not in my purview

Now Tumbling

2010-03-07T18:10:00.003-06:00

I'm moving my blog to Tumblr for the foreseeable future...I need to try something new. You can find it here:

http://purview.tumblr.com/

Beach House - "Teen Dream"

2010-03-06T08:02:00.007-06:00

I happened to catch Beach House at the Pabst Theater a few years ago opening for Grizzly Bear...or maybe it was Califone? I don't exactly remember, and it doesn't really matter because I wasn't really impressed (with Beach House that is; Grizzly Bear or Califone were awesome). I just wasn't that into the whole dreamy, shoe-gaze pop deal that was emanating from the man/woman duo onstage, and spent the majority of their opening set shuttling back and forth between the theater and the lobby, loading up on PBR for the set of music I was actually there to see. Beach House was a prime example of the opening set that you don't know is coming, don't want to hear, and can't wait to get over with. I don't remember a thing from their set, other than a lot of recorded loops and vocal swooning.

Flash forward a few years: I still don't like the whole dreamy, shoe-gaze pop scene, and Beach House has released a new record (their 3rd) that is lining the "best new releases" shelves in record stores, garnering good reviews world wide web-wide, and pushing themselves into the collective conscious of American pop music. Sure, why not give it a try? I shunned them once, and I can always shun them again. Besides,that "Norway" song they started playing on 88.9 sounded tolerable and not too shoe-gazey.

Turns out, there is still a lot of swooning, recorded loops, and drum machines, but I'll give them credit for making an album that is completely relaxing and inviting. A "reading album," as I like to call them, one that is peppered with a few good songs to kick back to while you're doing something else: "Real Love"--a terrible title--is a great piano ballad; that chord change on the word "arching" during "Zebra" makes the whole song we worth repeated listens; "Silver Soul" swells back and forth in a just-right, pleasant sort of way. That said, there is probably not much lasting power here; I'll probably forget about Teen Dream just like I forgot who Beach House opened for at the Pabst. But at least we made amends in between. Sorry, Beach House.

"Transverse Temporal Gyrus"

2010-03-05T23:26:00.007-06:00

Animal Collective debuted Transverse Temporal Gyrus at the Guggenheim Museum this week...try to decipher the rest of it here.

"Under the Dome"

2010-03-04T22:27:00.002-06:00

King's pacing and detail have slowed and withered, respectively, tremendously over the years, and for a book that is 1,074 pages long, Under the Dome exacerbates both of these declines. But there is something to be said about the Dome itself--it contained a mysterious and unknown quality from cover to cover (much like the ship in The Tommyknockers) that made every page worth digesting.

Google Monster

2010-03-04T07:17:00.006-06:00

Sketch by Asaf Hanuka depicting Google's plan to scan every book in existence into digital form (via):

Starbucks unleashes the Trenta

2010-03-03T20:23:00.008-06:00

American coffee consumers feel they are not caffeinated enough, and Starbucks has heard their cry. The corporate coffee giant is now test marketing a 31-ounce coffee--the "Trenta"--in Phoenix and Tampa in response to customer demand for larger coffees. America, prepare thyself for caffeine.

Depression's upside

2010-03-03T07:07:00.003-06:00

Great New York Times Magazine article on how the ruminative tendencies of depression are actually beneficial:

Why is mental illness so closely associated with creativity? Andreasen argues that depression is intertwined with a “cognitive style” that makes people more likely to produce successful works of art. In the creative process, Andreasen says, “one of the most important qualities is persistence.” Based on the Iowa sample, Andreasen found that “successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.” While Andreasen acknowledges the burden of mental illness — she quotes Robert Lowell on depression not being a “gift of the Muse” and describes his reliance on lithium to escape the pain — she argues that many forms of creativity benefit from the relentless focus it makes possible. “Unfortunately, this type of thinking is often inseparable from the suffering,” she says. “If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”

And then there’s the virtue of self-loathing, which is one of the symptoms of depression. When people are stuck in the ruminative spiral, their achievements become invisible; the mind is only interested in what has gone wrong. While this condition is typically linked to withdrawal and silence — people become unwilling to communicate — there’s some suggestive evidence that states of unhappiness can actually improve our expressive abilities. Forgas said he has found that sadness correlates with clearer and more compelling sentences, and that negative moods “promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.” Because we’re more critical of what we’re writing, we produce more refined prose, the sentences polished by our angst. As Roland Barthes observed, “A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem."

"Stylo"

2010-03-02T22:27:00.006-06:00

It's stylish...

The Persistence of Sadness

2010-03-02T20:33:00.005-06:00

The Persistence of Sadness by Rafael Rozendaal is digital, interactive art at its finest...click on the rocks (via).

Tacocat

2010-03-02T20:29:00.004-06:00

My new favorite palindrome...

New measures of tastiness

2010-03-02T07:08:00.005-06:00

A new study of "expert" wine tasters revealed that the tasters rated bottles of wine they were told were more expensive as "better" than bottles that were reportedly cheap. In their defense, though, the study also looked at a neurological component of the tasting:

Since reported tastiness is a poor measure of true taste experience in the era of fMRI scanning machines, the researchers were careful enough to take a peek into their participant's brains as these tasted the wines, and found something fairly surprising: When tasting the wine out of the $10 bottle, the medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain that is strongly related to experiences of pleasure - showed only very little activity. When the exact same wine was poured out of a $90 bottle however, this brain area showed levels of activation which indicate that the participants were indeed drawing much more enjoyment from the same wine this time around. In other words, the price tag seemed to have a real physiological influence on the taster's taste experience.

"Distinguished" palettes everywhere are screaming.

Atoms for Peace

2010-03-01T20:48:00.006-06:00

Thom Yorke. Flea. Nigel Goodrich. Joey Waronker. Mauro Refosco. Coming soon.

Weaponizing Mozart

2010-03-01T07:23:00.003-06:00

Britain has starting using classical music as a form of social control in its schools:

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

I wonder how this will affect their eagerness and interest in learning to play an instrument? An unfortunate Pavlonian side effect may be occurring here.

"Scissor"

2010-03-01T07:09:00.004-06:00

Liars literally getting stoned on a boat...

"The Hurt Locker"

2010-02-28T15:10:00.007-06:00

I loved how the onscreen intensity of disarming bombs was transferred to the viewer. I learned quickly not to hold a drink during most of the scenes in this film.

