Archive for 2010
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[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 25, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, March 25th, 2010That massive music collection you’ve compiled by buying songs on iTunes? The songs are probably worth just about every one of those 99 cents you paid for them. MP3′s intrinsically suck as an audio file format.
A long time ago we pointed out why your music selections might suck. Well, now we’re going to tell you why your collection sucks. How many songs would you say you have on your hard drive? A few hundred? A few thousand? Did you buy or otherwise download them online as mp3′s? If your answer is “yes”, we can fairly safely say your music collection sucks a little bit. Why? There are two reasons. One is that mp3′s – at any bitrate – simply will never contain the content of the original recording. The methods used for compression in an mp3 file are based on psychoacoustic modeling that by its very nature removes sound that you pay less attention to in the first place. Although you’ll find audio nuts arguing about .mp3 vs .flac vs .wav ’til the end of time on discussion boards, it’s a moot point. If you can’t hear the difference between a high-quality CD and an mp3 rip of it, that just means you can’t hear the difference. It absolutely is there. It may not bother you – which in fact seems to be the case with the iPod generation – but that in fact is just another psychoacoustic phenomena. The other reason your music collection probably sucks is that since the late 80′s, producers and engineers have engaged in what some in the industry call the Loudness War, which is the recording industry’s tendency to abandon dynamic range altogether for the sake of pure volume. If you think this is some sort of obnoxious audiophile whining, see the graph and brief video below, or if you’re interested in an in-depth technical rundown, see A Chronology of the Loudness War (scroll down). The difference is pretty astounding. So how can you resuscitate the quality of your music collection? Well, if you’re listening to it on your iPod or through your computer speakers, don’t worry about it, you won’t be able to hear many of these differences anyway. On the other hand, if you have a lot of disposable income, you could start replacing it all on vinyl and high-quality import CD’s, and play them on your $554,000 stereo system. If you haven’t listened to your music on a full-blown stereo system for a while, see the clip and graphic below to visualize just how bad this problem really is. Read the rest of this entry »
Indy Film Alive & Well At The 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 24, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010One of the world’s most respected and longest-running indy film festivals is in the tiny college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and if opening night is any indication, this year’s festival promises to be a winner.
I always think of myself as film lover until I find myself surrounded by the passionate fanatics that will comprise a festival like the amazingly long-lived Ann Arbor Film Festival, now in its 48th year. It’s quite a feat filling a classic venue like the 1700+ capacity Michigan Theater on a Wednesday night, especially showing short films that no-one has heard of, but the AAFF did well on their opening night; I didn’t check the balcony, but there were very few seats open on the main floor. I was a little anxious about attending a full evening of indy film festival shorts; the luxury of time-shifted viewing and Internet access to an amazing variety of indy media has made me something of an on-demand media monster. But the festival didn’t disappoint, which is another impressive feat. The double-edged sword of creating a successful festival like the AAFF is that – yes, of course, you’re guaranteed a lot of quality submissions from around the world – but as the festival’s Executive Director Donald Harrison pointed out in his introduction to the festival tonight, their screeners and programmers had to sift through over 2500 submissions this year. I get a headache just thinking about what that must be like. Combine the sheer quantity with the multiple media formats and preparation required for simply projecting the material, and if the festival takes place at all, a monumental task has been accomplished. Think about that if you happen to be lucky enough to attend the festival this year. If you aren’t able to attend the festival, a surprising number of the films are readily available on line. Of course nothing compares to seeing them on a huge classic theater screen like the Michigan, but below are a few highlights from tonight’s entries for your perusal. See the AAFF’s YouTube channel for more previews, and their web site for the week’s schedule and other festival details. Read the rest of this entry »
The iPad Killers Are Coming
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on March 23, 2010 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Longing for a lightweight tablet PC but not too thrilled with the iPad? Don’t worry, there’s an avalanche of contenders.
