Monthly Archives: January 2009

links for 2009-01-22

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links for 2009-01-20

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links for 2009-01-19

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links for 2009-01-17

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  • Schroeder Played Real Beethoven in Charles M. Schulz’s ‘Peanuts’ Strip – NYTimes.com
    “The music is a character in the strip as much as the people are, because the music sets the tone,” Mr. Meredith said. To understand what gave Schroeder chills, he said, you have to listen to the musical passage. “When you actually hear the symphony, the whole thing feels completely different.”
    (tags: music comics peanuts via:chuckfalzone)
  • The Nation: Change.Gov’s First Big Failure
    “Robert Gibbs, Obama’s chief spokesman and a seasoned press operative, knows how to maneuver around prickly issues. So when the most popular question on Change.gov asked whether Obama would appoint a special prosecutor to “independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping”–besting 76,000 other questions submitted in recent weeks by citizens–Gibbs simply ignored it. Instead, he recorded a YouTube video tackling other popular questions. Then Obama aides posted a note on January 9 inaccurately categorizing the special prosecutor question as “previously answered.” That gambit was the first obvious failure at Change.gov, Obama’s admirable attempt to create a portal for more open and transparent government.”
    (tags: opengovernment transparency change.gov)
  • Dave Rempis
    “Dave Rempis was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts on March 24th, 1975. He began his musical studies at the age of 8, inspired by a family friend who played clarinet in local Greek bands, and by Zoot, of the Muppets Band, to pick up saxophone.”
    (tags: chicago music dave_rempis)

links for 2009-01-16

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  • Change.gov against Obama — Crooked Timber
    “This is a pretty significant problem for an administration that is likely to be obsessed with discipline and message control. People calling for investigations by an independent prosecutor into torture can’t be dismissed as trolls or cranks. They are articulating a set of values which is likely held by a substantial majority of Democrats and Obama supporters. But it’s politically inconvenient, for a variety of reasons, for the Obama people to acknowledge this, much less to do anything about it. Under normal politics, they might be able to sweep this under the rug – after all Obama and his team are supposed to be the public face of the Democratic party. But the creation of an open architecture, where others can bring inconvenient issues up – and very likely keep on bringing them up – makes it substantially more difficult for them to maintain control of the conversation.”
    (tags: barack_obama politics democracy)
  • Infochimps.org: Free Redistributable Data Sets of Every Kind
    “infochimps.org community is assembling and interconnecting the world’s best repository for raw data — a sort of giant free allmanac, with tables on everything you can put in a table. Built by data nerds, used by data nerds, it’s a central source for the information you need to power the projects the world needs.”
    (tags: opendata reference)
  • A Seattle Newspaper Writes Its Own Obituary – TIME
    ‘All the reporters know that the chances of a sale are slim. “I’d say infinitesimal,” says Bill Virgin, one the paper’s business columnists. “It was only the third most significant regional economic news I wrote about that day.”‘
    (tags: economics media seattle)
  • The Curious Cook – Wine Enhancement Devices Are Put to a Test – NYTimes.com
    “Wine is like a baby,” he said. “It’s a lot hardier than people give it credit for.”
    (tags: science drink wine harold_mcgee)
  • Long Now Meetup Groups – Long Now Meetups
    “Find a Long Now Meetup Group near you…

    “The Long Now Foundation was established in hopes of providing a counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