10 billionth iTunes song dowloaded

2010-02-27T18:40:00.008-06:00

Georgia native Louie Sulcer downloaded the 10 billionth iTunes song recently, making him the winner of Apple's 10 Billion Songs Sold contest:

Sulcer’s winning purchase was, ironically, Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way,” which Sulcer downloaded for a mix of Cash songs he was making for his son. Having never heard the song, Sulcer listened to iTunes’ 30-second preview and bought the track, unaware that Apple was even having a contest celebrating their 10 billionth purchase. “I really liked it. It had some really good pickin’ in it. So that’s how I got to that song,” Sulcer says. Sulcer, a father of three and a grandfather of nine, was introduced to iTunes three years ago by an old friend at a high school reunion who taught him how to use the digital music service to load up on his favorite country songs of the 1960s.

Also included on the Apple web page announcing the winner was a list of the top 25 most dowloaded songs ever on iTunes. It is truly a list of shit, and an unfortunate barometer of where music tastes are aligned in the world today. Thankfully the landmark download was from a respectable artist.

Talking "Zaireeka"

2010-02-26T07:02:00.006-06:00

Matthew Perpetua recently sat down with Pitchfork's Mark Richardson to discuss his book on The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka for the 33 1/3 Series--I especially like this exchange:

Matthew Perpetua: One of the things I really liked in the book is how you write about how we listen to recordings, and how that’s transformed over the years with technological advances. But one thing never really changes — we tend to listen to music alone. Listen, as in focused listening, not just being in a room while music is on in the background. Do you think Wayne et al were thinking about this when they were making Zaireeka, since the record is something that can’t be heard alone?

Mark Richardson: Yes, I think the social aspect of it was there from the beginning, as it grew out of the Parking Lot Experiments. That was always to be a “happening” of a kind with multiple people there. The genesis of Zaireeka was, “How could we make a recorded version of this?” Had the technology existed then to make it 8 channels that you could listen to yourself, I am not sure they would have gone that way, because the idea of getting together with friends was really important.

I find it interesting that Richardson implies that "getting together with friends" may not be as important anymore. Not necessarily in the sense that you don't want to hang out with your peeps, but because a drastic overhaul in technology now makes music an instant gratification process that locks you in the dome of your iPod earbuds, alone. Zaireeka was a bulky, time-consuming experiment (I tried it once and it was work), and I think music listeners in general today would be less likely to have the motivation to purchase a CD, much less attempt to listen to four at once on four different stereos. Yet another example of technology driving social interaction, only this time, it's in a direction opposite to all the sharing and Facebooking and tweeting.

(Perpetua and Richardson also discuss briefly how Embryonic is fitting into the band's current creative narrative, something I looking forward to as their April 21st Riverside appearance draws near.)

Avatar and mascots

2010-02-25T07:26:00.006-06:00

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Eugene Kane finds connections between Avatar and the issue of using Indian mascot names at schools. I'm all for critical thinking and applying media to the world around us, but I think the whole Avatar-impacting-real-life thing has gone way too far.

Holidaying Horrors

2010-02-24T19:24:00.003-06:00

From a series on Anthony Hibbert's photostream...he also has a cool blog.

"Shutter Island"

2010-02-23T20:01:00.004-06:00

Rarely can a movie that is based on a book stay true to said book without adding some stupid Hollywood element or storyline that ruins key narrative and text-based flow. Shutter Island, however, succeeded in staying true to Dennis Lehane's literary vision word for word. Cawley was a little more pleasant in person than on page (I finished the book about 24 hours before seeing the film, so the characters were fresh for comparison; unfortunately, though, seeing trailers ruined some of the visual development that constitutes one of the joys of reading), but otherwise, every line, every scene, and every dark asylum corner resonated well between the two often-in-conflict mediums of entertainment.

Also, good use of foreboding piano notes, Scorcese.

Neurosonics live

2010-02-23T07:03:00.004-06:00

You've seen their studio work, now see them live (via):

Curling explained

2010-02-22T23:02:00.002-06:00

The sport of curling explained via infographic (via).

Four Tet - "There is Love In You"

2010-02-21T12:55:00.006-06:00

Clean beats and technicolor: they dominate There is Love In You like steady rain dominates a flat sidewalk while it's still sunny out. These components are delivered in a steady, unwavering supply that reveal a kaleidoscopic mist of rainbows after bouncing off your eardrums. The listening pleasure is all in the reflection. Electronic music of this ilk isn't impressive because of complex composition or avant garde manipulations; rather, it succeeds simply by being steady and colorful. And absorbing.

To be sure, Kieran Hebdan has gone mostly linear here. Compared to his past forays into progressive lo-fi or crumbling free jazz(tronica), There is Love In You (love the title) finds Hebdan scaling back in favor of a direct, straightforward vein to the heart of what electronic music is founded upon: a crossroads of repetition and addiction. In the week I've owned this album, I've probably listened to"Love Cry"--a track that is so perpetually pleasing, you mentally try to find ways to extend it long after its 9 minutes have finished up--18-20 times. The individual components of the track build together in simple ways that you would probably expect, but engage you in a much more critical listen. It just has a way of grabbing your attention in a crisp, clean way. Imagine the pastel spheres that dot the cover art starting to shift rhythmically--like bacteria in a dish--and you might understand what I mean.

"Running From the Cops"

2010-02-20T13:01:00.003-06:00

Sloooow motion...

Dead academia

2010-02-19T19:52:00.005-06:00

The Atlantic discusses The Grateful Dead as an early model for social networking theory:

As the band’s following grew, the notion that it might have something to offer scholars, particularly in the social sciences, became somewhat less far-fetched, though still not without professional risk. In the late 1980s, Rebecca G. Adams, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who studies friendships formed across distances, noticed deep bonds between Deadheads. The bonds seemed to belie the idea, then popular among leading social thinkers, that communities based on common interest, whose members do not live near each other, lack emotional and moral depth—that Deadheads might belong to what sociologists call a “lifestyle enclave,” but couldn’t possibly form meaningful relationships. Adams brought a class on tour with the Dead—an opportunity, she thought, to teach classical theory while letting students study a cutting-edge contemporary community.

Trey Anastasio Band - 2/18/10 (Pabst Theater)

2010-02-19T07:13:00.003-06:00

I: Shine, What's Done, Push On Til the Day, Let Me Lie, Sleep Again, Birdwatcher, Valentine, Cayman Review, Gotta Jiboo, Sultans of Swing, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Water In the Sky, Back On the Train, Bathtub Gin, Backwards Down the Number Line

II: Curlew’s Call, Sand, Night Speaks to a Woman, Goodbye Head, Words to Wanda, Money Love & Change, Small Axe, All That Almost Was, Spin, Tuesday

Encore: Magilla, First Tube

Do Not Turn Off

2010-02-18T23:04:00.004-06:00

"Do Not Turn Off" is an art installation by Pravdoliub Ivanov (via):

No band names left

2010-02-18T07:12:00.004-06:00

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are no good band names left:

For the generations of musicians who have taken up guitars and drumsticks, picking a band name has been as crucial as teasing out a distinctive style—and usually the name comes first. For a lucky few, a word or phrase can become iconic. The Beatles, before they were legends, were briefly the Silver Beetles, a nod to Buddy Holly's Crickets. Jerry Garcia discovered the name Grateful Dead in a dictionary.

