tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92084075721479588952024-02-07T03:00:07.158-08:00An Incredulous Stare"I cannot refute an incredulous stare." David LewisWayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.comBlogger314125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-57920486863209467642011-06-19T09:46:00.000-07:002011-06-19T10:36:45.085-07:00New OrleansFinally, summer vacation. We went to New Orleans for a wedding (see Miss Bee's facebook for some shots) and stuck around for five days to check out the city, and we loved it. Here are some of the photos we took, and the whole album is up on <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/bret.sikkink/NewOrleans">Picasa</a>. <div><br /><div><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WDR7udQzwyA/Tf4oCIHv7mI/AAAAAAAAQVo/EoAdtv3L_oA/s1600/IMG_5044.JPG"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WDR7udQzwyA/Tf4oCIHv7mI/AAAAAAAAQVo/EoAdtv3L_oA/s320/IMG_5044.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">Waiting for the streetcar - notice Chrysanthemum's new carrier. Not pink!<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2oYXsqbn8Mk/Tf4oCxlI_TI/AAAAAAAAQVw/38Ww3HjF5iw/s1600/IMG_5057.JPG"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2oYXsqbn8Mk/Tf4oCxlI_TI/AAAAAAAAQVw/38Ww3HjF5iw/s320/IMG_5057.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">Miss Bee waiting for the Tater Tachos at 13 Monaghan. Actually that wasn't this particular visit - yes we went to the same restaurant twice. When in Rome...we don't eat seafood.<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UWEey4Kxp_k/Tf4oDUhz7YI/AAAAAAAAQV4/4fr2MnF1NAY/s1600/IMG_5058.JPG"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UWEey4Kxp_k/Tf4oDUhz7YI/AAAAAAAAQV4/4fr2MnF1NAY/s320/IMG_5058.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">The trees! I think this was in Louis Armstrong Park near Congo Square, the birthplace of jazz. We could hear the drum circles from all across the park.<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AiafTeFZzII/Tf4oDh0gZkI/AAAAAAAAQWM/fa5-2AFsZmY/s1600/IMG_5064.JPG"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AiafTeFZzII/Tf4oDh0gZkI/AAAAAAAAQWM/fa5-2AFsZmY/s320/IMG_5064.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">Another restaurant we ate at twice was in this alley. <a href="http://www.greengoddessnola.com/">The Green Goddess</a> was fantastic, with options for vegetarians and carnivores, not to mention the impressive drink menu.<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r5Rj2flU9FM/Tf4oEqg95WI/AAAAAAAAQWY/sFpemUQx5Og/s1600/IMG_5110.JPG"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r5Rj2flU9FM/Tf4oEqg95WI/AAAAAAAAQWY/sFpemUQx5Og/s320/IMG_5110.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">The mules pulling the wagon tours drove Chrysanthemum UP THE WALL. She could hear the bells they wore from blocks away (even over the sounds of 8 different bars playing music all at once).<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px;"><a href="http://localhost:51105/32d92dd2fddd11d1aa86541f4631c968/image/7b8a61b3ad5c8748.jpg"><img src="http://localhost:51105/32d92dd2fddd11d1aa86541f4631c968/image/7b8a61b3ad5c8748.jpg?size=320" alt="" border="0" /></a> </div>This is such a classic shot of the French Quarter.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, we went to <a href="http://www.cafedumonde.com/">Cafe du Monde</a> and got beignets. No, we didn't try any seafood. Yes, we took a walking tour and a bayou tour. No, we didn't take a plantation tour. Yes, we rode the <a href="http://www.neworleansonline.com/tools/transportation/gettingaround/streetcars.html">St. Charles </a>streetcar to its terminus in Carrollton. No, we did not take the Canal St. line to its terminus in City Park (if we had one more day...). Yes, we walked Audubon Park and Magazine Street in the Garden District. No, we did not walk a cemetery officially, although we saw Saint Louis #1 (Easy Rider).<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, we went to Rue Bourbon. No, we didn't like it, not even a little.<br /><br /></div></div></div></div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none; padding: 0px; background: none repeat scroll 0% 50% transparent;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-70940651383717546352011-05-05T18:15:00.000-07:002011-05-06T17:05:21.094-07:00The Great OutdoorsThe great thing about spring is getting outdoors after the winter. Well, not so much in Phoenix, where the winter is the spring and spring is summer and summer is hell. But anyways, here are some outdoors things.<br /><br />*Going to the lake - no photos, but we saw two bald eagles there. In lieu of the diving adults we saw, check out <a href="http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/">the webcams at Raptor Resource</a> showing a nest of the little buggers. This is a popular activity at school right now.<br /><br />*Scuba - we are officially certified scuba divers to depths of sixty feet. While exciting, we're getting ready for our "advanced" dives in order to increase our depth to 100 feet.....and beyond!<br /><br />We went to Lake Pleasant to do our open water dives, driving out along the beautiful Carefree Highway which was fully in bloom and really pretty amazing. This photo by azphotons on panoramio gives you the idea.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJ5-UdgQJec/TcSI6hKQjsI/AAAAAAAAPjY/Oed0P96yqas/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2011-05-03%2Bat%2B7.10.04%2BPM.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJ5-UdgQJec/TcSI6hKQjsI/AAAAAAAAPjY/Oed0P96yqas/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2011-05-03%2Bat%2B7.10.04%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603754375270928066" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.panoramio.com/user/1242686">azphotons on panoramio</a><br /><br /></div>There are some more <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=carefree+highway+arizona&fb=1&gl=us&hq=carefree+highway&hnear=Arizona&ei=-LTATbf_O8TagQeOx9DhBQ&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQtgMwAA">good photos on google maps</a>.<br /><br />Here's where we were, by Scorpion Bay. You can see on the map that it's a good drive from Phoenix. It was also a brisk 42 degrees while we were driving out there on Saturday...<br />Google map scrollable: <iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=33.865732,-112.29355&spn=0.04098,0.052271&z=14&output=embed" scrolling="no" width="425" frameborder="0" height="350"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=33.865732,-112.29355&spn=0.04098,0.052271&z=14&source=embed" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small><br /><br />Unfortunately, our teacher friends who have been teaching us were stuck in Mexico and couldn't bring their underwater camera. We saw a striped bass and some other small fish at the bottom, and I apparently was right next to a crayfish but I didn't see it - too busy concentrating on the task at hand. There were also campfires at bottom, since the little bay we were diving in is dry land during summer.<br /><br />*Hiking - we have been making a conscious effort to be more active, both outdoors and in. This article in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17exercise-t.html">Times Magazine</a> was helpful.<br /><br />Here we are at South Mountain with Chrys.<br /><a href="http://goo.gl/photos/ktdUI6zA15" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TbHH_TVwhQI/AAAAAAAAOUw/lKdt9nyMDW0/s512/IMG_2638.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We took our teacher friend's daughter out to the Greenbelt to feed the ducks, play on the swings, walk the dog, etc. She took some great photos such as this one:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oWlJtmouo98/TcSLHaRZzlI/AAAAAAAAPkA/SYepoJaZYEw/s1600/IMG_2621.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oWlJtmouo98/TcSLHaRZzlI/AAAAAAAAPkA/SYepoJaZYEw/s400/IMG_2621.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603756795783401042" border="0" /></a><br />And a self-shot:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZH5bK6eKn4Y/TcSLHF4kuaI/AAAAAAAAPj4/wqRVFxmgKdk/s1600/IMG_2619.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZH5bK6eKn4Y/TcSLHF4kuaI/AAAAAAAAPj4/wqRVFxmgKdk/s400/IMG_2619.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603756790310549922" border="0" /></a><br />And the geese that harass Chrysanthemum:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-csaTHURnt3c/TcSLGqPY8gI/AAAAAAAAPjw/eKARrD_9PG8/s1600/IMG_2587.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-csaTHURnt3c/TcSLGqPY8gI/AAAAAAAAPjw/eKARrD_9PG8/s400/IMG_2587.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603756782890054146" border="0" /></a><br />And the doggie drinking fountain.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JqqTt9ffc8E/TcSLGPhHa_I/AAAAAAAAPjo/jI2mJYz-OA0/s1600/IMG_2566.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JqqTt9ffc8E/TcSLGPhHa_I/AAAAAAAAPjo/jI2mJYz-OA0/s400/IMG_2566.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603756775716645874" border="0" /></a><br />*California - okay, not strictly awesome because of spring, but it's what we did for break. Check out my <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/bret.sikkink">Picasa Web Albums</a> to see all the pictures. We stayed with Joe and Megan in SF and failed to take photos besides the one, but there are some other good ones in there.<br /><br />Here's the California coast:<br /><a href="http://goo.gl/photos/fXvaxNHwYQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUXgtTepIgkHSSDjVMS-NzNoKaC_FNvESufMkUpHgZI3I1a5c-3YfsuT6G_9PErnfomB_5guLjbZj6Ep_V_L1E9ePt9_p6uWyyy4CdYXxwrms8tO6abkhzAUgN0eeHJC_oqj5tW0eRdboI/s512/1000000121.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We also saw lots of undocumented wildlife. There were dolphins in the San Diego bay, and seals off the coast near Ragged Point, and bison in the Golden Gate Park, and more seals north by Stinson Beach.<br /><br />Now we're spring cleaning the house in anticipation of moving. Hello, Craigslist!Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-44174901983060783822011-04-08T20:54:00.000-07:002011-04-08T21:10:43.812-07:00A Sentence About the "Government Shutdown"<blockquote>"When the threat to opt out is empty for both agents, the outcome corresponds exactly with the (generalized) Nash bargaining solution." - from the abstract of Randolph <a href="http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/rsloof/">Sloof</a>'s <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www1.fee.uva.nl/scholar/wp/wp17-01.pdf">Finite Horizon Bargaining</a>...</span> paper from 2002 (direct PDF link). </blockquote><br />We've got some Hollow Threats in the news, this time from the US gov't. Ho hum, right, except Miss Bee and I wouldn't get paid. "Government shutdown" sounds so...I don't know...Windows '95.<br /><br />The preceding sentences look like this:<br /><blockquote>Typically the delay threat determines proposals in early periods, while the threat to opt out characterizes those in later ones. Owing to this nonstationarity both threats may appear in the equilibrium shares agreed upon.