MUSIC: Germans Love David Has... I Mean Johnny Cash: "I've just heard the most bizarre version of 'Space Oddity' since The Langley Schools Music Project:
For the past few years, producer Jennifer Sharpe has amassed a small collection of what she likes to call 'foreign tongue recordings.' They're versions of hit songs from the American charts, sung by the original artists, usually in German, Italian or French.
The singers learned the lyrics phonetically, line by line, taught by a language coach. Sharpe says the songs were recorded in a time when English-language songs had a tough time making it in Europe.
I don't know much about the German language, but I'm pretty sure the Beatles butchered it unmercifully.(Written by: Cigarette)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Apparently the book had an Easter Egg...
/me wants it.
POLITICS: Iraq’s Sergeant Sheik: "U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Dale Horn managed to earn himself the unlikely title of ‘Sheik’ in Iraq. Here’s how he did it.
Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radar for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.
Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols.
Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.
Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.
Mohammed, Horn's mentor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik.
Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
TECHNOLOGY: 125 Miles of Wireless: "Last year at Defcon, four kids from Ohio cobbled together scavenged satellite dish equipment, loaded it onto a truck, and dragged to the desert outside Las Vegas to see how far they could send an unamplified wireless signal. They set the record at 55.1 miles, and on the last day of the conference when they stepped up to accept their award, one of them jokingly asked if anyone wanted to buy their equipment so they could get home.
This year, the same four friends loaded up even more gear and set out for the desert again, with the intention of shattering their record... which they did. They shot a decent wireless signal almost 125 miles into the desert, across the border into Utah.Contestants had to establish an 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi link using two laptops with home-brewed or commercial antennas, and see how far apart they could place the computers and still get a connection with or without amplification.
The team, iFiber-Redwire, competed for the second time in the Wi-Fi shootout contest last weekend at the DefCon hacker conference here, and achieved a 124.9-mile unamplified connection from atop a mountain in Nevada and a small mound in Utah. (Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.)
That was several dozen miles farther than the 55.1-mile link that won them the contest last year. They maintained the connection for three hours.
Ben Corrado, Justin Rigling, Andy Meng and Brandon Schamer, all 19 and 20 years old and hailing from Ohio, were hoping to demolish a 192-mile record set by an amplified air-to-ground link in 2003, but were limited by terrain and time.
Even though they had some sponsorship this year, the team was plagued with problems. One of their laptops died in the desert and would only function if held upside-down. Their path to their destination for the shot was blocked by a forest fire. While rigging up their gear, one of the teammates fell from a scaffold and broke his leg.
That's some pretty amazing stuff from young engineers. I can't wait to see what this team is doing in a few years.(Written by: Shalome)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
MUSIC: Sigur Rós Song Title Translations for New Album: "Sigur Rós will release two songs, 'Saeglopur' and 'Glósóli', from their upcoming new album, Takk, on August 16th as downloads on a new site (not launched yet). 'Glósóli', however, will not be available for download in the U.S. for perhaps five minutes, possibly less, depending on P2P upload speeds. Takk will be released on September 13th.
Meanwhile, here are translations of the new album's song titles:1. 'Takk' = Thanks
2. 'Glósóli' = Glowsun
3. 'Hoppípolla' = Hopping into Puddles
4. 'Med Blódnasir' = I've Got a Nosebleed
5. 'Sé Lest' = I See a Train
6. 'Sæglópur' = Lost at Sea
7. 'Mílanó' = Milan
8. 'Gong' = Gong
9. 'Andvari' = Zephyr
10. 'Svo Hljótt' = So Quietly
11. 'Heysátan' = The Haystack
As we reported earlier, the lyrics for this album are in an actual language, Icelandic. Hopefully someone will take the time to translate those as well when the album is released.(Written by: Keith)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Bass culture: "
In the comments section to yesterday's entry I quote an article in Monday's Guardian in which Julian Baggini and other philosophers examine imaginary scenarios designed to present typical modern problems and paradoxes. I particularly liked the first example, in which a 'cosmopolitan' called Saskia is annoyed that a white waiter brings her poppadoms in an Indian restaurant, because she wants to be multicultural herself but prefers the wait staff in the 'exotic' restaurants she visits to remain monocultural. 'Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism,' comments David Goodhart. 'The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs.'
