In case you would like to look at the results from the "What Should I Blob" survey:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pLSGPc5ZtBN9BG8Zh8pP7Yw

I've emailed a "Form" to most of the people who read the Stare I think. I have left a link to the survey in the top menu, which always appears right above the posts. Other links: Miss Bee's website, my Picasa web photo albums, and my google site bretsbeer101. Thanks for participating in my survey.

I think I'm cool with the new template now. It took some fiddling for a while, and I couldn't remember how to put all the things back on the sidebar. But here it is - I think it looks reasonably slick. It's called Genesis, available on the website at the very bottom of the page - Cool Blogger Templates or something some such. Hope you like the new look!

New things:
The site is now a three-column affair, with the main posts on the left and two sidebars on the right. The first of the two sidebars is "me" stuff: my profile, a doohickey to chat with me if I'm signed into Gmail, my Shared Items from Google Reader, and my DailyLit book list (see my DailyLit post). Oh, and the world's wimpiest Blogroll: One! Hi, Miss Bee!

The second column is "blog" stuff, and gives you the option to subscribe using various services, shows the most recent comments, and has the Archives of The Stare. Fascinating.

Ok, well hope everyone likes the new look. Sound off in the comments.

-Bret

Just a reminder to any readers that come to the site, the sidebar on the right contains an box with the last five items that I've shared in Google Reader. I try to reserve these for interesting intellectual reading that would be both time-consuming (to me) to write up, and also probably rather boring for the people who read my blog, basically just my family.

Today I've shared a piece from the Becker-Posner blog, whom I've covered before, about "bribing" poor children to stay in school. The post is by Becker, about a Mexican program that pays parents to keep their kids in school, and the recent NYC initiative to pay high schoolers for passing performance. Interesting reading. And of course, check out my other starred items while you're at it.

Incidentally, if there are any Google Readers out there, you can either subscribe to my shared items as an RSS feed, or you can "friend" me.

I prefer to use this method as "blogging-of-last-resort" but I've seen some extremely interesting things on the internet recently.

Two things make tall buildings possible: the steel frame and the safety elevator. The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment. The population of the earth would ooze out over its surface, like an oil slick, and we would spend even more time stuck in traffic or on trains, traversing a vast carapace of concrete. And the elevator is energy-efficient—the counterweight does a great deal of the work, and the new systems these days regenerate electricity. The elevator is a hybrid, by design.

While anthems have been written to jet travel, locomotives, and the lure of the open road, the poetry of vertical transportation is scant. What is there to say, besides that it goes up and down?

That's from a New Yorker piece called Up and Then Down. Check it out.

Another N.Y. piece from a while ago by the esteemed Malcolm Gladwell: The Ketchup Conundrum. Who knew this condiment had such an interesting history?

¿Qué mas? Here's a link for the "50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time", which so far we've found to be very spotty but probably worth your time. Avoid #49.

Finally, I really enjoyed this little article about typographical errors. Maybe that's just me.

On Route 66. Now we're home and regularly scheduled blogging at random should resume soonly. Look for new apartment pictures soon, shot with our new Canon Powershot.

Also, in honor of the Iowa Caucus events, I'm re-posting a Russell Roberts quote that should be remembered whenever you get too giddy about a candidate:

Don't expect pigs to fly, cats to bark or politicians to act as if they care about us. They care about us if it helps them prosper. If it doesn't, they care about more important influences.

Nothing particularly special about these, other than Eminem is clued in both of them...






In other news, Blogger needs more keyboard shortcuts for adding pictures and such.

Also, Google Reader now features a search function. Yet another reason to Read.

Speaking of reading, if you're new in town, check out my post on Daily Lit: here. By book list is on the right sidebar, beneath the Shared Google Reader links. Just finished Tristram Shandy, moving on...

I'm going to start with the last one: Did anyone else see the Yankees get beat by 16 last night! Hahahaha... nice start Moose.

Art de Vany is quite a likable character: he writes with immeasurable wisdom on the science of food, he's an active 70-year old who loves sports - both performing and watching professionals, and he's an economist. He seems like a very even-headed and intelligent guy who's also fun: basically, who I hope to be in 50 years. Check out some of his writing here.