</blockquote>Oh, they're going to <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house-reviewing-terms-of-spending-deal-20110408">make on a deal on the budget</a>. Ok. The delay threat has diminished. Reps and Dems can't opt out. I would have put a comma between "nonstationarity" and "both", but otherwise the model holds.<br /><br />*fingers in ears*<br /><br />Moving to Mexico, la la la la...<br /><br />Tip of the hat to T.C.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-75111609687760466722011-03-18T21:25:00.000-07:002011-03-18T21:33:09.917-07:00Geez. Or, Moderation is Dead<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bqWF5obndlA/TYQxYwjb7KI/AAAAAAAAOLM/QDyQFvA6ef4/s1600/IMG_0151.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bqWF5obndlA/TYQxYwjb7KI/AAAAAAAAOLM/QDyQFvA6ef4/s400/IMG_0151.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585643739266411682" border="0" /></a><br />File under: "I can't even imagine this statistic being true."<br /><br /><blockquote>According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American bride and groom hope to drop 162.9 pounds, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2288396/?from=rss">jointly</a>[...]<br /></blockquote><br />I sort of hope it's not, but then again, this is America. The Slate article talks about a TV show dedicated to such efforts.<br /><br />Filed concurrently with the oral tradition of gossip and hearsay that tells me that the average American wedding is costing the couple and their families over $30,000.<br /><br />At what price sanity?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From our wedding, a photo of Thomas filming the proceeds from outside the chapel, a bit before things got under way. We came in well under budget. </span>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-8889827885890116872011-03-14T21:10:00.000-07:002011-03-14T21:36:21.319-07:00Worst Paragraph I've Read in a While<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oCGcFz5ETG8/TX7sdvhyCXI/AAAAAAAAOK4/ezXpQUiA1uU/s1600/4206047049_7ca32a3a29.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oCGcFz5ETG8/TX7sdvhyCXI/AAAAAAAAOK4/ezXpQUiA1uU/s400/4206047049_7ca32a3a29.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584160583704512882" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo by JD Photography (</span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/japokskee/">Flickr</a><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><br /></div><br />From <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18291567?story_id=18291567">The Economist</a>. Not the writer's fault:<br /><br /><blockquote>The protesters’ main demand was for more jobs—and welfare for those without them. Sultan Qaboos [of Oman] has hastily declared that this will be done, raising the minimum wage by 40%, to 200 riyals ($520) a month.</blockquote><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaboos_bin_Said_al_Said">Sultan Qaboos</a> has obviously never enrolled his spectacular name into an introductory economics class. If he had, the working class of <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mu.html">Oman</a> would not suffer the unintended-but-easily foreseen consequence of raising the minimum wage. As a business owner, if I am <span style="font-style: italic;">paying</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">more money </span>for my workers while the <span style="font-style: italic;">same amount</span> is coming in, then I'm certainly not in the position of <span style="font-style: italic;">paying more workers</span>. Thus, an increase in the minimum wage, especially such a dramatic one as enacted by the Sultanate, will have the opposite effect of that desired by the populace.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-18700409125990155232011-01-24T19:15:00.000-08:002011-01-24T20:38:53.592-08:00The Reading PostI got a great book recommendation this morning from our librarian. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295929814&sr=8-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Disappearing Spoon</span></a> by the way, nonfiction about the periodic table of elements.) She thought it fit my "dorky" personality, which was a nice back-handed compliment. That recommendation was a good impetus for me to finally write up some thoughts on reading, though.<br /><br />The iPad, which I am an owner of, has been a very interesting addition to my reading roster. Before I was given this beloved gift, <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/i_reader.php">an article from Alexander Chee was posted to The Morning News</a>. The following paragraph sucked me into the premise:<br /><blockquote>It began with approximately two paragraphs of the book, lit up on the screen of my phone. I tapped the side of the screen and it flew to the next three paragraphs, and so on. A few minutes passed and I observed that I was reading peacefully. It was both an entirely new reading experience, like I had a secret that fit inside the palm of my hand, but it was also familiar: In the fifth grade I was taught to speed-read on a machine that projected sentences onto a wall at high speeds, sentences in the white box of a screen, flashing in a dark room.<br /><br />Moments later, I got off the train. <i>That went well</i>, I decided, and slid my phone back into my pocket. And then I drew it back out, turned the app on, and kept reading as I walked, something I taught myself to do as a child when I lacked the patience to put a book down in order to walk to school.<br /></blockquote><br />Written about the iPhone's tiny screen, this resonated, to say the least. I remember reading during dinner when I was a kid - I'd get like half a page done. It's not always about the efficiency, but the process.<br /><br />Near the end of the article, this:<br /><blockquote>There have been unexpected domestic discoveries: The iPad is perfect for reading at night next to someone who’s asleep, both the book and the flashlight I hid under my covers as a kid. When I need to get water or go to the bathroom, I can use it to see where I’m going in the dark and not wake Dustin by turning on a light. I’m still prone to creating the need for a new bookshelf, with a recent purchase of eight physical books in a single store visit, but I’ve also put 12 books into what Dustin and I now call “the devices.” We both see this as a victory.<br /></blockquote>Miss Bee and I feel the same way. Her nook and my iPad are conspiring to knock paperbacks right off our to-do lists. We are still working our way through a small backlog of previous purchases, like <span style="font-style: italic;">Zeitoun</span> by Dave Eggers and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lacuna </span>from Barbara Kingsolver. But I don't see us purchasing additional copies of physical books except in special circumstances.<br /><br />*Before moving onto the Luddite's nightmare, let me recommend this short riposte from the editors of Ask the Paris Review, entitled <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/01/21/writers-and-their-libraries-fashion-v-english/">Writers and Their Libraries</a>. </span>A host of good suggestions about the wood-pulp side of book stewardship.*<br /><br /><br />Which leads me to Gary Becker's recent blog post that begins: "The traditional bookstore is doomed by e-readers and online sales of hard copy books." Some interesting notes that follow. <blockquote>The process of development has been presumed to cause a substitution of market activities for home production. For example, households in poor rural societies have not only grown their own food, but also made much of their clothing, washed their clothes, baked their bread, and cooked from scratch their other food. As countries underwent economic growth, many of these productive activities left the home and migrated to the marketplace. Factory-made clothing was substituted for clothing made at home, and bakeries and laundries developed to make bread and sweets, and to wash, clean, and dry clothes. <p>Further technological developments, however, such as small motors used in home washing and drying machines, and small machines that cooked bread easily at home, shifted many activities back into the home, and thereby saved on time and energy spent in the shopping process. The online digital revolution is a further major step in this trend of returning activities to the home. Time and effort are saved, for example, when instead of going to movie theatres, consumers both order and download films online to be viewed at “home”, either on television sets, or increasingly on computers.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Read the whole thing <a href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/01/traditional-bookstores-are-doomed-becker.html">here</a>. Insightful, and once again, my experiences resonate with the sociological theory of the author. In point of fact, Miss Bee and I have had free movie tickets, with popcorn vouchers, for months now and still haven't managed to leave the house to consume a new film in the theaters.<br /></p><p>Except for the whole bread-making machine thing...that never really caught on.<br /></p><p>But hearkening back to the Chee article, I didn't expect my reading experience to be radically altered by the medium. To wit, until I killed my iPhone, I had the nook and Kindle apps on my phone, iPad, and Mac. I could read with any of the devices. But <a href="http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2011/01/is-mobile-affecting-when-we-read/">this article on the Read It Later</a> blog shows some evidence that the medium does matter. The phone is used for "whitespace", those short spans of downtime during the day. The computer is used throughout the day, mirroring the amount of input we receive. But the iPad user graph is heavily concentrated during the evening hours, what the author calls "personal prime time". The gist? More of my online reading is going to the iPad than expected, in addition to the "print" media I consume with it (newspaper, sports highlights, weather, books).<br /></p><p>Read It Later is part of a crop of great new webapps that save content you find online to read another time. It's like a file folder, or even just a stack of articles you rip out, that you can peruse later when you have the time and inclination. I use Instapaper myself, and would recommend it to anyone. Here's their 2010 aggregation called <a href="http://givemesomethingtoread.com/post/1660934095/give-me-something-to-read-best-of-2010">Give Me Something To Read</a>. Click through the link and give the service a try.