Josh McNeill

Auteur/autrice : Josh (Page 8 of 8)

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.

Because I was asked…

juillet 13, 2013 / / 2 Comments

I recently received an e-mail saying that I now have 60 or so credits from a college that is losing accreditation:

The school [City College of San Francisco], the largest college in California, was notified last week by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges that it will lose accreditation on July 31, 2014, leaving students without federal financial aid and potentially voiding their ability to transfer credits to other schools.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/city-college-of-san-francisco-protest_n_3569046.html

The e-mail came from CCSF itself and they asked me to both tweet and write to a journalist about how important CCSF has been for me as a successful transfer student. Luckily, I transferred just under a year ago, which provides me with insight into how the school was operating while the pressure was on as well as what it has meant to me.

To start, it has, most definitely, changed my life in a significant way that I truly appreciate. I decided to go to college at 29 because I was having difficulty finding any work at all, let alone rewarding work, and found myself in a state where I could get an education for free. That second part is important. Because I was an independent student and a citizen of California with very little income, I qualified for the Board of Governor’s Waiver which paid for my tuition in full. I may have never gone if it hadn’t been for this benefit.

The education I received there was also, for the most part, just as good as what I receive at Tulane University now. In fact, my Spanish classes there were all far superior to the various languages classes I’ve taken at Tulane. The student population was also extremely diverse and interesting. I was never the oldest person in my classes. The school really did fill a lot of roles for a lot of people.

I’m not writing to that journalist, though. I don’t think he’d want me to anyway because I couldn’t say that I’m against the school losing accreditation. I remember hearing about this often for the last couple semesters I was there. The infrastructure was in shambles. I shivered through plenty of « summer » night classes in the Creative Arts building and I’m pretty sure they tried to cut back on costs by not providing paper towels in the bathrooms (which is both a minor issue for a student and a minor effort on the school’s part). The « offices » for faculty were often sectioned off makeshift cubicles in large rooms with giant stacks of paperwork functioning as supports. There were at most two financial aid clerks working during fairly limited hours that left slow-moving lines of up to 100 students at a time waiting to have a couple questions answered or a form signed. No one in the school could be reached by phone and you would be very lucky to receive a response to an e-mail that wasn’t sent to a professor. And what if you tried to get some of your bureaucratic formalities out of the way early before the rush of students made it a nightmare in the early semester? They’d tell you it’s too early and you’d have to come back. My guess is this was probably because they didn’t have the faculty to do anything with it at that time anyway.

Professors, though most of the ones I had (carefully) selected were rather good, often brought the politics of the school to the classroom. I was regularly asked by teachers to make sure that I voted for more bonds to be issued and whatnot, anything that would superficially provide the (possibly insolvent) school with more funds. In fact, my favorite teacher once complained–although she also had a sense of concern in her delivery–that she and others were forced to forgo raises so that other teachers with less time in wouldn’t be laid off. And I understood their concerns, but I didn’t automatically assume that the problem was simply not enough money being pumped in, especially given statements like that last one. I mean, they had a very poor faculty-to-student ratio but at the same time almost the entirety of their operating costs went to faculty salaries. To be fair, the ratio is a problem for most CA school and I couldn’t verify what a normal percentage of costs for faculty would be, but it was enough that it didn’t feel appropriate to bring the politics into the classroom so regularly.

That’s not to say the students weren’t equally ridiculous about the issue. CCSF has possibly the lowest tuition rates in the country for a community college [my guess] and they were very slowly increasing due to the crisis. Simultaneously, students would come into my classes–often those involved in the Occupy movement–speaking about how the original plan for CCSF was for it to be literally free for everyone. They were up in arms about the tuition hikes and the shorter semesters and the cuts in class availability (because CCSF was at least doing a little to try to lower their bottom line).

It was an impossible scenario where you have both a mismanaged school and an unrealistic student body attempting to maintain some pipe-dream where education is free and no one anywhere at any time needs to pay a dime as long as the city just keeps issuing loads of bonds. It caused both sides to move in such pathetically small increments that it would’ve taken a lifetime for the issues that the accrediting agency warned them about years earlier to get fixed. Which is another reason I feel very leery about giving CCSF a full blown vote of support in their protest: they knew what the problems were literally year ago and, when the accrediting agency finally came back to check on the school’s progress, they communicated twice as many issues as the last time. The college managed to receive warnings, and then progress in an even more negative direction as a result, probably due to the previously mentioned pipe-dream issue. How can I really say that I want the accrediting agency to change their mind about the school while knowing all this?

