2009/7/3
Your humble correspondent spent the past three days in beautiful Brutalist Birmingham, at EuroPython. This was my second visit to a Python conference in Birmingham (the first was last year's PyCon), and was just as interesting.
There were some interesting talks there: I found Chris McCormick's talk on RjDj quite interesting, not so much because of the Pythonic bits (a description of a Django-based web app, which is the online side of the app to sidestep Apple's iron grip on software updates), but because of the description of how RjDj works (it's basically Pd, hacked to work as an embedded environment). This has inspired me to look at the Pd sources and see whether it'd be possible to strip the GUI out and make a library, into which one could load a patch and then use that as an audio engine. (It doesn't seem obviously easy, though someone has gotten Pd to work as a browser plugin (with provisos about it being too insecure for anything but a proof of concept).) If one could create a Pd instance, load a patch into it, send events into it and get buffers of samples out of it, it would make a very useful component for everything from softsynths to in-game audio, but I digress.
Other notable talks I saw were Samuele Pedroni's talk about unit testing JavaScript from Python (he showed a Python script that launches a web server, starts some browsers and feeds them pages with the unit tests in iframes, getting the results back to the Python script), Orestis Markou's introduction to PyObjC, and Kevin Noonan's tour of cloud computing technologies accessible from Python (including Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine). At the end, Tommi Virtanen's proposal for Pythonic filesystem APIs to replace the legacy C-style ones (think the os module and such) was inspiring and timely; let's hope the idea gets adopted sooner rather than later.
And then, of course, were the keynotes: none other than Cory Doctorow gave a rousing speech on metaclass design patterns in Django how draconian copyright proposals threaten the right to code and innovate, and veteran computer scientist Sir Tony Hoare (the chap who invented Quicksort) spoke about the differences between science and engineering. They also tried, twice, to get Guido Van Rossum to address the audience via Skype, but that didn't work very well. Which may have had something to do with the flaky WiFi.
There were, of course, a few talks I missed which I would like to have seen; the one on CouchDB, for example, I heard was very good, as was the one about the Psyco Python to C compiler.
I was surprised to find, among the vendor stalls (Google sent two people over from Zürich to give T-shirts to anyone who could solve a puzzle, and Oracle were giving some sort of product away) was one from Ableton, the company which makes music software Live. It turned out that they weren't offering any new Pythonic APIs for mashing up audio (apparently Live has a built-in Python interpreter, though there isn't much one can do with it; they did say that if one bought Max/MSP for Live, one could hack it to one's heart's content); instead, they were just looking for Python developers for web-based applications, and giving away badges and cloth bags.
2009/7/1
Unfortunately chosen brand name of the moment: Russian gas company Gazprom has recently launched a joint venture with the Nigerian gas firm NNPC. Unfortunately, the name they chose for their joint venture is Nigaz. Word.
I wonder whether the problem was caused by some Russian executive being unaware of pejorative words in English, or whether the name was deliberately chosen so that they can have a totally wicked gangsta-rap company anthem.
According to his online journal, Melbourne-based Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman has contracted swine flu:
I picked home one last souvenir from South America, it's called the H1N1 virus. Wrongfully known as the Swineflue.
I was crossing the Atlantic when things started getting really bad, the fever was hallucinogenic and shaking me like a leaf and I grabbed the sleeve of the Air France steward. "I'm not feeling well, I should see a doctor" I said and the reply came as a brilliant mix of death anxiety and french rudeness: "Uh, yes... Terminal D... go there maybe... when we land". After that the stewards and stewardesses took long detours. A ring of empty seats formed around me. Peoples eyes were kind but determined, they read "Poor you, I really wish you all the best but if you come near me or my kid I will have to stab you with this plastic fork". I got up and went to the bathroom where I fainted.
Now I'm in quarantine for ten days. I can see the summer through my window and it's just perfect. Summer is always best through a window.I hope he makes it through OK.