<br /></p><p><br />Another list I glommed onto this year was part of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools website, which he calls "<a href="http://www.kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php">The Best Magazine Articles Ever</a>". With such an audacious title, Mr. Kelly made a good move in crowd-sourcing recommendations, and thus sharing the blame of any critical resistance to the selections. That said, there is a lot to love in those pages, from Gay Talese's coverage of Frank Sinatra's sinuses to David Foster Wallace's ode to the savage grace of major tennis stars. Have a look, and happy reading. (If you need a New Yorker login name and password to access an article, email and I'll share mine with you.) As I read through this list again, it's sort of amazing how many of these articles I have discussed with or recommended to friends - it is a repository of cultural treasure.</p><p><br /></p><p>The title of the Chee article also reminded me of a few things. Most notably, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i%2C+robot&aq=f">I, Robot</a> starring Will Smith. But I digress. In the spirit of the Becker article, here is a link to the Leonard Read econ classic "<a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html">I, Pencil</a>" - so old that the text references <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka">Ceylon</a>, but still so poorly grasped by most people.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write....Simple? Yet, <i>not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.</i> This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year. </blockquote><p></p><p>Milton Friedman follows up, with plenty more on YouTube where it comes from:</p><p><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/R5Gppi-O3a8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="480"></iframe><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Dear reader, happy reading to you in 2011. It is shaping up to be the best year for personal reading since leaving for college, and I hope that you are in some small way inspired to read something fantastic!</p><p>And for those of you that like a spot of tea with your novel, be sure to check on Christopher Hitchens <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2279601/">writing for Slate about the proper way to make tea</a>, via the George Orwell method.<br /></p>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-76151542442211807162011-01-20T20:26:00.000-08:002011-01-20T20:32:18.190-08:00ChrysanthemumWe think it's her one-year anniversary today. Here are some pictures from the year past.<br /><br />First up is from Tucson last February. Her head is cut off on my cell phone photo, but you can see how small she was.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLem65jXI/AAAAAAAAN68/sPdDNAxyPpk/s1600/Mobile%2BPhoto%2BFeb%2B12%252C%2B2010%2B7%2B22%2B18%2BAM.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLem65jXI/AAAAAAAAN68/sPdDNAxyPpk/s400/Mobile%2BPhoto%2BFeb%2B12%252C%2B2010%2B7%2B22%2B18%2BAM.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564491435064528242" border="0" /></a><br />More recently on our air mattress. One of her new nicknames is "Length".<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLeaEFY5I/AAAAAAAAN60/OqzcxXWNZWo/s1600/IMG_2473.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLeaEFY5I/AAAAAAAAN60/OqzcxXWNZWo/s400/IMG_2473.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564491431613391762" border="0" /></a><br /><br />On a wicker-chair throne before the beginning of this school year.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLeDfifbI/AAAAAAAAN6s/zivGP4HM0Qw/s1600/IMG_2430.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLeDfifbI/AAAAAAAAN6s/zivGP4HM0Qw/s400/IMG_2430.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564491425554529714" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Guarding the apartment.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLdsstAvI/AAAAAAAAN6k/anJakJHuGOc/s1600/IMG_2350.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLdsstAvI/AAAAAAAAN6k/anJakJHuGOc/s400/IMG_2350.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564491419435729650" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Her first day. Not sure if this picture has been shown around, but this is seconds after walking out the door with our first dog. She proceeded to defecate on Miss Bee's lap about 15 minutes later.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLdb7qZzI/AAAAAAAAN6c/lSYTqZIPF_s/s1600/Mobile%2BPhoto%2BJan%2B13%252C%2B2010%2B7%2B15%2B36%2BAM.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TTkLdb7qZzI/AAAAAAAAN6c/lSYTqZIPF_s/s400/Mobile%2BPhoto%2BJan%2B13%252C%2B2010%2B7%2B15%2B36%2BAM.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564491414935070514" border="0" /></a><br />We love our dogWayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-12513592642323168412011-01-06T16:38:00.000-08:002011-01-06T18:17:14.791-08:00School Things in a Text-y Post1. I have my Masters degree - it's done, and official, and everything. Whoo!<br /><br />2. We are registered to attend the UNI Overseas Placement Fair in February, which is exciting.<br /><br />3. You are reading the words of the new basketball coach at school. That's right, I volunteered to spend an additional multiple-hours per week after school...well, I expect it to be pretty fun, and an easy way to get some much-needed exercise. Already started planning out my practices - on second thought, only one hour a day three days a week doesn't sound like enough!<br /><br />4. I read a great article this weekend. As usual from <a href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/01/implications-of-international-comparisons-of-student-performance-becker.html">Becker</a> and <a href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/01/the-pisa-rankings-and-the-role-of-schools-in-student-performance-on-standardized-testsposner.html">Posner</a>, smart thoughts on international school performance data. Does it blow anyone else's mind that these two gentlemen deign to contribute to the blobosphere? Not too much to offer, but their comments ring true to me as a practitioner of the public-education arts. Dense with information. Highlight reel from Posner:<br /><blockquote><br />The rankings tend to be interpreted as measures of the quality of a nation’s pre-collegiate school system (primary and secondary education, since primary education influences performance in secondary schools). But this may be a mistake. Schooling is only one, though doubtless an important, input into performance on the PISA tests. Another is IQ...[which] is understood to reflect both genetic endowment and environmental factors, particularly factors operative very early in a child’s life, including prenatal care, maternal health, the educational level of the parents, family stability, and poverty (all these are correlated, and could of course reflect low IQs of parents as well as causing low IQs in their children)...The 2009 PISA test scores reveal that in American schools in which only a small percentage (no more than 10 percent) of the students receive free lunches or reduced-cost lunches, which are benefits provided to students from poor families, the PISA reading test scores are the highest in the world. But in the many American schools in which 75 percent or more of the students are from poor families, the scores are the second lowest among the 34 countries of the OECD; and the OECD includes such countries as Mexico, Turkey, Portugal, and Slovakia...</blockquote>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-75892548299395353542010-12-24T15:33:00.000-08:002010-12-28T18:26:56.922-08:00Top 10 Albums of 2010<span style="font-size:130%;">It is the best of tropes, it is the worst of tropes. It is time for the Top 10 of 2010 Lists. I love the top 10 lists, for informing me of what I missed this year and how I can rectify that in the future. I also love them for pumping out a firehouse of teaser tracks. Don't get it twisted, I did pay for some of the full albums on this list, but to be honest, I heard most of these albums for free by piecing the various available tracks. Of course, in the case of Nosaj Thing, for example, hearing five or six songs was enough to have me hooked, and by the time my iTunes play count hit 10 Guido's "The Way You Make Me Feel" single it was time to go cover to cover. So yes, I bought more music than I would have due to the presence of their free mp3s online.<br /><br />The "Top X" List can definitely be faulted in a number of ways. They are arbitrary for one, and so subjective as to be almost meaningless in terms of credibility or plausibility for others. As the phrase goes, "your mileage may vary". Further, some of the lists strain credulity. Top 65 Shoe-Gaze Albums of 2009. The 47 Best Witch House Tracks Not Produced By The Guy From Salem. Top 10 Worst Album Covers of the Year. Guess which one of those was real... answer <a href="http://www.prefixmag.com/features/cocorosie-ghostface-killah-grinderman-mia-mgmt-mike-watt-ne-yo-sheek-louch-soundgarden-weezer/best-of-2010-top-10-worst-album-covers/46982/">here</a>.<br /><br />List makers also strain credulity in other ways, namely, how they digested the amount of music they claim to have not only listened to, but liked, nay, <a href="http://passionweiss.com/2010/12/27/the-top-dj-mixes-of-2010/">loved</a>, in a given time period. While I may have a full-time job, that isn't in the music business, and furthermore isn't online, I still work pretty hard at hearing a lot of music. But I had a hard time picking out ten Full Albums that I enjoyed this year. (One sad thing that happened was that I got really into Mayer Hawthorne this year, but it came out in '09.) You'd like to say that you are highly familiar with each track on your top X list, and that you enjoy close to all of them. But it's just not the case. I trust that the full-time reviewers, who are given/comped new albums on the regular and have a lot of time and energy to devote to music can put together a moderately truthful list, even if it includes a lot of preening, signaling, and jockeying for position in the intangible (hipness) and highly tangible (Technorati).<br /><br />They (the Lists) are massively useful, however, for finding other blobbers whose tastes match approximately to mine, or close to the blobs that I follow, and so on. Last year I got into <a href="http://n3k4.com/">dubstep</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biVETVmwxgg">jj</a> (youtube video), and Freddie Gibbs (see below) as a direct result of the '09 List Season. This year, who knows?<br /><br />2010 also saw me busting out Audacity and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hlzbe9t4BI">mixing up some medicine</a>. (See my <a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink/femmes-fatale">femmes fatale mix</a> for more:<br /><br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6411759"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6411759" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object></span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink/femmes-fatale">Femmes fatale</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink">Bret Sikkink</a><br /><br />In honor of my new hobby, I've put together a mini-mix featuring songs from each of my 2010-List artists. These songs are not necessarily from the album in question, but are in some sense representative of what I like about the artist. Available for your streaming pleasure following entry #10.