Obsidian Wings

Music in the air

by Doctor Science

Wednesday evening we did something I haven't done for decades: listened to world-class live music with no electronic component, not even microphones. Music was in the air, and only in the air.
 
YouTube link.

The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra is touring the US, and the Sprogs and I went to see them at the NJ State Theatre. We only thought to go because one of our closest friends has a brother-in-law in the orchestra, so there was a group expedition.

Your moodle Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

It's the time in the school year when I'm finished classes and trying to make sure that the students who have fallen behind catch up and start to think about what to do in my classes next year to avoid this predicament. (university education in Japan is akin to grape-nuts, in that it isn't university and it isn't education. ba-doom boom!)

I'm creating a Moodle adjunct to my writing course to provide extra support for students retaking the course. A number of folks here in Japan (known as moodlers) are convinced that moodle is the answer to the world's problems. Or something like that. I tend to be a bit sceptical, but there are some things that it may be able to do that are quite neat. If anything, I like this, which is a Japanese company that deals with Moodle installations, calling itself Cup Moodle. Get it?

Kind of a narrow topic for an open thread, so how about talking about any interactions you have with online stuff. Or, failing that, telling these damn kids to get their damn online packages off your lawn.

Is This Corruption?

While browsing the interwebs today, I noticed that a wide variety of companies and websites are engaged in a protest regarding the atrocious Stop Online Piracy Act.  The most elegant one is Google's:

The recent campaign against the SOPA strikes me as both good and necessary.  But I immediately wondered how it fit with recent discussions about corporations and political advertising (see here  by way of example).  Putting up a politically charged message on Google's home search screen is much more valuable than almost any ad buy.  Many of the protests appear to be on corporate websites.  These efforts involve the use of corporate resources to attempt to directly influence Congressional opinion.  Beyond the corporate agitation, these efforts involve pooling resources among lots of people in an attempt to raise public awareness which no individual voice would likely get on their own.

If the politicians were allowed to shut this kind of thing down, they absolutely would.  There must be ways to attack corruption in politics without attacking free speech. 

May you get an interesting computer virus

by Doctor Science

Now *that*'s a phrase to strike fear into every heart. And that's what I've been dealing with for much of the past week -- a virus that even pros thought an "interesting case". The lovely & talented people at geekstogo came to my rescue, and after about two and a half days of work I am finally clean. It was a lot of this:

 
on YouTube

only *much* less cool.

king

by russell

Today, we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King.  Some folks do so enthusiastically, some less so.  Some not at all.

It's been almost 45 years since the man was shot dead in Memphis.  How far have we come?

• about 40% of the US prison population are black men
• two-thirds of black kids are in single-parent homes
• American blacks earn less than nearly every other demographic group
• American blacks are 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites, 7 times more likely to be the murderer

Later rinse and repeat for educational level and graduation rates, home ownership, household wealth, etc etc etc etc etc.

We have not reached the promised land.

There is virtually nothing in American life that is not touched - poisoned - by both the legacy and the present reality of racism.  And by "racism" I don't necessarily mean personally held animosity toward specific other people because of their skin color, although that is certainly not lacking.  I mean the ingrained habit and practice of treating people differently, in any of a million ways, because of their skin color.

We assume different things are true about each other based on our skin color.  We expect different things from each other based on our skin color.  We have different levels of comfort and ease with each other based on our skin color. 

Why is this?

How long will it go on?

What will it take to change it?

A lot of people literally gave their lives 50 and 60 years ago to move this particular rock forward.  Something like two generations later, I wouldn't say that things are the same, but I'm also not sure they're better.

What will it take for King's vision to come to pass?  Because it wasn't just his vision, it was the vision of many people - millions - and great prices were paid in the attempt to make it real.  IMO we owe those folks our best effort to understand and resolve the enduring, malignant, festering cancer of race as a cultural, social, economic and political point of division.

I have no solutions to offer here, I simply wanted to open the question.  It needs an answer.

Your handmade map Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

Dr. Science wrote earlier about Google maps and I've always loved maps. So I thought that this was pretty cool:

American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor is the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. The five most recent winners were all maps designed by large, well-known institutions: National Geographic (three times), the Central Intelligence Agency Cartography Center, and the U.S. Census Bureau. But earlier this year, the 38^th annual Best of Show award went to a map created by Imus Geographics—which is basically one dude named David Imus working in a farmhouse outside Eugene, Ore.