(via meimaimaggio) ¶ [no comments]
The British government is set to renationalise the east coast rail route, which connects London, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, after National Express complained that it can't afford to run it and went to the government begging for a bailout, to which the government said no. Of course, the government, desperate to avoid accusations of it reverting to the bad old days of brown-suited trade-union bolshevism ("Old Labour"), has expressed its deepest regret at the unfortunate necessity of taking such a socialistic course of action and committed itself to selling off the franchise as soon as is possible.
This is not the first time part of Britain's railway network has fallen into public ownership since privatisation; a railway operation in the south of England was taken back by the government a few years ago after the operator, Connex, was found to be rubbish. (Incidentally, the names of the operators will hold special relevance for Melburnians; both Connex and National Express have forfeited commuter rail franchises in Melbourne, in somewhat similar ways.)
I wonder what branding the new government-run rail franchise will use. I'm guessing they can't call it National Express, and will avoid calling it British Rail (or National Rail, which is the same only with less Helvetica) or anything that suggests a permanent nationalisation of the railways (because that would be socialism, and Socialism Is Always Wrong), so presumably they'll come up with some brand. I hope that they keep the web site, though; it has one of the nicer interfaces for booking tickets in the UK.
The recent Cat And Girl is an apposite comment on reactions to the death of the People's Prince of Pop:
2009/6/30
The latest development in Libertarian thought: Libertarian Monarchism, or the belief that democracy was a step towards the decline of civilisation, and that an absolute monarchy would be a far superior system of government from a libertarian (i.e., "hands off my property") point of view. Yep, it's as crazy as it sounds:
To understand how democracy destroys civilization, we must first understand how civilization comes about. Civilization is the outcome of saving and investment, in other words: capital accumulation.
As a result of taxation, the rate of return on investment is diminished. Saving to invest becomes less lucrative, so people consume more and save less than they otherwise would have. People become more present-minded and the process of civilization is impeded. The amount of taxation determines how significant this effect will be. CastleIf the government is privately owned (i.e., a monarchy), then this effect will be limited. Since the government is his personal property, a monarch has an interest in both the present tax revenues and the long-term capital value of his kingdom. His incentive is to tax moderately, so as not to diminish the future productivity of his subjects, and hence his future tax revenues.
Since the kingdom is the private property of the king, he has a strong incentive to uphold the integrity of private property law (the validity of his ownership of the kingdom depends upon it). The king also has an incentive to uphold economically beneficial law—private property law—to increase value of his kingdom. Democratic rulers have no private ownership stake in the government and thus have no incentive to uphold the integrity of private property law. Nor do they have an incentive to maintain economically beneficial law. On the contrary, they can benefit by creating artificial laws—legislation—that serve to undermine private property law for their own benefit.
(via MeFi) ¶ [3 comments]
2009/6/29
And now, a chap in an orange puffer jacket and plastic electro shades who goes by the name "Jetdaisuke" will demonstrate how to make a talkbox using only a Nintendo DS, a copy of Korg DS-10 and an ordinary drinking straw. It's in Japanese (with a few recognisable words like "sturo", "talkbox talking modulator" and "daftapunk"), but easy enough to follow from the video alone.
(via Boing Boing Gadgets) ¶ [no comments]
2009/6/28
A new book reveals how well-meaning but clueless celebrities adopting worthy causes just make things worse:
Her contemptuously funny deconstruction of Sharon Stone's knee-jerk me-me-me! posturings on world affairs reveal the Basic Instinct star as not so much an idiot savant as just an idiot. She recounts Stone's attendance at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum (!) where she grandstanded during a speech about malaria, offering $10,000 to buy mosquito nets for infected countries. By the end of the session, Shaz had browbeaten fellow delegates to pledge $1 million for the cause.... This all sounds dandy, but a year later, only $250,000 was given, so UNICEF had to come up with $750,000 - money that had to be diverted from other projects. Then there's the tricky detail that many of these nets are accepted by dirt-poor governments who sell them on the black market.
