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Cracked.com tells the story of Joy Milne - as a kid she'd play games of identifying varieties of rose by their respective smells, and later on as a nurse she discovered an ability - like canines - to detect various diseases, including Parkinson's (notoriously hard to diagnose early) which led to a reliable skin swab test.

It reminds me of a party-trick the physicist Richard Feynman had, where he would ask folks to touch just one book on a shelf when he was out of a room, then he would come back and identify the book by smell alone.

Famously, the sense of smell goes way back in the brain, and connects to emotional centers more directly than most of our other sensors, but it's challenging to learn to trust it - you can't pinpoint a source like you can with sight or touch or sometimes sound, acclimation happens quickly, it all seems so subjective, but maybe most importantly it's hard to quantify the sensations and put them into words. (I do think verbalization is an important part of cognition for most of us - language is the structure with which we build thoughts, not just describe them after the fact.) Also we associate so many smells with negative things - like even the Feynman story seems a little gross, there's an instinctive revulsion about it... I guess it's just a part of how we are part of our environment - the boundaries aren't as precise as we would like.

August was a decent month for music, especially from what Melissa's old coworkers had on during a getaway weekend...

5 star:
Hate On Me (Jill Scott)
Oh man I love the power and slow grind of this - joins the ranks of 5 stars.

4 star:
Clink, Clink Another Drink (Spike Jones & His City Slickers)
Goofy Loony-Tunes-esque novelty song, I just love the lyric "Trinkle, trinkle, trinkle, trinkle / Slice of cheese and bite of pickle / Doesn't even cost a nickel / Now to wash it down"
Hey! (I'm Dead) (Jank Sinatra)
Kind of a novelty song, but a real earworm.
Ken Makes a Discovery (Mark Ronson & Andrew Wyatt)
JP Honk does a "2001" version, and this one from the Barbie movie has some great funk.
Quality Control (Jurassic 5)
Jurassic 5 was a conscious throwback, and the way they dip into unison is great. Also fantastic groove.
Jock-A-Mo (Sugar Boy Crawford)
Been doing some due diligence about "Iko Iko" that JP Honk has taken on, this recording is big in its history.

3 star:
Boom Clap (Charli XCX)
Strange Things Will Happen (The Radio Dept.)
Alors on danse (Stromae)
Bomfalleralla (Afasi & Filthy)
Light (Michael Kiwanuka)
All Shook Up (Ry Cooder)
Opus 12Eee (Harry "The Hipster" Gibson)
Personal (Ice T)
Tap In (Saweetie)
Cumbia (Mexican Institute of Sound)
So What (Biréli Lagrène & Sylvain Luc)
Barbie World (with Aqua) (Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice)
Sinfonía Agridulce (Mexican Institute of Sound)
New Partner (Palace Music)
Which Side Are You On? (Rude Mechanical Orchestra)
Psyché rock (Les Yper-Sound)
Clearly a big inspiration for the "Futurama" theme song (especialy the chimes) but the modem noise makes it insufferable, and I may banish it to "2 star"

One of the hardest things in life to learn is which bridge to Cross and which Bridge to Burn.

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Light month for the still new summary format... Janelle Monáe is superb as always, and the "Caravan" by The Mills Brothers was a great bookend.

	Make Me Feel Janelle Monáe	Love the almost ASMR sound of the mouth clicks - and this song has so many small little twists, I love it- Strong "Prince" vibe. Some tumblr entry. Like her stuff in general.
★ ★ ★ ★	Saber Dance Harry James and His Orchestra	Heh, remember Peewee's Big Adventure? I played this in college, maybe some other places...
	Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit) N.E.R.D	Uptempo remix Liked this song, ran into the remix in this All iPod Ads video...
★ ★ ★ ★	Paagal Badshah	Blend of traditional India music and hiphop - was playing at Melissa's exercise class. Saw something online about this - controversy where the video is maybe being discriminated against and deserves some record for most views, or maybe there was click-buying, or maybe every big video does that...
	Something About You (Single) Level 42	Famous 80s new wave The brilliant Cary Bros cover of this made me look for other variants, so I went to the original.
	I Think I See the Light Cat Stevens	Harold+Maude's soundtrack had way too much Cat Stevens, though this one is pretty ok.
	Hole In The Bucket Spearhead	90s hiphop with a protest edge. References in a band email thread about how to use our funds.
★ ★ ★ ★	True Colors (Film Version) Anna Kendrick & Justin Timberlake	An episode of "Superstore" had the original, thought this cover seemed more promising. Deep ambivalence about Lauper's original...
	Blurred Ice (Vanilla Ice vs. Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams & T.I.) Ed Home	Mashup of some problematic songs. I've had "Best of Booty" (pop-mashups, some truly inspired) tracks sitting around waiting for a quiet month for a while.
	Them Basses Big Top Orchestra	Marching / Circus Band music. My bass buddy Kevin C posted: "Unpopular Opinion: Them Basses is not a very good march." But I remember playing it once or twice.
★ ★ ★ ★	Gittin' Funky Kid 'N Play	80s hip hop - missed the music back in the day, but now I think they were one of the bigger influences in the Christian rap I was listening to around then. Work buddy Mifi was going to see "Hammer House Party", MC Hammer and a pile of 80s/90s artists including these guys.
★ ★ ★ ★	Get Up Get Out (feat. Jstlbby) Born Dirty	Big motivational music. Someone on work slack did a push to all servers and sent a Spotify link to this, since it seemed thematically appropriate.
★ ★ ★ ★	bad guy Billie Eilish	The kinda sexy song that knocked "Old Town Road" off the perch. Love the "Duh". Friend was playing during a getaway weekend
	Nobody Mitski	Song sounds a bit too studio clean. The line "Give me one good honest kiss And I'll be alright" was on tumblr - here and here
★ ★ ★ ★	Caravan The Mills Brothers	Vocal-instrumental version of a jazz great. Doing Blog cleanup I ran into it while doing blog cleanup - on /2010/02/15 my mom mentioned by grandfather Papa Sam liked the group.