I usually refer to 'asymmetrical multiculturalism' as the strange collusion between liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists. Marxy put it rather more bitchily in a debate we were having yesterday about the meaning of a swastika he saw on a Harakjuku fashion-punk: 'I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.' (My counter-argument was that there's nothing inherently right wing about preserving national cultural differences: artists, museum curators and restauranteurs do it as well as right wing bigots. What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)(Via Click opera.)
(Kt had this picture taken in Maui.)
Navigating a wine store can be as difficult as trying to walk against traffic in Times Square. Aisle after aisle of labels that might as well be written hieroglyphic codes and cramped little spaces, which are almost begging you to knock a bottle off the shelf, is enough to drive you to drink (hmmm…coincidence or marketing strategy?). Well, times they are a changing - Discovery Wines, a unique and innovative wine store in Alphabet City, is setting out to change the face, or should we say interface, of wine stores.The second you walk into Discovery Wines you are aware that this isn’t your typical wine shop. The bright modern space feels welcoming and airy – baby stroller and dog friendly – but what really separates Discovery Wines from any other place we have been are the touch screen panels around the store. These touch screens are like having your own personal sommelier guide you through the place. They give out information on wine based on the way we drink wine – a crazy concept. Let’s say you are cooking a chicken dish and are looking for a wine to pair it with – the amazing touch screen has an answer. Or suppose your are feeling a little crazy and are looking for an exciting red wine from Turkey for under $10 – the amazing touch scene has 4 options. Or the best feature yet, let’s just say the green label with the cute little ducks catches your eye, just walk it over to the amazing touch screen to scan and it will tell you what it tastes like, what foods to pair it with and even about the 16 brothers that picked the grapes off of the south side of the hill.
Ellisa Cooper, one of the owners of Discovery Wines, says ‘their mission is to fix what’s wrong with wine stores today.’ Some of the ways they have achieved this is through bright open spaces, offering lesser-known affordable wines (70% of the wines are $20 or less) and of course through those amazing screens. And all the time you save from not aimlessly wondering around the store can be spent at their wine bar, where they offer daily tastings.
We are certainly entering into a new era in the world of wine. It is no longer some esoteric, unapproachable subject. It’s fun, accessible and relaxed. The world of wine is getting a much overdue facelift– and we think it looks pretty amazing.
Discovery Wines, 10 Avenue A between Houston and 2nd Street, (212) 674-7833
"(Via Gothamist.)
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
MUSIC: Christopher Lee: Saruman the Metal: "What do you do for an encore after a lifetime spent playing film badasses like Dracula (ten times), Saruman, and a Star Wars Sith Lord? Something that celebrates horror, Tolkien fantasy, and science fiction: metal. And so, 82 year-old actor Christopher Lee will perform at the upcoming Earthshaker Festival in Geiselwind, Germany.
He will sing with two bands, Manowar and Rhapsody, according to concert organisers.
Lee will be accompanied by a live orchestra and a choir and will perform alongside heavy metal bands such as Grave Digger, Dragonlord and Forces of Evil.
Suggested name for Lee's band: Man-flesh.
(via brooklynvegan)
(Written by: Keith)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
Calling this a hack is way too generous, but TheDamnBlog has a little tip for getting the most out of your next
elevator ride. Apparently lots of elevators have an express mode that lets you override everyone else’s selections and
go straight to the floor you’re going to. You just press ‘Door Close’ and the button for your floor at the same
time. Should work on most Otis elvators, as well as a few other models that are out there, but don’t blame us when you
accidentally go plunging to your death (blame TheDamnBlog, if you must).
[Via Digg]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.
"(Via engadget.com.)
Monday, August 01, 2005
In the post just below, I linked to an article about Charles Kernaghan, a man who spends his life shaming big corporations over their use of child labor and sweat shop labor in the products they have made overseas. Over at his site, Matt Yglesias responded with the standard, but quite powerful, argument that we in the West (or the developed world) often project unrealistic and even harmful expectations on to wages and labor practices in developing countries.
So for instance, rotten working conditions for far under a dollar an hour may be bad. But the conditions may be less onerous and the pay at least marginally more generous than what some of these people would otherwise be making in the agricultural sectors of their national economies. And maybe that's why the company owners are able to get people to work at what seem to us to be inhumane conditions. (As a general matter, people in the West underestimate the sheer wretchedness of agricultural labor and the endemic nature of rural poverty.)
In any case, that's the argument. And while I think it somewhat discounts the related issues of rural overpopulation and mechanization, on balance it's a strong argument.
