Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
I've just finished my second video for B-SPAN in which the speakers suddenly decide to conclude the session in Spanish. I'm not very good at following the discussion word for word, but my skills are still up to the task of decoding the themes of the question-and-answer session. I'm going to pretend that this was some kind of accomplishment. After all, I have to get my linguistic kicks somehow. One of the worst parts of being an American at the Bank is the way that all my other coworkers make it look easy to handle three or four languages each.
But considering that I haven't really used my Spanish in a couple of years, it's kind of amazing how much still sticks around the inside of your head.
Not that any of this will help me as long as I continue to travel only to countries where they speak completely different languages from the ones I've studied.
00:00 x Thomas x /bank/experience/bspan x link x 0 comments
Myspace is Terrible: Got My Own Thing Now Edition
I just got a friend request from someone who makes vegan guitar straps. Well, technically I was befriended by the vegan guitar strap itself. "I am a very vegan guitar strap," says the description, concluding with "I am cruelty free, I am sweathsop [sic] free, but, most importantly, I rock harder than the strap your brother got you at Guitar Center."
I am not sure I am ready to be friends with inanimate objects, much less ones that are proud of their cruelty-free status. Most of my human friends are not cruelty-free, even just in the interpersonal sense of the word. But I approved the request anyway, because you never know when that kind of thing might come in handy.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/internet x link x 1 comment
Memoirs of a Gamestop Employee
Where to start with a rant by Gamestop employees on how much they hate you, the customer? Ars Technica links to a messageboard post by a store clerk who was incensed by Kotaku's frustration with automated calls. How dare these uppity customers get upset by what basically amounts to telemarketing?
What basically comes across in the rant is the frustration and contempt for the customer. People call in who don't know the correct name for what they want to buy (although, to be fair, Ninja Garden does sound like a lot of fun), or they don't know the difference between a game system and its software (some kid's parents, perhaps?), and for these sins they are considered by the author to be the lowest form of life on the planet. He is also amazed that anyone would not be interested in the pre-order system, even though it is an alien abomination completely unique to game retailers--no-one asks me to pre-order movies, or books, or anything else that I buy off a shelf.
Clearly, he's not being supported or trained well, and he's bought the company line about its ridiculous policies. That's not necessarily his fault: he is probably young, and stupid, and we have all been there once. I don't like the game retailers very much, and I've tried to avoid them, but I wonder if we could actually step back from making this about video game stores and look at it from a wider context. The snarky, hateful clerk is a staple of speciality or geek retail niches--the snobby record store guy, for example, who makes snide comments about people who want to buy something that doesn't meet their standards of hipness. We could change some of the language in that rant and easily have complaints about customers who want to buy the wrong wines, or the wrong organic foods, or the wrong movies ("Batman Forever?!? You pedant!").
And yet these venues have not vanished yet, although in some cases (independent movie stores, small record shops) they are in danger of being eaten alive by the chains. I am no fan of giant chain stores and corporations, seeing as how they are grotesque avatars of The Man, but you have to admit that they usually put more effort into their training and hiring practices. They did not get to be large, abusive chain stores by scheming up new ways to alienate their customers. Maybe Gamestop is just leading the way by scaling up the sneer of small business into industrial proportions. Now I can get the distaste of a small store and an exploitative global business model all in one transaction!
These are exciting times.
12:48 x Thomas x /gaming/perspective x link x 1 comment
Let's start by looking at the things that Hotel Dusk does right:
This is a long way of saying that you will only enjoy Hotel Dusk if you actually enjoy reading. It is, as critics have alleged, a very verbose piece of software, and the text does take its sweet time making it across the screen. The fact that the writing is very good seems to have only made a cursory impact. For people who don't actually relish the experience of reading, the kind of people who don't list it as one of their hobbies when someone asks, the problems with text speed and clumsy puzzle design no doubt loom large. I would again protest that Hotel Dusk is certainly no more tedious or overladen with narrative than your average Squaresoft RPG, it simply does not hide that behind slick CGI.
Maybe I was just willing to forgive a lot. And it's possible that I'm the only person who feels this way, or that it's a game that caught me in one of my book-intensive phases. But moving from Hotel Dusk to Lunar Knights, a game that has been much applauded for its mechanics but in content embodies the most spastic tendencies of a marketing-driven anime, has been eye-opening. When I play a game like Lunar Knights that's been clearly aimed at children or short-attention-span adults, I find that my attention span likewise wanders quickly. Hotel Dusk may be long-winded, but it was not talking down to me, and I appreciate that.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/software/hotel_dusk x link x 0 comments
The week of March 12 I will be in Brussels, Belgium for a conference on Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption: New Frontiers in Public-Private Partnerships. I'm not sure entirely what I'll be doing there, but right now it looks like I'll be writing summaries and status reports for the conference website, as well as possibly creating audio interviews and podcasts for those who can't attend.
I mention this partially because the extra work for this conference, as well as some exciting internal projects, explain the relative paucity of posts during the last couple of days. But primarily I mention it because, hey: I'm going to Belgium for a week, and I think that's pretty awesome. Any tips from former visitors (or, who knows, any Belgian readers) are welcome.
