Premature evaluation?

Newspapers aren’t doing as badly as you think, says Slate’s Daniel Gross. His point seems to be that the huge decline of the past year is nothing special — lots of businesses took a bath this last year. And he points to signs of recovery, including a nearly 10 percent profit at the chain that [...]

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He Cares If You Listen

“Who’s afraid of the avant-garde?” explores why people like modern paintings more than modern music, by way of reviewing a book that explores the same question, “Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen.” I think there are a few other reasons modern art works better than modern (i.e. 12-tone) music: 1. [...]

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See Emily Compose

Classical composer “Emily Howell” (no relation to her namesake in the Pink Floyd video “See Emily Play” above) is actually a computer program (“Emily” is taken from “Experiments in Musical Intelligence”)  that can write classical music good enough (or at least classical-sounding enough) to fool some people into thinking it’s “real” music (mp3′s at the [...]

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Style Counsel

Fake AP Stylebook is brilliant. It’s enough to make me reconsider whether this Twitter fad might be worthwhile after all. Maybe it’s not quite as funny if you don’t have familiarity with the real AP Stylebook, but I don’t think you have to be a copy editor to appreciate an entry like, “Always capitalize ‘Bible.’ [...]

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All together now

“Symphony of Science – We Are All Connected,” an auto-tuned mashup of great scientists and popular science guys (and a couple who are maybe both) is nifty, if a bit mystical. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s Neil deGrasse Tyson who steals the show from the likes of Sagan and Feynmann. Mental Floss has the lyrics (and embedded [...]

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Improv Everywhere strikes again

So, Improv Everywhere does it again, with a musical number staged in a Queens supermarket, “Squish Our Fruits Together.” What’s interesting is that the crowd seems a lot more savvy than the onlookers at their earlier Food Court Musical — lots of cell-phone cameras being whipped out. Also interesting is the sponsorship by Trident gum [...]

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Fast cars and testosterone

Driving fast cars increases testosterone level in men, according to a new study. They tested the effect of driving a sports car, and also the effect of being around women, and the combination of effects. The most unintentionally hilarious line: “Interestingly, whether there were ladies present or not, the mens’ testosterone didn’t increase at all [...]

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Web Wisdom

AskPhilosophers.org lets you pose questions to actual philosophers, rather than advice columnists, therapists, talk radio hosts or wannabe bloggers. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice. Today’s question is whether there’s really any point to philosophy at all or whether it’s basically just mental masturbation (I’m paraphrasing), and philosopher Allen Stairs gives [...]

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Overthinking Jay-Z

Jay-Z Is A Genius offers some interesting insights into the rapper’s latest album art, and how it reflects his overall message of authenticity and lack of fakery (the pic appears to be Photoshopped, but it’s actually real paint covering the instruments). The blogger calling himself The Last Psychiatrist manages to touch on the irony of [...]

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Well It’s On and On and On On and On

“Rapper’s Delight” turns 30. Generally considered the first rap song (and the one that introduced “hip hop” as a phrase), the Sugarhill Gang’s breakthrough hit introduced a new era in music, even if it took a few years for “mainstream” (read, “white”) audiences to realize it. I’m not sure when I realized hip-hop was the [...]

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