Trey's iTunes Playlist

If you use iTunes, check out Trey's celebrity playlist. Pretty good mix of stuff, in my opinion. He's been talking up The Arcade Fire pretty heavily in the past year, so it's no surprise to see them on there. I like them too, but for a band with one album, I don't know if they deserve all of the praise they are getting quite yet. (Of course Harry Potter picked the same song for his playlist as well)

For the record, I know I post about these playlists a lot, but I have yet to buy one. I just find them interesting - kind of a window into a personal side of musicians/celebrities that you may not otherwise get. I'd love to see Amazon do this with books or IMDB or Netflix with movies.

From a more innocent time...

Here is a book that Ann found at work today:

End of an Error

Boston Dirt Dogs can be a little mean spirited sometimes, and they have a penchant for stirring up controversy for no reason, but you have to love their headline on the Renteria trade: "End of an Error."

For what it's worth, I agree with this trade - they overpaid for "Edgah" and his errors killed us last year. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the Sox may be looking to sign a certain free agent shortstop that wore number 5 when he was here. I'm not so sure that would be a good idea.

Site Feeds

I made some nerdy behind-the-scenes changes to the blogs, adding site feeds for both of them, and a trackback feature to the news blog (not that anyone ever links to an individual post on this blog, but whatever).

If you want to subscribe to the news blog, copy the following URL into your favorite newsreader: http://www.netspace.org/~mielcarz/atom.xml.

If you want to subscribe to Sadie's blog, copy this: http://www.netspace.org/~mielcarz/babyblog/atom.xml.

If you use a good web browser like Safari or Firefox, you should see a little icon in the address bar (on the right) when you go to either of the pages. Then click on that, and you should be all set. If you don't know what any of this means, just ignore it, and come to the pages like you always do.

4 more minutes of ads...

Maybe you have seen that Apple is adding TV shows to the iTunes store. At $2 a pop for a fairly low resolution video, I'm not really interested in buying any, but I did notice something interesting. Law & Order episodes available for sale average about 44min in length. However, if you go back in time and check out old Knight Rider episodes, you'll see that they average 48min. Both of these shows were shown in an hour of real time, so it looks like NBC has added 4 minutes of commercials to the average hour of television in the last 20 years. At this rate, in 220 years, the entire hour will be ads! And the networks wonder why they are losing viewers to HBO and DVDs.

mmm...frappe

Ever wonder how the majority of the people in your state pronounce "creek" or "aunt"? Look no further. I agree with most of the New Hampshire data, but not all. I definitely don't say pa-JAH-mas. That's downright pretentious.

Jake and Beth came up to see The Hold Steady at Dartmouth last night. The lead singer, Craig Finn, was truly insane behind the microphone, running all over the stage and spitting as he sang. Great, hard rocking music. And loud - I think my ears are still ringing. If you want an idea of what they sound like, check out this piece from All Things Considered.

Where do you fall on the political compass? FWIW, I'm in the libertarian left.

Why does everything involving the Red Sox have to be such a clusterfuck? Haven't they learned anything from the Patriots? If you keep things quiet and in house it's much better for everyone involved, your team has more chemistry, and you win multiple championships?

Update: I guess I should qualify the above statement a little. I don't think the Sox need Theo to succeed - there are probably other GM candidates that could utilize statistics the way Theo did and do just as well as him. I'm just sick to death of all the drama: A-rod, Manny, Pedro, etc. Can't we have a normal offseason for once? And even though he is kind of the antithesis of a stats guy, it would be neat if Brian Sabean (Concord High School Class of 1974) were the next general manager of the Red Sox. Neat, but probably bad for the team in the long run.

Happy Halloween! Here is a picture of Ann and I from the grad student halloween party:

What month is it again?

We had a great homecoming weekend. Liz and Reggie came on Thurdsay from San Fran and Houston respectively. We introduced them to Sadie and the hilarity that is Anchorman. Friday I had to go to the lab, but at lunch we went to Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, went for a walk around the orchard and tasted some heirloom apples and delicious hard cider.

