Wrapped Up in Books

Taking a tip from a blog I read occasonally (Crooked Timber) I thought it would be a good idea (for some reason) to keep track of all the books I read. And what's the point of having a blog if one can't inflict the tedious minutiae of one's life on others? So, below the fold, I chronicle the books I've read over the past 12 months (the ones I remember). The comments are not intended to be a comprehensive review; just some random notes that occurred to me.



The Most Evil Pirates in History
Shelley Klein
Read: Feb. 2007
Non-Fiction
A Christmas present from mi hermano. Some of the pirates didn't seem that evil, although many had a bizarre tebndency to cut off people's lips, cook them, then feed them back to the victim. Odd. Still, an entertaining read, if you're into pirates.

Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
Read: Feb. 2007
Non-Fiction
Fairly entertaining if somewhat implausible memoir of growing up as a gay teen in a highly dysfunctional family--and eventually going to live with his mother's therapist's even more highly dysfunctional family. A lot of this was hard to believe (and I'm told that the author has come under fire for purportedly making things up). We showed the movie at the Film Forum, but I was told it was terrible (by our own Managing Director) so I avoided it.

Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
Maureen Ogle
Read: Jan. 2007
Non-Fiction
Another Christmas present from mi hermano, a compelling history of the American beer industry, from its humble beginnings among German immigrants to the mass-produced (and foul-tasting) swill produced by the major breweries today. The book smashes some common myths and is well-researched. Good reading while drinking a pint or two of a good craft brew.

A Taxonomy of Barnacles
Galt Niederhoffer
Read: Jan. 2007
Fiction
Not that good story of six sisters and their eccentric father. There is a goofy attempt to tie the sisters (who are named Barnacle) and their WASPy neighbors the Finches to Darwin's writings on finches and barnacles but it so doesn't work. The author is wildly inaccurate with regard to many points of Darwinism (The Origin of Species has nothing to do with the beginning of life, but rather how natural selection gives rise to new species) as well as New York City geography (the D train does not go to Queens). (The book also needed a good copy editor.) It was occasionally kind of funny, especially early on, but all the characters got pretty annoying very quickly. Not really recommended.

V.
Thomas Pynchon
Read: Jan. 2007
Fiction
Flushed with the success of making it through Against the Day unscathed, I thought I would start back at the beginning. I did enjoy V., although I suspect a second pass would clarify some things--like, for example, the plot.

Bee Season
Myla Goldberg
Read: Dec. 2006
Fiction
OK, I admit: I bought this book because of The Decemberists' song "A Song for Myla Goldberg" which I like. This enjoyable debut novel, about a teenage girl's adventures in the dog-eat-dog world of spelling bees, takes a bizarre turn about halfway through and ends up ultimately being slightly less than completely satisfying, but is still recommended.

Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
Read: Nov.-Dec. 2006
Fiction
Mammoth, 1,000+-page tome which I didn't quite understand all of, but enjoyed immensely. More commentary here.

The Brooklyn Follies
Paul Auster
Read: Nov. 2006
Fiction
I first read Auster when I was in college and his "existential" mind-f--k "New York Trilogy" came out and I loved it (you know, characters answer ringing phones and end up talking to themselves…weird stuff like that). Auster has gotten a bit more down to earth in the 20 years since his debut, and The Brooklyn Follies is a nice tale of a retiree who moves from the 'burbs to Brooklyn and chronicles the universe of personalities that surround him. Nice, thought-provoking read, well-drawn characters, but the jaunt to Vermont has that typical New York contempt for anyone who doesn't live in an urban setting, which is faintly annoying. Still, an enjoyable book.

Nature Girl
Carl Hiaasen
Read: Nov. 2006
Fiction
I love Carl Hiaasen's crime fiction (I've read all his books) but this one should just be buried in a Florida swamp. Really annoying protagonist, a "bad guy" who really isn't all that bad, no real plot to speak of, and a final scene that goes on interminably. I cannot recommend this one. Go check out Skinny Dip, Basket Case, Sick Puppy, or Tourist Season (or any other book of his, really) for much better Hiaasen.

The Lay of the Land
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
The weakest of the three Bascombe novels (see below), but it still has much to recommend it. This time, Bascombe is in his 50s and is fighting prostate cancer. Ford likes to set these novels over holiday weekends (this time it's Thanksgiving) with some big, climactic event short-circuiting the resolution to some family crisis. This time it feels really forced and doesn't quite work. Still most of the book is quite enjoyable and Ford's use of language is a joy to read.

Independence Day
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
The sequel to The Sportswriter (see below) picks up Bascombe five years later and is a much more powerful book than its prequel (and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995). I read this when it first came out and loved it; I reread it before reading The Lay of the Land. The paperback of Independence Day came out about the same time as the wretched movie Independence Day (which had nothing to do with this book). I remember when I bought it mentioning to the clerk in Barnes & Noble that I didn't like the film version. She gave me an odd look, probably for good reason.

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
When The Lay of the Land came out, which was the third book in Ford's trilogy, I dedided to reread the first two. The Sportswriter introduces the titular Frank Bascombe at the tender age of 38 (ahem), in the wake of his divorce following the dwath of his young son. A long stream of consciousness, at times quite poignant. I really liked this book, although the sequel Independence Day was better.

The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester
read: Sep. 2006
Fiction
I picked this up based on the fact that Walter Koenig's character in Babylon 5 was named for the author Alfred Bester, and on the Earth of The Demolished Man, telepaths exist and have been drafted to make crime impossible. This book was somewhat of the inspiration for the Psi Cops in B5. A compelling book, fascinating ideas (megabillionnaire kills his rival and finds ways to elude the telepaths). Recommended.

Rainbows End
Vernor Vinge
Read: Aug. 2006
Fiction
Good science-fiction tale set a scant 25 years hence; has the ruing of truth. More commentary here.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Haruki Murakami
Read: Aug. 2006
Fiction
One of my favorite authors of all time; a collection of short stories which were not bad, although I like his novels better. In particular, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (one of my favorite books of all time), A Wild Sheep Chase, and Kafka on the Shore.

Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert
Read: May-June 2006
Non-Fiction
Interesting look at why we are not as happy as we think we are--why we are never as happy with material things as we think we will be, and similar permutations of those ideas. Good quantitative data to back up his ideas. I wasn't surprised by any of it (I never expect anything to make me happy!) but it was an interesting read. He has a very light, often very funny style.

The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
Read: May 2006
Fiction
Ugh. I read this on the beach in the Outer Banks. I would have tossed it into the ocean, but I borrowed it from Ken (not that he would have minded.) Horribly written and just generally annoying. Probably the most overrated book ever.

John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
Richard Parker
Finished: May 2006
Non-Fiction
It took me forever to get through this, but it is a well-done bio of perhaps the most famous economist--probably ever. Dense book, which covers I think every day of his 90+ years. Good detail on his ideas on those of his opponents. One is saddeend that at one time in this country there were serious intellectual thinkers debating intelligently on TV, rather than the shrieking heads we now have. Sigh.

Freaknomics
Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner
Read: Apr. 2006
Non-Fiction
Controversial look at "the economics of everyday things," but seemed a bit lackluster to me. Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers, if it's so lucrative? Was Roe v. Wade responsible for the 1990s drop in the crime rate? Etc. Much of it is a reach, but some of it was kind of eye-opening.