One of the video editors has been giving me a hard time because I'm phobic about needles, and he claims I'll need vaccinations. Against what, I'm not sure. I wasn't aware that Belgium was some kind of plague-ridden hellhole, ravaged by disease and lacking proper sanitation--or, indeed, the discoveries of fire and the wheel. At about the point that I was making a protest to that effect, my manager stopped in.
"So, you are headed off to the land of chocolate," she said, and for a second I thought: I'm also going to Switzerland?
"Does he need shots to go to Belgium?" asked my coworker. My boss simply stared at him for a minute.
"Not unless he is allergic to chocolate."
I think I can state firmly that I am not, and that this trip is sounding better and better already.
15:40 x Thomas x /bank/experience/personal x link x 1 comment
Joel Surnow is not just the sociopathically torture-happy producer of 24. This Sunday, the right-wing Daily Show that he spearheaded aired on Fox News, thus completing an infinite loop of irony for the rest of us, particularly those who have always suspected that Fox News was itself a right-wing Daily Show. Sadly, the complete show doesn't seem to be online, so if you "forgot" to watch it, you'll just have to settle for clips. You can find the two that were leaked out ahead of time, as well as a pretty insightful take on it, at John Rogers' Kung Fu Monkey. The whole post is brilliant, but my favorite part is where Rogers presents his theory of why humor works:
This, by the way, is the underpinning of the situation comedy, or nearly all scripted comedy: an ordinary person is put in a ridiculous situation, and his truthful response is amusing; or a ridiculous person is put in an ordinary situation and his truthful response is amusing.
Keep that in mind if you were to watch, for example, another leaked segment from the 1/2 Hour News Hour--that link, for those who are not masochists or who can't watch streaming video at work, is a parody "promotional ad" in which the ACLU sues on behalf of pregnant cocaine addicts. Have there been any pregnant cocaine addicts in the news lately? Not that I'm aware of. Is the ACLU well-known for defending either cocaine addicts or pregnant women, much less both? Again, that doesn't seem to be the case to me. Perhaps a better question is, are pregnant cocaine addicts actually funny? And the answer is no, not really. Even if the spot actually came out and mentioned "crack mothers," which (with all of its accompanying connotations) is almost certainly what they hope to evoke, that's not really a funny idea. It's just kind of sad. Tying it to the ACLU is simply bizarre--wouldn't NARAL have been the appropriate choice?
But you know, we could sit around and write better jokes for these guys all day (and, should I still be job hunting by the end of June, that might be the last resort). We could also simply take away the lesson that conservatives aren't funny, but as Dan notes that's just too easy. What I find fascinating is that the show is so aggressively unfunny, and I don't think that's necessarily a conservative fault. There are funny conservatives, somewhere. More importantly, I disagree somewhat when John Rogers says that you cannot "make" humor. You can't make really good humor, but you can certainly fake mediocrity better than the 1/2 Hour News Hour does. I know, because I spent two years on a college forensics team.
See, one event in forensics (competitive speech, not dead people) is called After-Dinner Speaking. It's supposed to be the humorous category, although that is tempered by the requirement that the speech should also have some sort of point and structure--this isn't stand-up, in other words. It's the kind of skill that might come in handy if you're asked to give a funny introduction for a business retreat, or some other equally awkward situation. Impress your boss without looking like an idiot, in other words. When you take a step back from forensics in general, you begin to find that those are the skills it develops most.
I wasn't very good at After-Dinner Speaking, personally. I think part of this is that I am neither a tremendously funny person, nor a tremendously serious person which is equally funny in the right context. But I managed to qualify for the national tournament in ADS both years on the team, because it turns out that you can actually manufacture jokes using a few basic formulas. For example, there's the List of Three: recite a trio of examples for any given point, where the first two items support your point and the third either undermines, subverts, or exaggerates it. So I might say that the 1/2 Hour News Hour is produced by Joel Surnow, Manny Coto, and a particularly bright howler monkey (you can hear him on the show's fake laugh track). Likewise, there are a number of stock joke constructions from ADS speeches like the Off-the-Wall Pop Culture Reference, the Non-Sequitur, and the Embarrassing Self-Deprecation. They're not going to get you a gig at the Improv, but they're good enough to liven up a presentation on your business case.
What all of these strategies have in common is that they're surprising, which I think is actually the root of humor. We find things to be funny when they snap us out of what we anticipated would happen. Maybe that means that they get us to look at the world a little differently, as with observational comics. At the lowest level, slapstick is funny because it combines everyday activities with overly-dramatic clumsiness and violence. It can even work in reverse: the punchline of "The Aristocrats" is funny because it's so utterly banal compared to the rest of the joke.
I get what Rogers is saying when he says that comedy is truth, but I feel like what he's really saying is "good comedy is truth." Mediocre comedy is just the unexpected. And that's what I find so sad about the clips of the 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour: they're not surprising at all, unless you count their lack of self-awareness (seriously, Rush Limbaugh mocking someone else for their medical treatment?). There's just nothing there that's even shocking, much less subversive. Calling Barack Obama "gassy" isn't a punchline. It's just an insult, and not a very creative one. I'm not offended because the show is racist and conservative. I'm offended because it's lazy. And I'm particularly offended because it isn't actually offensive, or unexpected, or challenging, except in the most mild and pandering ways. If it could manage any of those, I still wouldn't like it--but it might be funny.
