free variable

Football season is blissfully close — and, with it, the only time of the year that I actually watch television. As always, I feel compelled to revisit the perennial question: have those NHTSA advertisements really cut back on the number of people driving around in vehicles shoulder-full of booze?

I’d appreciate any hard data on this question.

There was a lot of commotion a while ago when some overcaffeinated kid revealed that the beat for the ubiquitous Usher single “Love in This Club” is made up of royalty-free loops, specifically, some synthesizer lines from the “Euro Hero Synth” set in Apple’s GarageBand. (All of the Apple loops have these bafflingly creativity-destroying names like “Cop Show Clav,” “Glow Stick Anthem Acid Bass,” “Angsty Chorused Flannel Stratocaster,” and “Uzbek Tech-House Breakdown Balalaika.”)

Of course, I use and love Logic Studio (which comes with approximately 2.7 years of royalty-free loops, including all of those included with GarageBand), but I never install loops. If I had — and if, you know, everyone else in the world hadn’t already done it — I might throw down a quick and mildly droll remix. This would probably be even easier than it sounds, since it seems like much of the production for “Love in This Club” may have been done in GarageBand. In particular, you might notice the obvious application of the “Earbleed Squarewave Mastering” preset:

Usher may not “care who’s watching,” but he cares even less, apparently, about those who are listening. Who’s winning the loudness war now?

NB: some preset and loop names may be imaginary.

The Canon Canonet GIII QL17 is a classic rangefinder from 1972. It was designed to use mercury batteries that are now unavailable in the U.S.¹; substituting contemporary batteries results in metering errors that change over the life of the battery, according to Wikipedia:

The lightmeter uses a PX625 mercury battery, which is now discontinued. The alkaline version can be used, but the different electric tension, different discharge curve, and absence of electronic compensation circuit, induce a defective exposure metering, between a 1.5-f-stop at the beginning of the life of the alkaline battery, and a 1.5-f-stop underexposure [at] the end.

At first glance, it seems absurd, or at least quaint, that someone would put up with inconsistent exposures and the absence of modern amenities in order to use this camera in 2008. (And people do make a lot of nice pictures with the Canonet even today.) However, when one considers all of the crap that people have to put up with to use a 2007-vintage, $10k Leica M8 digital rangefinder, worrying about a stop or two here and there suddenly doesn’t seem like that big a deal.

¹ This decades-old restriction on mercury batteries looks awfully prescient now, since we’ll need to ensure a ready supply of mercury for light bulbs in the next decade. Good show, lawmakers!

Well, this entry into the “themed-snack” marketplace is basically the dumbest thing I’ve seen since I learned that Sony was bankrolling “Are We There Yet,” a PG-rated children’s comedy starring Ice Cube:

Next up: “United States Currency-O’s,” “Fruit-Flavored Powerbook Keycap Snacks,” and “Whole-Grain Picture-Hanging Hardware Kit.”

(via Wolf Rentzsch on twitter)

Spotted in Madison:

If that’s unclear — and it might well be, since it’s a phone picture — the sticker on the left side says “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” and the sticker on the right side says “My sister is in the Air Force.”

I generally try to avoid paying attention in even-numbered years unless I have a ready supply of antiemetics, but I’m always happy to read about the competing goals of different typeface choices. Perhaps the most delightful thing that I read during my hiatus from posting here was this snarky riff on the typographic choices of presidential campaigns — and the questionable design goals each seem to aim for — from the always entertaining and quotable Hoefler & Frere-Jones Blog. (Note to typeface designers with weblogs: “mocking national politicians,” “type nerdery,” and “snarky riffs” become so much more powerful when combined, just like Voltron.)

Immediately preceding that post was a cute piece reflecting Hoefler’s delight that Barack Obama’s campaign is using H&FJ Gotham for some of their signage. As Gary Hustwit points out, Gotham’s aesthetic recalls Modernism and its attendant idealism — themes that resonate with Obama’s progressive base. (I suspect it is also resonates with voters who love flawless and absurdly expensive digital fonts with restrictive licenses.)

To my eye, Gotham is the finest typeface choice from any of these campaigns, both for its quality and for its rhetorical compatibility with the candidate. However, I note that Obama’s main wordmark does not use H&FJ faces. Rather, the ubiquitous Obama yard signs and bumper stickers employ two classic Eric Gill faces: Perpetua and Gill Sans. I am not sure if there is a similarly felicitous design goal behind this design choice. If I had to guess, though, I’d assume that this choice increases the campaign’s appeal among dog lovers.

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According to this article, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy is unable to write songs in front of other people. That’s reasonable, I guess. Apparently, he’s uncomfortable with exposing some parts of the process:

[W]orking melodies over, you’re constantly sounding like a yowling cat, as you’re trying to find the right melody. And you find stupid melodies, too, and stupid lyrics that you never would want anybody to think that you’d knowingly entertain….

