Museum of Music: Part 1

Art is a very broad term. Art can be paintings, architecture, or upholstery. Artists can be sculptors, chefs, or auto detailers. Anything that is made or done can be made or done artfully and thus become art if the viewer and/or artist deem it so. The most widely practiced and well establish art forms such as literature, painting, sculpture, and music are often displayed in the largest and grandest buildings in cities around the world.

Any book you could hope to read can likely be found at your local library, free of charge, or bought used on Amazon for dirt cheap. Thanks to projects like Google Books, even out of print titles can be found online, for free no less. The greatest paintings, sculptures, and photographs from around the world are collected and periodically circulated in regional museums such as the Louvre, the MoMA, and the Getty. At even the largest museums, the entrance fee is either voluntary or waved on certain days, so as not to keep anyone from enjoying the collections. And if you're not near a museum, you can at least find a high-definition rendering for free with a simple search online.

But what about music? There are museums for physical artworks and libraries for books but there are very few public access centers for the enjoyment or history of music.

Price of a life

On certain points, humans are proudly illogical. The most prominent example of this phenomenon is the supreme value of a single human life. We live in a world defined by limited resources, such as food, water, oil (except in the Middle East), and homes (except in the U.S.). Our need for these resources means that there is technically a price for which one would not pay to save lives.  Essentially, one has to weigh the detriment to society to the potential of that one life.


To simplify the matter for the sake of argument, let's say that there is a child that is certain to die shortly were it not for a magical machine we invented that is guaranteed to save him. However, the machine will only work if we stuff into it half of the world's food supply (it's magical; it can handle it). We wouldn't be willing to pay the price, which in this case would lead to billions of deaths. Even though we had the ability to save a life, we would choose not to.


How does this apply to real life? These types of decisions are made every day by the F.D.A. and other medical standards boards. Poor risk/benefit ratios cause the premature demise of thousands of would-be miracle drugs every year and many already approved procedures can not be performed as ubiquitously as would be most beneficial due to the high costs involved. Would a nationally mandated annual PET scan significantly improve cancer detection rates, and save millions of lives? Yes. But the cost isn't worth the benefit. The machinery is extraordinarily expensive, the radiation would actually cause cancer in a very small subset of the population, and the inconvenience of disrupting people's lives and work would further damage the already unstable economy. It would increase unemployment, cause more people to rely on government help, the government would go further into debt, stock markets would plunge, financial meltdown, panic in the streets. Bad things ensue. And all because we wanted to combat cancer as best we can.

Tap the screen to dog-ear this e-page...

Are the Kindle and the iPad the harbingers of death for the object commonly referred to as the book? The growing number of e-reader owners tout the net money savings and convenience of a library in your hand, but purists stubbornly point to these power-sucking gadgets as yet another instance of the techno-savy reinventing the wheel.


At the forefront of this debate are the simple, quippy complaints that a book doesn't run out of batteries, or need software updates, but these are readily combated by the space and trees savings of e-readers. An e-reader can download a book in less than a minute right from your chair, but again this is offset by the loss of the bookstore browsing experience, for online bookstores are hardly a suitable replacement for wandering the narrow canyons of stacks seemingly formed by the countless footsteps of the wizened readers that came before. Nor are the slapdash reviews in online comments a replacement for the judicious advice of a kindly librarian.

Tea... Earl Grey... Hot...

The other afternoon, Jenni and I succumbed to the desire for Panera Bread for lunch. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, Panera Bread occupies a weird niche in the restaurant scene, high-quality fast food in a warm, inviting environment. Think the sitting area of Barns & Noble or Borders that serves artisan sandwiches, soups, and salads on, in, or with its own delectable breads.

The weirdly cool thing about Panera Bread, at least at the three locations I've been to, is how amazingly fast they are at preparing damn tasty food. You'd be hard pressed to get your drink and find a seat before your coaster pager goes off. That's pretty impressive considering how long it takes McDonald's to get me sub-standard sustenance.


