Delorean's "Ayrton Senna" ep is epic. Too bad they didn't take the high road and follow it up with an ep called "Nelson Piquet." (Wonder about the Venn diagram overlap of people who are into Brazilian Formula One drivers from the 1980s/1990s and people who like electro pop...?) This is off their follow-up album, which is still pretty good.
28 July 2010
26 July 2010
Linearity, jamming, and soccer.
So, I went to a Dave Matthews Band show, and while I wasn't necessarily super into the idea, I do enjoy some of the band's music. I was of course dreading the utter abundance of douchitude, but it wasn't terrible, crowd-wise.
What caught my attention was that this was very different from the other improv-oriented rock band that I like (Phish.) Phish structures their shows into two sets. No opening act, just about 2.5 hours total of Phish. The first set typically contains more songs, with creative soloing but not necessarily a lot of improv that changes the musical structure of a song. The second set, on the other hand, tends to have longer songs that are broken open and which completely depart from the song's original mold. This makes sense to me: you start with the familiar, you play around with it, and by the second set, you see openings, cracks in songs, that weren't there before.
One of the endearing things about Phish, though, is that sometimes they have no idea how to structure a show. Because these concerts are often held in sports arenas, a friend of mine once referred to them as "a sporting event for hippies." That's not entirely off, though I don't thing likening anything to a sporting event is pejorative (I think Doughboy did when he made that statement, though.) And sports in America are - generalization alert - largely about the ending of the game.
Michael Jordan, John Elway, Doug Flutie, a pre-injury 2006 Gilbert Arenas - they were all inspiring and engaging to sports fans because of late-game heroics. Even Landon Donovan gets on that list now, with the miraculous finish against Algeria. Now, what does this have to do with seeing Dave Matthews at Nationals Park? Well, for starters, the crowd was sitting down for most of the show. I like sitting just as much as the next person, even if it will kill you, but I also enjoy standing quite a bit. I'd say I'm 50/50 on the sitting/standing thing. But at a show? I believe firmly in standing.
So, I noticed that the crowd was basically very complacent - sort of like a first quarter basketball crowd, or a third inning baseball crowd. Why get up? Why get into it? What happens early doesn't matter. It's all about the finish. And of course, as it became clear that the band was playing the last song, everyone was standing and behaving as though they were at a rock show.
What this has to do with soccer is that, in the context of how much ink has been spilled over the question of whether there is something fundamentally un-American about soccer or not (whatever the hell un-American means, right? Harvey Pekar was radically American, and so is Dick Cheney) and one thing that I think most scribes have missed is that in soccer, what happens in the first minute can make all the difference. In American football, there are so many possessions (and the possibility for half-scores in the form of field goals) that a good team can put themselves in position to remain competitive. Same in basketball, where a team can go on a sudden 12-2 run and make a game suddenly competitive. But in soccer, there are no half-scores, and no linear progression.
Put differently: a good drive in football that takes you 80 yards down the field can get you 7 points or 3 points. Unless you mess up, you'll get one of the two. A great possession in soccer can only result in a goal or not result in a goal. There's no reward for good effort - there's only the goal or not the goal. Similarly, a goal scored in the first minute of a game can be decisive. If you believe that the important stuff needs to wait until the end of an event to take place, you may find yourself sorely disappointed by a game where you can be locked into a bad outcome in the first minute, and spend 89 hapless minutes fighting to change that.
Besides thinking about this stuff, I also overheard a great conversation in the men's room, but I'll save that for later.
What caught my attention was that this was very different from the other improv-oriented rock band that I like (Phish.) Phish structures their shows into two sets. No opening act, just about 2.5 hours total of Phish. The first set typically contains more songs, with creative soloing but not necessarily a lot of improv that changes the musical structure of a song. The second set, on the other hand, tends to have longer songs that are broken open and which completely depart from the song's original mold. This makes sense to me: you start with the familiar, you play around with it, and by the second set, you see openings, cracks in songs, that weren't there before.
One of the endearing things about Phish, though, is that sometimes they have no idea how to structure a show. Because these concerts are often held in sports arenas, a friend of mine once referred to them as "a sporting event for hippies." That's not entirely off, though I don't thing likening anything to a sporting event is pejorative (I think Doughboy did when he made that statement, though.) And sports in America are - generalization alert - largely about the ending of the game.
