M@tt Largo's Cerebral Vortex

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2008-09-02T07:55:00.001-07:00

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2007-03-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

Check out this website if you are a Techie or Geek looking for contract jobs:

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Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

2006-04-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together. The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

read more | digg story

Working in IT akin to 'prison sentence' - Former BT technology chief tells

2006-03-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Cochrane, who was speaking at the launch of a Star Technology report From basement to boardroom; recognising the business value of IT compiled by the Yankee Group, said that the way that IT departments were run was â��stupidâ�� and that working in IT was more akin to a â��prison sentence.â��

read more | digg story

Roman Mythological References in

2006-03-31T23:58:00.000-08:00

Aquatic Symbolism and Roman Mythological References in "Leave it to Beaver": An Evolutionary Analog
The aquatic symbolism and Roman mythological references are obvious. Before we get to those, we have to set the foundation. The family's surname is "Cleaver." ...

read more | digg story

DVD Review: Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized

2006-03-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized, the sequel to Desparate Teenage Lovedolls, is a Low-Budget, Post-Punk period piece that draws its inspiration from the Los Angeles punk subculture. This film is a tongue-in-cheek stab at the establishment, Rock stars, slimy record label types, religious cults, pimps, and 70's cinema. This film leaves no stone unturned in it's covertly intelligent commentary of the underground Punk Rock scene, feminism, and drug abuse. As this sequel unfolds we find lead vocalist Kitty Carryall (Jennifer Schwartz) has descended to living a delusional, hazy existence, fueled by alcohol. Alexandria (Cheeta Punkerton) is a skanky, Hollywood Boulevard bangtail, and Patch Kelly (Janet Housden) is now the leader of a troupe of mindless, acid-head, commune misfits and has transformed into a religious cult leader going by the moniker of Patch Christ. Their major objective is to stage a Lovedolls comeback. They don't settle for the usual media blitz methods, but decide to resort to swift and blinding violence, coercion and gang-knifing record company execs.

The charm of Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized is that Director, David Markey, had no grandiose intentions for the film, except to create a lo-fi, satirical, attack on a laundry list of societal issues and pop figures in the spirit of mid-80s, D.I.Y. Post-Punk, underground mindset. One of the more humorous elements was the continous parody of the 1971 film, Billy Jack (that attempted to make a statement about racism as far as pertained to Native Americans in the 1970s) and the hippie movement. Other funny moments include an attack by a possessed Gene Simmons (ala Kiss) doll, a swipe at religious cults and cult leaders (specifically Jim Jones and the People's Temple), and a parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In the Dark" video with the chorus lyrics changed to "Somebody just shoot me in the dark" that ends in the assination of Springsteen.

Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized primary appeal is in its first-rate list of 80's Alternative/Post-Punk, heavy-hitters including: Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Steve and Jeff McDonald (Redd Kross), the Meat Puppets, Vicki Peterson (The Bangles), Sky Saxon (The Seeds), and Sonic Youth. A nod goes to The Lovedolls performance of "Love Machine", which rocked more than a lot of 'real' bands, who currently try to exist in this musical space. The bottom line is that this film is an enjoyable, albeit goofy, piece of nostalgia from the burgeoning Post-Punk underground music scene of the mid-80's that will is best viewed with a bunch of your Indie music afficianado friends, a couple of cases of cheap beer, while wearing your Black Flag t-shirt. This flick will either make you want to drag all of your vintage, 80's Post-Punk vinyl down from the attic or obsessively search Web for their mp3 equivalents.

Matt "SST" Largo

DVD Review: I'll Bury You Tomorrow

2006-03-05T02:42:00.000-08:00

The Beech Funeral Home is the setting for a carnival of weirdness in I’ll Bury You Tomorrow. Mr. Beech’s employees, Jake (Jerry Murdock) and Corey (played by the Director, Alan Rowe Kelly, in drag) are secretly running a black-market organ business. Mrs. Beech, who is gradually losing touch with reality, adds to the insanity of the situation with her hopes that their dead daughter will come back to her. Meanwhile at the Port Oram train station, Dolores Finley (Zoe Daelman Chlanda) arrives sporting a circled ‘Help Wanted’ newspaper ad for a position at the Beech Funeral Home. At first glance she looks fairly normal, but her arrival scene is spattered with vignettes of carnage and visions of bloody body parts that could possibly be hiding in her luggage. She gets directions from the train station porter and lands on the Beech Funeral Home doorstep. She subsequently impresses Mr. Beech with her knowledge of the funeral business and her expertise with embalming tools. Dolores seems like a perfect fit for the job and is hired on the spot even though her references are lacking. Little does Mr. Beech know that Dolores transforms into a mask-wearing (ala Paula Sheppard in Alice, Sweet Alice), slutty, schizophrenic, necrophiliac. This film picked up a total of 6 International Film Festival Awards:

Feature Film Winner – Telluride IndieFest 2002 and Key West IndieFest 2003
Best Horror Feature – New York Int’l Independent Film & Video Festival 2002
The GORE-GORE Award – Festival of the Macabre
Best Make-up Design – The B Movie Theater Film Fest

Although the premise of I’ll Bury You Tomorrow is ideal fodder for a B-Movie, Horror flick, it fails to provide enough momentum to push this film into the realm of “Campy but Cool.” I wasn’t expecting to see Oscar-quality performances or cinematic breakthroughs, but I my expectations were set a bit high after reading the laundry list of awards this film garnered during its original theatrical release. Besides a running time one minute shy of two hours, one major problem with this film is that it doesn’t effectively capitalize on the basics: fear of abandonment, anxiety of being lost, fear of the unknown, etc. (See The Hills Have Eyes, Evil Dead, and more recently, The Blair Witch Project). The best performances by far were turned in by Chlanda as Dolores and Murdock, who played a dual role as Jake and Sheriff Mitch. I didn’t even realize Murdock's dual role until I scrutinized the credits went back to view some scenes to verify it. Kudos go to make-up artist Kari Arthurs for helping to pull off Murdock’s dual role, Kelly’s gender-bending role as Corey, and the realistic look of the stiffs on the mortuary slab. I also think that Chlanda may have a shot at feature films if she can hook up with the likes of Wes Craven, George Romero, or Sam Raimi. The bottom line: I’ll Bury You Tomorrow was gory and amusing, but not outright scary. I’ll probably develop an I’ll Bury You Tomorrow drinking game and add it to the roster of movies I watch the week of Halloween.

The Electron Sea is Near...

2006-03-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Visit the ElectronSea.com the future home of Matt Largo’s Cerebral Vortex.

2006-03-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Discussion about new robot designer life-forms, the Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely", Pilotdrift's new release "Water Sphere", The Voom Blooms' new single "Politics & Cigarettes" to be released on March 20, 2006.

MP3 File

Pleo: The New Robotic "Designer Life Form"

2006-02-21T23:39:00.000-08:00

The next big “must-have” toy this year, may be in the form of a one-week old baby Camarasaurus. One of the co-creators of Furby, Caleb Chung, is putting the finishing touches on a new animatronic dinosaur called Pleo. Eight years ago the Furby doll was all the rage, with sales of over 40 million units. Chung’s Emeryville, California-based start-up, Ugobe (a play on words meaning You Go Become), will be manufacturing Pleo, which is scheduled to hit retail shelves in Q3 2006 just in time for the holidays. 49-year-old Chung, dubbed a ‘modern Gepetto’ by Wired magazine, chooses to design toys in isolation at his Boise, Idaho home, away from the rest of his Bay Area staff. He envisions Pleo as more than just another robotic toy. The main objective of Pleo is to create an emotional attachment with its owner. Ugobe reps say that if you play with it long enough, Pleo will learn just like a dog, cat or small child. Pleo moves just like you'd expect a baby dinosaur to move, and not a robot (although who really knows how a baby dinosaur moved?). If you think that Furby was ‘smart’, you’ll be impressed (or creeped out) when you hear that Pleo will have seven computer brains that control 14 servos and 38 sensors compared to Furby’s two computer brains. This is a quantum leap from the Artificial Intelligence implemented in toys like Furby and Sony's ill-fated, Aibo robot dog. Pleo is the first of a line of “designer life forms” that Chung and Ugobe plan to create that combine the latest in artificial intelligence, robotics, mechanical engineering and toy design. Pleo will have ”neural network'' software -- a program that behaves in a brain-like way as it processes many pieces of information to determine its actions. Another interesting note: Pleo does not have an on/off switch.

All of this cutting-edge technology packed into a 20-inch, Jurassic dinosaur toy seems a great new line of toys or the start of something pretty disturbing. First it’s robotic dinosaurs, what next? The next logical step in the progression of this technology will probably be humanoid “designer life forms.” The main objective of creating an emotional attachment between owner and robot, reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode called “The Lonely.” In this particular episode set in the future, Jack Warden stars as Corry, a criminal from the future, who has been sentenced to solitary confinement for fifty years on a penal asteroid (he has the whole barren asteroid to himself). The captain of a passing freighter, who sympathizes with him, leaves him a box containing a female robot named Alicia (played by Jean Marsh). Warden doesn't take to her at first, but soon he grows very fond of her, and eventually falls in love with her (they only showed him playing checkers and eating dinner with her, but do the math). After a few months go by, the captain of the freighter returns bearing good news: Warden's been pardoned and is free to leave. However, weight restrictions do not permit him to take Alicia with him. Warden doesn't want to leave her, because he feels that she really is a woman. The captain takes out a gun and blows Alicia's face off, pointing out to Warden that all he's leaving behind is loneliness. This Twilight Zone episode is an extreme example of the emotional dynamic that can possibly transpire between people and machines. As the level of complexity and sophistication of robots increases, forming emotional attachments to them will be come easier. Breaking those attachments will become more difficult because robots will be perceived as being “alive” in some small way.

Think about it. What IS the exit strategy to emotionally detach owners from their Pleos? Taking a page from the Twilight Zone book of solutions, there just may be a market for a 5 kg, Cretaceous Period, asteroid to put these pesky little Pleos down realistically… a new, functional, 21st Century version of the Pet Rock. It’s just a thought. Pleo will sport SD memory expansion and will set you back a mere $200.

For more information visit: Ugobe.com

CD Review: Pilotdrift – “Water Sphere”

2006-02-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

Texarkana’s latest export, Pilotdrift, has recently released Water Sphere, which runs the gamut musical styles from cool, rhythmically-driven, Indie Pop to scary, Fellini-esque, Cabaret tunes. Pilotdrift managed to catch the attention of Polyphonic Spree's Tim DeLaughter and Julie Doyle, who own Good Records. They consigned their first self-released CD, Iter Facere (5 of the 13 tracks ended up on "Water Sphere") at Good Records and shortly thereafter became the first band to be signed to Good Records Recordings that was not a product of DeLaughter. Upon first listen, I could easily tell that these guys defy simple categorization of their music and that little to none of creative soundscapes on Water Sphere were accidental or random studio magic. The fact that Pilotdrift calls Texarkana, Texas home, seemed unusual at first, but then again, the Flaming Lips call Norman, Oklahoma home. Pilotdrift (Kelly Carr – lead vocals/piano/acoustic guitar, Jay Budzilowski – bass, Ben Rice – drums, Eric Russell – electronics/guitar, and John David Blagg – electric guitar) slides comfortably between several musical genres while showcasing their vast lexicon of musical styles and influences. I have to admit, when I first popped this CD into my car stereo and cranked the volume to get the total effect, a few of the songs (“Late Night in a Wax Museum” and “Jekyll & Hyde Suite”) initially gave me the heebie-jeebies just by virtue of their dynamic range and the brooding mood they created. Throughout the album, I could hear likely influences from contemporaries like Supergrass, Radiohead, Mercury Rev, Pink Floyd, the Flaming Lips, and Sigur Ros. Some of my favorite tracks are:

“Caught in My Trap” – An intricate, Alt-Rock Opera in three movements.

“Comets” – A beautifully textured, ethereal tune complete with haunting, breathy choral arrangements

“Bubblecraft” – A cool, medium-tempo, Sci-Fi, Martini Lounge tune with Thom Yorke-ish vocals and a chorus that seems to contain a snippet of musical DNA from the Charlie’s Angels television series theme.

“Passenger Seat” – Rhythmically-driven, Alt-Pop song with tasteful helpings of soundboard experimentation and digital panache. Four minutes and forty-three seconds of this song will leave you wanting more.

