Music For Stupid People

Last week, Ryan offered me a bit of news from about this time last year that has led me to discover the efforts of one Virgil Griffith. His website, by the way, is at http://virgil.gr/. If he happens to stumble upon this blog entry, all I can say is, I feel your pain. Best of luck with grad school, my brother in arms. Anyway, he wrote a bit of software that tracks the sources of Wikipedia edits. His little experiment revealed that many major companies had edited their own Wikipedia pages. Companies such as Exxon-Mobil, Pepsi, and Diebold all made edits to their pages that removed undesirable information from being displayed.

Originally, I was planning on doing a long commentary on the state of quality control on Wikipedia. I was even going to cite the recent incident wherein my friend, an undergraduate engineer, found an error in a section on vortex tubes and tried to rectify it. But as everyone knows, I'm easily distracted.

On Mr. Griffith's site, he has a feature entitled Music That Makes You Dumb. By scanning Facebook for numerous schools and their listed Top 10 music interests, he was able to list the top 133 musical interests on Facebook and their associated average SAT scores. The results are pretty interesting.

As I would have guessed, the lowest SAT scores are associated with Rap or R&B artists - Lil Wayne and Beyonce, for example. However, it's not necessarily a racial divide, as a range of "Emo" artists such as The Used and My Chemical Romance are close behind.* There were also your standard expectations at the higher end of the SAT spectrum, with bands such as Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens, and really all of the "Indie" genre, which did the best in terms of scores. What I loved to see, though, was that there was only one Classical composer to make the list - none other than my main man, Beethoven. He actually blows everyone else out of the water, with 120 points over the second-place Mr. Stevens. I'm popping in my copy of the 9th Symphony as I type.

Another interesting project to note from Mr. Virgil's site is essentially the same thing using favorite books instead of favorite music. In that case, Erotica and African-American literature rank on the lower ends of the spectrum - followed, of course, by religious books. The highest-ranking genre comprises Classics (topped, oddly enough, by Lolita), followed by Philosophy and Science Fiction (one of the highest-ranking books in that genre being Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle).

Of course, for me, that's just an interesting aside. Anyone who knows me knows that I care much more about the results of the music study. If I ever have kids - and I'll try not to for the sake of humanity, but you never know - I will be sure to point them to this study if they start to listen to Rap music. Of course, that assumes that Rap will still be popular at that point in the future. God forbid "Emo" - a much more depraved and mindless genre as of late - surpasses it in popularity. Whatever genre it happens to be, I refuse to pass on the myth that masturbation will make you blind. Far more important to me is the belief - however baseless - that listening shitty music will make you stupid. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a stronger prescription for my eyeglasses.

* - I'm using quotes here, because I've long been against the use of the "Emo" label to describe whatever you'd call this music. True Emo was an evolution of the Hardcore scene of the 1980's Washington, D.C. area. It sounds nothing like what these bands today are putting out. The so-called Emo music of today is really an overly-dark version of the Bubblegum Pop paradigm. I therefore dub it "Licorice Pop." If this phrase gets used by music journalists, just remember you read it here first.

Quip

Maybe I've been paying too much attention to Vonnegut or Bill Hicks, but I came up with this little observation:

Sex is the ultimate joke of the human species. If everyone were to devote their time and energy to promoting love and sexual congress, I think we'd be a heck of a lot closer to achieving world peace. But of course, the cruel joke is that it would ultimately lead to procreation, meaning new lives and the perpetuation of humanity's problems anyway.

Polly Want a Lift

It being an election year, most so-called journalism is preoccupied with producing reasons for you to believe that we're on a painfully slow descent into Hell. (Author's note: Hell is capitalized out of respect for Satan.) If you're registered to vote and feeling like shit, then thanks for sticking to the plan. In refusing to conform to the depression that I feel most people in the world would rather I experience, I've come across a rather uplifting article. And by uplifting, I don't mean "heartwarming and inspirational" nearly as much as I mean "bizarre and funny." Your reactions may differ.

