January 31, 2008
Playlist - January 2008
Another month, another hour of disjointed listening.
Links go to non-DRMed music when possible. The eMusic list is here. If you're not on my mailing list, e-mail me for the 'special' links.
| Blitzen Trapper - Asleep For Days >> from Field Rexx |
| Oliver Future - The Second >> from Pax Futura |
| Maritime - Guns Of Navarone >> from Heresy and the Hotel Choir |
| The Clientele - Bookshop Casanova >> from God Save The Clientele |
| Deer Tick - Art Isn't Real (City Of Sin) >> from War Elephant |
| The Whigs - Hot Bed >> from Mission Control |
| The White Stripes - Truth Doesn't Make A Noise >> from De Stijl |
| Deer Tick - Baltimore Blues No. 1 >> from War Elephant |
| Cat Power - New York >> from Jukebox Chan is known for amazing covers that sound completely different from the originals. I'm not yet sure what to think about 'Jukebox' as a whole, but she's outdone herself on this song. |
| Cat Power - Silver Stallion >> from Jukebox This one actually sounds fairly similar to the version made famous by Johnny Cash and the Highwaymen. But there's something affecting about her performance of it. |
| Peter and the Wolf - Better Days >> from The Ivori Palms |
| Ambulance LTD - Sugar Pill >> from LP |
| The Whigs - Sleep Sunshine >> from Mission Control Several of this month's tunes feature pedal steel, but I'm most fond of the way it's used in this one. |
| Blitzen Trapper - Dreamers & Giants >> from Field Rexx |
| Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof >> from Mansard Roof |
| Vampire Weekend - Ladies Of Cambridge >> from Mansard Roof |
| LCD Soundsystem - Time To Get Away >> from Sound Of Silver I didn't like Sound of Silver as well as some people did. (It made its way into nearly every 2007 top ten list.) But it has its moments. Like North American Scum. Or this tune, which is my favorite from the album. It's a great mix of influences. Starting at about 1:30, I can't help but be reminded of Remain In Light -era Talking Heads. Good stuff. |
| Irakere - Bacalao Con Pan >> from Si, Para Usted - The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Vol. 1 The best tune I've ever heard about codfish & bread. |
31 Jan 23:44 | Link | Category: Music
Using Norton Ghost to clone a ThinkPad hard drive
This post is for the benefit of those who happen to Google their way here after trying to use Norton Ghost to clone the hard drive of an IBM ThinkPad (running Windows XP).
I have used Ghost for years, and version 8.0/2003 and earlier were good solutions for cloning Windows-based computers. (Later versions of Ghost are based on DriveImage, which I'm not terribly fond of.) I'm accustomed to its quirks and limitations, but today Ghost 2003 failed miserably.
I cloned the hard drive in my old ThinkPad T30 and when I swapped the drives, the computer refused to boot. It has to do with a "recovery" partition IBM, like many manufacturers, places on the drive. I don't have restore discs for the computer, so I need to keep the partition intact. (Besides, it also has some useful diagnostics utilities.) Unfortunately, Ghost has trouble with this. (It's hard to fault Ghost, since Windows has always been somewhat retarded when it comes to booting -- the letters NTLDR make me cringe). Oddly, the normal recovery console tricks (fixmbr, fixboot, bootcfg /rebuild, etc.) didn't seem to work.
After scouring the web, I learned that this is a typical problem with ThinkPads and Norton Ghost (at least Ghost 2003, which I was using). The solution was simple: use Acronis True Image instead of Ghost. It worked without a hitch. I was impressed with the program. It seems flexible and has a nice interface. It even supported a FireWire enclosure connected through a PC Card. So next time you need to clone a Windows hard drive, try True Image (especially if you have a ThinkPad). (If you have a Mac, it'll be much easier, and you can choose from a bunch of programs like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper.)
31 Jan 20:58 | Link | Category: Technology & Computing
January 26, 2008
Beat A Drum
People from 1 to 100 hit a drum:
It's from 'People In Order', a series of four short films.
26 Jan 23:53 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits, Music, Video
Oops
Note to talentless performers of shitty music:
Try not to fall off the stage. Especially if you're lip sycing.
Catching fake 'musicians' hasn't been so fun since Ashlee Simpson's SNL moment.