Overall Water Sphere is a pleasurable, mind-stretching, musical odyssey from the atmospheric first track, “Caught in My Trap,” to the Radiohead-meets-Andrew Lloyd Webber feel of the last track, “So Long.” This is an exceptional debut album and is hopefully the harbinger of more great music from this Texarkana intelligent and musically inventive quintet. Catch Pilotdrift live as they wrap up their tour with Supergrass: Feb 22 - Los Angeles, CA at Avalon; Feb 23 - San Francisco, CA at The Great American Music Hall; Feb 25 - Seattle, WA at The Showbox; and Feb 26 - Vancouver, BC at The Commodore Ballroom

Visit them online at: Pilotdrift.com

Highly Recommended.

More Google Rumors: Trogdor, Gmail Calendar, Pervasive U.S. Wi-Fi

2006-02-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

Google is rumoured to be working on an Ajax web page editor, a calendar app, and pervasive wireless in the U.S.:

1. Google has a project codenamed Trogdor, an Ajax webpage editor for creating web pages. = geocities except with a javascript page creator.
2. Calendar for GMail, basically like ical in javascript
3. Wireless in every city in the US, not just mountainview - still in early development + legal problems

Background information on Ajax:

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, or its acronym Ajax (Pronounced A-JAX), is a Web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to shift a great deal of interaction to the Web surfer's computer, exchanging data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability. The Ajax technique uses a combination of:

XHTML (or HTML) and CSS for marking up and styling information.

The DOM accessed with a client-side scripting language, especially ECMAScript implementations like JavaScript and JScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented

The XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in some situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server.

XML is commonly used as the format for transfering data, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML.

Like DHTML, LAMP, or SPA, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together. In fact, derivative/composite technologies based substantially upon Ajax, such as AFLAX, are already appearing.

Google or not, an Ajax-style GeoCities makes sense. We’ve seen portal-like editors like Dobrado that make light work of page creation by novices. Even Protopage makes a good editor for someone who wants to whip up a quick homepage. We also have many rich text editors being used in production, such as JotSpot’s use of the Dojo Rich Text Editor.

Tools like these not only make basic HTML generation a breeze, but could also help create some Ajax features too. Imagine a Portlet editor using drag-and-drop to set up the link flow. Another example is a Live Search widget, allowing all pages managed by the user to be searched.

CD Single Review: The Voom Blooms – “Politics & Cigarettes”

2006-02-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

Hailing from Loughborough in the U.K., The Voom Blooms are a four-piece band that creates masterful tunes with Rock and Roll bravado that belie their experience. Having only formed less than a year ago, The Voom Blooms (George Guildford - Guitars/Vocals, Thom Mackie – Drums, Craig Monk – Guitars, and Brett Young – Bass), seem to have tapped into a musical Castalian spring allowing them to create and deliver raw energy and genuine emotion where many fledgling bands fail. Their music, rich with a keen balance of texture, space, and volume, is replete with glimpses of British Culture and eclectic cinematic references. Drawing numerous comparisons to contemporaries such as Bloc Party, Interpol, and the Libertines, The Voom Blooms have defined their own unique parcel of this genre and musical space. Their soon to be released single, consisting of two tracks, begins with "Politics & Cigarettes", a future classic rock anthem. The unassuming intro starts with two tastefully interwoven guitar riffs accented by syncopated, machine-gun snare drum fills. Guildford’s passionate vocals enter the mix declaring:

You can keep all your culture
’cause we have got all our culture
and you can keep your politics
let someone else, get your kicks for you...
(without us, without her, and without...)

its awfully nice that you've stayed
its awfully nice what you've said for us
cause we all had such a beautiful start
cause we have got simple hearts.

if you just hold on, to politics & cigarettes
if you just hold on, to politics & cigarettes
if you just hold on, you'll find...

“Politics & Cigarettes” is a sonically huge song that artfully utilizes smashing dynamics and lyrical swagger to effectively convey a sense of heady, youthful defiance. Guildford says that this song was inspired by a 1978 film by Scottish director Bill Douglas called "My Way Home" and has particular relevance to today's political climate. The second track on the disk, “Thoughts of Rena,” is a mid-tempo number that opens with beautifully deft, spatial guitar riffs and chunks of strategically-placed, sinewy percussion, complemented by soaring melodic vocals:

I thought of Rena yesterday,
i dont know what to say, she got me, oh oh
and i thought of Rena just a moment ago,
she's from a right small town,
where things are so-so.
I thought of Rena,
she's out with John, where'd all these townies come from?
look at em', oh oh.
As i talk to Rena, they've had enough.

Now there's a riot sound,
left, left, right, right, right, left, left.
left, left, right, right, right, left, left.
Now there's a riot sound,
think that i should walk home, yet again.

“Thoughts of Rena” is a perfect example of a song that is greater than the sum of its parts. Guildford enlightened me with the meaning behind the song:

“The song is about falling for a bird, but she's got a bloke already. When you get to the club and she's in there, all your mates are telling you not to talk to her, not to go over to her, but you cant help it, when you do the result is a scrap with some townies and a long walk home 'cause you’re too broke to afford a taxi (a regular occurrence in the town we're from). It’s a bit of a true story really. Some people ask what the left, left right part means. It’s a reference to being punched from all directions as the fight breaks out in the club.”

The Voom Blooms have been generating an enormous amount of buzz due to their electrifying live performances. They have shared the stage with the likes of The Paddingtons and Babyshambles (ex-Libertines frontman, Pete Doherty’s new band) and are slated to play some U.K. shows with Mercury Records recording artists, Boy Kill Boy, toward the end of February 2006. Their debut single Politics & Cigarettes will be released on Fiction/Polydor records on March 20th to coincide with their 14-date club NME tour. Armed with a cache of great songs and the power to deliver the goods, The Voom Blooms seem to be on a definite course for Rock stardom. I see an upgrade from taxis to limousines in their future.

For more information visit: TheVoomBlooms.com

Highly Recommended.

Matt "London Head" Largo

Book Review: Learn to Program

2006-02-04T01:45:00.000-08:00

Learn to Program by Chris Pine is a concise introduction to the world of programming using an interpreted scripting language called Ruby. An initial “cool point” goes to Pine for writing Learn to Program around Ruby, which is totally free to use, copy, modify, and distribute. The examples start from the basics of getting Ruby correctly installed and configured for your particular operating system. Although Ruby is mostly developed on Linux, it is a cross-platform language that is supported on many types of UNIX, DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, MacOS, BeOS, and OS/2. I ran the examples on my Windows XP laptop without any problems, using a simple, free text editor called Textpad for some of the examples and the command line to round out my experience. The best part of it all…all of the programming tools were free! Gotta love it.

Pine aptly starts out with the essentials for most newbies to programming: data types, arithmetic operations, variables, and variable assignments. I found the overall approach and programming examples to be fun, detailed, and loaded with little tidbits of information, which gave great insight into the “how” and “why” of things. Pine’s examples and explanations throughout Learn to Program were great at illustrating the power of Ruby and programming in general, without having the overtly silly and annoying tone typically found in the “Dummies” series of books.

Learn to Program progressively and painlessly takes the reader through increasing complex (for most newbies) programming concepts such as methods, classes, objects, recursion, and flow control. To reinforce the concepts in each chapter there are sections called “A Few Things to Try”, which were both interesting and amusing. One of the more interesting topics involved writing simple programs to read, write, save, and load files using YAML. (YAML is a format for representing objects as strings). It’s always fun to learn how to dig around in various files to extract and manipulate information. This should also come in handy when managing log files on several OpenVMS servers I manage. Yes, there is a tested version of Ruby (version X1.8-1X014) for OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-1 and V7.3-2! The final chapter of Learn to Program tied all of the concepts together and introduced the use of blocks and procs as a step beyond using custom methods. The proc examples were an eloquent introduction into the more conceptually challenging topic of passing objects into methods and returning objects from methods. I remember learning the power of passing objects to and from methods in a college Java course (years ago), only after we were taken through the paces of writing programs the “dumb” way without knowing how to do this. I wish I had read this book before I took that class.

Learn to Program is an excellent book for anyone who has an interest in learning to program. It is written for true beginners, who have little or no programming experience. Surprising enough, Pine magically manages to go from “What is an integer?” to full-blown object-oriented programming in less than 200 pages. Another bonus is that you will be learning Ruby, one of the newer, (in my opinion) sexier programming languages currently in circulation (i.e. COBOL=not sexy, Ruby=sexy). Decide for yourself:

“Hello World” Program Examples:

COBOL
-------------------------------------------------

000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.
000300
000400*
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000900
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
001200
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100100
100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.
100300 BEGIN.
100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.
100500 DISPLAY "Hello world!" LINE 15 POSITION 10.
100600 STOP RUN.
100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.
100800 EXIT.

Ruby
-------------------------------------------------
puts ‘Hello World!’

Learn to Program is thoroughly engaging and informative and manages to painlessly convey some pretty sophisticated programming concepts that can benefit both novice and more experienced programmers. If you want to learn to program or want a great introduction to Ruby, Learn to Program belongs on your bookshelf.

Matt "Recursion" Largo

CD Review: The 88 - "Over and Over"

2006-02-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

The 88 pull out all of the stops on their latest CD, Over and Over. They gratuitously dig into the universal Pop collective, showing influences from the late 1960’s to contemporary fair. From my first listen to Over and Over, I could tell that the 88 had all of the prerequisites for a great Pop band. Every song seems meticulously constructed to meet Pop standards. There are great melodies, and flawless vocals and harmonies on every track. The first track, “Hide Another Mistake,” is an instantly gratifying, upbeat tune that begins with a tight guitar and drum intro, speckled with a few bass guitar glissandos for good measure. The Marc Bolan-ish (ala T-Rex) vocals play like an finely-tuned instrument, complementing the rhythmic backdrop. After this song finished playing, I immediately checked to see if lead vocalist, Keith Slettedahl was born on September 16, 1977, the same day that Marc Bolan died. Slettedahl’s vocal style on Over and Over has got to be more than coincidence. “All ‘Cause of You” is a mid-tempo, bouncing ballad that has equal parts Rock, swoon, and jangle. I can imagine that the live version of this tune is a killer crowd pleaser, especially with the ladies. A quick glance into the audience in the direction of a group of receptive ladies at the right time during the opening verses…

“I've been sinking through the drain of love
lift my eyes to skies of up above
listen to me this is how I feel
since I knew you all my thoughts are real
you're the only one I wanna do
everything's new and it's all ‘cause of you.”

…is probably like fishing with a stick of dynamite. “Bowls” has a groovy arrangement that utilizes space and showcases Slettedahl’s soaring Glam Rock vocal style. This song owes its fundamental catchiness to Carlos Torres’ melodic McCartney-like bass lines and Adam Merrin’s psychedelic keyboard work. This sounded like it could possibly be a remake from an old T-Rex album or a hidden track from The Velvet Goldmine soundtrack. “You Belong to Me” is an atmospheric acoustic that extols the power of love over the imperfections of the lovers. Slettedahl’s sings:

“I could tell an antique lie
full of all the things I want to hide
but that would only lead to the truth
you belong to me I belong to you.”

The acoustic guitar intro in this song is a direct lift from Big Star’s “The Ballad of El Goodo”. I wasn’t sure if this was done in homage to Big Star, or if it was done because their fan demographic wouldn’t know anything about Big Star or Alex Chilton. I’ll give The 88 the benefit of the doubt since both songs are thematically similar. Nevertheless this is a great acoustic number.

Overall, there’s not a single “throw away” song on this album and there are more hooks on these tracks than there are in your grandpa’s tackle box. These twelve solid tracks that show that The 88 have advanced degrees from Pop University, with minors in Retro Music Studies. Even though they seem to use the same formula for some of the songs (e.g. “All ‘Cause of You” and “Coming Home”), Over and Over track for track, is a consistently good, enjoyable album. To their credit, The 88, know the value of live performance and touring to build street credibility. I give them extra “cool points” because they acted as Elliott Smith’s back up band for a live performance of “Can’t Make a Sound” and because they wear suits and ties. You gotta give props to Indie bands that have a dry cleaning bill (unsolicited hint: FeBreeze can reduce the number of trips to the dry cleaner for all of you suit and tie wearing bands). I hear flashes of brilliance on this album as well as the echoes of such greats as Big Star, T-Rex, and Beatles, in the vocals, arrangements, and in their musical vocabulary. At times they remind me of a less horny version of The Knack. In any case, it’s no crime for The 88 to wear their influences on their sleeve. The 88 seem to be doing everything right from both a musical, image, and marketing standpoint. I can tell from their pristine recording that their live show probably has a welcome, rough edge and that they are each first-rate musicians. Although they’ve amassed a list of accolades and positive press as long as my arm, the true test of a consequential band is their ability to grow beyond their influences and continuously progress creatively without losing their fans. Time will tell. Maybe 25 years from now bands will be channeling The 88.

