Archive for February, 2011
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[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 8, 2011 by admin in Music
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
Although many would assert that Paul McCartney died the moment the Beatles broke up, and others would say it happened as he recorded “Ebony & Ivory”, still others believe it happened in 1966. The Winged Beatle is yet another look at the eerie connections between the Beatles, Aleister Crowley, and backwards speech. All wrapped up in compulsive fits of Pareidolia.
Did Paul McCartney die in 1966, to be replaced by a perfect double in order to keep intact the multi-million dollar empire that was The Beatles? Nah, probably not. And even if he did, they did such a good job of replacing him that ultimately it’s kind of irrelevant. But it’s a testament to the epic magnitude of the Beatles as a pop culture phenomena that anyone would still be talking about the idea today. Which they are. YouTube user iamaphoney has been uploading videos for several years exploring the legends and conspiracy theories surrounding the “Paul is dead” rumours that remained so pervasive in the late sixties and early seventies. In December, the material was released in a one-hour-and-four-minute compilation called The Winged Beatle (presumably a reference to the Aleister Crowley book
). It’s available as a stream on both YouTube and Vimeo, and is downloadable in higher resolution video via that first link. I’m a little ashamed to admit I got sucked into watching the whole thing the other evening, not with rapt attention, but in a second browser window while I worked. But I have to say that – especially as “user generated content” – it’s an intriguing piece of work that’s well worth a look. Not because it brings to light any shocking revelations, or because it’s particularly compelling in production quality, but because it pursues the mythology of the story with such vigor, and with the same spirit of “Look at this seemingly unrelated piece of information! Coincidence? DANH-DANH-DANH! We think not!” that gave the whole conspiracy life back in the more naive 60′s in the first place. I can’t tell you how many LP’s I ruined as a kid, playing them backwards, thanks to the Beatles. At least until my folks bought me a reel-to-reel Teac A-1200. And there’s no shortage of backwards audio in this relentless, hour long conniption fit of audio-video Pareidolia. Fortunately, during the parts where the suggestion that there are any intelligible words being heard is total poppycock, subtitles are provided. But that’s part of the fun. Because even if you’re (ahem) dead certain that it’s all a fairy tale, the “true” story of how it all unfolded is actually as fascinating as the conspiracy version. And of course, being the googleholic wikiphiliac that I am, I had to learn more. If you’re interested, one of the best-documented sources I found was Who Buried Paul , a presentation assembled by Brian Moriarty. It follows the original media trail with rigorous detail, from the first rumour in 1966 through its revival in 1969. Which I had no idea, by the way, began in my hometown of Ann Arbor, MI. And I always thought that all we had brought the world of pop was Bob Seger. Good show, Ann Arbor. If you want to learn more about the creator of TheWingedBeatle, he has a Facebook page and a Twitter account with the name Billy Martin attached. And apparently has two more releases planned, TheRightAlbum later this year, and TheRevelAtion in 2012. Watch TheWingedBeatle below if you like. Read the rest of this entry »
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 7, 2011 by admin in Politics
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Just who WAS that black man, and why did he keep interrupting Bill O’Reilly, anyway? A look at Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and Bill O’Reilly’s pre-Super Bowl interviews with President Obama
We do a fair amount of Obama bashing around here; it’s probably safe to say that many of us who voted for him feel a bit short-changed-and-hoped on occasion. But in spite of whatever you or I think about Barack Obama, I would hope that given the chance to actually speak to the man, we would maintain a little class and basic manners and remember that we’re talking to the president of the world’s most powerful democracy. I’d like to be able to say I was appalled at Bill O’Reilly’s demeanor while interviewing the president before the Super Bowl yesterday, with his constant interruptions and muttered asides, but I’m not. Although I’m rather fond of old-school manners and the concept of dignified statesmanship, I was just sort of detachedly disappointed by it all. For one thing, I’ve shared my thoughts before about how I find it ironic that Fox – an entertainment company owned by a foreigner – has become the main source of news for the most xenophobic of Americans. So the fact that Fox sent a ranting loon like O’Reilly try to stir up some paranoia about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt rather than asking some insightful questions was no surprise. And it’s just some darn pre-Super Bowl filler, right? I mean, while millions of people actually care about the game, it’s safe to say that many, many more people are interested in the commercial spots. So at the end of the