Josh McNeill

Author: Josh (Page 16 of 19)

I'm currently a PhD candidate in sociolinguistics at the University of Georgia.

Je suis actuellement candidat de doctorat en sociolinguistique à l'University of Georgia.

Looks like I’m heading toward stupid.

January 7, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Word is that living in cities makes you stupid. Take that city dwellers! Actually it just wears out your brain according to some new studies. On the other hand, living in a city also causes innovative thinking because of the constant stream of unpredictable social interactions. It’s pretty fitting that I came across this article just as I was finally deciding to get out of a small town and head to a big city. Here it is, by the way:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/

Fortunately, there are various ways to counteract the stupefying effects of city life. Essentially, just stare at some trees. That’s right, nature puts your mind back into focus, for real. This whole thing is starting to sound like some sort of hippy propaganda. Maybe it is. You never know when those sneaky little devils are trying to inject the idea of love of nature subliminally into your head. I blame Al Gore. He’s not really a hippy, but.. whatever.

Honestly, I’ll buy this argument. Hell, I’ve already decided to leave at least one of my two blinds open. Previously, they remained closed at all times. I’m paranoid, and hiding things. Not really, I think I just don’t like having to pay attention to whether I need to watch the window or not. But yeah, why not keep a tree in your periphery at all times? It’s not hard to do. Even taking a walk through a natural area once in a while isn’t a big chore, especially when it has real results for your well-being.

The next big thing that no one will hear.

January 3, 2009 / / 0 Comments

One of the most exciting things about music to me is finding out what will come next. There are always people out there claiming that they’re pushing the envelope but, generally, those people are full of it. So, when I do finally come across a sound that truly feels unique and new, it’s always thrilling to me and usually quite surprising. With that, I want to share what I think is coming next.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying the music of Kaija Saariaho quite a bit. She’s a Finnish composer, in her fifties, living in France. Her background is in something called spectral music, which you most likely have never heard of. There was a movement that started in France in the 70s where composers tried to use texture as the driving force behind their music. They didn’t care at all about harmony or melody, they wanted the focal point to be the texture of the music and how it changes. Generally, this led to a lot of extremely weird and, to me, awfully boring music. There were some gems though, like Gerard Grisey’s Partiels, but, for the most part, I think they were building the foundation for later composers to design great cathedrals on.

Saariaho is one of those new architects. She’s the first “spectral” composer that I have ever heard where I don’t say to myself, “If it weren’t for my interest in the theory, this would sound like utter crap.” Her music simply sounds good regardless of the fact that it’s a million miles away from any semblance of what most people would consider “music”. Honestly, most people want their music to be predictable and reassuring hence we’re stuck with pop music that’s still thoroughly embedded in the compositional ideas of the 18th century. Music that’s meant to be art left these ideas, returned to them, put them through a blender, and left them again, long ago. There’s this delay between the time when someone, probably poor and pathetic, creates something miraculous and when the rest of the world realizes that it’s good. By that point, no one even knows where it came from or who started it.

I’m kind of getting off on a tangent here but my is point is that this sound could very well be equivalent to Wagner breaking tonality. Maybe in two hundred years pop music will be all about exploiting the ideas expressed by Saariaho in some dumbed down, overdone drivel. If I could live that long, I would probably complain about how outdated and predictable everything you hear in the future mass media is too. I hope so, because it would be kind of neat to be right about what’s next right now.

If you listened to this and liked it you might want to check out her opera, “L’amour de Loin“, which is available on Netflix and probably other places as well.

Microsoft resurrects Y2K via Zune.

January 1, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday I got in my car to go to work and plugged in my Zune to find it frozen. Not frozen as in cold, even though it could have been but the software was frozen. I chalked this up to the thing possibly being broken and figured I’d take a look at it later when I had more time. I vaguely remember hearing about someone else’s Zune also having problems somewhere in that day. This morning I get up and I check out the videos on the front page of Google and find one that’s referring to all 30GB Zunes, the model I have, crashing. I watch that and then search the news for Zune and sure enough, every 30GB Zune out there has crashed because Microsoft didn’t program the software to be able to handle leap years.

Awesome, eh? I guess the idea was the none of these Zunes, as this is a two year old version, were going to last long enough to make it to a leap year anyway. Apparently, they didn’t foresee bad sales that left retailers with stock of this model even after the next year’s model came out. That’s right, many of us are using a two year old model that was only purchased one year ago. You can see how Microsoft tries to spin this into a good thing:

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30-GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used)

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/music/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700344&cid=iwhome_art_Digit_mostpop

You see that? This is a good thing because it shows how many people are still using a model that they’ve owned for two years! These things hold up great, don’t they?

When it comes down to it, this is simply a matter of incompetence. I was planning on my next MP3 player also being a Zune, maybe one that I could fit my whole library on, but if they could screw up something as simple as this, which comes after having horrible issues with their music management software, I’m not too sure I want to go that route. You want to know what their magically solution was? Let your battery die and wait until after a certain hour on January 1st to plug it back in and all will be well. Gee, that’s swell. Good thing I didn’t want to listen to anything on my player on New Year’s Eve.