For more information visit: The88.net

Recommended.

Matt “Cosmic Dancer” Largo

Rocketboom: The Brave New Vlog that is Reshaping the Future of Media

2006-01-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

The age of video blogging and “citizen journalism” is being led by Rocketboom. What is Rocketboom you ask? Rocketboom is a New York City-based vlog (video blog) that serves up Internet culture and other quirky topics in about the time it takes to boil an egg (about 3 to 5 minutes). This brainchild of former musician Andrew Baron was launched in October 2004, as an outgrowth of text-based Internet blogging. Episodes are anchored and co-written by comely, sharp-witted, aspiring actress, Amanda Congdon and are delivered Monday through Friday by 9am EST.
Rocketboom fundamental business model was to build a substantial audience without worrying about generating revenue. This seems to have paid off. Rocketboom is now one of the premiere vlogs on the Internet with upwards of 130,000 daily viewers. Recent distribution via TiVo and Akimbo, which enables Web videos to be watched on TV, has further increased its reach. The content and composition of Rocketboom segments typically consists of any number of elements: stream-of-consciousness news vignettes, strange Internet media finds, tours of interesting businesses, haggling (but not purchasing) with street vendors over the price of pirated DVDs, or wandering the streets and asking a question like “Why is George Bush so awesome?.” Rocketboom strength is that it is raw, creative journalism that is not afraid to have an opinion, unlike stale mainstream news media. Congdon shoulders about half of the scriptwriting duties. She also finds the many of stories and takes on the tedious task of sifting through and researching audience submitted stories. To complete the Rocketboom formula, add Congdon’s aesthetic appeal, instant likeability, and quirky persona and you have a winner. Rocketboom is addicting. When asked about the future plans of Rocketboom, Congdon responded in an email:

“We're going to expand our correspondent list to include someone in almost every major city. We're also in the process of developing new shows and creating what we hope becomes a network of vlogs. All of the shows will have the Rocketboom "feel" but won't all be news anchor style.

For Rocketboom.com, which will always remain free of charge, we're working on a different kind of advertising model, one where the ads are at the end of the video and are worthwhile and interesting in their own right. That way people anticipate the ads, instead of dread them. We've been working on this prototype.

Here's an example: Rocketboom New Ad Prototype

The content is thus related to the ad, making the ad more powerful and the viewers happy. We find the viewers often comment more on the ad than the actual episode! So, yeah, we'll be making our own ads for companies. We'll also be auctioning off ad space (video only) on eBay. Only catch: We can do whatever we like with the brand of the company, who wins (porn companies will not be allowed to bid).”

The amazing thing about Rocketboom is that only costs about $25 to create and produce an episode according to Baron’s blog, Dembot. Baron writes:
“…if you can find or loan a camera, a computer and an Internet connection, you can very easily create work that will support itself at any size. The news story behind Rocketboom right now and the story for any other dreamers out there is the daunting magnitude in which our humongous monetary value has outpaced our tiny costs.”

What does Rocketboom mean? Congdon says that there is no funny story behind the name and that producer/director, Baron chose it back in 2004 because he just thought it had a nice ring to it, and liked the space theme. Rocketboom is much more than wildly popular vlog. It embodies the reality that current technology gives “citizen journalists” the means to launch their commentary across the media at nominal cost with the potential to achieve extraordinary results. Rocketboom is reshaping the future of media.

FYI…For all of you Rocketboom/Amanda Congdon fans, keep your eyes peeled for Congdon in CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” on February 2, 2006. She will be appearing as herself in an episode, in which the killer watches Rocketboom only to discover she knows the truth about his case.

Check them out online: Rocketboom.com

Matt "A Face Made for Podcasts" Largo

2006-01-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

Moving Toward the Google Collective Unconscious

The latest rumor to hit the press is that search engine juggernaut Google is engineering a strategic move into the lucrative MP3 music downloading arena. Analysts at Bear Stearns are wagering that Google may be in the process of developing a service to rival Apple iTunes. An analyst wrote the following in a recent client note:

"We believe that Google is in the midst of creating its own iTunes competitor, which we've dubbed 'Google Tunes'. We think this is a logical step, now that the nascent Google Video product has been introduced."

Bear Stearns Analyst Robert Peck thinks that it makes perfect sense for Google to introduce a beta service in the next 3 to 6 months to claim some of the MP3 music downloading market that Apple currently dominates. Their speculation, which has not been confirmed yet, is based on the Mosaic Theory. Simply put, this means that he has taken non-material information from a variety of sources (he probably could tell us, but then he would have to kill us) and created some meaningful observations and projections concerning Google’s next logical move. The accuracy of his prediction greatly depends on the sources used and thorough knowledge of Google’s business model…a crystal ball wouldn’t hurt either. According to Nielsen [Net Ratings], iTunes has cultivated a distinct target audience with recognized brand preferences for consumer goods such as autos, alcoholic beverages, magazines, and television shows. If Google does decide to roll out music and video downloading services, besides Apple, they’ll be rubbing shoulders with Yahoo!, Microsoft, RealNetworks, and Napster.

Keep in mind, a short while ago Google announced their plan to purchase dMarc Broadcasting, Inc., a Newport Beach, California-based digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry. By purchasing dMarc Broadcasting, Google plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers. By doing this Google has essentially jumped the gap from cyberspace to terrestrial radio. What’s next…Google Radio Network? It all seems to fit together in some strange way, doesn’t it? But wait! Don’t answer yet! There is another piece to the "Google Collective Unconscious". Google apparently has a voracious appetite for ‘dark fiber’. Sounds like the premise to a sci-fi horror flick, but it’s not as scary as it sounds, for now anyway. ‘Dark fiber’ is telecommunications speak for fiber-optic cable that has already been laid, but is not yet in use or “lit up” with the required optical communications hardware. Thousands of miles of dark fiber are available in the United States because of the telecom industry crash a few years ago, but there have been few takers because of the high costs of making it operational. Google is planning on being a major taker. The following information was gathered from a job posting on Google’s website, which read:

"Google is looking for Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...(i)dentification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network.."

Google representatives declined to a request to explain the job posting and what it means for the future of Google. Having worked in Competitive Intelligence in the Telecommunications sector for a few years, I believe that this can mean a few things:

1. Google is merely planning for bandwidth needs over the coming years and is investing in ‘dark fiber’ now to save money in the future by owning their own network.

2. Google is planning a foray into the telecommunications business, maybe GoogleVOIP or even better VOIPoogle.

3. Google is planning to build a data/voice network as the foundation for a pervasive Wi-Fi network that will be an ad-supported, free broadband communication network that is viable alternative to the Internet. The GoogleNet?

Although the third possibility seems a bit more far-fetched than the first two, I think that it is quite plausible, given Google’s financial strength and track record of innovation. If a GoogleNet materializes, I imagine that handheld PDA-like Google appliances that store and play MP3s and video, function as phones, and enable users to Google other users and tagged objects via GPS in 3-space in won’t be far behind. Maybe even further down the road, we may see Google implants or better yet, Google neural implants. This sounds crazy, but scientists at the Max Planck Institute have developed "neuron transistors" that can detect the firing of a nearby neuron, or alternatively, can cause a nearby neuron to fire, or suppress it from firing. This basically amounts to a two-way communication channel between neurons and the electronic-based neuron transistors. They demonstrated the “neuron transistor” by controlling the movement of a living leech from a computer. I wonder if Google knows about “neuron transistors”?

The Google Collective Unconscious is upon us.

Matt "Nostradamus" Largo

2006-01-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

Wi-FiTV: A Smorgasbord of Worldwide Video Content

The technology to effectively provide streaming video content over the Internet has come a long way since late 1990’s. That is when the barriers of having enough horsepower and bandwidth in home PCs to support acceptable streaming video were broken. Providing worthwhile and compelling content that consumers will routinely incorporate into their media diet is the next hurdle for streaming video. Wi-FiTV is a streaming video portal that has taken the challenge by offering over 200 channels (I counted 209) of TV and some Web-only content from over 50 different countries. It also streams 50 audio-only channels of news and various musical genres from around the world. The moniker, “Wi-FiTV” was chosen a few years ago in anticipation of streaming video content over widely available Wi-Fi Internet connections.

Wi-FiTV currently has a free 30-day trial that does not require a credit card. After your trial is over, prepaid yearly subscriptions are available for only 99 cents per month for a limited time. The first thing I noticed about the Wi-FiTV.com website was that the layout and the interface still seemed like it was in a quasi-fledgling stage of development. To view streaming video through the embedded player, you must have both Windows Media Player and Real Player installed, because all of the channels are not using one or the other. This may pose a slight inconvenience for some, but most Web-savvy viewers have both installed anyway. Next, I decided to do what came naturally. I started surfing through the channels to see what Wi-FiTV was all about. There were channels from Albania, Pakistan, Serbia, Vietnam, the U.S., and the United Kingdom to name a few. Wi-FiTV serves up a variety of programming ranging including webcams aimed at barroom patrons, live talk shows, and assorted music video channels. The quality of the content was inconsistent, which is to be expected to a certain degree, since Wi-FiTV is acting as a conduit to deliver content from wide range of sources from amateur, public access video to rebroadcast content from existing television stations. Some of the channels had all the clarity of a circa-1975 video of Super 8mm Bigfoot footage, while others were pretty clear. After sampling a couple dozen channels over the course of few weeks, I was able to find some gems in the bunch like:

Channel 25 - eaTV - EvolvingArtist.com (USA)- New music including a live broadcast.

Channel 95 Astro TV - Astrology (German) - Attractive Blond dealing Tarot cards for phone in callers. I don’t speak German, but I liked to watch her shuffle the cards.

Channel 134 - Cybertika (France)- Music Channel - Watched "LA WEB TV Musicale".

Channel 176 - Kulaks Woodshed (USA)- Live Acoustic Music Performance (Web TV only). – Performances included: John McEuen 2001 performance, Maia Sharp 2003 "A Home", Laurence Juber 2002 "In Your Arms", Annie Rapid "Tails of Spain".

Channel 177 - Mania TV (USA) - Pop culture, short films and Talk shows

Channel 183 UWTV (USA) - Education TV from the Univ. of Washington – I watched a lecture about the Surgical Treatment for Ankle Arthritis including PowerPoint slides of x-rays and photos. I felt like I was in Med school without all of the pressure.

Channel 215 - Music Plus TV (USA) - A Los Angeles-based live Internet TV station that promotes independent, undiscovered and unsigned artists.

The viewer interface gives you the option to go to full-screen, but in most cases this turns it into an “impressionist” video. Wi-FiTV also offers free PC to Phone calls (US Only), free PC to PC calls worldwide, and a videoconferencing application called “Wi-Fi TV Virtual Living Room”, which is free now while it’s in beta. Once you have all of your favorites, you will naturally want to schedule recordings and record programs for personal use. Wi-FiTV recommends a couple of third-party applications from Applian Technologies, the WM Recorder from Applian Technologies that will set you back $30 separately or $50 for the “Replay Video Suite”.

Overall, Wi-FiTV seems to be onto something very cool. It remains to be seen how many people will find the content sticky enough to subscribe and make it part of their media diet. Wi-FiTV is in a unique media space, in which it is not in direct competition with Cable or Satellite TV. It seems to have a symbiotic relationship with Cable and Satellite TV, while offering somewhat of a social network built around a video content portal. In my opinion, the strength of the Wi-FiTV’s social network will be the key to its success. Building Wi-FiTV as a MySpace, Orkut, or Friendster type of social network revolving around worldwide video content and “citizen TV” is the way to go.

Check it out at: Wi-FiTV.com

Bottom Line: Wi-FiTV is worth a try.

