Oh… *ehem*… my apologies…
So it’s Rosh Hashanna, the Jewish new year. The year is 5778. For two days, we celebrate and eat far too much delicious food, so that the week after, on Yom Kippur, we can fast for around 24 hours or so to atone for our sins (because unlike Catholics, we only have to feel guilty once a year, instead of year round… we spend the rest of the year making everybody else feel guilty. BOOM! [I can make that joke because I’m Jewish… you can’t… unless you’re Jewish]).
I know I’m late. I got about 30 minutes of sleep last night and I had work at 12pm, so… sorry. But at least I got it in on Wednesday this time! 😛
Anyways… here’s a montage image of where Cassini crashed into Saturn. I’m putting it below the fold, as it’s an animated gif showing the exact spot…
More David Gilmour because… well… it’s David Gilmour…
This is from the P*U*L*S*E* DVD (that entire show is a treasure trove of amazing solos, to be honest). It’s the song “Sorrow”, from their 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
The song opens with a guitar solo, which ends at 3:15. The second solo starts at 3:57 and ends at 4:26. The third solo starts at 5:11 and ends at 5:31, which starts a very short ambient section. The final solo starts at 6:57, which closes out the song.
Special thanks to VolcanoMan in the comments on my last GGS post for suggesting this one…
I’ve already posted most of this on Facebook, so it will be familiar to some or all of y’all. But here I’m gonna expand a tad…
First, like I said on Facebook… I’ve been going over the take-down of What.CD, a private torrent site that, yes, shared official material (music, audiobooks, e-books, etc… no video, though).
Now, before I continue, I’m going to quote what I said on Facebook:
No, I don’t want to talk about how or why I know as much as I do about it, and yes, I agree that piracy is wrong, it’s right that piracy is illegal, people should support artists they love with money, and blah blah blah… we’re not having that conversation here.
And I’m gonna stress that here. We’re not here to discuss the relative morality of torrenting sites, question why I know as much as I do about the site, etc. So that’s the commenting policy. And that includes you, too, NSA, CIA, and FBI.
So anyways… I called What.CD the Library of Alexandria of music, and one of the reasons for that is because What.CD amassed an amazing collection of out of print, rare, hard to find, and/or prohibitively expensive music you basically couldn’t find anywhere else. It was incredible what could be found on What.CD, what new music you could find that you never heard before, and so on. And now that’s gone. Sure, torrent sites are like a massively exagerrated Hydra (shut down one site, a thousand more will pop up in its place), but it’s going to take a seriously long time to rebuild the What.CD Library.
But there could be another way, too… a… perhaps… more legal way… to rebuild a part of that library and make it accessible to everyone…
Hello! You’ll noticed that I skipped Astronomy Pictures of the Week on Wednesday. That… was on purpose.
Today was Cassini’s last day alive. This morning, Cassini plunged into Saturn, sending back some amazing data, but, in the process, ending its life.
Cassini was launched on October 15th, 1997. For two decades, Cassini revealed the wonders of the greatest planet and planetary system in our solar system to us. We learned so much.
But, now, it’s over…
Guess what?
It’s a short one this time… only 49 seconds. It’s also a true guitar solo, all acoustic.
It’s Randy Rhoads, playing a solo of his called Dee. It’s really very beautiful. I wish it was longer, to be honest, but I love it.
Cassini gazes across the icy rings of Saturn toward the icy moon Tethys, whose night side is illuminated by Saturnshine, or sunlight reflected by the planet.
Tethys was on the far side of Saturn with respect to Cassini here; an observer looking upward from the moon’s surface toward Cassini would see Saturn’s illuminated disk filling the sky.
Tethys was brightened by a factor of two in this image to increase its visibility. A sliver of the moon’s sunlit northern hemisphere is seen at top. A bright wedge of Saturn’s sunlit side is seen at lower left.
Okay… I should probably qualify that title a bit… thanks to my anxiety, I haven’t actually participated in many protests (though I’m working up the courage to actually start participating in more… and I have participated in dialogues and such). Plus, despite realizing that I’m not a pacifist, I’m actually a coward who’s usual reaction to face-to-face conflict is to curl up into the fetal position and cry for Mommy. So… you know…
However, I do support Antifa and consider myself Antifa, and I’m friends and comrades with Antifa. Despite the qualifications above, I am part of it… or at least I try to be…
So… that title? It’s not clickbait.
The DHS has officially classified Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
Another long one from the great Pink Floyd… with David Gilmour on lead guitar, obviously…
We’re going to their album Animals, and the song Dogs. I really love this one, and of course, as usual for David Gilmour, the solos are perfect.
Let’s get to the song…
The first guitar solo starts at 1:50 and ends at 2:25. The second solo, a guitar duet, starts at 3:40 and ends at 4:47. Then the third solo starts at 5:32 and ends at 6:46. The fourth solos starts at 13:25 and ends at 14:07, which is where a repeat of the second guitar solo (the duet) begins, which ends at 15:18.
IMO, it’s an incredible song. Sure, it’s long, but that’s Pink Floyd… and, for me, at least, they do an amazing job of keeping my attention through the entirety of their longer songs, so…