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2559/4182826573_3c20158212.jpg%20"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 347px; height: 346px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2559/4182826573_3c20158212.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Graphic credit: Sam Churchill (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/samchurchill/">Flickr</a>)</span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Without further ado.</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />1. My favorite album of the year, as ranked both by my spidey sense and by iTunes count, was by Bristol producer Guido, on the Punch Drunk label. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Anidea</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> is chock-a-block with deeply soulful beat-making English-style, and for that sheer suck-it-down listenability, it gets the nod. Sampler from Guido is an instrumental version of "The Way You Make Me Feel" from his <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2010/01/04/fact-mix-108-guido/">FACT Magazine mix</a> (the polished version with help from a singer called "Yolanda" is on the full album). Follow that link for more Guido fire from FACT mix 108.<br /><br />I also wrote about Guido and his</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> <a href="http://waswerebe.blogspot.com/2010/11/bristol-ranking.html">partners in purple here</a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://waswerebe.blogspot.com/2010/11/bristol-ranking.html">.</a><br /><br />2. I bought Nosaj Thing's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Drift</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> at the same time as Guido's album, and I initially ignored it in a shameful fashion as I went for the easy hooks on <span style="font-style: italic;">Anidea</span>. Jason Chung's compositions creeped into my brain, though, and really took hold. In fact, my prediction is that Drift will hold up much better than most of the Purple Sound producers, and will sound as good as its release many years hence. Also of note is the remix album of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Drift</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> on <a href="http://www.alphapuprecords.com/releasepage.php?UPC=669158522439">Brainfeeder</a>, which offers a different take on some of these tunes. Check out "Coat of Arms" from the album here: <object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/C1rmi9Ah9g8?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/C1rmi9Ah9g8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="640"></embed></object><br /><br />Notable L.A. artists of this year: Flying Lotus with </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Cosmogramma</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, Alpha Pup Records' Take, Alex B, Lorn, and Shlomo, as well as Daedelus, The Gaslamp Killer, and Teebs, whose full-length Ardour I am just dipping into. Long live the Low End Theory scene.<br /><br />3. Besides electronic "dance" music, I continued to enjoy a broad cross-section of hip-hop this year. My favorite album of the year in hip-hop was undoubtedly Big Boi's <span style="font-style: italic;">Sir Lucious Left Foot: Son of Chico Dusty</span>. For such an unbelievably dumb title, SLLF:SoCD produced some true bangers, and showed a lot of people that Andre 3K wasn't the only widely-eclectic visionary in Outkast. The crazy thing is, Antwon Patton had to leave some choice cuts with Andre Benjamin on the cutting room floor due to inter-label beef. Lame - Obama extended Bush's tax cuts and Jive can't loan Dre's voice to General Patton for two jams? Listen up for "The Train Part 2" and hit this link for the video to "<a href="http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhSq1rhnJ1pJfkfRwa">Shutterbug</a>".<br /><br />4. A close runner-up this year, coming from a total underdog, was technically a mixtape (see #5 as well). Big K.R.I.T. produced, mixed, and rhymed on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >K.R.I.T. Wuz Here</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, sampling over 1,000,000 different songs in the process. Okay, you caught me... seriously, this shit was free, so what are you waiting for. I've mixed up the "Hometown Hero" remix featuring Alabama's Yelawolf. <a href="http://www.djbooth.net/index/mixtapes/entry/big-krit-krit-wuz-here/">Download "K.R.I.T. Wuz Here" at djbooth.net</a>.<br /><br />5. Freddie Gibbs took my listening habits by storm this year. I didn't download </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><a href="http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2009/09/freddie-gibbs-midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik-no-dj-version">Midwestgangsterboxframecadillacmuzik</a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"> until I couldn't shake that "Boxframe Cadillac" beat. Although <span style="font-style: italic;">Str8 Killa, No Filla</span> is technically a mixtape, and is not quite an accurate descriptor (c'mon, all hip hop albums have some filler...), it still makes my year-end list. The Malcolm of the Midwest brings a low-tone but highly nimble flow and a serious, muck-raking, and even earnest attitude to his experiences. Big shout to "Slammin'". <span style="font-style: italic;">Str8 Killa No Filla<span style="font-style: italic;">available <a href="http://www.xxlmag.com/homepage-highlight/2010/07/download-freddie-gibbs%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98str8-killa-no-filla%E2%80%99-mixtape-now/">here</a></span></span> Also worth checking out: The Smoking Section's <a href="http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2010/12/the-20-best-mixtapes-of-2010">article about mixtapes</a> that could have/should have been proper releases this year.<br /><br />More hip-hop news: Shabazz Palaces was ridiculous, G-Side and the Block Beattaz crew did some big things, The Kid Daytona's <a href="http://thekiddaytona.l-r-g.com/">The Interlude mixtape</a>, The Roots are back with <span style="font-style: italic;">How I Got Over</span>, plus see some notes below.<br /><br />6. Rusko is one of the producers on the new Britney Spears record. Better you hear it sooner than later. Also, you may want to google "brostep". Dubstep took a beating this year, critically speaking, but it's okay to love the wobble as far as I'm concerned.<br /><br />With that out of the way, Rusko's <span style="font-style: italic;">O.M.G.!</span> bumps deeply. Like Bristol's Gemmy, he brings a deep reggae and dancehall sensibility to his dubstep and electronic dance music. I feel like he makes a lot of missteps, but for every clunker is a seriously awesome beat. My <span style="font-style: italic;">O.M.G.!</span> highlight is "Jahova", but I "Woo Boost" on the mix.<br /><br />Other reggae-tinged affairs I liked this year included Nas and Damian Marley's <span style="font-style: italic;">Distant Relatives</span> album, Earlyworm, Rod Azlan singles, Earl 16, OSC, and Jah Cure, as well as the dubstep-meets-Sun Ra group Digital Mystikz featuring occasionally solo artist Mala.<br /><br />7. Not sure how many people can honestly trace their musical roots back this precisely, but Audiogalaxy.com used to have a ridiculously detailed breakdown of musical genres (as they were understood at the time). Occasionally, and seemingly at random to my 8th grade mind, there was a free sample mp3 of a song that was considered representative of a genre (since most of the other songs I remember downloading were from jam bands, I'm going to push that back to 10th grade). This is how I discovered David Byrne, Yesterday's New Quintet (the Madlib jazz project), and Four Tet. I got to know Kieran Hebdan's work quite a bit more after checking out some CDs from the local library, and I've studiously followed his Four Tet output since (Rounds is my favorite - who's with me?). Also, XLR8R magazine recently front-covered Kieran for a <a href="http://www.xlr8r.com/tv/109">great article</a>.<br /><br />Listen to the "Much Love to the Plastic People" DJ mix from Four Tet:<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1135285"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1135285" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/four-tet/much-love-to-the-plastic-people-dj-mix-december-2009">Much Love To The Plastic People (DJ mix December 2009)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/four-tet">Four Tet</a></span><br /><br /><br />Notable easy-listening electronica: Bonobo Black Sands was amazing, and if it weren't for my long history with Four Tet, I could easily see Bonobo's fourth album here in my top ten. Also Teebs' <span style="font-style: italic;">Ardour</span> which I mentioned and Mount Kimbie's <span style="font-style: italic;">Crooks and Lovers</span> and Caribou's <span style="font-style: italic;">Swim.</span><br /><br />8. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_frerejones">LCD Soundsystem was profiled this year in the New Yorker</a>. Is that enough said? Probably not. I completely fell for his first album - how it fell in my hands I can't remember (but I think a Phones remix might have been at play...). "Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up" was so astonishingly brilliant and original (and could have been a Pink Floyd B-Side from 1969-1972) and combined with some insistent dance beats and refreshing honesty, humor, and satire, James Murphy's music became a close friend and driving partner for many Des Moines-Omaha roundtrips. That was several years ago, and I thought <span style="font-style: italic;">Sound of Silver</span> was a little grandiose and less funny. Maybe it was just my attitude, but I like this year's <span style="font-style: italic;">This is Happening</span> quite a Hit the break for "Dance Yrself Clean".<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WFhXMbICMzI?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WFhXMbICMzI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />9. 2010 was a big year for me and Erykah Badu. <a href="http://himissb.blogspot.com/">Miss Bee</a> discovered a pristine copy of her 1997 LP <span style="font-style: italic;">Baduizm</span> at Revolver Records here in Phoenix, and from the moment the needle dropped on "Rimshot (Intro)" I knew I had made a mistake overlooking the queen of neo-soul, but my familiarity with D'Angelo, Maxwell, Musiq, and Raphael Saadiq was deep enough to know that <span style="font-style: italic;">Baduizm</span> was in another league. Tearing through her back catalogue, I hit a slump after <span style="font-style: italic;">Mama's Gun</span> (save for "The Healer (Hip Hop)" from <span style="font-style: italic;">New Amerykah, Part One</span>). <span style="font-style: italic;">Part Two</span> came out this year, and proved very enjoyable: organic, spare but lush, deep beats. Pretty classic Badu; I was sold on the singles "Window Seat" and "Love" early on, and recently re-enjoyed the rest of the album enthusiastically. Return of the Ankh indeed.