03-10-2009

World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking delivered a lecture at Bovard Auditorium on Tuesday March 10th entitled, “Out of a Black Hole.” Dr. Hawking questions the vacuousness of black holes, describing how things can get out of a black hole to the outside and possibly on to another universe.

Dr. Hawking is a theoretical physicist & the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He is also author of the best-selling “A Brief History of Time,” (1988), which describes black holes, the big bang & superstring theory.

An accompanying article of the event in USC’s Daily Trojan can be found here

With the changing of seasons comes another dismal opportunity to create a [brand new] playlist, befitting the not so sudden, and ever so slight drop in temperature that generally occurs as we plunge deeper into the year, and consequently deeper into that pile of leaves, which at USC is that mire of papers that has gathered around one’s desk– the intensity of it depending wholly on your personal level of procrastination, a direct measurement of exactly how many days you chose to dance in an inebriated state to M.G.M.T. (to whom no one has a reason to listen to except for the reason above) instead of doing work.

Regardless, Matt Berninger may have been doing likewise in his younger days as he reflects back on the autumn season.

The National- “Mr. November”

 
“I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders”.

With his cavernous deep voice and well carved cheekbones, it is not difficult to see understand why, as this lead singer proves awkward looks to be an unnecessary (although common) component to being frontman of an indie band.

Kudos to those of you already familiar with the band, shaking your head to my cliche choice of song for said playlist, which is not so cliche at all with the exception of the title itself..

Those of you familiar with the band, but unaware of the existence of albums other than Boxer, should have their indie status examined.

Those fully aware and fond of all albums, especially the Virginia EP, should lose their hipster status altogether… (I mean, half of the new EP wasn’t even new).

For those who’ve never heard the band, here’s a chance to have a listen and redeem yourself:

http://www.myspace.com/thenational

Have a listen, but if your immediate reaction is to add them as a friend, then you my friend, are behind the times. Dear reader, what are you doing with an active myspace and without a proper blog account?

I guess that’s what we’re for. So stay tuned and keep reading.

So, I know everyone is really excited to know that there is yet another remix of Lil Wayne’s “A Millie” floating around, to complement the 10-millie-on other ones out there. Well, there is. It’s Obama style, and it’s made by A.P.T. Hopefully Bangladesh won’t be too offended…

Here it is, check it out:

Okay, so I won’t blame you if you didn’t listen to anything past the first 10 seconds, but you’ve gotta admit that was pretty funny.

Now this one here is a little bit older, but it’s actually one you might listen to a lot more times (I have). Vote for whoever you want, but this tune sure is catchy!

Coco Tea - Barack Obama:

To be fair, I did check around to see if there were any McCain songs. If you’re interested, check out Jordan Rich’s “Raisin’ McCain.”

Yea so this electronica artist from Montreal keeps coming out with consistently good tracks on his myspace page. From Kanye remixes to straight-up orginals, CFCF brings a sound that is instantly familiar. Maybe not as technically impressive as Daft Punk, but certainly as original. The sounds this guy makes with his computer are superb. Enough said. Check it out. And if you don’t trust me, trust PITCHFORK WHO HAS NAME-DROPPED HIM MULTIPLE TIMES !!!!!

I recently stumbled upon two really great ways to waste my time- the webcomic site XKCD and the blogspot site Postsecret.

XKCD (Randall Monroe says “It’s not actually an acronym. It’s just a word with no phonetic pronunciation”) is an online comic website started by Randall Monroe compiled from the margins of his old physics and math notebooks. It’s for anyone who has taken an advance math class, gotten their heart broken, or appreciates sarcasm, or has an uncanny fear of velociraptor attacks. There is a comic featuring these stick figures for almost every situation.
Some of the comics are a little above my head, talking about physicists and mathematicians such as Turing and
Others are totally hilarious and capture the little moments of college life perfectly

After going through withdrawal from Katamari Damacy- one of my favorite PS2 games of all time (Katamari Damacy is a game where you roll up objects on Earth that are bigger than you are into balls in order to make stars.), a friend of mine sent me this one:

Do you get it?
This website also has jokes that are made for the science-nerd or math-geek in all of us:

Finally, there are the three or four panel comics that simply and uniquely encapsulate human emotion:

and

I spend way too much time laughing at this website, and I encourage you to do the same.

