Author: shaned

Categories
music

The art of the mix-tape

It’s good to broaden your musical tastes and one great way to do it is to get others to suggest the songs that have soundtracked their lives. Kinda like making a mix tape for your friends.. We’re in high fidelity terrority here!

Rob: “The making of a great compilation tape like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch but you don’t want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway…I’ve started to make a tape. In my head, for Laura. Full of stuff she’d like. Full of stuff that’d make her happy. For the first time, I can see how that’s done.”
(from the movie High Fidelity staring John Cusack)

Recently I was forced to come up with a list of songs to be distributed to friends and colleagues over the next few weeks. Here’s what I picked. Not going to comment on them, it’s just like a musical snapshot of my life at the moment and whatever truths are here lie in the ear of the interpreter.

  • Are You Going With Me – Pat Metheny Group
  • Pink Moon – Nick Drake
  • Free Falling – Tom Petty
  • Samba Pa Ti – Santana
  • Belfast (Original Version) – Orbital
  • Into The Mystic – Van Morrison
  • Natural Beauty – Neil Young
  • She Is So Beautiful – The Waterboys
  • Wild Flowers – Ryan Adams
  • Get Down Make Love – Nine Inch Nails
  • Step Outside in The Morning Light – David Kitt
  • Lay It All On Me – The Black Crowes
  • Electrolite – REM
  • Zero – Smashing Pumpkins
  • Gorecki – Lamb
  • Whipping Boy – We don’t need nobody else
  • One/Take 5 – Rodrigo Y Gabriela
  • Pyramid Song – Radiohead
  • Nobody’s Fault But My Own – Beck
  • Go Down Easy – John Martyn
  • The Man in the Station – John Martyn
  • When the Stars Go Blue – Ryan Adams
  • No More Tears – Ozzy & Zakk Wylde
  • Redemption Song – Bob Marley

Pretty eclectic mix there but with some real gems aswell. I think that’s one of the unacknowledged benefits of the current wave of file-sharing apps. Broadening the musical palettes of a generation. To quote Rob again
“What are you guys doing? Stealing for other people?”

Categories
politics

Why the US should adopt Approval Voting

Excellent article from kuro5h1n here. This illustrates the fundamental flaws in the US electoral system i.e. essentially forcing the voter to choose between 2 deliberately polarised viewpoints (democrat or republican) when they may share neither. Approval voting is different in that it allows the electorate to vote for all the candidates or choices that they endorse. Indeed, this electoral system is favoured by the United Nations. The article is well worth reading, pointing out that the US electorate doesn’t necessarily imply its citizens as their right to vote isn’t protected by the constition. Yes that wasn’t a misprint! Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms (a right that many of them exercise to the hilt of their fully automatic assault rifles) but not to vote. This right is reserved for the members of the electoral college system who, theoretically at least, may arbitrarily distribute the votes as they see fit. And even if you do vote, the chances of it being accurately counted are much lower than could reasonably be expected. The US has a long tradition of voting fraud, even in Florida!

Categories
science

Mini-me

Many of you will be familiar with the concept of two separate genus of man existing side by side in prehistoric times. I’m talking about Neanderthal and Homo-sapien. Recent studies have shown our homo-sapien ancestors may have contributed to the extinction of the neanderthals. It seems 3 factors were at play

  1. Neanderthals were unable to deal adequately with cold stress at a time of climactic change, 25-30,000 years ago
  2. Neanderthals needed to increase their energy intake and hence food consumption to keep warm. Homo-sapiens were more anatomically suited to keeping warm, making better use of increasingly scarce food resources
  3. Homo sapiens devised high-tech ways to keeping themselves warm including furs, boots etc.

However, in a remarkable paleoanthropological discovery, researchers have unearthed the remains of a dwarf human species that survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until just 13,000 years ago. This significantly extends the known range of physical variation in the homo-sapien genus and reveals that we shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed.
This bantam human genus, dubbed Homo-floresiensis, stood around a metre tall and had a head slightly bigger than a grapefruit. Despite it’s compact cranium it developed sophisticated tools such as micro-blades, perforators and barbs. As the article points out islands have produced giants aswell as dwarves as evidenced by the giant komodo dragon lizard. Anyway, I keep wondering what we’ll learn about the evolution of man, the full extent of our genus and the factors that both shaped us and caused homo-sapien to prevail. It’s also an interesting assertion of the effect of genetic and environmental isolation on genetic development. More on this at a later date…