fascinating stuff!

There was something in the NY Times (I think that's where I saw it) about the usual tourist spots in London being a bit empty. Restaurants owners, etc., complaining that everyone in town is in the one spot, not really visiting anywhere else in London, and that your mayor has told everyone to stay away, and they have! I noticed the same thing on a much smaller scale in Vancouver in 2010, I was expecting it to be jampacked, but we had a really easy time navigating the city.