Scott and his girlfriend Shannon joined us on friday night and we went to the bonfire. It's always fun chanting "Worst Class Ever" at the freshmen and yelling at them to touch the fire. Then we went home and played Trivial Pursuit (the original version from 1981 with questions about the USSR and the like), with Liz and I being in the lead at with 4 pie pieces when we all went to sleep at 1AM. Saturday we went to the football game, and Dartmouth actually won. Granted, it was against lowly Columbia, but we'll take what we can get at this point. Sadie also got to see Aunt Jenny and her friends at the young alumni tent, and was in fact briefly kidnapped by them. After the game, we were on a nostalgia kick, so we went to EBA's and got some breadsticks with ranch dressing. Sounds kind of gross, I know, but for some reason they became a Dartmouth staple.

When we got home, Lolly and James were there waiting for us - well, mostly waiting for Sadie. They brought a great gift with them - the Family Guy movie. Hilarious stuff. After they left, it was time for a four-way Scrabble battle (yes, this is how lame we are - two board games in two days) - Scott and Shannon had gone home. Ann was the winner (of course) but she only beat me by one point. Then we all watched Reggie's Astros lose the first game of the World Series. Aside from that last hiccup, a good time was had by all. On Sunday, Reggie and Liz left, and Jenny and her pals came for one last visit.

If anyone out there is a Netflix subscriber and wants to be my "friend," send me an invite. Send Ann one too, since we've split up our queue.

I was surprised to see Stephen King include "I Summon You" (link goes to demo version) by Spoon on his iTunes celebrity playlist. Even more surprising was when he wrote this about the song "The best, most achingly beautiful ballad of the year. I've listened to it a hundred times and still have no idea what it means." I feel the same way. Just an all around great song.

This is all over the web right now, but in case you haven't seen it: The Shining, remixed. The use of that Peter Gabriel song is perfect.

If you liked it, check out these remixed trailers for for West Side Story and Titanic. Not quite as good, but still pretty funny.

Sadie is ready for the postseason, are you?

I guess I would have rather the Sox won the division, but I'd also rather the Sox be playing the somewhat sturggling White Sox than the solid Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California USA North America Planet Earth. We'll see how it goes. I'm not holding out too much hope because of the woeful state of the pitching staff, but I do believe in miracles, because I saw one with my own eyes last year. We should start getting ready for some late nights. I remember last year just being utterly exhausted and emotionally spent during the ALCS. It was good training for the first couple months of Sadie.

Also, if there is anyone who may want to watch the playoffs, like someone who doesn't have cable, my doors are always open. And we have a guest room for those extra inning games. Just bring beer.

Dolphins armed with toxic dart guns may have escaped from their holding pens because of Hurricane Katrina. Watch out if you are swimming in the gulf!

Squint and read the note Bush is writing in this picture from a Security Council meeting. Funny stuff. (A zoomed in version is here.)

Sears is currently running an ad featuring the song "Phantasies" by Stephen Malkmus.

Very very weird.

The Concord Monitor has a brush with hipness in this week's Onion:

MANCHESTER, NH—An appetizer of radish canapés with salmon mousse served at local French restaurant La Maison de Vin was torn a new asshole this week, according to Concord Monitor food critic Bernard Haberle, who reviewed the establishment in his "Good Eating" column.

On another note, bravo to The Onion for putting their entire archives online for free. If only more real newspapers would do this.
Update: Also, I am very happy to see that they have added RSS feeds as well.

Wow. This is just unbelievable. If you are white, you "find" bread and soda at the grocery store. If you are black, you looted the grocery store. Good work liberal media!

Ann and I were looking at Sadie's baby book tonight and there was a section where you write down the cost of various items. A gallon of gas was $1.90. This was only 8 and a half months ago.

