Wow.

Merlin has posted some cool things on his blog Kung Fu Grippe, but this might just top them all: an mp3 of the isolated guitar tracks from Master of Puppets. Great stuff.

In addition to just being cool to listen to, it’s also pretty educational as I can now definitely see where I was messing up all these years while playing this song.

For the longest time, I thought Blackwater Park was their best offering. But, the more I listen to tracks such as Ghost of Perdition and Reverie/Harlequin Forest I become convinced that Ghost Reveries is in fact Opeth’s best album.

Opeth is, and have been for quite some time, one of my favorite bands. Trying to explain Opeth’s music to people is difficult. The instant you say “death metal” a vast majority of people turn off any interest they may have had. They really do defy classification. They certainly do do death metal, but they do so much more, and they do it all stunningly well.

In a station on the Beijing subway. Nice job Windows.

by George Will (in the Washington Post from 1 September 2009)

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I don’t always agree with George Will but I think here he’s right on.

Yesterday I returned to Beijing. It’s hard to believe I’ve been gone for so long. True to form, upon my return there were Internet issues, no hot water, and other little issues. Annoying, certainly, but so often it’s the little things that make this place interesting.

In other news, a scary report in the New York Times that Google might pull out of China. I’m not sure as of yet what this would entail but the Internet certainly doesn’t need to get any narrower over here.

Plus, if things get really bad I might have to actually honor my vow that if my Gmail and my other Google accounts are blocked, that’s it, I’m leaving this country.