day, a short chat with the president is just a minor distraction. Which is why it’s a little disappointing that O’Reilly couldn’t just leave it at that, and instead tried to turn it into a Fox opinion piece. Although I have to add – as someone who enjoys observing people’s body language and vocal expression – it was kind of entertaining to see O’Reilly look so awkward and hear his voice tweaked up nearly a half-octave with discomfort. But I think my biggest disappointment was that Obama didn’t get a bit tougher and just tell his heckler to shut up like Reagan might have. Unfortunately, this is where – in a weird turnabout – the white man was carrying the race card. The difference in America between Barack Obama telling someone to shut up and Ronald Reagan telling someone to shut up is, sorry to say, like night and day. Below is O’Reilly’s interview yesterday, and the last two pre-Super Bowl interviews with Katie Couric on CBS, and Matt Lauer on NBC, respectively. Read the rest of this entry »
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 6, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
I went to the word doctor and he told me I needed a new Linguistic prescription, so I decided to stop procrasturbating and buy a new wiener filter.
 
What word lover wouldn’t LOVE a copy of
the OED? Well, me I guess. If it costs 1300
bucks and is obsolete by the time it ships. |
Today I got an e-mail from a friend in which the word “empath” was used. The particular usage of the word in the e-mail highlighted something that I think about quite a bit, which is that the English language is probably more fun now than it’s ever been, even if we don’t know what we’re saying to each other. I’m referring of course to the fact that as the venerated Oxford English Dictonary dies slowly from self-inflicted wounds like including Homer Simpson’s DOH! in its pages, new words and axioms are appearing and disappearing so fast that on a regular basis, it can be hard to tell what someone is talking about. There have long been two basic schools of thought regarding how to go about defining words – in a nutshell, prescriptivists want to tell you how to use words, and descriptivists want to tell you how you are using words. It’s sort of like the difference between always adhering to the dictionary, versus being more willing to accept common usage. Which is why I’ve always found the existence of Common Usage Dictionaries
to be a little problematic. In any case, neither of these schools of thought were of much use in addressing the word I mentioned at the outset. i.e.: empath. It presumably means someone who is empathic (or empathetic, if you prefer). But what does that really mean? If you take the word “empathetic” and its little friend “sympathetic”, you’ll find that the people who are most likely to be confident in their understanding of the two words’ meanings will in fact have the definitions reversed. Most educated people will say that empathy means that you can actually feel someone else’s feelings, while sympathy means that you can imagine how they feel. What do you think they mean? In point of fact, the word empathy was brought into usage in English in the 1880′s specifically to provide a word that describes a professional clinician’s need to maintain detachment while still truly understanding how a patient feels. See the yellow highlighted summary at the bottom of this page for further explanation. But that’s just two of probably hundreds (if not thousands) of commonly used words that are prone to misuse or open to debate. I’m surprised that they’re not on this Wikipedia List of English words with disputed usage. But those are slow-moving targets, much like the already-archaic term “politically correct” which enjoyed a mini-revival recently when hurled at Barack Obama by the Israeli press. But the real fun with the rapid evolution of our language is being driven by the internet, technology, and politics. In the case of the latter, GOP strategist Frank Luntz has brilliantly blazed new trails by understanding that it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. His book Words That Work
outlines how he helped the Republican party win repeatedly simply by, for instance, telling you to think about “personalizing your retirement plans” instead of “worrying about Social Security” . And regarding the former two influences – the internet and technology – we not only have a complex new world of devices and the behaviors that they drive, we have an incredibly rapid way to share the words being created to describe them. There simply is no way that a team of academics arguing about what to include in the next Oxford English Dictionary (only $1300!) can remain useful to us; probably the closest thing we have to a useful dictionary are sites like Urban Dictionary. Which is both scary AND fun, in my opinion. I mean, while we may not need words like procrasturbation, we may need words like Dykeadelic, because who doesn’t know someone who isn’t? And futronym will come in handy when we need to manage all the retronyms we haven’t created yet. Below are a few of my favorite recent words. Feel free to share any good ones of your own. And if everything I’ve said here just sounds like noise to you, maybe you should run it through your Wiener filter. You should have no trouble finding one; they’ve been around since 1949.
