Epistemic Ingemination

I kind of have an ambivalent view of Moby. Great synthesizer guy, and I am genuinely simpatico with anyone who can turn knobs and make electrons dance their way into art. But I’m not a big fan of industrial thump dance music; it’s the definition of redundancy; it got’s no funk to it.

This, though, is very cool. Moby created a website and wrote 70 pieces of music expressedly for independent filmmakers to use for free. If a big-studio commercial entity wants to use them they can, but the royalties have to go to the Humane Society.

A really neat thing to do. New respect.

Sorry for the quietness. I’ve been busy with a, um, project.

I’ll have a pretty neat announcement about it right here, before the end of the month. Stay tuned.

I’m not a big sports fan as a rule, but that having been said, sports are a huge part of our common culture. So kudos to Sports Illustrated; they’ve just put everything that’s ever appeared in the magazine online — 54 years worth — free.

That’s a neat enough thing to do that I think it falls in the category of “Public Service.”

Good for them.

Lyrics, sorted by the word, alphabetically. See if you can guess ‘em. I got about 75%.

Really kind of fascinating in an off-beat way; you can definitely get the feel of the song in question. Kind of makes the geek in me want to do a historiographical map of the frequency of words in popular song lyrics. Or sumpin’.

(Some are gimmes; not many songs that have the word “colitas” in ‘em out there, after all…)

Anyway. Enjoy.

“And Great Lyrics Quiz Rock Roll The” by Matthew Baldwin – The Morning News

Join The ACLU

Just saying.

And Hilarious. 763 SXSW MP3s, reviewed in six words only.

Behold the genius. I have tears running down my face, and I’m not even halfway through it.

WASHINGTON – With the size of U.S. terrorist watch lists growing to absurd proportions – now in excess of 900,000 names – the American Civil Liberties Union today unveiled a new “ACLU Watch List Counter” intended to make vivid just how bloated and dysfunctional those lists have become. “At the current rate of growth, the U.S. watch lists will contain a million records by July.

If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. “The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security.”

Link is here…

Good luck with that there presidential campaign thingy.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Chicken Little post, but there seems to be a fine amalgamation of doomsday reports appearing this week. Just thought I’d pass along a couple that I’ve noted over the last few days. These things seem to come in bunches. Let’s see here…

From the London Telegraph: The Federal Reserve’s rescue has failed. The Port Authority of New York is having to pay 20% on short-term loans. Home values are dropping all over the civilized world and some folks are beginning to worry about the unity of the Euro. Looks like a global depression awaits unless something drastically goes in the opposite direction soon.

From the Guardian: The guy who discovered Global Warming in the 70’s says that we’re past the tipping point. James Lovelock figures that we have about 20 years until everything goes haywire for everybody everywhere. The money quote: “But he fears we won’t invent the necessary technologies in time, and
expects “about 80%” of the world’s population to be wiped out by 2100.”

Just food for thought. I expect that the truth is a little less drastic on both – but not much.

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey’s Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president — and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

My Lord, I’ll be glad when these people are chased back into the rathole that they came from.

Ahh, the Folk Alliance Convention. Memphis, TN. It was a fine week. You old timers here might recall that I blogged about the Folk Alliance get-together here in town a couple of years ago. This one was equally satisfying.

I was responsible for the live broadcast mixes (XM Radio; WFMT in Chicago) and recorded interviews for folks such as The Art of Song and Folk Alley. (You can listen to some of the stuff that we did at their FA blog page.)

I ran into many old friends from around the country, and made a few new ones. Got to do what I enjoy most in this world: facilitate artistic genius.

The Austin contingent was strong; Sara Hickman, Jimmy LaFave, Eliza Gilkison, Kevin from the Gourds; Eddie Wilson brought out a whole collection of folks to promote the newly remodeled Threadgill’s, Austin music in general, and Texamericana. (And, BTW, the remodel of the north Threadgill’s place is amazing. It’s going to have one of the best dedicated music rooms in the city. Think the old Castle Creek, but with extraordinarily good sound. A real listening room, finally, in Our Fair City.)

Anyway. Folk Alliance president Louis Meyers and his people put on a fine convention. Louis should, of course: he was a founder of SXSW. He’s no longer associated with the SXSW music conference, and the difference between the two festivals is striking if you’re familiar with ‘em.

Oh yeah – speaking of SXSW, I think I’ll forgo my usual SXSW rant this year. Last year’s will suffice. If you’d like some unsolicited advice from an old war horse, save your money this March and go to a festival that cares about the artists next February. You’ll be entranced.