Matt "Video Globehopper" Largo

Where Have All the E3 Babes Gone ?

2006-01-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you into Gaming or in the Gaming Industry and have attended E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) in the past, this bit of news may come as bit of a downer for afficianados of the E3 babes at the booths. E3 draws tens of thousands of professionals to experience the future of interactive entertainment and apparently scantily clad women are not going to a part of the E3 future. A new rule has been added to the E3 exhibitor handbook and includes the following, which indicates that booth models wearing risqué outfits will soon be a thing of E3 history.

"Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the Show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the Show. ESA, in its sole discretion, will determine whether material is acceptable," reads the new rule.

If the E3 tribunal decides that these rules have been broken then they will slap a $5,000 fine on the offender(s), payable immediately. Any rule breakers will be required to comply with the dress code before being allowed to return to the show floor. For the purpose of illustration, the E3 babe pictured (Lisa Gleave) would most likely generate a $5,000 fine. In my opinion, E3 is not for kids, period. I see no reason to child-proof the event. This is just another example of people over-thinking morality in an attempt to child-proof the World.

FYI: E3 2006 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 10 – 12. Conferences are held May 9 – 11 and the show floor is open May 10 – 12.
For more info visit: http://www.e3expo.com/

Matt “Finishing Move” Largo

Technology and Porn Go Together Like Peanut Butter and KY Jelly

2006-01-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month the adult industry's 23rd Annual AVN Awards Show, the adult equivalent of the Oscars was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The emcee and host of the event, Greg Fitzsimmons focused on the symbiotic relationship between the Internet and pornography. "The Internet was completely funded by porn," he said from the stage of the 23rd annual AVN Awards Show. And if it wasn't for the Internet, he added, "you guys would be completely out of business". The entire audience, consisting of porn actors and adult entertainment magnates, like Jenna Jameson and Larry Flynt, roared with laughter. Fitzsimmons' joke isn't fiction. According to the Washington Post, online pornography, a $2.5 billion business and growing rapidly, pioneered such now-commonplace practices as streaming video, trading files and making online purchases. By comparison, sales of music downloads totaled $1.1 billion last year.

A common joke in IT is that every new technology is driven by porn. Think about the consumer technological advances that have porn applications: Digital cameras, the rapid spread of the VCR and later DVD players and recorders, which gives people the option to watch porn at home instead of going to the local Cine-porn movie house with all of the other real deviants. Although a lot of mainstream companies like Real Networks and Google earn some revenue from online porn, it's hard to verify. Mainstream companies almost never specify how much money they earn from the skin trade because they don't like to talk about it. It's obviously a huge, huge market, but mum's the word. The Porn industry has acted as kind a technology incubator for much of the technology that we're using now for less risque purposes. For instance, online "streaming video" is one major example of a technology that was driven by porn in its early days. While Hollywood is still struggling with how best to put its movies online, entire porn empires have been built by production companies selling streaming-video programs on the Internet.

The next hot technology that is being adopted by the Porn industry is mobile video. As soon as Adult Entertainment companies heard that iPod went video, the gears and pinions in their filthy, tech-saavy minds started to turn. We will most likely have the Porn industry to thank for working all of the kinks (no pun intended) out of mobile video technology.

FYI -- if any of you were wondering, The award for Best Screenplay- Video went to Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre starring Stormy Daniels, Jonathan Morgan & August Warwick produced and distributed by Wicked Pictures.

Jenna Jameson won Crossover Star of the Year.

Matt "Beef Swellington" Largo

Wal-Mart "Screws the Pooch" Again with Racist Website URLs

2006-01-21T03:57:00.000-08:00

Amid all of the recent controversy of Wal-Mart’s unfair treatment of its employees and it’s penchant for driving Mom & Pop businesses to the poor house, they make yet another fuck up. Check it…Can anyone explain how listing biographies of Martin Luther King, Jack Johnson and Dorothy Dandridge under the "similar products" category with Planet of the Apes looks anything but racist?...

Continuing their fine tradition of bringing products together to make your shopping experience easier, Wal-Mart's "Planet of the Apes" The Complete TV series, has a few recommendations that they feel are very similar to what you should associate Planet of the Apes with. How about Martin Luther King or Tina Turner? I wonder if the folks at Stormfront (the White Supremacists) are secretly the webmasters of this site.

Wouldn't similar items like "V" the Original Miniseries, or Battlestar Gallactica be more appropriate choices? Enjoy your shopping experience at Walmart where the prices are always low and I.Q.’s and ethics are even lower.

Update...Wal-Mart Stores Inc. temporarily shut down the system that creates movie recommendations on its shopping Web site after they found that the mistake about the link from a "Planet of the Apes" DVD to films about famous black Americans, including Martin Luther King Jr. They cited technical difficulties for the mishap.

Matt "WTF" Largo

2006-01-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

Green Eggs and Transgenic Ham

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three male pigs that glow in the dark. They claim that while other researchers have successfully bred partially fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are completely green inside and out. Even their heart and internal organs are green. The transgenic pigs were engineered by introducing genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.

To create them, DNA from jellyfish was added to about 265 pig embryos which were implanted in eight different sows (they basically injected fluorescent jellyfish green protein into embryonic pigs). Four of the female pigs became pregnant and three male piglets were born three months ago. In daylight, the pigs' eyes, teeth skin have a greenish hue. Research using the transgenic pigs will be much easier because the pig's genetic material is green and is very easy to spot. For instance, if some stem cells from a glow-in-the-dark pig are injected into some other animal, scientists can track how they develop without performing a biopsy or conducting other invasive tests. Creating these transgenic pigs was not simple, since many of the altered embryos failed to develop. Researchers hope the new, green pigs will mate with ordinary female pigs to create a new generation of transgenic pigs for use in human disease research.

The transgenic, green, glow-in-the-dark pigs immediately reminded me of the book Brave New World, in which Aldous Huxley taps into, and then feeds, our revulsion at Pavlovian-style behavioral conditioning and "eugenics" through genetic manipulation. On a lighter note, it also brought to mind Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham" because it means that we are half way to having the actual "Green Eggs and Ham" entrée come to fruition. How hard can it be for scientists to crank out a transgenic, glow-in-the-dark chicken that lays green, luminous eggs. I can see the diner menus already…Brave New Breakfast Skillet only $25.25. (I couldn't resist the Zager & Evans reference!)

Matt "Centrifugal Bumble-puppy" Largo

From Remote Controlled Leeches to Spock's Brain

2006-01-19T03:47:00.000-08:00

Remember the episode of the original Star Trek series... I believe it was stardate 5131.4, the USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, encounters a curious ship of unusual design. Upon contact, the ship emits a transport beam and a mysterious woman appears to the Enterprise bridge. She stuns the entire crew using a bracelet-like device, then examines each of them, taking particular interest in Mr. Spock, so much so, she somehow removes his brain, then disappears. McCoy then fashions a device to remotely operate Spock's brainless body.

That episode (along with most of the others) seemed like pure fantasy, but get a load of this...Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have developed "neuron transistors" that can detect the firing of a nearby neuron, or alternatively, can cause a nearby neuron to fire, or suppress it from firing. This amounts to two-way communication between neurons and the electronic-based neuron transistors. The Institute scientists demonstrated their invention by controlling the movement of a living leech from their computer. First leeches, then mice, then dogs and cats, then people!

What if someone was able to slip you a "neuron transistor" without you knowing it? They would be able to control you via remote control. Pretty scary stuff, huh?

Matt “Geppetto” Largo

See Emily Stern Naked!...Who cares.

2006-01-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

There has been some considerable on and offline buzz recently about Emily Stern’s hasty departure from her role as Madonna in the Off-Broadway show Kabbalah, in which she appears partially nude for the last ten minutes of the satire. She has been playing the part of Madonna (yes…based on the actual Pop star, Madonna), who is one of the most visible celebs involved in this mystic Jewish form of study. Uhh…why does anyone care? Emily Stern is the 22-year-old daughter of Sirius Satellite Radio’s hot property, shock jock (some would say “savior”), Howard Stern. Emily was worried that enemies of her father would distribute pictures of her on the Internet. She said, 'My father basically told me that if I take the role, that his enemies would buy blocks of tickets, throw garbage at my vagina, take nude pictures of me and put them all over the Internet.' Howard Stern has spent most of his professional career objectifying women. Now it that there is a chance that his daughter could face the very treatment that is his trademark, he has a problem. Irony meets hipocrisy.

The fact is that she has been starring in Kabbalah since November 2005, staged by the Jewish Theater of New York at the Triad Theater. What was she thinking when she signed up? If she really didn’t want to generate any publicity concerning her connection to Howard Stern, she could have used a stage name. She could have come up with some clever anagram of her name like “Tyler Misen” that would have taken everyone, but word jumble nerds, a long time to decipher. The problem with using a stage name that doesn’t connect her with Howard Stern is that she cannot take advantage of his celebrity. No connection. No attention. You can’t have it both ways. Kabbalah was described in the New York Times as "dreadful," "mind-numbing" and "in bad taste." My guess is that Emily probably realized after several weeks of starring in Kabbalah and underwhelming people 136 seats at a time, that it wasn’t worth her time and energy and decided spin her departure into a publicity machine. The whole Madonna Kabbalah thing is only worth about a handful of one-liners at best, but an entire play?

After viewing short video clips of Emily Stern in Kabbalah that have been floating around on the Internet, I think that she should be worrying about her career. I think the best thing going for this play was the 10 minutes of nudity, the pointy bra, and the fact that people would attend because they knew she WAS Howard Stern's daughter. I bet that the Triad Theater could’ve made a killing selling kosher garbage at the concession stand during showings of Kabbalah.

Bottom Line: Who cares?

Has it been 15 minutes yet?

2006-01-14T01:47:00.000-08:00

Single Review: The Flaming Lips - "The W.A.N.D."

The Flaming Lips are a perfect example of a band that has undergone a continuous metamorphosis from loud, Post-Punk, Indie Rockers to masters of lush, multi-layered, Psychedelia. Over the last twenty plus years, The Lips have succeeded in their musical and creative evolution without estranging their true fans. “The W.A.N.D.” is a teaser, digital release from their highly-anticipated, upcoming full-length album, At War with the Mystics, which will be released on April 4, 2006, on Warner Bros.

For my first listen to “The W.A.N.D”, I decided to listen to it with my ear buds at reasonably loud volume to simulate the sonic environment of a live Lips show…if that’s possible. My ears were greeted by a mutated, analog delayed, sound fragment, accompanied shortly thereafter by a metronome, a clap track, then an ultra-distorted buzz saw of a guitar (knowing how The Flaming Lips roll, I suspected that this guitar and amplifier were specially modified to exist only on this track). During the opening seconds of the song, I had faith...the faith that The Flaming Lips would sonically stretch my mind without losing me. “The W.A.N.D.” was the characteristically enjoyable, auditory feast consistently delivered by The Lips. Adding a dose of socio-political commentary to the mix, lead Lip, Wayne Coyne sings, “Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the World. Telling us all it's THEM...who's in charge of it all…”.

I have had the pleasure of being in attendance at numerous Lips shows over the past 20 years and “The W.A.N.D.” easily evoked memories of standing in a music venue filled with smoke, decibels, and people… watching the Lips and feeling like I got “it”. One noticeable deficiency I noticed while listening to “The W.A.N.D.” is that the rest of the album was not available to complete the concept. This single is hopefully a part of a greater sublime musical masterpiece called At War with the Mystics from these fearless freaks.

The Flaming Lips 2002 Photo by J. Michelle Martin

For current info about the Flaming Lips visit: FlamingLips.com

Recommended.

-Matt "Clouds Taste Metallic" Largo

Smells Like Toxic Spirits – PDBEs to be Exact

2006-01-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

The odoriferousness of your new car could make you sick, according to a new study published by the Ecology Center.

The report states that dangerous amounts of PDBEs (Polybrominated diphenyl ether chemicals often found in flame retardants) were detected in dust and windshield film samples taken from cars from model years 2000 to 2005. The Sun can raise the temperature of car interiors to up to 190 degrees, which accelerates the chemical breakdown and the release of toxins.

The Ecology Center found the highest amount of PDBEs in Mercedes and Chrysler vehicles, while Volvo and Hyundai had the lowest levels. Regulatory agencies around the globe are cracking down on the use of PDBEs. The Oregon Senate recently passed a bill preventing the sale of new products (such as furniture) that include certain PBDEs.

