I may have have stolen this blog entry from my other self because I couldn't decide which blog would be less interested in this

As usual in these situations, everyone loses.

K, so there was some music fest or something. There was music, blogging, beer-sweat T-shirts, but mostly blogging.
It was beautiful, probably.

But that was last week! This week, what we care about is stodgy guys discovering Youtube. I just won't let my developing classical music-blogging obsession die.

Here's a composer who pieced together Youtube auditions for his piece into a Powerpoint-ish purple-gradient-tastic 250-person choir. What poor grad student edited this into semi-coherence? We will never know, but his windows on our walls of many lanlord-friendly colors, windows into our souls, we will never forget.




Eric Whitacre has friends! Friends, named Steven Bryant, who tell us the Composing Secrets "They" Don't Want You To Know! But seriously, this guy deserves some Internet fame, because it's clear from his blog that composition is the dismal science.

And by science, I mean, art. And by dismal, I mean, no money.

Interweb comment of the day

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How I Started Developing a Head Tic...And Then Destroyed It

I just got back from getting my eyes examined. You see, last week I had pain in my right eye, and the nice people at UHS told me that everything looked fine, and that I shouldn't worry about it unless it gets worse. And then I started seeing a spot at night, so I figured that probably counted as getting worse and decided to have it looked at. And after a thorough examination, the doctor concluded that everything looked fine. And thus I conclude another chapter of my body randomly malfunctioning for no apparent reason (though to be fair, he did say it was probably just eigengrau, the stuff you see in darkness when your brain decides it doesn't want to just see blackness and starts making random neurons fire).

Which reminded of this one time my body malfunctioned, and I was actually able to solve the problem. So now it's time for me to share this glorious success story with you all.

Back in maybe January, I noticed that for the past month, about once a week, I would be minding my own business when suddenly my head would just twitch for no reason. I thought to myself, "How odd. I hope this doesn't get worse." But of course it did, and soon enough it progressed to once a day, then repeatedly throughout the day, and I thought to myself, "Great, another mild bodily woe not quite serious enough to actually complain about." However, the many hours I had spent researching anatomy and various physical dysfunctions came in handy. I immediately thought of a picture that was taken of me while I was preparing to race my illustrious roommates down the street to see who wouldn't have to pay for the two pitchers of beer we got at the Great Dane. What struck me about that picture was that my posture was just terrible; I was engaging in forward head carrying to the extreme. A good example of this can be seen below, where rather than resting comfortably on top of the spine, the head hangs forward, stuck in a looking at a computer screen style pose.

Here, have another picture.

Supposedly, for every inch your head is held forward of center, it adds an extra ten pounds of strain on your neck. This seems like a wild exaggeration, and I'm not sure why I added it in.

So I hypothesized that my forward head carrying was the culprit, and put several stretches into action. The first involves lightly retracting your chin/pulling it back. This should be gentle. The woman in the picture used her fingers to assist her, but I wasn't that hardcore. (if any of you are inspired to do any of those, remember to be gentle, and if you do use your hands, use them to pull or push on your head just the slightest amount - this isn't a quadriceps stretch, so don't treat it like one)

The next is basically the same, but you sort of tilt your head forward and look down toward the ground to give those posterior fibers a good but gentle stretch.

Now it's time to start stretching those levator scapulae. Keep your chin retracted, and pull your head or just let it fall forward at about a 45 degree angle.

Lastly, keeping your chin retracted as usual, let it fall to the side.

When I did this last one I felt a great stretch akin to the first time I successfully stretched my hamstrings in the muscle itself, rather than just the tendons. But it wasn't quite that hardcore.

And after I did those stretches, I found that the twitch had went away. It came back the next day, so I stretched again, and it went away again. But, being the aggressive guy that I am, I kept on stretching, and it has not come back.

Now maybe if you're lucky, someday I'll tell you about the time it hurt to raise my left arm to the side once it reached around 90 degrees, but I did this one stretch and the pain went away instantly.

THE END

best anti-virus hardware?

ps-wii?

linkified...

extreme disappointment

after seeing some of the new posts...i've come to the conclusion that we have some posters on this blog that haven't fulfilled their duties for this blog...u know who u r...

until then...

OK CUPID

JRGREENE and I had an interesting discussion about gender and compatibility. Now singles ladies, and single men (I suppose), I want to open the topic up to race, gender, and comptability. There is an interesting website run by OKCupid, called OKTRENDS that tracks the messaging behavior of their users. This makes for an interesting sample to think about how people choose a partner. Lots and lots of great data, pick and choose your favorite and lets talk about them. Mine are:

If you take a look at this series and the interval as men age, it's pretty obvious that men prefer women younger to them, and seem to be ok with women a few years older. But its pretty halarious the youngest possible match for old men is ~30years!

