| Go Beavers! |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|06:03 pm] |
Half of the freshman MIT class is now female. You've come a long way, baby.
(When I was an MIT student, only 20% of the students were female.) |
|
|
| Their last moments |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|04:27 pm] |
"I’m trying everything I can to contribute to when that next model does come up, whatever it might be, whether it’s subscriptions or whatever, where the artist is more fairly represented and has a say and is compensated, and you’re not paying for jets for record label CEOs ... They’re in their last moments of death and I’m happy to see them go ’cause they’re all thieves and liars." -- Trent Reznor |
|
|
| Bat for Lashes live! |
[Aug. 16th, 2009|08:06 pm] |
 I saw Bat for Lashes live at the Paradise in Boston this past Thursday. The Paradise is a relatively small club that holds a few hundred people. Bat for Lashes was wonderful. (I'm in love!) I got there early and squooshed my way to the front of the stage, so that I was within a hand's reach of Ms. Lashes for the entire show. (Except for when she played piano.) I didn't get to actually meet her, as she didn't go the merch table, or come out to her bus within a reasonable wait. I did meet the opening band, Other Lives, however, who played a very nice set.
I didn't realize how good a singer Natasha Kahn is. She doesn't ever do anything showy with her voice, but she was never even the slightest bit off pitch or timbre, not even for a millisecond, even when her monitors needed adjusting. She's also apparently a good musician, as she played a number of different instruments. You wouldn't know from watching her videos, as she only ever sings in them.
Her band was also excellent. It was largely a girl band, as there was only one guy in it. You don't see that many excellent female drummers, but Natasha has one of the few, and the female guitar player, played guitar, bass, and drums. And, strangely enough, she's Tori Amos's lost twin sister.
P.S. Here is the brand new Bat for Lashes video ("Sleep Alone")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1vtr9fXdg8
She was also on Jimmy Fallon's show a few days ago, performing the same song:
http://theaudioperv.com/2009/08/12/bat-for-lashes-perform-sleep-alone-on-fallon/ |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|02:58 pm] |
Here's the actual scoop on America becoming socialist. |
|
|
| Update to Soul Crushing Poem #2 |
[Oct. 17th, 2008|02:33 am] |
The hamlet of Centralia, Pennsylvania, was rendered uninhabitable after a coal seam underneath it caught fire in the 1980s, opening up steaming hot sinkholes filled with toxic gases. The fire’s still going and could burn another 250 years.
[...]
But for sheer breathtaking stupidity I don’t see anything beating the disaster at Lake Peigneur, Louisiana. In 1980 oil drillers in the lake accidentally pierced the roof of the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine 1,200 feet below, ultimately collapsing the bottom of the lake. In the spectacular whirlpool of destruction that followed, 65 acres of land, 11 barges, two drill rigs, and a tugboat (but, miraculously, no people) literally went down the drain. I bet the folks at Lehman Brothers can relate.
— Cecil Adams |
|
|
| Words of wisdom from Peter, Paul & Mommy |
[Oct. 11th, 2008|02:12 am] |
Do you ask why I'm sighing, my son?
You shall inherit what mankind has done.
In a world filled with sorrow and woe
If you ask me why this is so, I really don't know.
But if you take my hand my son
All will be well when the day is done. |
|
|
| With every mistake we must surely be learning |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|08:15 pm] |
Still my guitar gently weeps
I just watched "Across the Universe" on my spiffy new Netflix Player. In case you don't already know, this is a musical where all the songs are covers of Beatles songs. The Bee Gees tried this about thirty years ago, and the results sure stunk up the room real bad. Fortunately, "Across the Universe" does not suffer this same fate. In fact, to quite to the contrary, it's very effective and moving.
I grew up listening to The Beatles and nothing but The Beatles until I was about fifteen years old. Since then, I haven't listened to them much. Not because I still don't love their music, but more because I have already listened to every song so many times, that it became the wallpaper of the inside of my brain. Listening to the songs at this point usually doesn't add anything new to my head.
This movie, however, puts the songs all in a different context with different musicians, a moving plot line, and, at times, stunning cinematography, to hold it all together. (The plot is kind of like "Hair", only less hippy-dippy and simultaneously both more coherent and more surreal.) Hearing the music like this let me experience all again, as if it were fresh and new, it's beauty and power, re-revealed for my joy and amazement.