What I’d like to reiterate, though, is that I did receive a very good education there. CCSF was responsible for giving many people in the area a cheap place to go, even when they couldn’t get the Board of Governor’s Waiver. It really does sadden me to see that they’re closing down, despite the tone of this post. The direction of my life has changed drastically and led to all sorts of new experiences simply because I had that opportunity to go there. In a way, I also feel guilty, as if I received the fruits of a system that I simultaneously criticize. Maybe I share a bit of that pipe-dream, too. I think that mentality, while also being a source of frustration, is also what makes California such a wonderful place and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t influence me a great deal in just the few years I lived there.

Whatever happens, I do hope something bigger and better comes out of the rubble.

Boys have penises, girls have vaginas.

février 8, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Apparently, CocoRosie discovered Antony Hegarty long before I did. Besides possessing a unique and powerful voice, Hegarty is widely known for being transgender. This term, in itself, is rather confusing. In Hegarty’s case, he’s biologically male and seems to have no intention of changing that but many people (or at least that’s my impression) who consider themselves transgender have a desire to change their biological sex. This has always been odd to me but not due to the reasons people tend to find it odd (disgust, mainly) but because it’s difficult for me to understand why someone who doesn’t believe in the confines of gender labels would have such strong feelings about what their genitalia looks like.

The basic idea, for those who don’t have friends steeped in human sexuality studies, is that sex is what you’re biologically born with, meaning which genitalia you have, but gender is defined by your culture and, I suppose, the role you play when interacting with others in your culture. For instance, maybe you’re born with a female genitalia but all your interests and mannerisms fit into the mold of the prototypical male in your culture. Your sex may be female, but your gender could then be considered male.

This is exactly what’s interesting to me about sex changes, though. If the hypothetical person I’m speaking of feels their gender is male, they may choose to make their sex match their gender. Why make such an extreme change when gender is simply an ephemeral quality anyway? This sounds strange, to me, because you could become part of a different culture and find that your gender suddenly matches your sex without physically changing anything. For instance, Conrad Phillip Kottak claims that in Brazil transsexuals (at least, biological males who live as females) are seen essentially the same as biological females that identify as female (Anthropology, 13th ed.). In fact, I recently had a conversation with a guy whose part Brazilian (close enough that he visits occasionally and speaks Portuguese) and he claimed that cheap « female » prostitutes in Brazil are often biologically male and yet their clients are often heterosexual males (in gender and biology) that simply don’t care about the genitalia of the prostitute. It seems that someone from my culture in the US, for instance, who is born with the sex of a female but identifies as male would be completely accepted as is in Brazil. Maybe this has something to do with why Hegarty doesn’t feel a need to change his sex either, because he may have become involved in a subculture that accepts his sex/gender combination as perfectly normal.

I guess, in a way, this is a discrepancy in definition. It’s actually difficult to write about this topic because I feel like I have to constantly specify if I’m talking about sex or gender because we link these two so closely that there aren’t separate words for male sex and male gender, etc (that I know of). It’s so confusing to me that I don’t even know what someone means when they say they feel as if they were born as a male in a female’s body, a description I’ve read a lot when learning about sex changes. Does this really mean anything when talking about such a transient idea? It’s like there’s some sort of psuedo-Whorfian thing going on here where even transgender people end up with confused ideas because of the terminology available to them. If your culture uses the same terms when speaking about gender and sex, are you more likely to want a sex change when your sex and gender don’t match up with cultural expectations? I bet there are studies on this that I will never have enough time to read so anyone in the know should comment and clear the matter up.

Update: Coincidentally, today my Japanese professor asked us what gender/sex we’d want to be reincarnated as. We’re gonna have a discussion next week; maybe I’ll post about it.

No one is ever the bad guy.

janvier 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

… From their perspective that is. I was having a back and forth with a friend about various political/historical junk and it got into the merits or lack of for using the atomic bombs during World War II. I’ve always been under the assumption that they ended the war but he pointed me to a source that doubted that theory. The discussion kinda moved me away from being secure in my assumption but the alternative theory still wasn’t as convincing. In any case, the conversation ended with him talking about how he loves history because it changes and how it would be interesting to look into textbooks from other countries to see how slanted their descriptions of the same events are.

So I recently went to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, just because it seems like I should at least visit all the tourist sites in the city while living here. I didn’t actually have any particular interest in it but it turned out to be a propos to the conversation I had with my friend.

