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![]() I'm not exactly sure why, but Happy Halloween none the less.
Alexis and I got back from the Imogen Heap show at Canal Room in NYC a couple hours ago and we are still completely blown away. This was the last stop on her tour (WAIT! Immi said she'll be performing at The Living Room on Friday!) around the United States promoting her new album, Speak for Yourself. Immi fans will know that it's been out for a while in the UK and probably already have a copy (mine's signed!) but now you can get it for like 10 bucks from Amazon starting Tuesday. Anyway, about the show:
The bartenders were very nice and the drinks were very good. I had a couple Tanqueray and tonics after a Bud Light that was but two dollars cheaper, and Alexis had a couple Stoli Raspberry and Sprites. Now, on with the really important stuff. The opening band, I can't remember the name, was OK, but they need to learn to play more than chords on guitars. That said, they weren't awful. But they kind of were after eight songs. After a brief (20 minute) wait, Immi finally came on and completely tore the place apart piano stylee. The entire crowd of around 400 was enthralled (one could literally hear a whisper) with her piano and vocal renditions of electronic thrashers from her new album. She also performed a lot electronically but with new arrangements featuring live sampling, looping, and the playing of a new peculiar plucking instrument she picked up in San Diego. Acoustic bits would be followed immediately by heavy electronic beats for the chorus, then back to tiny sounds with sweet vocals. She even threw in a few tunes from her first album, I Megaphone, and played "Breathe In" (from her work with Guy Sigsworth as Frou Frou) as an encore. The best part (that could have been the worst part) was when I slid a CD of remixes I've done for her across the floor and, rather than landing near her slippers, it bounced off the mic stand and landed near the spare water bottle! Alexis and I devised a plan. At the end of the show, during the ear-shattering applause, somehow she heard us yell "Immi! The CD!" and looked our way, we pointed, she picked up the disc (on which I have spent dozens of days) and as she left the stage for the final time, she was carrying her two white fluffy slippers and my CD of remixes. Awesome. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
![]() My dad helpfully sent over this news of the 64-year-old tradition of putting inmates on wild animals in front of 6,000 people for the public's delight and financial gain. Doesn't sound very much like America to me. At least, not the America I want. To make matters more concerning, all the inmates mentioned in the article are non-violent drug offenders. These aren't baby-killers or carjackers being thrown into an arena with a bull (which I would still have a problem with), they're the drug dealers who used to live around the corner and now, for the next 20 years, will be living with Big Earl and Jimbo without a tube of Astroglyde in sight. The Outlaw Rodeo, billed as the “World’s Largest Behind the Walls,” is a big draw in these eastern Oklahoma hills, with 12,000 people expected Friday and Saturday nights. Professionals also compete in the sanctioned event, but boosters say it’s the thrill of being inside a prison arena with convicted felons that brings the crowd. ![]() ![]() ![]() This summer, Sony dropped 250,000 superballs down a street in San Francisco. This is the commercial that was created from that. Photos at Flickr.
The list is in! According to almost 133,000 people who voted this year, Paul Van Dyk is the No. 1 DJ in the world for 2005. He's a great guy and makes quite popular tunes, plus he has a really good publicist. Congratulations, Paul!
Check out the rest of the list on the DJ Mag site. ![]() Simpsons creator Matt Groening prepared a mix for The Breezeblock on Radio 1! That is a combination I never would have guessed. Tracks include tunes from The Boredoms, Frank Zappa, Nick Cave, and Electrelane. Very nice. ![]() ![]() Miers may not have ever been serious about the Supreme Court spot. The Republicans (and this seems very plausible) may have been sacrificing her. Tinfoil hats on. ![]() Gas prices have been pretty high, right? It looks like all that extra money has found a home.Exxon reported their biggest profits ever today. In fact, they're the biggest profits of any American company since the country was founded. US oil giant Exxon Mobil has posted a quarterly profit of $9.9bn (£5.55bn), the largest in US corporate history, on the back of record oil and gas prices. ![]() Last night we kind of thought our factory smelled like maple syrup. Was it all of New York City? An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome. ![]() With the growing grayness of the Winter season outside, we were getting a little bored with the grey background on the site that takes up most of our time, so to uniquely celebrate the holidays and the joy, brightness, and love they stand for, and to contrast with the gross coldness and lack of sunlight in the world that now surrounds us U.S. citizens, Wider Angle is instituting a new background scheme. The backgrounds will now be extensions of everyday life. Literally. Beautiful, colorful photos taken from the world around us will be single-pixelized and repeated as backgrounds on Wider Angle for the Winter season to brighten the spirit despite the cold and the administration. And if you live in the south where it's warm already, well, first of all thanks for reading Wider Angle. Second, now the color scheme will match your surroundings finally. Like it? Hate it? Completely ambivalent? Leave a comment or don't! ![]() We're all looking forward to Fitzmas tomorrow, when the indictments fall raining from the heavens and land on only those deserving enough to have committed treason. But the DCeiver, subbing for Wonkette, makes a valid point: [T]ake our advice: when this thing climaxes, don't linger too long. With Rove, the devil is always in the denouement.It couldn't be more true. This shit better not leave the headlines or we're toast and they're free. As a country we need to keep on this. I would guess only 20-22% of the country reads Wider Angle, so please, tell your friends who may not be fully aware of the worse-than-Watergate shit that's going down in the government we work for, pay for, and depend on. ![]() ![]() Al Franken was on The Daily Show last night to promote his new book: The Truth (with Jokes). Crooks and Liars has Quicktime and Windows Media. ![]() ![]() According to a study published by Harm Reduction Journal, pot isn't likely to cause lung cancer as cigarettes so famously do. Why?