(via The Presurfer)
26 Jan 23:27 | Link | Category: Humor, Music, Video
January 23, 2008
Panic! At the Trading Floor
Robert Reich in a Salon.com article titled The politics of an economic nightmare:
In reality, the crisis is both a credit crunch and the bursting of the housing bubble. Wall Street is in terrible shape and Main Street is about to be in terrible shape. And there's not a whole lot that can be done about either of these problems -- because they are the results of years of lax credit standards, get-rich-quick schemes, wild speculation on Wall Street and in the housing market, and gross irresponsibility by the Fed, the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency.
23 Jan 21:24 | Link | Category: Current Events, Politics
January 22, 2008
Well, at least we know who ISN'T the "black candidate"
"Who let the dogs out"?!? WTF?! (If you're patient, wait for "bling bling" and "Michael Jordan" near the end of the clip.)
This is incredibly awkward (even by the standards of extremely wealthy old white guys). Combined with other issues (such as his religion's discriminatory doctrine pre-1978 and his lying prevarication regarding seeing his father march with MLK), it's downright unsettling.
22 Jan 16:09 | Link | Category: Politics, Video
Bill Clinton Has a Dream
Update: Fixed the video for IE7 users. Sorry.
I've done this, especially during boring speeches. (But luckily not on camera.) I'd love to know who switched Bill's cup of Joe with decaf. (Insert "vast right-wing conspiracy" - or "vast left-wing conspiracy" - joke here, if desired.)
22 Jan 15:51 | Link | Category: Humor, Politics, Video
January 21, 2008
May your dreams be realized
From FAIR: The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV (via Cynical-C).
I have quoted some of the text below:
But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
. . .
By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.
In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."
You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 — and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."
King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" — appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."
21 Jan 21:51 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
January 20, 2008
Ch-ch-changes
This is some parade, yesiree Bob. *
20 Jan 13:55 | Link | Category: Humor, Politics, Video
January 9, 2008
Statement of Purpose
I've been working on "statements of purpose" and "personal statements" for graduate school admission. Against my better judgement, I decided to search the web for some advice. Never do this! (It's a bit like checking medical sites and message boards when you're wondering about the funny lump in your neck or mouth. You will assuredly run into something that will completely freak you out. "I'm gonna DIE!!!"... then the lump disappears two days later.) Sure enough, I found this:
Word for word, the graduate admissions essay is perhaps the single most important prose anyone will ever write. In ways that students rarely understand, it can be the ticket to the future of your choice, or not.
Well, that really helps... No reason to worry; it's just the single most important prose ANYONE will EVER write!
Feh. I don't know who wrote that statement, but judging from the advice (and creative use of commas) on the rest of the page, I don't think I'll take it too seriously. Instead, I think I'll draw my inspiration from Eddie Kohler's statements of purpose: SoP 1, SoP 2.
I have trouble thinking far into the future so plans are kind of sketchy but tomorrow I want to go to my aerobics p.e.
I also want to have a cat and a grand piano. And everyone should be happy and peaceful and like Shostakovich. But that probably won't happen. not even if you accept me into grad school.. . .
Please let me in to your grad school ebcasue otherwise I have to live at home next year.
P. S. Diversity is good
09 Jan 18:33 | Link | Category: Humor, Site/Life News
January 8, 2008
More evidence against autism-thimerosal link
Autism cases in California continued to climb even after a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some people blame for the neurological disorder was removed from routine childhood shots, a new study found.
I wonder if this will satisfy any of those who still insist on a causal connection between thimerosal (thiomersal) and autism. Back in June, Arthur Allen wrote an article in Slate about why there's no dispelling the myth that vaccines cause autism.
08 Jan 20:21 | Link | Category: Science
January 7, 2008
Memories
What a great find. Do any of you remember this?
(via Centripetal Notion)
07 Jan 12:36 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment, Music, Video
January 6, 2008
Boom!
If you've ever watched Steve Jobs give a keynote speech introducing new products, you've probably noticed certain idiosyncrasies and favorite phrases. Someone compiled a bunch of them into a surprisingly funny clip:
When he demonstrates software he also says "boom" quite often. (For example, watch his demo of Exposé.) Naturally, someone also compiled a clip of "booms"
I am sooo glad there aren't hours of video footage of me because being confronted with all my little sayings and idiosyncrasies would be horrifying.