I hope it doesn't go up another 60 cents in the next 8 months.

Congratulations to:

1. My dad for winning the New Hampshire State Senior Championship and for qualifying for the USGA Senior Amateur.
   
2. Jake and Beth for buying a house in Sutton, NH.
   
3. Me for waterskiing successfully on my first try in at least 15 years.

Bob Ryan has a great article in today's Globe on Dave Roberts' stolen base in Game 4 of the ALCS last year. Excellent recap of the most tense moment in my life, and I'm glad to see that Red Sox Nation gives him his due wherever he goes.

Finally! (What follows is probably the nerdiest post to this blog ever)

I have been plagued for literally years by a problem I've had with Microsoft Excel - how to change a vertical column of data into a horizontal row one without cutting and pasting each cell one at a time. A Google search today gave me the answer, found at a bulletin board on the PC World New Zealand website: paste special, values, with the transpose checkbox selected. I love Google.

(If anyone cares to know why I want to change my data in this way, it is so it will fit into the data sheet in my statistical software so I can make a pretty looking scatter plot, which are a pain in Excel because points with the same value fall on top of one another.)

Conservative Catholics want Sony to change the plot of the Da Vinci Code to make it less sacreligious - removing Opus Dei as the main villain, and eliminating the assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child. Now, I know The Da Vinci Code is no great piece of literature, and I have no idea if any of the claims in the book are actually true, but Sony would be stupid to dramatically alter key plot details of the best selling novel of all time. This would be a mistake of New Coke proportions.

I saw on the news the other day that one of our favorite restaurants in JP, El Oriental de Cuba, was firebombed with a Malotov cocktail. That sucks. The food there was so good, and so cheap, I have no idea why someone would firebomb it. I hope they catch whoever did it and force him to eat bland prison food for the rest of his life.

Ann and I both read the new Harry Potter this weekend. We each read 3 chapters at a time, although there were definitely times when we wanted to keep going. It was great and very sad and leaves many unanswered questions for the final book, which probably won't come out for at least 2 or 3 years. I won't discuss anything here, in case some of you are still planning on reading it, but if you want to chat about it, post in the comments.

There was a Garbage Pail Kids Movie?!? Why didn't anyone tell me?

An ethnographic study on non-traditional use of Gold Bond. Click "listen."

This would be funny if it wasn't true:

(Pic found at Washington Monthly).

Vladimir Putin stole Robert Kraft's Super Bowl Ring. Take us to Defcon 1.

So I put this on my del.icio.us list of links, but I realize that not everyone checks there. So if you want a laugh, check out Grocery Store Wars.

So I read a fascinating article in the New Yorker recently. It concerns the way the advent of recording has changed music - for better and for worse. The article focuses mainly on classical music, and talks about how classical has become very standardized since commercial recordings have become widespread. It seems that prior to the advent of recorded music, classical music was much more fluid, and the players given much more leeway in the way they played a given piece. Recordings also made the players much more self-conscious about inadequacies in their playing; it's analogous to living your entire life without seeing a mirror or a picture of yourself and suddenly realizing that you have an ugly mole in the middle of your forehead. Also interesting was the idea that since the early records were so lo-fi, loud brassy music and out-front singing was much easier to hear than quiet violins - it seems as if recoordings made pop music popular.

It's not something we think about, but the way we experience music is almost entirely through recordings, and not live performances - 100 years ago, there were almost no recordings, and the only way people got to experience music was to go and see it being made. And even when we do see a live show, it is almost always informed by listening to a recording prior to the show, and the musicians know that nearly everyone has heard a recording, so they try to live up to it, or try intentionally to play differently to play against our preconceived notions of the song.

This all reminds me (and this is something Ann and I talk about from time to time; she can expound on it more than I can and drop names like Derrida like a good English major) of why one needs to see a real painting when reproductions are so ubiquitous. When we were in NYC in February we went to the MOMA. As you may or may not know, they have Van Gogh's Starry Night on display. When I saw it, all I could think was "this is the original to all of those posters in every girl's dorm room at college." I couldn't distance myself from all of the reproductions I have seen in my life. Are the reproductions art?