Wicked
Gregory Maguire
Read: Mar. 2006
Fiction
I have always hated The Wizard of Oz (the movie) but I was intrigued by this "biography" of the Wicked Witch of the West. Everyone has read this already, but I really enjoyed it.

The Planets
Dava Sobel
Read: Feb. 2006
Non-Fiction
More or less short odes to each of the planets of the Solar System, with some science of the planets and the stories of their discovery thrown in. I like Dava Sobel's science writing--I loved Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, but The Planets was a bit too "lyrical," touchy-feely, and stylistic for me, and too skimpy on actual science. Not bad, but I'd recommend it hesitatingly.

Heel Thyself

While I have never worn high heels myself and, quite frankly, am not much of a fan of them on others (they just look painful), here is a weird idea: convertible high heels. Here's what would make this idea really cool: if they could be adjusted automatically while they are being worn. How cool would that be? You're standing there, talking up someone at a party and, suddenly there is a whirring sound, and her (or his) heels grow like four or five inches. Sort of like a sexy Nosferatu. Even I would go for that.

Wake Up Next to UXB

Via Engadget, another bizarre alarm clock, this time in the guise of a bomb:

The DangerBomb alarm clock from Banpresto is yet another oddball way of coaxing you into the morning grind. To disable the alarm, you must reconnect the red, yellow, and blue cables in the correct order. Fail your mission and suffer the annoyance -- and possible death -- of a mocked audible explosion.

Word of advice: do not bring this on any junket to Boston. Or, come to think of it, on a plane anywhere....

Gut Feelings

Or would that be "intestinal fortitude"? Be that as it may, my advice to the truckers of the world is that if you are hauling 40 tons of cow intestines (and good god, why?) you might want to pull into a rest stop before fiddling with your MP3 player.

Truck spills 40 tons of cow intestines

About 40 tons of cow intestines and bones spilled onto a major highway after a truck driver became distracted by his digital music player and his semitrailer tipped over, officials said.

Authorities closed parts of Interstate 43 for about two hours Thursday while the beef byproduct was cleaned up, said sheriff's Sgt. Blaine Spicer.

Animal Magnetism

Another personality quiz. This time: which super villian are you?

Your results:
You are Magneto
You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.



Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Jarring Video

Have a jar you can't get open? All the more reason to get a pet octopus, one of which was easily taught how to unscrew a jar. Cool video here.

Zombie Nightmare

Oh, I don't know:

New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed "watch out" to no avail.

Yeah, because the ban on driving while on the phone has been so &%$#%^ effective. (I almost got nailed again in CVS parking lot yesterday by a dork on a cellphone. It's a good thing I'm never on a cellphone; one of us out there has to be alert!)

Actually, I think it's rather entertaining watching people on cellphones try to cross streets--like watching someone play a video game like Frogger. I don't think we need a law; when it comes to the cellphone zombies, I'm perfectly willing to let natural selection take its course.

Masssssssage

Get St. Patrick on the phone. Creepiest thing I've seen in some time (via Boing Boing):

There's a spa in Israel where people pay to receive therapeutic massage from a bunch of live, nonvenomous snakes.

Seeing that Saratoga Springs is the "Spa City" (and is abbreviated SS, or maybe SSS), I hope this trend doesn't make it here.

Filipino Clambake

Get the drawn butter and head on out to the Philippines:

New mollusk species found in Philippines

A French-led marine expedition team believes it has discovered thousands of new species of mollusks and crustaceans around a Philippine island, officials and scientists said Monday.

Some 80 scientists, technicians, students and volunteers from 19 countries surveyed the waters around Panglao island, 390 miles southeast of Manila from 2004-05.

"Numerous species were observed and photographed alive, many for the first time, and it is estimated that 150-250 of the crustaceans and 1,500-2,500 of the mollusks are new species," said a statement from the expedition team, which was led by Philippe Bouchet of the French National Museum of Natural History.

The Examined Life

Here is one of those ideas so cool I wish I had thought of it: what if your life were conceived as a corporate annual report?

Would You Believe...

...that Get Smart is finally coming to DVD? Interestingly, it is only available as a $200+ five-season box set via Time-Life, but supposedly each season will be individually available come Fall 2007. The "red car" seasons were the best ones. When Max and 99 got married and spawned, the show pretty much went downhill.

Straight to Hell, Boys

You know the Bible 77%!

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Not bad, I guess, for someone who has never actually read the bible or is even remotely religious. Chalk it up to a) many of the questions referring to characters or events that have permeated pop culture and b) easy to figure out multiple choices.

For the Birds

Do you hate your officemates? Sure, we all do. Now, here is a novel way to torture them:

Designed by Japan's leading toy company: Takaratomy presents "Kotoridayori" (Humming Bird), the all new 2007 adorable solar powered toy. Featuring a chubby bird in the middle that sings in random tunes. The bird will also tweets when it senses vibrations. It has a built-in battery that will charge when it sits on the solar powered system. Takaratomy's Humming Bird is small and fits nicely in the palm. Great gift idea for anyone. Available in 3 different colors.

I can only assume the "humming bird" is different from a "hummingbird," since that thing is never a hummingbird.

Car Talk

Wired asks:

What Will Your Car Look Like in 2010?

I would imagine that my car will look pretty much the way it does now, although I may get around to washing it by 2010.

A Wicked [Cute?] Pack of Cards

For those who are Tarot-fied, the self-described "cutest Tarot deck you will ever own" based on Hello Kitty characters.

All the major and minor arcana are included, such as The High Priestess:
The Hanged Man...er, Pig:
And, my favorite, Death:
Aww.....

I Me Mine

In which the world continues its descent into complete insanity:

What Rachel Rasmussen thought was an explosive situation ended without a bang once the Army rolled into town.

Rasmussen, who recently purchased a new home in Wittenberg, thought she had found a land mine in her backyard but discovered Wednesday that it actually was an old base for a large umbrella.

You don't even want to know what her reaction was to the barbecue pit.

Horse Feathers

Uh, OK:

Colonial Downs, which offers betting on horse races at 10 sites across Virginia, is pushing for changes in state law so that it can offer a new form of gambling, called historical racing, on which people wager on horse races that have already taken place.

One more time for the world: "people wager on horse races that have already taken place." That's what I thought they said. Wha? Ah:

In historical gambling, which is also called instant gaming, customers would put as little as a nickel and as much as $5 into a video terminal that resembles a slot machine. The terminal randomly selects a race from an archive of at least 10,000 previous horses races from tracks around the country. Customers review a graphic showing the odds and statistics for each horse before deciding which one to bet on.

The race appears on the monitor. If the chosen horse wins, the patron will receive a payout based on the odds, how much was bet and that day's purse.

My guess is that anyone with a thorough and meticulous knowledge of the history of horse racing (and/or a concealed palmtop computer) could beat this, even if they left the horses' names off the screens.

Besides...wasn't this kind of the plot of The Sting?

I Am the Neuromancer?

Apparently (via which science-fiction writer are you?):

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Oh, the Sponge-anity!

Putting the phrase "sponge disasters" in a headline is a pretty good way to get me to click on an article. From Yahoo! News:

Microwave experiments cause sponge disasters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week -- with sometimes disastrous results.