(via 
trayce) ¶ [no comments]
2009/6/26
Not that long ago, the Hummer was king of America's roads; a ex-military truck, chromed for the consumer and with all the aggressive ugliness of a pit bull, it soon became synonymous with a certain form of all-American assholery, a combination of machismo, belligerence and callous indifference worn like armour. Then the price of oil went up, and the dealers' yards started filling up with unsellable Hummers. And then General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection, and decided to sell off a number of marques to raise some desperately needed money to keep the wolf from the door. A construction equipment manufacturer in China (that's Communist China, by the way, not Taiwan) was found who was willing to buy the brand and start making Hummers. Joe Sixpack and NASCAR Dad could rest assured that they would still be able to buy a Hummer, though in future, this icon of all-American triumphalism would be made in China, like a cheap Wal-Mart DVD player.
Now, it trns out that the Chinese government's planning agency has blocked the takeover of the Hummer brand, on environmental grounds.
Now that's got to hurt.
Michael Jackson's death melts the internet:
Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.
Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.And Farrah Fawcett (whom one really has to feel sorry for; what a way to go) wasn't the only one eclipsed by the "King of Pop" going supernova; the entire Iranian protest movement was as well.
That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.(It's probably, in the Blairite parlance, a good day to bury bad news; I wonder whether the Iranian government has taken advantage of this to hastily machine-gun all those pesky protesters into freshly dug trenches while the world's mourning a pop star.)
Michael Jackson's death will almost certainly go down in history as one of those iconic events that everyone remembers where they were when they heard of it, like the Kennedy assassination or the passing of his erstwhile father-in-law some three decades earlier. Only, this time, it happened in a highly networked world, so the recollections will surely reflect this. I first heard of it when I saw someone log into an instant messaging service with "RIP Michael Jackson" as their status. Though one may well have found out about it by reading Wikipedia's revisions page:
(cur) (prev) 22:49, 25 June 2009 TexasAndroid (talk | contribs) m (119,637 bytes) (Removed category Living people (using HotCat))Which is somewhat less ignominious than Wikipedia's summary judgment of non-notability on Steven Wells. (Wikipedia appears to be locked in a deletionist spiral of radicalism these days, as editors prove their hard-headedness and ideological purity by being increasingly ruthless with what is deemed "notable".)
And the Register' article on the Michael Jackson Twitter meltdown ends with some speculation about what's likely to happen in the days and weeks following his death:
We can expect floods of tributes, detailing how Jackson changed the face of pop music (a reasonable claim) was the biggest record seller in history (probably) and invented the moonwalk (absolutely not).
This will be quickly followed by floods of revelations about the singer's murky private life, now that libel restrictions no longer reply - at least in the UK.
But first of all, we can expect a flood of malware spam, likely promising post-mortem pictures of the star's body.The spam, it seems, didn't take long.
One of the major problems with Facebook, in the past, has been its one-size-fits-all privacy settings. You could decide, once and for all, who sees your status updates, but could not do so on a post-by-post basis. Which is fine and dandy when all your friends there know you in the same context, but becomes a problem once you have people from different spheres. You might not want to bore your generalist friends with detailed discussion of your more specialised interests, or share your personal life with your coworkers, so the only option is to self-censor down to the lowest common denominator, and hope that those who want more can be bothered with LiveJournal.
Not for much longer, though, because Facebook are soon rolling out post-by-post privacy options, which will let you decide, with each status update who sees it.
The options will include "everyone" (i.e., anyone who goes to your public Facebook page), friends, friends and friends thereof, or, most usefully, custom groups of friends. The devil is, of course, in the details, but it looks like it will make Facebook a lot more useful as a fine-grained social communications tool.
And bound for Valhalla today: gonzo music journalist Steven Wells (who wrote for the NME back when it was more interesting), actress Farrah Fawcett (who was most famous in the 1970s) and fairytale prince and self-styled "King of Pop" Michael Jackson.