So David Byrne read the same article I did and had a great long response on his blog (scroll down to Jun 5). He is a bit more optimistic than the author of the first article, and has some great things to say about different kinds of music today.

Incidentally, Alex Ross, the author of the original article, wrote the best article on Pavement/Malkmus that I have ever read. Check it out.

Dear Powerpoint,

Thank you for capitalizing the first letter on every row in my text boxes. If not for you, I would never have realized what a pain it is to have no forward delete key on my iBook keyboard! Also, it's really great when I write acronyms like mRNA and you know so much about science that you automatically change them to MRNA! Thanks for making my presentations the best they can be!

Love,
Dan

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best of the Hanover/Dartmouth police log.

I found a great new Red Sox blog: Chad Finn's Touching All the Bases. Funny and insightful. The author (umm...blogger?) used to work at the Concord Monitor and now works at the Globe.

My latest beer recommendation: Smuttynose Big A IPA. You may have had it in the past, but it's bigger and hoppier than ever this year.

Also, Ann and I saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith last week. It was by far the best of the prequels, and probably the only one that really should have been made. Ann's somewhat minor quibble with the movie was that Natalie Portman didn't look nearly pregnant enough to be having twins, particularly twins that looked to be about 3 months old at birth. I guess as a formerly pregnant woman, she's a bit sensitive. I think she would have liked it better if the movie showed Padme waking up three times in the night to pee.

Good couple games by the Sox this weekend. Of course, they are getting killed right now, but the O's can't keep this up all season, can they? Someone tell me they can't. Please.

I can't believe Bo didn't win American Idol. I'm more disappointed in the American public today than I was the day after the election.

Good movies we've watched in the past few days:

• Hedwig and the Angry Inch - about a transsexual rock star and his/her attempt to get recognized as the real genius behind a rock star. As a side note, every time I heard about this movie in the past, I thought it was "angry itch" not "inch." Strange the way your mind can play tricks on you like that.
  
• Run Lola Run - a very entertaining German action movie that is kinda like Groundhog Day.
  

Bad movie we watched last week:

• The TV movie Hercules. Horrible, yet oddly entertaining.
  

We had a great time with Beth and Jake this past weekend. Friday night Beth, Jake and I went a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists show at Dartmouth. They pretended they were students, we got in for free, and had free beer, water and candy. (Ann stayed home with Sadie). It was a great show, and we were all seriously deaf when we got home. It was amazing just to be out at a concert - thanks for letting me go, Ann!

On Saturday we drove up to Waterbury, VT. We took a quick tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory - our free samples were Triple Caramel Crunch (which was wicked good), Sweet Cream and Cookies and Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. While you are at the Ben & Jerry's website, be sure to vote to raise your favorite flavor from the graveyard!

After the tour we checked out The Alchemist, a new brewpub in Waterbury. The beer and food were excellent. We especially enjoyed the fries with garlic mayonnaise, and I loved the Holy Cow IPA and Grote Bruin.

Also of note - Jake and I passed the first three levels of co-op mode of James Bond: Everything or Nothing (although we kept getting our ass kicked on the fourth) and had great fun making two guys kiss in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Jake needs to get a Playstation so he can practice up.

Red Sox at bat music. My favorite is Keith Folke pulling out the Danzig.

If either Federov or Pork Chop (i.e. Scott) don't get voted off American Idol this week, Ann and I are going to stop watching. Go Bo!

Hmmm...I don't feel like BBQ, I'll try the Mec & Cheese.

Tom Brady's Celebrity Playlist. Pretty much what you'd expect: Aerosmith, Fitty, Eminem, U2. Can you imagine him grooving along to "Jesus Walks"? I can't. (You need iTunes for the link to work, and maybe a mac too.)

