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Couldn't be less obscure. No points here for digging. Makes my blood retard and crystallize. So noisy, so beautiful. If I ever saw a band this good on stage, I would eat several hats and wire money to twelve...
Roger Ebert talks about how to read a movie.
This all began for me in about 1969, when I started teaching a film class in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts program. I knew a Chicago film critic, teacher and booker named John West, who lived in a wondrous apartment filled with film prints, projectors, books, posters and stills. "You know how football coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to study game films?" he asked me. "You can use that approach to study films. Just pause the film and think about what you see. You ought to try it with your film class."
I did. The results were beyond my imagination. I wasn't the teacher and my students weren't the audience, we were all in this together. The ground rules: Anybody could call out "stop!" and discuss what we were looking at, or whatever had just occurred to them.
This article also contains the most information-rich paragraph I've ever read online...it's like an entire film class in 12 lines. Fascinating stuff. One of the points is that, generally, the right side of the screen is more positive. In a later comment, Ebert adds:
In all the years with Siskel and on all the incarnations of the show, I always quietly made sure I was seated on the right. When Roeper came aboard, the producers insisted I "belonged" in "Gene's seat." Sentiment won over visual strategy. Did I really think it made a difference? Yes, I really did.Also, he should do this online...post film stills and let people leave comments, discuss, etc.
(link)
We made new patches, improved previous and want to announce new builds for 5.0.62, 5.0.67 and 5.1.26 versions. One of biggest changes we separated releases of 5.0 into two branches.
First, just "-percona" release is more stable and contains only stable and proven on many installation patches. Second is "-percona-highperf" release, which contains experimental patches that can improve performance significantly. On this stage "percona-highperf" contains patches from Yasufumi Kinoshita (more info on Maximum performance of OLTP benchmark is not so scalable on multi-cpu.
Most important patch "split_buf_pool_mutex" to separate InnoDB buffer->pool mutex into several, and it allows to get 1.5x - 2.5x improvements in DBT2 benchmarks on 8cores boxes (benchmark results is coming and will be published)For all three versions we added SHOW PATCHES command, which is based on Jeremy Cole's patch
SQL:
Next, we added tables USER_STATISTICS, INDEX_STATISTICS, TABLE_STATISTICS to INFORMATION_SCHEMA
SQL:
For 5.0-percona-highperf release we added:
- split_buf_pool_mutex_fixed_optimistic_safe.patch | InnoDB patch to fix buffer pool scalability
- control_io-threads.patch | InnoDB patch to control count of IO threads
- control_flush_and_merge_and_read.patch | InnoDB patch to control insert buffer and flushing
5.1 release
Contains build-in InnoDB plugin, so there is no more needs to download InnoDB separately, install it and run mysql with option --skip-innodb.
We think InnoDB plugin is stable enough to use it with MySQL 5.1 RC, at least stable to name whole MySQL-5.1-percona release as RC.Along with previously mentioned patches, to 5.1 we added new column TIME_MS to
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PROCESSLIST which contains time of query execution with microseconds granularity.SQL:
On our release page
you can find links to RPMS for RedHat 4/5, binary tar.gz, source tar.gz (source contains source code with applied patches, so you can just download it and compile) and just raw patches.
Entry posted by Vadim | One comment
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via NYTimes, City Room blog, September 4, 2008,6:00 pm
Yet Again, Astroland Threatens to Close
By Sewell Chan
Following his bullpen session in Shea Stadium today, Billy Wagner told reporters that he feels good, and that he hopes to return from the disabled list on Tuesday - though the team may choose to take advantage of the two off days next week, and bring him back on Friday.
Wagner said he will throw a simulated game against live hitters on Sunday.
He said the muscles in his arm still feel stiff from time to time, but he is not sore.
According to Jerry Manuel, prior to the game, if Wagner does not end up pitching in a minor-league rehab game before his return, he’ll first be used by the Mets in a non-save situation.