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[ 21 Comments ]Posted on February 5, 2011 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
The very words “Last Minute Valentine Gifts” kind of suggest a problem. Why not just own up to your misogyny and buy a copy of Marc Rudov’s “Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze or Jumper Cables”
We’ve already shared a lot of other Valentine Gift Ideas, but are you a man who is sick and tired of these sexist, gender-lopsided traditions of Valentine’s Day? Or perhaps a woman who is sick and tired of the man in your life, who claims he’s sick and tired of the sexist, gender-lopsided traditions of Valentine’s Day, so he can get out of buying you Valentine’s gifts? Well, I think we’ve found the perfect gift for both of you. If you’re the woman in this scenario, you can buy it for the man, to help make him go away. And if you’re the man, you can maintain your thinly-veiled misogynistic pride by buying yourself a copy. And after you’ve validated all your bogus values of equality based on anti-feminism, you can start a bromance with Marc Rudov, and enjoy an endless string of chick-bashing man dates together. I’m referring, of course, to any of the “books” by Mark Rudov, including The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth
or Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze or Jumper Cables. We put the word “books” in quotes, because The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women appears to be the only one that made it into actual book form. The rest are just over-priced eBooks. We were going to pick up a copy of “Under the Clitoral Hood” so we could review it, until we realized it was a 55 PAGE EBOOK FOR $9.95 and decided to pass. Besides, Rudov’s message can easily be overheard any night of the week at a sports bar or strip club for free. And his personality type isn’t hard to suss out either; with free teaser downloads like Her Double-D’s Can Bankrupt You (PDF) and the admonishment on the “buy” page that “You can open and print this document as many times as you wish on the computer in which you installed and unlocked it. I can monitor this usage and deactivate your key if you abuse this privilege“, it’s clear that Rudov is a self-righteous, homophobic, breast-fearing, love-damaged control freak. An assumption we think is probably validated by the warm welcome he seems to receive on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox TV program. So. All you latently homosexual men who hate Valentine’s Day, rejoice! You finally have someone to share bro jobs with. And you can do it on Rudov’s Nomance Day . Oh. And if for some reason you need an image of the cover of one of Rudov’s books, brace yourself if you do a Google Image Search for “Under the Clitoral Hood”.
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[ 1 Comment ]Posted on February 4, 2011 by admin in Technology
Friday, February 4th, 2011
The iPhone finally comes to Verizon, but will it sound better? Time will tell, but have you ever wondered WHY the audio quality of cell phones is worse today than landlines were thirty years ago?