Michael Jordan, John Elway, Doug Flutie, a pre-injury 2006 Gilbert Arenas - they were all inspiring and engaging to sports fans because of late-game heroics. Even Landon Donovan gets on that list now, with the miraculous finish against Algeria. Now, what does this have to do with seeing Dave Matthews at Nationals Park? Well, for starters, the crowd was sitting down for most of the show. I like sitting just as much as the next person, even if it will kill you, but I also enjoy standing quite a bit. I'd say I'm 50/50 on the sitting/standing thing. But at a show? I believe firmly in standing.
So, I noticed that the crowd was basically very complacent - sort of like a first quarter basketball crowd, or a third inning baseball crowd. Why get up? Why get into it? What happens early doesn't matter. It's all about the finish. And of course, as it became clear that the band was playing the last song, everyone was standing and behaving as though they were at a rock show.
What this has to do with soccer is that, in the context of how much ink has been spilled over the question of whether there is something fundamentally un-American about soccer or not (whatever the hell un-American means, right? Harvey Pekar was radically American, and so is Dick Cheney) and one thing that I think most scribes have missed is that in soccer, what happens in the first minute can make all the difference. In American football, there are so many possessions (and the possibility for half-scores in the form of field goals) that a good team can put themselves in position to remain competitive. Same in basketball, where a team can go on a sudden 12-2 run and make a game suddenly competitive. But in soccer, there are no half-scores, and no linear progression.
Put differently: a good drive in football that takes you 80 yards down the field can get you 7 points or 3 points. Unless you mess up, you'll get one of the two. A great possession in soccer can only result in a goal or not result in a goal. There's no reward for good effort - there's only the goal or not the goal. Similarly, a goal scored in the first minute of a game can be decisive. If you believe that the important stuff needs to wait until the end of an event to take place, you may find yourself sorely disappointed by a game where you can be locked into a bad outcome in the first minute, and spend 89 hapless minutes fighting to change that.
Besides thinking about this stuff, I also overheard a great conversation in the men's room, but I'll save that for later.
13 July 2010
This Merkin Life
Every now and then, I get to actually spend more than an hour getting to or from somewhere in a car, and my default setting is to check out a “This American Life.” We were driving back from Roanoke this past weekend – also known as the town in a place where every town is a town you know from a bluegrass tune, like Flint Hill – and Ms. AC chose this episode to listen to. The second story is unbelievably sad and moving, and when we got home and had a so-called “driveway moment” (though the “driveway” was actually Kalorama Road, but whatevs), I thought I was in for a lesson about the importance of not staring an episode of “This American Life” when you’re too close to home. Typically, if they have a downer story, there’s a third, uplifting story to follow, and I thought, “Oh, if only we had another 12 minutes of driving, we could let Ira Glass finish us off with an unlikely tale of bonhomie and wit.”
Long story short, we timed it right. There was no third story. Just this horribly sad one, which went on and on and on, and which grows increasingly weird and transgressive. You can get curious by looking at this picture, or, even better, don’t look at the picture now. Listen to the show first, and then click through to the picture. Stupid Temerlins.
09 July 2010
Have I been gone for a while? You bet I've been gone for a while.
But I haven’t gone anywhere, really. Just been way too busy to carve out the time to do anything meaningful that isn’t either school- or home improvement-related. Also, the World Cup was kind of a time drain, but Brasil’s loss did give me the perfect excuse to watch the film version of “The Road,” which was lovely and truly inspirational when you hate humanity.
One thing I’ve been fighting for at work, for quite some time, is a fair and broad telecommuting policy. I could have secured a separate peace several months ago, but I kind of decided that I wanted to make my office a better place to work. And in the process – though it’s been miserable and I’ve been confronted with idiocy and small-mindedness at virtually every turn – is realizing that I’m sort of a company man. Not in the boomer “stay with one company forever” sense of the word, though that may come to pass…but more in the sense of enjoying the belonging-to-an-organization part of work.
