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Album Reviews

1——->3——>5
Terrible—–>Fantastic

5
Hancock, Herbie - VSOP The Quintet

4
Byrd, Danny - Changes
Dagga - Laughing Gas
Parker, Charlie - Complete Charlie Parker on Verve, The
V/A - Pressed for Sound (pehr sampler cd)
Rice, Tim and Andrew Lloyd Webber - Jesus Christ Superstar
Wiley - Grime Wave
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps Single

3
Byrd, Danny - Doghill
Byrd, Danny - Medical History
Byrd, Danny - Soul Friction
Cyantific - All Points West
Cyantific - Be True
Cyantific - Cyantific 2005
Cyantific - Cyantific 2007
Cyantific - Flashback
Cyantific - Ghetto Blaster
Cyantific - Hospital Mix, Volume 04
Cyantific - Little Green Men
Cyantific - Outpu
Francis, Sage - Human The Death Dance
O, Karen - At Home
Peas - Filters
Roots, The - Rising Down
Strange Fruit Project, The - From Divine
Subtle - Exiting Arm

2
Delta - Submerged
Byrd, Danny - Do It Again
Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

1
V/A - Industrial COnfusion, Strike 3 Cleopatra Recs Comp
Kano - MC No. 1
V/A - Nujazz Sessions 2 (Groovy Gravy Recs Comp)
V/A - Reinterpretations Inspired by the Works of Kitaro
V/A - Rocky Horror Punk Show, The (Springman Recs Comp)

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Search Index as the Web (Alternative Conceptualizations of the Internet)

The Register has a great piece on Cuil’s launch, its impact on Google, and what the Web really is these days. While I don’t completely agree with the article’s point, thinking of the Web not as the culmination of linked documents but as The Index (i.e., search engine handling of the Web) is interesting and useful. Here are some of the key points from the article (“Spammers, Cuil, and the rescue from planet Google”):

With a little thought, Cuil not being as good as Google at finding what we want online is the least surprising piece of news since people familiar with the situation said JPII was partial to fish on a Friday. In 2008, Mountain View’s all-seeing algorithms in many ways are the web.

It’s easy to identify what happened. When it first surfaced in 1998, Google made sense of the web a bit better than anyone else. It was a useful improvement on existing services. Ten years later, the web does its best to make sense of Google.

The sorry upshot is that barring some unimaginable technological leap no search engine’s results will ever be better than Google’s, at least in the West. And the switch leaves the likes of Microsoft and Cuil (and a dozen other doomed start-ups) effectively attempting to reverse-engineer Google, not understand the information on the web.

The people at the vanguard of reverse-engineering Google are not its jealous search rivals. They’re the spammers and SEO consultants. They have driven an ever-closer relationship between the quirks and whims of Google’s algorithms and policies, and the structure and content of the web. It’s a feedback loop that was unavoidable once Google’s early rivals proved unable to respond to its better search results and presentation.

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I Knew Radio Was Bad, But Not Harmful

U92 has been deemed dangerous by the Internets:

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BBC’s Video Player Cranks It To 11

I guess 10 just won’t do.

BBC\'s Video Player

BBC's Video Player

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Album Reviews

1—->3—->5
Terrible—->Fantastic

5
Empire, Alec - Golden Foretaste of Heaven, The
Empire, Alec - Kiss of Death Single
Kinch, Soweto - A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Towerblock

4
Empire, Alec - Intelligence and Sacrifice
Empire, Alec - Low On Ice (The Iceland Sessions)
Goodman, Benny - a ton of stuff from 1928-1949
Hancock, Herbie - Crossings
Hancock, Herbie - Dedication
Hancock, Herbie - Flood
Hancock, Herbie - Mwandishi
Hancock, Herbie - My Point of View
Hancock, Herbie - Prisoner
Hancock, Herbie - Takin’ Off
Hancock, Herbie - Trio ‘77
Rother, Anthony - a ton of albums
Switch - Ravers Only!