So smoke up, boys and girls! But remember: don't smoke pot and cigarettes if you still want to avoid most of the nasties. Nicotine's powers to harm are still far greater than THC's powers to help. ![]() ![]() Rupert Murdoch, in a "panic," is buying all the Internet companies he can get his hands on. Apparently My Space, Easynet, and IGN are just the beginning. "In the last two or three months he has decided to spend or try to spend I think it is about $5bn on internet properties of various sorts," said Sir Martin.Now is as good a time as ever to recall BugMeNot, as Media Guardian requires registration. ![]() Grandaddy's "Jed's Other Poem" has been turned into a beautiful, touching music video programmed entirely on an Apple ][+ in Applesoft II. ![]() As a user of OpenOffice (because I dislike Microsoft) I've noticed that it runs a bit slow, but I've never done any quantitative tests. I appreciate the open sourciness of it, but I think that's because I use it about once a month. cygnusx writes "ZDNet's George Ou has been writing a series of posts about Open Office bloat. Includes some interesting system usage comparisons" From the article: "Even when dealing with what is essentially the same data, OpenOffice Calc uses up 211 MBs of private unsharable memory while Excel uses up 34 MBs of private unsharable memory. The fact that OpenOffice.org Calc takes about 100 times the CPU time explains the kind of drastic results we were getting where Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes. Most of that massive speed difference is due to XML being very processor intensive, but Microsoft still handles its own XML files about 7 times faster than OpenOffice.org handles OpenDocument ODS format and uses far less memory than OpenOffice.org."
A big congratulations to Sheryl Swoopes for being the highest profile athlete to admit she's gay. I think she'll be pleased with how much better her life is going to get.
![]() Just as Rachel Maddow predicted when Bushie answered a question about confidential documents that was never asked at a press conference a few days ago, Harriet Miers is withdrawing her nomination and citing those documents as the reason/excuse. Bravo, Maddow. President Bush today "reluctantly accepted" Harriet Miers' withdrawal from her nomination to the Supreme Court, according to a statement from the White House. Miers, the White House counsel, said her nomination presented a "burden for the White House." The White House said Miers had to withdraw over concerns that senators wanted documents of privileged discussions between Miers and the president. ![]() None of us were ever meant to see the memo that circulated through Wal-Mart that said in order to cut costs they should hire healthier employees. Most of us know that under the prevailing wage of workers at Wal-Mart, they can't support their families and have health insurance. I guess that's one way to deal with it, but they won't be healthy long without healthcare.
![]() Celebrities somehow turn into weird robots that malfunction under sub-optimal conditions. Justin Timberlake : ![]() If there's one thing I dislike about sidewalk seating it's wobbly tables. Behold: The point is, when you get stuck with a wobbly table, is there any way to un-wobble-ify it? Most people attempt to stick a matchbook or piece of napkin underneath the leg. But André Martin, a physicist at CERN, would use a different trick: He'd rotate the table, working under the assumption that the legs were all the same length and that ground would eventually yield up four areas at the same level -- producing a perfectly stable table. He's always able to find a good orientation. That got him wondering: Could he mathematically prove his technique will always work? ![]() Not being a cable subscriber, I am pleased that Comedy Central will be launching a new broadband channel, MotherLoad, on November 1.