A new paper purports to give evidence that women are better at orienting themselves to healthier food sources, for evolutionary purposes. Men were hunters, women gatherers; thus, while men are generally better at navigation (required to get home after tracking an animal longer distances), when asked post-hoc to locate a particular food source, women more precise. Less convincing to me is their argument for the female predilection towards pink-red hues rather than blue-green. This article is worth reading for the summed up findings.

Is everything we know about saving the environment wrong? That's the title of an article in The New Republic ($1.25 an issue is probably worth it, assuming you're employed). I suppose I could be considered both a believer in "green" issues, as well as a skeptic; this article should give a good indication of why I'm not willing to radically put myself out for the purpose of not harming the environment: there's a good chance that I'm doing something else that harms something else. Economists are familiar with this problem.

I, Cringely blog author Robert Cringely writes that staying alive until the Singularity will be the hardest part. It's a nice overview of an event that polarizes really intelligent people, from Ray Kurzweil (optimist) to Bill Joy (inventor of the Internet and pessimist).

For those not hep to meta-technology geeks, the event known as the Singularity occurs when a technology passes the Turing Test, and is smarter than the human with which it is interacting.

"the Singularity is a phenomenon with both technological and economic components. Moore's Law works the same way. The underlying concept of both is the level of technological development we can reach AT A CERTAIN PRICE. The most powerful supercomputers can cost tens of millions of dollars and it is logical to assume that something on the order of a supercomputer would be the first machine to reach Singularity status. That's fine and would undoubtedly result in the creation of knowledge that would have an impact on all of us simply through the existence of that knowledge and its subsequent use by people and machines who may not have yet grown to Singularity, but what will really change everything is when the price of Singularity drops low enough to apply to the computer on our desks or on our wrists."

The article here.

Some items on the internets of late:

"Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch". Nick Tierney op ed about a theorist considering the possibilities that our world is actually an "ancestry simulation" a computer program being run by higher intelligences. Matrix-like, and interesting, if a bit out there.

"How To Save Money On Gas". Fairly self-explanatory.

"3D Sidewalk Art" is amazing. Check this out:

I also really like this one:

These are done with chalk, by the way.

Incredible discovery today, one that may cause others to look strangely at me: I can talk to my computer and make it do things.

Let me explain: there are speakable commands (for handicapped/disabled users) for the Finder in OS X along with a few other native applications like Safari and Mail.app. Some are silly, like "Tell me the time" or "Tell me what day it is", which are both immediately obvious by looking at my menu bar:

The real joy is in Finder, which has a list of probably 20 speakable commands programmed in. The best command is "Make Speakable" which takes that window and makes it, well, speakable. For instance, one of my most used folders, the only one on my desktop in fact, I call "Inbox". All my downloads go there, so every so often I visit the inbox and sort through it. It keeps the desktop clear (each icon on the desktop is treated as an open file, taking up RAM), and it's easy sorting in the finder: mp3s go here, crosswords here, pictures here, open disk images to try out new apps, etc. So my new way of getting to the inbox is: Hold 'Escape', say "Inbox". That's it!

Safari bookmarks are also speech-ready. With any open page, hold escape and say "Make Speakable". A little dialog box opens where you can call the bookmark something simple, like "Gmail" or whatever. Then just hold Escape and say the name of the bookmark, and it opens in a new tab in the open window.

I probably won't use this much in public for two reasons: I can't imagine that it recognizes speech very well with background noise, and you'll look a little strange talking to your computer.

In honor of this geekery, here's Home Computer is More Fun to Compute by Kraftwerk.

I'll take this time to briefly explain my menu bar, which has grown significantly in importance to me after I found out how much RAM the Dock uses. From left to right:

Milky Way is a program that replaces Preview on OS X. When I want to look at a picture in Finder, I click on it and M.W. pops up a slightly larger image. If I want to see it full scale, just click on the pop up and it opens full screen. No opening of programs, no need to "Quit" Preview.

Meteorologist is a nice little app that displays an image of the current weather, along with the temperature. Fairly customizable, and very stable.

