Feist - Sea Lion Woman
Feist sings “Sea Lion Woman” live, on YouTube. The description:
damn this rocks live!
That’s pretty accurate.
Feist sings “Sea Lion Woman” live, on YouTube. The description:
damn this rocks live!
That’s pretty accurate.
Let’s speak metaphorically for a second and say I own a rock labeled “faith in humanity” — well, an event today is responsible for taking a sharp chisel and hammering off a large chunk from said rock. Here’s what happened.
The search box in Firefox pulls results from something called “Google Suggest”. Here’s a description of the feature from Google (emphasis mine):
Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers. An example of this type of popularity information can be found in the Google Zeitgeist. Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on your personal search history.
So, what’s happening here is this: as you type, Google attempts to guess what you are searching for by offering a list of popular search phrases that are related to the one you are typing. I was searching for “is gzip compression turned on” because I was looking for this useful tool, which can tell you if your website is utilizing compression. I finished typing “is ” (the space is important), and paused… then this list of suggestions came up:
I stared at the first 4 suggestions for probably about 15 seconds. Then I entered in “is ” again, to see if I had made a mistake. Same result. That can only mean one thing: a popular query on Google is there because hundreds of thousands of people are judging a presidential candidate based solely on the color of his skin and the arrangement of the characters in his name.
This sickens me.
Sasha Frere-Jones blogs music at the New Yorker online, and he provides interesting details about about Britney Spears’ latest album.
Perhaps to offset consumer anxiety generated by Spears’s well-documented personal struggles, she and her advisory committee have spared no expense and have exhibited exceptionally good taste in hiring. The songwriters and producers who contributed to “Blackout” are as close to an all-star team as pop has right now: the producer Nate “Danja” Hills, a protégé of Timbaland who co-produced many of Timbaland’s recent hits; the proven songwriters Sean Garrett and Kara DioGuardi, as well as the up-and-coming and increasingly reliable songwriter Keri Hilson; the once dominant, now dormant super-producers the Neptunes; and, best of all, the Swedish production duo Bloodshy & Avant, responsible for older songs such as “Toxic” and “Me Against the Music,” which made Spears as deservedly ubiquitous as she wanted to be.
Frere-Jones’ list of people who made this latest album lends proper nouns to a thought I’ve had in my head for a while. See, those who rail against Britney Spears’s music are making an error. Now, don’t miss my point: Spears is not a pop musician — her skills are non-existent and infinitesimally small compared to pop music greats like the Beatles; but Britney Spears is a pop brand. Look at the situation more closely: the Beatles were the musicians and the brand. When you think of the Beatles, you think of Paul, John, George, and Ringo — they did the singing, much of the writing, had input on the production/engineering of their music, and guided the musical direction of the group. When you heard them, you knew that behind that music was a band composed of real musicians who were writing, rehearsing, and performing music. Spears, on the other hand, is simply a brand, ultimately representing a cynical corporate strategy (that, I must add, is not new — look at the Monkees):
So, Spears puts the face on a group of extraordinarily talented individuals, individuals whose amazing achievements include making Britney sound like she’s singing and not warbling out random tones. These folks behind the scenes are the pop musicians, who are crafting melodies and pushing the envelope on the popular rhythms and production values of the day. Their achievements (especially considering the awful raw materials they must begin with) are what you should compare with a group like the Beatles. So, when you say Spears herself is crap, you are correct — but if you are to do an actual analysis of the music, you must fully understand the meaning of and the people behind a corporate music brand.
Put your hands up if you dig live pedal looping. Check it out on YouTube with KT Tunstall and her performance of Black Horse And The Cherry Tree. You only have to watch the beginning because… I know you’ve already heard the song 56,000 times.
This picture of the corporate headquarters of Nestlé has the best view from an office building I’ve ever seen. It sits right on Lake Geneva, with mountains in the background.
I recently wrote about the absurdity of using social networking photos as indisputable evidence in a piece called Puritanical, Tyrannical, Overreaching Public Schools. I centered my argument around events at Eden Prairie High School, events which have been essentially repeated at Woodbury High School (my alma mader). I’ll keep writing the same journal until something changes, I guess. Here’s the story this time around: instead of controversial pictures being reported to the school by an anonymous meddling informant (as they were at Eden Prairie), they were shown by a student at Woodbury High School as part of a health presentation about underage drinking. The common reaction is: “wow those students sure are stupid for putting these pictures online, then presenting them to a class.” Such a statement is an oversimplification of the situation and it conflates stupidity with naïveté. Allow me to explain.