![]() Today saw the 2,000th American soldier dead in Iraq.
![]() Google to offer a database service. They really do want everyone's information.
![]() Wait... what? Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind.Me too.
I'll stick with the teacup ride, thank you. ![]() Cheney leaked Plame's name, and with all the whining and yelling Bush has been doing, it doesn't seem like he knew. In fact, it looks like the president's isolation caused all his top handlers to lie to him, and now he's mad, confused, and throwing poo at Laura. ![]() Democrats are preparing for the 2006 elections with new slogans. The nominees are... Together, We Can Do Better Together, America Can Do Better I'd like to propose a couple alternatives for them to consider: ![]() Any Starbucks is supposed to serve you a cup of fair trade coffee if you ask for it. If you're a Starbucks lover (really?) or just interested in their practices, check out the Starbucks Challenge, and report back if you participate. ![]() Rosa Parks probably never planned on being the Civil Roghts icon she is today, but nevertheless, she leaves quite the legacy behind her. Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950's Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for people far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation. Here's to you, Mrs. Parks. ![]() ![]() W's lawyers wrote to the Onion demanding that they stop using the presidential seal in their paper and on the website. The Onion replied asking for tax breaks for satirists.
![]() ![]() Now you can create a virtual you online, dress him or her in Gap clothes, and strip for yourself. Crispin Porter & Bogusy, the same team that brought us Burger King's Subserviant Chicken, has just launched Watch Me Change. ![]() Be on the lookout for these fine brews if you encounter them in a pub. Cheers! ![]() ![]() Jonathan Larsen on New York magazine's recent article on whether Jews are smarter than, one supposes, everyone else on earth. The answer is obviously no, but the way Jews value education and knowledge, incorporate it into who gets laid, and thus increase the average brainpower of the people could be a lesson to America. The political component of this is not the standard PC argument about whether discussing genetics is racist. The political component of this is patriotism. Every day we as a nation make choices about what kind of behavior to reward and to celebrate. Right now, we seem to have elevated dysfunctional stupidity -- of the supposedly "moral" religious variety and of the supposedly immoral celebreality variety -- as the quickest route to fame. We have also embraced (well, not recently, but you know what I mean) a president who openly denigrates the value of education. In doing so, we tell our males that they can gain esteem, status and power by acting like idiots. We discourage females from seeking intelligent, educated males and encourage them to seek the idiots: Those likely to reap society's rewards of status, wealth and power. ![]() A rookie designer didn't know what Guernica was about, so this ad happened. New Yorkerlarity ensued. ![]() Remember when Jessie took too many caffeine pills? She was soooo excited. Link on! ![]() Here's what's been on the Wider Angle system lately: The Go! Team [Thunder Lightning Strike] - Loud, energetic rock that's been on the scene for a while but still rocks the headphones. Danger Doom [The Mouse and The Mask] - MC Doom with Danger Mouse and Adult Swim. What? Boards of Canada [The Campfire Headphase] - Brand new album from a master of chill. Emiliana Torrini [Fisherman's Woman] - Beautiful, acoustic, bliss. Sufjan Stevens [Illinois] - Months on and still a daily listen. Also check out Greetings from Michigan and Seven Swans. Royksopp [The Understanding] - Funky and fresh. ![]() The FCC, utilizing a 1994 wire-tapping law, is demanding that libraries, universities, airports, and commercial Internet providers all make their systems easy to monitor by spring 2007. This would cost universities alone over $7 BILLION and would edge us ever closer to that Orwellian vision the Neocons love so well.
![]() I'm not sure when Fox News came out of the right-wing closet, but they're SO out now that they should have their own television network. Oh. I just had to call Fox News. Their hold music is actually George Bush giving a speech about Ronald Reagan. He tells all these boring anecdotes about Nancy writing on Air Force One stationary, etc. What blatant asslicking…I feel slightly dirty right now!212-301-3000. ![]() ![]() The organizations obviously don't need logos. People already remember them -- that's why they're there. But some may forget about the2ndFLOOR, or worse yet, not even bother going up there.
Ladies and gentlemen, the mug shot you've all been waiting for.
![]() (Original at The Smoking Gun) ![]() Suck.com created a startlingly prescient pitch for Wordprocessor.com in 1996. Don't shell out bucks for a shrink-wrapped letter-cruncher; edit on the web, free of
Some other links to great performances on KCRW: Frou Frou, Rilo Kiley, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, Sigur Ros.
