N.A.S.A. feat. Tom Waits + Kool Keith
Like I can even come up with something better than that title….
Some backstory available at Boing Boing.
[via Boing Boing]
Latest Entries
Fight Club Sound Design
Designing Sound has an interview with Ren Klyce about his work as sound designer for Fight Club. (The clip, unfortunately, has pretty echoey audio. But I’m willing to overlook the audio for the content.)
Norm Chomsky
We played open mic last week at La Casbah in Potsdam (verdict: passed without embarrassment… at least that was the band’s vote).
Ceclia Taylor-Hunt sketched us (on her 23rd birthday) at the end of the bar. Catch more of Ceclia’s work at MusicBox.
Job Posting: Visual Communication/New Media
We’re looking for a new colleague:
Visual Communication/New Media: Tenure-track position assistant professor position beginning August 2010. Will consider a range of specializations such as visual design, web design, and new media production and analysis. Evidence of successful teaching, scholarly ability, and active research agenda necessary. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Ph.D. preferred, ABD considered; corporate experience welcomed. Applications reviewed beginning December 7, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled. Send letter and resume to Prof. Stephen D. Farina, Department of Communication & Media, Box 5760, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699-5760. Inquiries should be made to sdf@clarkson.edu or (315) 268-6484. Clarkson University is an AA/EOE. Refer to Position 38-09
Cory Doctorow on IP
David Weinberger interviews Cory Doctorow on the Internet and copyright law, most of which is taken up by the disproportionate penalty of banning anyone from net access for something as simple as copyright violation (even if they do it several times).
[via Joho the Blog]
David Lynch
Dugpa is an online David Lynch weblog/resource thing: news, photos, deleted scenes, and more. Go creep yourself out.
The Value of Error
Monitor Mix discusses the inherent value of mistakes in rock music and laments the overly produced perfection of contemporary music. They offer up this (accurate) analysis of The Beatles’ Rain:
Want to hear a really sloppy record? It’s a good song, but the recording’s a mess. The drums consistently drag the rhythm; the bass player isn’t quite sure how his part is supposed to go. If you listen carefully to the end of the second verse (around the 48-second mark in this video), the whole band gets lost for a moment and ends up adding an extra beat by accident.
Other paradigm examples: The Sex Pisols (every song), the keyboard solo in James Brown’s Sex Machine, the beginning of the chorus in the Mommas and the Papa’s I Saw Her Again.
RTFM Possibly Gendered
Ars Technica summarizes a Gadget Helpline study which suggests a possible (and large) gender difference in how men and women think about tech product manuals. And the apparent differences seem to confirm stereotypes:
Gadget Helpline analyzed 75,000 calls received between September and October of 2009 and discovered that it’s not just geeks that aren’t reading the manual. A full 64 percent of men and 24 percent of women calling into the line had not checked out the booklet that came with their computers or gadgets before picking up the phone. If the numbers are that dire (especially for the men), we can’t help but wonder how many more kept quiet about their inability to RTFM.
There could be confounding factors–there any controls for any other demographic info as far as I can tell, so it’s maybe the issue involves which gender is more likely to call tech support, or purchase/configure technology, etc. Still, the study could be the start of many classroom discussions about technology, gender, and culture, if nothing else.
[via Ars Technica]