2009/6/25
Various Australian states are selling their wares in London, with the New South Wales government constructing a somewhat ridiculous simulacrum of Bondi Beach on the south bank of the Thames, and South Australia sticking to a more sensible wine tasting. It's not clear what Victoria's entry, showcasing the "sights and sounds of Melbourne" will be like; perhaps they built a laneway somewhere, covered it with stencil art, set up a street café (staffed by authentic Melburnian baristas flown in from Carlton or Fitzroy) and set up a tram line running back and forth outside it?
2009/6/24
Industrial design of the day: this folding UK mains plug:
Not much is known about who designed it (the video is posted by a "MrMinKyuChoi", though the narrator of the video is female, with an accent), though it certainly is ingenious, and solves the problem of British mains plugs being huge and chunky (which may have been reassuring when attached to an electric kettle, but doesn't quite fit comfortably in a laptop sleeve, in the way that plugs in most of the rest of the world do.)
The narrator asserts that the plug fully meets Britain's exacting safety standards. If this is the case, and the wear and tear of folding and unfolding it doesn't cause it to explode in flames or electrocute the user, it is a neat piece of design.
(Britain's rather conservative specifications for plugs and sockets seem to have something to do with the fact that, in a fit of post-war thrift, British houses were wired for electricity using a single ring of copper cable, rather than a length for each socket (which would be safer and more expensive), which is the case with the rest of the world. I'm not an electrical engineer, though I wonder whether (a) adopting the European plug standards (you know, the slender round-pinned ones they use on the continent) would have been more hazardous with ring mains, or whether there was somewhat of an ideological nativism and/or imperial exceptionalism in Britain's decision to roll its own rather than surrender their wall outlets to Johnny Foreigner.)
Anyway, if this idea works and ends up being manufactured, I'd gladly buy a few.
The British Psychological Society's journal, The Psychologist, has a fascinating article about outbreaks of mass hysteria and "dancing plagues" in the Middle Ages:
The year was 1374. In dozens of medieval towns scattered along the valley of the River Rhine hundreds of people were seized by an agonising compulsion to dance. Scarcely pausing to rest or eat, they danced for hours or even days in succession. They were victims of one of the strangest afflictions in Western history. Within weeks the mania had engulfed large areas of north-eastern France and the Netherlands, and only after several months did the epidemic subside. In the following century there were only a few isolated outbreaks of compulsive dancing. Then it reappeared, explosively, in the city of Strasbourg in 1518. Chronicles indicate that it then consumed about 400 men, women and children, causing dozens of deaths (Waller, 2008).
Not long before the Strasbourg dancing epidemic, an equally strange compulsion had gripped a nunnery in the Spanish Netherlands. In 1491 several nuns were ‘possessed’ by devilish familiars which impelled them to race around like dogs, jump out of trees in imitation of birds or miaow and claw their way up tree trunks in the manner of cats. Such possession epidemics were by no means confined to nunneries, but nuns were disproportionately affected (Newman, 1998). Over the next 200 years, in nunneries everywhere from Rome to Paris, hundreds were plunged into states of frantic delirium during which they foamed, screamed and convulsed, sexually propositioned exorcists and priests, and confessed to having carnal relations with devils or Christ.The article examines these phenomena, dismissing various theories (such as them being caused by ergotism, or the consumption of bread contaminated with hallucinogenic mould), and makes the case that they were culture-bound psychogenic illnesses, enabled by accepted beliefs about the supernatural and triggered by stress:
Similarly, it is only by taking cultural context seriously that we can explain the striking epidemiological facts that possession crises so often struck religious houses and that men were far less often the victims of mass diabolical possession. The daily lives of nuns were saturated in a mystical supernaturalism, their imaginations vivid with devils, demons, Satanic familiars and wrathful saints. They believed implicitly in the possibility of possession and so made themselves susceptible to it. Evangelical Mother Superiors often made them more vulnerable by encouraging trance and ecstasy; mind-altering forms of worship prepared them for later entering involuntary possession states. Moreover, early modern women were imbued with the idea that as the tainted heirs of Eve they were more liable to succumb to Satan, a misogynistic trope that often heightened their suggestibility.