The last decade's digital revolution not only transformed the way people listen to music, it changed the way bands establish identities. In the past, identically named acts often carved out livings in separate regions, oblivious or indifferent to one another. Now, it takes only moments for a musician to create an online profile and upload songs, which can potentially reach listeners around the world.

Great article, but it's important to note that there are actually seven band names left, and they are going fast.

Yeasayer - "Odd Blood"

2010-02-16T21:29:00.003-06:00

Odd Blood sounds like it crawled up from some leftover 1980s' concoction of big hair, synthesizers, and drum machines. That may sound horrid (if you find 80s music horrid, anyway), but it's important to actually make it through the first four songs, because they are quite good. Especially "Madder Red"--there's a certain epic ebb and flow to that one that makes it repeatedly listenable while driving or while running the final mile of a marathon. I'm not convinced that the final six tracks are really worth listening to, because they seem to adopt the framework of what the first four tracks set up, but then simply fail to deliver.

(Side note: Album art is an integral part of the music experience for me, and I've always enjoyed paying attention to the "little things" a casing or liner can do to enhance attention or interest. In the case of Odd Blood, it was the liner notes; they were the glossiest, most colorfully mesmerizing I have ever seen, and the smell of them reminded me of some brand-new childhood toy.)

Noteput

2010-02-15T21:14:00.003-06:00

This is neat, but doesn't need the O.K. Computer-esque narration to go along with it (via):

Amazon giving away Kindles?

2010-02-14T08:48:00.005-06:00

Amazon is toying with the idea of giving away free Kindles to Amazon Prime subscribers. Fearful, knee-jerk reaction to the approaching iPad release? Or generous means of rewarding faithful customers?

"Zombieland"

2010-02-13T09:18:00.004-06:00

Bill Murray's cameo has to be up there with best-on-screen-comedy-cameos-that-centralize-laughter-around-an-entire-movie (also see Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers). It was like Zombieland suddenly stopped being Zombieland and instead turned into 5 minute comedy relief (not that the movie needed comedy-relieving; pretty entertaining as it was). He doesn't even say that much, but when Bill Murray is dressed like a zombie, it is just funny.

Google Buzz

2010-02-11T21:46:00.003-06:00

I hate it. And others agree:

It violates the prime directive of new software. It starts turned on, and the way to turn it off is all-but invisible. And it invades a space that heretofore Google helped to protect. One of the big values of Gmail is its spam filter. Now all of a sudden it's as if the exhaust was reversed, and it was spraying dirt into my message stream, instead of filtering it out.

Talk about social network localization going in the wrong direction. What social networks like Twitter do is bring the user to the masses through a public, localized space (i.e., anywhere you bring your phone or laptop); you are in control, and you define the parameters of use. Google Buzz brings the masses to you through a private, localized space without your permission, and without any initial say about boundaries. There are probably ways to set those boundaries, but I would still feel uncomfortable sharing that space with emails. Funny how Google Buzz has already made the Inbox sacred.

Twitter Code Swarm

2010-02-11T07:34:00.002-06:00

The icons and particles represent the growth of Twitter over the last three years, showing Twitter's "explosive growth mirrored in engineering" (via):

You have anymore?

2010-02-11T07:28:00.001-06:00

Miles Fisher has a particularly stellar abstract photo post up today.

How to shovel snow

2010-02-10T18:46:00.004-06:00

In honor of all the snow we've been getting lately all around the country, The Awl offers tips on how to shovel snow:

First, chug a fucking glass of red wine.

Put on a hat and gloves. Next, throw on a light jacket. Not too heavy moron; you're going to get sweaty. Also, it's gotta be loose so nothing you bought at H&M. Armani? ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME? Next slam your feet into your boots. No, WITH PURPOSE. What, you don't have boots?! (Rolls eyes). Okay, put on your Aldo dress shoes and put each foot into a few tall plastic bags, doubling or tripling up. Duct tape those fuckers on around your calves. You do have calves, don't you? Yell to nobody in the house in particular, "I'm going out to shovel!"

Highly worth reading if you're frustrated with the weather.

"Blood into Wine"

2010-02-09T19:43:00.002-06:00

Maynard James Keenan is releasing a documentary about his wine vineyard. As a fan of both wine and Tool, I will probably have to watch:

Stayathomia

2010-02-09T19:30:00.004-06:00

An analysis of 210 million Facebook profiles reveals that our country is divided into specific regions. Although I don't use Facebook, I still have to live in Stayathomia:

Stretching from New York to Minnesota, this belt's defining feature is how near most people are to their friends, implying they don't move far. In most cases outside the largest cities, the most common connections are with immediately neighboring cities, and even New York only has one really long-range link in its top 10. Apart from Los Angeles, all of its strong ties are comparatively local.

In contrast to further south, God tends to be low down the top 10 fan pages if she shows up at all, with a lot more sports and beer-related pages instead.

The Samuel Jackson 5

2010-02-08T21:02:00.002-06:00

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

2010-02-08T07:08:00.004-06:00

Rebecca Skloot has a book out on Henritetta Lacks,

In 1951, an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor named George Gey snipped cells from her cervix without telling her. Gey discovered that Lacks' cells could not only be kept alive, but would also grow indefinitely.
For the past 60 years Lacks' cells have been cultured and used in experiments ranging from determining the long-term effects of radiation to testing the live polio vaccine. Her cells were commercialized and have generated millions of dollars in profit for the medical researchers who patented her tissue.

The big kicker here is that Lacks' family did not know of this until 20 years after her death, and I'm sure an ethical hailstorm ensued.

"Though I Have Wronged You"

2010-02-07T15:28:00.002-06:00

Two pixels debating Internet identity...

Animal Collective - "Campfire Songs"

2010-02-06T07:19:00.003-06:00

In 2003, Animal Collective were not the genial cohort they are today. They were more of a primordial soup of acoustic instrumentation and natural effects than they were a band that produced actual music. Attempting to find a bridge between their earlier work and Merriweather Post Pavilion is a futile exercise, one that ends in frustration (especially, I imagine, for those who began with MMP and worked backwards; this is, unfortunately, most people who like Animal Collective). Even finding the links to 2004s Sung Tongs--which probably comes closest to Campfire Songs in terms of phylum or species branching--requires a stretch of patience and open-mindedness that few could be prepared to take on. But with a meteoric rise to popularity comes a meteoric rise to re-issue and display roots, which is what makes Campfire Songs so interesting at this point in time. No one could hope to understand it or where it came from, but suddenly it's here, a brooding and thought-provoking mess. And everyone is compelled to listen.