According to the Oregon Department of Human Service

In animal studies, PBDE exposure before and after birth caused problems with brain development. These studies observed problems with learning, memory and behavior. They also show that exposure to PBDE's during development can decrease thyroid hormone levels, affect reproduction, and reduce immune system performance.

And the good news continues: The highest levels of PBDE's among the general population are found in the U.S. and Canada-10 to 100 times higher than levels reported for people in Europe and Japan.

So if you commute more than a 100 miles per day in the Southwest, you're f$#!d.

CD Review: Jon Yeager - "Truth & Volume"

2006-01-12T00:48:00.000-08:00

CD Review: Jon Yeager - Truth & Volume

Truth & Volume marks the debut of Jon Yeager, former member of the now defunct Daybirds. I have to admit that I’m a pretty tough customer when it comes to buying into new music. I have dozens of promo CDs from fledgling bands that have been reincarnated as coasters. I decided to listen to Truth & Volume a few times then put it away to see if it claimed any mental real estate. Within a day I found myself humming songs from the EP and replaying it repeatedly to find the deeper meaning of each song.

The first track, “Summer Under A Strange Sky” opens with a stark, driving, rhythm section and grows into an artful layers and tastefully, lilting guitar arpeggios throughout. The second track, “Thief in the Night” seamlessly wraps up tempo rhythm and guitar glister around a subtly downcast lyrical theme. Yeager’s vocals complete recipe offering cool, melodic resolve to the mix. Yeager sings, “This is the point where I let things go…My life it doesn’t matter. That’s what it said there on his note…the man hanging from the rafter. I guess he found ever after.” This is easily one of the strongest tracks on the Truth & Volume. The Beatle-esque, “Great Movies”, effectively showcases Pop-smart arrangements and pristine vocals. The guitar and vocal intro hooked me and the remainder of the song delivered the goods. “Great Movies” is a perfect example of the importance and power of melody. Yeager shows consistent, skillful tunesmithing and vocal styling on the remaining tracks. Upon first listen, the retro, mid-tempo “Black Boy” seemed like a sticky, sweet, ballad, in the genre of songs by 50s and 60s acts like The Skyliners or The Fleetwoods. After listening more closely to the lyrics, came the reveal. “Black Boy” is actually a venerating ode to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referencing his march on Washington D.C. Yeager manages to neatly pack this socio-cultural commentary into a solid, stylish song without sounding preachy or maudlin. “Without You” is an atmospheric acoustic piece that initially evokes feeling of a perfect lazy Sunday and gradually builds into a driving, cavalcade of layered vocals and haunting guitar riffs. Even though this track breaches what I call “Pop Song Critical Mass” at 7 minutes 12 seconds (1 second longer than The Beatle’s “Hey Jude”), it does so with passion.

Overall, Yeager effortlessly manages to channel Pop luminaries such as Big Star, Beatles, and U2 while ably sharing the Alt-Pop genre with contemporaries like Elliott Smith, Pete Yorn, Earlimart, and Iron & Wine. All of the performances are solid and show keen musicianship. While most 20-something singer/songwriters and rock bands in this musical space are whining about self-loathing and singing about crawling through their girlfriends’ bedroom windows after a bender, Yeager produces meaningful songs that should stand the test of time above the rest of the clutter.

Truth & Volume is a well-crafted, sonic kickshaw of Alt-Pop, Alt-Folk, and Acoustic Rock that proves that there is still great music to be created.

Recommended.

For more info visit: JonYeager.com or check him out on the ever popular social networking community, MySpace

Matt "Hot Licks" Largo

Alexander: A Potpourri of Fighting, Sex, and Inaccurate Accents

2006-01-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if this shite bothers any of you as much as it bothers me, but here goes… What is the deal with movies set in ancient Greece or Rome -- or Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessalia for that matter?

It never fails, I start watching a film set in ancient Greece and the first character that opens his/her mouth to let some dialogue… has a BRITISH accent! If that isn’t anachronistic, I don’t know what is. I can’t tell you how many plays I’ve seen, which are set in Ancient Greece or Rome with this basic flaw. Just an FYI… Julius Caesar didn’t make his first expedition into Great Britain until 55 B.C.E. A whopping 268 years after Alexander the Great died (275 years after Alexander got to third base with Hephaistion, his main man at the time).

Getting back to the point…I’m not a thespian, so I don’t know the inside story about this British accent that is so pervasive in Greek and Roman plays, but my guess is that it must be taught in thousands upon thousands of flawed acting schools around the globe. Another reason that the British accent is used may be that affecting a Greek accent might be a little tougher to master. It seems to be the technique used for plays set in ancient times. This is the reason we did not hear a throng of British accents in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Conversely, I never heard one “opah!” in Alexander , even when they were throwing their big shindigs. If there were British accents in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and “opah” showed up in Alexander, they would have cinematically cancelled each other out by the Cinematic Reciprocal Flaw Rule (I just made that up).

At the time of Alexander’s life (356 B.C.E. to 323 B.C.E) I don’t believe that the British accent sported by so many of the actors in the movie existed. I’m no linguist. It’s just an educated guess. Two major facts lead me to believe this:

1. Great Britain did not formally come into existence until January 1, 1801.

2. The distance between modern day London, England and Athens, Greece is 2392.68 km (1486.74 mi).

3. The distance between modern day London, England and Rome, Italy is 1448.49 km (900.05 mi.).

I never said that I could count.

I’m fully aware that it was possible to travel these distances back in 356 B.C.E., but I don’t think that it happened very often. Often enough to have an appreciable amount of genetic drift to transplant a British (British-like) accent in ancient Greece or Rome. I also realize that just because England and/or Great Britain didn’t formally exist, it doesn’t mean that a variant (or variants) of the ever popular British accent couldn’t have existed. All of the accents in the neighboring regions (Scotland and Wales) probably have exerted slight influences on each other in some way or another. Meter, inflection, borrowed words, back formations of words from one language to another, etc.

If a Greek or Roman person was able to make the trek to Great Britain and stayed for a few months, it is high likely that he (or she) may have picked up a British accent. Call me crazy, but I’ve known people, to which this has happened. A person goes to Britain for a short while on a corporate job gig or with a legion of foot soldiers on a campaign to take over scattered Welsh, Scottish, and English tribes and…poof! They come home sounding like a limey.

Back to the movie, Alexander, I don’t want to even get started on Colin Farrell’s (Alexander) Irish accent or Angelina Jolie’s (Olympias) Russian accent – a lot of badly rolled R’s. Overall, I think most people watched this movie for the same reason they watched the HBO series Oz … All of the fighting and the (implied) sex.

An after thought: Along the same lines, this past July (2005) I was in New York and happened to get tickets to see Julius Caesar on Broadway starring Denzel Washington.

You guessed it…Ancient Rome, Oscar-winning Black actor from New York, British accent. I got to meet Mr. Washington afterwards and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from asking him about the British accent. He would have probably gotten pissed and made it so I would never work in movies again. In New York, Hollywood, or anywhere for that matter.

Oh, BTW, my camera was not working for this photo op, so the woman behind me agreed that she would take my picture with her camera and send me the picture via email. Of course I gave her my email address, name, and contact info. It's been 5 months and the beeotch hasn't sent me my picture of me hugging (in a manly way) Denzel Washington. Deep inside I knew this would happen. Altruism is dead.

Matt "Maximus" Largo

Google, The New Collective Conscious

2006-01-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

News Flash…

I was going to call this post "Google Bought the Radio Star" as a special gift for those of you that were around for the birth of MTV, but I went academic on everyone. Anyway... Whatever happened to The Buggles.

Everything is going “Video” now! Friday, December 29th at CES ( the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Google unveiled plans to offer the ability to buy videos from content partners in an upgrade to its video-search service. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google plans to announce alliances with CBS Corp. and the NBA related to the new service.
Rumors are that, Google also plans to introduce a software package with offerings from Google and other companies that users can download and put on their computers. The Wall Street Journal said the bundle is to be called Google Pack.
This is just another piece of the Google World Domination puzzle. I also heard that Google has been buying up dark fiber like crazy. For those of you out of the “telecom know”, dark fiber is basically optical communication lines that have been installed beneath the streets that is all hooked up and ready to be turned on. That is why it was given the moniker “dark”, because the optical communications equipment has never been activated. It sounds kind of like dark fiber can also have some evil component too. That’s another story. I heard it through the grapevine that Google may be planning to offer pervasive, free Wi-Fi service as an alternative to the Internet. I’m guessing that it would be Google Adsense supported. Just thought I’d give all of you a heads-up.
I can’t wait for Google Air, Google Retinal Implants, and most of all Google Neural Implants to help you do a Google search of your own thoughts and memories and those of others called – you guessed it – The Google Collective Conscious. Carl Jung would be proud or soil himself. It’s kind of a hard call. I predict that the Google Collective Conscious should be coming down the pike in about 2525. The last reference to the year 2525 is for all of our more mature readers who were cognizant of Pop music in 1969 – BTW "In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)" by Richard Zager and Denny Evans reached #1 on the Billboard Charts on July 12, 1969.
Who’d a thunk that two hippies from the 60’s would have seen Google coming? To make a long post even longer, here are the lyrics. Read it. Know it. Live by it. Enjoy.

In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus) by Richard Zager and Denny Evans

In the year 2525 If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find........

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, or say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine, doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God's a comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say ``Guess it's time for the Judgement day''

In the year 8510
God's gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say ``I'm pleased where man has been''
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing...

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday...

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find.......

Nanotechnology - Say 'Hello' to My Little Friend

2006-01-05T04:04:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t resist quoting that line from “Scarface”. On with the show…

In the field of Nanotechnology, smaller is better. Nanotechnology is the science of building small machines – really small machines on the molecular level that will ideally be able to build macro-scale products (regular-sized stuff) from individual molecules. Although the term “Nanotechnology”, may be seem to be the new buzz word in the scientific community, the idea was first introduced in 1959. Yes, the idea of tiny nano-machines was first introduced in a talk by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom". Feynman proposed using a set of conventional-sized robot arms to construct a replica of themselves, but one-tenth the original size, then using that new set of arms to manufacture an even smaller set, and so on, until the molecular scale is reached. Then by controlling millions of these tiny machines via computer, we could program them to work together to create macro-scale products built from individual molecules – a “bottom-up manufacturing” process, instead of cutting away at material until you have the final component or product – “top-down manufacturing.” The advent of nano-scale machines has produced a variety of interesting nanotech pieces parts, such as the nanotube and the bucky ball.

"Conceptually, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can be considered to be formed by the rolling of a single layer of graphite (called a graphene layer) into a seamless cylinder. A multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) can similarly be considered to be a coaxial assembly of cylinders of SWCNTs, like a Russian doll, one within another; the separation between tubes is about equal to that between the layers in natural graphite. Hence, nanotubes are one-dimensional objects with a well-defined direction along the nanotube axis that is analogous to the in-plane directions of graphite."(1)

"It is the roundest and most symmetrical large molecule known to man. Buckministerfullerine continues to astonish with one amazing property after another. Named after American architect R. Buckminister Fuller who designed a geodesic dome with the same fundamental symmetry, C60 is the third major form of pure carbon; graphite and diamond are the other two."(2)

Buckyballs, being the roundest of round molecules, are very resistant to high speed collisions. It has been found that the buckyball can withstand a crash into a stainless steel plate at 15,000 mph, a bounce back, unharmed. Another interesting property of the buckyball is that when is compressed to 70 percent of its original size, it becomes twice as hard as a diamond.

These tiny structures will have a multitude of applications in medicine, manufacturing, geology, environmental sciences, physics, etc.

For every awesomely potentially good thing there is a dark side. A potentially bleak nanotechnology scenario is explored in the 2002 fiction thriller Prey by Michael Crichton. The story goes something like:

1. Scientists work for a military contractor (Xymos Technology)

2. They develop a shitload of nanomachines for a military surveillance project

3. They implement computer modeled swarm behavior (only a genius would do this..right?)

4. The billions of swarming nanomachines escape from the confines of the lab (we all saw this coming)

5. They become a malevolent swarm of tiny micro monsters after breaking away from the commands of the computer model, killing everything in their path.

