Do NOT Deny Science!

Just watch this. Then share it.

Are You Gonna Make a Best (Albums) of 2008 List?

I wasn't going to either.

But after a few recent feeble answers to that question like, "No, but if I did I'd put [Artist/Album] on there...", I ended up with a list anyway. Maybe it's my Most Referred releases, Most Shared, or simply Most Memorable of 2008. Perhaps it's Anything, Off The Top Of My Head, Released In 2008 That Had A (Somewhat) Formative Effect On Me. In no particular order. Enjoy.


Portishead - Third
While I would have bought it anyway out of long-time fandom, I really this one. I also like that they successfully tried to shake their trip-hop fan base loose by going prog. [link]


Ladytron - Velocifero
I was never all the way into Ladytron until this album. Now I am. Big sound, catchy tunes, tight production and, as Maria says, "they always have the best hair." [link]


The Duke Spirit - Neptune
This band's singer turned up on the last UNKLE album, and this album had the same producer (Chris Goss). But it's probably her voice that quickly made this standard listening around our house. [link]


Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
There's an overabundance of chimey indie rock laced with whispery vocals, but this was one of those albums that changed the trajectory of my listening habits for weeks, if not months. [link]


School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Turns out the tune on Prefuse 73's last album is also on this, and it is but one of many intricately woven tunes here. Maybe you should just give them a listen. [link] [bonus]


Christian Prommer's Drumlesson - Drum Lesson Vol 1
One of the Truby Trio busts out on his own with one of the most creative albums of the year. Check out what this guy did to Kraftwerk and Daft Punk songs. Amazing. [link]


Double Dee & Steinski - Who Owns Culture? (Live)
The founding fathers of mash-ups, bastard pop, blends (whatever you call them), Steinski and Double Dee open for DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's The Hard Sell (made even better by the Ben Stokes visuals). [link]


Instigator - Reduced Materials
Full disclosure: shameless self-promotion. However, strictly speaking, this is the music I listened to most in 2008. It's my final release as "Instigator", much as this is my final post of 2008. Cheers! [link]

Polling Place Ponderings

While waiting in line to vote, I turned my attention to the things I can't wait to be end with the election season. Three things in particular have been grinding my nerves over the past few weeks...

Claiming "this is the most historic election" ever...
You're only proving that you don't understand what "historic" means when you make claims like this. Stop being such a magpie; everyone knows you're just chirping what heard that on the news (which is more interested keeping you in the audience than keeping you properly informed). Something is either "having importance in or influence on history" or not; there is no graduated scale in the making of history, only in the way it is interpreted afterward. Every Presidential Election is equally historic. Every Election Day makes history. Even if we thought it was uneventful, it would still be historic because it's influencing history, one way or another. If you want to consider the voter turn-out a historic thing, that's fine -- but every voter turn-out before this was historic, too. Historic lows, historic highs... they're all recorded as public record and therefore part of the fabric of history. But, what's so ground-breaking about a US Presidential Election that boils down to one candidate from each of the two controlling parties, both of a Judeo-Christian faith? The choice isn't much different than it's ever been. It's good that you're voting, but keep things in perspective.

Implying that your vote counts more than mine because you're going to Grant Park tonight.
My vote counts just as much as yours; it always has and always will. But I don't create more waste with stickers, pamphlets or buttons; I don't lie that my middle name is Hussein or "donate my status" on Facebook (Why do some of you think assuming a fake name convinces me to vote for Obama, anyway? It doesn't make you the voice of reason you think you are. In fact, giving a false name may violate Facebook's terms of use); I don't consider my choice of candidate a status symbol -- it is our civic duty to vote, plain and simple. It's good that you voted, but you're not any more unique for it. If you secured tickets to gain entry to a public park for a speech tonight, good for you. I will have a better view from the comfort of my living room, and I won't be making the downtown area impassable for the people who traverse it every day. You are free to stand outside and clap for a jumbo-tron if you want. Just don't count your chickens before they hatch -- a lot of us thought Gore won eight years ago, but that's not how it played out.