There was a large section devoted to racist propaganda between the Japanese and Americans. For instance, there was this comic which was from the New York Times:

New York Times comic during WWII

I’m glad this sort of material was available because reflection on this sort of thing in hindsight seems like one of the most beneficial aspects of such a museum. I’m not personally as interested in what kind of guns were used as I am in what the social climate was at the time. What was a bit frustrating was their attempt to place equal claims of racism on both sides. Certainly, there was racism in Japan at the time but their example of such was the following:

Anti-American manga during WWII

It’s really hard to draw comparisons between the two. The first seems to be promoting extermination of a lower race while the other seems to be saying the people we’re at war with are mean. Should we really be claiming that the Japanese were just as racist as Americans at the time? They did terrible things to prisoners, sure, but we probably did, too. But such actions are not necessarily based on racism so it seems more appropriate to go by what we find in their media to determine the level of racism, which is notably weaker than American racism judging by these images. Let’s not kid ourselves about this; it does no one any good.

Speaking of doing terrible things to prisoners, also absent was any mention of Japanese-American internment camps whatsoever. I don’t know why we have such trouble talking about this subject in the US. We did it, it was terrible, we admitted that when reparations were authorized in the 80s, yet I still don’t remember being taught about this part of our history at all during my high school years in the 90s. And you would think the one place where this could be openly discussed would be a museum dedicated to the war. What better forum could there be for bringing this out in the open? Instead, there was one newspaper clip that gave directions to Japanese-Americans to go to a specific location on a specific date and that was it. The clip didn’t say what they were going there for and never used the word « internment. » There was also no caption explaining what the clip was a reference to. It’s like we’re willing to hint at the idea that we did something bad but no more than that.

This isn’t completely off-topic, however. Part of what I love about learning other languages is that it almost forces you to learn about other cultures and in a more direct way than just reading about them in your native language. For instance, one of my Spanish classes at City College of San Francisco spent one day a week where someone in the class would present a topic involving the country we were learning about at the time. This almost always turned into sort of guilt-ridden sessions about the evils of US activity in other countries but there was good reason for this: there was truth to it. And this was almost always buoyed by my Chilean professor who seemed to have a pretty robust knowledge of the history of all of Latin America. In fact, I really wanted to ask her personally why she came to the US because I later learned about how the US supported the takeover of her government by a pretty brutal dictator.

I never did work up the nerve to ask, but this is something I could only really get an inside perspective on by speaking the language. Likewise, my Spanish professor last semester was Cuban and even spent some time being locked up for his religious beliefs. I really wanted to ask him questions about Cuba but couldn’t work up the nerve either, unfortunately. But even the possibility of having that conversation is very unlikely to occur in monolingual situations. I even enjoy reading Wikipedia articles in both Spanish and English to see what changes from the other perspective. It’s interesting, to say the least.

Now that I’m learning Japanese, it will again be very tempting to ask my professor about her perspective on things like WWII. Maybe this time I’ll actually work up the nerve to take advantage of such an opportunity.

But anyway, for clarification for anyone who didn’t realize it: the US rounded up Japanese-Americans during WWII, especially on the west coast, and sent them to camps that they weren’t allowed to leave. Their property and possessions were often sold, etc. It was a pretty terrible thing and it happened.

An open letter to Radioshack. (off-topic)

octobre 13, 2012 / / 13 Comments

So I worked for Radioshack for a long time and it left me extremely bitter and resentful. I just recently left after a giant pay cut and I felt the need to voice my long term issues with them both to vent my own feelings and to give them insight into what their policies do to their employees, I sent them an e-mail. I mentioned this on Facebook where multiple people immediately wanted to see it (probably because it got the ridiculous length of 1,900 words or because I still know many employees). Instead of e-mailing it 15 times, I’ve decided to just place it here. Maybe others at the company will see it, maybe some of them will even agree, who knows. Do with it what you will. (Disclaimer: And I realize, objectively, it may sound like whining and complaining as some people experience much worse in their workplaces but these kind of things are relative. Also, many times when the problem is pay, it’s tied to the possibility of the employer failing. I don’t believe that to be the case here.) Here it is:

I apologize in advance for sending this e-mail to customer care but I can find no way to contact upper management directly. I only hope this ends up somewhere meaningful.