A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.

They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge.

"Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Could the destruction of a sponge really be considered a "disaster"? And, gee, who would have thought that putting something in an oven would cook it?

Oops...

Last night, I was helping a friend of mine (who is an eighth-grade science teacher) edit some video of her classes for some educational conference/contest. Fortunately, nothing in her video went as awry as this science experiment, caught on video. The inevitable line: "That wasn't supposed to happen." Serves him right for wearing a tie-dyed lab smock.

A Sloth By Any Other Name...

...would still be as immobile.

I've had days like this:

Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.

The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.

Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.

Then again, you know, they are called "sloths" for a reason....

Finnish Lines

Oh, this is just wrong:

A novel whose narrative consists entirely of mobile phone text messages has been published in Finland.

"The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000 altogether — are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in regular SMS traffic.

The Sound of Silence

One wonders if this is apocryphal or not:

A press release making the rounds on the web...claims that a conceptual artist named Jonathon Keats has made Cage's 4'33" into a ringtone.

If it's true, it's the best possible ringtone that could ever have been created.

Of the Icing

Far be it from me to say anything bad about the Wegmans supermarket chain (except that I hate them for not having a store around me), but, via Engadget, I was amused by their cake printer that could not handle special characters:
I'm sure that brought a tear to Aunt Elsa's eye.

I remember back in the late 1990s I did a story for Micro Publishing News on Torrance Bakery (in Torrance, CA), which was one of the first bakeries in the country to be able to print computer files onto cakes. They had adapted a Canon BubbleJet printer to use food-coloring-based inks that printed onto thin sheets of icing that could then be placed in top of a just-baked cake. For our holiday party we had the cover of our December issue printed on a cake. It looked cool but was kind of tasteless...slight flaw there...

I assume cake-printing technology has proceeded by leaps in bounds since then, though I still prefer my cakes to be imaged the old-fashioned way.

A Very GoodYear

I think I have solved my transportation problem (well, not really as problem per se). Instead of getting a new car, I think I will opt for my own personal blimp:

The Personal Blimp uses hot air (rather than Helium) for lift and virtually silent electric motors for propulsion. To put it another way: the Personal Blimp is a hot air balloon that can be maneuvered about in nearly perfect quiet. Passengers in a Personal Blimp have a serene experience of flight unavailable in any other type of aircraft. (Note: Initial flight tests are using a conventional gas-powered motor. Electric motors will be added once these initial tests are complete. Similarly, the initial flight tests are being made with conventional -- i.e. loud -- hot air balloon burners. Quiet burners will be added later.)

I suppose we should be happy it doesn't use hydrogen--oh, the humanity!

Fowl Threats

Here's a little tidbit of information I picked up this morning at the periodontist's, while undergoing oral surgery. My oral surgeon, by the way, is fond of expounding on bizarre trivia, either because he's just that kind of guy or it's a subtle way of getting the sedation to kick in faster.

Anyway, did you know that if you are a bird owner, you should not cook with Teflon cookware? Apparently, if you overheat Teflon, it releases a gas that is lethal to birds which, thanks to their heightened metabolism, they absorb more quickly than more lethargically metabolic organisms.

To that end, I propose the Tippi Hedren line of Teflon-coated cookware.

You could also use the cookware to take care of the creature it had done in.

The subsequent dissertation on the molecular structure of Teflon ultimately put me under....

Pure MADness

Now, who, I say, who could resist this?

Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years

Every issue of MAD Magazine on 2 DVDs

Read every single page as they were originally published - all the stories, letters pages, articles, and advertisements

Includes video clip interviews from the MAD writers and clips of Spy vs Spy animation

Over 600 complete printable issues, cover to cover, that’s over 17,500 scanned pages in full color

A truly interactive experience and can leverage the success of the late night show to introduce MAD Magazine to an entire new generation of consumers.

Time Flies

I confess, I rarely have any troubles getting up in the morning and, in fact, usually beat the alarm clock. On those rare occasions when I do "sleep in," the clock-radio is usually set to NPR, and newscaster Carl Kasell always sounds like he's eating something, which makes me hungry enough to get up.

For those who do struggle with consciousness in the morning (and really want to beat an alarm clock), we have two entries in what could very well be the most irritating alarm clocks in the world.

First, Clocky:

If you hit the snooze button, Clocky will roll off of the nightstand, fall to the floor, and run around the room, searching for a place to hide. Making you get your butt out of bed to find it and turn it off.

Second, the Flying Alarm Clock:

This nifty alarm clock literally flies around making an annoying mosquito-like noise until you catch it and return it to its base. So, you are forced to catch the darn thing if not whack it with a bat, and in doing so, forced to wake up. And should you press snooze, the device will just start flying all over again when the alarm goes off.

Regardless of one's attitude toward waking, I can't help but think that these timepieces would last about 30 seconds before being smashed into little time pieces.

Wall of Voodoo

OK then. Via Version 1.0:

[E]lectronics-tinkerer Mike Larsson['s] USB Voodoo Word doll plugs into your computer and, when you stab it with a pin, prompts a great gushing of vicious prose onto the screen.

Oh, I don't know. The same thing happens whenever I use Microsoft Word, which is itself based on voodoo.

Pod Save the Queen

Dig the new breed:

Queen Elizabeth to podcast annual Christmas message

In addition to more traditional terrestrial broadcasting, Her Majesty will be making her annual Christmas message to the Commonwealth at 3:00 pm GMT (that's 10:00 am US Eastern time) on Monday, December 25 available as a podcast to all those who really want to hear her opine away.

Miracle on 34th Street

Well, around the corner on Broadway, actually... I was in NYC a couple weeks ago and heading to midtown from Penn Station. I was surprised, but happy, to see that Macy's was celebrating Cephalopodmas. (Full disclosure: I did not take this photo.)

Kraken Baby

Just in time for Cephalopodmas:

Japanese researchers, the same group that caught the photographs in 2004, have filmed a live giant squid. The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it, on a squid bait, off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo, earlier this month. The squid was a female juvenile of about 24ft this falls shy of the 60ft record.

Watch cool video from Reuters here (short commercial first, alas).

It should be noted though that the mother of all giant squid--the still-elusive Architeuthis dux--is an Atlantic species.

Hall of Shame

Fresh from Japan, a way for you to confess all your shameful deeds (and you know you have some), just in time for New Year's resolution time: the Shameful Confessions Microphone:

a digital voice changing mic with a clear panel attached to censor out your eyes--and tell the world what a scumbag you are while preserving anonymity.

Perfect for karaoke (the very epitome of a shameful deed). It kind of reminds me of Mr. Microphone (remember that?) from the 1970s. In fact, all the people who appeared in that old Mr. Microphone commercial ("Hey, good-lookin', we'll be back to pick you up later!") should definitely switch to the Shameful Confessions microphone.

And that I remember the old Mr. Microphone commercial itself warrants a shameful confession...

I, Toons

A round-up, for all you animation fans, of the 50 Greatest Cartoons ever (as voted by the animation industry itself), complete with YouTube links. I agree with number one heartily.

It was said, back in the [first] Golden Age of Wireless (i.e., radio), that a true intellectual was someone who could listen to "The William Tell Overture" without thinking of The Lone Ranger. Having grown up in the 1970s, I would emend that to state that a true intellectual is someone who could listen to "The Barber of Seville" without thinking of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Alas, by my own logic, I am no intellectual....