While I am not by any stretch a connoisseur of pop music, I should disclose that I have been subjected to the Decemberists’ oeuvre several times and found it affected, grating, and essentially unlistenable. However, I now have new respect for Meloy. If he’s paralyzed by the prospect of “sounding like a yowling cat” in front of a fawning reporter from the Guardian, he must be an extremely seasoned performer to muster the courage to perform live at all.

Here’s some heinous logo work as spotted at the Madison airport today:

I can’t say anything about the bar fare ($7 for bottled macrobrews and $5 for french fries is far too steep for me), but this is certainly some of the würst treatment of blackletter I’ve ever seen. (Background info)

Sara Ivry at the NYT discusses efforts to market “Evan Almighty” to religious groups. However, Ivry (or her editors) seem to be serious Arians:

By comparison, “Evan Almighty” seems an unlikely candidate for [marketing efforts targeted at churches]. Unlike “The Passion of the Christ,” it is a comedy that portrays God in the flesh (played again by Morgan Freeman, wearing a natty white suit). “Bruce Almighty,” which made more than $240 million at the box office in the United States, was better known for irreverent humor and Mr. Carrey’s mugging than for any underlying religious message.

While “The Passion of the Christ” is no comedy, I’m pretty sure Gibson would characterize his movie as portraying God in the flesh as well.

[NYT article via GetReligion]

These raise many of my objections to self-righteous contemporary institutional heresy (note the ludicrous oversize comma). Feel free to suggest your own!

RIYL: The bumper sticker is dead, I’d buy one of these.

Technorati Tags: bumper sticker, heresy, ucc, heterodox

wikipedic

SYLLABICATION: wi·ki·pe·dic

PRONUNCIATION: wĭ-kē-pē’-dĭk

ADJECTIVE: 1. Characterized by sparsity, a pathological focus on ephemera, savant-like devotion to the trivial or irrelevant, and occasional blatant error: “his wikipedic knowledge of music comprised the following: the birthdates and hobbies of every member of Menudo past and present, the exact synthesizer preset patch names used in Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi score, and the author of the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra: namely, Richard Wagner.”

SEE ALSO: encyclopedic

Technorati Tags: neologism, wiki

I only saw about ten minutes of the Academy Awards, which included the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. As you may know, the screenplay for The Departed won. As William Monahan was taking the stage, the narrator said something to the effect of: “Monahan adapted the screenplay for The Departed from the Japanese film Infernal Affairs.”

I’ve always said that Andy Lau is one of the greatest Japanese actors I know, followed closely by Tony Leung. I also think that “Moo gaan dou,” the title by which Infernal Affairs is known in its country of release, totally sounds Japanese. (I’m no specialist, though.)

You don’t have to know much to read a teleprompter, and I suspect that you need to know only a little more to write the script for the Academy Awards narrator. Perhaps a good place to start would be “basic facts about films under consideration for major awards.” I have no particular affection for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — indeed, the only Oscars I care about include hollandaise sauce — but I’m embarrassed for them.

UPDATE²: UPI was repeating this bogus claim, but they’ve fixed it as of this morning. The original UPI text is below:

Here are two baffling assertions, both from a Starbucks in Wayne, PA. In the first, the asserted fact is baffling; in the second, the assertion itself is baffling.

1. According to a plaque on the wall, the Starbucks in Wayne, PA was voted “Best Coffee on the Main Line” by readers of some regional publication. (It doesn’t matter which one — it could have been Philadelphia Philistine Monthly and it would still be troubling.) Certainly the bourgeoisie must have ready access to superior coffee.
2. My espresso came with this quote from Nancy Wilson of the rock band Heart:
   
   
   
   OK, so it’s not a complete sentence. But what could it possibly mean? I’m not sure it’s even wrong. (Your suggestions for how to make sense of this are welcome in the comments. Bonus points if you can fashion this utterance into some part of a coherent argument.)

How was this domain name still available? Almost all student “activists” are pretty revolting.

I had a good time in college: I learned to love art music composed before Beethoven¹, spent a lot of quality time talking about interesting ideas, and met some of my best friends (including, most importantly, my lovely wife). However, since I graduated, my undergrad institution has apparently been evaluating tenure, policy, and strategic decisions based on only one metric: “Will this infuriate Will Benton ‘00?” A list of my grievances would be too long for users on dial-up connections — although I must note that 89.3 FM now broadcasts execrable “adult contemporary” fare instead of the best classical music programming in the country — but I can’t let this goofy press release slide. Here’s a representative quote:

[St. Olaf Choir conductor Anton] Armstrong disagrees with the religious experts and scholars who say that the civil and international unrest plaguing the world today signals an abandonment by God.