Postsecret is a community art website run by Frank Warren that receives postcards from all over the world with peoples’ secrets written on them. He posts a new card with a secret on it every Sunday. The cards range from sweet to hilarious to heartbreaking. There are also a few books compiling the postsecrets that they have received.They’ve gained so much popularity (they even have a book tour!) because the postcards are so easy to relate to and they make you want to send in postsecrets of your own.

Here is this past Sunday’s:

A couple fridays ago, I attended the DJ Spooky Visions and Voices event at Ground Zero, primarily for a musical analysis assignment in one of my courses. Unfortunately, the event turned out to be more of a lecture than performance, but it sparked some interesting philosophical questions. DJ Spooky was clearly a very intelligent and educated individual, but I found myself disagreeing with some of his perspectives on art and ownership.Before continuing, I recognize that not everyone can DJ. Finding the right samples to mix together into a compelling track isn’t a simple craft. And it can be impressive to hear two songs that, while seeming completely incompatible with each other in their original form, end up combined in an engaging, sonic latticework that makes you wonder: “How did he think of using those together?” And with an easier access to the world’s music, globalization has opened up even more possibilities for DJs.

That said, being a DJ seems to have artistic limitations in terms of self-reliance, in that most his work is usually, albeit complex, an amalgamation of original creations by other musicians. The DJ, then, to paraphrase DJ spooky, acts like “a filter.” Various works come through him and are uniquely filtered to form a mix. But he also consistently referred to himself as an artist, and I guess where Spooky and I differ is in the degree of innovative artistry involved in being this “filter.” For me, unless a DJ uses mostly his own material, it is a preponderance of external sampling that compromises a DJ’s artistic independency. And this is because I believe art is significantly qualified by it being exclusive to its creator. If Bach had never existed, would another composer have come along and written the Well-Tempered Clavier, note for note? You’d sooner see Jessica Alba act well. One could argue, of course, that with all the variables a DJ works with when sampling and mixing a track together, his final product is his creative brain-child; the artistic lens of his filtering is exclusively his. To an extent, I would agree, but without those other innovations that lens would have nothing, or very little, to work with. Going back to the Bach example, if a DJ has sampled Bach in his works, then deleting Bach’s music from history would critically fracture that DJ’s music as well. Yes, in general, musicians are inspired by other musicians, and are therefore subject to some artistic dependence as well, but this relationship usually serves (if one isn’t a flagrant plagiarist) as a creative motivator, a catalyst. Original recordings may inspire a DJ as well, but it’s also the medium they work with. Rather than carve a new sound sculpture, they segment and combine pre-existing ones, however interesting that may be. I’m not saying that DJ’s are rip-off craftsmen masquerading as artists, but after listening to DJ Spooky I wonder if some DJs may be giving themselves too much credit.

What’s peculiar is that DJ Spooky seemed to uphold a rather socialistic approach to music, in that it’s more “of an exchange between people” than a stable item. In my opinion, this is rather inconsistent with labeling oneself as an artist, especially an independent one. I don’t disagree that there’s dynamism to pre-existing compositions, whether it be in interpretation, transcription, covers, etc. But there are also immutable characteristics that make “Bohemian Rhapsody” what it is: “Bohemian Rhapsody.” And I don’t recall DJ Spooky ever explicitly calling himself any kind of visionary or innovator (in fact, for the most part he was pretty humble), but it seems hypocritical to suggest individualism by planting your stage name on your oeuvre and then suggest collectivism by asking, as he did when referring to copyright law and the transfer of digital memory, “who owns memory?”

If one is to embrace both this perspective of personal “filtering” and no concept of intellectual property, can’t I just edit the tags on my iTunes library to say they’re my own? Unfortunately, this has already happened to some degree with common P2P file sharing programs like Kazaa or Limewire. Tracks are frequently labeled with the wrong information, and become shared so rapidly that the genuine data might be in the minority. Would we really want this to exacerbate to a point of complete musical solipsism? DJ Spooky said in the Q & A that copyright laws “stifle creativity,” which is very understandable if you embrace his philosophy. But, while I don’t at all advocate a totalitarian control of intellectual property, I think copyright laws give musicians some dignity for their creations. I may even go far enough to say that they can be helpful reminders of how special music is.

Achewood is a fantastic webcomic driven by an idiosyncratic cast of talking animals. Achewood’s creator, Chris Onstad, maintains blogs for each of the comic’s main characters, often detailing side stories that have a textual humor as opposed to a visual humor.

For Kraftwerk fans, I humbly submit to you: a Kraftwerk Thänksgiving.