As usual, I'm going to summarize the article, assuming that you're too lazy to click on the link (this helps drive up my word count and correspondingly makes me feel more productive). Yosuke, a red-tailed African Grey parrot in Japan, was captured by police and taken to an animal care shelter. Having been taught to say its name and the address of its owner, Yosuke was eventually transported back home after two weeks. The article is not a very detailed story, but it gives you a rough idea of what transpired. It also mentions that the species, considered one of the most intelligent birds, is believed by experts to possess the cognitive abilities of a six-year old human. So if anyone reading this is a parent of a toddler, congratulations; your child is not yet smarter than a parrot. It's something to strive towards.

Come to think of it, this parrot is really smart. Remember reading that book, The Incredible Journey? Man, those animals were stupid. They didn't realize that if you just reveal your name and home address, most people - out of an insane love for animals that often exceeds their love for other humans - will give you a free ride home, not even asking for half the gas money in return.

Then again, perhaps that's only the case in Japan. It's a pretty bizarre country. If you need proof, just re-read the article. The parrot was originally captured after a woman saw it sitting on a fence and called the police. First, why the hell would you call the police regarding a bird sitting on a fence? In America (meaning only the United States thereof) we're too busy concerned with the possibility of terrorists raping gonorrhea into our gasoline to be worried about a mere bird - however odd-looking - sitting on a fence. I highly doubt we'd even be looking outside to notice it.

Even more bizarre is that the police apprehended the bird, for whatever reason. I guess it was all in the name of animal control, but imagine if you called the police with avian issues in this country. The best possible reaction you could hope for is a stifled chuckle and a transfer to animal control. I'll even bet that if you speculated that the bird was African American, you wouldn't get a reaction, as bird talons are ill-suited to operate firearms. I remember the news last month of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo. I'm sure that if this occurred in the United States, it would be a massacre with an automated weapon, and I'd probably have forgotten about it by now.

Both the fact that the police have time to respond to bird sightings and that a knifing spree is the biggest crime event the country has seen in a few years is reassuring about life in Japan. I may even consider moving there if I could find a job and it weren't so expensive. Then again, I could just buy a parrot costume and learn the address in Tokyo where I want to live. People love animals.

Real Estate

I went to Atlantic City last week to see about starting my very own real estate company. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, because I had $12,000. In my experience, that's more that twice what all the property in that city is worth ($5,690). But everybody in city hall just laughed at me.

Man, Monopoly™ is full of shit.

Shock Value

I came across a very recent article in the New York Times that discusses, of all things, Milgram's famous psychological experiments of the early 60's. In case you're too lazy to read it, the experiments were set up so that the subject was instructed to give a series of increasingly intense shocks to another subject when they answered questions incorrectly. The subject did not know that the "victim" was really an actor pretending to get shocked. At 150 volts, the victim requested that the test be stopped. Some refused to continue shocking the victim, while others turned up the voltage as required by the test. Milgram is also responsible for the idea of the "six degrees of separation," otherwise known as 64% of the reason Kevin Bacon is still popular.

I was previously aware of the Milgram shock experiments for the same reason that I'm aware of pretty much any other bit of information that most would consider trivial - I've heard a song about it. I am of course talking about the eighth track of Peter Gabriel's 1986 album, So, entitled "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)." The title is a reference to a variation of the experiment wherein forty people were given secondary tasks such as reading the questions or doing paperwork. They weren't actually triggering the shock. In this test, all but three (i.e., thirty-seven) saw the test through to the end. It's a classic study in the nature of obedience. (Similar references to the deontological proof for the existence of God and Pascal's Wager can be found in the lyrics to Devo's "Whip It.")

As a quick aside, how awesome would it be if scientific journals required that their findings not only be documented in articles, but be accompanied with relevant pop or rock songs? I'm envisioning something like Now That's What I Call Research In Optics, Vol. 6! Maybe it's not such a good idea, but at least it shows I'm thinking.

