May 31, 2008
Playlist - May 2008
Another month, another hour of disjointed listening...
Links to easy non-DRMed downloads are a bit sparse this month (mostly because of the lesser-known '60s songs, for which many had no download at all). The eMusic list (also sparse this time around) is here. Finally, if you're not on the mailing list, e-mail me and I will be happy to provide you with the magic links.
| Firewater - Borneo >> from The Golden Hour |
| Islands - Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby >> from Return to the Sea |
| The Old Haunts - Volatile >> from Poisonous Times |
| Future Clouds and Radar - Malice of Stars >> from Future Clouds and Radar |
| The Kinks - Nothin' in the world can stop me worryin' bout that girl >> from Kinda Kinks |
| Lee Hazlewood - The Night Before >> from Cowboy in Sweden |
| The Rolling Stones - Play With Fire >> from The Last Time (Single) |
| Nick Drake - Blues Run the Game >> from Family Tree |
| The Zombies - Leave Me Be >> from Leave Me Be (UK Single) |
| The Chocolate Watchband - In The Past >> from The Inner Mystique |
| The Beatles - Because >> from Abbey Road |
| The Stranglers - Golden Brown >> from La Folie |
| Grand Archives - A Setting Sun >> from The Grand Archives |
| Firewater - Six Forty Five >> from The Golden Hour |
| Stereophonics - Mr. Writer >> from Just Enough Education to Perform |
| Stereophonics - Getaway >> from You Gotta Go There To Come Back |
| DeVotchKa - New World >> from A Mad And Faithful Telling |
31 May 23:47 | Link | Category: Music
Links 18
There was a long list of links for today, but then I realized I promised some 'frivolous' links last time. I guess the heavy stuff will have to wait until later...
1. Judging by my server logs (specifically, the number of hits this entry still receives, especially Google Images hits for the second image), Googlers have a voracious appetite for photos of celebrities without makeup. I'm happy to oblige. Here's a large collection of makeup-less celebrities. Some of them still manage to look good, but plenty of them do not.
2. The 21 Best Mugshots Ever
3. Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose - from The Onion
4. Redacted CIA document about torture almost entirely blacked out - surprisingly, not from The Onion
5. A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue - interesting article from the NYT about a "miracle fruit that makes everything sweet"
31 May 22:57 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 26, 2008
Links 17
Today, the common thread seems to be "things that demonstrate how we're doomed". Next time, I promise to bring you something more uplifting (or at least something frivolous).
1. 16% of U.S. science teachers are creationists - Aaaghh. It's lower than the proportion the general population who identify as creationists, but still... Anyway. As John Hawks says, it's actually more distressing to see how little time is spent teaching evolution. Quoting:
We're entering an age in which health decisions will be made based on genetic information -- when everyone may know their own gene sequences if they want to. New diseases are emerging, new crops are being developed, and new organisms are being transplanted from one continent to another. Decisions about the economic development of entire regions -- perhaps entire nations -- are now subject to the evaluation of biodiversity, including threatened and endangered species.
The people making these decisions ten to twenty years from now will have an average of 13.7 hours of education on evolution.
2. And to depress you further on the topic, here's an editorial on the topic from my local paper: Darwinism isn't provable. I'm hoping it was written by a 15-year-old (whose biology teachers are creationists) because it sounds like an argument I would've used at that age. The most depressing thing about this item? Many of the 153 comments.
3. Moving on... West Virginians interviewed about Barack Obama:
The Daily Show played a similar clip that is also depressing, but at least has a touch of humor to it (the Jack Daniels, "West Virginia state motto: No Interviews Please", etc.)
4. Financial gap widens for college kids - "Parents who send their children to four-year colleges have long been above average when it comes to income. But today's freshmen are financially better off than ever before, and the gap is widening, a report on 40-year trends in higher education shows." - Just another indication of the growing gap between rich & poor. And of course it's not the price tag alone that keeps people from college. The lower your income, the more likely you are to encounter all sorts of situations that make college an unreasonable choice.
5. I had another upsetting link, but instead, let's finish up with something incredibly stupid but funny. Even though I've never watched any of the CSI shows (aside from a glimpse here and there), endless Caruso one-liners still made me laugh:
(Jim Carrey's impression is good, too.)
That's all for now, kids. It might be a little while until the next post.
26 May 20:53 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 19, 2008
Links 16
1. The Whole Five Feet: A Year With The Harvard Classics
2. Flush with Profits from the Iraq War, Military Contractors See a World of Business Opportunities
3. Drug firms 'inventing diseases'
4. Cost of stabilising global warming 'negligible'
5. Another (final) Derren Brown link: Tricks of the Mind: book explains magic, hypnosis, and the rationale for rationalism
19 May 20:59 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 18, 2008
Links 15
Things are getting weirder. Updates may be even more sporadic. But for now, let's continue emptying my bookmarks folder. (I'm down to 300.)