The Epic Battle Continues

Via Pharyngula, a timeless Cephalopdmas carol!

I'm Not Like Everybody Else

While I am hardly to the manner (or even manor) born, and the closest I've ever come to the aristocacy was seeing Disney's The Aristo-Cats when I was a kid, that still doesn't mean I can't have a peculiar aristocratic title. As it turns out, mine would be:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Duke Richard the Dejected of Piddletrenthide on the Carpet Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Six Squids a-Flailing

Merry Cephalopodmas!

These Shoes Suck

Oh, come now:

[H]ome appliance manufacturer Electrolux has revealed a "vacuum shoe" concept model. In order to accommodate the electric motor -- and store all the crap that you've left on your floor -- the concept design features a rather thick and ugly sole reminiscent of Cosmo Kramer's basketball sneakers, so you probably wouldn't want to do much walking outdoors in them. Seeing as this is just a concept model that's at least a couple of testing stages away from a real product, we wouldn't be surprised if the real model was even more "visually challenged."

Nature Green in Tooth and Claw

Not sure what to get that special someone for Christmas? Why, how about the Carnivorous Plant of the Month Club?

Some people have to fight with their cats and/or dogs while trying to eat dinner. And then, there are those who have to fight with their plants, as viny tendrils slither up the table leg and make off with large pieces of meat. Then again, it could be useful to have plants that can be trained to catch household pests, if only for the entertainment value.

Send Lawyers, Gums, and Money

What is the must-have gift this Christmas season?

Of course.

Happyholidaysmerrychristmas

Oh, let's not start that silliness again...

Anyhoo, next week will be Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory around here at the Blogito Ergo Sum International Headquarters, Cafeteria, and World Domination Showroom, as the impending holidays can only mean getting a million things done before the holidays. Thus, blogging will be fairly light, if existing at all. And, of course, after this week is over, it will be Lucille Ball pitching Vitameatavegamin around here...

So whatever holiday it is you celebrate--Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Tet, Boxing Day, Kickboxing Day, Wrestling Day, Cephalopodmas, Festivus, Robot Overlord Appreciation/Supplication Day, Antarctican Penguin Licking Day, the Xorlon Hrunkon Festival of Omicron Persei VIII, etc.--have a happy and healthy one.

Red Christmas

When you think about the toys today that are pulled from shelves because they are safety hazards, you can't help but think what wusses kids are these days. Back in the good old days, there were some seriously dangerous toys, and here is a list of the 10 most egregious offenders. Perfect Christmas gifts for those kids you don't like all that much.

I seem to recall having something like the Thing Maker--superheated plastic glop on a hotplate on which it was remarkably easy to burn yourself.

My favorite from this list (which I did not have, I hasten to add) is:

Snack-Time Cabbage Patch Doll

[T]he adorable lineup of Cabbage Patch snack-dolls appeared at first to be harmless. They merely wanted a nibble—a carrot perhaps, or maybe some yummy pudding. They would stop chewing when snack time was done—they promised.

Then they chomped your child's finger off.

In creating this innovative new toy, the great minds at Mattel devised a motorized mouth that sensed neither pleasure nor pain. It chewed for chewing's sake. With no mechanism to turn off the munching should trouble arise, it was only a matter of time before some cherub's long blonde hair got caught in the doll's rabid jaws. After 35 fingers and ponytails fell victim, the Snacktime Kids were removed from retail shelves forever, and 500,000 customers were offered a full $40 refund.

Dead Trees Rule!

A reminder, via Boing Boing, of why I like printed books (click image for larger view):

Bilocations

I am ashamed to admit that I have only ever read two Thomas Pynchon novels--and the two "easy" ones at that (The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland). So I decided to take the plunge and picked up his mammoth new book Against the Day (and am 400 pages into it--out of a total of 1,100+) and am enjoying it immensely. Granted, Pynchon is not an easy read, or at least not to get started reading, but once you get into the universe, it's a actually a lot of fun. Helping matters is an online Pynchon wiki of annotations I found, plus a discussion blog. (I seem to be progressing through the book faster than either of these two online sources!)

I would describe what the book is about, but that's not an easy thing to do. It is set between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the onset of World War I and concerns two families--the plutocratic Vibes and the Colorado mining Traverses. The patriarch of the former arranges the murder of the patriarch of the latter (because he is believed to have been dynamiting the mines owned by Vibe), and a son's quest for revenge. There are also subplots involving Nikola Tesla, various quests for something called Iceland spar, or a kind of double-refracting crystal that creates ghost doubles and multidimensional maps for finding lost cities. There is a sublot involving a British group of pre-New Age-y spiritualists called the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys (or T.W.I.T.--Pynchon is nothing if not a satirist) and everything is connected via the Chums of Chance, a group of teen adventurers out of (a parody of) early-20th-century boys' adventure stories (like Tom Swift) who travel around the world in a high-tech airship called the Inconvenience. Doubles and "evil twins" abound; a couple of competing physicists are named Renfrew and Werfner (check the backward spellings) and there are of course parallels to the present day. I have no idea where all of this is going yet, but it's a fun journey. So far.

Buoyed, I picked up Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow and added them to my book pile.

I'm Henry VIII I Am

Well, maybe not.

I've never been a big fan of personality profile quizzes, but here's one I can get on board with: which historical lunatic are you?

This would be good for me to put on my resume:

I was hoping for Caligula or perhaps a mad Pope or something, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

Back in Blacker

How evil are you? Take the test and find out.

Yep, as I always figured:

Back in Black

I have only two things to say about so-called Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The first is, there is no way on Earth I would venture anywhere near a mall (or any store) on Black Friday, as while I am sure I could probably save a few bucks, the resulting psychiatric treatment I would need would handily offset any savings. (I hate shopping to begin with, for any reason.) The second is, can we all agree that "Cyber Monday" is an utterly inane name (almost as bad as "viral markeing," now that I think about it)?

Online merchants may want to rethink their advertising strategies next year for the weekend following Thanksgiving in light of a report released this week by BlueLithium Labs.

The San Jose, Calif. maker of online advertising solutions reported that "click-through" rates -- the rate at which consumers click on Net advertising -- on the Friday and Monday following Turkey Day were below average compared to the rest of the month.

On Black Friday -- so named because the volume of shopping that day can boost a retailer's bottom line for the year from red to black -- click-through rates were 32.3 percent lower than the monthly average, BlueLithium reported, and for Cyber Monday -- a peak day during the year for online shopping -- click-through rates were 12.6 percent lower.

The report also found that conversion rates -- the rate at which a click-through is converted into a sale -- slumped by eight percent on Friday; however, conversions soared by 29.6 percent on Monday.

And, It's Moist

Perhaps the face on Mars has been crying (distraught, perhaps, by the high-res images that showed that, alas, there is no actual face on Mars), but, according to a paper published in the recent issue of Science (via SkyTonight.com), there may actually be water on Mars:

Michael Malin (Malin Space Science Systems) and four colleagues present compelling evidence that liquid water flowed across the surface of Mars in the past seven years.