After commenting to Jenni about their super-speediness, she pointed out that it's really not that surprising, given the little they really needed to do to serve sandwiches and soup. Admittedly, whereas a sandwich of elaborate complexity or even a panini still only requires minimal cooking time, just microwaving a Big Mac will take a while. "It's not like they're roasting a chicken back there," we joked (we had some friends over last week for homemade roast chicken).


This got me to thinking.

War & Peace

At some point last year, wanting to make better use of the time on my hands, I decided to combat my literary ignorance by reading some of the high-profile novels that I missed through my hitherto sparse literary education. Logically, I searched the numerous lists of highly rated books and tried to find titles or authors that I had at least heard of to start with. War and Peace made the top of most lists, so it is there that I started. Since odds are that most of my blog readers will not find the time to read such an intensive tome, I wanted to essentially review the book and try to explain why this book is so highly regarded. Also, this review is spoiler-free, so if this sort of thing seems up your alley, feel free to pick-up a copy and discover it’s intricacies for yourself.

Christmas Music in October! [gasp]

I am well known for listening to Christmas music as soon as is publicly acceptable each year. I love reminiscing about winters past, family gatherings, all that jazz. But, like most people, I find that 2 months is about all I can take of nearly nonstop Christmas music before I get jaded. All the same, if holiday music shows up sporadically on my Pandora station in October or February, I'm fine with it.

But I am very aware that other people have strong opinions about when it is and is not acceptable to begin playing holiday tunes in a public setting. I had one gentleman approach me when I worked at the movie theatre absolutely livid that there was Christmas music playing on October 29th, which is way before the universal Christmas music ok-day of Halloween...

The trouble was that the CD targeted for November 1st had arrived early and we were contractually obliged to play the most recent MovieTunes as soon as it arrived. I explained this and he was still upset. He demanded to file a complaint with whoever made the music selections. I explained that it was a separate company and that frankly (fyi: never, ever be frank with customers, no good will come of it), I doubt any good will come of it, since it is only a two day difference from the acceptable day, which is when they had intended to start playing this music anyways. At this point the gentleman starts cursing, demands to speak to the manager, who is not in, and then leaves the building with steam streaking out his ears and profanity streaming out his mouth.

Anyways, today I was in the local Borders and a subtle but discernible saxophone rendition of Silent Night was playing over the speakers. Now again, I love Christmas music and would not object to easing into the holiday season a few weeks early. But in this busy bookstore I realized that I was annoyed. This warranted some introspection. I discovered that I was not annoyed by the music itself, which was actually quite pleasant, but that I was annoyed that I needed to appear annoyed to fit in with the crowd around me. And that's just dumb. Spent the remainder of my stay in the store tapping my foot and humming through a smile.

China and the Democratic-Communism Conundrum

So the big news of the day is that the Nobel Committee awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese scholar who is currently serving an 11 year prison term for his pro-democracy and human-rights advocacy. This came just a few days after a likely counter-productive statement to the Nobel committee from the Chinese government warning that giving the award to Liu would have a negative impact on Chinese-Norwegian relations.


This got me to thinking about the nature of communistic governments and why China's government is so belligerent towards its dissidents. The combination of watching too much Star Trek and having a great world history teacher have always led me to believe that communism would work great if humans weren't involved, or at least the current human nature was radically altered. The problem is, of course, that humans are selfish and often materialistic creatures.

CDM & SW^2's Custom-Made Mini-Golf Hole

The Ithaca ScienCenter has an 18-hole mini-golf course with science-themed holes. For the littler kids (or idle engineers), they set-up some blocks that could be used to funnel a golf ball to a hole. When you put college graduates in this setting, this is what happens.


Credit for the idea goes primarily to Sam, who is also the one putting in the video.

Any last requests?

Now, I'm pretty sure they meant this sundae as a "Happy Ending" for your meal but that name inherently takes on a new, morbid connotation when presented on the Seniors page of the menu...

"Enjoy our Happy Ending Sundae; it may be your last!"

