Benfield Brass (I play Solo Alto Horn) was featured on this weeks Brasscast!.

Linz asked me to post this video, taken from deep within the super secret practice sessions of the Benfield Brass Band this was out first read though of a piece familiar to you Kiwis. Linz tells me it used to be the Goodnight Kiwi sign-off on TVNZ.

Crosspost from ProudlySelfish

My first assignment in my Technical Innovation class I was tasked with a 'concept diagram' with my view on the importance of technical innovation. I wasn't the only one to take a more philosophic bend on the task though I was the only one who quoted Rand

Crosspost from ProudlySelfish

Many of you who follow my twitter feed have probably watched one of the videos with me practicing my Alto Horn. I play in a British Brass Band. We have had the pleasure over my 4 year tenure to be visited by composer/conductor Nigel Horne. Getting the British style just right is changeling for any group and Nigel's passion and demand from the podium always leaves us playing one notch better then we though possible and about 300x better then where we started at the beginning of practice!

For an odd reason Nigel and us in the band often run into major communication difficulties. I'm not talking about the typical torch/flashlight stuff -- British musical terms come from a wholly different musical tradition then our common musical terms in America. For the most part we keep the frustration level low by staring at each other blankly as someone in the section quickly figures out what Nigel is talking about. I'm no musical linguist (Alton Brown style pause...) so here are my translations for some of the terms I've heard before stolen from various parts of the interwebs.

David Harriman's book The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics will be released on July 6th. He is a general session speaker at OCON 2010. I've pre-ordered the book (Hat tip, Diana at Noodlefood) and you should too!

From the back cover:

I'm tired of every class ramming Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs down my throat.

Here is the Black Dyke Mills Band playing Derek Bourgeois Serenade. We might play it this year in our British style Brass Band

I don't know anything about "High School Musical" from which the song "Breaking Free" comes from, but I did enjoy this cover. I like Sam Tsui's voice.

Update: The move will happen in the next 24 hours (by MON 1800 EDT). Downtime should be minimal (minutes) though some folks may experience problems since our old server may be 'cached' by your ISP. If you have any problems, give it an hour and try again, and contact the webmaster@solopassion.com. In the case of withdrawal symptoms please seek advice from your doctor!

Our server hosting company, DreamHost, has asked to move our website to another server because of all the issues we have had over the last few weeks with downtime and slow performance. I asked them to give me as much notice as possible, but I figured I'd tell everyone now it is happening "soon". I'll post the exact time as soon as I have it. It should be a simple thing that takes an hour or two.

If you've been following on twitter (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%...) OCON 2009 has been an exciting and stimulating event.

The following argument with a friend of mine on Facebook illustrates the 'thinking' of a utilitarian pretty well. I could only take so much argument from authority before I gave up but it is an interesting read. The discussion started on this piece about Rush Limbaugh being bad for the Republican party since he adovcates a return to 'Reagan Conservatism'.

As part of my grad school studies in technical management (which has kept me too busy to catch up on the site or post lately) I had to write a short web discussion on the question "Why should managers be ethical?" which I thought might be an interesting post. The end notes don't translate well so all credit to Tara Smith's "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics" and in a few places Peikoff's OPAR.

"A group led by four former Senate Majority Leaders gave a think tank $500,000 to inform African Americans about the alleged dangers of global warming."

We've outgrown the server our hosting company has us on and they have offered to upgrade us for free to one of there shiny new servers. We have of course accepted their offer.

We had an unscheduled outage today during the Messiah's speech. I was minding my own business editing some content and exposed a (thankfully) known bug.

NZ is ranked number two in sexual promiscuity. The Great Satan is #22. (Hat tip, Diana)

They have posted the video from the talk I attended in DC on Oct 22nd.

So much for Obama's diplomacy.

From the WSJ

Catching up today on everybody's posts I noticed we have had a few of the new folk post whole articles from other sites as posts onto our own site. This practice violates the content owner's copyright, even if you provide a link back to the site you got the content from.

A proposal by more then 100 University administrators to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 has created a firestorm among all the usual suspects, notes SOLO spokesman William Green.

While I will be the first in line to purchase my legal handgun in Baltimore, the Heller case is no cause for cheering.

After a several-year self-imposed moratorium on the reading of Fiction, I took the advice of James Valliant and ordered 'The Bot Story' and 'The Seven Isles of Ameulas'.

I thought this was a parody at first. From TFA:

I'm at the Microsoft TechEd conference this week in Orlando.

Just a quick note (at Linz's insistence) to show off my new profile picture.

From the NYT - 'Michael Kinsley, writing in Time magazine last fall, predicted that voters with libertarian leanings are going to be “an increasingly powerful force in politics.”

In his Sixth podcast Dr. Peikoff answered a question regarding his opinion of "Objectivist clubs and advocacy groups on the Internet" (8:35 in) and if these sites are effective and rational ways of spreading Ayn Rand's ideas. His answer may surprise you.

What happened to principles and issues in Republican primary politics?

I have been to the surgeons and the mask has been taken off. Now for the post-op bionic face!