The evidence comes from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which fell silent in early November. This high-resolution imager spotted fresh deposits in images of two crater slopes taken in 2004 and 2005 that did not appear in earlier pictures. "The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," says Malin, who is MOC's lead scientist. He argues that liquid water exists underground and collects behind icy dams along crater walls. When those barriers fail, water episodically rushes out, perhaps mixed with salts or other materials, and then flows downhill before evaporating into the thin Martian atmosphere.

If it turns out that there is indeed flowing water on the surface of Mars, it raises the possibility of there being (or having been) life on Mars. That being the case, we may not want to be so gung ho about curing the common cold.

Tongue Lashing

As if bats couldn't become even less appealing. Scientists have found the Gene Simmons of the animal kingdom:

One nectar bat can launch its tongue one and a half times its body length, longer than any other mammal and second only to chameleons among vertebrates, scientists recently discovered.
...
Even more surprising, Muchhala pointed out, the tube-lipped nectar bat came up with an ingenious way of evolving a longer tongue without the usual drawbacks. Just like humans, in bats the tongue begins at the base of the mouth, so the only way to stretch tongue length would be to grow an equally long snout. Tongue length correlated with snout length for 10 other nectar species, the researchers found.

That’s not the case for the tube-lipped bat. “Instead of evolving a longer jaw, it pushed the base of the tongue back and into the rib cage,” Muchhala told LiveScience. Its tongue gets stowed between the heart and sternum.

Let's hope this thing isn't what I heard in the wall a couple weeks ago. However, since I don't live in Ecuador, that does seem unlikely.
Still, it would be less freakish than to have Gene Simmons scrabbling in the walls.

Eye-Yi-Yi

In the spirit of the USB slippers (that keep your feet warm), comes...wait for it...the USB eye-warmer.

It plugs into the USB port of your PC or Mac and helps relieve stress and tension associated with staring at computer monitors all day. There's a temperature control so you don't end up scorching your eyes when all you wanted to so was feel some warm sensations.

Hummbug

While we can speculate (but not for too long) about the psychological health of anyone who would buy a Hummer--if only because it has all the aesthetic appeal of a Brinks' truck--or, indeed, raise the sociopathic implications of driving around in what is basically the automotive equivalent of a giant middle finger, we can all generally agree that it takes a special kind of lunacy to trick one out with a fireplace.

Cruel Shoes

Via Pharyngula, a terribly amusing new pseudoscience that I have no doubt will sweep Saratoga Springs by storm before very long:

The heretofore unknown science of “earthing”, patented by Clint Ober, is that your body needs to be earthed so that you can have the earth’s antioxidizing flow of free electrons to go through your body and extinguish free radicals.

Earthing Axiom:

The earth’s infinite supply of free electrons will neutralize free radicals in your body and will thus help to stave off disease and aging. YOUR BODY WAS DESIGNED TO BE IN CONTACT WITH THE EARTH FOR MANY HOURS PER DAY.

Being connected via our barefeet to the earth appears destined to provide us with many far-reaching health benefits, which when coupled with modern medical prowess and optimum nutrition will offer mankind the best opportunity for health and longevity possible.

Wait..."patented"? How do you patent not wearing shoes? (Ah; see below.) As for this whole "earthing" thing, well, despite the thick chowder of non-sequiturs and gobbledygook, on a more pragmatic level, it's 20 degree outside right now and snowed this morning. I can't think of any health benefits in going out barefoot, unless frostbite is actually healthy (or is that theory coming next week?).

The flow of electrons will neutralize free radicals? (Sounds kind of like using a taser on protesters.) So I could stick my toes in a wall socket and achieve even more health benefits. Cool.

As I scroll down this site (which should be issued a citation for font abuse) I see that in those cases where walking barefoot is not possible, you can sleep on a "barefoot pad" (this sounds upsetting):

The patented Barefoot Earthing Bed Pad fits any size bed, occupying the lower 1/3 of the bed where your feet will naturally rest. The soft, comfortable fibers of the pad are specially created to conduct electron flow through your feet. An earthing wire connects the fibers of the pad to the earth outside your home, so that your body’s cells are literally bathed all night with trillions of electrons from mother earth.

Pity; I prefer to sleep hovering five feet above the bed.

This goofy site will provide hours of entertainment.

Jaws--Not!

[Read in another stentorian movie trailer narrator guy's voice]

Thirty-one years ago, Jaws left you hungry for more.

Last October, "shrimp on a treadmill" left you breathless.

Two posts down, "octopus escaping through a one-inch hole" changed you in ways you still don't understand.

Now, prepare, nothing you've seen so far could ever prepare you for...octopus eating a shark.

The horror...the horror...

Having a Lovely Time...Wish You Were Squid

In other hot cephalopod action, via Version 1.0, if you're ever vacationing in Japan, be sure to send your friends and relatives...

Edible squid-flavored postcards

Residents of the coastal town of Susami in Wakayama prefecture love the sea and the post office so much that the town once installed a mailbox on the ocean floor for scuba divers. Now, further evidence of this powerful sea/mail love comes in the form of “Surumail” — edible postcards made from squid.

Produced by the Susami fishing cooperative, Surumail postcards consist of dried surume squid (Todarodes pacificus), the local seafood specialty. The squid jerky is flattened and vacuum-packed into the shape of a postcard, and an adhesive label is included for the postage, delivery address and a short message.

Do you have to write on them using squid ink?

No Bones About It

[Read in stentorian movie trailer narrator guy's voice]

Last October, "shrimp on a treadmill" left you breathless.

Now, prepare yourself, you will never be the same after seeing..."octopus escaping through a one-inch hole."

Octopus macropus. Call him an invertebrate...just don't call him spineless.

Moving Pictures

Today's Times-Union has a nice interview with our boy Derek, managing director of the Saratoga Film Forum. Given his newfound fame, we hope he will remember the little people (Billy Barty, Michael Dunn, Herve Villechaize, etc.).

Dancing with Scissors

This has to be a joke: Edward Scissorhands, the ballet?!

Ten Left Feet

Sure, a dancing robot squid seems harmless enough...at first!!

Robot Holocaust Continues: Jeux Sans Frontieres

Doomsday draws ever nigher:

George the robot is playing hide-and-seek with scientist Alan Schultz. George whirrs and hides behind a post until he's found.

Then a bit later, he hunts for and finds Schultz hiding.

What's so impressive about robots playing children's games?

"If looks could kill, they probably will in games without frontiers, war without tears..."

For a robot to actually find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate is a new level of human interaction. The machine must take cues from people and behave accordingly.

This is the beginning of a real robot revolution: giving robots some humanity.

"Robots in the human environment, to me that's the final frontier," said Cynthia Breazeal, robotic life group director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The human environment is as complex as it gets; it pushes the envelope."

Robotics is moving from software and gears operating remotely — Mars, the bottom of the ocean or assembly lines — to finally working with, beside and even on people.

"Robots have to understand people as people," Breazeal said. "Right now, the average robot understands people like a chair: It's something to go around."

Soon, though, the average robot will understand people as "something to destroy."

Deeply Unpleasant Fact of the Day

Bats, did you know, are apparently greasy and dirty by nature and, thus, their presence in the corners and crevasses of one's home can be detected by looking for telltale dark stains on eaves and in attics, rather like the stain someone who uses Brylcream will leave if he lies down on your couch.