Million Moderate March

Yesterday, the Daily Show announced that they will be holding a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in D.C. next month.

This is John Stewart's response to the hyper-vocal extremist that predominates the political and social scene. The idea is to show that the middle 80% care too and we don't need to act like children to express ourselves.

It is also a not-too-subtle rebuttal to Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally that was held last month and featured a restrained Sarah Palin. Beck created a good deal of controversy by "accidentally" holding his rally on the same day, at the same location (only 2 flights of stairs lower, he would later say in his defense) as the anniversary of MLK Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech. 

Glenn Beck's rally

Just to mock that point, John Stewart spent a good deal of time during his announcement to explain how the show's staff came to choose this date, the 36th anniversary of the Muhammad Ali's and George Foreman's “Rumble in the Jungle.” (the show was already going to be in D.C., that Friday would be too tiring for the crew, and that Sunday is Halloween) 

The Daily Show will provide Sane Signs to any rally-goers such as “I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler” and “I am not afraid of Muslims/Tea Partiers/Socialists/immigrants/gun owners/gays — But I am afraid of spiders.”

It would make me so happy if this rally turned into a big deal. Now no one is expecting a Million Moderate March, but the Daily Show has nearly 1.5 million fans on Facebook. One or two hundred thousand people could get together and show our leaders and the world that this is not a country filled with crazy people; the crazies are just the vocal minority.

Also, it should be mentioned that Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report will be holding a satirical "March to Keep Fear Alive" on the Mall at the same day. Ought to be amusing.

Coming soon: Mortal Peril!

If you've seen or read anything from the mythos of Harry Potter, you know of the Weasleys' whereabouts clock that uses magic to display the general location or condition of each of the members of the Weasley Family. If you didn't know of it, you do now... Some of the statuses mentioned in the series to which a Weasley family member can be assigned are Home, School, Work, Travelling, Lost, Hospital, Prison, Mortal Peril, etc.

Anyways, a few days ago, I was Skyping with my sister when my girlfriend/roommate instant messaged me saying that she was on her way home. I absentmindedly restated the message aloud saying, "Jenni's on her way how." And my sister was rather confused.


"How do you know that?" she asked. "Do you have that clock from Harry Potter that tells you peoples location? Is Jenni 'traveling'?"


We laughed and then I start thinking. It would be totally doable to make a simple version of that clock in real life. Nowadays, with everyone carrying around a smartphone with GPS, you'd just need an internet connection and a simple program that taps in one of the numerous GPS-based social networking features (e.g. Facebook Places, Google Latitude, etc). Wiring it so that the program then moved physical hands on the clock face would be relatively easy actually. Admittedly it would be a good deal trickier to set up the "lost" or "mortal peril" statuses but with some creative programming you could probably find a way. [Comment below if you have any ideas]


In fact, while researching  for this blog entry, I found an actual working version of  this concept. Apparently a man was talking with his  kids about Harry Potter and wanted to show them that science and engineering can be even cooler than magic, because science actually works (in theory...O-chem lab...grumble...grumble...).


To prove the point, he built a beautiful version of the Weasleys' clock that works by retrieving Twitter updates and scanning for keywords that indicate the person's location. Super cool! Also, on his website he points out that he's not the only one that's tried something like this even Microsoft has given it a whirl.

Canada, eh?

Lessons brought back from (less than a mile) beyond our northern border:

1. Niagara Falls would be much cooler with trees and boats being continually washed down them (à la toy boats and sticks cast into the gutter as a kid on rainy days).


2. Effeminate men are to French-Canadian game shows as large-breasted women are to Mexican ones. 


Also, French-Canadian game shows are apparently at least 10 times more complex than their American counterparts. After half an hour of secret numbers, poker-faces, v-neck shirts, and Who-Wants-to-be-a Millionaire? style questions, I still couldn't figure out even a small portion of the labyrinthine rule set of Paquet Voleur. Even the website didn't help. Humorously, I had to go to the French Wikipédia site to really get any understanding of this game. I guess that makes sense considering my typical Google query is "wiki [thing I'm curious about]".