Nicholas Cage Colorforms

2010-02-05T21:05:00.002-06:00

When I was little, I played with Colorforms until my fingertips were raw. I might have to take up the habit again now that Nicholas Cage Colorforms have arrived.

Tree House

2010-02-04T07:18:00.004-06:00

The Wilkinson Residence--located in Portland and designed by Robert Harvey Oshatz--is a house built into a tree canopy to "evoke the feeling of being in a tree house." Think I'll go sneak around the property when I'm out west later this spring for a closer look...

Can't breath when you wake up?

2010-02-03T18:01:00.003-06:00

This article will bring you up to speed on all the latest sleep apnea treatments, including didgeridoo therapy:

If all else fails, there is always the didgeridoo, an indigenous Australian musical instrument. In a study published in the British Medical Journal, 25 patients with sleep apnea who practiced playing it for about 30 minutes a day, six days a week for four months, significantly reduced the number of apneas they had during sleep; daytime sleepiness also decreased. Scientist believe the breathing technique required to play the didgeridoo strengthens the upper airway and makes it less likely to collapse.

"Splitting the Atom"

2010-02-03T17:56:00.001-06:00

It's like awesome opening movie credits:

Phish - St. Michael's College 11/19/92

2010-02-02T20:29:00.010-06:00

"Howdy...there's not much more to be said, so let's get on with it." Those are the introductory words that Michael Luoma--a 1987 graduate of St. Michael's College--spoke before Phish incinerated this small campus arena in the fall of 1992. Pretty standard procedure back then to have some random dude introduce the band (in this case, as Fishman was tingling the opening to "Maze"). That's always just killed me for some reason.

Anyway, it's yet another archival release, one that coincidentally was scheduled for release during the week of the Haiti earthquake. So as a bonus kicker, 100% of the proceeds go there (see post below for more ways to donate). The other bonus kickers are of course the music itself: a flawlessly executed "Foam"; the first ever "Big Ball Jam"; "Big Black Furry Creature From Mars" with "I Walk the Line" lyrics; Rift, Rift, Rift. All the good stuff that was happening in 1992 is here in its most ferocious and quirky form.

Gullshrooms

2010-02-01T22:35:00.003-06:00

One of many pieces of art you can buy here as part of a Haiti fundraiser (via):

"Pandorum"

2010-02-01T22:21:00.002-06:00

Pandorum had everything that a great space sci-fi thriller needs to be entertaining: cavernous, city-sized spacecraft, paranoia, legions of God-awful things trying to kill you, and a unique twist that makes Pandorum not Alien, Event Horizon, or Eden Log. I was pleased until the final two minutes, when everything just got too sparkly and neat.

County Stadium switchboard

2010-02-01T07:13:00.002-06:00

iPad as family computer

2010-01-31T07:50:00.004-06:00

Michael Sippey describes the iPad as family device:

It looks like a great machine to travel from the living room to the kitchen to the kids room to the bedroom. We'll search the web on it, read the news on it, the kids will do email on it, play Brushes and Bejeweled on it, and it'll be the perfect complement to the Sunday afternoon TV football ritual. We'll use it to control the music in the house, and do some quick bet-settling during dinner. I'm sure we'll eventually enjoy some multiplayer "board" games on it, or read a book on it, or watch a TV show on it. And the kids will argue with each other over who gets it next. (Dad will.)

With all the initial negative press and poo-pooing of the iPad, this is probably the most positive (and most useful) assessment I've seen so far. I'm seeing a lot of parallels to specific events like board game nights or bedtime reading, or as Sippey describes, to general family activities that are woven together throughout the course of the day.

Phones are too personal (and small) to play this role, and a desktop and laptops are too centralized in a home (i.e., lack versatility) to involve everyone. Perhaps iPad's greatest influence will not be derived from what it does as a personal device but rather how it is used as a personnel device.

"Await Your Reply"

2010-01-30T12:15:00.004-06:00

Await Your Reply--the first novel I read on a Kindle (which might be interesting to remember as the years go on and reading changes forever)--is a story of false identity. The book seemed to have no setting, and I'm not sure if that was a byproduct of distraction from reading on a new device, or if Dan Chaon's writing style simply focused the reader on the masked facades that each character created. Either way, it's a fine "Internet Generation" story:

An invader arrives in your computer and begins to glean the little diatoms of your identity. Your name, your address, and so on; the various websites you visit as you wander through the Internet, your user names and passwords, your birth date, your mother’s maiden name, favorite color, the blogs and news sites you read, the items you shop for, the credit card numbers you enter into the databases. Which isn’t necessarily you, of course. You are still an individual human being with a soul and a history, friends and relatives and coworkers who care about you, who can vouch for you: they recognize your face and your voice and your personality, and you are aware of your life as a continuous thread, a dependable unfolding story of yourself that you are telling to yourself.

You wake up and feel fairly happy, happy in that bland, daily way that doesn’t even recognize itself as happiness, moving into the empty hours that probably won’t be anything more than a series of rote actions: showering and pouring coffee into a cup and dressing and turning a key in the ignition and driving down streets that are so familiar you don’t even recall making certain turns and stops, though, yes, you are still present, your mind must have consciously carried out the procedure of braking at the corner and rolling the steering wheel beneath your palms and making a left onto the highway even though there is no memory at all of these actions. Perhaps if you were hypnotized such mundane moments could be retrieved, they are written on some file and stored, unused and useless in some neurological clerk’s back room. Does it matter? You are still you, after all, through all of these hours and days; you are still whole.

Bond will have an iPad

2010-01-29T18:00:00.003-06:00

Stephen Fry joined the "congregation at the Church of Apple" for the iPad launch and gives a glowing review:

Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.

Phish save Haiti

2010-01-28T21:41:00.004-06:00

iPad

2010-01-28T19:40:00.003-06:00

The iPad would be much more appealing if it were solely an e-reader (I really love the page-turning aesthetic), rather than a big iPhone or a small laptop. I realize that's hersey in today's world of multi-tasking devices, but I don't want to pay extra for a device that replicates the function of my other devices. Apples products are starting to overlap a little too much (much like the iPod Touch and iPhone) and their versatility is stretching itself thin. It will be interesting to see how potential buyers who own both MacBooks and iPhones respond.