1. ROCK BAND - A multi-instrumentalist tries his hand at the Rock Band video game:
2. Things Younger Than John McCain - a blog. (As for the ageism argument... obviously there are pros and cons... I just thought it was a funny idea. Their response is here.)
3. Of course you've already seen the old Bill O'Reilly clip (from his days on Inside Edition) by now. But just in case you've been living under a rock, I'll share it again because while it's not surprising (if you've ever watched his Fox show), it is quite entertaining for some odd reason. It's NSFW.
Since Stephen Colbert basically channels O'Reilly and his ilk, his take simply classic. Also kinda funny is Bill O'Reilly's Producer (Unseen Footage) from Barely Political (also NSFW).
4. Top 20 Taboo Topics for Presidential Candidates
5. Recently, I posted a video clip of Derren Brown debunking psychic readings. Here's a clip (via Cynical-C) of him showing how to take someone's wallet by asking (through a hypnotic handshake):
18 May 21:05 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 15, 2008
Links 14 (Primates)
Sorry for the silence. It's been a strange week. I've also been busy with work-related web stuff which means I wanted to get away from the computer, not spend more time in front of it. This may continue for a while.
Anyway, let's get back to emptying my overflowing bookmarks list. Today I have a bunch of primate links. I had lots more but I narrowed them down to ten, which are hopefully the most interesting or attention-grabbing. I also tried to choose links that weren't too lengthy or scholarly (read: journal articles that would bore most readers of this blog), so most of the links are to articles from New Scientist. New Scientist often veers into oversimplification and tabloid science (see 'A Plea to Save New Scientist'), but longtime readers know I routinely link to their articles because they're usually good for casual readers but always cite primary sources if something piques your interest. Without further ado:
1. Girrrrl power - "Females were persistently attacked by adult males, during this time. But, between October and December 2003, he noticed the females were starting to organise themselves into retaliation coalitions." - This is quite an interesting observation because it's not what one would expect based on conventional wisdom about chimpanzees. Bonobo females band together to combat male aggression, but as far as I know, this is the first observation of the behavior among chimpanzees, at least in East Africa. It has long been hypothesized that ecology is largely responsible for this interspecific difference. (Briefly, different food sources allow for different foraging patterns, which keep females from being alone and allow for more female bonding, etc.) But perhaps ecological and demographic conditions affect intraspecific and even intercommunity differences. I would love to see more research done on this. (And every other aspect of ape behavior, before they're gone in the wild. Our closest relatives can tell us much about human behavior, past and present.)
If you have access to the International Journal of Primatology you can read the journal article. Also look at this research brief.
2. New monkey species is already endangered (see also).
It's a new species of uakari. (The most well-known, or at least the most visually striking, uakari is the bald-headed uakari.)
3. 'Altruistic' chimps act for the benefit of others - The journal article is available from PLoS. The evolutionary origins of so-called "altruistic" behaviors are fascinating (and contentious). Studying the behavior of living species isn't the only way of approaching the question, but it is a very useful one. Chimpanzee behavior is of interest for human altruism simply because we are so closely related.
Primate characteristics satisfy many prerequisites for reciprocal altruism (long lifespans, large brains, long-term social relationships, etc.). Still, it may be that reciprocity explains only a small slice (if any) of altruistic behavior, even among big-brained apes. I would highlight de Waal's quote in the article:
"Animals don't know much about genetic kinship or future return favours," de Waal says, arguing that altruism could still be a self-serving trait, helping to win the "altruist" a good reputation and higher status.
4. Bonobos join forces to outdo chimps
5. Killings of mountain gorillas in Congo prompt U.N. probe - I may have mentioned this story last year, but I don't think I linked to these disturbing, heartbreaking photos.
Such a shame... this species, like so many primate species, is doomed to imminent extinction.
6. Chimps keep busy to control their urges - "In the experiment, the primates distracted themselves by playing with toys in order to avoid giving in to the temptation of eating instantly available candy so they could obtain even more treats at a later time."
7. Menopause sets humans apart from chimps - and, really, from all our ape cousins. It's an obvious, glaring difference that begs for explanation. There are several hypotheses and much intriguing research. One hypothesis for the adaptiveness of human menopuase is briefly discussed in one of article's links: Caring grandmas explain evolutionary role of menopause.
8. 5-year-old chimp beats college kids in computer game - "Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won."
Even with six months of training, the college students couldn't catch up to the chimps. Tetsuro Matsuzawa's explanation? "He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities." Maybe.
9. So college students are worse than chimps at short-term memory games. What about arithmetic? Turns out they're at about the same level as macaques: Monkeys perform arithmetic as well as college students.