Nice game by the Sox yesterday, good to see Tedy Bruschi looking healthy. I have to say, if he can't play anymore, the Pats better give him a nice job in the front office or a coaching position. I would be pretty pissed if they kicked him to the curb after being the heart and soul of their defense these past few years.

Classic Bill Simmons: Secret Yankee Closer Election Set for April 8. Yeah, I know the Yanks are up a game, but I'm happy to see that Rivera has lost a step.

New Beck album = Great

Something I'm very proud of - if you search for "chicken breast trees" (in quotes) on Google, Ann's post about same is the #1 result.

So I'm assuming you all use iTunes to organize your music. How do you rate songs? Here's my strategy, but I'd love to hear yours.

• 1 star: Novelty or just plain bad songs that I have in my library for fun. Examples: Me So Horny, Take On Me, Unskinny Bop
  
• 2 stars: Funny songs or cheesy songs that have a little bit of quality. Examples: Cracklin' Rosie, Lee, Ode to My Car, Yoda, Gin and Juice
  
• 3 stars: My least favorite songs by good bands, and my best "gimmick" songs. Examples: Good Day Sunshine, Dancing in the Dark, Kielbasa, Baby Got Back
  
• 4 stars: My biggest category. Good to great songs by good bands. Too many songs to give even a representative sample.
  
• 5 stars: Songs that everyone thinks are all-time classics (Like a Rolling Stone, I Can See for Miles, A Day in the Life, Thunder Road, Sweet Jane) and songs that I think are all-time classics (YEM, Sabotage, Remember the Mountain Bed, Where It's At, Type Slowly)
  

I'm pretty satisfied with this system, but I wonder if I don't have a little bit of grade inflation going on. Anyone else have stricter criteria? Next time on Dan's iTunes organization: cutting down on superfluous genres.

This NY Times article perfectly describes a problem I've had ever since I started using a cell phone - I can't remember phone numbers. It took me so long to memorize my new home phone number in Lebanon because the only time I'd ever call it was from my cell phone where I had dutifully programmed it in. I'd like to say that removing phone numbers from my brain has opened it up to a whole world of grad school facts and figures, but instead I think it's being filled with reality TV contestants. Oh Amanda Avila, we hardly knew ye!

Recommended:
Movie: The Station Agent. It stars Peter Dinklage, who you may remember as the dwarf author from Elf who beats the shit out of Will Ferrell. It was just an excellent little (really, no pun intended!) movie, the kind that isn't really going to change your life or anything, but an extremely pleasent way to spend an hour and a half.
Beer: McNeill's Scotch Ale. Ann and I picked this up on our way to NYC last weekend, and we just got around to drinking it. A delicious Scotch Ale, slightly smokey, malty, but very smooth. None of the cloying sweetness that you sometimes get in a Scotch ale.
Music: Brad Mehldau Largo. Yes, yet another white jazz keyboardist that plays cool cover songs in the proud tradition of Medeski and the Bad Plus. But his version of "Paranoid Android" kicks ass.
Essay: It isn't in the online version, but Jonathan Lethem's (author of Fortress of Solitude which you need to read if you haven't) essay "The Beards" in this week's New Yorker is amazing. The way he describes the relationship of the teenage male and his music (and to a lesser extent, books and movies) is exactly the way I felt, and the way I would write it if I had a modicum of talent. If anyone out there wants me to save the issue for them, let me know in the comments.

This is an actual question from the exam I mentioned last week:

You have just started your own lab at Red Sox Nation University and you decide you want to start a new research direction for your group. You have isolated a new organism called Yankees loserii that, upon infection, causes an abnormal swelling of the head. Your first mission is to gain a better understanding of how Y. loserii colonizes the host and causes disease. You have a few pieces of preliminary data you've gleaned from the literature that provide a starting place. An in vitro system has been set up in which Y. loserii has been shown to colonize a particular host cell line called AROD-S. In this model system, Y. loserii is cytotoxic and thus kills the AROD-S cell line after 48 hrs of exposure. Standard genetic tools such as transposons, gene fusions, plasmids and antibiotic-resistance markers are also available to you. However, no one has yet felt it is worth the money to sequence this organism. Of course, your lab is well stocked with all the typical equipment including incubators, microscopes, etc.