To be clear, I hate most people, especially those in my office. And not having to suffer these kinds of people is exactly one of the things I envy the most about people who freelance. But what’s not for me is the feeling that I’m only in it for me. The organizational behavior, changing the culture of a place, trying to do a small thing to help senior management realize the world is changing – I really enjoy that part of things. I can’t quite say why.
Sure, it’d be nice to have more autonomy. But I have the obligation of going to work every day to thank for a number of friends (not to mention a spouse) and other adventures. So, even though at times it’s really bad, I’m having a moment of self-satisfaction with the fact that I work in a building with people. But please, let me get this telecommuting policy implemented already…
24 May 2010
An immigration quickie
It's fairly embarrassing that I've never linked to this chart, which does its best to explain the legal immigration maze.
Something to remember when angry people in border states complain that people should come here legally. I'm not advocating for illegal immigration, of course - just pointing out that the current clusterfuck of a process, which results in a few tens of thousands of people becoming permanent residents every year, and a couple other tens of thousands being eligible to work here, is beyond broken.
PS. Hat tip to AF for reminding me of this a few weeks ago.
Something to remember when angry people in border states complain that people should come here legally. I'm not advocating for illegal immigration, of course - just pointing out that the current clusterfuck of a process, which results in a few tens of thousands of people becoming permanent residents every year, and a couple other tens of thousands being eligible to work here, is beyond broken.
PS. Hat tip to AF for reminding me of this a few weeks ago.
29 April 2010
A worthwhile commute
I drive to work exactly once a week right now. On Thursdays, we get veggies from a CSA set-up delivered to my office, and since I don’t have class that night (at least till later this summer), everything works out pretty well. This means that I have very few commuter habits: I’m never sure what to listen to, which path to take, when to be in the left lane and when to avoid it. It’s exhausting, that level of decision-making, but every now and then you have a very rewarding commute – rewarding not because it’s especially fast or problem-free, but because it reminds you that live where you live and not somewhere else.
In my case, this morning, it meant seeing the following:
-seeing a middle-aged woman being dropped off by a gentleman caller in a very posh section of Kalorama, doing the walk of shame. I could tell because she was wearing an Ovechkin jersey.
-while caught in funeral traffic, catching the distinct whiff of a presidential motorcade not too far behind me.
-still in funeral traffic, listening to the new Trans Am album, and thinking about how great the music sounds when you’re surrounded by police cars, secret service SUVs, and sirens, sirens, sirens.
-STILL in funeral traffic, seeing Donna Brazile and…daughter, I assume?...emerging from a cab.
-people dressed to mourn, but behaving as though they are at an important society gathering – which, anyone who remembers Craig Crawford being interviewed by Imus around the time of the Reagan funeral will remember, they sort of are. Funerals, protests, and inaugurations: these are the events that infringe on our daily lives.
I was stressed till I realized that being 20 minutes late to work would have no discernible impact on my day or on my relative state of anxiety. Life was good.
22 April 2010
I both do and don't hope that this exchange defines grad school for me
Innocent youngster: Why did Stupak care so much? I mean, there aren’t even abortion providers in his district.
Solid liberal prof, nodding in agreement: For sure, it’s a setback for reproductive rights.
Me: But…I’m not saying I buy it, but if you buy the argument that it’s a moral issue, then, you know, consider it by analogy to slavery. Telling someone, “Don’t like slavery? Then don’t have one” doesn’t work, because you don’t want anyone to have slaves.
Snotty lobbyist from Citizens Against Government Waste who is incapable of sounding nice: Actually? It had, like, nothing to do with that? It was really funding? For his reelection campaign? He couldn’t afford to lose support from his pro-life donors. We always had him voting for it. We knew he was going to support the bill.
Solid liberal prof: Because he said months ago he would? Why didn’t you think the dynamics had changed? As he ratcheted up the rhetoric, he was really boxing himself in.
Snotty lobbyist: Well? Yeah, we knew. We just knew. I mean, the pro-life Democrats had to put on a show, but they were going to vote in block because no one wants to be the deciding vote. But, for him? It was really all about the reelection.
This exchange happened the day before Stupak announced he would not seek reelection.
14 April 2010
If I notice that the most recent episode of "Lost"...