 
The only app I want on an iPhone is
the one that makes it actually
function for voice communication |
A friend asked me today if – since I’m a Verizon customer – I was FINALLY going to get an iPhone. Referencing “Convoy”, the 70′s novelty radio hit
and movie
about truck driver CB radio culture (here’s the trailer), I replied “that’s a big fat negatori, Rubber Ducky“. Yes, I’ve said it before. When it comes to technology, I’m a big whiny baby. Just see my Disappointing Technologies Part I and Part II. Or my explanations of why your mp3′s or your robots suck. But one thing I probably have found more annoying than anything – whether technology related or not – is the infernally faulty and obscenely expensive set of devices and services that we end up calling a “mobile phone”. Aside from the absurd prevalence of dropped calls (a friend of mine has a four square foot area in his Chicago apartment where his AT&T iPhone works that we call his “iZone”) I’ve always been astounded that in the 21st century, a device that is specifically designed to transmit your voice to another person’s ear does it less effectively than the walkie-talkies I played with as a kid. And this horrible sound quality is nowhere more obvious, in my opinion, than with an iPhone. This Wired piece explains that part of this problem will go away with an iPhone on Verizon’s networks, but I predict that the fundamental audio quality of cell phones – which is arguably a joke compared to landlines of even thirty years ago – will not get any better soon. Why? The first reason is that – as most of us would agree these days – a cell phone isn’t for talking, it’s for texting, web browsing, and apps. Verizon is well aware of this, and started revising all their data plans in preparation for the launch of the Verizon-compatible iPhone, which will add a new kind of load to their networks. And the second reason? It’s the fact that no-one seems to care about the atrocious audio quality of modern cellular/wireless networks. If it ain’t broke, why would they fix it? If you don’t know what I mean, you’re either a digital native who wouldn’t understand the old pin drop commercial of a couple decades ago, a very tolerant person, or perhaps just plain deaf. Remember when you were a teen, and in naively romantic moments in the wee hours on the phone, you’d play your boyfriend or girlfriend some cheesy song that expressed your complex teen feelings in a way that words never could? Well, forget it pal. If you have typical cell service in America and have ever tried to achieve anything beyond the garbled, delay-ridden talking that we’re used to, you know what I mean. But have you ever wondered why? You’d think it’s because the signal is being bounced through the atmosphere to a bunch of towers, maybe a satellite, and then a few more towers, right? Well, that is in fact part of the problem. But the real problem has two more elements. One of them is profit. Rather than investing in and building out high-quality capacity and then charging you for it, providers will continue to offer you the lowest acceptable quality to eek the most out of existing networks. And if customers don’t seem to care about the audio, they’ll continue to focus on non-voice data transfer. The other part of the problem is the audio compression codecs providers use to squish decipherable voice information into the smallest possible amount of data. Somehow, the rather shoddy codecs used for the 128kbps mp3′s you buy on iTunes became accepted as the industry standard for quality audio. That’s probably okay ultimately; studies show that the majority of people actually can’t distinguish that bitrate from higher quality sound sources. So fine. Let’s just say that’s acceptable audio. But if you’ve ever heard a song in say, a 64 or 32kbps bitrate, you know how bad things start sounding pretty quickly. And although simple voice data may even sound clearer around 32kbps (because a lot of people’s weird breath and mouth noises get compressed out) you may be surprised to know the actual compression and frequency response numbers for standard cell phone service. The bitrate is often 8kbps, and the frequency range being used is typically 400 Hz to 3500 Hz. For comparison, a decent stereo system has perhaps 60 Hz – 18,000 Hz capability. The 400 Hz – 3500 Hz part wouldn’t be so bad by itself, because aside from harmonics that affect the timbre and the sibilant sounds we make, the majority of vocal sounds are in that frequency range. The real problem is in all the other things the audio codecs do to compress the voice data. While it is in fact INCREDIBLE what audio engineers and programmers have developed over the years to facilitate various kinds of voice audio compression, the choice to continue applying the most “aggressive” of these algorithms and codecs is what makes your cell call sound like crap. Aside from the low bitrate and limited frequency response, the voice signal is further analyzed and hacked up with things like voice activity detection and linear predictive coding, which decide whether something is a voice, background noise, or silence. The codec then discards whatever it thinks is not useful voice information, further compresses the data, transmits it, and reverses the process on the other end. Thus the word “codec”, which is a portmanteau of “compressor-decompressor”. The result of all this secret-decoder-ring monkeying around? Well, when you combine it with the bizarrely un-ergonomic deck-of-cards-like shape of an iPhone and the tiny mic and specialized audio processing designed to compensate for it, the result is that horrifying shriek that interrupts your friend’s garbled voice when their child says something at a normal volume in the background. So no, I won’t be rushing to the Verizon store to pick up an iPhone. In fact, I’m thinking of switching to one of these little handheld CB jobbies
. It says the range is only four miles, but that’s without shootin’ skip.
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