As some of you will have figured out, I’m not a Republican; I’m not even a Libertarian. I think that government does have a role to play in the “private” lives of citizens, up to a point; I think it’s reasonable to force drivers to carry insurance, for instance, and parents to put their toddlers [...]
I mentioned my college’s station yesterday, KDVS at UC Davis, and should at least follow up that breadcrumb. What I remember most, I suppose, is a 2-hour-plus-long live interview with David Thomas from Pere Ubu—Davis, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. In the middle of the day. Back when one had actually to pay exorbitantly for “long [...]
As some of you know, AT&T is far from my favorite corporate megalith, since their spotty cellular service threatens to come between me and my beloved iPhone. As Jon Stewart so memorably put it in his open letter to Apple’s Steve Jobs on April 28, AT&T “make[s] your amazing phone unusable as a phone!” Seems [...]
My wife Robyn reads fcrp most days, but not every day; she’ll get to this one eventually and I’ll hear about it, but maybe not for a couple of days, I’ll hope. She’d have every right to rag me about this one. In classical mythology, Actaeon happened upon the naked goddess Diana while she was [...]
What’s the minimal semantic unit of the pop song? What’s the smallest particle that contains the information we require to “name that tune”? Based on my experience using Shazam on my iPhone, the answer must be, “very tiny.” For those not familiar, Shazam is an application that can sample and process the audio stream of [...]
My thesis, in yesterday’s post, was that Twitter and Facebook together have made attending a conference a lot richer, and a lot more complicated. Which are perhaps two ways of saying the same thing. Richer (cont.): I’m sure all of this—the invasion of conferences by Twitter and Facebook—isn’t news to many of you; I’m sure [...]
[Confession: I’m so new to Twitter, and Facebook, that I don’t yet know all the insider lingo. I’m sure I’ve made a hash, or perhaps hashtag, of it: I’m grateful for corrections. Teach me your secret language, O my Twitter and Facebook masters!] I spent last weekend in Seattle, at the Experience Music Project’s annual [...]