Posted: December 23rd, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: barbershop, bluegrass, matt morris, music, north carolina, short film, vimeo | No Comments »
A short film by filmmaker Matt Morris about a barbershop in Drexel, NC where they cut hair in the front and get down with bluegrass music in the back.
(via my tumblr)
Posted: December 22nd, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: aj rafael, audio, cathy nguyen, christmas, christmas music, darren criss, holiday music, jamie cullum, jamison scott, john mayer, justin patterson, kevin massey, micha williams, music, youtube | No Comments »
A Very YouTube Christmas
Above is a mix of a few Christmas renditions I came across on YouTube. Hope they help set the mood for the Holidays.
The tracks, in order, are: 1. Jamie Cullum – Let It Snow, 2. John Mayer – I’ll Be Home For Christmas, 3. AJ Rafael, Cathy Nguyen, & Micha Williams – Little Drummer Boy, 4. Darren Criss – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, and 5. Kevin Massey, Jamison Scott & Justin Patterson – I’ll Be Home For Christmas.
(via my tumblr)
Posted: December 22nd, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: air travel, airports, flight, government, security, tsa, vanity fair | No Comments »
Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? | Vanity Fair:
“The only useful airport security measures since 9/11,” [security expert Bruce Schneier] says, “were locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching”—ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them —“and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.”
(via my tumblr)
Posted: December 22nd, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: best of 2011, contest, national geographic, photo, photography | No Comments »

See the winners of this year’s Nat Geo Photo Contest in the categories of People, Places and Nature. There’s some stunning stuff here.
(via photojojo)
(via my tumblr)
Posted: December 22nd, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: article, government, obama, president, secret service, the atlantic | No Comments »
Inside the Secret Service | The Atlantic:
Clinton’s brush with death was closer still, and his life may have been saved by a gut decision made by his detail leader. The incident was disclosed only recently by the historian Ken Gormley in his book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. The context was Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s effort to force members of the Presidential Protective Detail to disclose particulars of Clinton’s movements and any conversation they might have heard that was germane to his case. Then–Secret Service Director Lewis C. Merletti argued to Starr that a president needed to have complete trust in his protective detail, offering the following example: in 1996, President Clinton was in Manila for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and had on his agenda a visit with a local official. He was running late, in a surly mood, and eager to get going. According to Gormley, just moments before the motorcade was about to move, agents using a special intelligence-gathering capacity—one that remains classified—picked up radio chatter mentioning the words wedding and bridge. Knowing well that wedding was often a code word for a terrorist hit, Merletti changed the route, which happened to include a bridge. Clinton was angry at the decision, which would cause further delay, but he did not override it. When agents arrived at the bridge, they indeed found explosives: had Clinton taken the prescribed route, he very likely would have been killed. (Within the past decade, the service has added an electronic-countermeasures vehicle— theoretically capable of jamming remotely controlled explosives—to the presidential protection package.)
A fascinating look into a government agency which very seldomly lets the press inside and therefore about which little is written.
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Posted: December 21st, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: bbc, bbc radio, Film, home alone, john williams, live, medley, music, studio, the maccabees, video, youtube, zane owe | No Comments »
The Maccabees perform a Home Alone medley as their Wild Card track for Zane Lowe on Radio 1, recorded live at the BBC’s legendary Maida Vale studios.
(via danger is everywhere)
(via my tumblr)
Posted: December 21st, 2011 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Personal | Tags: peter jackson, the hobbit, trailer | No Comments »
I cannot wait for this. I know what I’ll be doing on 12/14/12 and 12/13/13.
(via my tumblr)