<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-CPCs7vVz6s?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-CPCs7vVz6s?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Notable R&B this year: Aloe Blacc, Janelle Monae, Kings Go Forth, Mark Ronson and the Business International, Dam-Funk, some new Mayer Hawthorne singles.<br /><br />10. I do listen to rock music, indie and otherwise, it just rarely occurs that I love an entire album. Plenty of enjoyment was wrung out of Sleigh Bells, Tame Impala, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Phantogram, Warpaint, Belle & Sebastian, Spoon, Psychobuilding, Liars, a Pavement reunion, and especially the Arcade Fire's new monument to full-band bombast <span style="font-style: italic;">The Suburbs</span>. However, my favorite rock album this year was The New Pornographers <span style="font-style: italic;">Together</span> which followed the AC Newman formula to pop perfection. From the lead single "Your Hands (Together)" to "Daughters of Sorrow", just classic Montreal-collective indie.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Minimix of 2010 Favorites</span><br /><br /></div><span style="font-size:130%;">The tracklist is in timed comments. Enjoy:<br /><br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F8508743"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F8508743" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink/2010-minimix">2010 Minimix</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink">Bret Sikkink</a></span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Addenda: Because I have more wind than an Ethiopian marathoner.</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Pre-2010 obsessions from 2010:<br /><br />-Big shout out to Ollie for sending me a link to download Steinski's retrospective for free. May be still available here.<br />-Google THANK U SCREW to find a free mixtape of DJ Screw classics by an unprintable producer. The remix of Aaliyah's "One in a Million" in particular is ruthless (I posted it to Facebook, if you are my friend and care enough).<br />-Mayer Hawthorne killed it with <span style="font-style: italic;">A Strange Arrangement</span> in 2009, I just wasn't trying to hear it. Now I'm hooked.<br />-Got into jj's dreamy beat-pop from '09 lists and followed them a bit as well this year.<br />-2009 was the year of hip-hop beatmakers, while I got into the more electronic side this year. Star Slinger and Onra are some holdovers.<br /><br />What's coming in 2011?<br /><br />+ I'm looking forward to going through full-length hip hop albums from Yelawolf, Freddie Gibbs, Big K.R.I.T. and G-Side. Hopefully more of the Block Beattaz/Hunts Vegas crew gets some music out (I see you Jackie Chain, Mata, et. al.).<br />+ DJ Burn One had a banging 2010 and I can't wait to see what he's been working on. Same story with Big K.R.I.T. who should have a proper release like yesterday, and hopefully Bangladesh keeps cooking up those low-down beats for up-and-coming ATLiens as well as the big names.<br />+ From England, Young Montana did some big things this year, and if he puts together a full album I would expect some fire.<br />+ Didn't hear much in the way of new stuff from Joker this year, so hopefully some burners are in the oven.<br />+ Getting into Teebs, Baths' Cerulean, and hopefully a host of others from 2010 best-of lists.<br />+ Prediction: Low End Theory producers will keep producing bangers, and I will keep downloading them.<br /><br /></span>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-2705999142914333292010-12-22T12:05:00.000-08:002010-12-22T13:13:02.827-08:00The Evolutionary Biology of PenguinsI think this article should have used a more restrained title, such as the one modeled here. The TOP 5 ... YOU MUST KNOW NOW!!! link-baiting technique is bizarre in an article published in <span style="font-style: italic;">Scientific</span> American that includes over a dozen references and introductory clauses like "Much of my research" and other phrases unlikely to make your typical listmania.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/371748873_6f3fec68eb.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 279px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/371748873_6f3fec68eb.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />But there was some interesting information in this fairly brief, cogent-yet-learned piece about current evolutionary biological research on penguins. For instance:<br /><blockquote>[T]he most ancient penguin fossils are amongst the oldest fossils discovered from any group of living birds. Waimanu ("Water Bird" in Maori) is the earliest known fossil penguin taxon...<span style="font-style: italic;">Pachydyptes</span> was a true giant, but it is hard to reconstruct how big the species actually was because we only have a few pieces of the skeleton...we are also discovering that extinct penguin species had different body plans. Some were short and stout, while others were tall and slender.</blockquote>Read it <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=five-things-you-never-knew-about-pe-2010-12-20">here at the Scientific American</a> website.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-46615323185906464712010-12-12T15:42:00.000-08:002010-12-12T15:43:40.279-08:00Tempest in a teapotThank you Jon Stewart. <br /><br /><table style="font: 11px arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="353" width="360"><tbody><tr style="background-color: rgb(229, 229, 229);" valign="middle"><td style="padding: 2px 1px 0px 5px;"><a target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/">The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</a></td><td style="padding: 2px 5px 0px; text-align: right; font-weight: bold;">Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c</td></tr><tr style="height: 14px;" valign="middle"><td style="padding: 2px 1px 0px 5px;" colspan="2"><a target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-6-2010/the-gretch-who-saved-the-war-on-christmas">The Gretch Who Saved the War on Christmas</a><a></a></td></tr><tr style="height: 14px; background-color: rgb(53, 53, 53);" valign="middle"><td colspan="2" style="padding: 2px 5px 0px; width: 360px; overflow: hidden; text-align: right;"><a target="_blank" style="color: rgb(150, 222, 255); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/">www.thedailyshow.com</a></td></tr><tr valign="middle"><td style="padding: 0px;" colspan="2"><embed style="display: block;" src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:367360" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="autoPlay=false" allowscriptaccess="always" allownetworking="all" bgcolor="#000000" height="301" width="360"></embed></td></tr><tr style="height: 18px;" valign="middle"><td style="padding: 0px;" colspan="2"><table style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="100%"><tbody><tr valign="middle"><td style="padding: 3px; width: 33%;"><a target="_blank" style="font: 10px arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/">Daily Show Full Episodes</a></td><td style="padding: 3px; width: 33%;"><a target="_blank" style="font: 10px arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.indecisionforever.com/">Political Humor & Satire Blog</a></a></td><td style="padding: 3px; width: 33%;"><a target="_blank" style="font: 10px arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.blogger.com/www.facebook.com/thedailyshow">The Daily Show on Facebook</a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-85186589505305951632010-12-12T11:45:00.000-08:002010-12-12T11:53:11.469-08:00All Hail The Dissident<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/brews/reserve-series/the-dissident/default.aspx"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 315px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TQUmUxYmNuI/AAAAAAAAN54/3fmRskj5tqw/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-12-12%2Bat%2B12.44.47%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549884254099748578" border="0" /></a><a href="http://himissb.blogspot.com/">Miss Bee</a> and I had the good fortune to run into a keg of The Dissident last night at <a href="http://www.papagobrewing.com/">Papago</a>. From my review on Beer Advocate: <blockquote>In this corner, weighing in at 10.5% alcohol by volume and 30 international bittering units, a sour Flanders Oud Bruin hailing from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon: The Dissident. [Raucous cheering]</blockquote>Full review <a href="http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/63/44409/?ba=BretSikkink">here</a>. Get some if you can. <a href="http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/brews/reserve-series/the-dissident/default.aspx">Image and more information from the Deschutes website.</a>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-62241957742267766502010-12-11T22:27:00.000-08:002010-12-11T22:39:38.473-08:00Ron Artest, humanitarian"I always follow my plan 100 percent, even if I know I'm going to fail."<br /><br />Ron Artest.<br /><br />I can't believe I would even consider blobbing about this jackass, this jerk who punched a paying customer in the stands, got himself run out of Chicago and Indianapolis...The Brawl at the Palace.<br /><br />But he honestly sounds kind of great, if a little eccentric. Extended quote:<br /><br /><blockquote>"[H]e's raffling off the $26,000 championship ring he won to pay for school psychiatry. So far, the raffle -- go to RonArtest.com -- has raised nearly half a million dollars...the money will pay for "at least eight school therapists," he says.<br /><br />"I needed a therapist when I was a kid," says Artest, who was suspended every single year of his elementary school career. "I needed one real bad. I want kids to know that what they're going through, they're not alone."</blockquote><br />Admirable. It's crazy...it's a totally not-crazy thing to fund help for kids that teachers call crazy. And we still call Ron-Ron crazy...as Rick Reilly says "Four parts crazy, one part brilliant".<br /><br />Also: "Don't all Game 7 heroes thank their psychologists?" And: "There's 1,000 plays in the Triangle. It's such a challenge. I get so frustrated about it, I have to call my psychologist."<br /><br />Who is this guy? Find out more, some bits less flattering than those here, from <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=5902468">Rick Reilly's ESPN commentary page</a>.<br /><br />More:<br /><p></p><blockquote><p>"I ask Jackson why he's playing Artest fewer minutes this season. "I'm not," Jackson says. "Ron overheard [substitute forward <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=1765">Matt Barnes</a>] asking me for more playing time, so he's been raising his hand just to get Matt more time."</p><p> </p><p>Why, Ron Ron?</p><p> </p><p>"Because we're a team. I just want to win another title. Who cares about minutes? Who cares about points?"