15:01 x Thomas x /politics/wingnuts/fox_news x link x 1 comment
Well, it's been ten days since Nadia started guarding the comments section, and I've had no spam during that time. I guess it's working.
00:00 x Thomas x /meta/blosxom x link x 0 comments
Job Purpose: (summary of major job accountabilities at the full working
level)
Designs and maintains a group of web sites under the supervision of a web
manager;
Selection Criteria
You could do a lot worse than working for the World Bank Institute. The pay is pretty good and we're working to end poverty. Our current web master is leaving and we need a new one fairly soon. If you're in the DC area (or could relocate) and you've got the skills, send your CV, cover letter, and samples of your work to me using the link on the right side, by the end of February.
"ETT/ETC" refers to Extended Term Temporary or Consultant. These are not technically staff positions, but they are better than short term contracts and include health care and benefits. I am on an ETT contract, and although the tax situation is ugly, the rest of it is very good.
00:00 x Thomas x /bank/events/staff x link x 0 comments
Post-weekend organizing:
That's a pretty good little home studio, if I say so myself. I got my virtual effects rig up and running again this weekend. It's all battery-powered now, so theoretically I could play live with it, but I think it's better suited for recording only. The laptop's battery life still isn't spectacular, and the audio interface sounds a little flat through the bass amp.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording/production x link x 0 comments
My thoughts on Jesus Camp were definitely influenced by reading Bob Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism this weekend. If you haven't taken the time to flip through Altemyer's work, here's a basic summary: Altemeyer's research shows that a healthy portion of people fit into a psychological category he calls "Right-Wing Authoritarians," and these people display tendencies for submission to authority, compartmentalized thinking, heightened prejudice and clannishness, and a greater feeling of fearfulness. These people tend to be conservative, but it is not impossible to have Left-Wing Authoritarians, as Stalinism showed. Authoritarians also tend to be very religious, which makes sense, seeing as how organized religion often stresses submission to a supernatural authority.
Jesus Camp, in many ways, showcases these behaviors. It's actually the story of a camp in the Midwest called "Kids on Fire" that trains evangelical Christian children in zealotry and preparation for the end times. It may sound biased to say that they're being trained as zealots, but the organizer (who apparently fully endorsed the film) directly compares it to Islamic training camps and suicide warriors. There's a fair amount of martial metaphors on display here, and a lot of talk about culture warfare that sometimes becomes alarmingly literal. They are the "Army of God."
The directors have focused on three individuals: the pastor Becky Fischer and camp participants Levi and Rachael. Fischer comes across as surprisingly charming and humble, which can be disarming considering that she spends a fair amount of time making the kids cry and leading them in glossolalia. Levi is about ten, with a long rat-tail haircut, and he hopes to be a youth pastor, while Rachael is a little younger and almost desparately earnest about her faith. Both children, however, give off the vibe that they're robotically repeating the lines they were given in church, prompting my diversion into authoritarianism. And perhaps what the film does best is show how insular their lives really are: they're homeschooled from creationist textbooks, watch only Christian movies and television (Becky berates them about the witchcraft of Harry Potter), and seem to talk about little other than Jesus. Their parents even come with them to the camp (Belle: "Worst summer camp ever."). The evangelicals wear this isolation from the rest of society as a badge of pride, even the children--in one heartbreaking interview, Rachael admits that the other kids at school have teased her, but protests that it's only God whose judgement really matters to her, and (here I paraphrase but only slightly) it won't matter when her schoolmates are in hell.
Where Jesus Camp misses the mark is when it fails to emphasize the influence and extent of the evangelical population. When reading books about the movement (and Belle likes to give me a hard time about the number that I own), it's made clear that the religious far-right is a real threat to the country. Jesus Camp tries to make this point in guest-segments from an Air America radio host, but he's really pretty limp and unconvincing. Belle wasn't even sure whose side he was on until half an hour into the movie. It's only toward the end, when Fischer calls into his radio show and admits that democracy is really something she'd prefer to replace with Jesus, that the film feels really substantial.
There are a few moments of sardonic amusement to be had with the
evangelicals, especially former pastor Ted Haggard, who appears
momentarily when Levi visits his Colorado Springs mega-church. Even though
Levi may be a little brainwashed, he still shows enough signs of being a
normal, likeable ten-year-old that Haggard's dismissal of his pastoral
ambitions hits a little close to home. I might not empathize with Levi's
dreams of preaching, but we've all be talked down to by an authority or
role model. Of course, neither Levi nor the filmmakers knew what we know
now: that Pastor Ted was secretly visiting a gay prostitute for sex and
meth sessions, a fact that would lead to his fall from power when it was
exposed to the world, and which lends some extra frisson to
Haggard's jibes. Randall Terry Lou Engel, the fanatic who
protested outside of
Terry Schiavo's hospital room with "LIFE" taped across the lips of his
companions, also makes a cameo appearance to teach the kids about the
evils of abortion. Then there's the horrified looks of the other children
when one admits to having watched the Harry Potter movies at his father's
house. Rebellion, for these kids, is a low bar to clear.
For viewers who are unfamiliar with the evangelical Christian movement, Jesus Camp may be an eye-opener. But perhaps due to the movie and its buzz a few months back, as well as the increased power and profile of religious leaders within the Republican party, I think it's harder to be blissfully unaware of its subjects, even among urban liberals and heathens. I guess I'm trying to say that I was underwhelmed, but less-obsessed audiences might not be. Regardless of your exposure, it can still be fascinating for outsiders to listen to these believers, who clearly desire nothing more than to be puppets driven by the will of God, without individualism or personal choices.