Nowadays, the experiments of Milgram are as relevant as ever. There are accusations of the Bush administration and federal agencies using torture to obtain information in this absurd War on Terror. There are significant questions as to what degree the process of torture is immoral, and there are doubtlessly questions of who ultimately may be judged responsible. (Of course, given my current opinion of the Bush administration, I consider everyone involved to be severely guilty just by association, even if torture is not occurring.)

I propose that everyone involved in the recent alleged instances of torturing prisoners in pursuit of information be required to read up on the findings of the Milgram experiments. To make the reading more enjoyable, you can even have some Peter Gabriel playing in the background. Hopefully those who might have to do the dirty work and actually execute these cruel torture methods would pause and consider whether they may truly be culpable for failing to raise their voices in protest. I have a dream that one day they will rise up and refuse their so-called duty, and prisoners of this War on Terror will no longer be subject to that horrible punishment of being forced to play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." But here's a hint - don't forget that he was in Animal House with Donald Sutherland.

Rotten in the State of Youtube

Never before have I read two articles that seemed so relevant to each other, despite being on completely different subjects. The first article, found here, tells us that Denmark, of all places, is the happiest country in the world. And you thought it was Disneyland, you fools. Yes, apparently #2 and #3 are Puerto Rico and Colombia, respectively. The United States, while the nation with the greatest economy, falls to a pitiful 16th in the happiness rankings. Oddly enough, the study was conducted by Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan with NSF money. Come on, man, the government bribes you and you don't come through for us?

What's your first reaction to this information? I know what mine was: "Maybe there's not so much of a direct correlation between money and happiness." OK, I'll admit that was also pointed out in the article above. The article states that there are many other factors involved in determining a nation's happiness index, and apparently personal freedom is a much more important issue than money.

So I cruise around the BBC news website for a half-second and I see this article, which states that the courts have ruled that Google (owners of Youtube) must hand over its viewing log to Viacom. The log contains the login IDs, IP addresses, and video clip details. In case anyone reading hasn't yet taken sides in the two seconds it's been since you read that sentence, let's go over some television channels Viacom owns: Comedy Central, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, MTV2, and CMT. In other words, Viacom can be held directly responsible for 83.7% of the bullshit in modern culture. (Politics accounts for 16.1%, and the rest are remnants from the time before the creation of MTV.)

I could go on to talk about what this means in terms of privacy considerations, but instead, I'd like to give you more of an idea of how evil Viacom is. This blog entry details a story where a guy in North Carolina made a cheesy little elect-me-to-the-local-school-board commercial and posted it simultaneously on Youtube. The folks at VH1 grabbed it (without informing him) and used it for Web Junk 2.0 (which I'm assuming makes them money). Then when the guy decides to post the segment of the show that makes fun of his original video, Viacom alleges copyright infringement and has the video pulled. That's the kind of sick company we're dealing with here.

So drawing from the conclusions of both articles, we can observe a number of points. (1) Viacom is an evil bastard corporation that regularly clubs the baby seals that are our minds. (2) Viacom has repeatedly assaulted personal freedom and privacy in the name of copyright protection, or at least revenue protection. (3) For cultural happiness to flourish, personal freedoms are more important than money. Therefore, (4) Viacom is deliberately making us unhappy. Of course, I could have proved that last one just by showing you an episode of Cribs ...Flavor of Love ...whatever's currently on Nickelodeon ...Rock of Love Girls: Charm School 2 ...Hogan Knows Best ...The Real World ...anything on any Viacom-owned television station.

What should we do, then? I would have suggested merely getting your video fix you're just jonesing for from Youtube, but even then Viacom apparently has rights to access information about you. Dear lord, what if, in order to protect ourselves from the evil television behemoth, we have to return to physical activity or something as dismal as reading to keep ourselves entertained? Come to think of it, I've been meaning to re-read Hamlet after all these years. Wasn't he the Prince of Denmark? Man, he must have been one happy guy.

