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NPR: Yiddish Radio Project

Oh YEAH!

Yiddish Radio Project

March 26: real audio stream of the episode.

When I was a kid, my family used to listen to public radio rebroadcasts of Golden Age classics: Fibber McGee, the Shadow, The Lone Ranger…

Well, long story short (hard for me, you know), my tastes were formed to include a deep, slavering love of old-time radio. Hearing this kookiness is killer.

I’m struck by the structural similarity of the practice at the heart of this episode (adapting Klezmer tunes to 40’s big band arrangements and rhythms) to what we were doing in the Bare Knuckle Boxers, overhauling traditional irish tunes, stripping them to the chassis, and rebuilding ’em as hot rod rock tunes.

Greg brought in a couple klezmer tunes but we never finished ’em, really. I’m sure he and I will be able to pursue this again soon!

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He's ALIVE!!

Hey look! Look, everybody, you teeming ones and twos (hm, this is like being on the air, er, wire at WQAX): Eric Sinclair‘s back on the air!

Eric is my very oldest friend, an acquaintance sparked by, you guessed it, a Star Trek book being read covertly in Mr. Noel’s 6th grade Health class. By me, If I recall.

(current Trek reference count in this blog: on a logarithmic scale, it’s a lot. Did I tell you I’ve written three – or is it four – pieces on ENTERPRISE for Cinescape? I think they’re all premium content or in the mag only, though, so, tough luck, kids. You’ll have to do with the ever escalating number of Trek-related asides hereabouts. IDIC, like, dig?)

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ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL

In a wonderful serendipity, since I just got off the phone with Classmates.com, I caught the last half-hour to forty-five minutes of the classic teen rocker flick, “Rock and Roll High School”, which features the Ramones, Warhol scenester Mary Woronov, and the inevitable Clint “Balok” Howard (hmm… The Howard family and Star Trek… haven’t I been here before?), Ron Howard’s I-think younger bro.

Ah, I love this movie. What luck! Shot at the height of the Ramones’ superpowers, the filmmakers made the nearly incredible decision to include nearly an entire albums’ worth of Ramones tunes in their entirety. The centerpiece of the film is a five-or-six song concert in which the songs are presented pretty much as is, live on stage.

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Classmates.com

I had a phone interview this morning with a very professional recruiter for Classmates.com. I fear I started things off badly by asserting that they were IIS-based and located in Kirkland, which is incorrect in both cases.

I can’t say it was the most successful phone interview I’ve ever had. Still, I certainly hope to hear from them again. I think the Classmates.com idea – a site that permits and encourages people to locate others that they had contact with at specific times in their lives, such as high school – is one of the most natural uses of the internet, and has the potential to be as successful and central to internet users’ lives as eBay has become.

In fact, Classmates >could< become the central clearinghouse for internet contact information, if done right. Boy it'd be tough; but that would be a damn fun job. I have a bazillion great ideas how to get there; let's hope I hear back from them so I can share.

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IS IT HOT IN HERE, OR IS IT ME?

I assumed the whole world was losing sleep over this, but when I mentioned it at a recent gathering, not ONE person had even heard of it. So here goes:

In early March of 2002, an Antarctic ice shelf the size of RHODE ISLAND collapsed into the sea, an apparent result of, um, melting ice.

Amazing pix:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?group=events/sc/032202iceshelf&i=index&e=1&tmpl=sl

So, uh, how much is mountain real estate going for in coastal regions? How high’s the water, momma?

Oh, and by the way: screw the Kyoto Treaty, this is a fantastic market opportunity! Surfboards for everyone!

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! We’re Number One! We’re Number One (in greenhouse gas emissions, that is)!

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On LONGWINDEDNESS

Geez, I can really go on and on, huh?

OK, I pledge:

a) shorter entries
b) more focused entries
c) multipart entries when I get my steam up
d) shorter sentences
e) fewer nested clauses

I don’t know why it comes out that way. It is how I actually think, in my head. Long, complex, gramatically correct sentences.

I think my linguistic facility is responsible for both my strengths and weaknesses in coding. I don’t think in arrays; I think in trees.

Posted on by mwhybark

the New Yorker, March 25, 2002

I really enjoyed the illustration for Malcolm Gladwell’s review of “The Myth of the Paperless Office” on page 92. I enjoyed the article itself, of course, which is a reflection on messiness in the workspace as an organizing principle. Both the review and the illustration appear to reflect the ideas of David Gelernter, CS guy at Yale, victim of the Unabomber and the author of the pretty great “1939: The Lost World of the Fair”.

Piles, it seems, are actually a really efficient way of organizing information.

Although a piler, I’m not so sure I agree. But then, as with much of Gelernter’s work, I see lots of things I agree with but don’t necessarily reach the same conclusion.

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