00:00 x Thomas x /movies/reviews/documentary x link x 0 comments
Since (as my ranting on the Who may have revealed) my musical tastes can be this weird mix of hipness and stodgy rock cheesiness, I'm giving Pandora a chance today. It's an Internet radio station recommended by a friend of mine, which will build a playlist composed of similar songs to artists that you pick. So far, so good. At the very least, I can't imagine otherwise finding a station that would play the Darkness, the Talking Heads, and Rilo Kiley within 15 minutes of each other. So it's got that going for it.
The hardest part is forcing myself to listen to some of the sketchier songs it kicks out, just in case they turn into something really good halfway through. But if it works right, I should probably be discouraging it from giving me songs that only rock after 3 minutes of wandering.
I love that it's telling me I want songs based on "extensive vamping."
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/internet x link x 1 comment
Pandora Podcast on Guitar Effects
This is cool: the Pandora radio guys are doing podcasts, and this time they've taken on a basic guide to guitar effects. You can listen to the podcast, as well as hear samples of songs that use them, here. It's not incredibly in-depth for the mechanics of what each effect is doing, but I like that they're placing the effects into a musical and historical context.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/internet x link x 0 comments
Authoritarianism: A Field Guide
Bob Altemeyer, the scholar whose work was heavily referenced in John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience, has put his book The Authoritarians online in .PDF format here. I found Dean's book to be a little troubling in its reliance on Altemeyer's work, while at the same time I found his description of authoritarianism to be convincing and thought-provoking. It's nice now to be able to go to the source, as it were.
00:00 x Thomas x /politics/activism x link x 0 comments
Michael Chiarello's Best Button Mushrooms are a pretty tasty Valentine's dinner, if I do say so myself. Seen here with roasted baby potatoes, hummus, and some kind of white wine that Belle said was pretty good for $7. The green tea root beer, unfortunately, was a little weak.
I'd show you the mango ice cream with triple chocolate sauce, but we had to devour it before all of the chocolate hardened, and then we just sat around for a while muttering because it was too rich to finish.
10:42 x Thomas x /random/personal/events/holidays x link x 1 comment
In French, she would be called "Le Renard"
Wait, was there something I was supposed to do today? I took unscheduled leave because of the weather, but I just feel like there was something...
"Ooooh, dreamweaver..."
Was it something at work? Because I already sent the e-mail to let people know I wouldn't be in, and as far as I know I don't have any urgent projects right now. I'll have to put a podcast together tomorrow, but that's easy enough. And of course a couple of videos were going to be posted, but they're still well within their deadlines. Man, what was it?
"...I believe you can get me
through the niiiiight..."
Something around the house maybe. Was it the package I'm expecting? I thought that wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow. No, as far as I know, today I'm just hanging out with Belle...
Belle. I feel like she had something to do with it...
"Dreeeeeeeeamweaver..."
That can't be right, though. Because I wouldn't have forgotten something related to the best girlfriend on the planet, the girl who makes waking up each morning such a joy, right? I would never let something slip my mind and risk such a bright smile and dark, shining eyes. Why, if only there were a day specifically for our significant others, one day reserved for expressing just how they make us feel, perhaps through cheesy Photoshop gags. Something like Val-
Oh. Right.
"...I believe we can reach the
morning lii-iiiiiight!"
Happy Valentine's Day, Belle! Now you know why I was googling pictures of Tia Carrere this morning!
09:47 x Thomas x /random/personal/events/holidays x link x 1 comment
At some point, I'm going to have to pick up a copy of Pro Tools for my home studio, for two reasons. First, I'll probably be consulting for WBI after my contract runs out, and I want to be able to open project files without any import/export issues. Second, I've honestly grown to like Pro Tools. Cubase is good software, but in my (admittedly limited) experience with it, it's the kind of software that believes every function needs a new window. Soft synths? New window! Mixer? New window! MIDI editing? New window! Channel strip? GUESS WHAT WE'RE DOING!
I kid because I love, of course. Cubase also has a lot of great features that Pro Tools doesn't have, like support for VST plugins and a wider range of hardware. And even though it opens up all those windows, it does get credit for making it easy to move between them--from almost anywhere in the application, you can get to a track's plugins, sends, and channel strip information. But for fast and flexible audio production, Pro Tools is still a monster.
But it's never been budget software, frankly. Some may disagree with the comparison, but Digidesign (the people behind Pro Tools) have always reminded me a bit of Apple: they like to use their own hardware (the merits of which are strongly debated), they're seen as more expensive than the competition, and they're pretty much standard issue at professional studios. Of course, in professional studios, a Pro Tools rig doesn't mean the same thing that we've got here at the Bank. A top-of-the-line Pro Tools HD setup offloads the effects and signal processing to outboard DSP chips contained in big, expensive rackmount units. Home users unwilling to spend more than $10,000 on a recording setup have two Pro Tools choices that are file-compatible but use host-based processing instead: Pro Tools LE and M-Powered.