"Was she told when she was young that pain
would lead to pleasure
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back
to earn his day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he's dead" |
|
|
| Robust Strategies |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|09:27 pm] |
A few weeks back I went to one of O'Reilly's little mini-conferences called "Ignite". These Ignite conferences are filled up with a bunch of 5-minute long talks. One of the talks was by Tim O'Reilly himself. He talked about "Robust Strategies".
The idea behind Robust Strategies is to whenever possible plan things out so that you win no matter what happens. Let's take global warming as an example. Assume for the moment that global warming is true and we do nothing. What's the likely outcome? Billions dead, and having civilization knocked back into medieval times. Now lets assume that the opposite is true: global warming is false and we work hard to prevent it. What's the downside of that? Maybe we wasted some money and effort, but on the other hand, we likely develop a lot of energy efficient technologies that more than pay for themselves.
The robust strategy here is to assume that global warming is true, even if it is not, and to act accordingly.
Another example is Pascal's Wager: A long time ago the philosopher Pascal argued that you should practice religion even if you are not sure of the existence of god, because if you don't, then and you find out when you die that god does exist, you are likely to to end up in hell. O'Reilly turns this on his head: We should act as if there is no god, because if we assume there is one, then we will act as if there is a higher power responsible for the state of the world. If the world goes to hell in a handbasket, then it was fated to be so by our all-powerful creator. If, on the other hand, we assume there is no god, then we have to make sure on our own that the world ends up in a good state. There's no one to pass the buck on to but ourselves. |
|
|
| Capitalism is not working |
[Sep. 25th, 2008|02:30 pm] |
“Capitalism is not working! There’s been a corrupting of the system of capitalism.”
Who said this? Karl Marx? Noam Chomsky? Howard Zinn?
No, Alan Greenspan in 2002. |
|
|
| More |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|05:28 pm] |
|
|
|
|
| Spaces Sucks |
[Sep. 9th, 2008|02:10 pm] |
Spaces is the worst thing that ever happened to Mac OS X. Before Spaces, there were plenty of third party desktop managers. Now they've all gone the way of the dodo because of Spaces, but Spaces is a pile of poop that is worse than useless.
Steve, you're supposed to making things "amazing", and "fantastic", and "unbelievable", and so it "just works"! |
|
|
| Chrome |
[Sep. 9th, 2008|01:29 pm] |
"Far from a betrayal, Chrome represents the best possible future for open source developers everywhere. What Google has delivered is a giant-slayer, a self-contained WebOS that could one day supplant Microsoft's desktop hegemony. Chrome is the ultimate end-run -- around Windows, Win32/.Net, the whole entrenched ecosystem.
"With Chrome, FOSS Web developers can finally deliver applications that approach the functionality and runtime fidelity of native code, leveraging the new browser's robust process model and highly optimized JavaScript engine to isolate and accelerate these next-generation Rich Internet Applications (RIA).
"Given the lackluster state of FOSS desktop software (it sucks), such a paradigm shift might actually be a good thing. Why waste time with yesterday's clunky widget toolkits when you can leverage cool, next-generation technologies -- such as AJAX and Google Gears -- to power your write-once-run-anywhere FOSS projects?
"Let's face it: Firefox, for all its accolades, is old technology. Single process design? Plug-ins running amok? It's all so 2007. Chrome gives FOSS Web developers what they've been craving: A robust, stable platform that lets them push the limits of RIA design while leaving the old development paradigms behind.
"This is the future of FOSS, a future where Chrome becomes the OS and Linux is relegated to its rightful place as a glorified boot loader. You know that's where they're headed. You know that's Google's master plan. The wunderkinds envision a world where the OS is irrelevant, where everything revolves around their pumped-up browser and advertising-laced SaaS offerings.
"It's a beautiful vision of a glorious future. It's time for the FOSS community to stop resisting, to heap the broken carcass of Firefox upon the sacrificial flames and embrace your new-found savior! He's new! He's shiny! He's ... Chrome!"
-- Randall Kennedy in InfoWorld
Discuss amongst yourselves. |
|
|
| Go Beavers! |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|12:35 am] |
I just found out while watching Stargate Atlantis, that Caltech stole MIT's mascot -- they also have the beaver as their mascot. Don't they know that MIT has exclusive rights to all beavers?!?! |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nessus's journal