    (tags: longnow meetup)
  • CKAN – Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – Home
    “CKAN is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, a registry of open knowledge packages and projects (and a few closed ones). CKAN is the place to search for open knowledge resources as well as register your own.”
    (tags: opendata reference)
  • Google and Facebook battle for your friends. – By Michael Agger – Slate Magazine
    “Glazer believes that everything on the Web is better if it’s social. Checking out a stock? It would be nice to read chatter from other potential investors. Baking a cake? Look at advice from those who have already tried the recipe. Tempted by a new restaurant? See if your foodie friends have eaten there already. The reason we don’t do these things now is that the “barriers to social are too high.” It’s still too annoying to fill out all of those registration forms, and there’s no universal way to manage your online identity and networks of friends. Google and its partners want to collapse the barriers to social and give each and every one of us an entourage. There’s just one hiccup in this plan: Facebook, the place where many of us already have our entourage.”
    (tags: facebook google socialnetworking)
  • Everyone else is on Facebook. Why aren’t you? – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine
    “If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you already belong to Facebook. There’s a good chance everyone you know is on Facebook, too. Indeed, there’s a good chance you’re no longer reading this article because you just switched over to check Facebook. That’s fine—this piece is not for you. Instead I’d like to address those readers who aren’t on Facebook, especially those of you who’ve consciously decided to stay away.”
    (tags: facebook socialnetworking)
  • Derivative Works de Daniel X. O’Neil: Harper Reed: “The power is not the mashup. It’s the data.”
    “Chicago Transit Authority | CTA Bus TrackerWhen most people go to the CTA Bus Tracker Web site and click on Estimated Arrival Times or the Bus Location Map, they see a way to find out when their next bus might get to the stop near them. Another nifty map mashup they can use to plot their trips daily.

    “When Harper Reed saw the same Web site last year, he saw every bus, everywhere, forevermore. And he wanted that data. “The power is not the mashup. It’s the data. The data is the answer,” says Harper.”

    (tags: chicago transit api cta)

links for 2009-01-15

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  • Obama’s People – The New York Times
    “In December and early January, the photographer Nadav Kandar shot 52 portraits of Barack Obama’s top advisers, aides and members of his incoming administration. Kandar and the Times Magazine’s director of photography, Kathy Ryan, discuss putting those portrait sessions together and what happened behined the scenes.”
    (tags: barack_obama photography nytimes via:aruzin)
  • Rives remixes TED2006 | Video on TED.com
    “Mockingbirds are badass… they listen and mimic and remix what they like / they rock the mike”
    …
    “I’m gonna be the Johnny Appleseed of sound”
    (tags: video sound poetry)
  • Broken Government | Rank the Failures
    “To compile this list of the most important federal failures of the past eight years, a team of 13 reporters sifted through hundreds of inspectors general reports, Government Accountability Office assessments, congressional oversight investigations, and news stories. The team interviewed dozens of experts, congressional staffers, and leaders of government watchdog organizations and sent e-mails to more than 4,800 federal government employees to solicit nominations for inclusion in this project. Some 250 failures were nominated, from which editors selected more than 125 — those that elicited some level of bipartisan criticism, but also had a discernible impact on ordinary people.”
    (tags: transparency government)
  • Old-Fashioned – The Atlantic (January/February 2009)
    “For me, the best aspect of these bars isn’t that they’re essentially theme parks where you can drink, but that the drinks highlight rather than mask the tastes of the spirits. This is as it should be. Lading drinks with overly sweet mixers, thick juices, and fruits amounts, in a way, to a continuation of Prohibition. During the 13-year drought, Americans applied considerable creativity to hiding the taste of bathtub gin and bootlegged liquor, and then never really broke the habit. Seventy-five years after Prohibition’s repeal, we’re returning to the basics at last.”
    (tags: drink cocktail geotagged boston geo:lat=42.350775 geo:lon=-71.048715)
  • TidBITS Safe Computing: Protect Yourself From the Safari RSS Vulnerability
    “The good news is that it’s very easy to protect yourself. If you are on Windows, just stop using Safari until a fix is released. If you are using OS X 10.5 Leopard, make sure Safari isn’t your default RSS reader. In Safari, go to Preferences, then the RSS tab, then click on the Default RSS reader setting. If you change it to anything other than Safari, including Mail, you are now safe. If you are using OS X 10.4 Tiger or earlier this problem doesn’t affect you.”
    (tags: security)
  • t r u t h o u t | Yes, We Can Make the Stimulus More Stimulating
    “President Obama could not find any economists who were able to see the housing bubble for his economic team. Fortunately, he indicated that he would be willing to listen to those of us who did in designing his stimulus package.