My dilemma comes from picking between those two home versions. At the Bank, we're using an LE system (the very nice Digi 002), which requires Digidesign hardware (in this case, a big mixer-looking chunk of machinery that acts as both an interface and a control surface). That used to be the only budget choice. But then Avid (the parent company of Digidesign) bought M-Audio, makers of a ton of audio interfaces, and together they put out Pro Tools M-Powered, which is basically identical to LE but only runs using M-Audio hardware.
Now, I already own an M-Audio interface, the Firewire Solo. I like it. It seems solid, it's very low-latency, and other M-Audio hardware is relatively cheap so it would be easy to upgrade to a bigger system. Going to Pro Tools just means buying the software, which runs about $250. The downsides are that it's dongle-protected (so I'd have to carry around a little USB key in addition to everything else) and it doesn't come with as many plugins as the LE packs do.
Normally, I'd just have to bite the bullet on those deficiencies, because Digidesign's most affordable LE system was the Mbox 2, starting at $450. But they've just started shipping the Mbox 2 Mini, a small USB-based LE system. It doesn't offer very much in the way of input, but it's only $300, or $50 more than the M-Powered system. The Mbox also acts as a hardware dongle, meaning that I wouldn't need to carry the iLock dongle in order to use the software. On the other hand, it's expensive to upgrade an LE system (the cost of software is built into the price for new hardware) and I might still need a USB key for authorization if I bought any plugins.
So although I'm tempted, in the end I have to believe that for my small studio M-Powered will be the most logical choice. I like having a bigger choice of hardware, even if it does all have to come from M-Audio, and the overall costs are probably much lower (on par or cheaper with competitors, actually). If I had a couple thousand dollars, I'd probably want to shell out for a the Digi 002 system, because I've learned to appreciate having well-built physical faders for mixing, and then I'd add an Mbox 2 Mini for portable work. But I don't have that kind of money. I'm thinking I'll pick up the M-Powered, and then use the extra $50 toward either a Jamlab USB interface (very portable) or fxpansion's VST-to-Pro Tools plugin wrapper (thus negating the only feature I'll really miss from Cubase and Ableton Live).
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording/production x link x 0 comments
That's the creator of 24, Joel Surnow, speaking to the New Yorker. He's responding to criticisms by civil rights lawyers (including the dean of West Point) that 24 has made it harder for the Army to discourage abusive behaviors among recruits, for whom the show provides a compelling "time bomb" scenario of the kind largely dismissed by intelligence experts. Note that Surnow does not technically refute whether or not the experts are right and torture doesn't work. He's more interested in whether or not someone would torture, regardless of efficacy, when placed in a crisis situation. I thought I had a grim outlook on humanity, but combined with Surnow's statement that "young interrogators don't need our show," this is a quote from someone who lives in a pretty harsh internal life.
Before I get into the issue of this, can I mention how writing about these kinds of issues makes a mockery of my home-grown categorization system? Is this in "movies," where I've decided to put the television posts for the flimsiest of reasons? Or is it "politics," due to the outrageously wingnutty content of the show? These are the reasons that my "random" folder has become increasingly cluttered.
But excuse the digression. The point is not that 24 is a bloody show that flaunts its circumvention of the Geneva Convention at every possible opportunity. It's that the program has contributed to a public dialogue where torture has become an actual valid option for policy. That these goalposts have been moved (or, perhaps more accurately, had their fingernails pulled until they revealed the location of the real goalposts) is dismaying. I'm still sometimes shocked by the surrealism of seeing references to "the President's interrogation policy" in newspaper headlines, not to mention Surnow's other comment in the article that he'd like to rehabilitate the image of Joe McCarthy--"an American hero, or maybe someone with a good cause who went too far." Yeah, if anyone could be the ironic spokesman for wrongful accusations, surely Tailgunner Joe tops the list.
But then, to some extent that's already occurred. Anyone covering the extreme political right in this country already knows that the redemption of McCarthyism (as well as the revival of detention camps and other WWII-era outrages) has been a priority--and for their constituency, not unsuccessfully so. To sophisticates and elites--and I mean that in the very nicest sense of the word--Ann Coulter and her book Treason may be a joke, but those books sell. People agree with them. I know several who do. You may as well.
Here's another fun digression: guess who's Surnow's partner in creating a "conservative network" (Bravo with guns instead of gays) that became a right-wing Daily Show pilot, soon to appear on Fox News? None other than Manny Coto, the same writer who apparently rescued Star Trek: Enterprise from mediocrity shortly before it was cancelled. The tiny, dark cloud spotted hovering over NewsCorp's headquarters right now would be the ashes of Gene Roddenberry, attempting to spin in their orbital grave.
I don't really have a solution to 24's torture problem. I'm not sure we can. If you're going to be in favor of free speech, you can't limit it just because the speech isn't something you'd want to say yourself, or because you think it's a bad influence. I can't condemn 24 outright without taking part in the same demonization campaign of groups like Brent Bozell's Media Research Center (Motto: "Counting penis jokes and semi-exposed breasts since 1987"). But I think it's unfortunate. I'd like for people to talk about how torture, even fictionalized torture, makes them feel, and whether they think that's healthy. But my most considered impulse is largely pity for the writers: to sit in a small room, week after week, being paid to create new and fresh ways to inflict physical pain on hero and villain alike, does not sound particularly fun or sustainable to me. It sounds worse than watching it, frankly. I wonder if Surnow would have made such a grim statement as the quote above in 2001, before producing 24 for six years.