A. Design a genetic screen to identify factors required for Y. loserii to kill the AROD-S cell line.

B. Design a second screen in which mutants identified in the screen above can be sorted into the two following classes: a. Genes required for the colonization of the AROD-S cell line, or b. Genes required for killing of the AROD-S cell line

C. How would you use an enrichment to facilitate the screen you designed in Part A?

D. As a result of the screen performed above, you identify a key toxin called WS-04 that is required for killing the AROD-S cell line. In the course of your experimentation, you discover that this toxin is only expressed when Y. loserii is exposed to the AROD-S cell line, but NOT when Y. loserii is grown on laboratory medium. Based on your preliminary data, Dr. Taylor hyothesizes that expression of the gene encoding WS-04 is repressed on laboratory medium. Using the genetic tools at your disposal, describe how you would design and implement a genetic slection to identify the repressor of the gene encoding WS-04.

I got a kick out of it (well except for part C, which kicked my ass).

The Gates.

So I had a big test today. It sucked. Kind of unfair to have a test on Valentines day, but it also let me off the hook. Anyway, all Ann and I did for Valentines Day was order Chinese take-out. So what was my fortune? "You will pass a difficult test that will make you happier." Well, that's a relief.

Blogger finally got around to fixing their comment system - the comments show up in a pop-up and you can put your name in without registering.

I also started up my own del.icio.us account. Now I can put up links with very little commentary just like Jake. Of course Jake will probably be the only one who ever looks at it, but that's fine.

RIP Jimmy Smith.

Dynasty! It wasn't always pretty, but they got it done. To use the worst pun I've heard in years, it's a Boston Three Party!

It will be weird in a couple of years to see the Pats lose a playoff game - I've forgotten what it's like. Go Pats! This never gets old.

As you may have already seen on the Baby Blog, we went to the BeerAdvocate.com Extreme Beer Fest on Saturday. I thought I might list my favorite beers from the festival in case any of you get a chance to try them out:

• Sam Adams Utopias MMIII (of course)
  
• Cambridge Brewing Company YouEnjoyMyStout (not just because of the name, but it didn't hurt)
  
• Magic Hat Anti Oxidant Acid Ale
  
• Smuttynose Wheat Wine
  

That's about all I can remember, but I don't think I had a bad beer at this fest. Good times.

I've been thinking lately about what an amazing time it is to be a Boston sports fan. The Sox win the Series, the Pats might (will!) repeat as Super Bowl Champs. I keep telling myself it might never be this good in my life again, so I've been reading every article in the Globe sports section, reloading the Sports Guy and the Dirt Dogs several times a day and just soaking it all in. Go Pats!

Spongebob could be gay! Will somebody please think of the children!

By the way, the Flaming Lips song from the Spongebob soundtrack is great, and the Wilco and Shins songs are good too. Well worth your $2.97.

On All Things Considered a couple days ago I heard this great story about how that crappy band Nickelback put out the exact same song with different lyrics two years apart. It inspired me to seek out the song on the web to hear just how close they were. Here it is.

I finally got around to watching Faith Rewarded (the DVD about the Red Sox' epic 2004 season) tonight with Sadie. The indoctrination begins now! I had actually forgotten just how thrilling this season had been, since there have been a few changes in my life since the end of the series. I's still hard to believe that comeback against the Yanks - I couldn't help myself but stand up and clap when Ortiz hit that homer to end game 4. The movie got me really excited for spring training - about 6 weeks until pitcher and catchers report!