Thinking it's a good idea to create election-themed advertising campaigns.
I work in advertising, and have been sick to my stomach with the inane "election" themes that have been pitched since before this time last year. Thankfully, not many made it to the public - but a lot of them did. Realize this is part of the reason people hate advertising: when you take something serious and belittle it to sell automobiles or donuts, you make us all look like idiots. You make people feel fatigued by the time election day comes, and dillute the power of real voting as though it were as inconsequential as picking the right soft drink in the supermarket, or as trivial as selecting the winner of a game show. I am happy it will be another four years before bad advertisers belittle our civic duties again, even though I know I have peers who will revisit those inane themes again and again and again.

Unnecessary Typos

I thought I had a new favorite site: Unnecessary Knowledge.

But it can't be my favorite; way too many typos. Of the first six facts I viewed, three of them contained typos. I was going to say this was still good, nerdy fun -- but it's really not that nerdy with so much bad grammar.

If anyone from Unnecessary Knowledge is reading this, please, hire a proofreader. Your site went from charming to pissing me off inside of five minutes.

An Open Letter to James Meeks

Hey, James.

I'm referring to you as neither "senator" nor "reverend" today, because you're not living up to either title. You're not even living up to your last name. Instead, you are high on your own fumes with the most ill-conceived boycott ever.

Let's get a few things straight. All schools need more funding. All teachers are underpaid. These are issues not unique to your district, not by a long-shot. Funding is uneven, yes. So is the median household income; if your district puts less in, it will get less out. It's that simple.

Still, in your ever-so-finite wisdom, you have encouraged skipping school as a means to improve the education system. Let me clarify. You have publicly encouraged and arranged for thousands* of Chicago children to miss the first four days of school this year. You actually think that these kids are going to just camp out in the lobbies of corporate offices, and "hold" class there? Those kids won't get past building security -- which, incidentally is the best job they could ever hope to get if they follow your lead.

You spent a lot of money on bus rentals. That money could have been donated to schools that need funding more than they need a ride to a publicity stunt. Your behavior not only insults the teachers and students you purport to be helping, but you also make a mockery of the professional environment for which all those kids truly do need a better education. It's clear you have not considered the consequences of your actions. You have exploited your self-righteous religious affiliations for a publicity stunt predicated on ignorance, yet you offer no intelligent solutions or shred of common sense. I imagine you're the type to recommend praying that one wins the lottery rather than finding an honest day's work.

Are you such an ineffective senator that you need to make pawns of students, teachers, parents and Chicagoans' places of business? Even the kids you've implicated in this crack-pot scheme can see through it:

One New Trier student described the boycott as "a big publicity stunt."

"They are trying to make it racial," said New Trier senior, Andrew Scherer, 17. "It's a better media story." [Source]

Racial and religious make for sensationalism, but not a better story. The only supporters of today's boycott are churches -- churches that should be donating to schools instead of wasting money on go-nowhere publicity stunts. I seriously doubt you exhausted that option, James. I think instead that you relish the potential for this stunt to be racially charged, even though it's really just about your school district getting exactly what it pays for. Here's what you were quoted saying two days ago:

“I want the whole nation to look at Illinois. I want the whole nation to ask, ‘Why is Illinois racist?’ I want them to ask, ‘Why is Illinois treating low-income students like that?’”

James, come on. Why are you racist? I find it obscenely insulting that you equate racism with low-income students. I come from a low-income family. Welfare, food stamps, free school lunch programs, church-donated groceries and Christmas presents... I've been there. One lasting life lesson I learned is that money doesn't know what color my skin is, and it never will. Another lasting lesson: the world doesn't owe you anything. I genuinely feel sorry for the kids who don't know any better, being led down this path by a divisive panderer like yourself. You've already admitted openly that you will lie about the number of students you see today.

What a great example you set! The spectacle of your actions is more important to you than the substance of your actions. But you can't even get that right...