Last time I wrote about this, I strongly emphasized the idea that Facebook, et al. are public websites. The quote I pulled out from the Eden Prairie incident (reproduced below) seems to contradict my assertion that students understand “publicly available,” but bear with me:
“Everyone thinks it’s pretty weird,” [Kalaidis] said. “I think it’s a huge invasion of privacy.”
In the Pioneer Press article about the Woodbury events, we see this:
“It’s kind of like invading privacy even though it’s on a public Internet site,” Richter said.
Two points about these two quotes. One: their striking similarity is indicative of a worrisome homogeneity in news reporting. Two, and more importantly, these students are showing their naïveté (not stupidity). There can be no doubt that with their technological savvy, they fully understand that public pictures are freely available to anyone, including school administrators. However, students have assumed that school administrators have better things to do than examine individual pictures and pass judgment on what is perceived as evidence. You see, in their quotes the students aren’t calling out privacy in the legal sense, but in the sense that they understand it — these pictures are public snapshots of private events. During the party/gathering nobody was caught with a drink in hand, nobody was given a breathalyzer test, and nobody was booked for underage drinking (if they had been, punishments would already have been meted out, and this situation wouldn’t exist). Students had the party, took the pictures, nobody was hurt, and everyone went home; it is reasonable, then, to say that events and repercussions from this aforementioned party/gathering are not anything other than a private matter. Legally, I think this viewpoint holds water: formal steps have not been taken to prove that these pictures are representative of the events that actually took place, yet 4 students have already been punished. On top of all this, easily modified digital snapshots that are second or third hand simulacrums of events do not a case for underage drinking make. One could easily place these photos even lower on the reliability scale than a teacher overhearing talk of drinking. As we saw before, however, legal rights seem to have failed to show up on school administrator’s radars.
An analogous situation could involve speeding. Let’s say some student drives his Camaro 90 miles per hour and takes a picture of the speedometer. He posts the picture on Facebook and another student uses that picture in a health class presentation about the dangers of speeding. Who in their right mind would decide to expel this student from his driver’s ed. course at the high school? In this situation, the administration is doing the equivalent of exactly that.
Finally, principal Woodbury High School Principal Linda Plante is quoted:
… because the photos were brought into our building, it is our obligation to address any violations of school rules they might depict.
In an attempt to head off arguments that transgressions took place off school grounds and without reliable witnesses, Plante lays down some serious doublespeak by saying that this incident was brought onto school grounds. In doing so, she attempts to give the impression that some insidious aspect of underage drinking is invading the school; this is an implicit attempt to justify an inquisitorial school administration. Look, Woodbury High School, the biggest case you’ve got is punishing a student for showing controversial pictures of people in a presentation without those person’s consent and disrupting class as a result. You have no first-hand testimony from any reliable sources that drinking took place. In fact, you have nothing that qualifies as evidence. You can not, should not, and if I had a way to stop it would not punish students on the basis of such circumstantial, questionable, and extraordinarily mutable pictures.
Bench Crafted makes a magnetic knife holder called the Mag-Blok, which is both beautiful and functional; oh, and it’s made out of wood. Extremely strong neodymium-iron-boron magnets are sandwiched under the surface of the wood, making anything metallic (ostensibly) stick to the wood… makes for a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance. As an added bonus, the wood does not damage your knives. Given such good looks, I would expect a high price… but this thing is affordable. Dan’s Data writes:
This Mag-Blok is the eighteen-inch cherry-wood model, yours for a mere $US35 plus delivery. You can get Mag-Bloks made from a variety of other woods, plus smaller 12-inch versions as well.
Dan’s review features a ridiculous picture illustrating just how much the Mag-Blok can hold. If I had a wall to put this on, it’d be a “buy” for sure!
Mykala, just a second ago: “I’m going to bite your earlobe off and spit it up your nose.”
Guy talking to his girlfriend at Blockbuster: “See, this one has dragons in it. Every movie is better with dragons. What movie have you seen with dragons in it that you didn’t like?”
These little hand drawn characters are adorable, though they are “a blatant rip-off of Lewis Trondheim’s style.” Still, very nice. My favorite of this series is probably “The Pessimistic Rector.” By the excellent artist Meng Shui.
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