D'Artagnan Bar?

3 Musketeers, a division of Mars, just came out with a new variation on the classic 3 Musketeers bar:

"Whipped chocolate truffle filling sits on top of an airy crispy layer, surrounded by that 3 MUSKETEERS® Brand chocolate you love."

The only thing they're actually claiming that this candy shares with the bar it takes its name from is the chocolate covering. As if the chocolate covering is the unique identifier that makes people love or hate 3 Musketeers bars.


I can understand Milky Way: Simply Caramel or even 3 Musketeers: Mint, but if you change the size, lose the original filling, and add another filling, you really need to just market a new candy bar. Hell, Mars owns the Twix brand too! Why not just make another iteration of that candy bar? There's already Twix: Peanut Butter and Twix: Java...

Look familiar?

Every time a bell rings, an account opens at BofA

The other day I went into my local bank to close my account. I had deeply mixed feelings about this because I like to support local businesses and I'd had an account with them since my 18th birthday. There is, however, no Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in upstate New York.

I had built-up in my mind the idea that I would go into the bank and be instantly pleaded with by the bank manager like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life.

"...Now, listen to me, I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets a hold of this building and loan, there will never be another decent house built in this town…"

Instead, the very professional teller asked me to pay my last overdraft fee, in cash, then asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I was tempted to ask her to show just a pang of dismay.

...Or Forever Hold Your Peace

My phone recently received the upgrade to Froyo (Android 2.2) and as with many of the included apps, the Voice Search received a much needed upgrade. For example, I can now say "Send text to... John Smith... Hey can we change our meeting time to eleven [question mark] I'm running late [period]." The phone then asks me to confirm and then the text message is sent. The cool thing is that the voice recognition is good enough to understand most queries even if spoken in a casual tone (though I can do a pretty good robot impression to get it to understand the more obscure words).


This has me thinking of the possibilities of voice recognition software and, specifically, of the characters on Star Trek who could spontaneously say "Computer, what is our current trajectory?" or "Computer, how many dialects are there of Klingon and Romulan languages, respectively?" The computer would then respond quickly and accurately with an answer, in a crowded and noisy environment. This always seemed like, well, science fiction to me. But with recent phones like the Droid X and iPhone 4, I had an idea of how such technology could be possible. 


The newest phones have 2-3 extra microphones just for noise-canceling purposes. Imagine if you had a dozen microphones in each room of a house ambiently listening, then you spoke a nonsense name which activates the query process. The computer then subtracts out the background noise, thanks to the other microphones, and performs the task or answers the question. If all the electronics in the house are connected through the voice recognition computer, then one could say such things as:


"[random name], turn on TV to channel 34 (or even just 'ESPN')." or 
"[random name], play music by Frank Sinatra." or
"[random name], lower blinds in the living room." or
"[random name], lock the front door." or 
"[random name], what is today's local weather?"


The future could be pretty cool.

Real Imitation Mexican Food!

I have enjoyed my fair share of both fast-food and authentic Mexican food. Enjoying each for what they are. When Taco Bell announced their line of Cantina Tacos, I quickly cringed, then laughed heartily to myself. Taco Bell was going to try to make actual Mexican food? How bizarre! Instead of mass-produced taco shell, filled with "seasoned" ground beef, cheese, and shredded iceberg lettuce, these more traditional tacos would consist of ~80% meat, with some onion and cilantro in two plain-old soft corn tortillas.

So today I finally went and ordered their Cantina Taco Combo. I had one of each offered meat and then I ordered a normal crunchy taco for comparison. Clearly, someone at Taco Bell's development team has eaten real Mexican food, and someone else is in charge of securing cheep meat. These two people are probably bitter office rivals and don't send each other Christmas cards. The carnitas taco was great. I will probably order at least one of these from now on. The steak and chicken tacos, however, were rather disappointing. As I mentioned earlier, these tacos are mostly meat and if, as was the case, the meat sucks then so does the taco.

