This was the first album I ever purchase on CD. I remember it like yesterday.. falling for it. Still holds up pretty well... Except the songs I liked on the album are not the ones I go back to now. Stipe turned into a bit of a douche, and that whole thing with Courtney Love ended my relationship with REM. Anyway, time to move on!.. Here's Get Up live:
Bill Berry on the drums, and Mike Mills sounds awesome. He actually recorded a few tracks on the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream (piano on Soma comes to mind). The studio version is better than this acoustic track, but I can't find it free and streaming anywhere... Anyway, I really liked REM through "Automatic for the People" and "Monster"; two great and under-rated albums... after that REM started to blow, in my opinion.
Here's another from the album: You Are The Everything
I discussed this briefly with one or two people, and I don't think it came out quite right.. here's the explanation on the odds and statistics of marrying the right (or wrong) person (from a great article in the New Scientist)
--
If you have trouble knowing when to quit, try getting your head around "diminishing returns" - the optimal stopping tool. The best way to demonstrate diminishing returns is the so-called marriage problem. Suppose you are told you must marry, and that you must choose your spouse out of 100 applicants. You may interview each applicant once. After each interview you must decide whether to marry that person. If you decline, you lose the opportunity forever. If you work your way through 99 applicants without choosing one, you must marry the 100th. You may think you have 1 in 100 chance of marrying your ideal partner, but the truth is that you can do a lot better than that.
If you interview half the potential partners then stop at the next best one - that is, the first one better than the best person you've already interviewed - you will marry the very best candidate about 25 per cent of the time. Once again, probability explains why. A quarter of the time, the second best partner will be in the first 50 people and the very best in the second. So 25 per cent of the time, the rule "stop at the next best one" will see you marrying the best candidate. Much of the rest of the time, you will end up marrying the 100th person, who has a 1 in 100 chance of being the worst, but hey, this is probability, not certainty.
You can do even better than 25 per cent, however. John Gilbert and Frederick Mosteller of Harvard University proved that you could raise your odds to 37 per cent by interviewing 37 people then stopping at the next best. The number 37 comes from dividing 100 by e, the base of the natural logarithms, which is roughly equal to 2.72. Gilbert and Mosteller's law works no matter how many candidates there are - you simply divide the number of options by e.
There were also a ton of videos taken, but I'm saving most of them for a travel dvd. Here are two though... the first one from Skógafoss (trying to get behind the falls) and one from the Blue Lagoon.
This trip was taken about a month and a half ago, and I feel like I've been talking about it too much already... It was absolutely fantastic though, and I got that itch to travel more because of it.
I am going to try this again; this time with another sustained effort. I remember feeling really great about this blog in it's heyday (yes, three months ago). It gave me an outlet to share general ideas and get thoughts out to discuss and learn with people... So I went back and took a look at the opening post and why this all started, and after a rollercoaster few months, I'm back to starting (not stopping), feelin' good and sharing ideas and current thoughts and not just emailing (some of) you weird randomness.
Alex Edkins recommended this to me (of Metz), so I thought it might be good. I didn't realize it would change / blow my mind.
The Flying Burrito Brothers was an early country rock band, best known for its influential debut album, 1969's The Gilded Palace of Sin. Although the group is most often mentioned in connection with country rock legends Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, the group underwent many personnel changes.
Here they are again (embedding disabled) with Emmylou Harris (apparently the first concert ever recorded ;)
"Before leaving at about 4 a.m., the police took away memory cards and computer software material, Akbar said, adding that dozens of students were arrested.
One of Mousavi's websites said a student protester was killed early Monday during clashes with plainclothes hardliners in Shiraz, southern Iran. But there was no independent confirmation of the report. There also have been unconfirmed reports of unrest breaking out in other cities across Iran."
A very detailed look at the previous Iranian presidential election by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com, who is not at all convinced by the rural/urban divide story we’ve heard in recent days to explain Mr. Ahmadinejad’s reported election victory. Here’s how he starts ripping that notion apart:
You have probably heard it asserted that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad principal strength is in rural areas, whereas Mir-Hossein Mousavi did relatively better in Iran’s cities. However, it is not clear that this is true. Moreover, in 2005, it is demonstrably false. On the contrary, Ahmadinejad did much better in urban areas in that election.
Mr. Silver also adds that if Mr. Moussavi “only” had strong support in the country’s urban areas, he would have been in good shape: “Although Iran is a fairly large country, most of its population — about 68 percent — lives in cities.”
One final good article; off to some sort of sleep: If he did it.
Ahmadinejad appeared to pick up most of the vote from Mehdi Karroubi, who is routinely described as the most liberal of the candidates. This is in spite of the fact that Karroubi himself was on the ballot this year; he appeared to retain only about 5 percent of his own vote.
Renard already detected this pattern, so I am not really telling you anything new. But it seems to me to be the key to explaining the Iranian election -- whether it was legitimate or whether it was rigged.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well as any info I've missed.
This is terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity, and maybe it's the fact that there's only two dudes in this band that makes you feel like joining in to bash along.
Sounds like the heavier Starkicker we've all been waiting for.
They play in Toronto on the 16th of July at the El Mocambo, sold out. The concert will be insane.
Tickets go on sale September 1st. They're celebrating 10 years since the idea of the institute.
Events will take place from October 15 to 25, 2009, commemorating the 10th anniversary of Perimeter Institute’s creation, contributing to Canada's National Science and Technology Week activities, and providing one of the world’s most interesting on-site and online destinations during this International Year of Astronomy.
Just received this book as a (fantastic) gift. A first hand account of the creation of the Perimeter Institute from the founding executive director(!), who has subsequently left (in 2007). Experience all the "turf wars and ego clashes"! Science book? I don't think so (haven't read it yet.. ), but there's an index in the back!
Ok, everyone's chiming in on him, and I'd leave it alone, but this is just too much:
NEW YORK -- Jose Canseco plans to file a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and the players' association, saying he's been ostracized for going public with tales of steroids use in the sport....
...Canseco said the basis of the suit would be "lost wages -- in some cases, defamation of character."
"Because I used steroids and I came out with a book, I was kicked out of the game, but I have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame," Canseco said in a telephone interview.
"A lot of these players have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame: Mark McGwire and so forth. They're losing salaries, because obviously when you're inducted into the Hall of Fame, you get asked to do certain, you know, appearances and shows and so forth, which incorporates income. So there is a major income loss.
"Not even that, baseball blackballs you from their family, meaning you can't have a future proper reference from them, a job, no managerial jobs, no coaching jobs, nothing. They completely sever you."
Posts