This from my Terminix rep, who was here today investigating an unsettling scrabbling noise I heard emanating from the wall Saturday night--happily not bat-related, as it turns out. However, I may festoon the attic with antimacassars just to be on the safe side.

Balloon Man

On Friday, I ventured down to Gotham to see my all-time favorite musician, Robyn Hitchcock, in concert at a venue called the Hiro Ballroom, which I had never actually heard of, but is actually a rather nice performance space in the basement of the Maritime Hotel at 16th and 9th.

For those unfamiliar with Robyn Hitchcock, he is a British singer/songwriter/guitarist whose first band The Soft Boys (1977-1980) was a strange melding of Beatles-esque pop, Captain Beefheart rhythmic strangeness, and Bob Dylan's mid-60s-era flights of lyrical fancy. (This couldn't have been more out-of-step with the British punk movement of the time, but The Soft Boys would influence bands like R,E.M. and The Replacements, to name two.) Propelling it all are Robyn's often surreal lyrics, which typically involve insects, fish, amphibians, and other elements of the biosphere. He's always seemed to me to be best described as "if Gary Larson--of The Far Side comic strip--wrote lyrics for The Beatles". He and his band The Egyptians (1986-1993) were college radio favorites in the mid-1980s (which is where I found him, though certainly not on Syracuse's college radio station, which at the time was devoted to Top 40--bleech), with all his albums from 1986 to 1989 routinely hitting number one on the college album charts. He was picked up by a major label in 1988 and came close to grazing the mainstream in 1991/1992 (at the insistence of his record label with whom he split not long afterward), but has more or been a cult figure (and elder statesman of alternative rock) ever since, and his return to independent record labels (and Internet distribution) has meant that he can follow his muse wherever it takes him. And on Friday it took him to the Hiro Ballroom in New York.

Robyn was playing with a backup band (something he hasn't done in a while, as he has tended to perform solo acoustic shows for the better part of the last 15 years) which he dubbed The Venus 3 (a play on The Minus 5, which also features many of these same musicians), comprising guitarist Peter Buck (R.E.M., and who has appeared on many Hitchcock albums dating back to the mid-1980s), bassist/guitarist Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, the Minus 5), and drummer Bill Rieflin (Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, of all things).

It was a very fun show; Robyn was in good spirits, and his between-song narratives were as surreal (and often hysterically funny) as ever, and the band played well together. McCaughey and Hitchcock had a good chemistry and McCaughey knew exactly what to say to get Robyn on one of his long, surreal tangents.

The album the band is touring behind, Olé Tarantula, is arguably Robyn's best since 1989's Queen Elvis (1996's Moss Elixir is up there, though). Unlike the last band album he did (1999's Jewels for Sophia), the songs on Olé Tarantula hang together better and seem more of a piece. It also helps that much of the album was recorded by the same band at about the same time and not compiled from random recordings made over an extended perood of time, which gave JFS rather a "patched-together" feel. They performed a good chunk of the new album (about half of it) as well as some oldies but goodies (reaching back to Robyn's Soft Boys days for 1980's "Queen of Eyes" and "I Wanna Destroy You"). The Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians albums Element of Light (1987) and (my personal favorite album of all time) Globe of Frogs (1988) were also heavily represented (a good thing).

He was even joined by special guest Morris Windsor (drummer for The Soft Boys and the Egyptians) who lent his distinctive vocal harmonies to the last several songs.

I've seen Robyn on every tour he did between 1989 and 1996 (which is easy when you live in New York) but regret that I went a good seven years before seeing him again (two shows at the now-closed Bottom Line in NYC on Halloween, 2003). I have always enjoyed his concerts (obviously). In 1998, Jonathan Demme made a concert film (à la his Stop Making Sense film of Talking Heads) of Robyn called Storefront Hitchcock, which gives a good sense of what a Hitchcock concert is like. It's available on DVD--in fact, I think I'll put it on now.

The set list (in more or less the proper order, as I recall) for Friday night was:

Adventure Rocket Ship
Sally Was a Legend
Olé Tarantula
Somewhere Apart
Queen of Eyes (The Soft Boys)
If You Were a Priest
Jewels for Sophia
Chinese Bones
N.Y. Doll
Vibrating
Television
Underground Sun
Flesh Number One
The Authority Box
Madonna of the Wasps
(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs
Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)

Encore:
Aw Shit Man (from The Minus 5's latest album)
Eight Miles High (the classic Byrds song)
I Wanna Destroy You (The Soft Boys)

Dragon Their Heels

Hmm... Says the Times of London:

Sausages affected by draconian trade laws

A SPICY sausage known as the Welsh Dragon will have to be renamed after trading standards’ officers warned the manufacturers that they could face prosecution because it does not contain dragon.

The sausages will now have to be labelled Welsh Dragon Pork Sausages to avoid any confusion among customers.

Get it..."draconian trade laws"? Har har har.

I would worry, therefore, about buying anything labeled "baby food."

A Meatier Shower

If you're in the Northeast U.S. (or Europe) and the sky is clear, keep an eye out Saturday night for what is expected to be a more spectacular than usual Leonid meteor shower. Just head outside about 11:45 p.m. (EST). The shower is expected to last about a half hour.

Bundle up warmly, find a dark spot with an open view of the sky, lie back on the ground or in a reclining lawn chair, and just gaze up into the stars. Any Leonids you see will be coming from the northeast. Be patient.

Sky & Telescope has more here.

The Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

This is wonderful news: mix the utter unwatchability of cable television with the Unholy Device From Hell that is the cellphone.

Embracing a technology that has unnerved media and telecommunications companies, a major European wireless provider will let customers watch their home cable TV on a cell phone if they also have a device called the Slingbox back at the house.

3 Group will launch the new service in Britain first, starting Dec. 1, followed by three more of its 11 markets in early 2007, the wireless company announced Thursday.

Two new handsets running on 3's next-generation wireless network will feature the Sling application, which customers can use to watch any channel available on their cable TV at home. The phones also can be used to control a digital video recorder at home, pausing and rewinding live television, playing previously recorded shows, or setting up the DVR to record a program.

I guess my question is, if you're not at home watching television, aren't the chances pretty good that you're doing something you'd rather be doing than staying at home watching television?

Thoughts for Your Penny

Should we abolish the penny? A topic that arises time and time again, taken up in today's WSJ Econoblog. Sure, nothing costs a penny anymore--not even a penny, which costs about 1.23 cents. The debate takes tediousness to stratospheric heights:

The main problem is that pennies waste our valuable time. With American wages averaging over $18 per hour, it takes only two seconds for the typical person to earn one cent. Unfortunately, according to a widely cited study by the National Association of Convenience Stores and the Walgreen's drug store chain, using a penny probably adds slightly more than two seconds to the average retail transaction.

Picture yourself waiting in line to make a purchase. There are, say, three people in front of you and each of them decides to pay in cash and either fumbles around for a penny or receives one in change. If the line's length is constant, each penny use wastes the time of five people. By the time you reach the front of the line this has been multiplied threefold and a half a minute of time has been literally wasted because when you're standing in line you aren't doing what you want to do -- perhaps running back to your own business or getting off your feet at the end of a long day.

