Minor Wisdom

Sunday morning music

How far it is from gospel to the blues? About one song. Here is Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Folks, this is the real blues, close to the roots.

If you like your blues close to the roots, then you’ll love this: R.L. Burnside doing See My Jumper out in the country.

Skip James, the Bach of the blues

My guitar tutor, Vincent, referred to Skip James as the Bach of the blues. An apt description. Here’s a pretty-good-quality video of Skip playing Crow Jane.

How placebos work, and what this means

Everyone who took a psychology course in college knows about placebos. But most of us don’t know the physiological reasons why they work. And few of us think about the implications of their effectiveness. Here’s a video that wades into these subjects. (Hat tip to Improbable Research.)

Bring me my running shoes

Tomorrow’s Rock ’n’ Roll Mardi Gras Marathon passes my front porch, right around the 7-mile split. For all competitors, I offer the good wishes of Lord Birkenhead in Chariots of Fire: “Good luck to you all.” And I offer something that Lord Birkenhead could not: this bit of musical inspiration by Howlin’ Wolf.

Science meets red beans

Red-bean lovers may (or may not) be interested in the answer to this question, asked by the good folks at Improbable Research:

Is 9.89 gigaherz the optimal frequency at which to scan kidney bean crops in order to obtain ground-based multi-temporal, multi-angle and co-polarized scatterometer X-band data?

Crazy on them

Back in the 1970s, back in my college, seminary-school days, we were crazy on these two gals. Watching this today, I’m still crazy—and envious of Nancy’s fiddle.