09:46 x Thomas x /movies/television/24 x link x 1 comment
00:00 x Thomas x /politics/activism x link x 0 comments
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the worst comment protection system ever, Nadia the hamster:
I'm just kind of curious whether spammers really have text recognition for nonsense words in faux-bold, real bold, italic Book Antigua. I guess we'll find out.
11:29 x Thomas x /meta/blosxom x link x 1 comment
The First 11 Black Videogame Stars
Although readers at Wired and Joystiq have gotten sidetracked by the inclusion of Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, this list of Black protagonists in videogames is interesting. As I wrote in Guns, Gangs, and Greed, one striking feature of these lists to me is always that so few Black protagonists (from an already limited set) are either A) original intellectual property, meaning that they were created for the game instead of being licensed characters or based on real celebrities, or B) female. The industry's got a long way to go.
10:47 x Thomas x /gaming/society/class_and_race x link x 1 comment
What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?
I was going to do a review at some point of Michael Berube's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? But then I left it in the floor of my car, and the dog threw up all over it. So I'm not really keen on flipping through it to marshal my thoughts right now.
But it's good. Incredibly well-written, subtle, and evocative of my best college classes. It's not even really a partisan book--almost more of a primer on anti-foundationalist literary theory, which serves as an introduction to the "liberal arts criticism" perspective. That sounds horrifying, I know, but while Berube may claim that he's only an average professor, he handles this material with a deftness that's really something to see. I think it's probably one of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time, and I recommend it highly.
Apparently I don't think it's good enough to brave dog vomit for a decent review. But to be fair, there are very few things for which I would confront the contents of Wallace's stomach. There's no shame in that.
00:00 x Thomas x /politics/issues/education x link x 0 comments
The organizers of the talent show at work finally got pictures out to us. I understand the video of my parts of the show is basically unusable, because we didn't sufficiently mike the instruments. But these aren't bad:
Eyes closed, lip curled--yep, I'm looking mighty emo. Feel my
middle-class pain!
I love how small my amp looks here. It's not a monster by any stretch,
but the perspective makes it look like I'm playing through a boombox.
Bass solo! Quick, grab your earplugs!
10:54 x Thomas x /bank/events/staff x link x 1 comment
Does anyone know the mechanics of how blog spammers find places to spam? Mine are weirdly selective. They show up on my review of M. John Harrison's Light, the post about text forums, and my quote from Jim Webb. Of the currently open posts where they can add spam, those are the only ones they ever touch.
I would really rather not add a captcha to the comment system, especially since it's rudimentary at best and I'd probably have to spend all afternoon hunting down bugs. Also, I basically hate Perl, which surrounds fantastically powerful scripting capabilities in the most incomprehensible mess of punctuation since Lisp.
It's not hard for me to delete the spam, since I run the whole blog from an SSH session, and they show up with all the other comments when I "find . -mtime -1" for them. Then I just copy their path and append it to an "rm" command. But I'm always worried that I'll delete a real comment, and I hate the idea of anything slipping by and cluttering the archives.
Since I'm lazy, my version of a captcha would probably just be a static picture of Wallace with a speech balloon anyway. The dynamic versions seem like they're overkill for me. I don't think my spammers are that smart.
10:19 x Thomas x /meta/blosxom x link x 1 comment
Ultimately a disturbing film, Cronicas wavers between unsettling ambiguity combined with blatant and unsubtle plot points. It's a story about tabloid journalism set in Latin America, although that shouldn't limit its impact only to Telemundo. John Leguizamo plays a TV reporter, accompanied by a producer and a cameraman, tracking a serial killer and pedophile in the village of Babahoyo. The reporter zeroes in on an imprisoned man that he suspects may be the killer, but a confession is slow to come. Meanwhile, the team sends footage back to their program that triumphs the suspect as wrongfully imprisoned for hitting a child with his truck--footage that obviously conflicts with the other narrative that they're simultaneously developing.
Cronicas eventually lets us know which story is the truth, and a great amount of its suspense comes from figuring out which will actually air. The director, Sebastian Cordero, wants us to understand that these two factors, truthfulness and exposure, are not inextricably linked in the minds of these journalists, although they may posture to the contrary. I'm not saying that this isn't a good point, or that Cordero doesn't leave the audience uncomfortable. I think the confusion comes from the suspected killer, played with a damp madness by Damien Alcazar, whose performance is genuinely creepy but who doesn't leave the audience with much doubt as to his innocence or guilt. This may be a weakness in the writing, which sets up this question as the primary dilemma of the film, and as a result the crisis of journalistic ethics basically sneaks up on viewers. For some reviewers, this has been interpreted as the movie falling apart, but for me it's really the moment where it congealed from a Latin Primal Fear into something more interesting.
As a side note, it's surprising (to me at least) to see Leguizamo carry off a leading role. Previously, I'd mainly thought of him as a character actor or comic relief (his unfortunate turn in Spawn, for example). It's not accurate to say that here he boasts "star power," but he's certainly believable as a reporter who's chasing the spotlight as much as the truth. It's an understated performance, which is not something I thought I'd ever say about this actor.