In a recent chat for ESPN.com, Jerry Crasnick had the following to say when asked if Jerry Manuel could be a candidate to win National League Manager of the Year.
“Kevin, Interesting question. I was just thinking about that before the chat. At the risk of appearing inconsistent, yes, I think Manuel would be a strong Manager of the Year candidate if the Mets win the NL East. Tony La Russa looked like the early favorite. But with the Cardinals slipping, that doesn’t appear likely now.”
…thanks to long-time MetsBlog reader Kevin R, not only for the link, but for apparently asking the question of crasnick…nice work…
…if the mets put the Phillies away this weekend and then go on to win the division crown, i don’t see how anyone in the NL beats out manuel…he would have taken a team that was headed for disaster to a world series contender in three months time…he is one gangsta manager…
This article was written by Alex Steffen in September 2004. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective.
One of the formative experiences in my life was covering the Kyoto round of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). A cub reporter, I was frankly awed by the whole culture of major treaty negotiations: the diplomats and world leaders, the grizzled journalists and government flacks, the whirl of information and the party hordes. I was intimidated (for instance, at one point I was introduced to Prince Phillip. At 23, I didn't think my cocktail banter up to entertaining royalty, but he was very nice about it).
But what hit me harder than the event was the subject. For Kyoto was the first time I was forced, day after day, to come to grips with extinction. Day in, day out, I listened to speeches and interviewed experts who debated which species we'd already driven into extinction, which were going fast, which might still be saved, and which were, in E.O. Wilson's phrase, already the living dead. At one point someone gave me a document -- a rather thick document -- which turned out to be a listing of the known species believed to have vanished. Page after page after page, gone. And everyone -- everyone -- agreed the die-off was going to get much, much worse.
[[it gets better, below, sort of...]]
I left CITES feeling emotionally bludgeoned.
Since then, I've spent a few late nights thinking about what it means to be living in the midst of the Sixth Extinction -- what it means to have a part in causing the largest mass-extinction since the Death of the Dinosaurs.
I continue to struggle with it. The extinction crisis is one of the major problems humanity faces -- right up there with climate change, poverty and genocide -- yet it is little-mentioned outside of environmental and scientific circles. Why?
I think the reasons are cultural. To consider the extinction crisis is visit with death and guilt and horror. It's like living in a W.S. Merwin poem. It overwhelms you. It pulls you down like dark cold water. We are not culturally equipped to handle this stuff.
But cultures change. Cultures can be changed.
There's even an opportunity: the Threshold Foundation is offering a $50,000 grant "for projects to proactively address societal awareness of mass extinction and our responsibility in creating and reversing it."
"We are looking for new out-of-the-box approaches, which are at once creative, psychologically sophisticated and media-savvy. We see this issue as potentially analogous to the cultural taboo against discussing cancer a few decades ago, or to our collective attitudes toward smoking, drunk driving, firearms, asbestos, or most recently the health crisis of obesity due to fast food."Years ago, I thought we ought to build a Museum of Absent Nature, something the size of the American Museum of Natural History, where visitors could wander among the biologically-departed and point out the dodos, great apes and snow leopards to their kids. But honestly, who would go? It would just sit there, a giant intellectual mausoleum, dusty, empty and full of ghosts. Such a place would just entomb the extinct far out of our sight.
No, what we need is more immediate engagement with the Sixth Extinction, something that moves it onto the streets, brings it into people's homes, takes it to the bar and buys it drinks until we're forced to be comfortable enough with it to at least talk about it. Something like the red or yellow ribbons people wore to destigmatize HIV and breast cancer. Something that moves it from abstract issue to human concern. And, preferably, something beautiful and moving.
So, here's my modest proposal: I propose that we start wearing the dead on our skin.
Images exist of a great many extinct species, and I expect the proportion of well-documented extinctions to increase in the next couple decades. I propose that we assemble and maintain a database of names, pictures and information on species which have gone or are clearly soon to go extinct. I propose we make it possible for people to "adopt" a dead species, on one condition.