Theological conventions also conditioned the behaviour of demoniac nuns. This is apparent from the fact that nearly all possession epidemics occurred within a single 300-year period, from around 1400 to the early 1700s. The reason is that only during this period did religious writers insist that such events were possible (Newman 1998). Theologians, inquisitors and exorcists established the rules of mass demonic possession to which dissociating nuns then unconsciously conformed: writhing, foaming, convulsing, dancing, laughing, speaking in tongues and making obscene gestures and propositions. These were shocking but entirely stereotypical performances based on deep-seated beliefs about Satan’s depravity drawn from religious writings and from accounts of previous possessions. For centuries, then, distress and pious fear worked in concert to produce epidemics of dancing and possession.The article concludes with examples of modern occurrences of such phenomena, from the rather feeble examples (such as epidemics of fainting) one could find in a materialistic post-Enlightenment society to "spirit possession" among factory workers drawn from rural communities in Malaysia and Singapore, to delusions of penis-stealing witchcraft in western Africa.
(via MeFi) ¶ [9 comments]
2009/6/23
Blog discovery of the day: The Infrastructurist, which focuses on issues such as transport and urban planning, from a largely, though not entirely, US-centric point of view, and has some interesting stories. Such as a LA Times piece on the Dubai model of urbanism, an Economist piece on the Obama administration's US$500bn transport bill (which includes 50 billion for high-speed rail), a Google Maps gallery of six intriguingly shaped communities, a piece on what to do when neo-Nazis decide to sponsor a US highway (the answer: rename it after a civil rights leader), and a gallery of grand railway stations in America, all now long-since demolished.
2009/6/21
A few interesting posts from LiveJournal: Momus writes about the nihilism of heat:
In hot places, human life seems to be worth less. Iraq is a place where an army of Mersaults in the form of soldiers and "contractors" are constantly on the brink of breaching their own culture's taboos, driven to acts of violence by the murderous heat. Under the sun, nothing matters any more.
In hot places, human life seems to be worth less. Iraq is a place where an army of Mersaults in the form of soldiers and "contractors" are constantly on the brink of breaching their own culture's taboos, driven to acts of violence by the murderous heat. Under the sun, nothing matters any more.
Some say that cultural psychology changes as you move closer to the equator. In Discovering Psychology with Philip Zimbardo, a precis of a film about cultural psychology made for the University of Stanford, James Jones of the University of Delaware argues that a way of being has evolved near the equator featuring particular uses of time, rhythm, improvisation, orality, and spirituality. What he describes is a failure to defer gratification:And Lord Whimsy (author of The Affected Provincial's Companion) examines cod-Victorianism (think steampunk, goth and McSweeney's-esque retro typography) and cod-Modernism (think Shibuya-kei, Mod revivalism and, for want of a better word, Helvetipunk):
Cod-Vic usually has an element of knowing perversity to it, relishing its bad taste rather than recoiling from it. Cod-Vic has also opened the floodgates to a host of one-liners, cheap novelties, and dead ends--some delightful, others less so. The most successful Cod-Vic offerings seem to strike a deft balance, borrowing from overwrought Victorian forms while maintaining a modern crispness and rigor.
Cod-Mod is another form of retro, but an altogether less problematic one than Cod-Vic since its clean lines, unadorned materials and simple color schemes lend a laid-back, contemporary air of unaffected sophistication, making it much easier to defend as an aesthetic. Cod-mod has been mined heavily by indie music (Camera Obscura and Belle & Sebastian, anyone?), as well as interior design types like Jonathan Adler and film directors like Wes Anderson. Oh yeah, and Ikea.
(via imomus, lord_whimsy) ¶ [no comments]
The Independent looks at the Tories' new allies in Brussels, or, in particular, the other prospective members of the new right-wing group they're setting up because the standard centre-right is not strident enough:
It is expected to include the Belgian Lijst Dedecker party, some of whose politicians are former members of the far-right Vlaams Belang part, whose candidates backed a statement saying: "We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation", and used campaigning material featuring an ape with the words "I have not forgotten my roots ... have you?"