There is one thing, however, that this line of reasoning misses: political violence. Which is, after all, the grand-daddy of extra-economic inputs.
You can't make a solid argument that wages in other countries have found their natural level if one of the major 'inputs' is organized political violence to keep wages low and labor activism inert.
To put it more concretely, one part of a real market in labor is the ability for people to protest conditions, either actively (through organizing) or passively (through quitting or refusing to work). But if people who try to form labor unions are murdered then that whole theory falls apart.
This certainly doesn't solve the thicket of questions about globalization and third-world economic development. Nor does it invalidate the broader argument Matt is making. But on this particular point I think it makes clear that we're dealing with more than invisible hands.
"(Via Talking Points Memo.)
Sunday, July 31, 2005
I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.
Baby in a Gift Bag Found in Brooklyn: "
A newborn baby girl was found in a gift bag that was hanging on a chain link fence in Brooklyn. The girl, about a week or so old, is in stable condition, but the residents in Bushwick who found the baby were surprised that someone could leave the baby this way. There were a few interesting quotes. Karen Vaughan, who found the baby while heading to a store for cigarettes at 4AM, told the NY Times, 'I was like, 'Yo, look, a baby.'' Another man, Calvin Johnson, who also found the baby, told the Daily News, 'I'm very distraught. But I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.' Another resident told the Times, 'I'd like to give [the mother] a nice beating.' Police are looking for the mother, and Brooklyn DA Chester Hynes emphasized that babies should be taken to 'any firehouse, police station, or hospital...The baby will be okay and no questions will be asked.'
Photography by Newsday
(Via Gothamist.)
Friday, July 29, 2005
Free beer and planets for all!
The evidence points to it being smaller than Pluto, and right about Sedna's size.
passing the time
Popsicles dripped on shirts. Shirts cleaned in the sink.
Supposedly atrocious food from Swish, left by the roommates to whet the appetite of yours truly.
The Two Towers on Encore WAM late at night. Yes we apparently get Encore WAM (thanks to Yulia for pointing that out.)
I found my Mogwai, in Ogg format. Silly iPods, no mogwai for you.
Tomorrow, Jets Camp with Cy.
Also drinking Tang, the choice of astronauts everywhere.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Kylie?
CULTURE: Europe: Drought... Australia: Man Drought: "Australia is facing a drought of men as continued migration to the northern hemispheres larger economies leaves behind a gender skew:
New figures show there were 20,000 fewer men than women aged 30-something in Australia last year, according to a report by accounting firm KPMG, reversing a long period in which there were more men.
The study, which uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, shows that in the 12 months to 2004 there was a surplus of women in every age group between 29 and 55.The skew has had a remarkable effect on national culture:
'The man drought is leading to a shift in consumer culture; you have more women buying apartments, taking out finance loans; women are evolving their own single culture,' Mr Salt said.
(Written by: SomeOneUK)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
Do I hear 4?
USDA probes possible 3rd case of mad cow disease: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cow suspected of having mad cow disease will be retested in British and U.S. laboratories for confirmation of what may be America's third case, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday."
(Via Reuters: Top News.)
At first blush, this doesn't seem like terribly good news, but it does give us a bit more information to use when thinking about our climate response options. Researchers studying the carbon cycle in the Amazon River basin (particularly the uptake and release of CO2 by the region's plants) have found that, rather than sequestering the CO2 for decades or centuries, the carbon is cycled out back into the atmosphere within five years. Among the implications of this discovery (assuming it's confirmed) is that the Amazon rain forests are not good candidates for long-term capture of CO2, and that we need to pay close attention to the actual carbon cycle for each biome before assigning sequestration targets.
(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 02:05 PM)"
Just because.
Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: "
P.Z. Myers on the non-sweet tooth of cats:
Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: What this protein does is detect sugar, and then instruct your taste buds to start sending nerve impulses up to your brain.... Cats don't get to experience that... their TAS1R2 gene carries a substantial mutation that destroys its function.... There is a small deletion near the beginning of the sequence that chops out 247 base pairs. This deletion puts the remainder of the sequence out of register... turning it into non-functional nonsense, and also generating multiple stop sequences.... Poor kitties. They don't even know what they are missing.