That condition? That you have an image of that species tattooed on your body in a visible place, with the Linnaean name underneath.
Style, size, color, location -- those are all your call. I'd think some tattoo artists would even do them for free, if asked. The main thing is that you agree to become someone who remembers, in a very personal way, that this plant or animal once existed, and no longer does, because we killed it; and who is willing to talk with others about it, to drag the taboo out of the closet and carry it around with you.
It'll hurt. It'll hurt, and then it'll heal, and then we'll start to talk about it. We might even begin to live differently. We might even begin to more widely celebrate and feel wonder at the species -- living and dead -- with whom we share the planet.
It's worth a try. Consider this a free idea -- if someone wants to put this into a grant application to Threshold and get it going, I'm totally behind you.
I'll even volunteer to be the first to put my hand under the needle.
This Culture of Extinction is a part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on Oct. 1. For the next four weeks, we'll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Retro at 10:49 AM)
I love the linear version of the Word Clock. Completely impractical but lovely.
(link)
Before VP candidate Sarah Palin crystallized her views on the future of US energy policy in her "drill or do nothing" speech to the Republican National Convention, we only had a vague idea of her record on transportation and development, gleaned mostly from her time as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla.
As news of Palin's past continues to surface, here's Slate with a Wasilla video postcard. Says reporter and narrator Alex Sheshunoff:
You read that Palin was the mayor of a small town, and you think of central squares and tree-lined sidewalks and neighbors who give pies to one another. Wasilla isn't that kind of place.
Video link. Thanks to Doc Barnett for the tip.
On Gourmet.com, Chris Cosentino demonstrates how to butcher a whole pig's head (via Serious Eats), and how to make porchetta di testa from the meat, skin, snout, tongue, &c. Not for the squeamish, I guess.
At the Whole Hog cooking class I went to a couple of months ago, the instructor butchered a pig's leg while we watched, but a pig's head is even more fascinating.
And, I have to say--the look on the pig's face in the photo to the right makes me laugh every time I see it.
Were you missing you some slime?
Have no fear, the green goopy stuff is on it's way back -- and so are Bill Murray and Dan Akyrod -- as Variety reports they are gearing up for a third Ghostbusters installment. Bill and Dan's spirit-wrecking cohorts, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, will return as well.
The new film is being written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who both were responsible (and who we love), in part, for bringing the British hit The Office to TV here in the U.S.
I'm all for the guys strapping on their suits and being their silly selves, but I'm not sure I can handle a resurgence of Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song.
Something strange
In your neighborhood
Who you gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS!
If WordPress didn’t suck, I’d embed this. But you’ll have to click over to Obsidian Wings to watch. Well worth it.
Our NFL correspondent checks in: "For no apparent reason, S'mac got a 15-second editorial feature in the middle of the third quarter of the Giants/Redskins game, complete with Al Michaels voice over." We don't know what you had to do to pull off that coup Sarita, but well done. Someone in the Giants must be a fan (or owe a favor). [Eaterwire]
More worm.
Many people apparently don't realize that contributing to DoseNation is as easy as signing up for an account and then starting to write. It's true! Since we launched over a year and a half ago, some of our most interesting contributions have come from people who stumbled across our "Submit a Listing" link and just dived right in. Your posts will initially go into a moderation queue, but if you can put a few sentences together, pretty quickly we're likely to make you an editor - it's not too dissimilar from the Metafilter model in certain ways.
Anyhoo, in the age of Google News alerts and keyword-based news feeds, it's not at all difficult to stay abreast of breaking news about your favorite substances. The difficulty of course is sifting for the interesting bits and having something interesting to say - but we suspect there are quite a few of you who could handle that with aplomb. So by all means, jump right in - this blog has turned into a lovely little community, judging by the very active and interesting comment threads we get, and it'd be nice to see even more instigators helping us document the strange world of modern drug culture.