    “In response to his request for ideas on how to make his economic recovery package more effective, I have put together the following list of seven proposals. This is a mix or match list, intended to be added to the list of items already suggested, although given the severity of the downturn, all of them could probably be included without causing concern about excessive deficits.”

    (tags: economics bailout)
  • MediaShift Idea Lab . Inaccessible Pothole Data in Chicago | PBS
    “Last summer — long before pothole season — I requested the following from CDOT: “…a list of every pothole filled by the Department of Transportation in the City of Chicago. For each record, we would like the Department to publish the exact location of the pothole, the date the pothole came to the attention of CDOT, and the date the pothole was filled. We request that this information be refreshed on a daily basis.”

    “CDOT rejected this request and all of the follow-up efforts we’ve made to get this data.

    “It’s time to stop reading static stories about pothole data that are out of date before the day is out. The people of Chicago have paid for the Department’s technology, and we deserve all the benefit from it. Today, as a blizzard bears down on the city and another deep freeze is on its way, we made a renewed inquiry to CDOT.”

    (tags: chicago opengovernment everyblock)
  • ‘Tiki Bar TV’ Sets Sail For Fifth Season: Time For An Epic Interview – Tubefilter News
    “The old model was this: you make a show and then you turn it over to this distribution system where they exploit it for all this money and you get some of that money. But with us, when we finish an episode, we still haven’t made a product. The show itself was not a product—until recently. Nothing could be sold on it. It was a very difficult mindset to get out of. For 2 of 3 years we’re getting all these views, we’re doing well and people know us, they are watching us they love it, etc. – but where’s the money? Who’s the person who’s going to come along and give us money for it?

    “There were a number of people who did come along, but they were severely undervaluing it. This really old media mindset brought into new media just doesn’t jive. The meetings we’ve had, I don’t think I would have been able to have several years ago, and we’ve met with all these networks. And they are all like ‘this is cool.’ But we don’t know what to do with each other, and the numbers never make sense.”

    (tags: video podcast tikibartv)
  • Will My Cell Phone Work at Inauguration? | The Root
    “CTIA, the international association for wireless telecommunications, has been working with the nation’s major carriers and the Presidential Inauguration Committee for months. But, there is only so much that they can do. So if you want to reduce stress on the systems and increase your chances for successful communication, text more and call less. Simply, text messages take up less bandwidth. On the backed-up communication channels, text messages are the bobbing and weaving motorcycles whereas phone calls are cars stuck in traffic. And wait to send your pictures and video until everything is over. You might even consider going back to ancient, pre-cell-phone methods of coordinating activities. Set up meeting times and places for the day in advance so that you really only need your phone in case of emergency.”
    (tags: telephone inauguration_2009)
  • Bad usability calendar
    “Here it is again! The (in)famous Bad Usability Calendar has featured 48 classic design mistakes in 13 different languages since 2005. Get it while it´s hot! “
    (tags: funny usability calendar)
  • Joe The Plumber Fights With Israeli Reporter
    ‘Talking to reporters in Israel, Joe went even further, suggesting that journalists shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near war zones: “I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer-and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.”‘
    (tags: politics israel joe_the_plumber)

links for 2009-01-14

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  • TriMet Developer Resources
    Portland’s transit agency is much more forward-thinking than Chicago’s! They make data feeds and even an API available to developers.
    (tags: transit opendata portland)
  • The Nation: Shovel-Ready Mass Transit
    “Transit is a money losing venture if you look at money put in v. revenues generated. And it SHOULD be. If we asked our riders to pay the actual cost of a ride, we’re talking about $6 per ride. That is not only untenable, but exactly the opposite of how we should ask our customers to support us given the benefits we provide. We should find progressive funding mechansisms (congestion pricing) because the actual transaction for taxpayers and metropolitan regions continues to be one that greatly favors transit investment. Roads, on the other hand, are bad investments when looked at regionally.”
    (tags: chicago transit policy economics cta)
  • DOJ Internal Probe Confirms Politicization, Again—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)
    The report describe Schlozman’s histrionic conduct in some detail and suggests that his core strategy was to build a secret “team” of initiates within Justice who would run the show. The “team” was to be composed of politically engaged Republicans active in the Federalist Society. Here’s a passage from an email that Schlozman sent one of his henchmen:

    Just between you and me, we hired another member of “the team” yesterday. And still another ideological comrade will be starting in one month. So we are making progress.

    These ideologues were recruited and placed in career positions throughout the Justice Department as part of a conscious policy of partisan entrenchment. Which shows that Eric Holder will have his work cut out for him.

    (tags: politricks)
  • Eric Schmidt wishes Google could save newspapers – Jan. 7, 2009
    “They don’t have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There’s a problem with advertising, classifieds and the cost itself of a newspaper: physical printing, delivery and so on. And so the business model gets squeezed.”
    (tags: economics journalism google)
  • PressThink: Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press
    “In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.”
    (tags: internet journalism)
  • Small World Networks and Imagination: The Case of Broadway Musicals
    “In this paper, we analyze the effects of small world structures on the financial and artistic performance of the Broadway musical industry from 1945 to 1989. Using standard small world statistics, new methodological advances for analyzing bipartite graphs, and unique data that measures successful and failed networks, we find that small worlds can significantly impact the probability that a musical is a financial or artistic success depending on how “small worldly” the small world is. Our findings suggest that small worlds have a positive effect on system functioning up to a point, after which the effects of small world structures turn negative.”
    (tags: music network northwestern)
  • The Straight Dope: Does it ever get too cold to snow?
    “The truth is that it can never be too cold for snow, barring a drop in temperature all the way to absolute zero, in which case snow or lack thereof should be the least of your concerns. “
    (tags: weather)
  • Portfolio by Mariana Cook: A Couple in Chicago: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
    “There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.”
    (tags: barack_obama michelle_obama 1996)
  • The Shape of Song
    “What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see–literally–the shape of any composition available on the Web. The resulting images reflect the full range of musical forms, from the deep structure of Bach to the crystalline beauty of Philip Glass. “
    (tags: music visualization midi via:ajturner)
  • Obamicon.Me – Home
    ‘Make your own “Obamicon” — your image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster. Regardless of your candidate of choice in the 2008 election, here’s your chance to sound-off.’
    (tags: design election_2008)
  • Zulu celebrates 100th birthday with parade and exhibit – Breaking News from New Orleans – Times-Picayune – NOLA.com
    ‘The exhibit, titled “From Tramps to Kings: 100 Years of Zulu,” fleshes out the club’s rich history, from its beginning in the backroom of a bar in 1909 to a current-day club with hundreds of members. It opened to the public Saturday and runs through December.

    ‘”We have been here through world wars, police skirmishes and civil rights actions,” emcee Gralen Banks said. The club has weathered hurricanes and sweeping societal changes. Members began buck jumping to Victrolas, then LPs, eight-tracks, CDs and now MP3s. Through it all, they danced.

    ‘”And we still dance,” Banks noted.’

    (tags: newOrleans mardiGras)
  • Curbed: Bowery’s Amato Opera Sold for $3.7M, Closing in May
    This story is illustrated with a photo I took on a recent trip to New York. I never saw a show at the Amato Opera, and don’t even think I care for opera, but reading the comments, I feel like I missed out.
    (tags: music newyork geotagged opera geo:lat=40.72609 geo:lon=-73.992139)

Conference of the Birds, 2009-01-13

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“Conference of the Birds” is my weekly radio program on WNUR-FM.  It airs on Tuesdays from 5-7:30 am Chicago time (UTC-6). And, of course, when technology cooperates, you can just come here for the archives.