Confessions of an e-book pirate

2010-01-27T20:20:00.004-06:00

The Millions interviews an e-book pirate:

3) Just because someone downloads a file, it doesn’t mean they will read it. I realize that buying a book doesn’t mean someone is going to read it either, but clicking a link and paying $10-$30 is very different – many more people will download a book and not read it than buy a book and not read it.

In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers. Realistically and financially, however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks.

I'd have to agree with him...one aspect of e-piracy often overlooked is the actual use of the "stolen" material. When you burn a CD--one that you really end up enjoying--you can listen to it thousands of times. You are constantly experiencing the value, artistic purposes, and personal creative reflection of the art. With books, it's more of a one-shot deal (seriously, how many times will I read Infinite Jest over the course of my life?). Now, certainly physical albums and books carry these same connotations--that's just how you engage with them--but I would argue, in a very subjective, experiential way, that stealing an e-book is overrated because we (potentially) invest less time in the stolen material.

Fever Ray wins

2010-01-27T07:25:00.001-06:00

Fever Ray "accepts" the award for best new dance artist at the P3 Gold Awards in Gothenburg:

"Orphan"

2010-01-26T21:14:00.003-06:00

The Internet ruined Orphan's twist for me--I stumbled across a blog post that was well-labeled with SPOILER alerts, but I just couldn't resist. I believe the title of the post was "Don't You Want to Know What the Deal is With the Girl From 'Orphan'?" Of course I did, because the movie looked terrible and I wasn't planning on seeing it anyway. How good could the twist be? Now I wish I would have just rented it, because Orphan is pretty creepy, even when you know the secret the whole time. Let America's obsession with killer children continue.

Interactive CD

2010-01-26T21:08:00.003-06:00

One more reason to buy CDs instead of mp3s (via):

Dead Sea Scrolls

2010-01-25T22:13:00.007-06:00

When looking at 2,000 year old pieces of paper, you begin to predict (or at least I do) what texts from your time will still be around 2,000 years from now. Chances are, the books on my shelf will not be, nor will much of anything else, for from dust it came and from dust it will return, etc. Physical is physical, and it has a shelf life. There are of course rarities, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which defied physical logic by surviving in readable intact-ness for over 20 centuries in a cave by the saltiest place on earth, only to end up at the Milwaukee Public Museum in 2010 for my Saturday night enjoyment.

But even when our books--and iPods and iPhones and Kindles--disintegrate back into dust, there will be billions upon billions of webpages and digital data--that will theoretically last forever--detailing their introduction into society, how they were used, and when they were finally phased out. The digital will outlast the physical, and there will be very little mystery about how these objects from the past came about and influenced our world. While going through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, I kept thinking about how much less exciting archeology will become for people as time goes on.

Do you eat it?

2010-01-25T21:53:00.004-06:00

An expanded version of the 5-second rule (via):

Spoon - "Transference"

2010-01-24T08:54:00.008-06:00

In 2007, Spoon released Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, an album that was received with critical acclaim. Why there was acclaim was beyond me; that album was a poppy sell-out job that seemed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. I finally chalked it up to a Spoon-can-do-no-wrong phenomenon, and just stopped listening to it. Usually, once a band is able to pull off that trick where every reviewer and fan is sucking at their teet, they never return to prior form. But now, in 2010, Spoon have released Transference, an album that takes Spoon back to what made them a great band to begin with, and Surprise! the reviews are bad, and the public disease of expecting never-ending accessibility and catchy, shitty songs is rearing its ugly symptoms. Those poor people; they've been poisoned, and have forgotten that a bizarre and hip-ly senseless song like "Who Makes Your Money" is why they liked Spoon in the first place.

I haven't forgotten, though, and I'm sure that there are still plenty post-apocalyptic Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga survivors that haven't either. Transference is a damn fine album, one that challenges you a bit and doesn't just show up to be your friend. Like I said, it's made of the stuff that doesn't quite fit into the canon of rock and roll. Opener "Before Destruction" seems half-written and undecided on the major/minor tones of its spine, but nevertheless, it intrigues you as unique, and projects (transference!) all sorts underlying feelings and creativity. These are the kind of fragments of music that Spoon excels at writing, but they still retain the ability to throw out a great "regular" rock song as well ("Written in Reverse"; I would also argue that "Out Go the Lights" is one of the better songs they've produced). Here, they keep that mix of the abnormal and normal, and perhaps save their career in the process. A fine start to 2010.

The self-consuming barbecue pavilion

2010-01-23T08:46:00.004-06:00

Caroline O'Donnell has proposed sketches for a project called Bloodline, an isolated grilling structure composed of wooden grilling sticks (grillholz) that would literally consume itself as the summer grilling season progresses into fall.

What's perhaps most interesting is that the pavilion is based upon the designs of "solitude castles" in Germany in the late 1700s. Isolated, hidden rooms were built in these castles to make servants invisible to their masters while they prepared food:

Ingeniously, O'Donnell's proposed site for Bloodline means that our barbecuing hero, standing in front of the grill-window on the southwest-facing side of the pavilion, is the only person in their party who can see that they are actually inside the missing third castle.

In other words, while their friends and family relax in the grounds outside the pavilion, eating sausages they haven't had to prepare, "only the servant (or grill-master) will know the truth," explains O'Donnell, "although they can sneak others in, to share the secret."

In terms of grilling experience, the barbecue pavilion that becomes a secret, personal castle seems second to none. "After that, the sausages are not my responsibility," O'Donnell told me. "There are however custom spaces built into the pavilion on the west side for a fire-extinguisher and a fire-blanket, as well as a big vent on the east side that aligns with the prevailing wind and uses the stack-effect to ventilate the space naturally."

Only the grill master will know the truth...

Kindle PDFs

2010-01-22T18:33:00.004-06:00

I undertook a hefty freelance project this week, one that required a lot of research and a desktop folder full of journal articles in PDF. For fun, I loaded a bunch of them onto my Kindle to see if that would affect how quickly I could read and annotate the articles.

While the page clicking of Kindle was preferable to the stapled-page-turning of a printed document (and the terrible onscreen-scrolling of PDFs) in terms of reading, working with Kindle PDFs is a whole different story. The speed of note-taking is just not there compared to pen scrawls in a margin, the print is too small for scanning purposes, checking references is an utter bitch, and most of all, you can't haphazardly throw the Kindle down on your desk to type something when you get a quick idea.