We've made the basic assumption that psychedelics, pharmaceuticals, caffeine, Modafinil & Ritalin, Viagra, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, heck - music, film, television, comics, and so on - are all a major part of a culture that seeks altered psychoactive states on a regular basis. Drug users are no longer the "counter"culture - drug use is ingrained in the fabric of mainstream culture at large. We're aggregating a particular slant on drug culture that few others are as focused on as we are. You could help!
From http://www.dosenation.com/listing_add.php. Posted by Scotto.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this speech tonight. But I was pretty sure, as high-stakes conventions speeches almost always end up being, that it would be good. But I really don't think it was. It certainly wasn't bad. He didn't say anything embarrassing or have any real flubs. But the truth is that John McCain does have, at least for a critical five years of his life, a compelling story. And for a relatively brief period of the speech, toward the end, he spoke about it powerfully. But there wasn't that much of it. The rest of the speech, when condensed to its essence, seemed to be that he'll turn the page on the Bush era by continuing all of Bush's policies.
Among the surprises, perhaps the biggest one was that it actually wasn't a very good speech. Not in the sense of delivery, but the speech itself, the speech-writing. There wasn't a clear theme, though it approached on toward the end. Most of it was a fairly tired recital of Republican boilerplate. Did they really devote like ten minutes to charter schools? It was much, much too long for the speaker. I really think they could have given him a much better speech.
Another surprise? What happened to the days when the Republicans were the masters of stagecraft and theatrics. They had him up with there with a set that on TV looked like the notorious green screen from the speech in New Orleans. Even Karl Rove, on Fox, pointed it out.
And when they panned out to see what the audience in the convention hall saw, it was some unidentified mansion. Like maybe a house they're putting in an offer on? Weird. No idea what that was about.
I'll have more thoughts tomorrow. But I thought the delivery was acceptable but tired. The speech itself let the candidate down. I can't imagine the folks at Obama HQ didn't look at each other and say, "Okay, we can deal with that."
Spin Magazine's piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D'Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a fan of D'Angelo's from the start.
And that's true even though I was clowning him when he got arrested. To tell the truth, I hadn't quite realized just how far the man had fallen. If you look at the comments on my post from three years ago, you can see that even then people were saying they just wanted the man to get well so they could hear more of his work. ?uestlove articulates the challenge here better than anyone, though: "The new minstrel movement in hip-hop doesn't allow the audience to believe the artist is smart."
It's a particularly striking observation given that Spin's look at D'Angelo mentions in passing how that tension between art and commerce has affected so many of the acts I love. The world of R&B success demands either heaven or hell -- you either become a preacher and lose all of the sexiness and swagger that made you compelling in the first place. Or worse, you succumb to the demons.
While D'Angelo grew increasingly isolated, the rocky path he was traveling was, ironically enough, quite crowded with like-minded compatriots. At least three of neo-soul's other late'90s leading lights — Maxwell, [Erykah] Badu, and [Lauryn] Hill — have spent much of the new millennium on the sidelines.
Hill's struggles have been well documented: She followed her 1998 breakthrough, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, with an MTV Unplugged set four years later that felt like the soundtrack to a real-time nervous breakdown. She's yet to offer a second studio album and, apart from some aborted Fugees reunions, occassional shows, and involvement with a shady guru, much of her time has apparently been devoted to her family.
Badu released her triple-platinum debut, Baduizm, in 1997 and a successful follow-up, Mama's Gun, three years later, and then said she had writer's block and went on what she dubbed "The Frustrated Artist Tour" in search of inspiration. She eked out a slight EP in 2003 but then was largely silent, until the well-received release of New AmErkykah (Pt. 1 4th World War) last February.
Maxwell's journey probably parallels D'Angelo's most closely. The Brooklyn-born singer released three platinum albums between 1996 and 2001, earning frequent comparisons to D'Angelo, then seemed to disappear entirely. A new album, Black Summers' Night, was originally slated for spring 2004 but has been delayed repeatedly. Some close to him suggest that, like D'Angelo, he's been wrestling with a rather ill-fitting public image as a sex god.