* One bus arrived with four people on it. Four. Is this the kind of inefficiency and waste you want to teach kids? Hope so, 'cause you just did.

Keep the preaching of ignorance confined to your precious mega-church, James. The rest of Chicago will do better without this self-righteous, racially-charged divisiveness in the classroom, in the state senate and in the media.

Now, please, just shut up and get back to class.

Borgnine Has The Tip

Can anyone among you argue that Ernest Borgnine is not a bad-ass?

No. You can't.
Click play to see how this 91-year-old stays young. Then wash your hands.

We Can All Believe In Monique Davis' Resignation

Representative Monique D. Davis (IL) is not fit to hold public office. Just listen. In fact, I think you should email her and tell her what a bigot she is, demand her resignation, and maybe even tell her that she's probably already guaranteed a spot in whatever hell she believes in. To spit so much venom, to be such a short fuse... she's a liability to Illinois.

For added kicks, check the comments on this little site (coincidentally) run by a guy who used to sport Skinny Puppy T-shirts in the same World Religions and Journalism courses I took at NIU.

UPDATE:
It took a while to bounce back, but it's dead. That email address for our favorite hater-faith-having politician is undeliverable. No good. You'll have to contact this winner of world's worst person the old-fashioned way.

Hello Muxtape, Goodbye Muxtape?

For the past couple weeks, all kinds of folks have been hyping the Muxtape. I say live it up now, because it isn't likely to last. Why? The basic-yet-totally-vague requirement that your MP3 uploads must meet for Muxtape: "Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use."

So, the first thing I think is, how do I know if I have permission to let Muxtape use a song? Apparently there's no way to know for sure. Muxtape doesn't explain itself, which could spell trouble with a capital R-I-A-A.

What was Muxtape thinking, exactly? The blog implies that it's a way for bands to post their original songs, but if you're a band you need to do more than just post your songs (you use sites like MySpace to collect fans' info, too). The majority of Muxtapes posted are begging for legal action. In fact, a cursory look at just a few random posts reveals rampant unauthorized duplication. (The only "safe" mix I can find is this genius offering from Catbirdseat.)

I'm going to get this out of the way now: Nice sorta knowin' ya, Muxtape. Find a good lawyer and make room for all the C & D's you're about to get.*

* Unless you're some elaborate means of entrapment, rigged by the RIAA, in which case I salute your sinister scheme and simultaneously shiver at the settlements you'll wring from the stupid saps who keep uploading illegally.

Know When You're Living

Welcome to another installment in my periodic posts about wordplay.

Today, I'll briefly discuss a phrase I've heard used four times in the past three weeks, and each time used incorrectly. The phrase?

Turn-of-the-century

Folks, that was just over seven years ago. The century turned when our calendars moved from 2000 to 2001. If you want to refer to the turn of the century, you must be more specific.

Please, know what year you're living in. Don't say "turn of the century" unless you mean to harken that period when we worried about the Y2K bug. Try "turn of the Twentieth Century" to refer to the late 1800's and early 1900's.

You're welcome.

Friendly Reminder

Dearest Reader(s):

Please remember: "pull your lid back" is a figure of speech.
It is not to be taken literally.

Thank you.

Help Yourself

I'd like to point to three links you may or may not have noticed in the right-hand column. I find myself checking these out of curiosity at first, then reading further because I've found useful, practical advice on how to better get one's proverbial shit together.

• 43 Folders - "Merlin Mann's family of websites about stuff like personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better."
• Dumb Little Man - "...tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane."
• Lifehacker - seems self-explanatory enough to me. Part of the Gawker Media empire.
• Ririan Project - "learn practical ideas to make important changes in your life, both big and small, so you can get your life on track and start living up to your true potential."

Enjoy. Let me know if I missed any good ones. I'm sure there are more out there.

