Accept no substitutes

Month: March 2005 (Page 4 of 5)

Still Wicked; still an eyesore

Lots of press lately on the abandoned Wicked Burrito downtown. Most saying how the new Downtown Development Corporation is trying to take charge of the problem. And now without speaking to the Corporation, Lone Star the owners are already getting to work on the exterior.

I was down there today and saw another change: The awnings have been replaced. They are now bright yellow! At least they’re not ripped and flapping and faded green. The paint is still peeling and ugly.

Another thing that would have improved my lunch would have been wireless access. My lunch partner wanted to show me something on his laptop, but …
The good news is that the Downtown Development folks are working on that too.

Why they call it a “Hook”

BBC reports that scientists at Dartmouth College have discovered how and where music works in the brain–specifically what makes a catchy tune catch, what sets the hook in your mind.

[The research team] played volunteers tunes with snippets cut out.

They scanned for brain activity and found it centred in the auditory cortex – which handles information from ears.

When familiar tunes played, the cortex activity continued during the blanks – and the volunteers indeed said they still mentally “heard” the tunes.

When listeners were exposed to snipped songs that were unfamiliar to them, they “heard” the silences. But when familiar songs, “Pink Panther theme” and “Satisfaction,” were played the brain filled in the silences so that the listeners were unaware of anything missing.

Once exposed to a catchy song, you are hooked in the auditory cortex. But do you then have to pay 99 cents to iTunes?

Fred seeks artists and performers

Fred says:

I’m writing an article about musicians who are embracing alternative copyright (Creative Commons, or anything else) in their work. This is not limited to the licensing of their work. I’m also interested in artists who work with Public Domain/CC licensed materials, or who push the limits of fair use. If you ARE these artists, or know any of them, please get in touch with me, on or off list (fred@metalab.unc.edu). I’m putting this piece to print next Friday, so the sooner I can interview you, the better.

Jessamyn West librarian.net to be here

NOTE TIME CHANGE! NOW at 2:00

Jessamyn's got the answers
Who: librarian.net’s rarin’ librarian Jessamyn West
When: Monday March 21 2:00 (Vernal Equinox)
Where: Freedom Forum Conference Center, 3rd floor, Carroll Hall
What: Postcards from the Other Edge of the Digital Divide. Political Choices and the Information Poor

About the talk: While we read blogs, tag content and swap lifehacks, people in rural areas are still learning to type. Public libraries are making many more technological choices just to provide basic information and Internet resources nowadays, yet the paradigm for learning to work well with technology differs dramatically from learning to work well with books. Jessamyn West will be talking about being a tech-savvy librarian in a profession struggling into the 21st Century.

More about Jessamyn West:
Jessamyn West is wrapping up her job as an outreach librarian at a rural public library in Vermont. She has worked in public, special and college libraries and done stints of on-the-fly reference at Burning Man, the WTO and the Democratic National Convention. She has maintained librarian.net, a weblog for radical librarians and other interested parties, since 1999. She is fascinated by the intersection of technology, the public sphere and politics.

Counting California

Most digital libraries are about digitalized artifacts. Books, images, music, film. Some are about born digital artifacts. Mailing lists, digital documents, annimations, etc.
Monica McCormick notices that the California Digital Library’s Counting California project goes back to what computers used to do — munch and crunch and rearrange numbers. Counting California gives you access to all kinds of databases and spreadsheets that you can download and work with using a variety of applications.

Paris Mean Time retarded by 9 minutes 21 seconds

From several time zones away and from a different season, Andie Miller points us back in time to the year 1999 in which an article was published distantly north from her home in South Africa about the politics of time in the Guardian (UK).
Among the many delights detailed:

[T]hough GMT was declared the universal time measurement in 1884, the French, until 1978, continued in law to call GMT “Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes and twenty one seconds”.

Much there about the colonializing use of time as the fabled 2000 was approaching as the article was being published.

Black Banjos in Boone (April 7 – 10)

Sule Banjo
Dr. Cece Conway has had a fascination with banjos that goes a long ways back. In particular, she has been interested in the travels of the banjo from Africa to America to Europe to America to Appalachia. Amongst other things, Cee Cee produced the Smithsonian Folkways compilation “Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina & Virginia” and the book “African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions”.

Now Cece is putting together a conference and gathering called “Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, April 7th through 10th, 2005. It will feature lectures, jams, workshops, down home frolics, and performances–four days to meet, mix, and mingle.”

8 Wonders of North Carolina (1956)

Found in the North Carolina Miscellany [1962] whilst at the CuppaJoe Coffee Shop.

The Seven [sic] Wonders of North Carolina
[as reported in the Greensboro Daily News 1956]

  1. Cow Palace in Raleigh [Dorton Arena]
  2. Old Fort–Ridgecrest Southern Railway [Andrews Geyser/Loops.]
  3. Blue Ridge Parkway
  4. Any mammoth textile mill especially those such as Cone Mills (thanks for the reference, Ed)
  5. Duke Tower [on Duke Chapel]
  6. [Old] Playmakers Theater at UNC-Chapel Hill
  7. [Old] State Capitol Building
  8. Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hills

What are our newer Wonders? Generic retro-downtowns in Planned Urban Communities? Fake 30s bungalows? MacMansions? Chiller plants? Airport terminals?
Submit your favorites for this half century.

The Pleasure Was Mine

Novelist Tommy Hays writes about important human things like growing up — I mean seizing your adult life instead of avoiding it — in Sam’s Crossing, his first novel. Coming of age, as a ten year old in the South when death, race, and religion intermingle and where being a “Waffle House mystic” is an actual career choice in In the Family Way.
His third novel is just out from Saint Martin’s. The Pleasure Was Mine deals with dealing with Alzheimer’s. This time at the late end of life. Tommy will be in Chapel Hill at McIntyre’s Books on April 16 and in Raleigh at Quail Ridge Books on April 14.

Google meantime to suckage achieved?

I use a Mac and have for years — and, despite of what this blog may seem to reflect, have been pretty busy lately. Even hiding under my rock hasn’t kept me completely unaware of the stink that has arisen over the Google Autolink feature/bug/spyware that comes with Google Tool bar. Most everyone I know and respect has weighted in on one side or the other. Dan Gillmor, Dave Winer, Paul Boutin (in Slate, good article but I donno him), and others dislike AutoLink intensely. Ed Felton isn’t quite sure. Cory Doctorow champions AutoLink.
I use a Mac. I use FireFox. I’ll find out later maybe.

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