There are some interesting things a-happenin' with our friendly neighbour (or "neighbor", if you will) to the south this week. Most interestingly, Al Gore won a Nobel Prize, and the US House of Representatives has finally acknowledged the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey, which took place from 1915-1923, as genocide.
I was intrigued by the genocide acknowledgement mostly because of the response it provoked from Turkey. Apparently, the ethnic killing of hundreds of thousands (maybe even up to 1.5 million, depending on who you talk to) of Armenians is a bit of a sore spot, and they'd kindly ask that you not bring it up, thank you very much. They're so enraged, there's talk of them backing out of their currently friendly agreement that allows US forces to pass through Turkey on their way to Iraq.
This all seems a little ridiculous to me, especically given how long ago the genocide took place. Does the Turkish government think it can eventually convince the rest of the world that it wasn't genocide? It's not like they're denying the killings; there's too much documentation to get away with that. Rather, what they're arguing against is the specific use of the term "genocide". I guess there's some other term they'd rather use for the systematic elimination of a race of people.
For a country jockeying for a position within the EU, Turkey doesn't seem very committed to getting its human rights record cleaned up. In fact, as recently as 2005, they were enacting laws like the infamous Article 301, which states: "A person who, being a Turk, explicitly insults the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months to three years."
Because, as we all know, the best way to solve a nation's problems is to pretend they don't exist, thus solving the problem forever.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Aesop Rock
I've been listening to Aesop Rock almost constantly for the last few weeks. I've had some of his tunes kicking around my computer for a while, but never really invested the time to get familiar with them until recently. I feel like an idiot for not listening to them earlier.
On the surface, it's underground hip hop, with quirky beats and incredibly articulate vocal delivery. Once you start listening to the lyrics themselves, though, it gains a whole other dimension. He takes a very stream-of-consciousness approach to writing, and the result is sort of like the hip hop equivalent of impressionism. You can get a pretty good feel for the ideas he's laying down by listening to the whole, but if you try to pick apart individual lines to squeeze literal meaning out of them, it all becomes kind of nonsensical. Every once in a while though, he drops great straightforward lines that stand out all the more as a result of the abstractness of the rest of the lyrics. It's a wicked awesome combination of literary delivery and unstoppable flow.
The best example of his lyrical style is the "Daylight/Night Light" song pair. The first song has a sort-of-melancholy feel to it, but seems kind of optimistic at times. Nightlight, on the other hand, is Daylight's evil twin. The lyrics are almost identical, but where Daylight is optimistic, Night Light is negative and furious. Listening to them consecutively makes for a pretty cool effect. Best lyric pair:
Daylight: "I'll lay my boots to rest when I'm impressed, so I triple knot 'em and forgot 'em".
Night Light: "I'll lay my kicks to rest when I'm impressed, so I'll staple gun 'em to my face."
Intense.
On the surface, it's underground hip hop, with quirky beats and incredibly articulate vocal delivery. Once you start listening to the lyrics themselves, though, it gains a whole other dimension. He takes a very stream-of-consciousness approach to writing, and the result is sort of like the hip hop equivalent of impressionism. You can get a pretty good feel for the ideas he's laying down by listening to the whole, but if you try to pick apart individual lines to squeeze literal meaning out of them, it all becomes kind of nonsensical. Every once in a while though, he drops great straightforward lines that stand out all the more as a result of the abstractness of the rest of the lyrics. It's a wicked awesome combination of literary delivery and unstoppable flow.
The best example of his lyrical style is the "Daylight/Night Light" song pair. The first song has a sort-of-melancholy feel to it, but seems kind of optimistic at times. Nightlight, on the other hand, is Daylight's evil twin. The lyrics are almost identical, but where Daylight is optimistic, Night Light is negative and furious. Listening to them consecutively makes for a pretty cool effect. Best lyric pair:
Daylight: "I'll lay my boots to rest when I'm impressed, so I triple knot 'em and forgot 'em".
Night Light: "I'll lay my kicks to rest when I'm impressed, so I'll staple gun 'em to my face."
Intense.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Toynbee Tiles and Markovian Parallax
Today's theme is "weird mysteries".
First off, the case of the mysterious "Toynbee Tiles". These tiles of unknown origin have materialized in several major US cities and South American capitals, embedded in asphalt. Most of them contain a similar crypic message, along the lines of:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.
Uh, yeah. No one knows who's responsible for these tiles or what, if anything, the message means. Perhaps the most mysterious tile is one in Santiago de Chile that references a street address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The couple who live at the address in question don't know anything about the tiles, and apparently get quite annoyed when people ask. Legitimate response, or crazy conspiracy coverup?