But if we look at women, they seem to be pretty reasonable--but they skew a bit older, but aleast the interval says relatively uniform as they age.

And of course, there is beauty. Which is to say that this chart maps women's overall attractiveness over time.

And it seems like, atleast for women, if you're hot, you stay hot. Now, that means a few things that are interesting to me--overall your attractiveness doesn't change despite your age. If you are in the top quantile of good looking women, you stay there --even compared to women in the same quantile of a younger age! The author says that this sample is taken from responses of available single women positing that your avg 35 year old is probably married and therefore has stopped optimizing her looks. I don't know about that. I would actually be interested to see how a representative sample of married and unmarried women would fare.

Let me know your thoughts, America. I know its taboo to rate people, and I've shied away from it, but I guess in this medium, where you do it annonymously from the comfort of your own home, makes me feel better about it, especially when you get frank results.

Edmund, an entirely irrelevant experience

Citizens of the blogodrome, I hope it goes without saying that of all our honored hosts, the last with whom I would strike discord would be Mr. Dreed.

Nevertheless, I cannot allow certain recent musings to go unchallenged. (Christ, how did people ever get to the point before the 20th century?)

The central issue with Edmund is not whether or not it needs to be entertaining. It's pretty clear that a game by the name of "interactive software" is one in need of having its glasses ripped off and casually torn at the bridge, but also one that might grow up to do some good someday.

My Word! Edmund, an entirely unpleasant experience.

I recently had occasion to sit in a dank, dark room and play one of those "electronically televised games". I say, chaps, a bit balmy on the crumpet, and I had a spot of the blue devils afterward. I hadn't been so befuddled since I caught my friend the broomsquire in a nasty jar with a clergyman's daughter. Unless you want to hear a lot of rubbish, I suggest you cut it to the snuggery.

Gorillaz Return in Stylo

Apparently, I live in a cave under a rock on the moon, because, despite my almost rabid fan-love I somehow missed the fact that the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach drops on March 9th. Featuring guests ranging from Mos Def to Lou Reed, I'd say this is something to watch for- well, if you need convincing. At this point, I'd say Gorillaz' legacy is more or less secure.

Interesting to note- despite there being a bit of talk (so said Murdoc, anyhow, back when Demon Days hit) that Gorillaz was going to be a trilogy, I'm not seeing a lot of last-album-buzz around this. Though I suppose hoping for a fourth album before hearing the third is a bit greedy. 

I'll give you my sage opinion as soon as I get my slightly furry hands on it, but until then satisfy your soul with Stylo- see the Noodle-bot (mourn for poor dead Noodle!), guess where the hell Russell is, and goggle with shock at the surprise guest appearance (whoa!). I definitely dig on the track: laid-back synth with a bit of dub and just enough sinister. Judge for yourself:

Stylo [feat. Mos Def and Bobby Womack] by Gorillaz 

Rube Goldberg Machines!

I've never been more than a passing fan of OK Go (last I remember of them was from my freshman year of college). However...I am a HUGE fan of Rube Goldberg machines, and OK Go has compiled one of the most excellent yet.

Part of the appeal is that, despite the continuously escalating complexity and absurdity of the machine itself, it all still has a homemade feel, like if you really had the patience, time and money you could rent a warehouse and make it yourself. There are some parts of the video where the continuity is a little questionable, but I'm all for hoping that it really is one machine as other articles suggest. Judge for yourself and enjoy!

This one's for Erotic Grotesque (David and Noah) --Zola Jesus.

In terms of blog hype, we've got a little gem here in Madison. Zola Jesus is gracing pages of every blogship in this blog-o-verse but just shy of critical mass. Maybe Pitchfork will do it. But now lets get down to music: Zola Jesus is interesting and well done pop. Too electronic to be chamber pop, but you get that vibe from the vocals. It's contemporary, operatic, and minimal, elegant and a little grotesque. Stuff I think David and Noah will like. Well to rub it in she's 20 studying philosophy and french here is releasing an EP this month. Hopefully this will get them out to a show.


On a side note, she's in the front running for actually being Liz's  doppelganger (conditional on her height):

Obviously Liz doesn't wear this much eye shadow. 

But here are some songs!

Nasa's Project M

M is for Murder Moon, (though it also probably stands for "Maybe") and I bet it has absolutely nothing to with the following video:



Ignore the slightly embarrassing enthusiasm of the vid, and think instead about what we got here: sure, Obama's cancelled space for the time being, but hey, maybe we could send robots to the moon. And maybe we could control them from earth. And, hey, maybe we could get this done really, surprisingly quickly for not that much money.

That sounds like some futurism I can get on board with. Or rather, futurism that I can fire at our natural satellite and remotely control.

AWESOME.