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The Number on the Wall: Why Physicists Call 137 Magic

I came to 137 the way most people come to it, by hearing it called a magic number and wanting to know whether the word was earned. My instinct with a claim like that is suspicion, because a working life spent around language and persuasion teaches you how easily a large word gets draped over a small thing. This time the suspicion did not survive the facts. The number turned out to be real in a way I had not expected, and the people most gripped by it have been some of the hardest-headed physicists who ever lived.

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Playing with your Fingers on an Electric Guitar

There’s nothing quite like playing the Blues guitar using your fingers.  It can be another matter entirely when you toss away your pick and play with only your fingers on an electric guitar.  Mark Knopfler is probably the best known, and most successful, “fingerstyle” electric guitarist of our generation.

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The D'Addario EXL115 Strings Review

After throwing on a set of Gretsch 11-49 strings on my Gretsch G5120, I decided to get my hands on some D’Addario EXL 115 strings for “Blues/Jazz Rock” and at .011, .014, .018, .028, .038 and .049 they’re quite a hefty string gauge and harder to bend than the Super Slinky set o’ nines I’ve been using from Ernie Ball.  I bought an EXL115 tenner pack because you get such a greater value buying in bulk and the price drops to around $3.00USD a set.

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Warren Haynes Electric Blues and Slide Guitar DVD Review

Warren Haynes — of The Allman Brothers Band — wants to teach you how to play Electric Blues and Slide guitar as part of Arlen Roth’s ongoing, and outstanding, Hot Licks video series.

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe Sings the Gospel Blues

Sister Rosetta Tharpe is a musical whirlwind of a stepping stone between Gospel music and The Blues.

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D'Addario EXL110 Electric Strings Review

Electric guitarists the world over are always on the search for the very best strings and I can tell you right now the best strings — forget value and pricing even though these strings are cheap — are the D’Addario EXL110.

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Adding Fake Sound to Electric Cars

We all know technology can kill us — but we must learn to leave behind our current, menacing, totems if we ever hope to stretch into the future of us to create a cleaner and quieter world. There is an idiotic move afoot to make electric cars as noisy as their prehistoric gas-guzzling ancestors.

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Loving Electricity as Jersey City Melts

Jersey City is melting!

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Lethal Killing is Legal

Nothing bends the will of the living more than a government-injected death, and with the recent Supreme Court ruling that lethal injection was not cruel and unusual punishment — the killings will continue.

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Methods of Execution: Death Row Racism and Gender Bias

Are you in favor of Capital Punishment?

If you do support state-sponsored killing, do you prefer hanging, firing squad, lethal injection or death by electric chair?

Is the current method of execution in America Racist and muddled in gender biased while being based on misinterpreted Laws of Moses using “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as a rationale for killing?

There is a rather gruesome conversation going on in the state of Nebraska right now concerning their use of the electric chair as the sole method of capital punishment.

The argument isn’t over the issue of using the chair or not or if killing people is right or not.

The discussion concerns just how much electricity it takes to “humanely” kill someone:

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