After cleansing my pallet with a crunchy taco, I came to the conclusion that I like this line of thought and these really were a good attempt at authentic Mexican food. However, when I return to Taco Bell I will probably order more fake-Mexican food than otherwise, and if I want the latter I'll go to a real Mexican restaurant.

Prop. 8

The overturning of California's Prop. 8 by Judge Walker of the Federal District Court in San Francisco was national news today. This is by no means a final decision on the matter, but it is a big deal because it sets up an almost certain Supreme Court case (after an irrelevant stint in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals). Because Judge Walker used the US Constitution as the basis for his ruling, rather than the state constitution of California, if the Supreme Court takes up the case, their ruling will apply to every state. There are hurdles for both sides when it gets there but that's for another post.

I do not understand the argument or really the motivation of the intelligent, informed people who are against same-sex marriage. Marriage is a word. Some say it is a right. However, if it is a right then it is a very different sort of right than say the right to free speech or due process. Whereas the latter two are protected by the Constitution because they are freedoms that should not be impinged, marriage is just a legal action that two people take to change their status from two entities to one in the eyes of the government. The institution of marriage exists as a convenience to those pairs of people (historically a man and a woman) who chose to spend their lives together.

A major part of the defense's case for Prop. 8 was trying to establish as fact that heterosexual marriage is a inalienable aspect of human culture, that was created as a result of the human need to procreate. Saying that procreation is the source of our marital traditions is a perfectly sound but completely invalid point. A tribe of humans that has a familial structure generally works better than one where everyone sleeps around and no one takes responsibility of the resulting children. There are 1-2 commandment(s) on the subject for a reason. However, when John and Jane, the sweet octogenarian couple who grew attached after the deaths of their spouses, decide to move-in together, I'd like to hear you tell them they can't get married unless they intend to have children. I'll even go a step further: in a world pressed for space and resources, do we care if fewer children are born and more are adopted?

Relatedly, another very weak point in the defense of Prop. 8 was that having gay or lesbian parents would be detrimental to children. Same-sex parents have been shown in several studies to be just as good or slightly better at producing successful and well-adjusted kids.

Essentially, it seems that the opponents of same-sex marriage are trying to take away an institution they enjoy from those people who they believe are living a morally reprehensible lifestyle. Do most Christians think that a practicing Hindu will not go to heaven? Yes (That's Commandment #1, after all). Does that mean that because a majority of Americans disapprove of that lifestyle, they shouldn't be allowed to own a home? No, of course not. That is exactly opposite of how this country was designed to work.

Film: Inception

Inception. Great movie. See it. Trailer bellow.



Working at a movie theatre has, amidst the endless reminders of the shortcomings of our species, revealed some unforeseen pleasures to be had from the watching of humans en masse. One of my favorites is watching in anticipation as several hundred people work-out the punchline of a joke. The quickest and loudest people give courage to the more mild-mannered folks who in turn allow the timid ones to audibly chuckle. All this noise and positive energy feeds back into the crowd and, as they catch their breath and wipe away the blissful tears, the room is filled with an almost tangible sense of camaraderie and well... humanity. I love it.

SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS

Very similarly, at the end of Inception, as Mr. Cobb spins his totem (the little metal top) and walks away to his kids, the crowd gets a good 30 seconds to figure out what it would mean if the top doesn't fall. As they think back 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, or even an hour into the movie they can see that the closure which for nearly three hours they worked so hard for, has just slipped through their fingers. The very audible sigh of annoyance uttered by the sold-out crowd is priceless.

What do I think the ending means? Well let me start with what I don't think happened:

1. The totem was wobbling and was going to fall, they just didn't show it.
Fail. Even if it did fall after the cut to black, the filmmakers choice not to show it means they at the very least wanted you to think about what it would mean if it didn't fall. Also, the last ten minutes of the movie following Cobb "waking up" on the plane are filmed like a dream (i.e. abrupt cuts, the dreamer is suddenly at locations with no time between, the scene at his house seems like a reconstructed memory with the same angles/lighting).