Last week’s “DJ-didn’t-show-up” issue was actually because the schedule still hasn’t been ironed out and there is no scheduled DJ after my show yet.  So this week I split the interim time with Marv, who normally starts at 10.  The archiver still stops after about 2.5 hours, though, so again, some of what you read in the playlist below will require your imagination if you want to hear it.  (Specifically, it fades out during the Spaceways/Zu take on the Art Ensemble’s “Theme de YoYo”.)

I did enjoy a number of folks calling in to the show today, including (among others) someone who was apparently knocked out by the Rova tune, and a caller who reminded me that while I took the name for the program from the David Holland Quartet composition, David Holland took it from a 12th century sufi poem by Farid ud-Din Attar.

Note, no “Conference of the Birds” next week because I’ll be in Washington, DC for the inauguration.  No sub has been identified yet.

Listen:

complete program (141 MB, 2 hrs 34 min)

Artist: “Track” – Album (Label)

Jaki Byard: “Out Front” – Out Front! (Prestige)
Roy Campbell Pyramid Trio: “Imhotep” – Ethnic Stew and Brew (Delmark)
Don Byron Quartet: “A Mural from Two Perspectives” – Romance with the Unseen (Blue Note)
George Gruntz: “Music for Night Children” – Mental Cruelty (Unheard Music Series/Atavistic)
Mark Helias: “Gnomeswalk” – Attack the Future (Enja)
Donald Byrd: “French Spice” – Free Form (Blue Note)
Jeb Bishop Trio: “Anticipation of an Embrace” – Jeb Bishop Trio (Okkadisk)
Dave Holland Sextet: “Lazy Snake” – Pass It On (Dare2)
George Russell Septet: “Blues in Orbit” – The Stratus Seekers (Riverside)
The Vandermark Five: “69L” – Free Jazz Classics, Vol. 1 (Atavistic)
Marty Ehrlich/Myra Melford: “Don’t You Know” – Yet Can Spring (Arabesque)
Electric Masada: “Hadasha” – John Zorn’s Fiftieth Birthday Celebration, Vol. 4 (Tzadik)
Dennis Gonzalez & Faruq Z. Bey with Northwoods Improvisers Septet: “Kuntu” – Hymn for Tomasz Stanko (Qbico)
Roy Haynes Quartet: “Moon Ray” – Out of the Afternoon (Impulse)
Thomas K. J. Mejer and Peter A. Schmid: “(S)watch Watching” – Nautilus (Earup)
Anthony Braxton and Stuart Gillmor: “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” – 14 Compositions (Traditional) 1996 (Leo)
Ian Gordon-Lennox: “Vilnius” – Low Brass (Altrisuoni)
David Murray/Don Pullen Quartet: “High Priest” – Shakill’s Warrior (DIW)
Spaceways Inc. & Zu: “Theme de YoYo” – Radiale (Atavistic)
Aesop Quartet (with Rob Swift): “Cuttin’-n-Scratchin’” – Fables for a New Millennium (8th Harmonic Breakdown)
Voices of Darkness: “Mota Ginya” – Nigeria Disco Funk Special (Soundway)
Herbie Hancock: “Blind Man, Blind Man” – My Point of View (Blue Note)
Charlie Byrd: “One Note Samba” – Jazz ‘n’ Samba (Hindsight)
David Holland Quartet: “Conference of the Birds” – Conference of the Birds (ECM)
Anthony Braxton: “Piece One (Composition 51)” – Creative Orchestra Music 1978 (RCA/Bluebird)
Fred Anderson/Steve McCall: “Within (excerpt)” – Vintage Duets (Okkadisk)
Rova: “Beyond Columbus and Capitalism” – The Works (Volume 2) (Black Saint)
The Remote Viewers: “Secret” – Obliques Before Pale Skin (Leo)
Marion Brown: “Africa” – Live in Japan (DIW)

WNUR Conference of the Birds, 2009-01-13 [ 2:34:00 ] Download