</p><p> </p><p>Uh, everybody else?"</p></blockquote><p></p>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-28639679095527631882010-12-07T19:45:00.000-08:002010-12-07T20:04:44.322-08:00Puzzle Day at the NYT Science Department<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TP8DrAxJauI/AAAAAAAAN5w/aIRYXkVYluQ/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-12-07%2Bat%2B9.02.23%2BPM.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 292px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TP8DrAxJauI/AAAAAAAAN5w/aIRYXkVYluQ/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-12-07%2Bat%2B9.02.23%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548157303419136738" border="0" /></a><br />All the articles today in the Science Times were about puzzles and games. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html">Check it out</a>. It inspired me to do the crossword.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-84393870384449087452010-12-02T20:21:00.000-08:002010-12-02T20:46:54.989-08:00Department of ArsenicNo <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Cobject%20width=%22480%22%20height=%22385%22%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22movie%22%20value=%22http://www.youtube.com/v/oy2bxDw9qG0?fs=1&hl=en_US%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22allowFullScreen%22%20value=%22true%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cparam%20name=%22allowscriptaccess%22%20value=%22always%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cembed%20src=%22http://www.youtube.com/v/oy2bxDw9qG0?fs=1&hl=en_US%22%20type=%22application/x-shockwave-flash%22%20allowscriptaccess=%22always%22%20allowfullscreen=%22true%22%20width=%22480%22%20height=%22385%22%3E%3C/embed%3E%3C/object%3E">Old Lace</a>. (Sidenote: Love those old movie, <span style="font-style: italic;">ahem</span>, picture trailers.)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPh1veDF5NI/AAAAAAAAN5o/N130rGspMdc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-12-02%2Bat%2B9.44.13%2BPM.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 238px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPh1veDF5NI/AAAAAAAAN5o/N130rGspMdc/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-12-02%2Bat%2B9.44.13%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5546312399487100114" border="0" /></a><blockquote>"Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about."</blockquote><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html">Wow, the New York Times reports</a>.<br /></div><br />Kottke <a href="http://kottke.org/10/12/discovered-a-new-form-of-life">comments</a>. T. Cowen <a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/12/arsenic-based-bacteria.html">comments</a>, with links.<br /><br />*Another take: "Scientists have found a form of life that they claim bends the rules for life as we know it. But they didn’t need to go to another planet to find it. They just had to go to California."<br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/12/02/of-arsenic-and-aliens/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Loom+%28The+Loom%29&utm_content=Twitter">Zing, Zimmer</a>.<br /><br />*The upshot, according to <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/bacteria-can-integrate-arsenic-into-its-dna-and-proteins.ars">Ars Technica</a>:<br /><blockquote>"The researchers’ discovery that bacteria can substitute phosphorus with arsenic in the backbone of DNA has significant implications for evolutionary chemistry and astrobiology, since it suggests that life won't necessarily be limited to the six elements it favors here on Earth."</blockquote><br />*On the satire tip, Doyle Redland, of the Onion News Network, is here to tell us about concerned parents demanding that arsenic be removed from the periodic table.<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" id="orn_player" width="375" height="230" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"><param name="movie" value="http://media.theonion.com/flash/audio/player/player.swf?soundFile=http%3A%2F%2Fo%2Eonionstatic%2Ecom%2Faudio%2Farticles%2Farticle%2F13863%2F427%5FPeriodic%5FTable%5FW%2Emp3&title=Concerned%20Parents%20Demand%20Removal%20Of%20Arsenic%20From%20Periodic%20Table%20Of%20Elements&date=Tue%2C%20May%2022%202007&slug=concerned%2Dparents%2Ddemand%2Dremoval%2Dof%2Darsenic%2Dfrom%2Dp&autostart=no"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"><embed src="http://media.theonion.com/flash/audio/player/player.swf?soundFile=http%3A%2F%2Fo%2Eonionstatic%2Ecom%2Faudio%2Farticles%2Farticle%2F13863%2F427%5FPeriodic%5FTable%5FW%2Emp3&title=Concerned%20Parents%20Demand%20Removal%20Of%20Arsenic%20From%20Periodic%20Table%20Of%20Elements&date=Tue%2C%20May%2022%202007&slug=concerned%2Dparents%2Ddemand%2Dremoval%2Dof%2Darsenic%2Dfrom%2Dp&autostart=no" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" name="player" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" width="375" height="230" align="middle"></embed></object>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-43437952717163872952010-11-30T20:58:00.000-08:002010-11-30T21:08:04.379-08:00Who is yours?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPXXxnfTNJI/AAAAAAAAN5g/rHcyorDoE5E/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-11-30%2Bat%2B10.04.01%2BPM.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 319px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPXXxnfTNJI/AAAAAAAAN5g/rHcyorDoE5E/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-11-30%2Bat%2B10.04.01%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545575763590460562" border="0" /></a><br />"Finally, the narcissist, who longs for the approval and admiration of others, is often clueless about how things look from someone else’s perspective. Narcissists are very sensitive to being overlooked or slighted in the smallest fashion, but they often fail to recognize when they are doing it to others."<br /><br />Remind you of anyone? Of course it does...<br /><br />Narcissism is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/views/30mind.html">slated for removal from the DSM-V</a>, along with three other personality disorders. In my neck of the woods, Asperger's Syndrome is also being left out, much to the chagrin of those who self-identify.<br /><br />*Note*<br />All photos used on this blob are used under a creative commons license from flickr, unless otherwise noted. This one is by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayusa/">Cayusa</a>.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-10823295771917833262010-11-28T18:43:00.000-08:002010-11-28T19:25:39.158-08:00In the year 2036...<span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPMcSe23yQI/AAAAAAAAN5Q/_kV04rjXLNo/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-11-28%2Bat%2B8.21.14%2BPM.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TPMcSe23yQI/AAAAAAAAN5Q/_kV04rjXLNo/s400/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-11-28%2Bat%2B8.21.14%2BPM.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544806670069647618" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17509373?story_id=17509373&CFID=149238396&CFTOKEN=89583226">...and I quote:</a><br /><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;">"[T]he car, the plane, the bicycle, the voice-only telephone, the espresso machine and, luckily, the wall-to-wall bookshelf will still be with us...<br />The world will face severe biological and electronic pandemics, another gift from globalisation. Religious practice will experience a revival, seen as a conveyor of robust heuristics, cultural values and rituals...[W]hat is now called academic economics will be treated with the same disrespect that rigorous (and practical) minds currently have for Derrida-style post-modernist verbiage.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Nassim Taleb, of the Extremely Important Concept known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory">Black Swan Theory</a>, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17509373?story_id=17509373&CFID=149238396&CFTOKEN=89583226">writes in The Economist</a> about how he sees various institutions in 25 years. Although these are things I occasionally think about, I don't have much additional commentary on this article. It is not immediately clear to me that everything he notes is true (See Robin Hanson on Near vs. Far thinking and Yudkowsky on A.I.; Kurzweil has a different take on the progression of science, at least as it pertains to engineering technology.)<br /><br />Notably, education, especially in the classical vs. modern sense, is not discussed (how will increasingly entrenched religious beliefs affect the present-day concept of the university? I would infer a move toward madrassa-style disconnect, while many of the other predictions take a very World Is Flat view.)<br /><br />It is very short, and should definitely be read in totum, if only as food for thought in light of the author's prescience regarding matters in the immediate past.<br /><br />Reading anything by Taleb is personally very interesting because his book was just coming out the last time I traveled abroad, to Scotland. Not only was I stockpiling a lot of American periodicals for the trip, and thus reading the reviews all at once, I was also reading a lot of English periodicals along the way that were also reviewing his ideas. And at THE SAME TIME I was listening to a lot of Thom Yorke's solo album, which Miss Bee was lovely enough to have purchased beforehand and which I had ripped to my computer. Here is the song that I always think about:<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="divplaylist" width="335" height="28"><param name="movie" value="http://www.divshare.com/flash/playlist?myId=13354381-4aa"><embed src="http://www.divshare.com/flash/playlist?myId=13354381-4aa" name="divplaylist" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" width="335" height="28"></embed></object><br /><br /><a href="http://www.divshare.com/download/13354381-4aa">Download directly here</a>.<br /><br />I wish I could drop some kind of killer, never before heard, ultra-maximum remix, but sometimes life gives you lemons.<br /><br />Also, if anyone that reads this has a concise opinion re: Taleb's mention of gold replacing individual currencies, please drop me a note. It seems very rare for technologies, concepts, institutions, and theories to jump back 120 years, bypassing the interceding period with nary a backwards glance. Is there any way that the Federal Reserve experiment has yielded so few lessons that we can't even begin to build on it? Inflation is definitely a problem to consider, but in the age of iPod, Kindle, and 1 Terabyte hard drives for a couple hundred bucks, do we want to revert to storing massive amounts of gold ingot?<br /><br /><br />And now for something completely different.