It's nice to have an explanation for why cats prefer fish to candy bars, but there's more to the story than that. It's also another piece of evidence for evolution. The cat TAS1R2 gene has been thoroughly blasted into uselessness, but there is obviously more than one way to do that. A larger deletion that took out the whole gene would be just as effective, as would a 1 base pair deletion at the beginning of the sequence. Any random scrambling would do. So how do you explain this?
The sequence was analyzed in house cats, but the gene was also examined in samples taken from a tiger and a cheetah. They have exactly the same mutation... 'plagiarized errors ', a phenomenon that is most simply explained by common descent. The last common ancestor of house cats, tigers, and cheetahs had this mutation, and passed it on to all of its progeny.
We can also make an evolutionary prediction: I expect that lions, leopards, and lynxes will also have the same 247 base pair deletion... the scar of this ancient gouge in their DNA will be present in all cats...
One question: is there any sense in which it is... adaptive for cats to not like fruit? Fruit is, after all, a quick source of energy--easily digested calories. One would think that a cat that liked fruit would have more energy for the hunt.
Or is this just an example of genetic drift at work? The few animals that speciated into the ancestral cat lineage got this mutation, and it wasn't (very) harmful, so they didn't become extinct. And thereafter there was no way to undo it.
"(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)
it's a dirty job. Bradford Plumer reads City Journal so we don't have to:
"
Bradford Plumer: City Journal always strikes me as one of the most noxious magazines around... its writers... wade into decades-old debates... disregard all... research, and then flatly declare that liberals are stupid and conservatives were right all along about everything. Exhibit A is Kay Hymowitz's piece this month on how... legions of liberal academics... have kept people poor and stupid for 40 years... [and] the one true cause of black poverty is that most black children grow up in fatherless homes. Liberals, Hymowitz declares, need to step out of their 'don't blame the victim' mentality and realize this hyper-obvious fact.
Well, okay. Plenty of liberals have been thinking about the importance of family structure for quite some time: she even mentions two (William Julius Wilson and Sara MacLanahan), and then there was, um, the last Democratic president--a pretty prominent liberal, when you think about it. (Hymowitz makes it seem like Clinton was only 'forced' to worry about family structure in the post-Gingrich era, but in fact, his 1992 campaign speeches included lines like, 'Governments don't raise kids; parents do.') Beyond that, though, the relationship between marriage and childhood problems--let alone wider poverty--is complex and deserves a bit fuller treatment than the shallow gloss Hymowitz gives.
As it happens, the other day I was reading a collection of essays called The Future of the Family, edited by none other than Hymowitz' hero, Pat Moynihan, with a literature review of the effects of fatherlessness co-authored by... yet another one of Hymowitz' heroes, Sara MacLanahan! And lo, the results are a bit more ambiguous than the City Journal essay suggests.... MacLanahan argues that... fatherlessness is associated with lower test scores, greater levels of poverty, behavioral problems, delinquency, etc. for children.... What's not clear... is why... perhaps poverty causes both fatherlessness and negative outcomes for children, in which case single motherhood wouldn't be the root problem. One study, for instance, found that 'when pre-divorce circumstances are taken into account, the associations between family disruption and child outcomes become smaller, sometimes statistically insignificant.' (Not all studies, though.) And then some of the findings are just plain odd. For instance, the academic achievement gap between kids in one- and two-parent families is moderately small in many social democracies like Sweden and Iceland--smaller than the gap in 'neo-liberal' states like the U.S. or New Zealand--suggesting that a sturdy safety net can overcome the supposed disadvantages of single-parent families. On the other hand, the achievement gap is even smaller in Mediterranean countries....
Basically, it's just not clear.... The facts here aren't speaking for themselves, or else they are, but in ancient Aramaic.
[I]nsofar as the fact of single motherhood itself is actually a 'problem' (and I'm not convinced it is, but let's suppose...), there are basically two remedies. One, we can try to reduce the number of divorces by, say, making divorce harder... that seems like a terrible option....
So let's look behind door #2. And door #2 is... reducing out-of-wedlock births in the first place. This seems like a pretty unambiguously decent policy goal, especially since 60 percent of all births are unintended.... Now the tried-and-true way to reduce unintended out-of-wedlock births involves teen-pregnancy prevention programs that emphasize, yes, condoms and other 'icky' items. (Hell, they can teach abstinence too, since that seems to work, though 'abstinence-only' programs pretty clearly do not.)... But these are all pretty well-known liberal policy goals, I daresay.
(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Why am I not surprised?