I wish I would have had a Kindle in grad school, because, like I said, it's fantastic for reading purposes; all those articles I read week in and week out could have been stored in one central location, and I could have just cranked them out one after the other. But for the rigors of work, research and reference, paper documents are still king. And I think they will stay that way for a while. Technology, with all its bells and whistles, can't provide the same affordances that the disposability of cheap, one dimensional paper can offer.

"Seasons in the Sun"

2010-01-21T18:45:00.000-06:00

A very joyful, happy, un-grunge-like side of Nirvana (via):

Using Twitter wrongly?

2010-01-21T18:40:00.002-06:00

The Awl suggests five things to do with Twitter if you suspect you're doing it wrong:

Take some time out from your bloody lifecasting and lurk around as an amplifier. You know what? You have fun friends, or "friends," probably. (Are Twitter friends "friends"? Sometimes! Sometimes not.) Take a break from putting your "original" "thoughts" on it and just become a (gross word alert) "reTweeter" of things that You Find Of Interest.

I love my records

2010-01-20T20:24:00.004-06:00

I do too... (via)

E-book piracy costing billions

2010-01-20T19:19:00.005-06:00

According to a recent study by Attributor--a web service monitor for illegally posted content--publishers could be losing out on $3 billion this year due to e-book piracy (the report linked in the text is worth checking out; informative and concise):

Attributor’s Rich Pearson said he was surprised about how bad the piracy problem has become since the company became more involved with book publishing over a year ago. Of the 14 book categories tracked, piracy was most prevalent in the business and investing segment which had an average of 13,000 free downloads per title, the report found. The professional and technical segment was a close second followed by science, and computer and Internet. The average number of free fiction downloads was just over 2,000, the study found. Pearson said he wasn’t surprised to find a “high correlation” between books that are illegally downloaded and subject areas that students are the most interested in. Still, the survey found lots of illegal fiction downloads with Attributor finding 7,951 illegal downloads of Angels and Demons and 1,604 downloads of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In nonfiction, Architect’s Drawings was downloaded 9,715 times.

I'm not surprised about that "high correlation" of student subject matter books, either; my books for my first semester of college cost $588, which is an absolute sin. Had I had access to that kind of technology ten years ago, I would have done the same thing. E-book publishers are just going to have to suck it up and deal with it, just like the music industry does.

Beatles as infographics

2010-01-19T17:51:00.004-06:00

Mike Deal Graphic Design is exploring the Beatles through infographics. For example, there are pictograms depicting each album's relative key distribution over the Circle of Fifths:

The synthesiser

2010-01-18T11:00:00.002-06:00

Brian Eno on the synthesiser:

One of the important things about the synthesiser was that it came without any baggage. A piano comes with a whole history of music. There are all sorts of cultural conventions built into traditional instruments that tell you where and when that instrument comes from. When you play an instrument that does not have any such historical background you are designing sound basically. You're designing a new instrument. That's what a synthesiser is essentially. It's a constantly unfinished instrument. You finish it when you tweak it, and play around with it, and decide how to use it. You can combine a number of cultural references into one new thing.

This concept of "unfinished" instruments is especially true of electronic music today. Where do you draw the lines of historical development with groups like Autechre or Supersilent? I wonder if those kinds of sounds/instrumentation could eventually have the standard conventions of a grand piano? It seems unlikely, but at the same time, necessary for creative development. I guess we'll know in 500 years when people are dusting off copies of Draft 7.30 for music theory classes.

The Americanization of mental illness

2010-01-16T10:31:00.006-06:00

An essay--adopted from Ethan Waters' upcoming book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche--touching upon the many ways in which America is "homogenizing the way the world goes mad":

Even when the underlying science is sound and the intentions altruistic, the export of Western biomedical ideas can have frustrating and unexpected consequences. For the last 50-odd years, Western mental-health professionals have been pushing what they call “mental-health literacy” on the rest of the world. Cultures became more “literate” as they adopted Western biomedical conceptions of diseases like depression and schizophrenia. One study published in The International Journal of Mental Health, for instance, portrayed those who endorsed the statement that “mental illness is an illness like any other” as having a “knowledgeable, benevolent, supportive orientation toward the mentally ill.”

The entire essay is absolutely fascinating, and I can't wait to read the book. It's incredible (and frightening) to think of Western biomedical diagnostics catching on in other countries as quickly as Coca-Cola, especially when you consider the way we recklessly medicate patients and prescribe drugs these days.

Pink Freud

2010-01-16T10:26:00.001-06:00

Cost of Kindle

2010-01-15T07:13:00.005-06:00

David Wertheimer recently did a little cost analysis on reading the New York Times on paper versus on Kindle:

I began to seriously wonder, should I buy a Kindle and switch to electronic delivery? I did a little cost assessment and realized my newspaper is a very expensive habit. The Times, to its credit, gives daily subscribers a break: our papers cost us $11.70 a week (at the newsstand it'd be $17). Factoring in the Monday and Wednesday purchases, and assuming we remember to stop it when we go on vacation, 50 weeks of the New York Times in print costs us $785 a year.

Compare that with the Kindle, which costs $259 for the small version—the pocket-sized, and therefore commute-friendly, one—and $13.99 for a monthly subscription to the Times. After one year, I'll have spent $427, and I'd have a shiny gadget to boot. Heck, we could get a second one for Amy, and after 14 months, our spend would be tied, $910.60 for print versus $909.72 digitally.

Assuming he just buys one, that's a huge savings. In tough economic times, why wouldn't a newspaper addict jump at those savings (and like he mentions, get an awesome techy device in the process).

This could be one of those underlying factors that eventually will shoot even more arrows into the heart of print. Print is definitely going the way of the dodo already, but I think what holds a lot of people back--and thus, keeps print in print--is the "scary" price of buying a new gadget, investing in two mediums just for the sake of having both, etc. E-books in general are not yet well known for their investment quality, and depending how you utilize them, what you get back in monetary value is still a crap shoot. There is always a lot of talk and debate about how e-books change reading habits and twist the context of reading, so the intellectual value and feedback is there, but maybe pricing, economy, and even environmental economics should be just as heavily considered in the e-book debate.

Wertheimer acknowledges toward the end of his post that "the piece of the future that he was willfully neglecting has suddenly come into sharp relief" and the "horizon just got a lot closer." For all those still on the fence--including myself, a little bit--perhaps that future also creeps closer.

First-person Tetris

2010-01-14T20:38:00.002-06:00

Ever wonder what happens when YOU are the Tetris? Nausea, that's what.

