Crickets have a much shorter lifespan than humans. Here we have two audio tracks: one in real time, another stretched out into “human time”. Inception!

For reference. I’ll explain later.

0% = #000000

1% = #030303

2% = #050505

3% = #080808

5%= #0D0D0D

8% = #141414

13% = #212121

21% = #363636

34% = #575757

55% = #8C8C8C

89% = #E3E3E3

Full text:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

— Abraham Lincoln

Nov. 19, 1863

Syd Field has died. He was 77.

It’d probably be impossible to find a working screenwriter who hasn’t at some point studied Syd’s books on the three-act structure paradigm. For those who prefer to absorb information through lectures, his workshop is up on YouTube.

Part 1 of 8:

You can watch the other parts here.

A random photo from about 2005.

Metallica’s “And Justice for All” is notorious for having no perceivable bass line. As it turns the ripe age of 25, somebody’s gone and remixed it so we can hear Jason. Turn it up:

Jason Newsted reflects:

…and I love her more every half hour.

Time flies, peeps. Don’t wait around.

Whip It and this one are two of the most relentless songs to play all the way through on drums. I can’t imagine doing either with shoulders only. Nicely done.