There's much, much more in the story, but it's almost impossible to overstate how much a lot of us had put our faith for the future of soul music in a small group of talented artists, centered around these talents. A decade later, it almost seems as if no one's even trying to carry the torch anymore.
We'll see how it goes; I've got tickets to see Maxwell in concert next month, and I'm still holding out for that new D'Angelo record.
- If you like music, you should own D'Angelo's Voodoo.
- Maxwell is active on MySpace.
- ?uestlove, the heart of The Roots and the standing leader of the neo-soul movement, is a born blogger.
- And Erykah's "Honey" is one of the best videos of the year:
We are very excited about our newest partner in the WordPress.com VIP program, the National Football League, with their launch of blogs.nfl.com.
The NFL has partnered with WordPress.com VIP for both a rapid-fire news blog at blogs.nfl.com, as well as an expert commentary / user feedback set of blogs which are incorporated into the NFL’s exciting new web video application Sunday Night Football Extra:
On blogs.nfl.com you’ll find news and commentary about the NFL as well as insights and reports from the great Adam Schefter.
Sunday Night Football Extra will feature NBC and NFL Network analysis from the likes of Jerome Bettis, who will be blogging in WordPress.com with his thoughts on the game. To see this in action head over to nfl.com during the game.
[ Visit blogs.nfl.com and Sunday Night Football Extra ]
From the Boston Globe blog ...
One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.
The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one's opponents to Hitler.
Soul Sides's "word cloud."
Get your wordle on.
TAKE A GUESS AT THESE:
Take a guess at these:
(What's interesting to observe from this is that some of the great songs aren't very complicated, lyrically speaking. It's all in the performance, not the writing).
While I'm on the subject of musicians who use dance in their performances, I'd like to give some props to Kate Bush.
I find her to be marvelously unique and original. To my ears, her music spans from absolutely genius to utterly unlistenable, but I'm always impressed by someone who pushes their own creative boundaries and continues to try new things. She's been a pioneer and an inspiration to so many artists, and you have to respect that.
A few interesting facts about Kate:
- David Gilmour helped her record the demo that eventually got her signed to EMI at the age of 16
- She only toured once in her career
- She was the first female to top the UK charts with a song she wrote herself (with this unlistenable number)
- In the song "Π", she sings the number to its 137th decimal place
- She was the first singer to use a wireless headset radio microphone onstage
The reason she needed that wireless headset mic? To accommodate extensive dance routines into her shows. (You're welcome, Janet Jackson, et al.)
Now let's watch a perfect example of her musical genius and love for dance in this video for "Running Up That Hill":
Bonus video: Here's a live version of "Running Up That Hill" with David Gilmour, which I'm sharing mostly because I want you to check out the bassist's phenomenal hairstyle:
Among the challenging decisions new parents must make is the name of their child. It’s a lifetime commitment, and not something to be taken lightly.
We very quickly settled on his middle name, Joseph. It’s my dad and brothers’ middle name, and Stacy’s grandfather’s first name and brother’s middle name. So, a family name on both sides. Done.
The first name was trickier. Early on I proposed David, my middle name. I’ve always liked the name David (and when I was a little kid, wished it had been my first name). But I was concerned that giving him my middle name might be narcissistic, so we kept our eyes open for alternatives.
In July, I posted about The Naked City. It’s directed by Jules Dassin, and I turned to Stacy at some point, and said, “How about Jules?” Jules works for us on many levels. Most important: my mom’s name is Julie, so it’s a kind of family name. Also, well, I sincerely appreciate the director’s work, and, frankly, his left-leaning politics. The Beatles’ song “Hey Jude” was originally titled “Hey Jules,” and that makes for a good lullaby. And, of course, there’s the pun on “jewels”.