"Phish: The Biography"

2010-01-13T21:23:00.002-06:00

Phish: The Biography is certainly not the first biography written about the band, nor will it be the last, considering they are still a touring band (I'd like to read one complete biography someday, but when there is money to be made, there is money to be made, I guess), but what strikes me most about this current biography is the stark contrast of the late nineties period in comparison to how that era was percived only ten years ago. Bittersweet Motel depicted that era--especially 1997; my favorite Phish year--as nothing but sick funk-jamming and good times had by all. And it was; it was a period that saw a significant shift from the full-throttle jamming of the early 90s to something wildly creative and exploratory.

But in Parke Puterbaugh's text, it's depicted as the tipping point where things went terribly wrong:

In some ways, Phish and their audience were moving in different directions. Phish had simplified and toned down their style of playing; the words "sparse" and "ambient" were often heard in conversation with the group members in 1997 and 1998. At the same time, much of the younger and wilder audience longed to be hosed by music and dosed by drugs as intensely as possible. But the buildup and crescendos, the displays of speed and virtuosity, weren't forthcoming from Phish as routinely in the late nineties. Between the abbreviated domestic tour schedules and escapes to Europe in 1997 and 1998, coupled with the turn to more low-key textural jamming and bass-driven "cow funk," one might infer that Phish was on some level endeavoring to tame the crowd scene.

I think that's some interesting hindsight, most of which I don't agree with. It's one thing to address a period of time where the root of drug problems may have kicked in, but to infer that Phish was in some way playing down to the crowd to keep things under control is a fairly ludicrous statement, given how highly those tours have been held in Phish chronology. They were simply different styles of shows compared to earlier years, and fans tended to side with one or the other. This kind of personal reaction might be due to bias, but at the same time I don't believe that Phish has ever played for anyone but themselves (and I don't mean that in a negative sense).

"Oversteps"

2010-01-13T13:19:00.002-06:00

Out March 23...

China hacks Google

2010-01-12T21:25:00.002-06:00

There is something absolutely surreal about this Google Blog post, which details their response to recent cyber attack by Chinese dissidents. What interesting times we live in, when global policy and human rights intersect and interact at the level of megabytes and pixels.

Costanza's Frogger record beaten

2010-01-12T07:00:00.004-06:00

Seinfeld writers made up George Costanza's high score in "The Frogger" episode (860,630 points), but someone has actually now beaten that score in real life:

Interestingly enough, famed game record organization Twin Galaxies has been waiting for someone to beat the impressive "Costanza Score" for over four years now, and today it was announced that Pat Laffaye of Westport, CT has done just that with an impressive score of 896,980 points.

"Brothersport"

2010-01-11T19:17:00.001-06:00

Costumed children being pursued by a St. Bernard:

Cell phones protect against Alzheimer's

2010-01-11T18:57:00.005-06:00

A study involving mice indicates that talking on your cell phone all day at an early age helps prevent Alzheimer's:

[The study] involved 96 mice, most of which had been genetically altered to develop beta-amyloid plaques in their brains, which are a marker of Alzheimer's disease, as they aged. The rest of the mice were non-demented. All the mice were exposed to the electro-magnetic field generated by a standard phone for two one-hour periods each day for seven to nine months. Their cages were arranged at the same distance around a centrally located antenna generating the phone signal.

The researchers, led by Professor Gary Arendash, said that if the phone exposure was started when the Alzheimer's mice were young adults, before signs of memory impairment were apparent, their cognitive ability was protected.

Arendash also previously authored a paper claiming that coffee could protect against Alzheimer's. Get your children iPhones and bring them to Starbucks, every day.

"Llama"

2010-01-10T20:19:00.001-06:00

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem cover Phish's "Llama" (via):

First Kindle musings

2010-01-09T12:52:00.003-06:00

Santa ushered in my first era of e-book reading this year with a Kindle, and I have many thoughts on how that is changing the context of reading. First and foremost is the dramatic change in the pacing of reading. Not in the sense that my reading speed has increased or decreased, but that the fractions of time in between reading--i.e., page turning--significantly change the pace of storyline. With no *pages* to turn, reading loses the smooth page-to-page transitions that one encounters when completely absorbed in a book. Rather, there are now page clicks that give a sense of timing, rather than continuity. That timing needs to be learned, and Kindle challenges you to do so at the risk of losing the continuity of the story. This is fascinating because we don't need to learn to use books and turn pages. With Kindle, reading almost becomes a multi-tasking event with your thumbs and mind, which ultimately, I think could become valuable in the long run. I don't exactly know how yet, though.

The Flaming Lips - "Dark Side of the Moon"

2010-01-08T19:20:00.005-06:00

It's rare that I download music from iTunes, and even rarer that I read iTunes reviewer comments before purchasing music from iTunes. Those people are the bottom feeders of the Internet, only a genus or two above people who comment on youtube videos. Their only online purpose is to waste millions of key strokes en route to terrible, senseless and juvenile words. This probably has a lot to do with why I purchased The Flaming Lips' cover album of Dark Side of the Moon--the iTune "critics" were bashing it in a seething comment pool of half-wit clauses and emoticons, and I couldn't bring myself to agree with their poorly thought-out cautions.

Part of me, however, does agree with them. I mean, seriously, if there has ever been an album that 1) shouldn't be covered anymore and 2) shouldn't have ever been covered in the first place, it's Dark Side of the Moon. It's one of the greatest, most unique pieces of art in the history of music, and every band--I'm especially looking at you, Phish--has to cover it "in its entirety" and not even come close to paying it the homage it deserves. When I first heard the Lips were doing this, I scoffed. But as I said before, I wasn't about to align myself with the iTunes cretins, so I downloaded it anyway, simply out of spite.

It's actually not that bad. At the very least, it attempts to reinvent DSOTM, rather than replicate it (for example, coughing instead of clock-ticking during the brooding intro of "Time," and those ridiculous synthy munchkin voices on "Money"). Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips both inhabit different universes, so it's a little bit like solar system jumping. The Flaming Lips' version is more of a space march--much like last year's Embryonic--whereas Pink Floyd created a space odyssey. The former is worth listening to if you're into The Flaming Lips at this point in their career, the later is just worth listening to all the time.

Tea time

2010-01-08T07:33:00.002-06:00

From the portfolio of Fred Perrot:

phthal

2010-01-07T21:24:00.003-06:00

This web page--titled phthal--is actually pretty close to what I imagined David Foster Wallace's samizdat to be like. I watched this for a good two minutes before looking away, which is an eternity in Internet time (via).

Go away

2010-01-07T07:16:00.004-06:00

How to build the most useless machine ever (via):

"Avatar"

2010-01-06T18:48:00.005-06:00

Avatar was the Dances with Wolves of the Web 2.0 generation. That's not a slight, because I enjoyed Dances with Wolves as much as the next guy. It's just that the story lines were bizarrely similar: man goes to far off land, tames wild beast, earns trust of tribe, joins said tribe, mates with tribal woman, vanquishes evil doers, earthly spirituality everywhere.