…featured two references to songs on side B of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” what exactly about the statement dates me the most? The old Bruce album, or the fact that I remember that the songs referenced opened up side B of the album? And that side B of that particular album may be the greatest side in the history of rock?
13 April 2010
morning-run talk
She: the physiological basis for ‘the bends’; the meaning of the term (ie, it’s hard to bend your joints when afflicted by it); nitric acid boiled into blood.
Me: Asymptotic covariances; the importance of homoskedasticity; hate of SAS.
But hey, at least we got out for a run.
12 April 2010
In which I push music!
This is really Gordon's terrain (wiredformusic!) here, but I've been known to make the odd mix here and there, and being in grad school has awakened all the angst of being in high school and college, which were my prime mix-making years. I'm still working on an econ/public finance type-mix, but here are a few tunes that have made my quant playlist. There are a few missing tracks (Luna's "math wiz"! Lala doesn't think I own it, but lala, you're wrong about that, just as you're wrong about the Silver Jews not existing, and about me not owning "Supra Genius" by Soul Coughing or "Fractions and feelings" by Malkmus + Jix.)
Without further ado! The quant mixtape! Comments below.
1. 4 out of 5 (Soul Coughing)
Few bands spent as much time counting or listing numbers as Soul Coughing. Accordingly, they are something like the patron saints of this mix.
2. One (Aimee Mann)
Pretty self-evident.
3. Don’t tell me to do the math(s) (Los Campesinos!)
Every mix needs token bratty Scottish indie punk. Work on your algebra and stand out in the rain! Plus, the title reflects that charming British locution of calling it “maths.”
4. The Calculation (Regina Spektor)
“Counted up our feelings / and divided them up even / and it called that calculation perfect love.” HAHA, nice try, liar. Multivariate linear regression is the opposite of perfect love.
5. Plus Ones (Okkervil River)
Ah yes, the plus one. Because this song is explicitly about all the things that got left out of other songs that enumerate things (97th tear, 100th luftballoon), I think of it as being about the error term.
6. If you don’t like the effects, don’t produce the cause (Funkadelic)
Funkadelic goes right to the heart of the matter, don’t they? They bypass association entirely and go right to causality. This must be a bivariate model since they don’t touch on interaction effects. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get to hear George Clinton’s thoughts on multicollinearity.
7. 100% Dundee (The Roots)
In evaluating Dundee-ness, it is clear that the Roots will not tolerate even the smallest alpha. This song mentions sigma, assumptions, and the phrase “lyrically calculus in this arithmetic hip hop metropolis.” It therefore makes math seem much cooler than it is.
8. 6’1” (Liz Phair)
Clearly what’s going on here is that the break-up in the song has caused Liz Phair to reparameterize her height variable, and she’s found that the recalibration gets her an extra 11 inches on her height measurement.
9. 123 goodbye (Elvis Perkins)
Abacus of the rain! Calculus of pain! It’s all there, and it’s all true. Elvis Perkins has written a couple of gorgeous songs about the death of his mom – she was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center in 2001. This is one of them.
10. My mathematical mind (Spoon)
My English lit mind does not see the breaks.
11. Neverending math equation (Sun Kil Moon)
Originally a Modest Mouse song. Love this cover. Google the lyrics because they’re good, and while Sun Kil Moon has this great mopey voice, he’s also completely incomprehensible.
12. Feelgood by numbers (The Go! Team)
Except going by numbers makes me feel bad. On the other hand, this song makes me feel decidedly good, so maybe you can feel good by “Feelgood by numbers.” Hmmm.
13. Two sevens clash (Culture)
Marcus Garvey predicted that on July 7, 1977, something epic or terrible was going to happen. The sevens would clash. The band Culture made this prediction famous, and the song was so popular that supposedly when the date rolled around, most of Kingston shut down. Schools, stores – all closed for fear of the sevens clashing. Nothing happened, but we certainly do put a lot of faith in numbers, don’t we?
14. 100% (Sonic Youth)
Much like the Roots’ uncompromising approach to Dundee, Sonic Youth will not accept any degree of alpha in their “love for dead roadie model.”
15. Casiotone nation (Soul Coughing)
Again, with the counting.
16. I wish I could go back to college (Avenue Q cast)
Because this is how Quant II makes me feel.