You get the picture. It’s pretty good, suspenseful, a pretty fast read. It seems like it was written to be converted into a movie. My casting choice would be Kyle MacLachlan as Jack Forman and Famke Janssen as Julia Forman.

You can guess who's Kyle and who's Famke. Anyway...

There are real dangers of nanotechnology aside from the works of fiction. For example, nanoparticles are made from known elements, such as graphite. The behavior of graphite in our bodies and ecosystem is pretty well known. On the other hand, the nanoparticle version of known elements exhibit undocumented and different behavior than their regular-sized counterparts. While the body has built-in defenses for natural particles it encounters, the danger of nanotechnology is that it is introducing entirely new type of particles. Particles some experts say the body is likely to find toxic.

“Complicating the dangers of nanotechnology, size and shape of nanoparticles affect the level of toxicity, preempting the ease of uniform categories even when considering a single element. In general, experts report smaller particles are more bioactive and toxic. Their ability to interact with other living systems increases because they can easily cross the skin, lung, and in some cases the blood/brain barriers. Once inside the body, there may be further biochemical reactions like the creation of free radicals that damage cells.”(3)

Does the potential good from Nanotechnology outweigh the potential evil? Only time will tell.

Transforming Mozart into a Media Whore in 2006?

2006-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if any of you knew it, but Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday is coming up on January 27th. There is going to be a big hootenanny in Salzburg, Austria all year long. Yep. You heard it correctly…ALL YEAR LONG! I don’t know if the demographic of “The Matt Largo Show” includes purveyors of baroque music, but I thought that this was an interesting little tidbit that deserved some attention. Out of the 4 Million people that travel to Salzburg every year to find remnants of Mozart, I’m certain that we must have one or two closet Baroque fans.

The organizers of the 2006 “Mozart Year” are trying to convince the world that it won’t be Mozart overload. Some of the items that will be for sale in honor of Salzburg’s prodigal son are: Mozart Milkshakes, “Mozartwurst” (it contains beef, pork, and pistachios), Mozart cake, Mozart beer and wine, Mozart knickers, Mozart golf balls, Mozart bras that play “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” when unfastened.

There are even package Salzburger Festspiele deals consisting of special Mozart Year subscriptions. If you have 60 days to burn during July and August and want to hang out in Salzburg, you can catch 22 of Mozart’s operatic works for a mere €4,995 per person (about $5940 US at the time this post). If Mozart were alive today, he would probably have to think twice about buying a ticket to see the 2006 “Mozart Year” showing of “The Marriage of Figaro”, which will set you back a cool €600 (about $715 US) per person. By today’s standards Mozart would be earning about €38,000 ($45,000 US).

Another interesting tidbit that I found was that there is speculation that Mozart suffered from Tourette’s syndrome. Letters he wrote to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla ("Bäsle") between 1777 and 1781 contain scatological language and he wrote canons titled Leck mich im Arsch ("Lick my ass") or variations thereof (including the pseudo-Latin Difficile lectu mihi mars). Getting back to the man and his music and the festival…

I think that even though the 2006 “Mozart Year” year has all the trappings of an event like the Gilroy Garlic Festival, it fundamentally serves to expose people to music and art. People, who happen to go just to eat a Mozart burger and do Mozart beer bongs, will inevitably leave the festival knowing a few new tunes. “The Matt Largo Show” is tentatively planning to attend the 2006 Salzburger Festspiele in May. If so, I will blog it complete with photos and soundbites.

Check out all of festivities by clicking here: 2006 Salzburger Festspiele

Matt “Magic Flute” Largo

Mental Models on the Catwalk of Reality

2006-01-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

I think that this post falls under the category “Science of the Mind”.

How many of you have ever moved into an apartment and hear a cacophony next door? It’s past 11:00 pm and you have an important exam tomorrow or an important meeting at work. What miscreants live next door? How can they be so inconsiderate? Your blood starts to boil at the thought of your ignorant, 24-hour party people, drinking, drugging neighbors. You decide to give it another hour or so to die down. An hour later the music is still pumping. You decide to go next door and give them a piece of your mind and let them know you are minutes from calling the cops.

Your heart rate increases as you knock on the door. In your mind you are rehearsing exactly how you are going to tell these people off. As you firmly knock on the door, it swings open. You hear the music, the lights are on, but there are no people in sight. You walk into the next room and see a boom box, a ladder, and some painting supplies. In reality, there is no party or evil low-brow neighbors it was just a forgetful painter that left his boom box playing. You shut the boom box off. You return to your apartment.

Oddly enough, your heart rate is still higher than normal and you still feel a twinge of anger at your non-existent neighbor. This situation illustrates the power of Mental Modeling. Your Mental Model was a construct of what you expected to find upon going over to your next door neighbors apartment. As your mind fleshed out the details, it basically became your reality. Mental Models are so strong that they can change your physiology.

This shows the power of Mental Modeling. What we see in our minds becomes our reality. By changing our Mental Models we can remove limits in our lives and create new opportunities.

2005-12-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

The M@tt Largo Show is Now Listed in Apple iTunes!!!

Yes...you heard it here first! After only one week on the air, "The M@tt Largo Show" is now a part of the Apple iTunes family. We will be putting the iTunes chicklet on the website in the next few days to make subscribing to the podcast via iTunes a snap. Thanks for listening.

If you have iTunes installed and you want to subscribe now, you can click on the following link:

Get Matt Largo on iTunes

ROTFG*,
Matt Largo

*Rolling on the Floor Gloating

Sean Lennon's Lonely Hearts Club Band

2005-12-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

I found this news story while perusing the Internet. I think that this is basically a social commentary on how disparate our society is becoming. Although the World is getting smaller because of advances in technology, we, as individuals, are growing further apart. The Universe isn't the only thing expanding, so is the space between our lives.

Poor Sean Lennon. John Lennon's 30-year-old kid has gone to the New York Post, asking for help in finding a true love. But he does have standards: "Any girl who is interested must simply be born female and between the ages of 18 and 45. They must have an IQ above 130 and they must be honest. They must not have any clinical, psychological disorders . . . and a kind heart. Clearly beautiful - but beauty on the inside is more important - but no deformities, third legs, fifth nipples . . . I'm completely alone and I'm completely miserable. So please send your request to [Page Six]."

Isn't this sad? This presents a very interesting conundrum.

1. You're the son of John Lennon, Pop Music Icon, one of the founders of the Beatles.
2. Any woman who marries you gets the booby prize of having Yoko Ono for a mother-in-law.

How this is going to work out...I don't know. My real question is how can you be the son of a Beatle and not have any game? Beats the f@$#! out of me. Such is life.

See the original post at The Plain Dealer

Mistletoe History Lesson

2005-12-28T02:38:00.000-08:00

This is some interesting historical information about mistletoe researched by Eleanor Sullo. I thought that some of you would like to know about the sordid history of the practice of kissing under the mistletoe. Enjoy!

-~^~^~^%~^~^~^%~^~^~^%~^~^~^%~^~^~^-

Learn about mistletoe's history; this notorious little plant has a fascinating and somewhat morbid background.

The Christmas custom of kissing underneath a branch of mistletoe goes back hundreds of years, certainly to the early 17th century. But legends about the curious plant go back even farther, even to the time of Christ and earlier. One legend has it that the wood of the cross of Christ was made from mistletoe, and supposedly for that reason the mistletoe plant has been doomed to live as a parasite, and is so classified today, making it condemned to live on the goodwill of other trees.

Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus called it "the baleful mistletoe," no doubt referring to the fact that in large quantities the waxy white berries are toxic. On the other hand, ancient Druids thought the plant had healing, even magical, powers. Back in Roman times in Britain, Pliny the Elder referred to the habit of Druid priests of cutting away mistletoe from oak trees where it attached itself, using golden sickles and spreading white cloth on the ground under the tree lest the trimmings touch the ground and risk losing their powers. The Druids elevated mistletoe to sacred powers, even using it in ceremonies of human sacrifice. Unlike other plants, mistletoe retained its fresh green color, and the evergreen therefore became a symbol of fertility. They also hung it over doorways to protect against evil.

Because of the Druids' use of mistletoe, Christians banned its use in their churches in England. Because mistletoe grows primarily on apple, lime, poplar and hawthorn trees in the midlands and up to and around York, it was a local favorite there long after the Druids were in decline. So in the famous minster at York, its use during the holiday season has always been retained.

In the York cathedral the minister placed the branch on the High Altar and procalimed "public and universal liberty, pardon and freedom of all sorts of inferior and wicked people at the minster gates, and the gates of the city, towards the four quarters of heaven." In the 21st century the Dean informally hung a bunch of mistletoe and holly from the High Altar at noon on Christmas Eve, although the custom was more general good will than intended as an encouragement of kissing in its presence.

Strictly speaking, kissing under the mistletoe was never to get out of hand, and often nearly did. To prevent abuses, the custom was defined as a man might steal a kiss under the hanging branch, but when he did, one berry was to be plucked from the plant and discarded. Once the berries were gone, the kissing charm of the mistletoe branch was spent, although that aspect of the custom is rarely recalled in these days. During the 19th century abuses of the kissing custom were prevalent, according to a verse written and called "The Mistletoe Bough." Interestingly, during uptight Victorian times, the custom came into full bloom!

Adhoc Quote

2005-12-28T00:12:00.000-08:00

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- unknown

The Shakespearean Version of Deliverance?

2005-12-23T05:59:00.000-08:00

How many of you come from the Appalachia? I really don’t know if my readership or demographic captures a lot of Appalachian folk, but I thought I’d ask anyway. Really, if any of you do hail from Appalachia feel free to chime in….<sound of crickets chirping>….OK on with the meat of this post. This bit of information came as a bit of a shocker to me when I happened upon it a short while ago. There are very credible, scholarly linguists, who believe that the Appalachian dialect is a result of Elizabethan influences in that geographical area during the 16th Century. During the early development of the United States back when there were a few fledgling colonies, Shakespearean acting troops supposed traveled around in, what is now known as Appalachia. Before we go much further let’s define Appalachia.

“Appalachia, as defined in the legislation from which the Appalachian Regional Commission derives its authority, is a 200,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. About 22 million people live in the 406 counties of the Appalachian Region; 42 percent of the region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.”(1)
To make it a little easier to picture I have included a map of the region below:

Basically, the theory says that during the 16th Century in Appalachia there where a multitude of different cultures and dialects in this area. The Appalachian dialect is believed to be an amalgamation of elements from the original Indians, early French trappers, German settlers, and Blacks with whom the Scots-Irish pioneers worked in lumber camps, coal mines, cotton mills, and textile plants. I’ve also found accounts that implicate traveling Shakespearean acting troupes that left members behind in various Appalachian communities during their travels. In any case, the Elizabethan Shakespearean English influence can be recognized in the present day dialect with a little insight and some imagination. When the word “Appalachia” is uttered, most people immediately think of the movie “Deliverance” and the famous line, “Squeal like a pig for me…”. American film and television have been the messengers of a less-than-flattering almost repulsive view of Appalachia and the culture. Displayed by such films as "Deliverance", and such television shows as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and by the comic strip, "Li'l Abner", Appalachian people were viewed as hopeless but proud, desperate but industrious, noble first generation frontier people, yet somehow ignorant, degenerate, and INBRED.

Some examples of the Elizabethan and Scot-Irish elements in Appalachian dialect can be seen in the use of phrases like “a-studying” and “a-working”, which are verbal nouns and go back to Anglo-Saxon times. The word “nigh” is the old word for near, and “weary” was the pronunciation of worry in the 1300's and 1400's. Another common word, “reckon”, comes from Tudor England and means to consider or to suppose.

“Pronunciation of many words has changed considerably, too. Deef for deaf, heered for heard, afeared for afraid, cowcumber for cucumber, bammy for balmy, holp for helped, are a very few. Several distinct characteristics of the language of Elizabeth's day are still preserved. Words that had oi in them were given a long i pronunciation: pizen, jine, bile, pint, and so on. Words with er were frequently pronounced as if the letters were ar: sarvice, sartin, narvous. It is from this time that we get our pronunciation of sergeant and the word varsity which is a clipping of the word university given the ar sound. Another Elizabethan characteristic was the substitution of an i sound for an e sound. You hear this tendency today when people say miny kittle, Chist, git, and so on. It has caused such confusion with the words pen and pin (which our people pronounce alike as pin) that they are regularly accompanied by a qualifying word - stick pin for the pin and pin and ink pin for the pen.” (2)

I think that you get the drift. There is also a lesser know theory that environmental influences such as temperature and vectors (such as infectious mosquitoes) played a part in introducing lethargy and effectively slowing down the meter of the spoken language in the southern regions of Appalachia. Much like playing a 45 rpm record at something like 42 rpm (for our younger readers – there used to be these things called records way before CD’s and MP3’s – yes, really.). Well! There it is ladies and gentlemen, your brief foray into the wonderful and weird world of linguistics. The next time you watch “Deliverance” don’t think about a narvous Ned Beatty getting sodomized whilst hugging a fallen Sugar Maple for dear life, think about how those inbred mountain miscreants in the film have preserved a small token of the Elizabethan linguistic heritage.