I left Radioshack in the middle of August after roughly nine years as a sales associate. I was not simply any associate, I was an ideal associate. I worked under nine different store managers between seven stores in three states and was looked at as the most reliable person to leave in charge in each case. My numbers were good enough that I was consistently in the top 10, sometimes consistently in the top 3, at all times. I rarely used sick time. I regularly trained new associates, not just in operations but in sales, an area of training that is extremely neglected in most Radioshacks. I was even trained early on to be a manager and upset my district manager greatly when I decided to go back to school and remain an associate instead of taking a store. I was around long enough to know what it was like to be a T4, a status that I doubt most upper management is even able to remember at this point.

The reason I preface my e-mail in this way is not to brag but to give Radioshack a sense of what type of employee this is coming from so that it perhaps holds more weight. I hate Radioshack. It’s not that I think the products are bad or the organization doesn’t have nice people in it, it’s because I hate the disconnect between upper management and those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Working at Radioshack, even as an associate, is a mentally exhausting job. One is expected to know a huge amount about the inner workings of electronics, the nuances of multiple contract based services, and be able to communicate all this information clearly to customers who mostly have no idea what’s going on. I dare say that no other entry level retail position in the United States requires the level of expertise that working at Radioshack does. Sure, some associates get away with knowing very little but they’re not successful. They get by, barely, and are often more of a detriment to the business as a whole than a help. No, good associates must be extraordinarily knowledgeable and patient.

With this in mind, Radioshack offers an exceptionally unrewarding work experience. When I started at Radioshack, in my small town in southern New Jersey, I went in to work with pride. It was shocking how rewarding my efforts were. I would leave some days knowing that I made $200 gross in just 8 hours of work. It was a lot of work, as mentioned above, and a lot of effort, but the results could often be amazing. Compared to the other work available in my area, I felt a bit like an aristocrat. I was doing a job that could pass as professional work for an income well above what everyone else was making other than hard laborers or people who had to commute 2 hours away. To top it off, promotions were easy to come by. Within 6 months I was part way through the manager in training program and I had already seen multiple coworkers who started before me get their own stores in that time. Everything seemed perfect.

Then came pay plan updates. Every year or two brought a new pay plan with it. These became the bane of my existence. My first pay plan change was actually beneficial. It came, I believe, shortly after Len Roberts left the company and yielded a significant increase in my gross earnings. Of course, Radioshack realized this very quickly and many of the boosts were removed before being in place for even a year. That seemed okay to me. If the company changed the pay plan in a way the could make them go out of business, it wasn’t worth it. That was the one moment of reward that I’ve ever experienced at Radioshack, though. I must have experienced some 5 or 6 pay plan changes in my time there and literally every single one other than that first was realized as a pay cut for myself. It was amazing. At first it was just a little aggravating but as it happened more and more I developed a sharp sense of bitter resentment at the company. My motivation to excel at my job was drastically reduced, as it was for all my coworkers as well. Radioshack became the thing I would be doing until I could find another job. It was convenient enough that it could pass as a job until there was something better. This essentially became the mantra of every coworker I’ve ever had after my first year or two with the company. This is absolutely the worst situation I can imagine for a company that survives on the sales skills of its associates.

The final blow for me came during the last pay plan change. I was already about to transfer to a new school and focus on only that but even if that weren’t the case, I would have quit Radioshack even in the absence of a new job. I went to the meeting where my district manager explained the pay plan changes and my stomach grumbled as soon as the topic came up. She spun it well. People in the room were mostly convinced that they could actually make more money because of the change in mobile upgrade SPIFFs. I knew better. I kept a spreadsheet detailing my pay on a daily basis for years and I knew I made half of my money in performance SPIFFs. That portion of my pay generally accounted for $2/hour but the max that could be earned under the new plan was $1/hour and relied on the entire store performing, not just me. What’s more, the goals for the drivers that had to be hit were set across the board instead of by store. This was incredibly short sighted (or not?) as, for instance, never in the history of the store I was in did even a single person end a month with a 33% RSSP attach rate let alone had the entire store averaged that. It was full of tourists, foreigners, and rich people who saw money as expendable; there was no way to achieve this kind of result. Similar problems were obvious with other goals but even if everything was reached, like I said, it was a 50% cut in performance SPIFF earnings. Ok, so cell phones are to make up for that, right? Prepaid would pay an extra $2 and upgrades, the majority of post paid phone sales, would pay an extra $7. My store did not have a lot of post paid sales but we had an unusually high amount of prepaid sales. So, I did some calculations. I knew exactly how many hours I worked every week in the past year so I compared that with my phone sales over the past year and found that not once did the extra phone sales make up for the cut in performance SPIFFs. I casually voiced my disdain for the new plan to my manager who seemed baffled that I thought I would make less money. Of course, my math skills showed to be true once the pay plan went into effect.

