var person = function () {
	// Private
	var name = "Robert";
	return {
		getName : function () {
			return name;
		},
		setName : function (newName) {
			name = newName;
		}
	};
}();
alert(person.name); // Undefined
alert(person.getName()); // "Robert"
person.setName("Robert Nyman");
alert(person.getName()); // "Robert Nyman"

In this code, a self-executing function creates an object with two methods, getName and setName.  Both methods are closures which have access to the private name variable that was created in the self-executing function.  The object, stored here in the person variable, does not itself have access to the private name variable.  However, the getters and setters both have access to the same name variable since they were both created in the same local scope in which the closure was created.  I may not be totally describing this right but if you look at the code you’ll probably figure out why it’s useful.  This is the best explanation I’ve seen because it’s immediately apparent how practical this is, especially how you can limit access to and manipulation of the private variable only via the getter and setter methods.

This explanatory code is from the blog post Explaining JavaScript scope and closures

Loop–Afterglow

Hawkwind–Born to Go

See:  How To: Cisco VPN with Snow Leopard & Lion via .pcf File

For more info on just using the Mac VPN, see the following but but substitute your info:

http://kb.its.psu.edu/article/1654

1. Select the Apple on the toolbar.
2. Select System Preferences.
3. Click Network.
4. Click the + icon in the lower left corner to add a new network interface.
5. Under Interface, select VPN.
6. Under VPN Type, select Cisco IPSec.
7. In the Service Name field add ISPtoPSU.
8. In the Server Address: field enter vpn.aset.psu.edu.
9. In the Account Name: field, and your Penn State Access ID in the following format: xyz123@dce.psu.edu.
10. Click Authentication Settings.
11. Shared Secret:psuconnect
12. Group Name: psuconnect
13. Click the checkbox next to Show VPN status in menu bar.
14. Click Apply.

Buy it at Interpunk.com: Shiny Beast

Shiny Beast–Lodestar (not even one of their best, I’ll try to upload something better to youtube later!)

For example, it might read “Proposed Action: Repealed” or “Proposed Action: Amended.”  What this refers to is not the proposed legislation, but rather it refers to what would happen to the statute you KeyCited if the proposed legislation were to pass.  So if it reads “Proposed Action: Repealed,” that means the KeyCited statute would be repealed if the proposed legislation passed, and if it reads “Proposed Action: Amended,” that means the KeyCited statute would be amended if the proposed legislation passed.   Why on Earth do they write the proposed action in the past tense, if it’s proposed action for proposed legislation?  They should write something like: Proposed Action: Repeal, and Proposed Action: Amend.  Otherwise, it looks like the proposed legislation has been repealed or amended!

Here’s an example:

Proposed Legislation

PROPOSED ACTION: Repealed

Gestating ideas:

• Make manufacturers/companies accountable for their packaging.

• Refill and Reuse before Recycle!  I.e., the precedent for this is people used to have milk delivered to their house in glass bottles, and the milkman would pick up the empty bottles and the milk company would reuse them.  Similar to watercooler water bottles like Arrowhead water; they deliver plastic bottles of water, then they pick up the empties.  Or you can refill the bottles yourself at the supermarket.  SO obviously the milk people and the water people have ways of safely cleaning and reusing the milk and water bottles.  We should move to this model; every peanut butter jar, every jug of milk and orange juice, etc, should have a $1 deposit added to the price; you have to bring it back to the supermarket to get the $1 back; and the companies clean and reuse the packaging.  We throw away jars etc that people in third world countries would kill to have, that they collect and reuse until they wear out.  This is based on the assumption that recycling is more wasteful than actually cleaning and reusing, which would have to be tested. Products could be made of glass instead of plastic if more durable and easier to clean, this too would need to be tested.  One example of this is people reusing jars as “growlers,” they bring the jars into bars and restaurants to be filled with beer!

• Have a campaign to make the Vatican more accepting of birth control.  It would prevent unintended conception and could prevent the spread of AIDS.   Campaign would include images and cartoons etc of God telling Adam and Eve “Be fruitful and multiply!”  Then the next cartoon panel would show God looking at an overcrowded, overindustrialized Earth, and yelling, “Whoa, slow down!  I was talking just to Adam and Eve!  They did their job!  You’re overrunning the planet!”

• Find some way to make a global international right, human right, or common property right, to the environment, acknowledging that damage to the environment in one nation will likely affect others down the road.  How can this be done?  Treaties?  What treaties won’t the U.S. join already and why?

• Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, it’s awesome and true.  So many public health problems could be avoided with better, simpler nutrition.

• Rally local communities against nuclear power, then work up to states, then federal wide opposition.  NO ONE probably wants nuclear power nearby, but it’s hard to organize against it when people are diffuse and don’t see a coherent way to organize against nuclear power.  T-shirts: TEPCO Nuclear Power: because Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren’t enough!