3
Empire, Alec - Funk Riot Beat
Empire, Alec - Futurist
Empire, Alec - Generation Star Wars, Part 01
Empire, Alec - Miss Black America
Empire, Alec and Carl Crack - Live DJ Set at Radio Massive Kiss FM
Feist - Monarch
Hancock, Herbie - Secrets
Human Television - Human Television
Kid Kut - Underground Kingdom Mix
Les Savy Fav - Cat and the Cobra, The
Prodigy - HNIC, Part 02
Rza as Bobby Digital - Digi Snacks
Spank Rock - Fabric Live 33

2
Empire, Alec - DHR01
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Hammond, Jr, Albert - Como Te Llama
Lady Tigra - Please Mr. Boombox
No Age - Nouns
Raconteurs, The - Consolers of the Lonely
Roots of Orchis, The - Crooked Ceilings (CD2)

1
Blanx, Mike + The SDABS - Starting Them Off Young
Brown, Pat - Equal Opportunity
Gospel Gangstaz - Do or Die
Gospel Gangstaz - Gang Affiliated
Islands - Arms Way
Pendulum - In Silico
Resilience - Sound of Strength
Saucy Jack - Ways You’ll Visit
TCR - Chrome Recordings, The
Wonderland Junk - Manifest Destiny

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Three Mixes of Three (or Two)

I hit a period of listening to some incredible singles and wanted to share them with friends, so I whipped together a couple of elementary mixes of the songs. The tracks aren’t as fresh since I’ve sat on them for a minute, but they are still excellent (and one or two are old but I just keep digging them). Here they are:

He Gets the Women (15MB)
(1) Hazard - Machete
(2) Mistabishi - No Matter What (Jason’s Re-Edit)
(3) Unknown (from the 50 minute block of the 20080524 Futuredub Radio One-Year Anniversary Show with FSTZ)

It’s Sometimes Easy (9MB)
(1) Trim - Liar Liar (Part 1)
(2) Soulja Boy - Booty Meat (Jason’s Re-Edit)
(3) Wiley - Gangster

Prayers for Hoods (12MB)
(1) J. Rawls and Middle Child - Useless
(2) Roger Robinson and Charlie Dark - Prayers for Angry Young Men

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Unnoticed Impact of the US Recession

Yes, we’re in a recession. And it’s going to get a whole lot worse.

But the main reason I post is to send readers through the Internets to a Grace Undressed-a well-written and in-depth blog by a stripper, which I came across probably via BoingBoing-post on how strippers are massively crunched in the current economic situation. The anecdotal-based point of the post is that less people are going to strip clubs and spending less. Not only is this interesting insight into the adult services industry, but it is a simple and low-level (i.e., no more trickling to be done) example of how much trouble U.S. consumers are in.

On the economies of adult services, I have argued for some time that strippers must be a huge source of U.S. productivity increases (assuming that their incomes correctly make their way into the relevant statistics). Consider the fact that their income is predominately tip based and, unlike waiters and waitresses, not based on a percentage of another good (e.g., food) that can increase in price (given inflation, etc.). Furthermore, the form of currency constrains their income stream. That is, a buck per dance per gent is traditional because you can’t slip coins into a garter belt but there’s only moderate incentive for the viewer to provide more dollars per dance. As a result, strippers probably had a much higher labor value years ago than today.

Because of the diminishing value of their labor (i.e., one dance has been, is, and probably will generate one dollar per viewer), they must work much harder to maintain the same quality of life. This squeeze is why I suspect they are a major contributor to productivity growth.

Of course, this isn’t a robust argument. It’s an analysis of logic with almost no case studies (let alone large-n datasets). Furthermore, people are probably providing more than one dollar per dance, meaning that a stripper’s income is more correlated to inflation/price changes than I make it out to be in this post. Last, the likely emergence and growth of additional services (e.g., VIP rooms, table service, non-sexual escorting) mean that strippers have probably found new more profitable revenue streams that make up for lower margins (just like any other successful business).