The tech industry is a brutal world. Every time a product or service establishes some kind of dominance, every few months you’ll hear about its impending murder. Google Killers, Facebook Killers, Twitter Killers …well, now it’s the iPad’s turn. I already explained why I probably won’t be buying one even though I drooled for months awaiting its release. If you feel the same way I do, but long for a tablet PC to replace your laptop, we may be in luck. With the iPad hitting the market soon, the existing tablet industry is tooling up to cash in on its notoriety. We’ve rounded up most of the major players below. Read the rest of this entry »
Wealth Care For All
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on March 22, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, March 22nd, 2010If America were one hundred people, one would have forty-two bucks while eighty others shared seven dollars.
Now that they seem to have that “health care for all” thing fixed, maybe America should get to work on WEALTH care for all. I mean, somebody besides the Billionaires For Wealth Care that is, whose motto is “if we’re not broke, don’t fix it”. Yeah, it’s nice that Ben Bernanke is all outraged now that the money has changed hands and he still has a job. But I bet he’s still against the idea of wealth redistribution otherwise, even though he was behind one of the most epic examples of it. But seriously, what is wrong with redistribution of wealth? And when did so many working stiffs start thinking it’s a horrible idea? Let’s ponder for a moment the concepts of “fairness” as it pertains to wealth distribution. If, because of our God-given right to explore our Darwinian right to survival of the fittest in our laissez-faire capitalist society, I guess it’s fair that if you can horde a few billion dollars for yourself, well, more power to ya. At the point where you have 6 or 7 houses and as many cars, as well as virtually no worries in terms of food, clothing, shelter, and FU luxury items, still we might say well, go ahead. You’re a selfish ass, but go ahead. But when you reach this level of surplus and the citizens of the country that got you there are literally starving, I think any reasonable person would say maybe it’s time for you to cut a few bucks loose simply out of human decency. I mean really, you can’t drive seven cars at once, can you? In my opinion, if by this point you haven’t decided on a little serious philanthropy, that’s still your choice. But in the interest of maintaining the “survival of the fittest, every man for himself” theories that you justify your behavior with, I think that’s when it becomes fair for the rest of us to kill you and eat you. Because science shows that money only makes you happy when you know that you have more than others, and you can’t see us anymore through your smoked-glass limo windows. And we just want you to be happy. So once we’ve wrecked your life and you’re unemployed (we weren’t really gonna eat you, you probably taste like crap) you can rediscover that giving even feels good when you’re jobless. On a serious note: you always hear statements like “one percent of Americans have ninety-nine percent of the wealth”, but no-one ever gets the infographic right. They always use plot lines and pie charts. We have a better example below, feel free to share it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tea Party? The Coffee Party? Wake Up. It’s The Corporate Party
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 21, 2010 by admin in Politics
Sunday, March 21st, 2010The real power in this country lies in the hands of corporate interests in ways most people don’t understand.
 For some unsettling insights into who’s really running things, check out the DVD  or the book “The Corporation”. |
When it comes to politics, I sometimes get the feeling lately that I’m having one of those weird anxiety dreams where all the surroundings are basically familiar, but everything is just a little different somehow, and everyone else knows what’s going on except me. When you have a bunch of mostly working-class people calling themselves “teabaggers” marching against the party that historically has been on their side calling legislators niggers and faggots, and the best response that the liberal intellectuals of the country can muster is a contrarily-named coffee party, you have to pause and ask: what really is going on here? Well, after doing more reading and research on the topic than I’d really care to, I have a bit of an opinion forming. Almost every problem that I see in America right now can be traced to one basic source. Corporatocracy. Whether it’s the corruption that ensues from regulatory capture by way of DC’s revolving doors, or the travesty that is the current health care battle, or the incredibly unsustainable and unhealthy diet and food production process in America, it can all be directly traced to corporate interests. I’ve longed for a third party for some time now, and was too dense to realize it was right here all along. It’s big business. Whether it’s campaign donations, lobby dollars, or the direct infiltration of the government via the aforementioned “agency capture”, Global and national corporations are clearly more powerful than government today. And the sick part of the big joke is that the GOP will probably deflect attention from their profoundly corporatocratic beliefs by using the widely misunderstood term corporatist to call Democrats fascist corporatists (which will be partly true, in an odd way) and both groups of voters will buy into their side’s spin. The irony of course being that both parties will be telling some twisted version of the truth, while benefiting personally as people of wealth and power by keeping the citizenry split down the middle, pointlessly hoping for a democracy-based solution.