Tiger Launch is an application launcher. Clicking on the paw opens up a customizable list of applications. I only keep ten things in the Dock, including Finder, System Preferences, and Namely (which I will discuss some other day) - none of which go away anyhow. The remaining Dock apps are "frequently used" in some sense.

The envelope is a Google Notifier for Gmail, the number next to it is how many unopened messages are in my inbox. Also, when I get a new email, a Growl notification pops up, identifying the sender, the re: line, and about eight words into the first sentence. Which is nice.

The scissors is a sweet app called JumpCut, which holds *everything* that goes to the clipboard. Anytime "Copy" is invoked or Command-C is held, that text goes to JumpCut; from the menu bar I call pull down the last ten, or with a key command I can toggle through the last fifty (!) copies. Which is really nice for when you want to copy several things without switching tabs, windows, programs, whatever.

The small numbers on top of each other are Top: internal temperature of my Mac and Bottom: fan speed, in RPM. I stick with Apple defaults for the most part, but if it's getting really hot I'll turn up the minimum fan speed to more quickly cool down the laptop. Things like playing movies or music with full Internet-browsing can run up the temp pretty fast.

MainMenu is a "system optimizer" with a couple of nice features. It makes some "command line" stuff a lot easier: things like running maintenance and chron scripts, repairs, cleaning, and some other tasks. My most used features are probably Restart Dock, and enabling/disabling Dashboard (another memory hog).

The rest are Apple prefs: Battery, showing the graphic and how much time til the battery runs out, AirPort show the wireless signal, Microphone for audio volume, and my customized Date and Time bar. This one was tough to figure out, but you can pretty much make that say anything up there. I abbreviate the day to save space, but I like to have the whole month there, along with AM/PM. Not that I don't usually know, it's just nice. The profile is "Fast User Switching", a nice little feature that lets me log into another account very quickly, by choosing the account from the drop down menu, then typing the password. Bypasses the Login Window entirely. Which brings us to Spotlight, the much-maligned and actually doomed feature that searches your harddrive for keywords. I don't hate Spotlight, but I only use it occasionally. If I upgrade to Leopard in October, though, it's gone.

OK, Computer lovers. And OK Computer lovers. Radiohead, with Lucky

It can be hard sometimes to finish a novel, or even start one, when you're in college, and I assume beyond. It seems like there's always something else to do, whether it's spend time with friends and family, study and/or work, tidy up, whatever it is that takes up your free time. Take naps...

I still managed to get through a reasonable amount of literature, between class assignments and textbooks, books I would grab along with my textbooks from the book store, checkouts from the public or school library. It's always haphazard, but it's something.

And now there's a new something, something that appeals deeply to my Internet-indebted soul. It's called Daily Lit, and the premise is that you can receive snippets of literary works on the daily. There are two options: a feed reader, or email. Either way is easy enough; I use Google Reader and get an updated chapter/poem/lengthy paragraph every day at 3 am. The other way to do it is have an email sent at a designated time.

It's still a bit haphazard, as the works they have available are a somewhat short list, when compared to, say, the downtown Phoenix library. But the price and convenience can't be beaten.

Two key features: you can read as many works as you like, and you can refresh feeds as often as you finish them. The former refers to the fact that Daily Lit has reference works, foreign language novels, and poetry in addition to English language non-fiction and novels. These days, I receive a poem from William Blake, a random quotation from a work called "Many Thoughts of Many Minds", and a chapter or two of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman each day. The latter feature means that as soon as I read the sentence or two that is a random quote, I can click a link to send the next quote to my reader.

Whether you just want to re-read Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" in four installments, or care to spend two years slogging through "War and Peace" or "Les Mis", Daily Lit is probably worth your time if you check your email every day or if you already are invested enough in the Internet to use a feed reader.

Here's what the Daily Lit interface looks like for my profile:

Check out this interesting site which tracks, well, lots of things. I found the number of internet user rather astonishing. Check out rates of change here.

Read Even Public School Employees Love Education Tax Credits over at Cato At Liberty.

