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Here’s an interesting exercise. Watch this video of early 70’s Stevie Wonder. Head the posters added notes “listen to this at full volume loudly”; there’s a reason they were redundant on that point. Listen very closely to the PA, the room sound, how the instruments stick out. I have a feeling that most sound engineers today would think that this sounds terrible and try to fix it, but damn is it gorgeous. Everything is so raw it hurts.

for extra credit watch James Jamerson and Marvin Gaye, just because it’s incredible. I’m thinking about naming my first born Jamerson.

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I haven’t seen dissent this beautiful since.. well, never.

shamelessly borrowed from Jon Taplin’s blog

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This is my favorite TED speech of them all. I hatched this idea that I wrote very poorly about here called the Law of Conservation of Adherents. In it’s base form it is very similar to Kevin Kelly’s idea, only that his idea is based around technology only. But I wanted to take it one step further, past just being a technology, to also applying to things that people do. And along side these things that people do, I wanted to proclaim one startling fact, that there is a conservation of the number of people that do this thing, through-out time. I’ll give you an example. A friend of Kelly’s says, well, how about steam cars? Surely there can’t be people who still use steam cars? But sure enough, Kelly was able to find a website that sold new parts for the Thompson(?) steam car. This is exactly what I mean by conservation of adherents, that once an idea of something exists, the number of people that participate in this idea over the remainder of history either stays the same or increases. And yes, I do claim to have thought of it first, but I did not possess the considerable skill that Kelly does at the time that I thought of it, in order to jump through the few remaining hoops that caused it to remain an undeveloped day-dream instead of a Gladwellian bestseller.

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Thanks Chris!

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another episode in the ongoing Dubuque-NYC saga. New Yorkers always reference Dubuque for some reason. I had a theory that there must have been an exodus in the 60’s of talented smart-asses who made it into the cocktail party set in New York, which really put the name, Dubuque on the map in the mind of the New Yorker. Or perhaps that flow is constant.

see the New York Times Story

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I really like this guy, Stephen Fry, although, admittedly, up until now I’d never known his name. He is one of those British actors who’s been in everything over the years. But I remember him from parts in the Young Ones. Which is street-cred to the 10th power for a 30-something like me. Click on the pic and you can goto Gnu’s site and watch his dialectic on free software, if you like.

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I’m very proud of this one.

http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/cranky-with-the-culture/#comment-11324

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There is a Dean Karnazes interview up on KQED from July 22nd. If you ever need inspiration get out and go running, or if your a jogger and you want to run farther and longer, Dean is a great place to look. He’s just such a cool guy.
Interview Link

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http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/cranky-with-the-culture/#comment-11092

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