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Let's leave aside the fact that no divine entity or precept of natural law gives anyone the right to own an assault weapon. Let's also ignore the fact that it's entirely likely that gun control solutions would have denied the Odessa shooter easy access to the firearms with which he carried out his killings.

The most interesting question here is about evil intent. If human evil is the ultimate cause of gun violence–rather than the shocking ease with which modern firearms allow tense situations to escalate into deadly violence and unbalanced individuals to become mass murderers in a matter of seconds–then presumably there must be more bad people in America than anywhere else in the world.

I've been hearing "God-given right to own guns" in a few quarters. How the hell does that work? Either it's "well everything comes from God" (all things good and ill, I guess, if God is all powerful and lets 'em happen... and Gun Control would come from God too) or maybe just "well there's this amendment about guns and militias in the Constitution, and that especially in particular came from God".

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Oh wow - MRI videos of what's going on with the mouth and tongue and throat when a trombone player is doing their thing! Here's my favorite:

You know life is what you make of it / So beautiful, or so what...

A while ago my erstwhile debating partner introduced me to Rapoport's Rules, guidelines for criticizing the argument of an opponent. As formulated by my favorite philosopher Daniel Dennett, they go:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way."
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Another term for this is "steelmanning" - in contrast to "strawmanning", where you knock down a lightweight representation of the opposing argument that's designed to be knocked down, here you make an effort to really understand and then gird it in rhetorical steel and state it back to them.

On some levels the rules' concept is appealing, but also - unlikely, I guess I'd say, for people who have are arguing sincerely. If you could whole-heartedly restate your partner's (or as the rules put it, "target's") view, you'd pretty much have to be believing it yourself. That "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way" bit is also weirdly condescending - your displayed mastery of the domain is such that your "target" will humbly thank you for your cleverness of the restatement? For something that you still don't believe? What kind of insincere sophistry is that? Like a suit of armor, I think this kind of steelman will ring hollow.

My erstwhile buddy didn't really grasp my objections until he listened to Hannibal Buress on the Sam Harris podcast. (Admittedly Buress might be a little drunk, but I appreciate his sincere points) Around 29:00 minutes in, Sam Harris says

Here's a bet, here's a bet: I could summarize your view of me in a way that you'd agree with. You couldn't return the favor. You want to take that bet? I'm absolutely sure I can articulate how you view your side of the conversation in a way that you'd sign off on. I have absolutely no faith that you could do the same for me. That's a problem, we're not successfully communicating.

My buddy had an even strong reaction against Harris there than I did, that he saw Harris using the "I can see your side" concept as a bludgeon.

My counter-proposal was "spongemanning". The best we can do is try to absorb the other person's argument, then wring ourselves out, restating the argument as best we can, and have our partner comment on the drippings, to see how much of the salient info we had actually taken in. Spongemanning offers more substance than the superficialities of steelmanning, and it is more respectful than steelmannings "anything you can think, I can think better".

At its very best it invites participants to think about where their partner is coming from, and what are the headwaters of their current flow. (At the risk of straining the wet metaphor.) One of the few things I like about Ayn Rand is her alleged greeting of "What are your premises?" It's rather belligerent, but it gets to the heart of why sincere people who keep faith in the methods of rationality and discourse as a way of understanding the universe can still disagree... they have different starting assumptions and then differing concepts on what is best prioritized in life. By trying to absorb what your opponent is saying, you might better identify and catalog those sticking points - fundamental areas of disagreement where "agreeing to disagree" isn't throwing out the whole kit and kaboodle.

Behold: the spongeman! (With normal, double-tube-shaped pants)

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Huh. After listening to an Atari podicast, I just now realized I know "Douglas Crockford" from two different contexts, Atari 8-bit demos and Javascript: The Good Parts...

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I just found out the music composer for the new Mario/Rabbids crossover is named "Grant Kirkhope". That's a sentiment I can get behind. A surprising amount of 4-stars (marked in red) last month...

Hiphop

• Phantom (Redux) (Shirt) and Nobody Speak (feat. Run The Jewels) (DJ livew) - these two songs feel a bit similar, awesome old school electric strings and horns.
• Move Bitch (feat. Mystical & I-20) (Ludacris) Song is a little harsh, but I really dig Mystical.
• GREEN TEA (FEAT. MARGARET CHO) (Awkwafina) Awkwafina is terrific in general.
• Nuevos Tiempos (Pueblo Cafe) One of those "credits for Silicon Valley")
• Blockbuster Night, Pt. 1 (Run The Jewels) These guys are good.

Mario

• Supermarioland (Ambassadors Of Funk) I was delighted that this song uses the rarely-covered "Super Mario Land" Gameboy theme... super nostalgic.
• Mario Hanafuda (Nintendo) The more often covered original SMB theme, but with Japanese instruments.

"Old Stuff I Missed"

• Fortunate Son (Creedence Clearwater Revival) I forget why I thought to dig this one up.
• End of the Line (The Traveling Wilburys) Brings up that 90s case. The song Melissa thinks of first when I'm trying to describe George Harrisons "I Got My Mind Set on You"
• Up to Me (Bob Dylan). Penn Jillette like this one. There's surprisingly little Bob Dylan in my collection.

Misc

• Closer (feat. Halsey) (The Chainsmokers) Found out about this via Slate's series on current #1 hits. I like the description "For the first 10 seconds, the song sounds like it’s building to something monumental: thundering piano chords, sweeping synth washes, and a swelling echo like you’re down in a vast ravine. And then, at 0:11 … click. It all switches off like a lamp—a finger-snap and a meek 'Hey' "
• Polkarama! ("Weird Al" Yankovic) Polka parties are now my favorite type of Weird Al.
• Give It Away and Black Or White (Dick Brave & The Backbeats) Favorite genre: Germans pretending to be American Country or Rockabilly cover bands.
• Try to Remember (Isabelle Georges) (link is not the version I found on iTunes) - I think this song from "The Fantasticks" is getting a lot of play after being in Marvel's "Civil War"
• Bizarre Love Triangle (2014 Remaster) (Frente!) This is a song I did a cappella at Tufts... come to think of it it may have been inspired by this version.
• Masterpiece (Clarence Reid) Nice R+B.
• In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel) Really just love the line "Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"
• Call Your Girlfriend (Erato) There was a video with Emma Stone and Maya Rudolph doing a similar "butter tubs" cover of this song, but it generally got removed. This version is a fine substitute.

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Best daytime firework I've seen!

I think it's a "gerindola" I kind of hate Google's new logo (looks too much like a kid's toy) but I think I prefer the "Capital G of many colors" mini-version...

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That's a "closeup" of the last 5 years or so of my weight monitoring. (It avoids the tragedy/triumph of my mid- and late-aughts foray into 220 land, but the data is a lot cleaner) An annual pattern has emerged! Spring and summer, I tend to put on some pounds (this year some of my easiest dieting times happened during the blizzards, living on microwave popcorn and canned soup actually ain't so bad.)

I've been thinking about my inner-eater; the part of me that apparently wants me to bulk up in case there's a famine or something, or just likes to eat tasty things. He's gotten *really* devious: my favorite bit is where I consciously figure out "so, I'm not really hungry, and there's not even anything super tasty temping me, so I'm ok with not eating now" and he comes up with "Aha! Right! So now is a good time to enjoy the pleasure of eating because you don't really need/want it!!!" -- the rest of me totally falls for that sometimes.

Radiolab had a bit about ways we can motivate ourselves; in particular, how to wrestle the immediate-gratification parts of ourselves. The examples given was the socially-consciously lady who quit smoking by vowing that if she had another cigarette she'd donate $5,000 to the KKK, and that disgust caused her to recoil from the cigs. In an even more extreme case Oliver Sacks gave himself ten days to write the book he was stalled on or kill himself. (!!!)

The point of those were that you might need something really visceral to counteract the promise of pleasure in the moment. To quote the "Procrastination" demotivators -- "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now." Life is so uncertain, that sometimes I think our tendency to overvalue immediate payout is not as irrational as we assume!

But still, I'm convinced I'm more content at a lower weight, ideally around 180. Unlike smoking, folks gotta eat to SOME level, so it's not like I can say, I Don't Eat or I Give $1,000 to the NRA. I'm thinking maybe I can bribe myself? Like if I hit 185 (which is where I'd need to be to stay below 190) I can get that cheap Windows laptop I've been thinking of, or maybe some exhilarating experience like skydiving or bungee.

Come to think of it Liz does dietbets, which is along the same idea of the KKK donation wager -- lose X% of your body weight by a certain time or lose money. I guess I'm blessed with enough financial cushion, or feel that enough factors go into weight loss (especially against a deadline) that I don't want to go that route- it doesn't feel quite visceral enough, I think.

Wow, this got longer than I planned. Guess I'm still an old blogger at heart.

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I love logos and mascots Last month was oddly dominated by hiphop for me.

With everything listed in descending order of MAN you really gotta hear this, five things that I think are intriguing:

• Peach (Novel) I think I found this trying to find good footage of "I could eat a peach for hours". Terrific sexy slow song.
• Bottom of the River (Delta Rae) This song is kind of getting lost in the shuffle, but it's worth hearing, kind of old-- gospel/blues feel? With some big percussion.
• Crazy In Love (Fifty Shades Of Grey) (Beyoncé) Cover used in the 50 Shades movie trailer... song is great slowed down.
• I Like Farts (New Brian / Family Guy) Comedy. The best part is Peter's delighted/horrified AUGH as soon as the chorus kicks in and he figures out what the song is about.
• Let Me Clear My Throat (Old School Reunion Remix '96) (DJ Kool) I missed this one somehow. I really love the beginning when Biz Markie is announced and he's like "HEYYYYYYY!" - he just sounds so happy to be there doing his thing.

And the rest:

• NOW That's What I Call Polka! ("Weird Al" Yankovic) For the yong nerd growing up it's Weird Al's parodies are that important, but as you grow up, it's the polka mashups that mean the most.
• Forgot About Dre (Chris Pratt / Treytech) Actor Chris Pratt did a good eminem and someone put it to music.
• Rollout (My Business) (Ludacris) Not bad but I like the mashup better. Plus it doesn't have that weird miniskit with a guy being put in a sleeper hold.
• Shake It Off (Taylor Swift) I just think it has a good sound. Also I think that one live track where they isolate her audio is totally unfair.
• Peanut Butter (feat. Big Freedia) (RuPaul) Probably literally the gayest video I've posted here? Men booty poppin', packages flailing wildly... dumb fun!
• Anaconda (Nicki Minaj) Mixed feelings about this, I guess? It's novel hearing "Baby Got Back" repurposed. I kind of like how unfocused and rambling the rest of it is.
• Feel This Moment (feat. Christina Aguilera) (Pitbull) A so-so pop song, I'm kind of fascinated by the pretension of Pitbull.

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Once or twice a year, I'll get a nice email thanking me for http://mortals.be/ and/or the comic I need to get off my but and find a publisher for. Sometimes I engage further with people who are still wrestling with angst of being mortal by nature, and finite in impact. Today I wrote this:

I suspect ultimately there will be no way to come to terms with the non-immortality of even our finest acts, and the corresponding "lack of significance" vs what our imaginations can posit, that of something eternal and everlasting, except by personal contemplation and reflection.

One thought I had... we want to be significant and remembered outside our "reference frame", the people who know us, and then MAYBE culture as a larger whole, and then, somehow, the space time continuum (I think I'm misusing physics terms like "reference frame" here). In a way, this seems as misguided, as at odds with the makeup of reality, as desperately longing to have an impact outside of our "light cone", that somehow we should be able to make an impact that would resonate instantaneously across all space and time, rather than propagating at the slow speed of light.

I think that's just the inversion of the same problem; we want to resonate not just instantly, but forever, and, ultimately, everywhere. It's a natural desire, and frustrating that even B-list celebrities will have a "bigger" impact than we will (as my friend Dylan put it, "it makes me said that cartoon character Dilbert will has more influence on this world than I do"), but even Elvis has a reference frame he will never transcend, never be known outside of.

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25 Years Ago Today, I played tuba in the marching band for the first nationally broadcasted high school football game... it's kind of weird to think that I've been blogging daily for over half that time. Busy month, not many new songs but some good ones. 4-stars in red.

• 222 (Paul McCartney) 222 is my lucky number. Kind of a Phillip Glass-ish piece, a bonus track to "Memory Almost Full" which is my new favorite album name, especially by an older artist.
• Retrograde (James Blake) This is the most haunting song I've heard in a while.
• Get Low (Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz & Ying Yang Twins) Conversely, this is the stupidest, raunchiest song I've heard in a longer while.
• Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) (Julie London) A bossa-nova tinged version of the standard. I heard Julie London was one of my grandfather Papa Sam's favorites.
• Girl Control (The Polish Ambassador) Very odd bit of hiphop, but it grows on you.
• Sam Hall (Johnny Cash) "Damn your eyes" is such a curse.
• 3 am (Acoustic) (Tabitha's Secret) I kind of nice version of the kinda overplayed song. Heard this in Alaska.
• I Won't Back Down (Dawn Landes) A very sweet acoustic cover of the Tom Petty song, also heard it in Alaska
• Going (Sam Phillips) Wish I could find the lyric sheet for this, but the way the music pauses on "I'm more than halfway through" is darkly striking for us folks coming up on that point in our lives. An amazing song for 2 minutes.
• Bang Bang (will.i.am) Very odd retro/modern blend, I think from that recent "Great Gatsby" movie. Such a use of white space.
• Bitter Heart (Zee Avi) Lovely and sad. Zee Avi is amazing.

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Some amazing "motivational" posters from the 1920s At the end of every season I make a list of the songs I added to my rolling "latest music" playlist, all stuff I consider 3 stars or above, and I dig up links and post it here so people who share some of my wide-ranging musical sensibilities can find more of what they might dig.

I found a lot of new music this past summer! Some really great stuff in all...

These songs were 4 stars:

• The Rest Of My Days (The Exploding Voids) One of my favorites, but not publically released.
• Too Close (Alex Clare) So good they're using it in that ad for Internet Explorer. Don't dig the sentiment, but the sound is great.
• Hey Boy (The Blow) The absolutely perfect followup to "Call Me Maybe"...
• Bang Bang Bang (Mark Ronson & The Business Intl) Heard this on "Girls". For a while I was too cool to admit how much I liked it.
• When Doves Cry (Damien Rice) Hard to find acoustic cover... knocked over how Prince is using language in this.
• Be My Guest (Gaitana, Ukraine Eurovision 2012) Bright clubby fun with just a bit of a bass drop.

Bluegrass or Rural Tinged

• Aces And Twos (The Devil Makes Three) Bluegrass-tinged -- sometimes Chiptle has the best music.
• Graceland (Paul Simon Cover) (The Tallest Man On Earth) The guy's voice is a little weedy, but I think he brings out some of the sadness of this song in a lovely way.
• Wilderness (Middle Brother) Folksy.
• Ballad of Lucy Jordon (Nicki Gillis) Marianne Faithfull's version of the Sheil Silverstein lyric is the most famous (I heard it in Thelma & Louise) but I find Gillis' version more palatable, if a bit too polished.

Hiphop

• Gimme Some More (Busta Rhymes) That is a freaky video.
• Bonkers (Dizzee Rascal) The Olympics opening had this song. I could see "There's nothing cra-zee about meeeee" being some kind of catchphrase.
• Whistle (Flo Rida) Some people are scandalized by the single entedre of this, but it's not a bad piece of summer bubblegum pop.
• 99 Problems (Jay-Z) I knew about the chorus, but didn't listen to the song 'til I saw this analysis of its second verse in terms of a representation of the 4th amendment.
• Party and Bullshit (Ratatat remix) (Notorious B.I.G.) Awesome remix.
• My Homies Still (Lil Wayne) There was a weird Colorado shooting conspiracy theory floating around, but it's a fun, if filthy, song.
• Gangnam Style (PSY) Making the rounds for its goofy dancing fun, even if (or because) it's mostly in Korean...
• Traktor (Wretch 32) I bought that Olympic Opening Ceremony soundtrack, and this was one of the few other songs I liked on it.

Novelty

• The Bjork Song (The Brunching Shuttlecocks) (available in MP3 or RealAudio!) "Her name... ahh.. her name is Bjork. Isn't that lovely? It's like a gentle zephyr carressing the surface of a still pond. Bjork."
• Dead Puppies (Dr. Demento) This was on a mixtape of Demento stuff a family friend made for my dad when he was sick. The song is itself a bit sick, but fun. Points for the Roman Hruska reference.
• The Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer) I prefer the full orchestra version of this over the man at the piano.
• F**k S**t Stack [Explicit] (Reggie Watts) INSANELY catchy a capella groove, in spite or because of the nonstop cussing... at risk for becoming 4 stars.
• Jimmy Fallon, Carly Rae Jepsen & The Roots Sing "Call Me Maybe" (w/ Classroom Instruments Just what it says on the tin.
• Michelle's Song -- ItsYouNotMe (zeFrank) Touching Group Effort.

Instrumental

• Sabre Dance from 'Gayeneh' (The London Symphony Orchestra) For a long while I used to say "I like Classical but only if it's fast" -- this song and "Flight of the Bumblebee" were to big reasons for me saying that.
• Pee Wee's Big Adventure -- Breakfast Machine (The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra) That video is actually the fun fun fun Rube Goldberg-ish clip from the movie.
• Il Buono, Il Cattivo, Il Brutto (The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Ennio Morricone) I heard Tracy Emin use this in one of her pieces in London last summer.
• Mechanism Eight (UT3 Remix) (Rom Di Prisco) I first heard this great bit of mid-90s techno as a MOD file
• The best drum line video ever! (Keith Urban) Ripped the soundtrack to that video. Man I love funk-tinged drumlines.
• The People's Court 1981-1993 theme music Great music, at least 'til 3:10 or so where it starts to totally wuss out.
• Flat Beat (Mr. Oizo) Oddly chip-tune-ish.

Softer

• Someone Like You (Adele) Heard about this after WSJ analyzed why it was so sad...
• Imitosis (Andrew Bird) via The Onion Horrible Couple Really Wants Wedding To Reflect Their Personalities.
• Natural Light (Sun Kil Moon). Crazy Melancholy.
• The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Album) (The Postal Service) Another work tinged with regret.
• I'm Going To Go Back There Someday (Rachael Yamagata) Loved this song on the Muppet Movie soundtrack...
• Settle Down (Kimbra) Less soft than some stuff here, still paints a wistful tone.

Retro

• Come Together (The Beatles) A few years ago I saw this great (unauthorized?) Flash video...
• Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd) What can I say, I liked Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid too.
• Nothing From Nothing (Billy Preston) I enjoy how much Billy Preston seems to enjoy his afro.
• As Time Goes By (Dooley Wilson) Got to take Amber to see this movie for her first time.
• I Love Rock N' Roll (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts) Even better than the Weird Al Version
• Always True To You In My Fashion (Peggy Lee With George Shearing) Sometimes my mom's love of musicals comes out in weird ways.
• Superstition (Stevie Wonder) It's too bad I mostly heard his softer stuff, 'cause man could this guy get funky.
• Steal My Sunshine (Len) Hey remember the 90s? Me too!

Clubbish

• Northern Cree - Red Skin Girl (A Tribe Called Red) Love this group's mix of Native American and modern sensibilities.
• Chammak Challo Punjab Remix I love Bollywood! Had a hard time finding a version with the female vocals.
• We Like to Party! (Vengaboys) Hey remember that old Six Flags ad? Me too!

Other/Alt

• Hell Yes (Beck) I like the peculiary Japanese admonition to "Please Enjoy".
• You're Not All That (The Herbaliser) Retro-funk sound.
• Get Some (Lykke Li) Such attitude in this.
• Count On Me (Mat Kearney) Might be a cover of a Bruno Mars song? Cute number and alphabet puns anyway.
• 1940 (AmpLive Remix) (The Submarines) "Something's wrong when you regret things that haven't happened yet."

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• He was tall, thin and bony, like a cadaver trying to remember something,
• Fearless, as he was dumb, he walked over to the edge of the ship.
• Jake was not a man to show much emotion, but he found himself supressing the urge to smile out loud.

--from this list of submissions to Isaac Asimov magazine via BoingBoing..."To announce the grand opening of Westfield Stratford City, which will soon be 'the largest urban shopping centre in Europe'" It kind of reminds me I'd be a bit out of fashion in any era...

Notherners		Southerners
cold		fiery
sober		voluptuary
laborious		indolent
independent		steady
jealous of their own liberties, and just to those of others		zealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of others
interested		generous
chicaning		candid
supersitious and hypocritical in their religion		without attachment or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart

--via "One-Night Stands with American History", Shenkman + Reiger

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If you can't make fun of yourself, then you are terrible at making fun of people.

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Started riding my bike to Alewife. Besides saving a bit of time it's just fun and kinetic.

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To quote a friend, "Another oil rig explosion in the Gulf? Yeesh."

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Startlingly chatty Red Line conductor giving a play-by-play of the trains blocking our entry into Alewife...

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--Weirdly captivating Japanese commercial for Sony's PS3. (via Offworld, which has some of the precursors to this ad)

Come to think of it I guess it reminds me more of this older Nike spot:

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[on analyzing H1N1 in terms of bits of information] So it takes about 25 kilobits -- 3.2 kbytes -- of data to code for a virus that has a non-trivial chance of killing a human. This is more efficient than a computer virus, such as MyDoom, which rings in at around 22 kbytes.

It's humbling that I could be killed by 3.2kbytes of genetic data. Then again, with 850 Mbytes of data in my genome, there's bound to be an exploit or two.

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Last month the manager at my consulting company said "yeah-we found QA was too much of a loss leader so we don't do it"-Maybe I shoulda run

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The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

Pac-Man Ends

Last week crummy.com Leonard (whom I might be meeting up with this week) wrote about this awesome article on the kill screen, where certain classic video games that seem meant to run forever run into some kind of Ragnarok, often seemingly because the player has gotten to farther than the programmers thought anyone could get.

Leonard wrote:

Before I go on, let me make my position clear: I am a total video game nerd (though not a particularly angry one). Songs have I written and stories that draw from this pixelated well. My cohort has a fascination with video games: old ones, new ones, the people who make them, the ones we make ourselves, their distribution mechanisms, their similarities and basic building blocks, the ways we push ourselves to best them, the stories we tell about them, the relationships they create and mediate.

So don't take it as "Get a life!" when I say there's nothing special about the games themselves. Like books, they only have the power we give them. Pac-Man has a bug. It's not even an Easter Egg. There's nothing to unlock. The kill screen is not in the realm of the meant. If you spend years mastering Pac-Man and prefer it to Ms. Pac-Man because it's totally deterministic, why get mystical about the way it crashes at the end? This is real life, not Lucky Wander Boy.

My response was as follows...

Some pretty cool links...

Galaga Ends

I guess I'd counter with... why NOT get a little mystical about it? In an age where science seems to suggest that metaphor and relationships are a more valid use of religion than a literal explanation of why things are, I think people are free to find mysticism where they'd like.

(also for people who might not know Lucky Wander Boy, I quoted a bit from the Pac-Man meditation here: http://kirk.is/2003/03/28/ )

The Pac-Man kill screen feels like... I dunno, like coming to the edge of the Matrix, of sailing to the place on the map where "There Be Dragons".

"The kill screen is not in the realm of the meant." - absolutely! You seem to be conflating found, interpreted meaning with authorial intent. The microcosm collapsing because of programmer oversight, as the natural product of code that otherwise seems fine, sturdy, and lovely, seems to have a potential for profundity that, say, a reward intermission screen showing Pac-Man winging off to the beyond, would never have. (Or for that matter, a patch either locking in level 255 forever, or looping back to cherries.)

Heck, even the patterns that let these players get to that point are in some ways transcendent... I've read about the surprising depth of personality used for the Pac-Man monsters, and it's a byproduct of that determinism that allows for this almost meta-game of perfect score plotting... have you ever seen a perfect play video? It's all about waiting in certain spots 'til the ghost waves finally coalesce and then pouncing... not very fun to watch or do, except in a meta-sense, and certainly not what was "meant" by the programmers.

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loresjoberg I think metal fans enjoy a level of unirony that's difficult for other populations to grasp. (dunno if unirony==sincerity)

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Caught some of a TNG marathon, (OLPC recovery). Enjoyable, but- wow, the Treknobabble and "end of episode reset" can get pretty intense!

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Just figured out how to get to my earliest Twitter posts - need to do some personal archiving, I'd hate to lose what's now my insta-journal

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Note to websites: white on black text burns into the eyes. STOP IT. (hint: for these idiot sites, hit ctrl-A for ugly but readable colors)

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I get so outraged at minor frustrations. It's an unsuccess of the imagination: I envision a world w/o this traffic, or this PC glitch, and-

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let me introduce you to the wikiway, my friend, where blowhard cranks are lionized

So yesterday Evil B and I worked on his driveway. It was unpaved gravel but with enough weeds that it was starting to look like an extremely poorly kept lawn, virtually enough to give careless beachgoers an excuse to block it while parking.

Well, we took care of that.



The first part was the weeding. For the first stage we broke up the worst areas with the pickax and one of those twisting garden claw things, both shown here. Eventually we started shoveling hunks of gravely landscape into a sifting screen over a wheelbarrow, shaking furiously and picking out the roots and plant bits. Later we had to shovel and rake to redistribute the new gravel to cover the turned over space.

It was a lot of heavy and dusty work. The photo above is him and me standing after the new gravel was delivered. In all we had about 2 1/2 "scoops" delivered, a scoop being about a cubic yard, which is about a ton.

A ton of gravel is only like 30 or 40 bucks! I am totally in awe of our society that you can buy a ton of anything useful for that kind of money. I almost want to get a scoop delivered to my apartment, just so I could have a ton of something.

Physically it was a tough but satisfying day, and the end result was a huge improvement. In the evening we head for a reviving swim at the beach, braving the chilly water for a swim to the raft anchored offshore. It was kind of cool seeing Evil B pass on the neighborhood lore of the raft to some groups of younger people who later arrived: the game where you stand on the edge with your heels hanging off until the small ocean harbor waves throw you off, and then the ritual of diving to the bottom and returning with handfuls of sand to show that you've done it.

(Evil B mentioned that he liked the mix you see in Rockport. The first group who joined us swam over from a sailboat, 2 very young boys, 2 older girls, and a father-y figure. Later it was 3 boys, sweet natured kids who might've been from the wrong side of the tracks.)

So, a good day in all.

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Exchange of the Moment
[Evil B explains that he's going to break up some ground with the pickax and I can then move in with the Garden Claw to rip it up. He begins swinging the pickaxe with great vigor:]

Evil B: "[Swings] Get in there! [Swings]"
Kirk: "Uh... your lips say 'yes, yes' but your ax says 'no, no'..."

Turns out he was addressing the ax, not me...
You had to be there but my nervous comment struck him as pretty funny.

Back in town!

Boston people... so a friend of Ksenia's, also a student at AIB, but a bit older, just went on a trip to Japan. He took some photographs that I haven't see yet but I've heard are great. He's looking for some kind of exhibition space... any suggestions?

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Video of the Moment

--Fun Simpson/Star Trek mashup. Great use of the theremin!
Ongoing Bad News of the Moment
For the record, this is kind of what I expected for all over the USA during Y2K, at least in 1998. (By mid-1999, it was clear that a number of systems had been rolling over with no problem.) The "advantage" for Y2K was that it didn't have the physical infrastructure blowout that they have right now down south; conversely, a Y2K scenario meant there would be no "outside" to ship aid in.

It almost makes me want to get my survivalist mojo working.

I would say, I wonder if there's anyway we're going to avoid an oil-shockish recession from all this. (slate has similar thoughts.)

Of course, any questioning of Bush's push for a taxcut early on, and the negative effcts thereof, are handwaved away by 9/11 and now maybe this. I just read a good, if scary, analysis of this in Atlantic, written from a hypothetical future campaign advisor looking back to 2008-2012 or so. Bush strived to eliminate a guesstimated surplus that never showed up, with no concept of setting aside resources for a rainy day. And if the Iraq war wasn't neccesary, it's an unnecesary brutal ongoing drain on our economic and military strength. (Slate has argues that this is a huge test and failing grade for "Homeland Security".)

[UPDATE in 2015: the "this" was Hurricane Katrina] Ramble of the Moment
So there's that new indy film with the title "Napolean Dynamite", which, supposedly by coincidence, is the pseudonym Elvis Costello (heh, not his real name either come to think of it) used on his 1986 album "Blood and Chocolate". And it made me think that an Elvis Costello fan would get ticked, because most websearches for "Napolean Dynamite" will be about the movie, not about Costello.

I decided there should be a name for this: your "Dooplegoogler" is the person or thing, more famous than you, and with a similar enough name that Google searches for you are thwarted. Now, the Costello fan can arrange to search for both full names, but I live in fear of the Scottish National Church (aka "Kirk") having a big terrorist incident at its Jerusalem chapel, because then I might be totally lost on like the tenth page of a Google search.

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Quote and Art of the Moment

A good friend of mine often compares programming to music. He studied jazz improvistion at the college level and is now a programmer... so I feel like he has a good insight into this sort of thing. One quote that really made sense to me was, 'Traditional jazz improvisation is all about trying to fit creative and spontaneous music composition on top of somewhat predictable chord progressions.'

This is what many programmers try to do... develop creative solutions using predictable software design patterns. I guess Alex Mclean has found a way to be creative AND spontaneous with his coding.

Man...coding Perl live, with an audience...THAT takes cajones.
I should look into this...supposedly, getting back into making music, making some electronica using the basslines I've had in my head (and on any available piano) since highschool is the mandate for my 30s.

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Image of the Moment

--sign from the Kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific, via ThisIsBroken.com

Blenderites: It looks like things are starting to work again on the Love Blender but there are still some bugs (like the author profile page isn't showing up). I'll be getting things up to speed this evening.

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Funny of the Moment

A study in The Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: 'Duh.'

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Article of the Moment
After reading the article The Naked Face a year ago, I was thinking someone should capitalize on training people to read the "microexpressions" people inadvertantly broadcast with their faces...according to Wired, it looks like somebody has.

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News of the Moment
That news report about the deliveryman who had a bomb strapped to him and was forced to rob a bank is the weirdest and saddest thing I've heard in a while.

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Image of the Moment
The miniseries "V" was on one of the movie channels the other day...everyone remember its logo of a spraypainted "V" but I was more struck by the Vistors' "official" logo, which I've tried to reconstruct here. I like how it looks other worldy but still useable, like the alien countdown LED timer in Predator.

Incidentally, the current overapplied gag on Slashdot is "I, for one, welcome our new ______ overlords", from Kent Brockman in this episode of The Simpsons, which fits the old miniseries well.

Oy, I've slacked off on doing the Blender all weekend, better get to work.

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Videos of the Moment
What happens when you cross the Care Bears with Dead Baby Jokes? Probably something that looks a lot like Happy Tree Friends. Warning: this stuff, while very cartoonish, is also very very macabre and violent. But kinda funny none the less. If you're in a hurry just watch the first one. (I only got up to #11 or so.)

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Movie Quote of the Moment

"You have no values; your whole life is nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm and orgasm."
"In France I could run on that slogan and win."

--by Mo, 1997.12.26. Made on Dinky Pad for the PalmPilot. She graciously let me post it here; it's admittedly a little cornball, as are many things at the start of a good romance.