Figure 1: Toynbee Tile embedded in crosswalk
Mysterious internet thing number two is the "Markovian Parallax Denigrate", a cryptic series of messages that got posted to Usenet in 1996. Like the Toynbee Tiles, no one has been able to figure out what the post means, if it means anything at all. There are a few strange indications that it might be something more than random words, though... The person listed in the "From" field, Susan Lindauer, was arrested for conspiracy to commit espionage in 2004. Could the words in the Markovian Parallax Denigrate posts be some kind of secret spy code? Mysterious!
First off, the case of the mysterious "Toynbee Tiles". These tiles of unknown origin have materialized in several major US cities and South American capitals, embedded in asphalt. Most of them contain a similar crypic message, along the lines of:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.
Uh, yeah. No one knows who's responsible for these tiles or what, if anything, the message means. Perhaps the most mysterious tile is one in Santiago de Chile that references a street address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The couple who live at the address in question don't know anything about the tiles, and apparently get quite annoyed when people ask. Legitimate response, or crazy conspiracy coverup?
Figure 1: Toynbee Tile embedded in crosswalk
Mysterious internet thing number two is the "Markovian Parallax Denigrate", a cryptic series of messages that got posted to Usenet in 1996. Like the Toynbee Tiles, no one has been able to figure out what the post means, if it means anything at all. There are a few strange indications that it might be something more than random words, though... The person listed in the "From" field, Susan Lindauer, was arrested for conspiracy to commit espionage in 2004. Could the words in the Markovian Parallax Denigrate posts be some kind of secret spy code? Mysterious!
Thanksgiving trivia
I'm feeling festive, and yesterday's turkey-themed trivia round at The Grad Club got me thinking about Thanksgiving-related info, so I dug up a few interesting tidbits for the weekend:
-The first official Thanksgiving celebration in North America was Canadian (take that, USA!). It was celebrated in Newfoundland in 1578. As noted on the Wikipedia entry, though, that is a bit of a Euro-centric fact, since Native American cultures had probably been celebrating informal harvest-time festivals for quite a while before Martin Frobisher showed up and put a name on them.
-Tryptophan, the chemical compound in turkey widely held to cause drowsiness, is probably getting a bad rap. While it is present in turkey, the concentration isn't much different than most other meats. The most likely culprit of the post-meal coma: stuffing your face with food until you can barely move. A little wine certainly doesn't help the alertness, either.
-At the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever", John Lennon repeats the same thing over and over, which some conspiracy theorists (who claim Paul McCartney died in 1966) interpret as "I buried Paul". The actual lyric is "Cranberry Sauce".
-Wikipedia's entry on cranberry sauce has the following to say about it's sauce status: "Despite being called a sauce, cranberry sauce is most often consumed as a food itself, not as a garnish for other food items (a fact which has confused generations of American children)." Apparently, American children confuse easily.
-The terms "sweet potato" and "yam" are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Yams are way bigger (up to 2.5 metres long!), and not as sweet.
-Cornucopias are incredibly impractical-looking baskets. That's not really trivia, just an observation.
Figure 1: This basket is supposed to carry what, exactly?
-The first official Thanksgiving celebration in North America was Canadian (take that, USA!). It was celebrated in Newfoundland in 1578. As noted on the Wikipedia entry, though, that is a bit of a Euro-centric fact, since Native American cultures had probably been celebrating informal harvest-time festivals for quite a while before Martin Frobisher showed up and put a name on them.
-Tryptophan, the chemical compound in turkey widely held to cause drowsiness, is probably getting a bad rap. While it is present in turkey, the concentration isn't much different than most other meats. The most likely culprit of the post-meal coma: stuffing your face with food until you can barely move. A little wine certainly doesn't help the alertness, either.
-At the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever", John Lennon repeats the same thing over and over, which some conspiracy theorists (who claim Paul McCartney died in 1966) interpret as "I buried Paul". The actual lyric is "Cranberry Sauce".
-Wikipedia's entry on cranberry sauce has the following to say about it's sauce status: "Despite being called a sauce, cranberry sauce is most often consumed as a food itself, not as a garnish for other food items (a fact which has confused generations of American children)." Apparently, American children confuse easily.
-The terms "sweet potato" and "yam" are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Yams are way bigger (up to 2.5 metres long!), and not as sweet.
-Cornucopias are incredibly impractical-looking baskets. That's not really trivia, just an observation.
Figure 1: This basket is supposed to carry what, exactly?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Sgt. Rza's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Big news over on Pitchfork yesterday. Not new-Radiohead-album-big, but pretty big.
In the world of hip hop sampling, pretty much everything has been covered. Diddy's sampled Bowie, Ghostface Killah has sampled Schoolhouse Rock, and everybody has sampled the Knight Rider theme.
However, there remains one giant, glaring omission in the world of sampling. No one has ever legally sampled The Beatles.