<br /><br />One of my second-graders got off the bus the other day walking in a very unusual fashion, for no apparent reason. The bus was late so there was no one else around, so I indulged his whimsy and walked halfway to class without looking back. When I did so, not only was he still walking in this ridiculous way, another student in line behind him was also conveying himself about the grounds in a most peculiar fashion. Incidentally, we got a new PE teacher who started that very day, and who watched me and these students behave rather oddly. I said hello and began my day calmly - like a black swan who looks so serene above water but is paddling furiously - and in perhaps a somewhat embarrassed fashion, below.<br /><br />The initial walk was something between the high-stepping element of this (first :10) -<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9ZlBUglE6Hc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9ZlBUglE6Hc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />and the careening nature of this (skip to :40 in) -<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z-mLuLnN2xw?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z-mLuLnN2xw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Toss in a little Jack Sparrow and you've got the idea.<br /></span>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-81583696830643448672010-11-25T17:51:00.001-08:002010-11-25T18:35:05.381-08:00How To Drink Coffee Without Being a Prick<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TO8Sy4qsN1I/AAAAAAAAN5I/J_u5ep5cDec/s1600/clover-coffee-maker-7.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 342px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TO8Sy4qsN1I/AAAAAAAAN5I/J_u5ep5cDec/s400/clover-coffee-maker-7.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543670331730573138" border="0" /></a><center><a href="http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/kitchen/clover-coffee-maker2.htm">The Clover coffeemaker explained by howstuffworks</a></center></div><br /><blockquote>You stumble out of bed, struggling toward consciousness, in urgent need of caffeine. You drag yourself into the kitchen. And there, ready and waiting, are 10 cups of coffee, brewed automatically, just five minutes earlier, as a consequence of a few simple steps and some alarm clock-style programming the night before.</blockquote>Shots fired at the coffee-geek crowd. Frank Bruni extols the virtues of the Mr. Coffee drip coffeemaker, flying in the face of fellow gourmands who prefer the ever-growing crop of complex technologies and strict methodologies for what Bruni describes as "first and foremost a caffeine delivery system...It was medicine, just as food, stripped of its pretensions, is fuel. Expeditiousness matter[s]."<br /><br />I'm with Bruni, the former restaurant critic of the Times and author of the recent memoir "<a href="http://www.bornround.com/">Born Round</a>". I do make my coffee with the French press, but I would love to have it ready when I get out of bed in the morning. And also I'm intimidated by the more esoteric strictures of the coffee-brewing crowd (swirl the pour. stir every x minutes. etc.)<br /><br />Check <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/dining/24coffee.html?pagewanted=all">the article</a> for more good times. But no Mr. Coffees in my stocking, thanks.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-10573841111526488962010-11-23T19:37:00.000-08:002010-11-23T20:48:14.370-08:00Best Pseudo-parenthetical Sentence I Read Today<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TOyJuaVKXAI/AAAAAAAAN5A/6zWyBlFRbrw/s1600/Starflight_GEN_ScreenShot2.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 224px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TOyJuaVKXAI/AAAAAAAAN5A/6zWyBlFRbrw/s400/Starflight_GEN_ScreenShot2.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542956671821306882" border="0" /></a><br />"Of course if you want to slow down your ship at the other end instead of flying by at 0.1c, you need a much larger ship."<br /><br />This comes at the end of a post by Robin Hanson that includes such representative paragraphs as this:<br /><blockquote>Until recently, it would have been expected that 1 mm would be an absolute upper limit for the size of interstellar grains in the warm (T * 6000 K), low-density (n * 0.1–0.2 hydrogen nuclei cm<span>^-</span>3) interstellar cloud [LIC] which surrounds the Sun. However, recent … measurements … have identified a high-mass tail to the local interstellar grain population extending to perhaps as high as 10<span>^-</span>12 kg (i.e., 4.5 mm radius).</blockquote><br />If the technical feasibility of rapid interstellar travel and the requisite economic concerns are of interest, by all means...<a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/starflight-review.html">have at the link</a>.<br /><br /><br />While we're at it: the best re-creation of space travel ever (Kanye: of ALL TIME), along with a link to a <a href="http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html">1969 interview with Kubrick</a> in which, among other things, the director clarifies that HAL is a 'straight' computer. I can sleep easier.<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TlR-9Cn14fs?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TlR-9Cn14fs?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />**Update**<br />During a '90s R&B jaunt down youtube-memory-lane, THIS was discovered. Putting my earlier claim regarding "best re-creation of space travel" in jeopardy. <br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fUSOZAgl95A?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fUSOZAgl95A?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />In other youtube-and-lisps-in-popular R&B music news: <br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/drvS9w-lTMc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/drvS9w-lTMc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-1252903035908748122010-11-21T11:58:00.000-08:002010-11-21T19:41:47.364-08:00Bristol Ranking<span style="font-weight: bold;">Purple City:</span><br /><br />Lots of digital ink has been spilled about what Dubstep is or isn't, but an unquestionable nexus of the bass-heavy wobble is the port city of Bristol, South West England. Peverelist's Punch Drunk label (and electronic dance music mecca <a href="http://rootedrecords.blogspot.com/">Rooted Records</a>), Pinch's Tectonic imprint, and the loose organization of Planet Mu (google them), Bristol's electronic artists have imprinted the charging London Dubstep wobble with a dash of this and that: Sach O over at Passion of the Weiss mentions trip hop, jungle, and Berlin techno. Dubby, crunchy, wobbly, and above all, tuned very loudly to the low end.<br /><br />In light of the new Peverelist compilation <a href="http://boomkat.com/downloads/348808-various-punch-drunk-worth-the-weight-bristol-dubstep-classics">Worth The Weight</a>, I thought I'd add my own needle into the haystack of music coverage and post some of the tracks that hooked me on the across-the-pond awesomeness of the purple sound. But first, the tracks on Worth the Weight from <a href="http://boomkat.com/">boomkat</a>:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://boomkat.com/embed/348808/42203F" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" height="1077" width="400"></iframe><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Georgia;font-size:85%;" >Read full review of <a href="http://boomkat.com/downloads/348808-various-punch-drunk-worth-the-weight-bristol-dubstep-classics" target="_blank" style="font-size: 10px; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Worth The Weight: Bristol Dubstep Classics - Various / Punch Drunk</a> on <a href="http://boomkat.com/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 10px; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Boomkat.com</a> ©</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Hook:</span><br /><br />""When you hear a song, you envisage things: soul music is mahogany, basslines are yellow," says Joker."<br /><br />The color that unites Joker, Gemmy, and Guido is a rich purple, and as the young players on a rich music scene that has given the world Massive Attack, Portishead, and Tricky, these three have emerged as renowned beatmakers and composers in their own right.<br /><br />Joker is perhaps the most straightforward producer of the three, and his productions are catchy, in your face, and very wobbly. His Purple Wow Sound mix was the first place I had heard such deep bass, pulsating wobble, and catchy melodies. First, the entire 43:00 mix (download <a href="http://www.divshare.com/download/13275580-d62">here</a>), followed by a representative sample track from youtube. As always, yt is a complete rabbithole that you can follow wherever you'd like.<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="divplaylist" height="28" width="335"><param name="movie" value="http://www.divshare.com/flash/playlist?myId=13275580-d62"><embed src="http://www.divshare.com/flash/playlist?myId=13275580-d62" name="divplaylist" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="28" width="335"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0bIR_YmiuVw?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0bIR_YmiuVw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Gemmy brings a Jamaican sensibility to the Bristol sound, which befits the long-standing relationship between the island and its former colonial overlord. From Keith Richards taking a break from the Stones to record native Rastafarian chants, to a young Chris Blackwell forming Island Records and signing the young Wailers, English music has long been indebted to Jamaican riddim and vocalization. In London, electronic producers have been using one-off dubplates and toasting throughout the 2000s, with Digital Mystikz' DJ Mala as but a prime example. Gemmy's dubby sound owes plenty to Lee Perry, the Professor, and King Tubby. Bomboclot:<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/84q70YHwOsc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/84q70YHwOsc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Guido is an electronic music producer with an unmatched ear for composition, reminding me of LA's Teebs, another beatmaker whose album <a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=8083"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ardour</span></a><span><span> is full of subtle, layered melody</span></span>. From the clipped horn sample on "Mad Sax" to the wall of synthesized strings on "Tantalized", Guido's Punch Drunk debut <span style="font-style: italic;">Anidea</span> is worth a <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anidea/id369539151">cover-to-cover listen</a>.<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6vL487qSmOo?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6vL487qSmOo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Godmother: </span><br /><br />No mention of the dubstep scene would be complete without a mention of Mary Anne Hobbs, the innovative Radio 1 deejay, whose compilations on Planet Mu brought the music to a wider audience, including yours truly. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anne_Hobbs">Wikipedia here</a>, <a href="http://www.planet.mu/artists/Mary_Anne_Hobbs">links to her albums here</a>, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqb7">her BBC page which is still up here</a>. She has recently moved on from her position at the Beeb in order to pursue tastemaking in other forms, which are sure to be well-received.<br /><br />In the post referenced earlier, <a href="http://passionweiss.com/2010/11/19/ditdc-worth-the-weight-bristol-dubstep-classics/">Sach O concludes</a>:<br /><blockquote>Contemporary House music is fine to dance to and UK rapping will probably never catch on over the pond, but to me, like Hip-Hop in 88 and 94, punk in 77 to 82, soul throughout the early 70’s and psychedelia in its late 60’s peak, this is era-defining music, material that truly speaks to the times and redefines what it means to be a listener or a participant within a culture.</blockquote>Hear hear.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-32460592131241427322010-11-18T19:27:00.000-08:002010-11-18T19:37:33.666-08:00Best Run-on Sentence I Read Yesterday<blockquote>In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways.</blockquote>That's funny.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TOXwr3Ec6rI/AAAAAAAAN44/PuPPG9ZJAnc/s1600/01derby.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 292px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_riUpMXx-_38/TOXwr3Ec6rI/AAAAAAAAN44/PuPPG9ZJAnc/s400/01derby.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541099552856926898" border="0" /></a><br />Deep down the rabbit hole of <a href="http://www.ralphsteadman.com/index.asp">Ralph Steadman's website</a>, you can find full texts of Steadman-illustrated, Hunter Thompson-penned classics, including "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", quoted above. Appearing in a periodical called <span style="font-style: italic;">Scanlan's Monthly</span> in 1970, it is considered the first piece of Gonzo journalism. See Wikipedia for more, or hit the jump for the <a href="http://www.ralphsteadman.com/KYDerby.asp">full text</a>. One of the prints from the auspicious occasion is represented above, available for purchase on his website, naturally.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-71482790377771399322010-11-17T17:14:00.001-08:002010-11-17T17:27:23.790-08:00"Shadow Scholarship"The topic today is a "shadow scholar" who is paid to write essays for college-level courses. <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/">Completely fascinating throughout</a>; I think I missed my calling. He got started when some frat boy friends wanted him to write papers for them, and today he makes more than $60,000 a year. Key quotables:<br /><br />"I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph."<br /><br />As an online-course-taking, weekly-paper-writing-machine, I can definitely sympathize with that one. He goes on:<br /><blockquote>I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me.</blockquote>People sometimes ask me (when they found out I did graduate school online) how I can write papers each week about different topics without going to the library. Given that I didn't go to the library in college except to print, my answer approximately mirrors this explanation with the caveat that I did use the e-library to assemble and read legit sources:<br /><blockquote>I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples...Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article...there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way.</blockquote>The Shadow Scholar is quite explicit about the variety of "students" he has helped, and includes a pretty funny list of the different types of papers and assignments he has written over the years. He takes on nurses, social scientists, architects, and plenty of others. But he saves a particular vitriol for one branch of higher education:<br /><blockquote>I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)</blockquote>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-5328859745217824802010-11-15T20:09:00.000-08:002010-11-15T20:32:57.947-08:00'Graf of the DayIn my earnest effort to begin posting here more frequently (since the completion of my Master's courses, still waiting on the review of my work), I decided to focus, if ever so some-what, on language and writing. I have composed two "<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/features/magazine/columns/on_language/index.html">On Language</a>"-type columns in my head that I shall type up forthwith after moderate efforts at research (Footnote 1).<br /><br />I'm also consistently reporting events, published takes, turns of phrase, and sentences to my <a href="http://himissb.blogspot.com/">Miss Bee</a>, who both judiciously ignores me and comments, occasionally, in a vague fashion, while in turn concentrating on her own affairs. To her betterment. In that light, I'm moving towards a MR-esque "Best __ I Read Today" format, which I can decorate in the finest possible manner. Working within the confines of such strictures, I am parsing my reading material most delicately, and in Day One of my efforts, I am delighted to present this gem, verbatim from <a href="http://kottke.org/10/11/high-on-ecommerce">kottke.org</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Four 50-packs for around $115. "Whoa!" I exclaimed to my wife, "Someone out there really likes whipped cream!"<br /><br />Readers, I could almost hear the eyeroll as my wife explained to this naive bumpkin that people use these canisters of compressed nitrous oxide <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whip-it">to get high</a>. So whoever you are, thank you for the novel experience of learning a new Urban Dictionary term from my wife.<br /><br /></blockquote>In a most remarkable turn of events, Miss Bee came home today and mentioned the need to go to Costco, this evening, no procrastinating, It's-For-Student-Council. Standing in line with our one item, which happened to be three canisters of whipped cream....<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">1 According to the Magic Tree House author Mary Pope Osbourne, in her Opus #9 entitled </span>Dolphins at Daybreak<span style="font-style: italic;">, research is roughly defined as working to find the answer to hard questions. Noted to self: drill that into students. </span>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-46957037649806726352010-11-02T16:29:00.000-07:002010-11-02T16:42:13.751-07:00Palin on Press: Pretty, pretty, pretty goodThis is funny.<br /><br />Sarah Palin on the press in this country:<br /><blockquote>"I suppose I could play their immature, unprofessional, waste-of-time game, too, by claiming these reporters and politicos are homophobe, child molesting, tax evading, anti-dentite, puppy-kicking, chain smoking porn producers … really, they are. … I've seen it myself … but I'll only give you the information off-the-record, on deep, deep background; attribute these 'facts' to an 'anonymous source' and I'll give you more."</blockquote><br />Anti-dentite. Hmm.<br /><br />A quick google search reveals that in fact the only thing that anti-dentite refers to is a Seinfeld episode (the Yada Yada, for those scoring at home). To wit:<br /><br /><br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ythrdCsOFJU?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ythrdCsOFJU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Tip of the hat <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2273301/?from=rss">to Slate for that little gem</a>. I miss Bushisms, but Bidenisms + Palinisms is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp4pJ-mEmE4">pretty, pretty, pretty good</a>.Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9208407572147958895.post-38331036345826088762010-10-25T22:04:00.001-07:002010-10-25T22:25:14.815-07:00Femmes fatale mixI've been teaching myself rudimentary audio manipulation recently, both for school purposes as well as entertainment. I've always enjoyed making mixtapes and such, but perhaps due to the talent and prodigious output of my roommate DJ Jewels, I never did get around to learning the ropes in college.<br /><br />Well, I got super-obsessed with Audacity and made a genre-bending mix that was really fun, subsequently lost all my data in an program crash, and painstakingly re-mixed it for the beginning of the school year. I felt like I learned so much, but after listening to those songs a million times each, I needed to start something else pretty quickly. Right about <a href="http://himissb.blogspot.com/2010/09/picture-of-day-september-19-2010.html">the time we went to Sedona</a>, I started pulling together this epic, three-suite mix that was to start with a sample from David Axelrod's The Human Abstract, that would reappear throughout the mix as segues. Suite II was to be called A Change of Heart, and would feature female vocalists in a variety of genres, but primarily uptempo. The third movement was to be a hip hop mix based around DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World, which samples the lonesome piano chords from Axelrod.<br /><br />Basically, they all blew way out of proportion.<br /><br />Suite I is languishing. At 36 minutes, it has run out of creative steam and I don't know what to do with it.<br /><br />Suite III is still being worked on, but it's pretty well done. Clocking in at 79:20, this is a CD-R away from a good road trip. But it's not as carefully put together as...<br /><br />Suite II has been re-named to Femmes fatale and teased out to feature length. Again, around 79 minutes of music, for those who still quaintly like to burn their music to CD. Perhaps more of a creative constraint than anything.<br /><br />Listen up:<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6411759&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6411759&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink/femmes-fatale">Femmes fatale</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/bret-sikkink">Bret Sikkink</a></span><br /><br />The lynchpin of the mix is a track called "A Change of Heart" by El Perro del Mar, and a Rakamonie remix that appears halfway through. We detour through the off-key warbling of Nite Jewel, the droning sludge of Fever Ray, and back through the looped sampling of Star Slinger before a quick trip to the dubstep of Bristol, England. The mix finishes with a series of modern rock favorites.<br /><br />The mix is hosted by Soundcloud, a really cool music sharing website which allows for timed comments. The tracklisting is posted via timed comment, with the song's artist and title at approximately the point that it starts within the mix. Enjoy.<br /><br />Supplemental materials:<br /><br />David Axelrod's The Human Abstract<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnOFD3P_LIQ?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnOFD3P_LIQ?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/InFbBlpDTfQ?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/InFbBlpDTfQ?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Wayne Bretskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12421492836937385431noreply@blogger.com0