12:53 x Thomas x /movies/reviews/foreign x link x 1 comment
Once upon a time, I looked at eBay as a way to break even on purchases that I didn't need any more. I would look at my items carefully, check the market, and price them accordingly. Then I would hover over them, nervously wondering how high they would go.
But like my habit of buying obselete tech when I was having a rough semester in college (Apple Newton? Don't mind if I do!), that is now a thing of the past and I am much happier for it. Instead, for the last few auctions I've looked at eBay not as a commercial transaction, but basically as a form of trash disposal. People are paying me to take items off my hands instead of throwing them away. I am lucky in that I can afford to buy myself the occasional luxury. Why not pay that on to someone else?
This philosophy means that my last few auctions have been listed a bit differently. I want the whole interaction to be as quick and painless as possible, and that means encouraging Buy It Now sales. So I've been setting that price as a good selling price for similar items, minus ~15%. Then I set the starting price at the lowest I would be willing to sell--basically the reserve--and let it run from there. For video games, that means that the starting price is what EBGames offered as a trade value. For the Tascam, I went pretty bargain-basement with it at $50, because that's probably more than Guitar Center or a pawn shop would give me.
And as a result, my eBay experience has been a lot more pleasant, and the buyers are getting a great deal. I like to think that they feel warmly to me, as the guy who's basically unloading well-loved-but-unused toys. It's like a big circle of karma, concluding with the warm fuzzy feeling of "WOULD BUY AGAIN GREAT SELLER ++++++++++=+++PLUS+++++" Thus proving once again that there is no act of charity that the Internet can't find a way to misspell or mangle.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 0 comments
Sound is one of the late senses. Only smell is slower, but its reactions often have a primal immediacy that belies its leisurely spread. Touch and taste are obviously close at hand (or tongue), and vision arrives with the speed of light. But sound takes its sweet time sauntering along, maybe stopping to radiate and reflect before it finally shows up, unashamed, and monopolizes the bean dip.
I remember that the first time I'd really seen with my own eyes how slowly sound travels (relatively speaking, of course) was during a summer camp in Indiana, watching kids in the batting cages from a half-mile off. It was close enough to see a batter hit the ball, but the crack of the bat wouldn't arrive for another half-second. Most of the time, we don't really pay attention to the lag involved in travelling sound waves, because the distances for our interactions are so short. But sometimes--say at that park, or when the drone of an airplane lags behind it in the sky--we can't help but notice.
Of course, no matter how tardy everyday sound can be, it only gets worse when you run it through a computer. The lag between input and output on a computer audio interface is called latency, and it's measured in milliseconds. Digital audio enthusiasts trade latency numbers the way car enthusiasts swap gear ratios. The lower latency, the more responsive the interface can be, and the less it will throw off a musician's timing. The closest analogy I can think of, for non-musicians, is actually playing a video game online, where the inputs are delayed slightly (I think they compensate for this on the client-side now, but I remember it from Quake). With small amounts of lag, the player might not even notice. As the lag increases, the game starts to feel a little "floaty" and players have to mentally compensate. When the lag becomes too high, keypresses become disconnected from the action onscreen, and it's impossible to play effectively. The amount of latency that can be tolerated in a game or a DAW varies from person to person, and musically it also depends on the instrument: some instruments have almost no natural latency (drums), while others involve physical mechanisms or note "bloom" (piano, bass guitar) and their players tend toward greater tolerance.
My Tascam US-122, one of the first USB audio interfaces, has pretty terrible latency. That's not why I'm selling it, but it's been noticeable and much more than newer interfaces. I get just under 30ms, compared to reports of less than 8ms with the Line 6 Toneports. 30ms is still not very much--.03 seconds---and it's enough to throw me off when I'm singing, although I don't notice it at all when playing bass. Like all modern computer soundcards, you can route the signal directly through to the outputs for almost-zero latency, but then you don't get the effects processing, and that's one of the main reasons I work with computer audio in the first place.
With all that said, I want to address a misconception that I hear from a lot of musicians with regard to computer-based effects. Many people say that even the slightest latencies throw them off. I've heard people say that even a 6ms delay is enough to disrupt the groove's timing. And frankly, it's all in their head. It's a form of snobbery to be able to say that you can hear such a short delay, one aimed at people like me who can comfortably play at much higher latencies (must be something wrong with us!). Here's why:
Remember the batting cages? As that example shows, sound moves through the air relatively slowly compared to the speed of light. In fact, when you work out the math, it travels about a foot for each millisecond. This is the physical latency of sound--for each foot from your amplifier or sound source, add a millisecond of latency. In other words, someone who complains about six milliseconds of latency is basically claiming that if they moved six feet further away from their amplifier, they'd be unable to play. Given the number of wireless systems and long cables typically used by rock musicians, I doubt that they could actually tell the difference in a blind test. It just sounds cool to say that your rhythm is so tight that even a .006 second difference throws it off.
Latency--physical or digital--is simply a natural part of musical performance. In an orchestra, performers need the conductor because they might be 40ms of distance apart. From the audience's perspective, they are all in time, but adjustments must be made from instrument to instrument in order to preserve that perspective. But musicians are nothing if not distrustful of technology, a perspective that Autotune and Pro Tools have done nothing to change. Digital latency is just an easy boogeyman. The next time someone makes a claim about their delicate timing, you might ask them to literally take a step back from that opinion.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital x link x 0 comments
A defining feature of reviews for Hotel Dusk on the DS has been that it requires the player to read a lot. "...it's very wordy, forcing you to read long passages between short bursts of walking around," says Gamespy. You'll have to excuse me if I seem a little annoyed. It's just... well, have you seen Final Fantasy games lately? The ones that are trumpeted by most gamers as one of the consistent high points of the medium?