Next Wednesday, Imogen Heap will be doing a set. ![]() Followers of Sufjan Stevens know how the press for Illinoise has been unbelievable, which is the focus of this post on Plastic, but it also links to a 40-minute performance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic that is spine-tingling.
You won't be seeing the little New York Press icon here on WA anymore, and that's sad to me.
When I first moved to New York, I picked up the NYP every Tuesday (then Wednesday) to read the columns, crime blotter, reviews, and political stories. Now it's gotten so thin that you can see through it if potato chips even get near it. They fired some of their best columnists, the paper itself is half hooker ads, and they did away with my beloved silly crime blotter. They've moved on to insulting innocent victims of tragic events because, apparently, they have nothing better to do. We noticed when the Post originally reported that Kim had been with 17-year-old Jennifer Hare when he made his dive into the Hudson. Now we find out that the 22-year-old had a former girlfriend who was also 17. Exactly how former of a girlfriend was Nowak? Was Kim so lame that he was actually dating a 16-year-old back when he was twenty-one?Goodbye, New York Press. The cynicism was fun at first, but it turned sour, then bitter, and now rancid. Cleaning the Tupperware is no longer an option; the whole thing's gotta go in the trash. ![]() ![]() According to a newly released email, Michael Brown was too busy eating dinner to, you know, help millions of people with their hurricane thing. C&L has Quicktime and Windows Media of the report on Keith Olbermann's show. ![]() An author is having a bit of a scuffle with her publisher, Simon & Schuster, about their lawsuit against Google Print. She wants her book to be included to help people find it, while they want no books included because people could, wait for it, infringe on the copyrights. Not to mention that... I fail to see what the harm is in Google indexing a book and helping people find it. Anyone can read my book for free by going to the library anyway.Her book is the Field Guide to the Apocalypse, if you're interested in taking a look. ![]() ![]() Evolutionary developmental biology, or some combination of it and our current theories, I think could be a significant step toward further understanding evolution. I've wondered for a long time why we mammals have eyes in the same place on our heads, have two of them, and even tiny small-brained animals know where a human's eyes are. Given that nearly all our cells carry the same DNA, you might wonder why your eyes look different from your pancreas. The main reason is that genes don’t necessarily make their proteins in every cell. Instead, a particular gene in a particular cell might or might not be “expressed” (that is, switched on, and so making its protein). Part of the reason that your pancreas differs from your eye is that the insulin gene, among others, is expressed only in your pancreas and not in your eye. How particular genes get switched on or off plays an important part in the evo-devo story. ![]() Will Vice Sleazeball Cheney resign in shame and deputy nut job Condi replace him? Will worst-president-ever George lose it without turdblossom Rove and start speaking without his fake Texan accent? Find out next time on... our federal government. ![]() Cory at BB says: "NYU students are staging a street-demonstration against DRM! w00t! If I were there I'd bring a pitchfork!" There's actually a halloween store a couple blocks away so that may be possible. I'll see you at 14th and Broadway on October 25. On Oct. 25 at 7 p.m., the Free Culture Club is holding a protest in front of the Virgin Records store at 14th Street and Broadway. The purpose of this protest is to educate customers about the use of digital rights management technology that might be be placed on CDs unbeknownst to the customer and to encourage Virgin to use a label that clearly indicates and explains DRM technology on CDs that have DRM technology blocks. ![]() ![]() The Wider Angle/Pi Factory crew pays $60/month for a reliable 3.0mbps connection in New York City from Time Warner Cable, the second largest media company in the world. With the intense saturation, the price should be lower, or they should use that money to bring broadband access to people in more rural areas. And it might be nice to deal with someone a little more non-megacorpotron when we call for help. Tenken writes "Salon has an article about the state of broadband in America. After seeing what many other countries have accomplished with their broadband markets, namely Japan, Korea, and (gasp) even Canada, the current state of affairs in the U.S. is looking pretty dismal. I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of paying $45 a month just for cable internet." From the article: "Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition." ![]() ![]() The Secret Service needs to investigate students' posters because really, why waste time on the important stuff? Who's getting hurt? Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster..."
BBC interactive is excellent, but I'm excited that Upcoming is going to get even better.
![]() ![]() Tom Vanderbilt on Intelligent Design and the Designer. ![]() Reconstructing the 1918 flu was dangerous enough, but we didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. So... the Department of Health and Human Services (a misnomer if there ever was one) published the genome. Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy: UN FUCKING BELIEVABLE. | |||||