06 Jan 0:02 | Link | Category: Humor, Technology & Computing, Video
January 5, 2008
The Evil Eye
I don't know why this is funny, but it makes me chuckle:
05 Jan 18:09 | Link | Category: Humor, Video
The Most Important Issue for Voters in 2008
05 Jan 17:43 | Link | Category: Humor, Politics, Video
January 4, 2008
Oceans of Plastic
A recent post at The Daily Galaxy reminded me of a topic I've been meaning to write about. Unfortunately, I don't have time today, so I'll just point you to the post and several related articles:
Are There Really 'Continents' of Floating Garbage? - The Daily Galaxy
The Plastic Killing Fields - The Sydney Morning Herald
Oceans of Waste - The Seattle Times
Fact: 46,000 pieces of plastic float on each square mile of sea - Telegraph opinion piece
"It was just filled with things like furniture, fridges, plastic containers, cigarette lighters, plastic bottles, light globes, televisions and fishing nets," Kiernan says. "It's all so durable it floats. It's just a major problem."
Kiernan says it’s killing wildlife in a vicious cycle. Holding an ashtray filled with colorful pieces of plastic he told The Sydney Morning Herald, "this is the contents of a fleshy-footed shearwater's stomach. They go to the ocean to fish but there ain't no fish - there's plastic. They then regurgitate it down the necks of their fledglings and it kills them. After the birds decompose, the plastic gets washed back into the ocean where it can kill again. It's a form of ghost fishing, where it goes on and on."
...
"The most menacing part is those little bits of plastic start looking like food for certain animals, or the filter feeders don't have any choice, they just pick them up," noted Connacher.
Perhaps an even bigger problem is hiding beneath the surface of the islands of garbage. Greenpeace reports that about 70 per cent of the plastic that makes it to the ocean sinks to the bottom, where it then smothers marine life on the ocean floor. Dutch scientists have found 600,000 tons of discarded plastic on the bottom of the North Sea alone.
National Geographic ran a story on Hawaii's outer islands a few years back that included some sobering photographs. I can't find the original article anywhere, but this PDF includes some of the photos (scroll down a bit). Here are smaller versions (I don't want to get in copyright trouble with Nat. Geo., but they should really make it easier to access their old articles!):
04 Jan 11:12 | Link | Category: Science
January 3, 2008
Shelving Game
Shelving books has never been so... fun? weird? trippy?
Check out this Library of Congress classification game. The chipper music and the gruff "you're not done yet" aren't so bad, but the "YES!" and "ALL RIGHT!" guy seems a little too enthusiastic about shelving books.
I must admit that I played through to the end. My inner librarian loved the fact that I could shelve all the books and have them stay in perfect order, because my time working at a library taught me that this never happens in reality (at least not at a public library). Patrons constantly put books back on the shelf in the wrong spot and, more importantly, shelving never ends. You never finish shelving. It's a constant process that must be diligently monitored. And if the computers go down or a power outage occurs, the backlog takes ages to clear out. It's like the 'Seinfeld' episode in which Newman explains why postal workers 'go postal':
Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming. Piles of it, more and more! And you have to put it all out, but the more you put it out, the more it keeps coming in! And then the barcode reader breaks! And it's Publisher's Clearing House Day!
(Maybe it would be helpful for library workers to have someone standing next to them saying "YES!" and "ALL RIGHT!" every time they shelved a book correctly.)
03 Jan 0:59 | Link | Category: Interactive, Libraries & Digital Information
January 2, 2008
The $300 phone I want
Sure, the iPhone is cool and I would love to have one. But guess what you can get for $100 less? A real rotary telephone from the 1940s:
Made in Sweden by the L.M. Ericsson Company, this hefty Bakelite phone was popular in Buenos Aires in the 1940s. Found in Argentina and restored by hand, vintage phone has all-new wiring, a new microphone, a real rotary dial, and an authentic ring. Plugs into a standard jack.
For the longest time, I've wanted a phone with a real rotary dial and a real ringing bell like the ones my family had when I was a small child. This one's even cooler because it's from Buenos Aires in the 1940s, but you can find plenty of cheaper ones, including some 1960s phones for as little as $140 and others for as little as $60. I didn't look very carefully, so I'm sure there are better deals out there, too. (If your lines are tone-only, you can apparently convert your old pulse phones.)
02 Jan 21:35 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits, Technology & Computing
America's Vainest City?
Forbes looked at the country's 50 most populous cities and compared the number of plastic surgeons per 100,000 people. The city topping the list? Salt Lake City.