Ok, this is more than a little freaky: the new head of public education for the state of Texas is a nut-job creationist. Read more about this man who WILL push church and state together.

Enough about scary things. Look at the beauty of the new iMac:

Billy G. should just be happy that Apple didn't rub it in and use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse in the photo, reducing the number of wires to...one.

Hilarious Fake Steve Jobs post about Linux devotees (those would be the Freetards) vs. Microsoft apologists over recent news that MS now has more Chinese market share. I saw one blogger call it "inspired". Peep over at the new Fortune.com-hosted FSJ. blogspot.com.

Dr. Gregory Clark of the University of Cal.-Davis has an intriguing-looking new book coming out, called "A Farewell to Alms", which analyzes the means by which mankind managed to escape continual poverty and jump-start the Industrial Revolution. Econ bloggers have been all over this one, preemptively debating some of the more provocative points.

In his thesis, Dr. Clark describes the Malthusian trap, whereby a geometric marginal productivity increase through technology ushered in exponential population growth. He believes that throughout history, man has struggled on the cusp of this line: untenably rapid population growth when compared to cultivation methodologies, and that only through natural disasters (e.g., the Black Plague - caused by these very same factors of "too many people, not enough [fill in basic need]") was the number of humans reduced enough such that subsequent generations, inheriting the technological know-how, were able to provide for themselves. Of course, these evolutionary winners celebrated by copulating prodigiously, falling back into the same trap as before.

Nicholas Wade's review in the Times
To read a chapter from the book on social consequences of the I.R., visit Mark Thoma's
Economist's View. With comments.

Of course, in a rural agrarian society, children double as labor. So it made infinitely more sense to pop out as many kids as you could afford to feed for, say, ten years, at which point their labor productivity outstrips their consumption. But what causes a modern family - especially an urban, economically disadvantaged family - to continue to procreate so rapidly? Cost of contraception vs. Cost of raising a child? Hmm..


Speaking of rural-agrarian societies, Timbuktu has long been associated with "the middle of nowhere". It's just one of those proper nouns - like Walla Walla, Washington - that rolls off the tongue so nicely that you don't even realize where it is, anything about it, or whether it really exists. Apparently at one time, this Malian city in the middle of the Sahara was a bustling academic center, featuring the University of Sankore which boasted 25,000 scholars. Due to a confluence of agricultural and religious factors, traffic - and scholarship - declined in the late middle ages. Today the Libyan government is pouring money back into Timbuktu, with the intention of transforming it into "the Alexandria of Black Africa" by collecting ancient manuscripts in storage throughout the streets and nomad camps of Mali.

Lydia Polgreen has more.

I'll use this opportunity to post some traditional, and not so traditional, music of Mali - a nation of nomads for hundreds of years. Tribal songsmith, known as a griots (jeli, in Manding), served as a mouthpiece for the past and present of the Tuareg people. Carrying on this tradition today include great artists like Toumani Diabate, the recently deceased Ali Farka Toure, and Tinariwen, the latter riding a wave of international popularity today. While rooted in Saharan Africa, many of these artists have collaborated with Western artists and musicologists such as Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, and Ry Cooder.

The tunes:
Toumani Diabate, maestro of the 21-string West African harp known as the kora, from his debut album Kaira: Jarabi

Ali Farka Toure, known as the African John Lee Hooker, with a bluesy solo off Niafunke: Instrumental

Diabate and Farka Toure together on 2005's In the Heart of the Moon: Kala

Farka Toure with Ry Cooder in 1994, from Talking Timbuktu: Gomni

Internet sensation of the moment Tinariwen, from Ammasakoul: Chet Boghassa

Finally, there's Salif Keita. From allmusic.com:

Born to royal lineage, with ancestral roots going back to Soundjata Keita, the founder of the Malian Empire in 1240, Keita was disowned by his father after announcing his plans to play music.

Here's Yamoke, off his album Moffou.

And speaking of ethnomusicologist rock musicians, I just found out that David Byrne composed the score for the second season of Big Love on HBO. Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo, Wes Anderson films) did a great job in the first season, and I'm excited about this development. Now I just need a TV...

