"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Doctor Science
Wednesday evening we did something I haven’t done for decades: listened to world-class live music with no electronic component, not even microphones. Music was in the air, and only in the air.
YouTube link.
The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra is touring the US, and the Sprogs and I went to see them at the NJ State Theatre. We only thought to go because one of our closest friends has a brother-in-law in the orchestra, so there was a group expedition.
by liberal japonicus It's the time in the school year when I'm finished classes and trying to make sure that the students who have fallen behind catch up and start to think about what to do in my classes next year to avoid this predicament. (university education in Japan is akin to grape-nuts, in that … Read more
While browsing the interwebs today, I noticed that a wide variety of companies and websites are engaged in a protest regarding the atrocious Stop Online Piracy Act. The most elegant one is Google's: The recent campaign against the SOPA strikes me as both good and necessary. But I immediately wondered how it fit with recent … Read more
by Doctor Science
Now *that*’s a phrase to strike fear into every heart. And that’s what I’ve been dealing with for much of the past week — a virus that even pros thought an “interesting case”. The lovely & talented people at geekstogo came to my rescue, and after about two and a half days of work I am finally clean. It was a lot of this:
only *much* less cool.
by russell Today, we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King. Some folks do so enthusiastically, some less so. Some not at all. It's been almost 45 years since the man was shot dead in Memphis. How far have we come? about 40% of the US prison population are black men two-thirds of black kids … Read more
by liberal japonicus Dr. Science wrote earlier about Google maps and I've always loved maps. So I thought that this was pretty cool: American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor is the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. The five most recent winners were all maps designed by large, well-known institutions: … Read more
by liberal japonicus
(Alternative title: Hooray for Holyrood?)
My understanding of parliamentary government is a lot like my understanding of centigrade (or celsius, I guess). I can get a rough idea of the temperature outside when I see a temperature with a ℃ after it, but I don't understand it in my bones, the way I do Farenheit. Losing a vote gets you kicked out of office, figuring out when to call an election is something important (rather than schedule it on a Tuesday when everyone is at work like we do), forming an alliance with some bat-shit crazy party, going for a year and a half without actually forming a government, having a shadow minister as a real job, where these are things that seem really strange to me, but probably merit not even a blink of an eye if you grew up with it. This and this and this, while in English, sure seems a lot more lively than C-span. And when we get to those Asian ones, we have this and this and this.** More on one of those funny parliamentary maneuvers below:
by Doctor Science
Andrew Sullivan pointed to DJ Earworm’s year-end Mashup, United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom):
At YouTube
Now, I admit I am a fogey, and I don’t necessarily understand Kids These Days and Their Wacky Music on My Lawn. I watched the video — which I think is extremely cleverly edited — in part to see how many of the riffs and singers I would even recognize. Results: … some? I am not completely ignorant!
But since I am *substantially* ignorant, a number of things about the mashup — and thus about the most popular songs of the day — really jumped out at me.
The big thing is how many of the voices are very similar: they are women’s voices, or, if male, they are tenors. The two voices that really stick out as *different*, tonally, are Lady Gaga’s and Adele’s. It may be that what I’m hearing is really a sea of Autotune, out of which Adele’s voice naturally sticks out like a lighthouse. Gaga’s voice is gritty and naturalistic (if not natural) enough that it, too, sticks out of the humming uniformity.
The fact that so many of the voices are women’s was not what I was expecting, for two reasons. First, the “classic rock” and other music-of-my-youth stations I usually listen to definitely have more male voices than female ones. Second, I remembered a multi-part discussion from much more music-savvy people than I on TigerBeatDown, about how many (white) males — including critics — see nothing wrong with saying they “don’t like women’s singing.” (Also see TBB’s recent satire of how music critics write about male and female artists.)
So both my expectations and logic predicted that the voices of popular music would be male. And yet, that’s not how it seems from the mashup. My immediate reaction: It’s Time for SCIENCE! Or more specifically, data.
by von (retired) A vote has been taken, and the following is at least seven (7) times awesome. Seriously, this is one of the better covers that I've seen — and I'm a pretty harsh judge, since I was maybe a drink away from getting a four F's tatoo (Jawbreaker fans will understand). In other … Read more
by liberal japonicus
I love the fact that 'I am resolved to the fact' gets the word resolved away from the notion of being resolute, and doing whatever it takes to get something done, to a "well, I guess there's nothing that can be done", which sort of exemplifies my policy on New Year's resolutions.
Here in Japan, they aren't much on resolutions, but New Year's cleaning is rather big, which is a good thing, except that I hate cleaning up when it's cold. But, in the spirit of the post, below the fold are of my resolutions