Bookmarks for June 7th through June 12th
These are my links for June 7th through June 12th: Class, power & ideology – – the illusion of control causes people to over-estimate the chances of them escaping the working class through their own efforts, and so under-estimate the importance of collective class action . – the in-group heterogeneity bias (which is the flipside [...]
Bookmarks for May 29th through June 6th
These are my links for May 29th through June 6th: Circles and Euclidian Rhythms: Off the Grid, a Few Music Makers That Go Round and Round – Music Notation, What is it Good For? How About Humans? – Make: Online | Walled Gardens vs. Makers – “Making, in short, is not about making. Making is [...]
Bookmarks for May 1st through May 2nd
These are my links for May 1st through May 2nd: L.A. as foster city run by outsiders – "Something narrow and coarse in the imaginations of the McCourts and Zell and Selig and their business partners squeezed out any moral dimension to their deals or any feeling for Los Angeles. But to question how they [...]
i have been sitting in a room
this recording has been a long time in the making and i have avoided blogging much about it until i knew i was close to being able to release it. a lot has happened since i started recording it in 2007, but in many ways that is the reality of making DIY music; you go ahead one step at a time.
as i have alluded to in a previous post i’m in the final stages of mixing and in general it’s very strange to be spending so much time listening to recording sessions that are from a few years ago. i feel like i’m spending all my time hanging out with a holodeck version of my band that i start up on my macbook every morning. the other day when i was talking to scott mcintosh (clarinet) i hadn’t realized that we really hadn’t spoken for a few weeks since i have been listening to him play every day.
the most surprising thing about editing and mixing music is the strange intimacy you develop with the performances. during the process you become aware of everybody’s musical strengths and weaknesses which goes far beyond our relationship as bandmates in rehearsals. it’s a strange place to be in, repeatedly listening to a single moment of time when in reality the all of the band have moved on with their life (i have to remind myself of that in rehearsals). as for editing and mixing my playing, having that kind of self awareness is problematic and is a big reason why i need to take a 3-6 month break between each stage of the process (recording, editing, and mixing) so that i can get some emotional distance from my own performance (and in general each composition). it’s not easy and i’m not usually happy with my trombone sound, but the good news is that on this album i finally have found a ‘good enough’ trombone sound where i don’t cringe everytime i hear myself play.
at this point of the summer it feels like i have been rehearsing every day (with my holodeck band) and i’m getting pretty excited as i get closer to taking this recording from ‘rehearsal’ to ‘performance’. i’m also looking forward to finally being in a place where i feel comfortable sharing more about my DIY process and the how this album was made
Bookmarks from Saturday June 13th-Friday June 18th 2010
The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries | A Hamburger Today
this looks awesome. DIY + nerd science!
It’s Complicated David Souter finally tells Americans to grow up.
“Souter’s speech thus represents much more than an ode to a changing Constitution or a forceful admission that something that sounds suspiciously like “empathy” means that “judicial perception turns on the experience of the judges, and on their ability to think from a point of view different from their own.” Souter’s words even transcend his own high-minded call to “keep the constitutional promises the nation has made.” What Souter asked Americans to do in his Harvard speech is to live with ambiguity. To, in his words, acknowledge that there is a “basic human hunger for the certainty and control that the fair-reading model seems to promise,” while recognizing, in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes‘ formulation, that “certainty generally is illusion and repose is not our destiny.” He is telling us to stop dreaming of oracular judges with perfect answers to simple constitutional questions. He is telling us, in other words, to grow up.”
Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors
“interestingly, they also find students whose professor had higher student evaluations typically did worse in subsequent courses. They attribute this to the “teaching to the test” that they think may go on in classes where professors have high student evaluations. Secondly, they find that students who took Calculus I from professors with lower student evaluations did better on subsequent courses. ”
The Civil War as Revenge of the Nerds – Personal – The Atlantic
“There’s a way of looking at the ugliness after Reconstruction–the rise of the Lost Cause, the Klan, the lynchings–as a tragic search for Southern white male identity. First the old slave patrols go. Then the Confederate Army is subdued and humiliated. Then blacks began to dominate “manly” athletic pursuits. Then Martin Luther King exposes the immorality of the Southern system. Reeling from “each successive volley, the Southern racist–and really any white racist–is left with a question: If the Southern white man is proven inferior physically, mentally, and even morally, than what is he?
HEY STOUFFERS! F$$K YOU IN YOUR F$$KING TOASTED A$$HOLE.
via . « Grocery Eats groceryeats.com post very NSFW (but very funny)
Almost All Is Vanity – PostClassic
“We have three markets. There’s a commercial market, entirely determined by huge corporations whose sole interest is money. We’re never going to make a dent in that one. There’s an orchestra-music circuit that you have to enter young, and it’s all about who you know, and the music sucks. And there’s an academic market, which demands a healthy respect for the Schoenberg line and a suspicion against anything populist. I and my 400 closest friends don’t fit any of these markets.”
“Success Is Just Another Form of Failure” – PostClassic
“The artists, on the other hand, are at a permanent disadvantage. The most creative of them cannot present their work with the kind of empirical verifiability that translates as prestige going up the ladder – except by winning awards administrated by other universities. And those who aim for and achieve any kind of popular or commercial success virtually negate the explicit aims of the institution.”
Is there an Bubble in Higher Education? (via DIY U)
“We don’t often hear higher education talked about in such baldly commercial terms. Most faculty and campus administrators have visceral negative reactions to this kind of language. But that doesn’t mean that colleges—even not-for-profit colleges—aren’t essentially run as businesses. It just means that (a) they’re often run as businesses badly because it is considered distasteful to draw on the lessons and vocabulary of the business world, and (b) educators often fail to identify the tensions between their school’s mission and its operating model, thus making it less likely that they will be able to confront some of the system’s ethical challenges successfully. But since the heart of DIY U is an economic argument, it is worthwhile to try framing issues in the language of economics. As the title of this post suggests, the specific question I want to address is whether there is a bubble in the college education market.”
link: DIY U: Is There a Bubble in the Higher Education Market?
fireworks "you can trust" sold here
i was very surprised to get a mention in the new yorker online, so if you haven’t visited her before let me please introduce myself: although i’m a “blogging composer” it’s probably easier to keep up with our bigger conversation with other wide range of very interesting and uniquely individual composers that i follow on [...]