I don't know when the last time these economists went shopping, but I can't remember the last time I saw anyone on line anywhere fumbling for pennies. (They usually use debit cards these days.) And receiving a penny is no biggie; shove in your pocket and move on. And anyone who is too busy to spare two (or even 30) seconds of time has bigger problems than pennies, and should probably get a stress test before their heart explodes.

But that's just my two cents. (Doh!)

Robot Holocaust Part [I Don't Remember]: Destroyer, Heal Thyself!

Great. Now our inevitable overlords are just going to be harder to destroy--not that they weren't already:

New Robot Adapts to Injuries

A newly designed robot can sense and recover from unexpected damage, an ability that is sure to prove handy in dangerous terrain, researchers announced today.

Living organisms have the ability to continuously evaluate their abilities and surroundings and adjust their behavior accordingly. If a person twists an ankle, he walks differently so as to not put too much pressure on the injured muscles.

But robots aren’t typically equipped with such capabilities. They are programmed with a rigid model describing them and the surrounding environment. When they become damaged or something unexpected occurs, they are typically unable to adapt, limiting their potential.

Often when exploring new terrain, such as on another a planet, researchers cannot predict what a robot might encounter. So they designed a machine that can improvise in response to unexpected injuries.

Referred to as Starfish, the new four-legged robot creates a model of itself and revises that model to respond and adapt to injury by synthesizing new behaviors.

"Starfish," eh? Sure, it sounds cute and quaint, but think about this: A starfish often feeds on its prey (like a clam) by prying open the clam's shell and forcing its stomach into the clam to digest it "on the half shell." Let's hope our robot predators' relationship with us doesn't come to that.

Egyptian Cream

Take a brilliant songwriter (my favorite), a cool song off the best album he's done since the 1980s, and combine that with some super-cheesy Flash animation and you pretty much get what is apparently the "official" video for "Adventure Rocket Ship." One longs for the days of his stop-motion animation featuring vegetables and lightbulbs.

I Think, Therefore IM

Be sure to check out The Industry Measure blog for my incoherent mutterings on last week's ad:tech show as well as the connection between a 3.3-million-year-old skeleton and multichannel publishing (I sound like James Burke all of a sudden...let me see if I can work James Watt's steam engine into it somehow...).

Nefarious Porpoises

Um, OK:

Scientists have taught dolphins to combine both rhythm and vocalisations to produce music, resulting in an extremely high-pitched, short version of the Batman theme song.

The findings, outlined in two studies, are the first time that nonhuman mammals have demonstrated they can recognise rhythms and reproduce them vocally.

My choice would have been the theme from Flipper, but perhaps that's just me.

Olé Tarantula!

This being the case, my next Cinco de Mayo party will be quite the event:

The burn of hot peppers and the searing pain of a spider bite may have a common cause. New research suggests that molecules in hot peppers and in a certain spider's venom target the same receptor on nerve cells.
...
The team purchased venoms collected from a variety of spider, scorpion, and snail species known to deliver painful bites. The researchers diluted the venoms and added them to dishes containing human-kidney cells that had been genetically altered to carry various types of channels.

Only the venom of one West Indian tarantula species, Psalmopoeus cambridgei, sent a flood of ions into cells that sported the same receptor that's sent by capsaicin. When the scientists broke down that venom, they identified three component molecules responsible for the rush of ions.

Sing a Song of Six Squid

Mark your calendars--December 22 is Cephalopodmas. And nothing gets one in the Cephalopodmas mood like ambling from door to door enchanting (or perhaps terrifying, as the case may be) your neighbors with Cephalopodmas carols. Wait till you see my tree...

Never heard of this venerable holiday? Well, the science blog Pharyngula feels it's all because of a cutural War on Cephalopodmas. They may have a point.

Green with Envy

Official video for The Decemberists' "O Valencia." For those waiting for the green screen to come alive with some kind of CGI, well, apparently the point was for the viewer to do it him/herself. (I'm not.) The same might also be said for the lip-syncing.

"Under the Boughs Unbowed..."

I drove out to Boston last weekend to see a concert Saturday night at the Orpheum Theater with mi hermano, a band called The Decemberists, who hail from Portland, OR. I discovered them a year and a half ago, following the release of their third album Picaresque, and one of my first blog postings ever was a review of that record, which I believe I described as sounding rather like "pirate folk music" or "if Herman Melville fronted Fairport Convention." Singer/songwriter Colin Meloy's songs are mini-stories (he has a degree in creative writing from some school or other), typically involving doomed lovers or watery deaths, often both. It's a very literate (and literary) style of songwriting that does tend to send the listener running for the dictionary every once in a while ("the curlews carved their arabesques," for example...but "soft as fontanel"? Oh, ick...). Musically, it can be very challenging and eclectic and I have grown to like them rather a lot, and have acquired just about their full discography (which includes only four albums, two EPs, and the odd single).

Anyway, they have a new record out called The Crane Wife (no, not Lilith), with a three-part title track based on a Japanese folk story of the same name...an object lesson about love and greed and all the stuff that makes for a good, rousing folk story. It's a much darker record than Picaresque, with none of the whimsical light-hearted songs like "The Sporting Life," which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In many ways, it hearkens back to their first album, Castaways and Cutouts, which is also a bit on the dark side. It took me a few listens on the drive to and from a Syracuse football game to really get into it (and erase the memory of the wretched performance of the football team--"The Sporting Life" indeed...) and it's one of those records that take a few spins to unlock its charms, but once you do, it becomes a top favorite.

Interestingly, they've expanded their sonic palette by incorporating bits of 1970s progressive rock (at one point they seem to channel Emerson, Lake, and Palmer--but, hey, I like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer). Actually, bits of the new album (especially the 12-minute song suite "The Island") remind me of Thick As a Brick/A Passion Play-era Jethro Tull (1972/73), where they mixed classic English and Celtic folk elements with blues and put it all in a progressive rock context. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's one I drink down with great relish. Anyway, I must have listened to The Crane Wife about 100 times by now and I still can't get enough of it it (that and Robyn Hitchcock's Olé Tarantula, about which more after I see him in concert in two weeks...).

In concert, The Decemberists are wonderful. There are five regular bandmembers (who are all multinstrumentalists), and they were augmented by an additional violinist/keyboardist who, in that typical "augmented bandmember" way, didn't always have something to do, so at times just kind of stood there looking awkward--or worse, digging out the dreaded tambourine. My brother and I were often challenged by identifying just what it was that lead guitarist Chris Funk was playing--at one point, he had something that was played by turning a metal crank--it kind of looked like a Gatling gun. The credits to the new album indicate that he plays something called a hurdy-gurdy (and it looks like what I would imagine something called a hurdy-gurdy would look like--and Wikipedia confirms my suspicion). They also did an on-the-spot recreation of the Boston Massacre, which we had a hard time seeing from our rather distant vantage point.