I received two full pay checks and one partial pay check before leaving the company. I found a roughly 20% decrease in pay on those two pay checks. Coworkers of mine couldn’t calculate their cut but also told me that their paychecks looked significantly smaller. This cut was much larger than any other cut I’d received in 9 years and was completely uncalled for. The last earnings report from Radioshack claimed that the company was doing just fine. There wasn’t as much growth as hoped for, to paraphrase the report, but the company was in no way struggling. And how could the company be struggling? Most large electronics chains that competed with Radioshack had already gone out of business more than a year before this change. No, just as every other pay cut Radioshack gave to its associates over the years, there was literally no reason other than a desire to grab more profits to the detriment of the people who serve as the front line for the business. Pay cuts have happened consistently, in good times and bad, during recessions and during times of general economic growth. There was no excuse.

So I left, with a fierce sense of disdain. So did everyone else in my store. Within a month, my store, whose employee base all had between 2-9 years of experience (most being 5+ years) had literally one employee left who was just about to leave the job for another also. I’ve been to sites like Glass Door over the years to see what retail life is like for at other similar businesses. Four years ago, entry level associates at every corporate cell phone store (Verizon stores, T-Mobile stores, etc.) reported making at least $10k/year more than what Radioshack associates were making. That was well before this 20% pay cut. Today, I can’t even imagine. My store literally has not made even the minimum of the 5 targets for performance SPIFF that are required to date (I’ve kept up through my manager and coworkers who stayed there a bit longer). There is simply no way that working for Radioshack is competitive with other businesses. One can literally work at a hot dog stand and make significantly more money (I know because my roommate was doing just that and averaged $13/hour with tips while my pay had shrunk to an average $11/hour in San Francisco where the minimum wage is $10.24/hour already).

I suppose Radioshack is intent on turning over their workforce until they have, essentially, a bunch of cashiers who don’t realize that Radioshack at one time was a profitable company to work for. It was a company to be proud to be a part of. If that’s the goal, then you are well on your way. If you want to have one of the most knowledgeable and helpful associate bases in the country on your front lines, you’re failing miserably. My personal bitterness has extended beyond simply not wanting to work for the company, I have literally suggested to friends and family that they not go to Radioshack for anything because it’s a company that does not care (and I say this having multiple childhood friends who are store managers). If nine years of dedicated service are rewarded by regular and painful pay cuts and nothing more, what does that say about Radioshack?

I apologize for the length but I feel this really needs to be said, maybe even just for my own sake. In a way, I hope this reaches someone in the company that has a voice and can be swayed to actually change things for the benefit of employees at the bottom of the hierarchy. After all, the business can only be as strong as those who act as its face on a daily basis.

How 6 seconds grows.

décembre 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

This explanation of how a 6 second drum break from a little-known 1969 song can spawn innumerable sounds and subcultures is quite beautiful. I really couldn’t hope do a better job of explaining how sampling and technology have redefined the potential for musical expression so here it goes:

I’m really glad that the creator of the video inserted all the issues with copyrighting at the end, too. Imagine how different music might be if The Winstons had sued every artist that wanted to use their music right from the beginning. We seem to have moved closer and closer toward that being the norm and it’s a shame. Who knows how many remarkable uses of samples have been stifled by stringent copyright laws.

Also, it strikes me that this is essentially the opposite of what I’m doing with my one year project. Whereas this simple 6 second drum break has been manipulated to create innumerable musical expressions, expanding it endlessly, my idea is to take an enormous amount of recorded sound and stuff it into one small, digestible package. Actually, I would love to see someone take a snippet of my end product and expand it out again. It could be as if the music is alive, inhaling and exhaling.

There’s a piece by Steve Reich called Proverb which puts the phrase, « How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life! », to music and expands on that. I just like the piece, and the quote (from Ludwig Wittgenstein), and thought it seemed in the same vein as the video above, even though it’s classical music.