Political and Science Quickies, with a Dash of Humor

2005-12-21T04:03:00.000-08:00

A few months after 9/11, President Bush authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans in the US without having to obtain court warrants. Bush supporters argue that the president's actions "make sense, regardless of their legality." (What the f#$@ planet do these people come from?)

The Onion on the Patriot Act: "I'd really like to tell this damn government what I think, but thanks to the Patriot Act, they already know."

SNL did a hilarious parody of the robotic vacuum, Roomba. This ad for Woomba cracked me up.

Don Wise on Incompetent Design: "Look at the bones in your face. They're the same as the other mammals' but they're just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it! So is this evolution or is this plain stupid design?"

When you read this headline: Researchers: Mother squids nurse eggs think "squid milk." An extremely cool photo accompanies the story.

Visit Popplers to see the original post.

Unicorns Love White Chocolate

2005-12-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

The questions of the day are:

1. What is this stuff (< ---I almost used an expletive here) called white chocolate? 2. Is it really chocolate in the true sense of the definition of chocolate? Let’s go back way back to the birth of chocolate…Central Mexico sometime during the 15th Century.

An Aztec Ritual (not chocolate-related. It would suck if it was.)

Chocolate originated thousands of years ago in the Aztec civilization. It is made from the Theobroma (Greek for “food of the Gods”) cacao tree. The Aztecs, Toltecs, and Mayans, brewed a stimulating drink called Xocoatl, which was brewed from cocoa beans, maize (Indian corn) and water. This concoction was sacred and was associated with fertility and wisdom.

“The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food.” Montezuma – Aztec Emperor (1480-1520)

That’s a far cry from your Bosco, Ovaltine, or Nestle’s Quik.

Little did we know that during lunch hour in grade school we were all becoming wiser and all of the girls were becoming more fecund. Anyway, this original, ancient chocolate formulation was different (besides containing cocoa beans) from the chocolate we know and love today. The current formulation, which is mixed with milk, cocoa powder and cocoa butter, came about in 1876. Chocolate is believed to trigger many psychological and physiological reactions. I think that some of the reported effects are fueled by the folklore and mythology surrounding chocolate. I believe that some of the romanticism about the powers of chocolate contribute to a kind of placebo effect, but that’s an entirely different discussion.

True chocolate contains substances such as phenylethylamine, theobromine, anandamide and tryptophan. These substances trigger mood enhancing chemicals in the brain to reportedly create feelings of giddiness, attraction, euphoria and excitement. What is this atrocity called “white chocolate”? White chocolate is made the same way as milk chocolate and dark chocolate -- the difference is the ingredients. White chocolate does not contain chocolate liquor, the defining ingredient of real chocolate. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, milk, sugar and vanilla…

NO CHOCOLATE LIQUOR = CHOCOLATE IMPOSTOR

The Bottom Line:

Because white chocolate has no cocoa solids from the chocolate liquor, the FDA doesn't classify it as chocolate. Below is a quote from the FDA website concerning white chocolate:

“A product labeled as ``white chocolate'' contains the term ``chocolate,'' an alternative nomenclature for chocolate liquor that indicates the presence of cacao-derived ingredients. All existing chocolate standards include the cacao-derived ingredient chocolate liquor, which contains both the nonfat and the fat components of the cacao nibs. In contrast, the cacao-derived ingredient contained in products that consumers have come to know as ``white chocolate'' is cacao fat (i.e., cocoa butter), not chocolate liquor. Because the term ``chocolate'' implies that the product contains cacao-derived ingredients similar to those in standardized chocolate products, in the absence of a standard of identity or TMP, the product described in the proposed standard could not use the term ``chocolate'' on its labeling. Specifically, a product labeled ``white chocolate'' would purport to be chocolate, but it would not comply with the current food standards for cacao products in part 163. Therefore, the product would be misbranded under section 403(g) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the act) (21 U.S.C. 343 (g)).”

White chocolate is technically (and in reality) a white candy confection. All of the mystical effects attributed to the consumption of real chocolate containing chocolate liquor are not realized when consuming white chocolate. The only euphoria you'll feel from eating large quantities of white chocolate, is the euphoria of growing your thighs and ass. It is believed that eating 2 ounces (50 grams) a day of plain chocolate with a minimum content of 70% chocolate solids can be beneficial to health, providing protection against heart disease, high blood pressure, and many other health hazards as well as essential trace elements and nutrients such as iron, calcium and potassium, and vitamins A. B1, C, D, and E and it's a lot tastier than vitamin pills. A 1 1/2-ounce square of chocolate may have as many cancer-fighting antioxidants as a five-ounce glass of red wine (1).

So the next time someone asks if you like white chocolate, you should reply:

“No, but I heard that Leprechauns love to feed their pet unicorns white chocolate because they both don’t f@#% exist!”

Matt “Real Chocolate” Largo

Emotional Machines: Binary Tears and Digital Sarcasm

2005-12-19T01:09:00.000-08:00

At first I started to write this article as a bit of trivia about "The Terminator" series of movies. After contemplating the weight of the subject for a while, I decided to provide a little technical background information with some social commentary for good measure. Whether people want to admit it or not, the age of “Emotional Machines” is approaching. It’s just a matter of time before machines develop the ability to “think” and “feel” using complex heuristic algorithms. Remember the 1984 movie "The Terminator", starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 Terminator robot? Some interesting trivia about this film is that whenever you see the view as seen by The Terminator scrolling download the side of his eye/camera display. That 'stuff' is actually 6502 assembly/machine code fragment. More specifically, the actual code shown is the screen output of a checksum program for the Apple II. The 6502 chip (pictured below) was manufactured by MOS Technology in 1975 and was used in the Apple II and Commodore 64.

It looked pretty high-tech in the context of the movie. They decided to use more readable, but less believable stuff in the 2nd movie.

Just to illustrate how unwieldy the code is when using a low-level assembly language, below is the ever famous “Hello World” program written for this particular processor:

MSG: .ASCIIZ "Hello, world!"
LDX #$F3
@LP: LDA MSG-$F3,X ; load character
JSR $FFD2 ; CHROUT (KERNAL), output to current output device (screen)
INX
BNE @LP ;
RTS

The 6502 is an 8-bit processor with a 16-bit address bus was typically run at 1 MHz clock speed. The question of the minute is: “Can the 6502 chip power a complex machine like the T-800 Model 101 Terminator robot?” Although this chip was the inspiration for much faster processor chips that are currently in use today, the answer is …NO.

The beginnings of the “Age of Emotional Machines” can already be seen on the Internet. Where? You guessed it….in Internet Chat Rooms!

Chat bots are small stepping stones towards building anything close to an emotional machine. So far the bots are only able to understand emotions that are expressed by words or short sentences. Like "Hello!", "How are you?", "I don't like you", this step is just like the "hello world!" in programming language or single words.1.

Chat bots have been implemented quite successfully to moderate chat rooms. This is still light-years away from being an emotional machine, but it’s a creepy start. Reasons for this progression toward smarter more human-like machines and software, is:

The dissolution of the need for face-to-face interactions with people.
Increased comfort level in dealing with computers/technology instead of people
The need for human interaction in an environment of increasing socially disparity

Responsive, emotional, intelligent machines seem to be just what the Doctor ordered. Although many human qualities can be mimicked by software and computers, the basic quality that cannot be coded into a machine is what French philosopher Henri Bergson called élan vital. His concept of élan vital, "creative impulse" or "living energy", was developed in Creative Evolution, his most famous book. Élan vital is an immaterial force, whose existence cannot be scientifically verified, but it provides the vital impulse that continuously shapes all life. It is basically the force that motivates people to persist and be motivated from moment to moment. No matter how many ones and zeros you feed into a super processor chip, I don’t believe that this can be fabricated. If (when?) the great Machine vs. Man conflict comes you can count me on the side of the human resistance.

Oh and another thing… There is one thing that kind of bothered me in the "Terminator" series. It's not really a big deal, but did you ever notice that Arnold has no eye brows in the first movie, but, in "Terminator 2" he does have eyebrows, why is this????. The Terminator in T2 has to be a different model with an eyebrow upgrade. It's all about accessorizing.

1AI-Depot.com, “Overview: Building Emotional Machines”, Nitin Mendiratta

Terminator Action Figures @ Movie Eye!

SATURDAY EVENING QUOTES...

2005-12-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

Below are a few poignant quotes by some of the greatest
minds of the Modern Era. This will become a regular
feature of The Matt Largo Show. The birth of "Saturday
Evening Quotes". I think it is a great way to fuel
everyone's philosophical engines before a night of
saturnalia (ok, maybe not that extreme). Feel free to
comment on this or any other post. Ponder and Enjoy!

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only
advise his clients to plant vines."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent
one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"When I am working on a problem I never think about
beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But
when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I
know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

You Too Can Have "Automatic Mind Control"?

2005-12-17T15:23:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the advertisements from the back pages of comics? All of those crazy novelty and gag items like a 7-foot Glow-In-The-Dark Frankenstein Monster, the ever-popular X-Ray Specs, Vanishing Ink, Soap that makes everything black, and my favorite, a book about “Automatic Mind Control”. Some of the items had redeeming qualities, while some were complete trash (Extra info: watch out for the 7-Foot Glow-In-The Dark Frankenstein Monster. It’s just a glow-in-the-dark picture of Frankenstein’s Monster on a white plastic sheet, basically a white trash bag). Although most of these things are codswallop, the “Automatic Mind Control” idea is based in fact. Many of the principles of mind control are known and used by government agencies, the military, and various cult organizations. At the root of this science are NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and basic subconscious direction. Some examples of subconscious direction and NLP are:

Handshaking – When shaking someone’s hand upon meeting them, you can send and receive signals about their intentions and/or personality. If their hand is facing more toward having their palm upward, it shows a predisposition to taking a submissive position. Facing down, of course, means just the opposite. This interaction can set the tone for a meeting.

Eye Contact – One simple way to exert some degree of control over someone during a meeting is to make constant eye contact. Most people feel uncomfortable having prolonged eye contact. A sign that it is working can be seen in the other person’s eye movements. Their eyes will usually start to dart back and forth to avoid this intense eye contact. Since they have now been put on edge, they will probably more likely to agree with what you are saying just to get out of this situation.

Voice – One of the simplest ways to establish control of a situation is to speak with a strong, confident, even tone. This immediately sets the tone concerning who is the authority figure. The other person will usually drop their guard and be more likely to go along with what you are saying or suggesting.

Mirror then Lead – This technique works best in a one-on-one situation. The idea is to behave like the mirror image of the person. If they cross their leg, you cross your leg. If they lace their fingers together, you lace your fingers together. It is also important to try to match the meter and tone of their speech and voice. After doing this for a while you can test them by uncrossing your leg. If they uncross their leg, try unlacing your fingers. If they perform both of these actions after you do, it is a good sign that they are following you now. Next you can present your ideas and they will be more likely to follow. A simple demonstration of the power of this technique can be seen by doing something simple like checking your watch. If a person is in tune with you, 9 times out of 10 they will check their watch too.

The foundation of all of this psychological hocus-pocus is that if you act like a leader, people will be more likely to follow you. Now go out into the world and control people to your hearts content. Try it when chatting up the babes/dudes at the club or in a job interview. Be careful with your new found powers and refrain from amassing a Legion of Terror wearing ominous black jumpsuits and helmets with face concealing plexiglass visors.