Anyway, it was a terrific show and if they ever come to your neck of the woods, do try to check them out. One thing that took me completely by surprise, through, was the crowd--I was (and I am not exaggerating) the oldest person there, and by at least 15-20 years. My brother teased me about this, until I had to point out that, at only four years my junior, he was the second oldest person there. At first, we thought they were college students (I can see how The Decemberists would appeal to English majors, much like Elvis Costello was required listening among English majors back when I was one in the 1980s), but it soon dawned on us that most of them were high school kids. Maybe I underestimate the youth of today, but I really have no idea why this band would appeal to teenagers (the bandmembers themselves are only a couple years younger than me)--and the crowd really went for the obscure stuff, too. On the plus side, there was no line to get beer.... But I have to say, they were probably the best behaved rock audience I've ever seen, certainly better behaved than crowds were when I was their age.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here is a link to a Boston Globe interview with Meloy, published the day of the concert and a positive review of the show published today.

For the record, here is a set list (more or less in order, near as I can remember):

The Crane Wife 1 and 2
The Crane Wife 3
We Both Go Down Together
The Engine Driver
Yankee Bayonet (I Will be Home Then)
The Perfect Crime #2
Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect
O Valencia!
July, July!
Shankill Butchers
The Island (Come and See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel the Drowning)
16 Military Wives
Sons and Daughters

Encore:
Red Right Ankle
A Cautionary Song
(unidentified song)

The Vinyl Frontier

If you're like me (and I know I am) and grew up in a world before MP3s (or even CDs), you have many vinyl records. Many of them date from high school or earlier and thus are best kept in a dark corner of the basement never to be seen or heard again. But then, we still have our favorites. Some records I own and like have yet to appear on CD (like Warren Zevon's The Envoy, for example) and, of course, several years ago I got in an "I refuse to buy crap I already own" mood and thus have not "upgraded" some vinyl oldies to CD. But how then to rip vinyl to MP3 and play those old Tull records (like the appropriately named "Living in the Past") on my iPod? Well, you could do what I did, and run an audio cable from a stereo into a Powerbook and use a very good piece of audio recording shareware called SoundStudio to record vinyl to AIFF files, which can then be burned to an audio CD and subsequently ripped to MP3. (With a little tweaking, skips and pops can be fixed and the result actually sounds better than some of the el cheapo CD releases of old albums.)

Or, you could pick up this new USB turntable:

This belt-driven turntable plugs into the USB port of any computer. Fire up the included Audacity software and begin ripping those fabulous songs that you felt the need to listen to one last time.

Leader of the Pac

Via Boing Boing, a little geek humor sure to amuse those of us who spend too much time making charts in Excel: "Percentage of Chart Which Resembles Pac-Man," represented as a pie-chart, resembling Pac Man.

Everyone's a Critic

Thanks to Amazon, they are. Sci-fi author extraordinaire Charles Stross compiles bad reader reviews of classic literature. My favorites:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

goosedog 69 (New York) wrote: "if you don't like reading books with way too much detail than don't buy this book. when i was reading it i couldn't understand anything it said. if you are older maybe you wouldn't think it's boring, or if you like this author's books, but i thought it was very boring and it took me forever and a half to read."

A reader wrote: "I found this book difficult to follow and hard to hold my interest. I am an English teacher so I don't think it's me. I was revved about the book and started it immediately unpon receipt. I didn't even finish it--which is something I can say about few books..."

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

Son of Sammy wrote: "i just read this book. everybody like always talks about how great it is and everything. but i don't think so. like, it's been done before, right?? soooo cliched. omg."

The Evilution of Technology

Think technology is evil? Sure, we all do. There is no doubt that the cellphone is the work of Satan (I was nearly rear-ended again yesterday by another cellphone zombie driver--I tell you, these clowns are making agoraphobia sound more and more appealing).

Anyway, Wired looks at the history of evil and technology:

Early last century, the Mark of the Beast was your Social Security card, which presumably was encoded into the Computer Punch Card of the Beast and fed into Satan's Mainframe.

After that, the Mark of the Beast was your credit card, and in the '70s the UPC symbol was the new Mark, presumably because of the passage in Revelations stating, "And the mark was placed upon the Wonder Bread, both white and the kind they call wheat, even though it's basically a slightly more tan version of the white stuff."

Now, of course, the Mark of the Beast is RFID chips. It's not enough that they might get your purchases tracked or your identity stolen, they might also get you booked into the Hotel Inferno for all eternity. Thanks, Wal-Mart! Totally worth it for discount cotton balls!

And, as a public service, they map the very Handbook of Evil (that is, The Book of Revelation) to modern technology and find that St. John was even more Divine than we thought.

"And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."

This is obviously a reference to file sharing. The "stars" in question are the hard-working entertainers of the world, "falling to earth" because of the "casting" of their works to and fro like figs (figs were the main form of entertainment in the ancient world) by a "mighty wind." A mighty wind? Like a "torrent," perhaps?

"And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains."

Clearly the "hiding" is the anonymity provided by "dens" of personal web spaces like LiveJournal and MySpace. The rocks are friends lists or something, I'm still working that one out. Once the mighty men start joining MySpace, we're screwed. Don't do it, mighty men!

"And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."

Frankly, I can't think of anyone more bitter than political bloggers. The "waters" are the blogosphere, and Wormwood is probably a misreading of WordPress. They have several of the same letters!

"And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

That's pretty much how I feel after a few minutes looking at homemade music videos on YouTube.

Personally, I think these passages foretell the looming Robot Holocaust, but I could be wrong. Though I'm not.

Space Ghost

Via Ken, an appropriate image today from the Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Spooky Nebula.

The dark nebula SH2-136 appears to be celebrating Halloween all of the time. The complex process of star formation create dust clouds of many shapes and sizes -- it is human perception that might identify a ghoulish creature, on the right of the above image, chasing humans. Halloween's modern celebration retains historic roots in dressing to scare away the spirits of the dead. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With our modern calendar, however, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Other cross-quarter markers include Groundhog Day and Walpurgis Night.

Poor Circulation

Uh oh. Says the New York Times:

Circulation at the nation’s largest newspapers plunged over the last six months, according to figures released today. The decline, one of the steepest on record, adds to the woes of a mature industry beset by layoffs and the possible sale of some of its flagships.

Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent.

But some papers fared much worse. The Los Angeles Times lost 8 percent of its daily circulation, and 6 percent on Sunday. The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Company, lost 6.7 percent of its daily circulation and almost 10 percent on Sunday.

The New York Times, one of the few major papers whose circulation held steady over the last few reporting periods, did not emerge unscathed this time: its daily and Sunday circulation each fell 3.5 percent. The Washington Post suffered similar declines.

The Wall Street Journal’s new Weekend Edition, just over a year old, lost 6.7 of its circulation from a year ago.

Remember, this is not a new phenomenon. According to Newspaper Association of America data, newspaper circulation peaked in the early 1980s and has been declining ever since, a process set in motion by the advent of 24-hour cable news. The effect of the Internet is only hastening a trend set in motion some years earlier.

Still, some people just don't get it:

Newspaper executives attribute some of the latest losses to intentional cutbacks in the number of copies that are paid for in bulk by third parties, for example to be distributed to hotel guests. These count as paid circulation but are of less interest to advertisers than copies paid for directly by readers.

Well, actually, they do have a point. Still, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it may not be an oncoming train:

Still, the association said, when newspaper Web sites are taken into account, the number of readers its members reach is up very sharply. Revenues from Web sites are rising quickly as well, but they account for only a small portion of overall revenues, and it could be decades before Internet revenues exceed those from the printed editions of major newspapers.

Newspaper readership--at least in print--is in for some big-time generational changes.