Botox? Why not just get a new face?

December 17, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In all seriousness, this story has strong ethical implications.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=1f3c75d5-4ef6-4cb0-9f33-4d3edf16d47e

A woman, who is being kept anonymous, has received a face transplant in Cleveland. This procedure has been done three other times but not in the United States and not to such a great extent (80% of her face is from a cadaver). The operation took twenty two hours and the team of experts that were involved in the procedure sound confident that it was a success. They still have to wait for swelling to go down to really know, but there’s a great deal of optimism about it.

The patient was chosen from a body of candidates who were put through all sorts of tests both psychological and physical. The drugs she has to take, for the rest of her life, will weaken her immune system so that her body doesn’t reject the face but the side effect is losing up to ten years off her life.

Mostly, I’m interested in the psychological and ethical implications of such a procedure. For one, when this person looks into the mirror they’re going to look like a human being that has died. There have been experiments recently where people are taken out of their body, psychologically, using virtual reality devices, and placed into the body of someone else and the impact is drastic. For instance, racists were placed into the body of someone from the race they hated and it was very convincing for those people. For a bit, they actually believe that they are that other person. Think of what this means for this woman when she looks into the mirror and someone else stares back at her.

The ethical questions are also numerous. What about the family of the donor? Their dead relative is practically walking around in a different life and I don’t mean heaven. What if these people met? What happens if people start entering into this procedure just because they want to look different? Is there anything wrong with that? After all, plastic surgery is an accepted reality anymore. This could be a new extension of that idea. Along with genetic engineering, we’re getting closer and closer to being able to literally make ourselves into whatever we want. For my part, I’m going to try and remain optimistic. Maybe looks will be unimportant once everyone is beautiful.

The universe as a pogo stick.

December 14, 2008 / / 0 Comments

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026861.500-did-our-cosmos-exist-before-the-big-bang.html?page=1

It appears, if I understand this article, that the big bang may not be exactly what we thought it was. Some crazy smart theoretical physicists came up with this testable theory called loop quantum cosmology (LQC) which seems to be saying that the universe just explodes and contracts repeatedly. Basically the universe would have no start or end. I’m going to try and explain what this thing looks like from my limited understanding but someone smarter than me should really come along and correct whatever parts I get wrong.

Picture a point that’s the size of a proton. That’s the universe in its contracted state. Once it gets to that point it bursts out like a spring that you can’t hold closed any longer. After expanding for a while it reaches it’s maximum size and starts to pull back with enough force to eventually reach the size of a proton again.

Apparently this is a much different view of the universe from what scientists have thought for a while. Also, this is testable and gives some hard evidence for a lot of other important ideas that have remained educated guesses.

Honestly, most of this is just a million miles over my head. I think I get the gist of it but the fascinating part to me is the fact that we’re still making big breakthroughs in understanding our universe. I get the impression that this is almost equivalent to Einstein’s formulation of general relativity.

The world is unfolding. I think that’s neat.

Transparency is neat.

December 6, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I was going through my e-mail tonight and I came across a message that lead me to this:

http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/seat_at_the_table/

It seems the Obama team is serious about cutting the crap out of how Washington works. Of course, they say they’re going to show you all the documents presented but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will. I feel pretty optimistic about these types of things though. At the very least, things like this give the administration one more hoop that they have to jump through if they want to try and hide what they’re doing.

It’s already different.

November 7, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I was browsing Google News today and came across an article that linked to a new site set up by Obama. The site is Change.gov and appears, to me, like a good first step in having an administration that works differently. The site is dedicated to keeping the public informed. It lists the issues that are of top priority at the moment and tells you how decisions are being made on these issues. You can also submit stories and suggestions on whatever you want through the site. I’ve already made my own suggestions on what I would like the cabinet to look like. I asked that it be made up of more than just Democrats, for those who are curious.

I like this step though and, for those of you who are more proactive about this stuff than most, this might be very useful for you. Check it out:

Change.gov

Obama’s plan.

October 30, 2008 / / 0 Comments

The election is five days away and, while I would hope that everyone who’s voting has figured out where the candidates stand on the issues, I’m going to post this video to make it perfectly clear, to those who are interested, where Obama stands. This was broadcast over six or so major stations last night. It’s a thirty minute long “infomercial” and it’s an unprecedented move for a presidential candidate. The price tag on this is some three to five million dollars which pretty much no candidate ever has at this point in the race. He had this money because he’s had an enormous amount of donations. His average donation is around $100. Last month he raised $150,000,000 that way. That’s a lot of Americans handing over some hard earned cash for something they believe in. That’s not to say that anyone should vote for him because his numbers are impressive. No one wants an election to be bought. Those numbers should tell you that maybe there’s something going on with this guy that’s special though. Anyway, here it is:

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