• Publicize the environmental harm of our current fad gadget obsession with 1-3 year planned obsolescence: keeping people buying a new iPhone or iPad every year, a new flat panel TV every 1-3 years.  This stuff goes in the trash often.  It used to be that electronics would last 5-10 years.  What waste, and the public has been brainwashed to think this is normal.

• Make an aggregator of novel and useful environmental protection and public health ideas and other progresive ideas with the ability for people to comment, like Huffington Post or Hacker News or a more modern Wikipedia.  So that people interested in different initiatives can add input and track organizations and people working on these problems already.  It could be a public crowd-sourced progressive think tank where anyone can participate.  What should the name be?  Could it be proposed as part of an existing site/organization?  What CMS would be best for such a site?  Maybe proposing a forum/thinktank/discussion/wiki section of Causes.org could work.  Maybe they seem a little too commercial though, courting businesses and advertisers, with a full panel of investors?  Hmm…

Image from The Center for Economic Research and Policy Analysis (CERPA) at Appalachian State University.

All we can say is, wow! The Fucking Champs made this song like 100x better! Champs/Justice/Daft Punk album/world tour???

Kurt: “Exactly which parts of daydream nation sound like pink floyd? Minutemen are prog rock? I think you are stretching your “everything is prog rock” thesis a bit too far. If you said that husker du sounded like king crimson on zen arcade then yes, but really, come on. Exactly which parts of daydream nation sound like pink floyd? Minutemen are prog rock? I think you are stretching your “everything is prog rock” thesis a bit too far. If you said that husker du sounded like king crimson on zen arcade then yes, but really, come on.”

Trickledown:
Basically, the first two Minutemen albums as prog rock: the complicated bass and the tricky timing that’s way different from punk rock, the bass is like in Yes or Gentle Giant, the guitar is complicated and tricky, so is the drumming, it’s way different from punk or hardcore, and the Minutemen were big fans of Captain Beefheart which falls under the prog rock umbrella in terms of experimentation.

I would say the first two Minutemen albums are as much prog rock as they are punk, not necessarily like keyboard laden prog but tricky time change prog (Yes and Gentle Giant happen to have bits of both). Daydream Nation, the echo and noise breakdowns like in Silver Rocket and Total Trash, are very similar in parts and vibe to a lot of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, it’s their most indie album, with Syd Barret, I’m not talking about Dark Side of the Moon or anything.

Check out songs like Interstellar Overdrive (the beginning few seconds sounds exactly like a song on Daydream Nation or Goo even!) or Astronomy Domine, they’re quite different from more mainstream Pink Floyd (which I happen to like too). They’re very experimental noise rock, art rock, postpunk even at times, much different from what people consider more “bloated” PInk Floyd (but which has become much more influential on bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor etc in recent years).

Pink Floyd: Astronomy Domine

Here’s another person in a book on rock calling Minutemen prog rock, saying they fused hardcore and prog… Also here: “Borrowing the pagan impetus from hardcore, the harsh quirkiness from the new wave and the cerebral, and the convoluted indulgence from progressive-rock, the Minutemen concocted the miniature hardcore shrapnels of Punch Line (feb 1981 – nov 1981) and What Makes A Man Start Fires (jul/aug 1982 – jan 1983).

The acrobatic primitivism of these albums became even more neurotic and atonal on Double Nickels On The Dime (nov 1983/apr 1984 – jul 1984), one of the most ambitious recordings of the decade, a veritable encyclopedia of musical styles revisited from the point of view of a spastic genius reminiscent of Captain Beefheart and the Pop Group. After Boon’s untimely death in 1985, the survivors hired a new vocalist, renamed themselves fIREHOSE (1), released Ragin’ Full On (oct 1986 – nov 1986) and pursued a more conscious program to refound the song format, except that R.E.M.-like folk-rock took over Minutemen’s unpredictable structures.” http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt49.html

Pink Floyd and Sonic Youth:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/05/sonic-youth-rock-music
“Gary Gersh, who signed us, had some sort of idea that ‘You guys could be the next Pink Floyd,’” Gordon remembers with a smile.”

Here’s a comment on Youtube
“Anybody else think that Sonic Youth ripped early floyd off alot….?” rassault 1 month ago

A whole thread on Piper at the Gates of Dawn on a Sonic Youth fan site http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=16479

Also,
“As D. Boon of the Minutemen famously said, “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” This seemed especially true of the generation of American iconoclasts associated with independent labels such as SST and Discord in the 1980s. Not unlike prog-rock or fusion of the time, these bands experimented with song structure, lyrical content, improvisation, and even crowd control. But unlike their more “respectable” counterparts, the punks sought to disrupt the complacent social order they inherited.”
http://www.bassplayer.com/article/21st-century-upright/April-2010/110637

Picture of Ian Williams from: