High Blood Pressure

Playoff misery

2008-04-04T06:48:00.002-04:00

Long before I got an iPod and stopped listening to the radio in my car, I loved listening to Frank Deford's sports commentary on NPR. He appeals to my inner curmudgeon, talking about the aspects of sport that don't get talked about on the frat-boy sports network ESPN. When NPR started making its segments available for download I immediately subscribed to Frank Deford's feed and I still get my weekly curmudgeon allowance.

Frank's latest piece echoes a sports frustration that I have had over the years - the fact that the NBA and NHL "playoffs" feature more than half the teams in the league. Some seasons even feature teams with records under .500 - how can you get into a playoff when you lose more games than you win? The owners can't be worried about gate revenues - a losing team won't make it past the first round, so at best you only get three playoff games more. Why not just extend the regular season to have five more regular season home games instead?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89291408

Apple passes Wal-Mart and I don't care

2008-04-03T07:49:00.002-04:00

All right that's probably too bold a statement to make. Ars Technica among many other sources reports that Apple has passed Wal-Mart as the top US music retailer. This is definitely an indication of how much music retailing has changed in the five years since Apple launched online music sales. Apple passing Wal-Mart, which for Americans in smaller towns is often their only music retail source, demonstrates not only the shift of music retailing from a physical purchase to a digital download, but also demonstrates that online retailing has finally "arrived" in the way it was predicted during the first dot-com boom. (If you don't think we're in the midst of the second one, you haven't been paying attention, but that's another post.)

I however have recently discovered the joy of the Amazon music store, and I am loving it for four reasons:

better catalog of the "obscure"
higher quality of files (based on bitrate)
lower prices
DRM free

Amazon has even crafted up a little application that will automatically import your downloaded music into iTunes, so even though I would be willing to take the extra effort I don't need to worry. Amazon is now my first stop when buying music.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html

Living with Baseball Season

2008-04-01T06:55:00.003-04:00

Before last year, the last time I had followed a baseball team closely from spring training through October was when I was in university. I had forgotten how baseball season is something you live with throughout the year. Unless you are a die-hard fan, you don't directly watch every single game the way you would a football game. Many games end up playing on the TV or radio while you do other things, and the good thing about baseball is that it is a game that you can have on in the background while you do other things.

The Boston Globe magazine profiled Jacoby Ellsbury this Sunday, and I was reminded of the two games we were lucky enough to attend last year. The first game was April 22 versus the Evil Empire when the Sox hit four straight home runs. The second was June 30 when Jacoby Ellsbury had his first major-league hit, beating out the throw on a routine grounder to short and letting all Sox fans know that he would be a factor. It was amazing to actually be in the park during two significant events like those. Since Red Sox tickets are so hard to come by, I can't expect to be at any games this year, but I spent some time yesterday putting all the games on my home Outlook calendar. Regardless of whether I actually get to attend any games, I am looking forward to living with the Sox for the next seven months.

Avant-Garde and Art as Pain

2008-03-31T06:41:00.003-04:00

I was recently getting ready to re-watch the Ken Burns Jazz series, and decided to read up a little on the series' artistic director, Wynton Marsalis. When Jazz first aired I wasn't all that familiar with Marsalis, but I became a fan after watching him talk eloquently and musically about Jazz, race relations in the USA and the various musicians profiled in the series. I was interested but not surprised to read that there have been several criticisms of Marsalis's direction of the series, and the relatively little attention paid to developments in jazz music since 1960. Marsalis is criticized as a "classicist" or even worse as a poor musician who doesn't understand either blues or jazz.

The reason I am not surprised is that Marsalis critics come from the avant garde school of art. Avant-garde seems to have at its heart the premise that "anything goes" is a value rather than a dangerous shortcoming. With avant-garde, one can create a performance that is five minutes of a musician humping a piano and call it art. In fact, much of avant-garde art - be it music, dance, art, film, theater - seems to be about punishing its audience rather than entering into a communication with it. If one looks at an avant-garde piece and sees nothing of artistic merit in it, one is criticized as being too philistine or just plain stupid to truly "understand" what the art is about - never mind the basic fact that if a reasonable person cannot see any artistic merit in a creation it demonstrates a failure on the part of the artist to effectively communicate. "Dance" is now about throwing one's body around like a rag doll having an epilieptic siezure; "music" is about atonal, arrythmic squeals and growls; "art" is throwing cruxifixes in toilets or canvases painted one solid color. Art seems to be more about punishing the audience rather than enlightening them.

The constant cry of the artist is "you just don't get it," as if I am somewhat deficient because I fail to derive anything that feeds my soul from their spastic self-indulgence. The sad thing is that there is always a circle around the avant-garde artist that showers them with praise, mainly because they don't want to hear the dreaded "you just don't get it" attack directed at them.

If it makes me a philistine because I fail to see any talent or art in such behavior, so be it. I will devote more of my time to enjoying dance, music, and art where I can clearly see the artist has had to exert will and talent to create something new and to communicate with me, and less of my time trying to decipher the ramblings of a talentless hack.

You Don't Understand our Audience

2008-01-16T17:46:00.001-05:00

Great article from John Hockenberry about how Dateline NBC went from being a "hard news" program to NBC's answer to "Cops" with "To Catch a Predator."

http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=19845

New Years' (kind of) resolution

2008-01-07T13:30:00.001-05:00

OK, I know it is the classic cliche, but this past weekend I joined Weight Watchers with the intention of losing weight and developing an overall healthy lifestyle. What I am hoping to do with Weight Watchers is go from being one of these people who resolves at the beginning of the year to lose weight and then stops trying in March or April. I figure Meredith doing it at the same time will help - I think in the past we both wanted to be healthier but we couldn't put any kind of concrete frame around that desire. I am very happy with both the session leader at the place where I joined and the Weight Watchers website with its food tracking and meal planning tools. I have had a couple craving moments over the past couple of days but generally I feel like I'm doing well.

LED Christmas lights in action

2007-11-26T14:07:00.001-05:00

Christmas tree, no ambient light
Originally uploaded by HotblackDesiato

I wrote last week about the tree at Rockefeller Center being lit with LED lights, and went out this weekend and bought some for my tree.

The initial cost of the lights is very high compared to regular lights, so there is a little sticker shock (I paid $11.99 for a 60 bulb string. I think 100 bulb stings of standard lights go for $2-3.) However, the energy usage is about 50-60% less and they also last much longer than regular lights, so I imagine over time they will pay for themselves. They are much brighter than regular lights and the colors are probably a little jarring if you're not a geek and used to the colors that LED's throw.

In the grand scheme though I think they look very nice and it's nice to have a Christmas tree again.

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree goes LED

2007-11-22T10:14:00.001-05:00

Engadget reports that the famous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is going to be lit by energy-efficient LED lights this year. This will reduce the energy consumption of the tree by approximately 65%. I am very impressed by this, and thankful as well, because I never knew there were such things as LED tree lights, and I will definitely get some to put on my tree this year.

Link

Wired blurb on xkcd creator

2007-11-16T07:41:00.001-05:00

A friend at work turned me on to the great web-comic xkcd, which is consciously low on artistry but high on humor, science, programming, and artful statements about life and love. Wired Magazine features a short blurb on xkcd's creator Randall Munroe.

Link

Last DC power connection in NYC cut

2007-11-16T07:08:00.001-05:00

This story from the New York Times (who by the way appear to have stopped their irritating registration policy) details the termination by Con Ed of the last DC power connection in Manhattan. This is one of the things that absolutely fascinates me about New York City - that there was still a customer using DC transmission from Con Ed. New York City is so vast, so populated, so diverse, I am constantly amazed that the city is able to function every day.

Link

20 Things Encountered in Rome by Heidi Swanson

2007-11-08T21:11:00.001-05:00

My hope is that one day I will get the opportunity to travel to Europe, and especially France and Italy. This gives me some things to look forward to.

Iraq war cost visualized in Beer

2007-11-08T07:56:00.001-05:00

This is in British figures, but still compelling. Make beer, not war!

Tonight's dinner

2007-11-06T20:21:00.000-05:00

The attempt: a home-made pasta dish featuring very simple ingredients.

The ingredients:
Two roma tomatoes
1/4 onion
three cloves garlic
about two tbsp fresh basil
salt/pepper
a splash of sangiovese wine
3 oz dry pasta

The result: Generally good, but too much tomato taste. Either need more garlic and basil, need to add tomatoes later, or need to cook sauce longer.

Presidential campaign as sports

2007-10-30T07:44:00.001-04:00

One of the great things about the Internet is that I can usually find someone who articulates my thoughts far better than I ever could. From Ars Technica there is a breakdown about how most mainstream media coverage of the Presidential campaign has more in common with sports reporting rather than political analysis.

A bit of Fry and Geeky

2007-10-29T20:58:00.001-04:00

I have always been impressed with the intellectual horsepower of Stephen Fry, and was happy to discover that he has now been asked to write a column for The Guardian about technology. When I first heard that Fry was a big technology buff who not only owned a lot of technology but actually understood it, I was pleased but not overly surprised. I had imagined Fry as a kind of classic gentleman who never would get involved in such things, but he addresses that right out of the gate:

Well, people can be dippy about all things digital and still read books, they can go to the opera and watch a cricket match and apply for Led Zeppelin tickets without splitting themselves asunder. Very little is as mutually exclusive as we seem to find it convenient to imagine. In our culture we are becoming more and more fixated with an "it's one thing or the other" mentality. You like Thai food? But what's wrong with Italian? Woah, there... calm down. I like both. Yes. It can be done. I can like rugby football and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim...

I am glad Fry has not painted himself into a corner in his interests, and look forward to many interesting columns in the future.

Union Leader idiots discover sex on Craigslist

2007-10-07T11:15:00.001-04:00

It must be a slow news week in the white trash wonderland. The front page story on the Union Leader today screams "Sex content a click away on popular classified site." This story would be amusing if it were not another pathetic illustration of how useless the Union Leader is as a credible news source. The content of the story is just about is just about as hyperbolic as the headline:

IF YOU THINK your kids are looking for a used skateboard or video game when they're surfing Craigslist.org, you might want to check and make sure.

Craigslist also offers local "erotic" services on the same page; shocking, sexually explicit nudity and banter about various sex acts, some hinting at underage sex, and all just a click away.

There is a NH.Craigslist.org and just like the housing, jobs or cars listed on the popular online site, the erotic services are offered by town or city. And while many parents may be unaware of the explicit content on Craigslist, police across New Hampshire are using it more often to make prostitution-related arrests and to look for child predators.

The rest of us are saying "Wow, welcome to 1995."

The truly depressing reality of this article is its illustration of how far New Hampshire has strayed from its motto of "Live Free or Die." There is indeed sexual content on Craigslist that can viewed by minors who are not under proper parental supervision - however, why are the supposedly independent people of New Hampshire asking the state to do their parenting for them? There are many methods of ensuring your children do not become exposed to this content without asking the police to cause undue hardship on a website whose vast majority of visitors use it to find good cheap products and services.

Relativity passes absolute test

2007-09-27T19:16:00.001-04:00

This is a little old, but I am very interested to stumble across an article from Scientific American indicating that a test of general relativity was able to successfully confirm Einstein's hypothesis. The experiment tested the theory that large objects bend space-time with their gravitational force. I am amazed that physicians and engineers were able to develop a mechanism that could confirm or disprove Einstein's theories.

Training bureaucrats to lobby for REAL ID

2007-09-25T07:31:00.001-04:00

Although New Hampshire originally failed to recognize the privacy threats of the REAL ID act, they eventually came to their senses and enacted legislation rejecting such an ID system. So what is a company that makes ID systems, and which stands to profit immensely from the REAL ID act, to do? Hold a good old-fashioned junket, and train state workers to advocate these systems to their legislatures back home. I hope that New Hampshire continues its independent stand on this issue and refuses to be swayed by such shallow lobbying efforts.

Six years later

2007-09-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

So much has changed.

Richard Feynman: "Judging Books By Their Cover"

2007-09-10T17:19:00.001-04:00

A great first-hand account from physicist Richard Feynman about his experience serving on the California State Curriculum Commission, evaluating new textbooks for the State of California. His tale is an excellent illustration of how companies do business with the state and how inevitably someone gets short-changed in the process.

We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."

Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"

"I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

The Great Iraq Swindle

2007-09-08T10:44:00.001-04:00

Rolling Stone features an excellent expose on the incredible money pit that Iraq has become. Thanks to toothless congressional oversight and contractors with friends in high places, the reconstruction effort in Iraq has become a perverse combination of capitalism and socialism. Taxpayer dollars are funnelled from the federal treasury into the pockets of contracting companies with very little to show for it. When I read David McCullogh's excellent biography of Harry Truman, I was impressed at the work Truman did on the Truman commission eliminating war profiteering during the Second World War. What a shame we do not have a congress willing to do the work that Truman did in the 1940's.

NYTimes profiles Rick Rubin

2007-09-04T07:05:00.001-04:00

Rick Rubin will always be a favorite of mine because of the way he revitalized Johnny Cash's career. He's now working with Columbia Records to try to save the music industry from itself. My hope is that the industry is finally seeing the light of day, with two labels now releasing music that is free of DRM. There is a lot more work to be done - labels continue to sign uninteresting acts and release overproduced records, commecial radio is an affront to most people's intelligence, and the RIAA continues to sue its fans. However, perhaps Columbia embracing Rubin is a sign that the industry may finally understand that their business needs to be about the music.

A Nation of Wimps

2007-09-03T14:29:00.001-04:00

Psychology Today writes on the super-protective environment currently swaddling our children and how it's doing more harm than good.

Would Orwell have been a blogger?

2007-09-03T14:25:00.001-04:00

Robert McCallum writes in The Observer in an attempt to surmise what George Orwell's opinions regarding the current state of communication in our most energized medium today, the Internet.

I don't pretend to understand Orwell enough to divine what his opinion would be regarding blogging and the health of English letters as evidenced by communication on the internet. My thoughts cast back to images of the Kaleidoscope in "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the machine at the Ministry of Truth which could grind out endless folk songs for the entertainment of the Proles. I think much of the discourse currently existing in the "blogosphere" consists of rote work and there is very little illumination, or even mechanical skill, out there. While Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur" book, as well as the author himself, are universally reviled for their elitist attitude and ham-handed delivery, I think there exists a grain of truth in his overall thesis. I think that the lowest common denominator attitude in cyberspace that has delivered a million YouTube videos of "America's Funniest Home Videos" rejects should be deplored. People have been granted the ability to get their voices out to the world; they should not squander that opportunity by screaming unintelligible obscenities.

On a tangent, while doing a little background reading on Orwell, I came across the interesting 1984 Index (unfortunately out of date) whose goal was to track the similarities between the environment described in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and our current "War on Terror" environment in the Western World.

Seige at Rainbow Farm

2007-09-03T13:39:00.001-04:00

Courtesy of Playboy and the Media Awareness Project, a story of another group of peaceful protesters defying government authority and getting gunned down for it. My hope is that the current NH standoff will not end this way.