A One-Way Ticket to Scoville - The Hottest Town This Side of the Pecos

2005-12-15T01:26:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you ate someone’s famous three-alarm chili, which happened to be spiked with a secret ingredient that made your mouth turn into a mini blast furnace? Have you ever wondered why your mouth burns and what the specific mechanism behind the whole phenomenon was? Today is your day. I’m about to drop the science on you about culinary seasoning heat. Since it is Chili season, I thought that it would be appropriate and informative to explain the science of hot seasonings and how it is measured.

The Scoville Heat Scale
Columbus may have discovered chiles in the West Indies, but Wilbur Scoville is the name most closely linked with peppers today. Scoville, a pharmacist, was the first to develop a scale that defined the relative heat produced by different types of peppers back in 1912. His initial system was very subjective, akin to you and your friends sitting around the table and voting. Today, heat testing of peppers is done by complex machinery, but Scoville remains the scale's founder and namesake, worshiped by "chile-heads" worldwide. You can find Scoville heat unit ratings on jars of salsa or bottled hot sauce.

The Big "C"
What makes a chile hot is actually the amount of Capsaicin it contains. Capsaicin is said to be addictive because when it comes in contact with the nerves in your mouth, pain signals are sent to your brain. Your brain responds by releasing endorphins, natural painkillers, that create a sense of euphoria. The more spicy food you eat, the more endorphins entering your system, and the better you feel -- even if your mouth is on fire. That's why chile-heads say 'the hotter the better.'

Just for your enlightenment I have included an official Scoville Heat Units chart below.

If you are into trying different kinds of hot sauces, visit to Hot Sauce World.
It will be well worth it. Enjoy!

2005-12-14T17:31:00.000-08:00

The Impossible, Frustrating 4-Step Origami Project

Welcome to the origami project, which contains complete and detailed instructions on how to build a simple origami model in 3 easy and one difficult step. I have entitled this fold "Rabbit style object on geometrical solid".

Step 1:First take a 2:1 rectangular piece off origami paper - ideally rabbit colored on one side and geometric object/rabbit's ear colored on the other.

Step 2: Fold the corner flaps of the left hand square to the centre and crease the right hand square as shown.

Step 3: Fold the right hand square into this simple base by pinching in the bottom centre crease so that it meets the top centre crease. Crease the left hand square as indicated.

Step 4: Fold all remaining bits of paper on the left hand square into a rabbit-like formation while folding simultaneously the right hand square into a geometric formation.

Did you get that? I thought you didn’t.

Techniques that Hollywood has Taught Me About Picking Up Chicks:

2005-12-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

1. Steal cars. Nothing "drives" a woman into "high gear" faster than a man who can use automobile terms in his sexual innuendo.

2. Carry a giant sword, kill thousands of British soldiers, and threaten to kill the woman's husband, the heir to the throne of England.

3. Replace your weak human skeleton with a cybernetic skeleton, travel back in time, and try to kill the woman. When that fails, travel back in time again except this time, protect her son from mercury poisoning.

4. Go to prison for five years and when you get out, rob her boyfriend's casino of one hundred sixty million dollars.

5. Do not have a job. Instead, travel along a river and play guitar. Also, grow your hair into a pony tail and have constant stubble. Having previously been an undercover cop in a high school helps.

6. Kill a New York police captain, run to Italy, find a girl walking down the street, then go tell her father that you want to marry her or you will kill him. When you are through with her, blow her up with a car bomb.

7. Carry a guitar case full of guns and kill every man you see. Apparently, when you are finished, she will have no choice but to be with you.

8. Sneak your way onto a giant boat, make up some bullshit about being able to fly, and then freeze to death in the Arctic Ocean.

9. Grab a friend, sing a song to a stranger, then follow her into the bathroom and offer to have sex with her on the sink. It also helps if you have previously been a pimp, race car driver, or spy.

…and the absolute best way of picking up chicks...

10. If the woman's father doesn't like you, bring him to an orbiting asteroid, set a nuclear weapon. Then take off before he can make it back to the ship.

Which is Worse Email or Cannabis?

2005-12-14T01:02:00.000-08:00

e-mail

1. A system for sending and receiving messages electronically over a computer network, as between personal computers.

2. A message or messages sent or received by such a system.
3. An electronic communication medium that can dull you down more than a Philly Blunt.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember back in the early 1980’s, only very few people had access to email, or as they called it back then – electronic mail. You were either a government employee or a high-brow academician somewhere. Does anyone remember those ugly old Arapanet or CompuServe email addresses? It was only a matter of time before a good thing went bad. There has been research showing that Email may actually lower your functional I.Q. If you use email at work, think about how many emails you receive throughout the course of a day. The basic theory is that during the course of your work day emails basically attack your uniform and focused approach to your projects. The worst case scenario happens when you try to field each email as it chimes into your mailbox. After several hours, your brain starts tiring and you are at a lower functional level -- a whole 10 I.Q. points lower on the average!!! To drive the point home even further, researchers compared the effects of email with the use of marijuana. Guess what…The research showed that the effects of email posed a greater threat to concentration and I.Q. than cannabis. In some cases, the people who were studied couldn't resist the temptation of trying to juggle the influx of new email messages while trying to concentrate on their existing work, which resulted in, over the course of a day, the equivalent to loss of a night’s sleep.

Another “side-effect” of email overload are the deterioration of manners. This can be seen most commonly, when people divert their attention from a face-to-face conversation or meeting to read and reply to email. Some call it multi-tasking, but it just boils down to being rude.

The irony of email is that it is supposed to increase and improve productivity, but it has evolved into a destructive force on productivity in some cases. The irony of email, is that one would think that email facilitates social interaction by reducing the effort to communicate with others. It actually seems to be cultivating a preference for asynchronous communication over face-to-face communication. If it hasn’t already surfaced, I think that addiction to email will become a recognized psychological affliction along with new cases of ESA (Email Separation Anxiety). I just made ESA up, but I think it has a nice ring to it.

A good article about this can be found here: Emails Pose Threat to I.Q.

Debate with a Fizz Killer...

2005-12-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I got into a heated debate with some co-workers (not as heated as the one about “white chocolate”) one day because one of them had purchased a 20 ounce bottle of Coca-Cola and after drinking about 20% of the contents he proceeded to squeeze the bottle then recap it.

“Homer, what is your rationale for doing that?” I asked.

Homer said, “Duh….If you have a partially full bottle of soda, and you squeeze the sides together, it creates less air in the bottle and the soda won’t go flat as fast.

At first I thought I could understand how this could work. I thought that it would have something to do with partial pressure. But after reasoning this concept through, I figured that there was more to it than that. So…What IS the best way to keep Homer’s soda from going flat?

After putting on my Physics brain…Here is my take on this:

Squeezing the bottle, as Homer did, and then capping it will produce a less than 1 atmosphere pressure condition inside the bottle because the flexible container will try to return to its original shape. After digging around in some old Physics books I found our old friend...

Le Châtelier's Principle of Chemical Equilibrium, which goes something like this:

If an outside influence upsets an equilibrium, the system undergoes a change in a direction that counteracts the disturbing influence and, if possible, returns the system to equilibrium.
The three methods to stress a system that's in chemical equilibrium -

1. a change in concentration(s)
2. a change in temperature
3. a change in pressure

In this situation, involving the squeezing of the soda bottle, we are concerning primarily with number 3. The concentration isn't changing substantially (yep...I'm calling Homer's backwash negligible) and to keep it simple, neither is the temperature, even though the soda is slowly warming up to room temperature.

The inverse relationship between volume and gas pressure is the piece of the puzzle we need. We need to first consider how the volume change will affect pressure and then consider how the change in pressure affects the chemical equilibrium. This leads us to Boyle's Law which will give us a relationship between pressure and volume. Increase volume and pressure is decreased. Decrease volume and pressure is increased.

Boyle's Law

Pressure is inversely propertional to the volume:

And this gives us Boyle's Law:

The reduced pressure inside the squeezed bottle will encourage the carbonation to be released from solution. Looking at the carbonic acid (yep...you are drinking carbonic acid...read your bottle...mmmm...mmmm...tasty!) equilbrium equation, the reaction shifts to the side that produces more gas molecules:

This will make the soda go flat sooner. So Homer, you are actually killing the fizz. You are a fizz killer!

The bottom line is…You will be more successful in keeping the soda from losing its fizz, by capping it tightly and keeping it cold at an elevated pressure. There is also a special cap out on the market that lets you re-pressurize the bottle. You just screw it in place and then operate a little pump that is part of and affixed to the center of the cap. I know this sounds pretty trivial, but it bothered me enough to waste about 20 minutes of brain power.

Holidays Wrapped in the Hospitality-Obligate System

2005-12-09T02:54:00.000-08:00

Because I work in a corporate environment, I'm always aware of the subtext of how power is being played during the course of a day, throughout the lifetime of a project that involves several people and cross-functional groups. I try not to become obsessed with the power games, but I am very mindful and aware of them and how I fit into the mix.
Rituals of power have been around for thousands of years. Some of these rituals have remained intact over thousands of years, surviving eons with only minor changes. Many of the power rituals revolve around food and meals. The religious significance is blatantly obvious...a meal shared together is supposed to establish a sense of unity. It is very common for a Supervisor, Director, or some other big wig to foot the bill for a holiday meal. I tend to believe that this gesture smacks of some kind of power play instead of being an act of holiday cheer or kindness. I believe that this is an attempt to wield the power of a corporate expense account (of course the big wigs don't ultimately end up paying for this gesture of goodwill from their own pockets...) as some kind of Eucharistic transubstantiation. This comes from an ancient power ritual of "breaking bread together" or "having a bite together", which had very little to do with hospitality. It's not so much that the Supervisors, Managers, and Executives want to have a meal with all of the underlings (all of the people who don't have people), nor is it posited that lower level employees can each be simply bought for a $15 meal. The power of this gesture lies in the fact that it is based on an unconscious memory of the significance of eating a meal together as a gesture of peaceful intentions.
In many tribes of other cultures a stranger must share something to eat with the members before being accepted. From the tribe’s point of view the stranger has been extended some hospitality. Upon accepting this hospitality, an obligation has been placed upon the stranger. From the stranger’s point of view, he has announced his peaceful intentions and accepted those of the tribe. This is pretty much the same game with different players in the corporate environment. The upper echelon management assumes the role of the tribe and all of the underlings being the strangers. An exchange has taken place, but it does not really involve, except in the ritualistic sense. In some ways, by accepting the hospitality handed down to them, the underlings have given up a tiny parcel of power.
Some people are very aware of this power subtext and how it plays out into the hospitality-obligation game. The receiving and giving of presents is a prime example. How many times have you or someone you know received an unexpected present around the holidays? What is the most common reaction? You say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” This is because most people cannot accept a gift without immediately thinking about how it can be repaid. After receiving an unexpected gift, the gift giving exchange can sometimes reach neurotic levels. Subconsciously, most of us have the basic instinct to not want to be placed in a position of debt to someone. The worst news around the holidays is arrival of a card or gift from someone to whom we have sent nothing, especially when it’s too late to buy the return gift to cancel out the obligation. In this case, an obligation is put on us and even an expensive, belated gift cannot fully cancel out our obligation. You may find yourselves bitterly exchanging gifts for several holidays to come, or in extreme cases simply deciding not to see them again.
An example, of this type of power play and the hospitality-obligation couplet that is used to gain leverage is painfully obvious in Ik tribesman of Uganda. The trivia question goes something like this….
“Why do Ik tribesman build their houses at night?”
You can probably guess the answer…Ik tribesman try to build their houses secretly at night to avoid obligation to others. It is customary for Ik tribesman to offer help to a man, who is building his house and in turn he is obligated to repay the men, who helped him in food. You say…”So? That’s nice. That’s what neighbors are for.” The only problem with this scenario is that the Ik tribesmen live at starvation level. The helpful tribesmen can fulfill their social obligation to their house-building fellow tribesman, while simultaneously starving him out and possibly killing him, based on the hospitality-obligate system.
My point is that most social customs, especially in the corporate environment, that have the trappings of goodwill and hospitality are actually concealed acts of aggression. We practice a lot of these customs without knowing their origins. Shaking hands originated as a way of proving that we are not carrying weapons in our right hands. Hence the weirdness associated with the left-handed shake – an act of deception. Standing up when new guests approach our table a dinner function was not originally done as a courtesy. It was done because our ancestors could not draw their swords from a sitting position.
Enough of my paranoid ramblings…now you kind of know what its like to be inside of my head.
Responses and other opinions are welcome.