The Tories are also in talks with the Dutch Christian Union, which includes the SGP, a Calvinist party which believes the Bible means that women should not stand for parliament but have a "nurturing role" at home. Mr Cameron's party is also wooing the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom party, several of whose MPs marched in Riga with veterans of the Latvian SS in March.
The 25 Tories will be the biggest national team in the new group. Its other prominent members will be the Polish Law and Justice Party, which has 15 MEPs, and the Czech Civic Democrats, which has nine. The Polish party, headed by the controversial Kaczynski twins, is anti-gay, and banned gay-rights processions. In talks on EU voting power, it demanded that Poland's losses at the hands of Hitler be added to its current population so it would have more clout.Noted by their absence are the other right-wing British parties, i.e., the UKIP (which is essentially the voice of Daily Mail-reading Britain) and the BNP (who are disadvantaged by being fascists with a high profile in Britain, unlike the Latvian Freedom and Fatherland party). The Tories are also trying to block the Italian Northern League from joining, though are in a quandary: they need MEPs from at least 7 EU states for the group to officially exist, and there are too few parties which aren't either happy in a mainstream group or on the wrong side of politics; so the Tories are walking a tightrope, having to pick parties with right-wing populist appeal who aren't obviously unpalatable. Which, in the age of the internet, may be harder to get away with.
2009/6/19
The editor-in-chief of a commercial academic journal has resigned after the journal accepted for publication a nonsensical, computer-generated article:
Bentham confirmed receipt of my submission the very next day (January 30, 2009). Nearly four months later, I received a response — the article was accepted. The acceptance letter read:The journal, "The Open Information Science Journal", is published by a company named Bentham, out of an office in a tax-free zone in the United Arab Emirates, and charges authors to publish papers, whilst making the journals freely available. The ostensible difference between this and a vanity publisher is that TOISCIJ ostensibly subjects its submissions to a peer review process, thus ensuring that, for example, a charlatan couldn't burnish their credentials merely by writing a cheque. Unfortunately, it appears that the peer review process seems to resemble the papers sitting in a pile for a few months; consequently, those who have had papers published in the journal have probably wasted US$800 in doing so."This is to inform you that your submitted article has been accepted for publication after peer-reviewing process in TOISCIJ. I would be highly grateful to you if you please fill and sign the attached fee form and covering letter and send them back via email as soon as possible to avoid further delay in publication."
The letter was written by a Ms. Sana Mokarram, the Assistant Manager of Publication. She included a fee schedule and confirmation that I would pay US$800, to be sent to a post office box in the SAIF Zone, a tax-free complex in the United Arab Emirates.
The paper in question ("Deconstructing Access Points", by "David Phillips" and "Andrew Kent" of the "Center for Research in Applied Phrenology"), incidentally, may be downloaded here. It contains howlers such as:
Our implementation of our methodology is pseudorandom, wearable, and collaborative. We have not yet implemented the centralized logging facility, as this is the least private component of our method.
Gaussian electromagnetic disturbances in our mobile telephones caused unstable experimental results. Note that vacuum tubes have less jagged effective floppy disk throughput curves than do autogenerated robots.
2009/6/16
Controversy has erupted in Britain after it emerged that Prince Charles used his personal influence with Qatari royalty to sack modernist architect Lord Richard Rogers from a development in London. Charles has been an outspoken critic of modern architecture and advocate of neo-traditionalist styles, and even created a model village to showcase his ideas about "proper" architecture, and then designed (or perhaps art-directed) the fire station. Charles' preferred replacement for Rogers is Quinlan Terry, a peddler of honey-hued neo-classicist kitsch.
As worthy of comment as Charles' architectural preferences are, there is more at stake. For one, Britain's constitutional monarch is meant to refrain from exercising powers over the day-to-day business of government. (This is the flipside of the monarch being above the sort of probing criticism that politicians and policymakers should expect; in a modern society, hereditary authority should be at most purely ceremonial.) Charles is not the monarch, but is next in line to be, and this case is worrying. Whilst his preferences for chocolate-box architecture may be quaint or risible, he is also an advocate of potentially harmful pseudoscientific theories such as homeopathy. Were he to grow comfortable with using his influence to guide the system, could we expect to see, for example, NHS funds being diverted away from tested medical care and into the pockets of quacks and charlatans? And would the prospect of his interventions in, say, education or transport or finance, should he decide to have a hand at such, be any less troubling?