How To Have A Number-One The Old-Fashioned Way

Taking time to talk pop reminded me of something I meant to post a while ago, yet I never got around to. That something is The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way. Long out-of-print and impossible to find, this book was hugely influential on my early forrays into the music industry. The K Foundation's combination of discordianism, Illuminatus references and unabashed pop sensibility stuck with me. I've followed the further exploits, musical and otherwise of Jim Cauty and Bill Drummond. I've had The Manual in my Amazon wish list for years, never to see it actually "available". I loved it when I read a friend's copy in college, and always wanted to have my own copy. Now we can all have it.

A relatively recent BoingBoing post about the KLF links to a PDF version of the manuscript. So while you miss some of the illustrations and the tactile sensation of holding this adorable little case study, full of instructions (which were guaranteed to work, BTW, if you followed them to the letter), you can still read it.

It's worth knowing that The Manual did in fact work, too. The Austrian Euro-trash band Edelweiss found #1 hit status with "Bring Me Edelweiss" - a song they claim was created by following the instructions in The Manual. And this was some time before you could use a MySpace page to collect friends or distribute a new single. Of course, with theories like The Long Tail afoot, it's probably not so much about having a number-one anymore.

Does anyone feel like telling Kanye?

Prozac Turns 20, Still Not Good For You

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Prozac, the first drug I was oh-so-wrongly prescribed. I'm no doctor, but believe me when I say the long-term effects are still being determined. I have yet to meet anyone who was on the drug before I was, for what it's worth.

I was twelve or thirteen at the time, one of the first people under age 18 to be prescribed the "miracle" drug. By a lazy physician, urged by a parent who couldn't cope with the mood swings of a pubescent me. I was too young to be on an antidepressant. I didn't have a serotonin imbalance, so Prozac didn't do anything for me - unless you count about nine months of side effects with no improvement in mood. In fact, things got progressively worse.

That same physician later tried to get my mom to pay for a drug test he ran on me during one check-up when I was in a decent mood - as if he couldn't believe that such a mood was possible without chemical inducement. (There were chemicals at work, but they were hormones awakened by a make-out session with a girl the day before.) That's the last time I saw that doctor, but others followed in his unsure footsteps and continued to prescribe dangerous substances without concern for their long-term effects.

Of course, I was better off consuming the relatively useless Prozac than I was on the medication that followed, a form of Lithium that led to other, more severe mood and medical issues - including unpredictable toxicity in the bloodstream and, for me, DOZENS of kidney stones. Plus a whole lot of excruciating pain that came with those stones, complications from other medications, and so on.

Moral of my story: Prozac is neither a status symbol nor a magic bullet for "bad" thoughts. Don't give antidepressants to kids who are just going through puberty; you could seriously screw up their bodies in ways you can't imagine.

To commemorate the anniversary, I felt the need to relate my experience with the drug before I showed you to this: Guardian Unlimited's Anna Moore gives us "20 things you need to know about the most widely used antidepressant in the world.

[via BoingBoing, via MindHacks]

Bike Helmets Bad For Cyclists?

Just in time for prime bike season: news that wearing a bike helmet may actually increase your chances of an accident involving a motor vehicle. I'm not just pulling your leg, this makes a lot of sense to me. But I've done a little reading on it, so let me throw the links at you...

Neatorama reports on
a Scientific American article about
the findings of University of Bath's Dr. Ian Walker.

As a perennial pedestrian, people-watcher and rider of public transportation, I have no problem whatsoever getting behind Walker's reason for conducting this road safety study.

His road safety work is currently considering questions relating to how drivers' attentional and decision-making mechanisms affect the safety of vulnerable road user groups such as pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists. Of particular interest at the moment is the issue of how our natural tendency to "read" other people (i.e., to interpret their gaze signals and other non-verbal communications) affects the safety of vulnerable groups.
[via Ian Walker's site]

I've worn a bike helmet ever since I started biking through the city. I've never been hit, but Chicago traffic is always more dense and less predictable than, say, DeKalb traffic. I do remember first wearing kneepads and a helmet while skateboarding on a half-pipe, and feeling invincible. But I also get the feeling that certain accidents are likely to happen regardless of the cyclist's choice of headgear.