24 hours after his birth, we still hadn’t settled on a name. We like both David and Jules quite a lot, and I found myself vacillating between the two. Earlier I made a comment that “David Joseph,” while a good name, sounds like the name of somebody else’s child. “Jules Joseph” sounds like the name of our child (It helped that Jules is an anachronistic name, which both plays into our love of history, and allows us to own it more.”. As we’re staring at the birth certificate form, Stacy said, “It’s Jules,” and we were done.
So, there you have it. Jules Joseph Merholz.
An Alaskan delegate on the convention floor just now: “The caribou absolutely love the pipeline! When the pipeline was built 30 years ago there were 3,000 caribou, and now there are about 30,000 caribou out there. During the wintertime the caribou snuggle up to the pipeline because it gives off heat because the oil is warm; it pumps through there.” Keith Olbermann then correctly noted that Rampton “is to some degree full of canal water.”
The Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and video games (LucasArts). Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors.
The Flash interface is really annoying and not useful...the whole image is a better way to look at it. Very Mark Lombardi. (via vc)
(link)
Love this guy:
Look — I would argue that doing work in the community to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that had been hard-hit when the steel plants close, that is relevant only in understanding where I’m coming from. Who I believe in. Who I am fighting for, and why I’m in this race.
The question I have for them is — why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? Do they think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the Presidency? I think that as part of problem, may be why they are out of touch and do not get it, because they haven’t spent a lot of time working on behalf of those folks.
Video shortly.
Update: Here’s the vid:
I could read about con men and tricksters all day.
"I could sell shit at an anti-scat party," he says, "you have to figure out someone's wants and needs and convince them what you have will fill their emotional void." A con man is essentially a salesman -- a remarkably good one -- who excels at making people feel special and understood. A con man validates the victim's desire to believe he has an edge on other people.
It requires avid study of psychology and body language. It's an amazing paradox--a con man has incredible emotional insight, but without the burden of compassion. He must take an intense interest in other people, complete strangers, and work to understand them, yet remain detached and uninvested. That the plan is to cheat these people and ultimately confirm many of their fears cannot be of concern.
The particular fellow profiled in that piece has also written a book called How to Cheat at Everything.
(link)
By Alec MacGillis Both Rudy Giuliani and Gov. Sarah Palin reserved some of their harshest lines last night to mock Barack Obama's years working as a community organizer in Chicago, with Palin saying that it resembled her work as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, except that as a mayor "you have actual responsibilities." The attacks may have been inevitable, given how much emphasis the Obama campaign has placed on that part of his resume. The campaign's...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.
Confirmed: Rudy ran way long in his convention speech, forcing planners to nix a planned soft-focus bio video of Palin that was set to run before she spoke.
You can view the Palin vid here.
Summize, er Twitter Search, is no longer of much use to me because an Alaskan would-be "Sarahcuda" is taking over my Twitter stream. I'm increasingly annoyed by this. Sarahcuda has been my nickname on MySpace, Twitter and other sites for years, and Sarah Palin wasn't even CLEVER enough to come up with it! Her nickname was "Sarah the Barracuda," it has just been shortened by others for 140-char Twitter purposes. I mean, what if McCain was going by "Scobelizer"-- how would Robert feel???
So while I spent a lot of time last week defending her against knee-jerk reactions over her gender and lack of experience, now that I have heard her speak and am duly appalled by her full-on embrace of the Karl Rove style of politics, I am actively working to bring her DOWN and take my good name back. Starting with this clip. (And speaking of Karl Rove)
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
Say what you will about hockey moms and lipstick, but please do not bring sweet, obedient, attention loving pitbulls into the political debate. All you’re doing is reinforcing stereotypes. (photo by minak)
while the fashion world has no doubt moved on from the trends of 2006, we couldn’t help but highlight
this collection by american designer jeremy scott. while the designer is known for his sometimes
outrageous creations, this collection took it to a new level. the theme of the show was fast-food.
models walked the runway wearing chocolate bar inspired dresses and french fry print dresses.
his 2008, money inspired collection will perhaps be a little more slimming but equally as rich.
http://www.jeremyscott.com
via killing denouement
