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And I have left LiveJournal, and fled to WordPress. So here I am. |
| » Second Impression |
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On a first full-listen to "A Long, Long Walk" I think that it is recorded really well, at least from the standpoint of the band and the other instrumentalists playing on it. All of those sounds are great. And all of those parts were recorded independently, which is much easier to mix. The horns, which we recorded as a group, didn't have that flexibility. So if you're mixing them in, and you want to hear them, you mix to the level of the instrument (trumpet or clarinet) that stands out the most, and then all of the inner stuff gets lost. So it goes. Let's hope the record sells well, so there's a next time!
Speaking of which, CD release party details:
Turf Club
Friday, April 28th
Probably starting around 8pm, with TitV on around 11ish.
Apr. 19th, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
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| » Hot off the presses! |
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I've got the new Thunder in the Valley CD, "A Long, Long Walk" in my hands now, and running it through on the first listen. The band sounds great. I reserve judgement on the horns for anyone who wants to get me drunk enough to forget the work we (I mean, Buckwalter) put into it.
Apr. 17th, 2006 @ 09:52 pm
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| » "It's like free-basing sugar!" |
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That was how the Fox News Channel reporter described "Peeps" this morning on the news. I agree. The only thing I like about Peeps is that you can make them explode in the microwave. Preferably someone else's microwave, but work with what you have, people. For other "Peeps"-related links, see the local Democrat.
Never, ever, cut serano peppers and then try to take out your contacts. Your eyes will burn out of your head. Trust me. I know things like this. And if you talk to Slummy, you should also know really spend some time scrubbing your hands before you go take a whiz, 'cause its not only your eyes that will burn.
Last week, was mistaken for a police officer. You know, because I'm so official and stuff. Some old lady who had been in a traffic altercation near a friend's SBUX, really thought that I was the cop that she had called. I had to explain that I really wasn't involved with the law in that fashion. She was confused. So was I. Maybe I need to rent a uniform and pull girls over on the freeway to ask them out. It's been done before. Then again, not everyone would appreciate it if I did that. Ah well.
Yes, and I know I've been absent lately. Don't remind me. I'm working on a lot of stuff, new shit has come to light, etc. etc. Deal with it.
Apr. 17th, 2006 @ 02:09 pm
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| » Get Disturbed |
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I've just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which is an interesting discussing of the effects that our unconscious thinking has on our behavior. We process a lot more information than we think we do, and we do it in split-seconds, what Gladwell calls "thin-slicing." We're interpreting all of the available information, of which there is a lot, and then we're making decisions, sometimes when we don't know when we are making a decision.
The whole point is that we gather a huge amount of data from the environment around us, and this affects our perceptions of that environment. One of the more disturbing things that Gladwell highlights is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The test is based on the notion that we make connection much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to us. What the IAT can do is measure the response time between categories and your ability to sort items into those categories. What happens is that there is a cognitive slowing when you are presented with ideas grouped together that are unfamiliar to you, and this measures your unconscious association between the categories.
Take a test on-line. I recommend that you take the Race IAT, which is the most famous of these tests, and will probably leave you feeling a bit disturbed. You probably consider yourself, as I do, to be an open-minded individual with respect to equality between blacks and whites. This test will almost certainly reveal that you have an automatic preference for whites, as does some 80% of the population.
This doesn't mean that you're a racist, but it does indicate that your attitude towards race, or some other category like gender, operates on multiple levels. You have a conscious attitude, in which you choose to believe in equality, and then you have an unconscious attitude which is your immediate unconscious reaction to something. This unconscious attitude is formed by all of the data from our environment that we've put into our heads without thinking about it; the things we see, read, hear, feel, and touch.
Often these unconscious attitudes are in conflict with our conscious beliefs. Some 50,000 African Americans have taken this test and about half of them show a strong preference for whites. What does this say about our culture? Well, we are continually reinforcing the unconscious perception that white = good and black = evil. And this test underscores that.
These unconscious perceptions show up in other ways, of course. If you're in the corporate world, you'll have noticed that CEOs tend to be tall men. It appears that among Fortune 500 companies, CEOs average just over 6 feet in height. The average American male is about 5 foot 9 inches. In the American population, about 14.5% of men are 6 feet or taller, but among CEOs, about 58% are 6 feet or taller. And in the general population, 3.9% are 6 feet 2 inches or taller, and among CEOs, it is about 30%.
Statistics being statistics, we'd have to do more analysis to determine if this was a significant result. However, it appears to show that tall men have a better than average chance to get into a top position, simply because of an automatic preference that tells us that tall = leader.
At any rate, it is interesting for me to look through this lens, and think about the reasons people make choices, and why we might do something even if we don't know that we're doing it. Walking through the MOA yesterday was an experience. I haven't quite categorized the things that I've seen, but just looking at the different store-fronts and the clientele that was drawn into them was educational.
As a side note, I didn't see any shoes that I liked at any of the shoe stores, so I designed and built my own from Nike iD and Vans. I know I've mentioned these sites before, but I still think it's really cool that we are getting to the point of mass customization where we can design our own sneakers and have them sent to us in weeks.
Apr. 9th, 2006 @ 10:52 am
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