Does wearing a helmet just say to everyone "the wearing of this helmet is totally protected"? It would seem that some effect like this is indeed at play. Do you think drivers are more likely to take precaution when a cyclist is not wearing a helmet?

Two Tips On (Not) Sounding Stupid

Two things that, for some reason, I've heard or read a LOT in the past couple weeks. Two things that are widely over-used and very incorrect. Two things I hope you'll learn to avoid saying, because they make you sound stupid. Two things that make me ignore everything else a speaker has to say, because these popular errors do a lot to remove a speaker's credibility.

1. Trying or giving anything more than 100%. Say this and you not only are a liar, but you've proven that you are terrible at math and not thinking about what you're really saying. Do the math. You can't have more than 100% of anything, because 100% is all of it. It's impossible to give 110%, so don't say that to someone if you want them to have more confidence in your abilities. You might as well come out and say "2+2=17".

2. Saying "it's in our company's / corporation's / brand's DNA". Absolutely not. Companies, corporations and brands do not, nor will they ever, have DNA. Claiming that anything is part of your organization's DNA shows that you don't understand what DNA is, and that you are spewing meaningless gibberish. Do your homework before you ape something that sounds scientific, or you'll look like a fool. What you're talking about are ideas, not genetic information. It's likely that, if you're referring to anything at all, it's a "meme" or "meme-complex". Have some respect for science; try not to butcher it just to feel like you sound important.

Piracy is a business model

Interesting post on Boing Boing, quoting a Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney. While the executive's comments at Mipcom seem clearly spurned by the belief that "content is king", Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow rounds out his post with a moment of clarity to which more studio execs and marketers should subscribe:

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Well put. I'm inspired to put it this way:
Conversation is king because no one can own it.

(Not even Disney, not even with all the pirate references ... coincidentally made as a Disney pirate movie special edition DVD is made available for pre-order.)

In fact, Sweeney goes on to mention that some consumers want to consume content in a timely fashion so as to not miss out on the proverbial "watercooler moment" - conversation, in not so many words. This doesn't jive with her "content is king" stance. You don't bring content to the watercooler, you bring conversation. Let me give you an example:

This week, had I a watercooler conversation, it would have been about how the streaming online player for selected ABC programs doesn't work very well, and how the Disney-owned network was unable to stream more than twenty seconds of LOST without grinding to a halt for minutes at a time (an unpleasant, frustrating user experience). I'd then turn the conversation to the feeling I got, saying "just go buy it at iTunes and be done with this", and how I thought I'd just been teased into buying content I was supposed to have gotten for free. I'd managed to see a choppy two minutes of the episode, and now I wanted to see the rest. This is where I'd let the conversation go parenthetical...

(What do you do when the brand new, free streaming player isn't working? You can pay two dollars for the same content - plus DRM - at iTunes, or you could just watch for the content on a free P2P network, where you can get the content that will keep you in tomorrow's conversations.)

I would have concluded the conversation with mention of the BitTorrent options for freely acquiring the content on which our conversations thrive.

Common, change your name to Commercial already.

When he still went by Common Sense, I saw this Columbia College drop-out hanging with his buddies at a Wendy's in a suburb of Chicago - that's right, a suburb, not Chicago proper.

A few years later, I watched him "perform" at NIU. It was so uneventful, people in the far-from-sold-out crowd were sitting down on the floor and some even nodding off to sleep.

Fast-forward a few more years and he's done away with all Sense, and openly fancies himself one of those psuedo-poetic, racially charged "issue" rappers. By no coincidence, he also started doing a lot more commercials and fashion spreads. He still claimed to be "representing" Chi Town through all this.

Common, come on. How can you possibly "represent" Chicago when you, like Kanye, don't even live there anymore? Maybe you need a hook to sell your records? Maybe geography isn't your strong suit.