In any event, it’s a stimulating issue to think about.

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A Logic Check In Time For The Presidential Elections (But Too Late For Many People)

In reading through the current issue of Foreign Affairs (July/August 2008), I came across Colin H. Kahl and William E. Odom’s When To Leave Iraq piece, which is an interesting argument for the evolution of the situation in Iraq, primarily the so-called Sunni Awakening. The idea is that the Democratic Congressional victories in November 2006 contributed to an improvement in relations between the US military and Sunnis. This idea is new to me and interesting in that it has important security implications. One example of this is the Spain thesis, an argument that emerged after the Madrid bombings, that voting to withdraw from a counter-terrorism operations (or whatever we want to call it) is antithetical to peace. The second example of how this Democratic peace (heh) argument is important is that it dramatically shifts–not necessarily through ideas but through evidence–the domestic debate regarding which party would do a better job at ensuring US security and peace in Iraq. Below is the relevant selection of text from the article:

The Awakening began in Anbar Province more than a year before the surge and took off in the summer and fall of 2006 in Ramadi and elsewhere, long before extra U.S. forces started flowing into Iraq in February and March of 2007. Throughout the war, enemy-of-my-enemy logic has driven Sunni decision-making. The Sunnis have seen three “occupiers” as threats: the United States, the Shiites (and their presumed Iranian patrons), and the foreigners and extremists in AQI. Crucial to the Awakening was the reordering of these threats.

At the same time, U.S. forces had to convince the Sunnis that they were not occupiers — that is, that they did not intend to stay forever. Here, growing opposition to the war in the United States and the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress in the November 2006 elections were critical. Major General John Allen, the Marine Corps officer responsible for tribal engagement in Anbar in 2007, recently told me that among Sunni leaders, the Democratic victory and the rising pro-withdrawal sentiment “did not go unnoticed…. They talked about it all the time.” According to Allen, the marines, from top to bottom, reinforced the message sent by the Democratic takeover by saying, “We are leaving…. We don’t know when we are leaving, but we don’t have much time, so you [the Anbaris] better get after this.” As a result, U.S. forces came to be seen as less of a threat than either AQI or the Shiite militias — and the risk that U.S. forces would leave pushed the Sunnis to cut a deal to protect their interests while they still could. As Major Niel Smith, the operations officer at the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center, and Colonel Sean MacFarland, the commander of U.S. forces in Ramadi during the pivotal period of the Awakening, wrote recently in Military Review, “A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made these younger [tribal] leaders [who led the Awakening] open to our overtures.” In short, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the Awakening began before
the surge and was driven in part by Democratic pressure to withdraw.

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Netflix for Purses

I came across this a long time ago and meant to post, but never did (and their frequent mention in Sex and the City: The Movie scooped me in bringing the news to the masses):

http://www.bagborroworsteal.com/ui/howitworks#ways_to_shop

These guys let you rent high-end bags on the (kinda) cheapo. Cool concept. I wonder how many people are doing it.

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To Those Who Have Ever Worried I Was Having A Heart Attack

Great news! Remember those times when we thought I was going to drop dead from a heart attack because of the sharp stabbed-with-a-knife-like* pain I felt “in” my heart? Well, a co-worker–who suffers from the same pain–told me it is precordial catch syndrome (pdf), which is semi-common and nothing to get super-worried about.

So when this happens in the future, don’t sweat it and just stand by and help if I’m holding anything; I’ll be okay!

Not surprisingly, those hacks society calls “doctors” don’t know why it happens. WebMD–that it’s-gotta-be-cancer diagnosis center–doesn’t even have an entry on it.

*How do I know?

I got Stabbed 14 times, I can tell you it weren’t by gangsters
My uncle got stabbed like twice and he died, I tell you he’s one of them gangsters.

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