Is that 3000-9000 songs in your pocket?

The Ipod has certainly proved itself to me as being the most awesome music tool I've ever owned. It's just a good tool in general. Last week I had to navigate my way to my basement to replace a fuse and it was my trusty Ipod that shone the way. How's that for thinking outside the box?

In days of yore I used to tote around my discman and half a dozen cds in a backpack to enjoy tunes. Kids today probably know nothing about discs skipping, but that was a constant concern before I 'leveled up' to anti-skip. Cripes, I could hardly walk around with my cd player without it convulsing to a halt every few steps.

I guess that's one of those things that will define my generation. While my parents used to talk to me about 8 tracks, records, and the difficulties in maintaining them, I suppose I'll be regaling my children with stories about keeping my discman steady and parallel to the horizon at all times.

So anyway, when I finally moved up to an mp3 player I used it for years until it basically fell apart. It only held about 30 songs, and from there I made an insane leap to my 30 gig Ipod video. For the past two years I've been utterly spoiled to be able to carry around every song I've ever bought or downloaded in one place. At the same time, I'm filled with the fear having it fall from my pocket and destroy every song I've ever bought or downloaded. With great power comes great responsibility I guess.

At the pace music technology is growing and how much it's changed since I was in junior high I can hardly begin to guess what the next generation will have. My guess is it will be small silver wrist bands that transmit a streaming playlist of every song every recorded to your wireless earphones. And did I mention the earphones are invisible and contain upwards of eleventy billion terabytes of space. Plus when you're bored of listening to songs that do exist, you can set your infinity player to improvise creating songs based on your mood and preferences. Sadly it will take another generation before they can make one that doesn't set parts of your brain on fire. But that'll be their story.

Mitch & Roland: #34 Cube

Hook, Line, and Zapper

This week I heard people talking about something called electrofishing and I was surprised to learn what it was about. Actually, I was more disgusted that surprised.

In a nutshell, electrofishing involves using an electric current to draw fish to your boat and capture them easily. With two electrodes in the water (anode and cathode) and the correct current, nearby fish will begin swimming involuntarily toward the anode and then become briefly paralyzed or stunned when they reach it. Sometimes this isn't the case and the fish will begin jumping out of the water, making it even easier to net them.

Right off the bat - what the frig? Is anyone else sort of disturbed by this?

Okay, I'll admit that most of the sites I found talking about electrofishing explained how it's a good way to capture fish alive for surveys and assessing the types and number of fish in ponds, lakes, and whatnot. That's what they are advertised for, but I'm certain this technology is abused ... a lot.

People are zapping ponds and lakes to catch fish. The fish can't do anything but swim to their doom, and then go into a state of narcosis so some jack off can scoop them out of the water. I can't believe they have the balls to call this fishing. It's the equivalent of lighting the woods on fire and waiting by the road for a deer to come running out so you can shoot it.