What makes Avatar much more generationally appropriate, of course, is the idea of real identity becoming false identity through the crises of character and emotion. Aside from the obvious otherworldly upgrades, the movie is not too far off from real life. Online portals and social networks dominate the landscapes of our living rooms nowadays, to the point that some people lose touch with the real world and the social existence around them. Why be human when you can be nine feet tall and blue?

When my mind wasn't being blown by Avatar's insane visuals, I was thinking about how well this movie inserts itself into our current social mindset. Becoming someone else no longer requires just stepping over the river to where the Tatanka roam; now, the physical is stripped away completely.

How to train an aging brain

2010-01-04T19:26:00.004-06:00

Researchers are looking into new ways to improve adult learning:

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, [Dr. Kathleen Taylor] says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.

This critical approach to learning makes sense, but is it really new? To me, it follows the natural progression of learning that one utilizes when entering middle age: assimilating the facts you accumulated over your life into meaningful observations and analysis. Moreover, any adult who uses the Internet--which is pretty much all of them nowadays--is constantly challenged by a framework of knowledge they did not have when growing up, and are thus re-learning how to integrate loads of information into their pre-existing conceptions of critical thinking. For this generation, simple Web-browsing provides the ultimate relief from stagnant neuroplasticity.

Netherlandish Proverbs

2010-01-04T18:52:00.002-06:00

Would have been better had it been soundtracked by Fleet Foxes--who used the famous Flemish proverb-laden painting as the cover art for their fantastic 2008 self-titled release--instead of this awful song, but still an interesting art-into-modern-context effort (via):

The endurance of Twitter

2010-01-03T08:43:00.005-06:00

David Carr argues that Twitter is here to stay (via):

The expressive limits of a kind of narrative developed from text messages, with less space to digress or explain than this sentence, has significant upsides. The best people on Twitter communicate with economy and precision, with each element — links, hash tags and comments — freighted with meaning. Professional acquaintances whom I find insufferable on every other platform suddenly become interesting within the confines of Twitter.

There are certainly downsides to less detail in communication, but detail does not run parallel to the needs and wants of the information age. Now, the priority is on the vector that leads to the information; detail is for a later time in the generation of nano-second attention spans. Carefully crafted bursts of information can save time, energy, and mounds of frustration that often occur in endless pools of data. Why wouldn't that sort of efficiency last?

Value of liquids

2010-01-03T08:26:00.002-06:00

Makes donating blood seem not all that special (via):

"Terminator: Salvation"

2010-01-02T09:27:00.003-06:00

When a movie franchise stretches over an arc of 25 years like Terminator has, there is bound to be a difference in the thinking and aesthetics that go into the production of the films. Each movie represents a different iteration--in most cases, a technological iteration--that either pushes the franchise forward into new and exciting territory, or cripples it by abandoning the classic foundation it was built on. The jump from Terminator to Judgment Day was an example of the former: new technology was infused and created an epic film that perfectly built upon the first.

If you pretend that Rise of the Machines never happened and skip directly to Salvation, the technology doesn't make that jump (even though it was produced in 1992, Judgment Day set the bar high). In fact, Salvation seemed to intentionally replicate Judgment Day--including a final scene involving terminators chasing humans through metallic staircases in a steamy abandoned factory that ultimately involves liquid magma as a resolution--and didn't bring any new ideas to the infinite possibilities of a post-nuclear world. What Salvation should have done is focus on the human condition within the technology, much like The Dark Knight did with the Batman franchise. Sam Worthington's character touched upon this aspect, but it seemed more gimmick than anything, and the more I think about it, didn't make any sense within the context of the movies that preceded it.

Phish - 12/31/09 (American Airlines Arena)

2010-01-01T13:06:00.002-06:00

Set I: AC/DC Bag, 46 Days, Water in the Sky, Bathtub Gin, Punch You in the Eye, The Moma Dance, Guyute, Swept Away, Demand, Seven Below, Lawn Boy, Julius

Set II: Rock and Roll, Piper, Simple, Theme from the Bottom, Shine a Light, Ghost, NO2, Suzy Greenberg

Set III: Party Time, Auld Lang Syne, Down with Disease, Fluffhead, Joy, The Squirming Coil, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: Blue Moon, Loving Cup

Phish - 12/30/09 (American Airlines Arena)

2009-12-31T07:14:00.002-06:00

Set I: Soul Shakedown Party, Runaway Jim, Jesus Just Left Chicago, Dixie Cannonball, Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan, Corrina, What's the Use, Tela, Gone, Rocky Top, Chalkdust Torture, David Bowie

Set II: Sand, The Curtain With, Lifeboy, Back on the Train, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Hold Your Head Up, Love You, Hold Your Head Up, Free, Boogie on Reggae Woman, Run Like an Antelope

Encore: Frankenstein

Google offices

2009-12-30T20:02:00.003-06:00

A gallery of Google's offices. A $400 billion company and they are sitting in boats...

Phish - 12/29/09 (American Airlines Arena)

2009-12-29T23:18:00.002-06:00

Set I: Golgi Apparatus, Maze, Driver, The Connection, Wolfman's Brother, Ocelot, Reba, Access Me, Divided Sky, Cavern

Set II: Kill Devil Falls, Tweezer, Prince Caspian, Gotta Jibboo, Wilson, Gotta Jibboo, Heavy Things, 2001, Slave to the Traffic Light

Encore: Sleeping Monkey, Tweezer Reprise

New York Times visualization

2009-12-29T07:19:00.005-06:00

NYTimes.com traffic on June 25, 2009 (notice the surge at 1:10 when the news broke that Michael Jackson died):

Phish - 12/28/09 (American Airlines Arena)

2009-12-29T07:07:00.002-06:00

Set I: Sample in a Jar, NICU, My Soul, Roggae, Undermind, Bouncing Around the Room, Poor Heart, Stash, I Didn't Know, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Possum

Set II: Mike's Song, Light, I am Hydrogen, Weekapaug Groove, Alaska, Backwards Down the Number Line, Makisupa Policeman, Harry Hood, Contact, Character Zero

Encore: First Tube

What's under your mask?

2009-12-28T19:56:00.004-06:00

I think that's all of them (via):

@Home Alone

2009-12-27T19:49:00.003-06:00

Someone has re-created Home Alone in real time on Twitter, using all 22 characters from the movie (via):

@KevinMcCal Yeah we did. But if you want any...somebody's gonna have to barf it all up, because it's gone. :D