May 2009 Archives

Triley60's Geek Chart

You can see, then, why I find the AMS resolution so pompous. The society condemns outlandish abuses of music and people in remote prisons while it undermines the role of its membership at home. In doing so, the AMS parades in lockstep with other contemporary institutions, for which Enlightenment rhetoric masks the disfigurations of capitalism, and big, idealistic statements muffle the groans of social division and injustice. Still, it's worth asking how people who teach, perform, and study the most harmonious of arts can generate so much discord and hidden resentment among their younger colleagues, who are expected to lick their wounds in dark corners and forever remain silent, because torture, abuse, and violence, in whatever form and dosage, exist only elsewhere.

The ultimate goal for music technology, "the celestial jukebox," is going to be reached very soon. That term has been floating around for a decade or more, but what it comes down to is total access, anywhere and at any time, to any music ever recorded. That's not just the 10 million songs presently in the iTunes sStore, but the really long tail: the forgotten archives of sound-recording history, the exploding amateur library that MySpace Music and YouTube have made possible--everything. The celestial jukebox won't just be a listening interface; it's clear from the past quarter-century of mix tapes and file-swapping and recommendation engines that we also want to be able to share music (without digital-rights management) and be surprised by things we've never heard before. The only question is whether we're going to get the celestial jukebox the way that the biggest copyright holders would prefer: by paying for it...--Douglas Wolk in Portfolio

A virus is currently spreading among today's young people. Like swine flu, it has made life extremely unpleasant for many, but unlike the H1N1 strain, it is exclusively passed between old and young. If left unchecked, it could have the far-­reaching effect of rendering an entire generation between ages 20 and 40 culturally stagnant.

It can't be prevented with a face mask -- although earplugs would be a step in the right direction -- but what's most tragic is that the young are enthusiastically welcoming it into their homes, cars and iPods. Even, after a few shots, into their karaoke parties...--Ben Westhoff in the Houston Press

You young'uns may not remember, but Sinead caused a scandal on SNL back in 1992, and got booed off Bob Dylan's stage two weeks later, all for confronting the "real enemy" as an abused Irish Catholic. It's time for a major essay on how right she was and how oblivious Dylan remains.

"If you get quoted in The Wall Street Journal, you might get rich. If you get quoted in Rolling Stone, you might get laid." From Dan Baum's New Yorker screed, first on tweeter, now at DanBaum.com.

Science and technology columnist Dave Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph has come up with a novel approach to generating material for his GraniteGeek blog on the paper's website: He's handing over partial control to the University of New Hampshire news service. The publicity organization will "post items about science and social science research at the university...directly on GraniteGeek whenever it wants (probably once a week), and I have no control over it," Brooks writes. "That's something that would have been unthinkable not long ago."

It's not unthinkable any more, though. "Slightly to my surprise, reaction in the newsroom has been uniformly favorable," Brooks wrote in an e-mail to us. "I knew the publisher and online editor would like it, since it drives traffic, but even a reporter who I suspected would balk - he's an uber-traditionalist when it comes to media ethics - thought it was fine, that it 'added to the discussion."' Entries from the news service are clearly labeled with their source. Staffers are also apparently willing to accept the philosophy that "standards are different for news blogs that for newsprint."

--from Newspaper Deathwatch, a sturdy news site that's nowhere near as snarky as it sounds.

We got loads of top-shelf journalists teaching at schools everywhere, let's build a new model where student journalists get edited by profs and start attending zoning meetings and sniffing out corrupt pols. Crisis/opportunity folks...

"Star Trek" was shot for Desilu Productions, on the lot its founders, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, bought from RKO Radio Pictures, the prolific studio that had made "King Kong," "Citizen Kane," the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals and countless B pictures like "I Walked With a Zombie." In time, the series moved to Paramount and if it seemed as though Kirk and his crew were venturing from old movie to old movie, Roddenberry and his crew were traveling literally from old-movie set to old-movie set.

"The majority of story premises ...can be accomplished on such common studio back lot locales and sets such as Early 1900 Street, Oriental Village, Cowtown, Border Fort, Victorian Drawing Room, Forest and Streamside," wrote Roddenberry in his original pitch. "Interiors and exteriors temporarily available after an 'Egyptian' motion picture, a 'horror' epic, or even an unusual telefilm, could be used to meet the needs of a number of story premises." -- David Hajdu in yesterday's NYTimes

Law, Mugar buy Opera House, Orpheum, Paradise for $22.5M
"We are actively working to divest our remaining non-core assets as we continue to enhance our liquidity and de-lever our balance sheet," Michael Rapino, Live Nation's president and CEO...(from the Boston Herald).