I can't stop laughing at this image.

Sing-off picks

First place for showmanship: Yellow Jackets

 Still waiting for a kickass opening number a la "Use Somebody" from Season 2 on the Sing-Off. Then again, there were only 8 groups left at this point; we're still looking at 11, so there may be better work in store. I hope.

First place for technical excellence: Afro-Blue.

Steve Jobs thought. Just as Jobs excelled in understanding human nature in his life, achieving raw success in a cutthroat corporate world against a range of detractors, his death is also a window into our true nature. We forgive his megalomania; his questionable labor practices; his ridiculous markups that led to gigantic profits. We do this because he found a way to build products that we LOVED - had some attachement to, both via marketing and a all-consuming attention to perfect design that literally led to pointless screws put in place solely to provide visual symmetry.

In any case, I'll keep watching, and cancer sucks. RIP Steve, and thanks for everything you did, and everything you revealed.

Tabloid Journalism and Thankfulness

November 1, 2007: I'm writing on our college discussion board about limited card swipe access to dorms. Another ongoing topic of focus is the JK Rowling declaration that Dumbledore was gay. Somewhere else, a college student is murdered; another student displays some reportedly "odd" behavior.

The next 3.7 years: I study politics, economics, sociology, more, graduating in June of 2011. Somewhere else, as written later that month:

She continues to study Italian (which she now speaks fluently, with occasional sallies into jailhouse vernacular), reading textbooks from cover to cover three times each. She has also become proficient in German and French, and is studying Japanese, Chinese and Russian. She is devouring the Western canon, and lists in her journals each book she completes. She has become something of a specialist in Existentialism (Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Sartre's No Exit and Nausea), Magical Realism (Calvino, Borges, Eco), Absurdism and Despair (Vonnegut, Beckett, Woody Allen, Kafka).

I travel to Rome, to Florence, to Paris and Taize, to Jerusalem. Somewhere else, a long stay in a jail cell. I am free. Someone else is - was - not.

It's regretful that so many stories that could be told are not told. We don't read or hear about the countless stories of brutality that brave men and women have survived. We don't read about the thousands killed by natural disaster in China; of the German solders killed defending what they thought were their interests. But we do hear about Natalee Holloway, and the sister case that reached its conclusion today in the city I'm visiting on business.

Quoth the same:

When an attractive young woman from a privileged British family is murdered in Italy, you've got a popular crime story. When the person suspected of killing her is an attractive young woman from a privileged American family, you have tabloid gold. When the prosecutor hypothesizes that the victim was slaughtered during a satanic ritual orgy, you've got the crime story of a decade. When a sitting U.S. senator declares that the case "raises serious questions about the Italian justice system" and asks if "anti-Americanism" is to blame, and when 11 Italian lawmakers in Silvio Berlusconi's coalition request a probe of the prosecutor's office — well, at that point, you have an international crisis.

We don't need this example to understand the media's bias, though. We don't need it for anything except our own fascination (I didn't know that much about this until reading the article linked above, but I got sucked into an online argument about the evidence yesterday. I'm guilty as anyone else.)

But what I'm trying to remember - trying to maintain focus on - is that something like this could have happened to me. I remember the death of my grandfather when I was 10 or so, and how my tears were in private, in secret. I also remember not crying - feeling overwhelming "control" - upon learning the news, and how guilty I felt that I couldn't or wasn't displaying my grief like others. I'm still learning how to do that. I remember various dumb decisions I made when abroad, such as getting deliberately lost in a french wood surrounded by a fence during a rainstorm (a twisted ankle would have been more than problematic), and my solo sojourns in countries where I spoke little-to-nothing of the native tongue. Curiously, I have never returned to Spain, though Spanish is the second language I know best.

All of this to say that the world is strange sometimes - cruel even - I'm lucky to have enjoyed what I have, and to have had all of the wonderful experiences over my past 4 years that I enjoyed. I hope we can leave others involved in this case alone (I haven't mentioned names here deliberately), and that there can be some lesson learned from sorrows so that we can avoid repeating them or their cousins ourselves.

Obama Administration Puts Pressure on Israel

I find it interesting that the Secretaries of Defense are the administration's method of sending public messages to Israel: perhaps attacking them would be harder?

One stupid, cowardly cop in NYC.

We have given ammunition to repressive regimes everywhere. Thank you, Deputy Inspector Bologna. You have harmed your country, her* values, and her interests.

*Interested if folks think this is sexist....

MDKKs

The MDKK is everywhere. You probably know MDKK members: they drive on the roads with you, work alongside you, and participate in community events.

MDKKs declare themselves to be socially superior, but are characterized by their morally aberrant behaviors. Adultery, domestic violence, alcoholism, and much more are all present at high rates within MDKK cells, many of which take advantage of American tax code advantages and American banks to further their own wealth. Even worse, MDKK cells will occasionally split into two, three, or ever four pieces, which will soon form into separate, individually functioning cells that maintain an ever-widening network of MDKKs and their affiliates. They are responsible, some experts say, for the decline of the American educational system, and drive many of our worst economic trends through their purchasing power.

You might even be a part of an MDKK cell right now. I am.

Don Draper, Selling Facebook Timeline

Sing-Off Week 2

Pentatonix - This week's best. (Hon Mention: DelTones)

A weaker week, overall. Pentatonix was the only group to reach Afro-Blue or Delilah's height of last week, and the "middle" groups of week 1 were more consistently solid.

Mind Games

From Scientific American:

The cost of hiding the logistical details of perception is that we are always a beat behind. The brain must strike a balance. Cognitive psychologist Alex Holcombe at Sydney has some clever demonstrations showing that certain forms of motion perception take a second or longer to register, and our brains clearly can’t wait that long. Our view of the world takes shape as we watch it.

The 80-millisecond rule plays all sorts of perceptual tricks on us. As long as a hand-clapper is less than 30 meters away, you hear and see the clap happen together. But beyond this distance, the sound arrives more than 80 milliseconds later than the light, and the brain no longer matches sight and sound. What is weird is that the transition is abrupt: by taking a single step away from you, the hand-clapper goes from in sync to out of sync. Similarly, as long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronized within 80 milliseconds, you won’t notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the two abruptly and maddeningly become disjointed. Events that take place faster than 80 milliseconds fly under the radar of consciousness. A batter swings at a ball before being aware that the pitcher has even throw it.

The cohesiveness of consciousness is essential to our judgments about cause and effect—and, therefore, to our sense of self. In one particularly sneaky experiment, Eagleman and his team asked volunteers to press a button to make a light blink—with a slight delay. After 10 or so presses, people cottoned onto the delay and began to see the blink happen as soon as they pressed the button. Then the experimenters reduced the delay, and people reported that the blink happened before they pressed the button.

Other Good Music

Troy Davis was killed tonight

http://multimedia.savannahnow.com/media/pdfs/DavisRuling082410.pdf

I mourn the death of anyone, and the monstrous taxpayer expense that the death penalty incurs. More later.

I Love the Sing Off

This week's winning group (Hon Mention: Vocal Point Afro-Blue).

So much real talent, so little stupid will-they won't-they drama. Episodes are simple:

1. Happy group number
2. Songs (with long intro sequences...the one eh)
3. Informed commentary with musical terminology I don't always know ("rubbing seconds")
4. Quick elimination as decided by smart judges I rarely disagree with.

 This is what TV is supposed to be, right here. And if the groups get better (Kinfolk 9, Urban Method, Yellow Jackets, looking at you).....oh boy.