Also, have you seen the new iMacs?

*Update: I forgot a song I wanted to post, that refers to the capital of Mali, Bamako. Amadou and Mariam met at an Institute for the Blind in Bamako in the '80s. Both blind, they have three kids and have toured together for the last 20 years.

Amadou et Mariam, from 2006's Dimanche a Bamako - Taxi Bamako

By show of hands, who here uses P2P programs to acquire music, video, etc.?

BitTorrent is my preferred alternative to security catastrophes like Kazaa, et. al. It's not a program so much as a platform. I'm new to it as well, so I'll turn it over to the guys at Lifehacker.org:
Beginner's Guide
Slightly More Advanced User's Guide

Btw, I use Transmission as my downloading client, I've heard good things about xTorrent as well.

Also, in new music news today, we've got..

UGK's 'Underground Kings' is now out on DVD,
Public Enemy's 'How Do You Sell Soul to People Who Have Sold Their Soul' is reissued,
and a James Brown 'Singles' comp drops.

Also, Zap Mama has a new album "Supermoon" out; Marie Daulne is probably my favorite Belgian-Zairean soul chanteuse. Featuring songs in French, English, and "pygmy onomatopoeic vocal techniques", Zap Mama deliciously blends African soul with European and urban production. I point you to Yaku, off of 2004's 'Ancestry in Progress', and recommend that you turn up the bass.

Finally, the Flight of the Conchords have an album out. I think they're funny, plus, the sidekick's name is 'Bret', just like that. I don't have a TV, so I don't know if their show on HBO is a flop or not - maybe one of these days I'll grab a Torrent..

**Huge update: Lifehacker has posted up a carnival of BitTorrent goodness. Check yo' self before you wreck yo' self: here."

Purpose:

Well, I graduated this spring, and I just moved to Phoenix. I have lots of interests, and I want to remember some things about them. To preview a few things that I'll be returning to:

1. Music. I'll post mp3s on a reasonably regular basis here, using DivShare. If anyone has a request or wants more off an album, hit me up at waynebretski@gmail.com and we'll work something out.

2. Technology, the Internet, and Apple. I read a lot of things on the intertubes, and some I think are both arcane, and worth sharing. So I'll let you know. Also, I got a Mac this spring and it has revolutionized my life. I'll spotlight a few of my favorite applications, processes, etc. If there is demand for Windows alternatives or I run across something cool for PC users, I'll post those too.

3. Food. I cook. I like to do it, and I want to improve. I'm going to start posting recipes/processes (I'm pretty bad at following a "recipe"), and trying to be a little more
organized about the whole thing.

4. Crosswords. When I have time, I do the New York Times crossword every day. I'll also attempt the New York Sun a lot (cause it's free online). I'll probably post the answers occasionally, maybe comment a bit, and note my time. This is mostly for me to look back on.

5. Economics. My degree, particular interest, and the subject of a lot of my online reading. I'll post some things I think others might enjoy relating to this most versatile of subjects. I'm going to avoid politics, though.

6. Education. I'm going into the teaching profession this fall, and I'm starting to accrue news and notes about teaching, etc. Something strikes my fancy...

7. Beer. Goes along with the food, I enjoy so-called Micro-brews along with a bevy of international styles. At some point I'll drop some knowledge. I worked with an awesome group at Beertopia the last six months I lived in Omaha, including Beer Specialist Brent Udron, who I think will get a special guest post at some point.

8. Art, Photography, Film. Everybody likes these right? If I find cool jpegs or video clips, I'll post or embed them. I'll make every effort not to use copyrighted images, so feel free to use it if you see it here.

9. If any of you, dear readers, are involved in anything that I can point my internet browser (Camino, by the way!) to, let me know and I'll be sure to pimp it immediately.

Comments are open, I'd love to hear from you. Also, Blogger uses Atom feeds, so if you use an RSS feeder like Google Reader, NetNewsWire, BlogLines, etc., it should work fine. I get all the photos, text, and mp3 links in my GReader.

And if you don't know about Google Reader or why it can help those of you with Internet addictions, peep this.

"Peace and love in this house."