Why I Play

After rereading the post entitled "The Gaming Closet" and thinking a bit, I've come up with a startling realization. I really only have one reason to come crawling back to D&D time and time again. I love rolling the oddly-shaped, colorful dice. Call me shallow, but I'm addicted to such shiny, simple things. In no other situation do you get to roll an icosahedron to determine an outcome of any importance. I'll bet if there were a Vegas casino game that used all those dice, I'd be hooked.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Gyllenspoon

I saw a headline Tuesday that announced rumors of a Jake Gyllenhaal-Reese Witherspoon romance. Nothing too notable in and of itself, but the headline referred to the potential union as "Gyllenspoon." It's the latest in a long line of bad celebrity joint-names. ("Bennifer," "Brangelina," and of course, "Filliam H. Muffman."*)

Might I suggest that we apply the term "Gyllenspoon" to denote the spoon that is used to prepare heroin for injection? We'll see how long the media mentions it then.

* joke taken from The Colbert Report

The Gaming Closet

I have a confession to make, and it might be pretty disturbing. Or it could shock absolutely none of you and be one of those realizations of a long-harbored suspicion. Like when you discover how that odd-smelling kid who sat in the corner and picked his nose all day grew up to be a child molester. The confession is: I have, in the past, played role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. There, I said it. But there doesn't seem to be that sudden lifting of a great weight from my shoulders. Instead, there seems to be a heavy burden of nerd-based shame that is raining down upon me as I type.

(Some may be lost as to what the game itself entails. Basically, a group of people team up to form a cast of fictitious adventurers, each with vital statistics - strength, intelligence, etc. - recorded on sheets of paper. Another person, the Dungeon Master, or "DM," feeds the players the story and dictates the actions of monsters and other characters they encounter on the adventures. Various dice rolls, modified by aforementioned recorded statistics, represent the luck inherent in the gameplay.)

Of course, no one is unaware of the stereotypical scene of a bunch of acne-ridden, ever-virgin geeks sitting around in a circle pretending to be adventurers in some Tolkien-derivative fantasy world. I'd like to think that this stereotype is not as steadfastly true as one may think. In fact, some famous players of the game include Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs, Patton Oswalt, Robin Williams, Mike Myers, Vin Diesel, and even Stephen Colbert. All have acknowledged their indulgence in the D&D hobby, and with exception of Vin Diesel, all are admired and respected public figures.

Being wary of eventually falling victim to the stereotype, I refuse to play the game with anyone except my very closest friends who have eventually revealed that they are also familiar with the game. The best games, in my opinion, are played by those who fully realize the sad nerdiness that surrounds the game and rather than be ashamed, fully embrace it in the most comic way possible. During the hours I've actually played role-playing games, I've only enjoyed the sessions wherein everyone playing is proudly wearing their self-derisive geek badges.

Oh, and as a side note, the sooner that you realize and come to terms that you're a nerd, then the happier you're gong to be, and I highly doubt that anyone reading this isn't a nerd in some way or another. Being a nerd, the way I see it, is defined by a strong desire to gain a lot of knowledge about a specific topic, in addition to the pursuit and acquisition of that knowledge. The characters in Hornby's High Fidelity, Rob Gordon and his cohorts Barry and Dick, are pop culture nerds. I've come across a number of English majors who know a lot about classic literature. They, too, are nerds. Oh yeah, and men (or women - let's not be sexist) who can lecture you on sports facts and historical data? Nerds.

With a game like D&D, where the rules are so extensive, you have no choice but to be a nerd, and I think this is how the stereotype came about. You have to devote a significant amount of effort to learning the mechanics of the game before you can even play. Even though I am proudly a nerd in other areas (ask me what kind of music I like and get ready for a thirty-minute lecture), I try to avoid becoming so familiar with role-playing games. For example, the most enjoyable games were those I played with my old roommate, who valued creative stories above all else and never used dice or rules. Really, it was a form of collective storytelling much like improvised theater. Only with no effort put forth to costumes or acting, and entirely for our own enjoyment.

Maybe I'm still a hopeless music nerd, but I like to think I know where to draw the line when it comes to this fantasy gaming. I never take D&D seriously on any real level, and I've given away my lot of Magic: The Gathering cards. Maybe that one will be worth another post. But for now, I need to apply some astringent to my face and gain some charisma points.