Who are these “religious experts and scholars?” (Has St. Olaf given them tenure?) And how on earth did St. Olaf’s “experts and scholars” manage to completely miss the last two millennia of Christian intellectual history — in which other “religious experts and scholars” came up with numerous explanations for the problem of evil that, overwhelmingly, did not involve abandonment by God?

Of course, it seems most likely that the writer of this release didn’t actually consult any “religious experts and scholars,” and made up a transition paragraph that seemed plausible. However, if this is true — that this transition seemed plausible — then we have a much more troubling question. St. Olaf purports to provide an “education committed to the liberal arts [and] rooted in the Christian Gospel.” How is it then, that a college employee — who, in writing this release, served as a mouthpiece for the college — is apparently so ignorant of both the liberal arts and the Christian gospel?

¹ I had previously regarded Beethoven as “acceptable” only because a clear evolutionary line could be drawn from his work to that of Mahler. Ah, how three semesters of music history conspire to open one’s eyes!

If the election were held today, I wouldn’t tell you how I planned to vote, just as I am not telling you how I plan to vote even though the election shall not be held today. We have a secret ballot for a reason. Why do you insist that I voluntarily waive such privacy? Put yourself in my shoes: sure, I can appreciate it that you believe in what you’re doing. You could be watching football or taking a nap (both of which I was doing, to some extent, until your most recent visit), but instead you’re going from door to door bothering people.

If some random stranger showed up at your door and started interrogating you about various candidates and policy points, how would you feel? Maybe it would make your day to identify an ideological comrade, or fill you with moral superiority at the sight of someone who espoused positions you found disagreeable. Perhaps you would love telling this person all of your deepest desires for the legislative and executive branches of Wisconsin government, and enjoying an informative presentation about how you could get more involved. Please appreciate, as foreign to you as this may seem, that I would not. Indeed, I wouldn’t even tell you what I had for breakfast.

Thank you for your consideration,
Will Benton

Note to non-prosletyzing readers: please allow me to recommend the breakfast burrito at Pasqual’s Salsaria. I’ll be stopping by your door later to ask you whether, if brunch were held today, you’d order one or not.

I’m currently listening to Chroralvorspiel BWV 599: “Nun komm’, der Heiden Heiland” (Bearb. Busoni) from the album “Dinu Lipatti: Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti, Schubert” by Dinu Lipatti

We asked W.T. Benton a simple question: “Thomas, what do you think of the new Lutheran hymnals?” His response was immediate, direct, and unambiguous.

Long-time readers may remember my favorite party game, “Whack-an-enthymeme”. The producers of “Who wants to be a millionaire?” (one of my least-favorite game shows) apparently have decided to let us play my game at home while playing their game at home. By felicitous coincidence, I managed to notice an opportunity for WaE on the TV and snap a picture:

It’s a real pity for would-be slave owners that the Emancipation Proclamation is merely a “dead document”, robbed of its opportunity to evolve and fixed in time with the precise meaning Lincoln intended. However, the absence of other “living documents” only makes the Constitution all the more remarkable. Indeed, I wish I could find the exact incantation that the Framers used to animate the Constitution — if I could write some technical papers with “meaning that [could] evolve over time”, I could really stay on top of my field!

Andrea and I went to Whole Foods on Sunday afternoon to buy some groceries. Whole Foods, of course, is best known for its emphasis on natural and organic foods. However, their rather vague mission statement (styled as a “Declaration of Interdependence,” as part of “efforts to communicate more often, more openly, and more compassionately.”) eschews being “overly restrictive or dogmatic” about foods; instead, they prefer to be “inclusive and open-minded.” Presumably, an “inclusive and open-minded approach” to food means that Whole Foods would grudgingly sell “conventional” produce or meat, if it were vastly superior to any available organic analogue.

As we saw upon leaving the store, the mission does not end in the checkout lane. Rather, the commitment to communicate “often” and “openly” extends beyond the doors of Whole Foods; at least, it does to the extent that doing so is required by local law. Furthermore, the desire for inclusivity and avoidance of dogma extends to lawn care as well as to food product selection. We know this because in each grassy, curb-lined island and median in the Whole Foods parking lot, there were at least two small signs reading as follows:

One wonders how inferior the organic parking-lot grass must be.

(Image credit: Wis. Adm. Code, § ATCP 29, Appendix B.)

Here’s the front page of yesterday’s Wisconsin State Journal:

One assumes that any pro-spellchecker “referendums” were tabled. As is my wont, I’m providing some unsolicited advice for the local paper:

Hey, it would be a start. (By the way, since I have recently come under fire for singling out the local “alternative weekly” as a snark target, please note that this post mocks a non-alternative non-weekly. Enjoy.)

Related non-word abuse: “quadrilogy,” “theologist.”