10. New World monkeys are also clever. Here's an article about an interesting study on capuchin monkeys: Monkeys learn to do arithmetic for peanuts
I tried to hold the list to ten, but I just noticed this link in my bookmarks list and I have to share:
11. Did we learn to walk in the trees? (and more comment from the author's blog)
Conventional wisdom holds that apes developed bipedal locomotion after (or, more accurately, as) they descended from the trees. (Why and exactly how remain hotly debated.) A year or two ago, I started to very seriously consider a different possibility - that the bipedal locomotion of hominids actually started in the trees. Although heretical, the idea is attractive for a variety of reasons. (I don't have time to expound, but suffice it to say I think it matches some evidence in ways other hypotheses do not). Perhaps the knuckle-walking of gorillas and chimpanzees is derived and bipedal locomotion is ancestral (not, as traditionally thought, the other way 'round). You will need a subscription to read the full article from the first link, but I have a copy of the entire article. E-mail me if you're interested. I can also point you to some more reading on the topic.
15 May 22:02 | Link | Category: Human/Primate Evolution & Behavior, Link Dump '08, Science
May 7, 2008
Links 13
(If you're wondering what all these 'Link' entries are for, read the original post.)
1. The 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time - Lots of funny videos. There are a few glaring omissions (like Bill Murray's commercial for Swill Mineral Water), probably because they couldn't find any copies online, but there are plenty of classics. My favorites are probably Compulsion by Calvin Kleen (you might not be ancient enough to remember the original ads from the '80s), John Belushi's Little Chocolate Donuts, and the deadpan delivery of Sam Waterston in a parody of Life Insurance commercials that target the elderly:
2. ART GONE POSTAL - The Envelope Collective - I could browse this for hours.
3. Passive Aggressive Notes - a blog that keeps track of "painfully polite and hilariously hostile writings from shared spaces the world over". Submitted notes are not always passive-aggressive, but they're usually pretty funny:
4. Derren Brown (more), debunking psychic readings:
5. James (the Amazing) Randi, doing the same thing years ago.
07 May 21:44 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 6, 2008
Links 12
1. The very first iPhone - The page doesn't really show the 'origin of the iPhone' as it claims, but there are some interesting retro Apple prototypes from the '80s, like this:
2. Columnar Basalts - An entry from Centripetal Notion with some great photos. Links to articles explaining what columnar basalt is appear below the photos. Check out the Wikipedia's links to notable columnar basalts for more cool photos.
3. David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars from WIRED -- David Byrne is one of my favorite musicians, artists, and all-around smart people. It's a thoughtful article. Don't miss the cover of The Fiery Furnaces' 'Ex-Guru' on the first page (with extra verses added by Byrne), as well as the other audio conversations on subsequent pages - especially the one with Brian Eno. (Rumor has it that they're collaborating on something new, for the first time since the magnificent My Life in the Bush of Ghosts from the early '80s.)
From the same issue of Wired, you might also be interested in David Byrne and Thom Yorke discussing the Real Value of Music. (The lighting and other effects they often use for the photos in Wired tends to lead to slightly creepy images, but that has to be the creepiest ever. They managed to make both of them like bad wax figurines.) If you have time, listen to the audio (which is interesting despite the awkward moments). Finally, you should bookmark David Byrne's online journal, which is always full of thought-provoking posts.
4. Self-centered cultures narrow your viewpoint
When it comes to putting yourself in the shoes of others, cultures that emphasise interdependence over individualism may have the upper hand.
In a new psychological experiment, Chinese students outperformed their US counterparts when ask to infer another person's perspective. The researchers say the findings help explain how misunderstandings can occur in cross-cultural communication.
5. "Race Types" from a 1906 Geography Book - A collection of what essentially amount to racist caricatures. Notice how the Anglo-Saxon man is at the top. As you move down the page you encounter progressively 'lesser' races until it reaches Africans at the bottom. It's also an interesting look at the way arbitrary definitions of races change over time. (Splitting Spaniards and Scottish Highlanders into different races? Really?)
I think this shows that, as far as we have to go, we've made some progress over the last century. While we still pay undue attention to classifying distinct racial groups (a very unwise way to view human diversity), at least we place all races at the same level.
06 May 21:03 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 5, 2008
Links 11
1. In Praise of Melancholy - by Eric G. Wilson. It's a thoughtful essay about how "American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life".
2. Obesity in the U.S. - animation - a simple Flash animation from CNN showing the increasing numbers of obese individuals over the last twenty years or so. It'll play too fast, but once it's done you can click through and look at the maps more carefully. (What's with Colorado?)
