Month: April 2007

Death of the Music Store

Spinning Into Oblivion – New York Times
Our intention was to offer a haven for all kinds of music lovers and obsessives, a shop that catered not only to the casual record buyer (“Do you have the new Sarah McLachlan and … uh … is there a Beatles greatest hits CD?”) but to the fan and oft-maligned serious collector (“Can you get the Japanese pressing of ‘Kinda Kinks’? I believe they used the rare mono mixes”). Fourteen years later, it’s clear just how wrong our assumptions were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices. Continue reading “Death of the Music Store”

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Edge: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE By Steven Pinker
This doctrine, “the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset (“War is not an instinct but an invention”), Stephen Jay Gould (“Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species”), and Ashley Montagu (“Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood”),” he writes. “But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.” As an example:

From Wikipedia

Cat burning was a form of zoosadistic entertainment in 16th century Paris, France. In this form of entertainment, people would gather dozens of cats in a net, hoist them high into the air from a special bundle onto a bonfire. According to Norman Davies[1], the assembled spectators “shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.”[1]

“[I]t was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648 Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris. At Metz midsummer fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats, enclosed in wicker cages, were burned alive in them, to the amusement of the people. Similarly at Gap, in the department of the Hautes-Alpes, cats used to be roasted over the midsummer bonfire.”[2]

When a 6′ Tiger Shark Bites Both Feet

Tiger Shark teeth are more like needles, than the typical “V’-shaped Great White’s teeth. That is why you don’t see the usual tearing of most shark attacks in these photos, even though the surfer was yanked off of his board, as he was paddling out. (Click on them to enlarge) From the bite pattern. experts estimated that this was a 6 footer. Here is his story:

sharked-foot3.jpg sharked-foot.jpg sharked-foot2.jpgMy girlfriend and eventual wife, Nat and I were in Florida visiting her family. During our stay the surf had been either flat or small, but on this day the surf had come up to overhead or better. We decided to watch the swell for awhile and wait for the tide to drop so the reef break in front of her house would build a little juice.

At about 10:00 am we put on our suits, waxed up the 6’2’s and walked the 2 blocks back up to the beach. Upon arriving, I slapped on my leash, ran down the beach to the water, and quickly began paddling through the soup as we had to go through about five rows of waves to get to the main peak. After three duck dives, I was about 30 meters off shore and still in white water, when I was grabbed from behind by my feet and pulled off my board, directly backwards. I was not shaken but was held for what seemed like forever, in fact, it was most likely two seconds or so. It was a shark…. Continue reading “When a 6′ Tiger Shark Bites Both Feet”

Balconies banned in Turkey

RichardMiniter.com: No Balconies
Turkey’s current AKP prime minister, from the ruling Muslim Party, routes almost all of the government construction contracts to firms where he holds a financial stake. Typical developing world behavior, I think. Then comes the surprise. She says that if you look at all of the buildings built by the state since the AKP came to power, you will see it.

See what?

“There are no balconies,” she says. Nearly every building built before the AKP boasts expansive balconies, which function as second living rooms for many Turkish families.

“Only windows. So the traditional women kept inside cannot be seen by the world.”

Or enjoy a moment in the sun, seven stories up. It is by such petty cruelties that the face of radical Islam makes itself seen.

The Psychology of Abu Grahib

Philip G. Zimbardo – Finding Hope in Knowing the Universal Capacity for Evil – New York Times
 You had the C.I.A., civilian interrogators, military intelligence saying to the Army reservists, “Soften these detainees up for interrogation.”

Those kinds of vague orders were the equivalent of my saying to the S.P.E. guards, “It’s your prison.” At Abu Ghraib, you didn’t have higher-ups saying, “You must do these terrible things.” The authorities, I believe, created an environment that gave guards permission to become abusive — plus one that gave them plausible deniability.

Chip worked 40 days without a single break, 12-hour shifts. The place was overcrowded, filthy, dangerous, under constant bombardment. All of that will distort judgment, moral reasoning. The bottom line: If you’re going to have a secret interrogation center in the middle of a war zone, this is going to happen. Continue reading “The Psychology of Abu Grahib”

Can Animals Understand Time?

Time in the Animal Mind – New York Times
Humans are born time travelers. We may not be able to send our bodies into the past or the future, at least not yet, but we can send our minds. We can relive events that happened long ago or envision ourselves in the future.

New studies suggest that the two directions of temporal travel are intimately entwined in the human brain. A number of psychologists argue that re-experiencing the past evolved in our ancestors as a way to plan for the future and that the rise of mental time travel was crucial to our species’ success. But some experts on animal behavior do not think we are unique in this respect. They point to several recent experiments suggesting that animals can visit the past and future as well. Continue reading “Can Animals Understand Time?”

If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | George Monbiot: If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels
Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People – and the environment – will lose.

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn’t happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild.

But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel.

There are similar impacts all over the world. Sugarcane producers are moving into rare scrubland habitats (the cerrado) in Brazil, and soya farmers are ripping up the Amazon rainforests.