Let's talk about social issues, since you claim that's what you're all about. Did you ever stop to think that the empty calories in Coca-Cola are helping to deteriorate the health of "your people" and contribute to the obesity epidemic? Your role as a shill to promote cola is in direct conflict with the stated mission of your children's charity.

Let's address the real issue: you going commercial. With this new Gap deal you've got, not only are you now potentially mid-shark jump, but you're also wearing out your own moniker. I think you should just change your name to Commercial and spare us all the cognitive dissonance.

Stigmergy vs. Synergy

I learned a new word today, thanks to Jason Kottke and Wikipedia: stigmergy.

After reading the definition, it occurred to me that stigmergy is potentially the Web 2.0 equivalent of "synergy" - a term notoriously mis-used and abused by account directors and strategists everywhere. Synergy is not always good - it is a compounding of effects from two or more discrete influences. Think of the side-effects of cold medicine... take two or more kinds and the resultant synergy could prove fatal.

Since "synergy" has practically lost its meaning through mis-use (much in the same way "impact" is mis-used as a positive term - usually as the non-word "impactful"), I think "stigmergy" has promise. It affords a more realistic, organic approach to defining the nature a given relationship. That is, until chumps with poor language and communication skills butcher the term into meaninglessness.

The Backlash Bandwagon

It always happens... The industry leader is the brand that takes criticism for the entire category. The brand's competition may very well be worse for you, but it doesn't matter because you armchair activists and podcast pundits aim for the biggest target. I'm not defending McDonald's or Microsoft, but pointing out that "anti-hype" is little more than a backlash bandwagon - based on misplaced emotion more than fact.

You can see the anti-hype around MySpace more frequently now. From the half-assed "Fox bought MySpace" panic that, in the end, only attracted millions more people to the social networking site... to this article. Let me get this straight: a site that has 70 million members is "out" because one 18-year-old out of just 400 high school students surveyed said she's done with MySpace? Can't we just admit that we're tired of stories about MySpace's dominance, instead of publishing superfluous fluff and clutter about it? I'm not defending MySpace, but wondering where our collective common sense went.

We bitch about MySpace being too big, yet we've more than doubled the site's population in the past year. We claim that we don't eat McDonald's any more, yet we actually go to the fast-food giant more often and spend more when we're there since SuperSize Me came out. We bitch about Bill Gates and Microsoft, yet somewhere around 90% of us still claim Windows as our operating system. As consumers have proven that we are lying through our teeth; that we love to complain, but we have no resolve to effect change.

Why not get off the backlash bandwagon and put your money where your mouth is, folks?

AMP'd Fakes Don't Make It

First off, I have to say that the fad of replacing "extreme" with some variation of "amp" is already old-and-busted. You can all stop using it now. Please.

Speaking of old-and-busted, let's talk about fake sites. Like the one you get to from this banner that ran Comedy Central's site this week (among other sites, I'm sure).

Click "approve" and you go to get AMPD. But click "disapprove" and you get this.

This "fake" site BS seems to come up more often than bad ideas are made into TV spots - but does it help to undermine your own message so readily? Obviously, someone wants to make the point of saying "this is not for some people" in an allegedly "young-adult" fashion. But are these sites made with genuine concern for the consumer, or are they just funny to the interactive marketers who spend their days making this stuff?

Definitely the latter. Every button on this fake site just sends you back to AMPD.com. It's a particularly hollow gesture, as it doesn't even do "fake" right. Irritating and overwhelmingly pointless. It's possible to do "fake" and remain conceptually sound, but this isn't even close. It's such a shitty experience for the user, whoever came up with this should be shot.

To AMPD and it's agency: don't pat yourselves on the back, mistakenly considering this post "earned media" -- you haven't earned anything but scorn and distaste, and this is from an "early adopter" in your target audience, as far as you know. Don't take us for idiots.

(I wonder if Coors was officially involved in any way... theirs is the only product featured in the banner ad, and I'm pretty sure it's done without permission or legal clearance. And is that cat 21?)