3. New survey lists hundreds of potential carcinogens - "The most comprehensive survey to date of environmental chemicals linked to breast cancer lists 216 compounds - many of which are commonly encountered in most women's lives." Lovely.
4. Desiree Palmen Photography - some interesting images like this:
5. The Orcale of Bacon - Enter a celebrity, and the Oracle (using IMDb) will tell you by how many degrees he/she is separated from Kevin Bacon. Use Star Links to connect any two actors. The advanced search gives you even more options.
05 May 21:58 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 4, 2008
Links 10
(If you're wondering what all these 'Link' entries are for, read the original post. I'm down to 325 bookmarks, so let's keep going...)
1. Life in an earthship - a short article about homes that "are specifically designed to be comfortable in any climate even as they're entirely off the grid and made using a healthy supply of natural and recycled materials." And a related CNET blog entry.
2. 27 aquatic lifeforms you never caught while fishing - from the Bounty Fishing Blog. The list includes creatures like the axolotl:
The Wikipedia entry on axolotls has more info., too. This reminds me... there was a great song by Hum (an old favorite of mine) called Afternoon With The Axolotls. You can listen to it at YouTube (although at poor quality) because someone made their own video for it. You'll also find links to a bunch of (somtimes odd) videos that let you hear other songs in their entirety. (If you want to download the song, try Amazon - but, oh, get the whole 'Downward Is Heavenward' album, and add You'd Prefer An Astronaut while you're at it.)
3. How NOT To Use Powerpoint - Over the years, I've seen an uncountable number of computerized slide presentations. Some were good. Many were bad. In this clip, Don McMillan runs through some of the common mistakes people make:
4. Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants - this bookmark is really old, but still worth linking to. Also check out another old link, AlterNet's Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State.
5. Video of assembly of Trabants - via this post at BoingBoing. The Trabant, if you're somehow unfamiliar with it, was an automobile built in East Germany for many many years. You can read all about it - from Duroplast to the fact that it was often years between order and delivery - at the extensive Wikipedia article. And now, you can watch part of the high-tech assembly process:
04 May 22:19 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 2, 2008
Links 9
1. CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character - duh.
2. G. I. Jones -- S.E. Nigerian Art and Culture - some interesting old photos from the 1930s:
3. SinkPositive - A faucet & sink that mount atop the toilet. Wash your hands with clean water right before it turns into toilet water. (The water drains into the toilet bowl, not the tank.) Clever and simple.
4. The Cube, starring Richard Schaal -- a teleplay from 1969, produced and directed by Jim Henson. Still makes for pretty interesting viewing. Supposedly based on (or at least "strikingly similar" to) a short story by Thomas M. Disch. If you ever saw the 1997 movie Cube, a great low-budget sci-fi/horror flick, you might also find it interesting.
5. Talking to ourselves by Susan Jacoby. I've often wondered about the way that, despite technology (or perhaps because of it), many people seem to be growing increasingly close-minded, surrounding themselves only with people and ideas with which they already agree. I come from a family tradition of people who enjoy arguing, but I must admit that even I have succumbed to this behavior to some degree. In a commentary for L.A. Times, Susan Jacoby explores the phenomenon:
Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation's best cultural traditions.
I'm not sure she's really nailed the issue... I can't help thinking she's missing something, or that the phenomenon is more complicated than she makes it out to be. Still, her argument is worth pondering.
I enjoyed the response on one of the LA Times blogs:
That's total rubbish! Couldn't disagree more. She probably lives in her car. So we stopped reading that stupid article. Came back home here where we agree with virtually everything we write.
02 May 23:42 | Link | Category: Link Dump '08
May 1, 2008
Links 8 (Vonnegut)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of my favorite writers and a fine human being, died last year. I had lots of related bookmarks saved up (I guess in the expectation of weaving them into some sort of tribute). Here are a few of them...
1. 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will. Things like these:
"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
"She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing."
"Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
2. The Art of Fiction No. 64 - a great interview from 1977.
3. Harrison Bergeron - a short story. I have no idea why the link was in my bookmarks list.
4. NOW - A Tribute To Kurt Vonnegut - one of his last public interviews, from the PBS program. To see all 20+ minutes of the interview (which you really should because the last half is better than the first), you'll need to go to the PBS page, but you can see part of it on YouTube:
5. Original Kilgore Trout Stories - someone went through Vonnegut's books, located all the excerpts from Kilgore Trout stories, and put them online. Wonderful.
6. Dear Mr. Vonnegut, - Vonnegut wrote lots of articles recently that can be found online. I had bookmarks to quite a few of them, but I most enjoyed his short answers to e-mails (sent in response to his interview Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@) in Dear Mr. Vonnegut. There's also a part two and a part three.
7. For a few more links, check out one of my old Vonnegut posts.
01 May 22:44 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment, Link Dump '08