The Week In Review - Sunday Comics

The Week in Review is a chance to toss up some stuff we didn't get to, or could be summed up in a cartoon...

The oil spill is all done. Gone. Over. Quit asking about it. Hey, is Lady Gaga talking - go over there!
Another bail out is coming - and it's for the bankers, and the rest of those mortgages - which, one would suspect that the economy isn't quite over the 'adjustment' period, despite the cheer leading?
Here's what a double dip recession actually means....
The trouble with Iran... seems that anyone who still stones another for not following the mob rule ought not to have nukes. Or maybe they should just have a judge overturn the decision?Enforcing Federal Law... I the odd chance you can't read it, one dude says, "I'm glad the feds sued Arizona." Other one says, "yeah, you can't have people enforcing federal law."
Speaking of the Feds...
It's hot. It's summer...
Have a good week. See you next week? Stay cool - and out of the peat moss fires.

In The Groove

Understand that audio is simply vibrations. The groove in a record is created by a pin being vibrated by an audio signal while you rotate the record at a certain rate. Going the other way, when you place a pin in the groove, rotate the record at the same velocity as it was recorded, and amplify the signal coming from the pin, the resulting signal is the audio.

A CD is simply a digitized version of those vibrations, called a wave. If you truly understand how a CD works, a record is basically a much simpler subset of that process: No conversions from/to digital to/from analog. The waveform of the audio is stored exactly as a physical reproduction of that waveform.

A cassette tape works on the same principle but instead of the vibrations being stored as a physical groove in a record, it is stored by magnetizing those vibrations onto a metallic strip of material over the length of the material. Playing it back is somewhat like placing a tiny piece of metal by the tape as it moves and as the tape goes by that little piece of metal, the magnetic changes that were stored on the tape move the little piece of metal. Those movements/vibrations are amplified and that's your audio.

These are very simplified explanations, but only to get the ideas across.

It isn't magic.

This is a photo of a single groove on a vinyl record, magnified by 1000x.

Sixty - 60 - Counts of Federal Corruption

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama the court announced there will soon be a verdict in the Larry Langford public corruption trial.

Langford faces 60 charges from a federal indictment returned in June 2008 and unsealed 6 months later. He was arrested by the FBI on a 101-counts.

Among the sixty charges are bribery, money laundering, conspiracy, mail and wire fraud and filing a false tax return.

Prosecutors claim Langford accepted $235,000 in cash, clothing and jewelry from investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre.

In exchange, prosecutors argue, Langford arranged lucrative bond swap deals for Blount and LaPierre while Langford served as President of the Jefferson County Commission.

Langford has pleaded not guilty to the charges. I wonder if he had to plead not guilty to all 101 charges, or just the 60 that he was just convicted of?

Blount has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery and LaPierre admitted guilt to conspiracy and filing a false tax return.

If Langford is convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum of 804 years in prison.

His office of the Mayor of Birmingham is also automatically vacated if Langford is convicted on any of the 60 charges.

City Council President Carole Smitherman takes over as Acting Mayor until a special election is held in early-mid December.

Great work. Now, please, please, please come to Chicago!

UPDATE: Larry Langford was found guilty Wednesday on all federal criminal counts against him, abruptly halting the 32-year career of a Jefferson County political fixture who had been Birmingham's mayor for just under two years.