Yesterday, it was announced that the longstanding Beatles resistance to sampling had ended, and the first group to obtain legal permission to sample their music was... The Wu Tang Clan? I'm not making that up.
It was reported that the song to be sampled was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which will make up part of "My Heart Gently Weeps", a track on the upcoming Wu Tang Clan album. "Finally!", I thought, "the tastefully brilliant, understated guitar melodies of George Harrison's songwriting and Eric Clapton's soloing will be accompanied by The Rza spittin' game all over yo face."
Alas, it was not to be. Today, the Clan posted a note on their MySpace stating that they were very sorry, but by "sample", they meant "interpolation". And I'm pretty sure by "interpolation", they mean "interpretation", but I'm not going to correct them. They own guns, and are apparently nothin' to fuck with.
In any case, the Pitchfork correction has a link to an mp3 copy of the "interpolation" if you feel like checking it out.
In the world of hip hop sampling, pretty much everything has been covered. Diddy's sampled Bowie, Ghostface Killah has sampled Schoolhouse Rock, and everybody has sampled the Knight Rider theme.
However, there remains one giant, glaring omission in the world of sampling. No one has ever legally sampled The Beatles.
Yesterday, it was announced that the longstanding Beatles resistance to sampling had ended, and the first group to obtain legal permission to sample their music was... The Wu Tang Clan? I'm not making that up.
It was reported that the song to be sampled was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which will make up part of "My Heart Gently Weeps", a track on the upcoming Wu Tang Clan album. "Finally!", I thought, "the tastefully brilliant, understated guitar melodies of George Harrison's songwriting and Eric Clapton's soloing will be accompanied by The Rza spittin' game all over yo face."
Alas, it was not to be. Today, the Clan posted a note on their MySpace stating that they were very sorry, but by "sample", they meant "interpolation". And I'm pretty sure by "interpolation", they mean "interpretation", but I'm not going to correct them. They own guns, and are apparently nothin' to fuck with.
In any case, the Pitchfork correction has a link to an mp3 copy of the "interpolation" if you feel like checking it out.
Tomatoes: the debate rages on
I've heard many different arguments on the topic of whether tomatoes are a fruit or a vegetable, but today I decided to see if I could find a definitive answer. It seems that botanically, they are fruits, specifically berries, which blew my mind. However, they are also made into sauce and served on pasta, and I have never heard of a pasta served with fruit sauce. Though, now that I mention it, that might be delicious. Maybe I should pioneer a line of dessert pastas... Raspberry cannoli? Chocolate caramel lasagna? Could be delicious.
The definition for vegetable seems largely culinary. Some definitions call vegetables any edible plant or plant part, which would mean that fruits are a subset of vegetables. However, some other definitions specify that vegetables are any edible plant or plant part that is not a fruit. Therefore, if all fruits are vegetables, and to be a vegetable, you must NOT be a fruit, fruit does not exist.
We are no closer to an answer.
Luckily, in 1883, the Supreme Court of the United States of America stepped in to end the chaos once and for all, and legally declared tomatoes to be vegetables. This is a US-specific law, though, so if you're eating an American tomato, you're most definitely eating a vegetable. However, if that tomato happens to be Mexican, it could well be a fruit. Barring a UN-backed global tomato standardization effort, the debate may never be settled.
Some more interesting tomato trivia:
-The tomato's latin name, Solanum lycopersicum, means "wolf-peach". So next time you're ordering some spaghetti, don't forget the wolf-peach berry sauce.
-"Tomato" was popular slang for an attractive woman in the United States from the 1920's to the 1940's.
-Tomatoes used to be considered poisonous due to their botanical relation to the "nightshade" family of plants, many of which are indeed poisonous.
-According to American legend, the tomato's poisonous reputation led a British national to attempt the assassination of George Washington by serving him a dish laced with tomatoes. Sinister!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Happy 50th birthday, Sputnik!
I was flipping through the fantastic Mental Floss blog this morning, and I found a link to a pretty interesting article over on Wired about the scientists who were responsible for the development of Sputnik, which was launched 50 years ago Thursday.
Apparently it wasn't a very meticulously planned scientific instrument. Rather, the Soviets designed an intercontinental ballistic missile with the goal of being able to hit the US with a hydrogen bomb, and just happened to notice that the result was a rocket with enough thrust to put something into orbit. Some dude pointed this out, and said "Hey, we should use this to launch something into space".
They then proceeded to cobble together a satellite in three months, and blasted it off into orbit. Three months! I prefer not to itemize what I have achieved in the last three months, but it falls somewhat short of putting the world's first artificial satellite in orbit.
One more interesting tidbit: Sputnik had no scientific instruments on board at all. Just 2 radio transmitters and four antennae. All it did was beep.
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