The article makes it sound like an extraordinary piece of work and I'm hoping to order some for my students. You can order a copy of the map here. 

But to expand it a bit, the article says this 'This is an example of heartfelt, artisanal cartography coming from a pro at the top of his game.' What does 'artisanal cartography' sound so cool?

It may sound strange, but I have always envied people who could find something they really really wanted to do and then were able to devote all their attention to it. I have always been what Japanese term as a 'three day monk' (三日坊主) In other words, someone who tries something and then gets bored at it (though some say the proverb is about people who don't like hard work. That fits too...) I would like to think that it is that I have just not found that thing that would capture my undivided attention, but I suspect that there is nothing like that. I flit from hobby to hobby, and always find the grass a nicer shade of green when I'm not standing on it. I've masked it a bit by moving to related things rather than starting things from scratch, but that's just a ruse. 

So an open thread for maps and your heart's desire.

 

Scotland, the brave?

by liberal japonicus

(Alternative title: Hooray for Holyrood?)

My understanding of parliamentary government is a lot like my understanding of centigrade (or celsius, I guess). I can get a rough idea of the temperature outside when I see a temperature with a ℃ after it, but I don't understand it in my bones, the way I do Farenheit. Losing a vote gets you kicked out of office, figuring out when to call an election is something important (rather than schedule it on a Tuesday when everyone is at work like we do), forming an alliance with some bat-shit crazy party, going for a year and a half without actually forming a government, having a shadow minister as a real job, where these are things that seem really strange to me, but probably merit not even a blink of an eye if you grew up with it. This and this and this, while in English, sure seems a lot more lively than C-span. And when we get to those Asian ones, we have this and this and this.** More on one of those funny parliamentary maneuvers below:

Kids These Days: That Music, and the people who sing it so loud. On my lawn.

by Doctor Science

Andrew Sullivan pointed to DJ Earworm's year-end Mashup, United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom):
 
At YouTube

Now, I admit I am a fogey, and I don't necessarily understand Kids These Days and Their Wacky Music on My Lawn. I watched the video -- which I think is extremely cleverly edited -- in part to see how many of the riffs and singers I would even recognize. Results: ... some? I am not completely ignorant!

But since I am *substantially* ignorant, a number of things about the mashup -- and thus about the most popular songs of the day -- really jumped out at me.

The big thing is how many of the voices are very similar: they are women's voices, or, if male, they are tenors. The two voices that really stick out as *different*, tonally, are Lady Gaga's and Adele's. It may be that what I'm hearing is really a sea of Autotune, out of which Adele's voice naturally sticks out like a lighthouse. Gaga's voice is gritty and naturalistic (if not natural) enough that it, too, sticks out of the humming uniformity.

The fact that so many of the voices are women's was not what I was expecting, for two reasons. First, the "classic rock" and other music-of-my-youth stations I usually listen to definitely have more male voices than female ones. Second, I remembered a multi-part discussion from much more music-savvy people than I on TigerBeatDown, about how many (white) males -- including critics -- see nothing wrong with saying they "don't like women's singing." (Also see TBB's recent satire of how music critics write about male and female artists.)

So both my expectations and logic predicted that the voices of popular music would be male. And yet, that's not how it seems from the mashup. My immediate reaction: It's Time for SCIENCE! Or more specifically, data.

I was scared but it felt sweet

by von (retired)

A vote has been taken, and the following is at least seven (7) times awesome. Seriously, this is one of the better covers that I've seen -- and I'm a pretty harsh judge, since I was maybe a drink away from getting a four F's tatoo (Jawbreaker fans will understand).

In other news from long ago: wugazi (scroll down, it's a genius mashup).

That is all.

Your resolved for New Year's Friday Open thread

by liberal japonicus

I love the fact that 'I am resolved to the fact' gets the word resolved away from the notion of being resolute, and doing whatever it takes to get something done, to a "well, I guess there's nothing that can be done", which sort of exemplifies my policy on New Year's resolutions. 

Here in Japan, they aren't much on resolutions, but New Year's cleaning is rather big, which is a good thing, except that I hate cleaning up when it's cold. But, in the spirit of the post, below the fold are of my resolutions