2009/6/15
The Official Chart Company, which runs Britains's music charts, is reviving the indie charts, updated to reflect the changing definition of "indie":
The initial criteria defined an independent release as any record which was released by a label with independent distribution, in an era when major record companies were self-distributed and smaller labels used alternative routes. Today, however, with even majors outsourcing their own distribution to independent operations, this criterion has become less relevant.
Under the new rules, a download or CD will be eligible for the Official Independent Charts if it is released on a label which is 50% or more owned by an independent (or non-major) company, irrespective of the distribution channel through which it is shipped or delivered.So now joint ventures with the Big Four major labels are officially "independent".
I think, however, that they missed the big picture. When the word "indie" is used to refer to musical product (bands, labels, records), it seldom refers to the business model under which the product was released. Typically, when a band or record is described as "indie", this refers partly to what they look or sound like (which is to say, to a greater or lesser extent like the independent bands between post-punk and the rise of Britpop), but more saliently, to the target demographic. "Indie" means sort of what "alternative" meant in the 1990s; a conspicuous badge of not being "mainstream" that doesn't require any more effort to obtain than being in the mainstream would, with its sounds and styles (not to mention the word "indie") borrowed from the original independent bands, only stylised and streamlined for easy mass consumption ("Note: lose all that stuff about Marxism and Fluxus and existentialism, and pump up the sex.")
As such, looking at the ownership and distribution of a record label when assessing whether a record is "indie" is woefully inadequate. A more suitable criterion would have to be based on a points system, with bands or releases being awarded points if they fulfil certain criteria, i.e.,
- band is on an independently-owned label: 2 points
- At least 50% of the band wear skinny jeans: 2 points
- At least one band member has an asymmetrical haircut: 1 point
- 1 point for each of the following influences cited (with proof): The Clash, Joy Division, XTC, Gang Of Four, Neu! (maximum 3 points)
- band's sound has been described by music critics as "angular" - 1 point
To keep the criteria relevant, a committee of industry, media and marketing types would convene every six months to update these rules to take into account recent trends. (For example, in light of the recent trend towards hipster-folk, the committee might now be debating allowing one point for band members with rustic-looking beards, or for bands having ukuleles in their instrumentation.)
(via xrrf) ¶ [7 comments]
2009/6/14
Idea: for their Windows 7 marketing campaign, Microsoft should reanimate Wesley Willis and have him say that it "whups the snow leopard's ass".
2009/6/13
Found in Bruce Schneier's account of a workshop on security and human behaviour, this gem:
Great phrase: the "laundry belt" -- close enough for students to go home on weekends with their laundry, but far enough away so they don't feel as if their parents are looking over their shoulder -- typically two hours by public transportation (in the UK).
The Onion has another fine slice of human disappointment: This Space Camp Looks A Lot Like Fat Camp:
Wow. I can't believe I'm really here. When I told my parents that I wanted to go to space camp, I never thought they'd actually agree. Especially not after they took me to see that doctor and he said that if I didn't lose some weight this summer I might end up getting diabetes. Mom and Dad seemed pretty concerned after that. But, hey, here I am!
Uh-oh. Better stand up straight. Here come our NASA-trained camp counselors! Strange. They look a little young to have graduated from the flight academy already. And why are they wearing gym shorts and coaches whistles instead of their regulation flight suits? Come to think of it, why am I the only one who showed up wearing a flight suit?
No, wait. It can't be. This is not what it looks like. It's space camp. That's why this gymnasium they've taken us to has a giant model of the solar system. Yes! Check it out! A giant, sprawling replica of the solar….
Okay. Those are just a bunch of different colored exercise balls.
(via Amanda) ¶ [no comments]