This has really turned into more of a miscellaneous post than a post about sampling. Oh well. Here’s the Reich piece:

George Hurd Ensemble at Hotel Utah SF with Harlan Otter and William S Braintree

janvier 14, 2010 / / 1 Comment

For an event meant to showcase the cross pollination of classical and electronic music, The Hotel Utah Saloon seemed like an odd venue. This place is old and looks old. You would sooner expect some ragtime from a dirty piano or maybe a down and out solo country singer to be playing here before the contemporary pastiche of sounds that were to be played. Regardless, the setting was comfortable and just the sort of place that new classical music should be brought to.

The night opened with Harlan Otter playing some solo piano pieces inspired by, or having to do with, mountains. Save for the first piece by Alan Hovhaness, an ominous sounding work ending in a spastic romp called Mountain Dance No. 2, the mountain references were hard to decipher. Otter portrayed the works, which also included some pieces by Bay Area composers Jason McChristian and Doug Michael (Moto Perpetuo and Clusters respectively) interjected with Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis, with specific attention to accuracy. Glass’s music was easily the most moving of what was played although, at times, it felt like the performance was too rough or rigid. Either way, it stood out much more than the other modernistic pieces. Of special note was Clusters, which transitioned into the George Hurd Ensemble’s set. In this piece, electronics were added to the piano part. This wasn’t done in a particularly effective way as the two never really meshed very well, instead feeling like two separate pieces played at the same time, but it was an excellent choice by Otter who should also be applauded for taking a chance on some new music.

The George Hurd Ensemble, comprised of a viola, violin, cello, upright bass, piano, and electronics, appeared to be in good form. On the other hand, the sound system did not. The mix coming out of the speakers didn’t make the group louder as much as it threw off the balance. The nice part of amplifying a classical ensemble is that it does away with that concert hall hush. People are free to roam and chat a bit and, if someone coughs, the rest of the crowd doesn’t look at them with scorn in their eyes. The bad part of all this is that the subtleties of the compositions can be completely glossed over by a bad mix or sound system. Pop music has been plagued by this issue for years and it looks like classical music will have to welcome a new challenge if it’s going to modernize itself in this way. Still, while the sound wasn’t perfect, the music was able to shine through.

The set started off was a groove heavy piece marked by liberal use of pizzicato to give it a playful feel. Hurd has a particular penchant for this technique but it never sounds overdone. The next couple of tunes continued in this vein and also made apparent a possible trip-hop influence. One of the stand out parts of the set was a piece for solo piano. It may have stood out because it was the only one to not make use of the whole ensemble but it also offered some insight into more of Hurd’s influences. It acted as a sort of interlude that reminded me of a solo Thelonious Monk performance with hints of romanticism thrown in. The rest of the group came back in for the remainder of the set which contained a work that seemed to be mimicking koto music and mixing it with synthesized harpsichord (which was skillfully implemented, avoiding the expected baroque feel). The performance ended with an energetic foray that could only properly be described as swingin’.

George Hurd seems to have found a balance between accessibility and depth. This music sounds fresh and new while retaining its connection to its roots. And, while this combination of electronic music with classical music is being attempted by people like Mason Bates, it sounds much more naturally integrated in Hurd’s work. He regularly leaves one with impressions of various musicians or genres but the sound is always his. This is classical music’s equivalent to indie rock.

To tie together the classical-meets-electronic theme, the night ended with a set by William S. Braintree mixing some highly energetic IDM. Unfortunately, I’m uncertain whether he was mixing all original music or whether this was more of a DJ mix. Either way, you could tell Braintree was a huge Aphex Twin fan. The set started out very strong with a very organic flow. By the end, maybe because the crowd started to dissipate, the transitions seemed a lot less inspired. Still, it felt like a perfect end to the night. Intentionally or not, the music managed to hint at a classical influence that culminated in a few final chords that sounded like Franz Liszt playing through an FM modulator.

It occurs to me that large classical institutions could learn something from programming of this sort. For instance, there didn’t seem to be a person over 40 in the room and the space felt much more communal than what you would experience in a concert hall. From the players dressed in a fairly casual manor, the violist having a beer during his set, to the audience, which at one point even included people who looked like they would sooner go to a punk show than a classical concert, this was an event that was very in touch with modern sensibilities.

Jim Cramer of CNBC suggests illegally manipulating the market.

mars 12, 2009 / / 1 Comment

This is amazing. I don’t have time to comment on it and I don’t know what I could say other than mentioning that the SEC needs to start understanding what these guys are doing so they can be sent to jail. Just watch in amazement as Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, suggests that hedge fund managers should illegally manipulate the market because it will make them money. This guy should be hung by his testicles in the middle of Wall Street.

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