17. A day to God is 1000 years (RZA)
RZA takes on the delicate issue of scaling in data. Sure, it’s just a day to God, but it’s 1000 years for humans. Be mindful of how to interpret the coefficient on your time variable in this model because of thi scaling issue. And, bonus thematic tie-in: The Wu guys are five percenters, or at least use a lot of it in their lyrics. So, we’re back to Soul Coughing, the oroboros of quant music.
18. Count me out (The Del McCoury Band)
Yes, Del. Sing it.
Without further ado! The quant mixtape! Comments below.
1. 4 out of 5 (Soul Coughing)
Few bands spent as much time counting or listing numbers as Soul Coughing. Accordingly, they are something like the patron saints of this mix.
2. One (Aimee Mann)
Pretty self-evident.
3. Don’t tell me to do the math(s) (Los Campesinos!)
Every mix needs token bratty Scottish indie punk. Work on your algebra and stand out in the rain! Plus, the title reflects that charming British locution of calling it “maths.”
4. The Calculation (Regina Spektor)
“Counted up our feelings / and divided them up even / and it called that calculation perfect love.” HAHA, nice try, liar. Multivariate linear regression is the opposite of perfect love.
5. Plus Ones (Okkervil River)
Ah yes, the plus one. Because this song is explicitly about all the things that got left out of other songs that enumerate things (97th tear, 100th luftballoon), I think of it as being about the error term.
6. If you don’t like the effects, don’t produce the cause (Funkadelic)
Funkadelic goes right to the heart of the matter, don’t they? They bypass association entirely and go right to causality. This must be a bivariate model since they don’t touch on interaction effects. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get to hear George Clinton’s thoughts on multicollinearity.
7. 100% Dundee (The Roots)
In evaluating Dundee-ness, it is clear that the Roots will not tolerate even the smallest alpha. This song mentions sigma, assumptions, and the phrase “lyrically calculus in this arithmetic hip hop metropolis.” It therefore makes math seem much cooler than it is.
8. 6’1” (Liz Phair)
Clearly what’s going on here is that the break-up in the song has caused Liz Phair to reparameterize her height variable, and she’s found that the recalibration gets her an extra 11 inches on her height measurement.
9. 123 goodbye (Elvis Perkins)
Abacus of the rain! Calculus of pain! It’s all there, and it’s all true. Elvis Perkins has written a couple of gorgeous songs about the death of his mom – she was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center in 2001. This is one of them.
10. My mathematical mind (Spoon)
My English lit mind does not see the breaks.
11. Neverending math equation (Sun Kil Moon)
Originally a Modest Mouse song. Love this cover. Google the lyrics because they’re good, and while Sun Kil Moon has this great mopey voice, he’s also completely incomprehensible.
12. Feelgood by numbers (The Go! Team)
Except going by numbers makes me feel bad. On the other hand, this song makes me feel decidedly good, so maybe you can feel good by “Feelgood by numbers.” Hmmm.
13. Two sevens clash (Culture)
Marcus Garvey predicted that on July 7, 1977, something epic or terrible was going to happen. The sevens would clash. The band Culture made this prediction famous, and the song was so popular that supposedly when the date rolled around, most of Kingston shut down. Schools, stores – all closed for fear of the sevens clashing. Nothing happened, but we certainly do put a lot of faith in numbers, don’t we?
14. 100% (Sonic Youth)
Much like the Roots’ uncompromising approach to Dundee, Sonic Youth will not accept any degree of alpha in their “love for dead roadie model.”
15. Casiotone nation (Soul Coughing)
Again, with the counting.
16. I wish I could go back to college (Avenue Q cast)
Because this is how Quant II makes me feel.
17. A day to God is 1000 years (RZA)
RZA takes on the delicate issue of scaling in data. Sure, it’s just a day to God, but it’s 1000 years for humans. Be mindful of how to interpret the coefficient on your time variable in this model because of thi scaling issue. And, bonus thematic tie-in: The Wu guys are five percenters, or at least use a lot of it in their lyrics. So, we’re back to Soul Coughing, the oroboros of quant music.
18. Count me out (The Del McCoury Band)
Yes, Del. Sing it.
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