I hadn't played a Final Fantasy in years, and a few months ago I felt like maybe I'd been missing something. So I started a new save on Belle's copy of FFX. It took ten minutes before I could press a button--I think it was to go right a few feet--at which point the game took control again for another movie sequence.
Now, I like movie sequences as much as the next person, maybe more. But five hours into the game, it had pretty much maintained the same dynamic:
So now Hotel Dusk does much the same thing, with stronger characterization and a fun little noir storyline, but it's text-based so reviewers are having trouble. My only problem with it is that the text moves a bit slowly for my tastes, but there are worse crimes: I can only play Sonic Rush in Japanese, a language I don't understand, the dialog is so very, very bad.
This is why gaming needs new reviewers: not because they're on the take or obsessed with sex and violence, but because so many of them are frightened by the written word.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/impressions/ds x link x 0 comments
The View from B-SPAN, Episode Two
I can't see a preview image on this, and Google Video's been shaky all morning. I hope it doesn't look too stupid.
Featured links for this post:
16:13 x Thomas x /bank/events/bspan x link x 1 comment
Book Review: Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, by Mark Katz
I've made no secret of my obsession with digital audio and its effect on listening habits. When David Byrne mentioned that someone had written a scholarly book exactly about that topic, I went looking for a copy as soon as I could, although I expected to be disappointed by it. But surprisingly, Capturing Sound is an interesting and accessible--if lightweight--look at the history of interaction between recording technology and music.
Those expecting an immediate leap into the intricacies of MP3 and DRM will have to be patient: Katz basically proceeds in chronological order, beginning with the first phonographs and how they were meant to make America "more musical." Subsequent chapters explore the ways in which jazz musicians altered their style and timing for recordings, how recordings began to emphasize violin vibrato, "grammophonmusik," and DJ turntable battles. In each of these, Katz's goal is not too show that technology irrevocably led to a specific cultural output (determinism), but to show that the musicians and the machines interacted.
There's a lot of emphasis on phonographs and old recording styles in the book, material with the potential to be boring or overly nostalgiac. But Katz has a deft hand for anecdotes and revealing stories that liven up his subjects. For example, when discussing the spread of the home phonograph, he talks about the Graduola--basically a volume control switch attached to the playback mechanism. Although it sounds silly to modern sensibilities, the Graduola apparently gave phonograph owners the feeling that by controlling the volume, they were "conducting" the record, and by extension lent a feeling of "musicianship." Then again, anyone who has watched an exuberant game of Guitar Hero may not think it's so silly after all. Are music games the new Graduola?
Katz's chapter on DJ battles was, for me, one of the most fascinating in the book. He explores the background and social culture of turntablism, then spends several pages on a step-by-step description of a winning turntable battle track. It's an impressive glimpse into a maligned musical genre, although he warns that the track itself (included on the CD in the back of the book) will not sound as interesting to untrained ears, and indeed it's barely comprehensible. Capturing Sound also gets off to a strong start in the final chapter, on digital sampling and audio, where he examines Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" at the same critical level of detail. It falls slightly short when he begins discussing MP3 audio, but peprhaps this has more to do with the preponderance of discussion around MP3 lately (there's little new anyone could say about it at this point), and less to do with Katz's focus.
Capturing Sound is carefully nonpartisan when it comes to its subject matter. Katz is no technology apologist, and although he may be an enthusiast he seems to be a cautious one. It's thought-provoking and, at 190 pages for the main text, a short read. After putting the book down, I felt like I had new tools to compare and understand the differences between live and recorded music, and obviously I think that's a good debate to be having.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording x link x 0 comments
Today and tomorrow I'll be in an all-day workshop on learning design with the rest of the Multimedia Center.
Talk amongst yourselves.
16:29 x Thomas x /meta/announce/delays x link x 1 comment
"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.
"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"
"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.
From the Post today.
06:27 x Thomas x /politics/national/congress x link x 1 comment
Warren Ellis tells Newsarama why his novel is set in America (emphasis mine):
13:01 x Thomas x /culture/america/usa x link x 1 comment
In general, I think I've been more than fair to Digidesign, the people behind Pro Tools. I like their software, and I put up with its little oddities. But the upgrade process--that's got to improve, guys.
We ordered an upgrade to Pro Tools 7.3 a while back, since the Bank's 002 Factory rig came in just slightly before the upgrade grace period. After it managed to make its way from the distributor, through the security screening, and up to our office, I went to install it on the rig but found that they had sent us disks for 7.1.1 instead. A little piqued, I called them up to figure out the problem.
There are no disks for 7.3, said the distributor. You have to register the old upgrade, and then they'll send you an e-mail qualifying you for the new version, including the download link and registration key. They can't even send us a physical copy for our backups--I had to burn it from the web installer onto a CD-R myself. Classy.
I don't know who is more annoying here: Digi for putting a major distributor in this situation, or the distributor for failing to let us know about any of this when we placed the order.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital x link x 0 comments