Part of the explanation may be that the University of Utah's medical school offers residency in plastic & reconstructive surgery. However, Salt Lake residents also spend more on cosmetics, hair coloring, skin care, and the like than residents of other cities. Residents of Oklahoma City (a similarly sized city), for example, spent about $175,000 on hair coloring vs. $2.2 million for Salt Lake City, and $400,000 on skin care products vs. $4.4 million for Salt Lake City. So it seems the medical school alone doesn't explain the high rating. (I would like to know if they studied just Salt Lake City rather than the whole metro area, though I suspect the results might be similar either way. It would also be interesting to see income information. People with more disposable income will obviously have more money for cosmetics and surgery. Also, surgeons per 100k does not equal procedures per 100k.)
What's interesting to me is that this result is considered "shocking" -- because, I presume, of Utah's (well-deserved) conservative reputation. But I think they're missing two important points.
First, 'conservatives' (whatever that word might imply) are no less obsessed with manufacturing the perfect look than anyone else. For example: Watch Fox News for more than a few seconds, and you will be bombarded by bimbos female anchors with fake hair and breasts. This exercise should quickly disabuse you of the notion that only those 'crazy Hollywood liberals' think women should look fake and overtly sexual. (For more fun, take the Fox News Anchor or Porn Star Quiz). People in every society care about good skin and a figure that conforms to notions of attractiveness. Plastic surgery was once restricted to the elite because they had lots of money, needed to look young for career and/or status, and were perhaps more willing to break taboos. Now cosmetic procedures are cheap and ubiquitous -- why should we be surprised that they're prevalent in conservative Salt Lake City?
Perhaps there's still this sort of perception: "But wait, isn't Salt Lake City full of dowdy old-time Mormon housewives who wear homemade dresses and spend their days sewing and canning fruit?" This is, of course, untrue. I would argue that there are aspects of Mormon culture that, in a modern setting, actually lend themselves to "vanity". One is that the social organization and practices increase the pool of neighborly acquaintances and bolster gossip networks, fanning normal status competition ("keeping up with the Joneses" writ large). Another is the patriarchal power structure, which leads - as one should expect - to the exhortation that women should bear as many children as possible. (To put it bluntly, a woman's value is measured primarily by the number of children she has.) This increases pressure on a woman before she has children and also means she needs extra help looking young and attractive after having so many.
I would need more detailed information to really convince myself that Mormon cultural characteristics drive the results of the ranking, but there is one way in which I'm sure they are a primary factor, at least indirectly. It's the second point I think the "shocked" folks at Forbes are overlooking: Salt Lake City is full of young people.
In the old days it was mostly old, affluent women who got plastic surgery - they needed to look young to maintain attractiveness and status, and they could afford it. But with cosmetic procedures dropping in price and losing their taboo (indeed, becoming the "in" look), it should be absolutely no surprise for the young to latch onto them. And Utah's a relatively young place. Lots of young people means lots of young adults (i.e., adults of mating age, ~18-45) who have a strong desire to be considered sexually attractive. According to the U.S. Census, the median age in the U.S. (2000) is 35.3. The median age in Utah is only 27.1 and Utah Valley, just south of Salt Lake City and the most predominantly conservative, Mormon county in the nation, has a median age of just 23.3. (Oklahoma City, mentioned above, has a median age of 34. I also looked up the median age for all of the top ten 'vainest' cities on the Forbest list. Salt Lake was the youngest.)
I know of many young (and 'conservative' and 'religious') women around here who have had cosmetic procedures (and not for a cleft lip or a droopy eye). From all appearances, it's a booming business. My parents receive an advertising circular (ironically and annoyingly titled Hometown Values) that features some sort of cosmetic procedure on practically every other page, including cosmetic dentistry, teeth whitening, laser hair removal, tanning, permanent makeup, pedicures, day spas, hair salons, surgical weight loss procedures, cosmetic surgeons, and more. I chuckle every time I see it in their stack of mail (and then grumble about the goddamned craze over the word "values" that people still haven't gotten over).
So, is Salt Lake City really 'vain'? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me in the least. And if it is, I suspect much of the reason is those crazy Hollywood liberals young people and middle-aged mothers who lost their shape when they had children.
02 Jan 18:36 | Link | Category: Human/Primate Evolution & Behavior, Opinion & Thoughts