2. The whole thing was a dream.
Possible but unlikely. The totem falls several times in the beginning of the movie thus proving reality. Unless the totem concept is entirely in Cobb's mind, which is kind of a cop-out. Also, there would have been projections trying to kill them any time they were in public. "What about the men from the company that hired them for the opening job? They could be the projections!" you say. Like I said, possible but improbable. It is kinda cool to think that Mal was right and if Cobb would just die, then he'd wake up to his real life with her.

What I think really happened: when Cobb visits the Yusuf the chemist, he tries out the special sedative/dream mix. We then see a quick montage of dream events and memories before Cobb presumably wakes up. However as Cobb tries to spin the totem in the bathroom, he is startled by Saito, fumbling the totem and stowing it in his pocket. He never reestablishes reality from that point on. This means that the entire caper could be a result of the shared dream Cobb has with the dozen old men in the chemist's basement, the rest of the cast being Cobb's projections.

This is not as depressing as it sounds, however, because Cobb does finally let Mal go and sees the faces of his kids again, meaning he may have found closure or catharsis, as Cobb likes to say.

On Dealing with People Who Suck

Everybody sucks sometimes. Even the nicest people have really bad days and rather than deal with it, they take it out on you. All you can do when people suck, and they will, frequently, is assume that there are ten other things going on in their lives (school, work, rent, family, health, etc.) and hope that if you met them on a different day you'd actually be best of friends, or at least civil to one another. 

And maybe that encounter with you, and seeing what unhappiness unfolded from their immature lashing out at you, will change them. When they get home, cool down, and realize that they acted poorly, hopefully the guilt will stick with them and shape them for the better. Maybe the next innocent bystander to their crappy day will be better off because of you.

Space! The final frontier...

Let's say humanity discovers the technology to travel between stars and colonize other planets. Soon after that point we'd probably send out our first colonizing ship (for the sake of the narrative, let's call it NewEarthOne), but due to the immense distance between stars, the journey could take several lifetimes. Science-fiction tells us that, in order to cut down on supplies needed for the journey, the colonists and crew would be kept in a state of suspended animation, only awaking from this deep sleep when the autopilot calculates that they have arrived.


Back on earth, technological advances are still being made and in another 20 years or so, we develop substantially faster technology. Once the technology is perfected, they send out another colonizing ship. However, due to the scientific advances, this one will arrive before the first ship. When NewEarthOne arrives many years later, they awaken to find a thriving and futuristic NewEarth colony already established on the virgin soil they were seeking.

This concept could be taken even further because if the first trip takes hundreds of years, then there is time for many technological leaps. Perhaps the fifth group to set out is actually the first to arrive and every few decades a ship full of people shows up from further in the past.


It would be a cruel fate to be a pioneer, leaving your old world behind and setting out to create a new one from scratch, only to find that the old one beat you there.

Speaking Words of Wisdom

I was introduced to The Beatles in 2000 by the album 1. My parents played it over and over again in the car for years. As I grew, my favorite songs changed from "Eight Days a Week" and "A Hard Day's Night" to the ones further through the album (which is organized chronologically) such as "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be." Though I liked the music and I appreciated the apparent significance given to The Beatles by their fans, I didn't understand the what the big deal was; I had heard music just like this by countless other people on the radio. In fact, it was probably because I had listened to so much popular music as a kid that I liked The Beatles at all.

It wasn't until college, when I had most of a minor in music under my belt that I realized why The Beatles were so extraordinary.  The year The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show (1963), the biggest hits were songs like "Louie, Louie" and "It's My Party" that you'd find on oldies stations nowadays. In 1966, when Sgt. Pepper's came out (think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the tambura-laden "Within You Without You"), the top of the charts were Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys.

The Beatles' music defined the course of popular music, then reinvented it before the rest of the industry had time to catch-up. More than this, they inspired musicians in every genre of music. This is wonderfully illustrated in the performances by other legendary artists at the presentation ceremony of the Gershwin Prize to Sir Paul McCartney which aired on PBS tonight.