Music Sampling Playlist

I been wanting to do another playlist post for a while. I was planning on doing a Christmas mix, but I didn't sit down and write a post before Christmas. Instead I'm going to do a list based on sampling.

Recently I've started paying a lot more attention to sampling in music recently, mostly because I've been getting into the soul and funk music from the 60's and 70's that gets most widely sampled. Sampling has become an ubiquitous part of our pop music/culture. Based on what I've learned--mostly from Wikipedia--the origin of sampling in American musical culture was the invention of breakbeats by DJ Kool Herc. Sampling certainly existed since at least as early as the 1960's, but it was Kool Herc's method of extending beats from funk and soul tracks that developed into hip-hop in the late 1970's. This made hip-hop the first musical genre to which sampling was an intrinsic part. And you know, at least generally, what happened after that.

So I've been collecting a playlist of some originals and songs that sample them. You might wonder, as I did, If there is a site that catalogs the use of samples in music. That site is whosampled.com. They have a large user generated database of samples, which helped me find a few of these.

Poll: If the Earth were exceptionally flat and smooth, would we have evolved wheels?

If you'd like to discuss, do so in the comments.

Research Update

Yo. I've been working in this lab now for about 9 months. I still feel like I know nothing and I still feel completely new. But I'm learning a lot...for reals. And I'm experiencing a different kind of learning than I did in classes. I'm sure all of you have taken classes where you cram your head full of information during 10 weeks and then dump it all out after the final. One of the nice things about Carleton is that this effect is minimized. Of the 6 courses I have taken so far in graduate school, I only retained a good amount of material from 2, maybe 3 of them. I say 3 because the 3rd is a class I just finished in December...we'll see if it sticks. Isn't that a horrible thing? We have 15 weeks here at Maryland to take a class. With all that time they can't get the material out effectively? It's strange.
I remember a whole lot more from my classes at Carleton than I do here at Maryland. I can think of 2 main reasons, but feel free to propose others.
1) At Carleton, the pace moves so fast, that you have to pay close attention in class or else you'll miss everything. When I came to Maryland, I was astonished when we started reviewing material from the previous class. I was even more astonished when this started happening every class period. Although I find this helpful sometimes, I think it encourages people (me) to zone out in the beginning of class and ultimately become disengaged throughout the rest of the class period. I suppose this also related to the fact that the courses at Maryland are straight up easier than those at Carleton. For one of my electives, I took a course about how radiation affects materials. You'd be surprised how much stuff you touch daily has been irradiated. For example, plastic grocery bags, tires, and food packaging have all been irradiated with an electron beam. Everyone has heard of polyethylene. It is what makes up your plastic water bottles. Exposing the monomer, ethylene, to radiation under various conditions can drastically change its physical properties. Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene can actually be used as a hip replacement. Anyway, despite how interesting the course was (this is the one I finished in Dec), I hated it. I think I felt this way because it was not challenging enough (possibly because it was combined with undergrads). I got through almost every assignment and test by using unit analysis. There wasn't any difficult math, and all the cool physics is typically covered in math! By the way, unit analysis is, by example, when you know that the answer to your problem is going to be in units of time, and they give you a distance and a speed, than you just divide the distance by the speed to get the time because distance is in meters and speed is in meters/second.

Crap. As I've been writing I realize that a) this was a course of which I did not do a mental dump and b) I didn't learn enough to actually have my brain full, which is the whole point of what I started with. In fact, I think it turned into stream of consciousness a little.

Anyway, this class in particular moved very slowly, so I would just bring my computer and go on gchat all period.

Wow. Now I can't even remember what my second reason for mental dumps was. Oh well. What I meant to say at some point was that I have been learning way more from being part of this research group than I have in my classes. It makes sense too because obviously a PhD is more than just classes (otherwise it would be a masters).
I think the key way to learning something effectively is to get involved in it. Obvious, right? As obvious as it seems I feel like a lot of professors do not embrace it. I've had too many professors that just go through the motions of teaching introductory material. It is clearly "elementary" and boring to them, but they have to teach it. One professor I had uses the same power point presentations every year except for the occasional new slide to discuss a modern application for a couple minutes.
I think the classes I enjoyed or learned from the most were those that either had labs or had an intense project (no non-science classes discussed here btw). Although I spent a lot of time on lab reports in contemporary experimental physics at Carleton, I loved that class. I think part of why I liked it so much was because I was putting my time into an experiment. So why would I want to write a shitty report after all my hard work to get good data?
What I'm trying to say the long way is that I really care about the research I'm doing and want to get good results. And through this "investment" of mine I am learning all sorts of new shit. Back at Carleton I had the hardest time reading academic papers. Now I have a much easier time with them because I've read so many. I also get really hands on with the equipment in the lab. If something breaks (which happens frequently), the other graduate students and I have to fix it ourselves rather than send it to a specialist or something. This hands-on approach forces us to get into the nitty gritty details of how the equipment works, even if its as simple as a pressure gauge (which is not always simple btw).

Ok, so this really isn't a research update. It is definitely more of a ramble. Adios

Album Review!

link for Ted

Hello friends. My current state of funemployment lends itself to a plethora of free time. I find myself bored much of the time. Leads exist, but nothing solidified yet. Keep your fingers crossed.

That said, I haven't been able to find a topic to blog about lately. Nothing really has happened in my life of late. But, with the recent dearth of blogging (until the last few days), it became apparent that I had to blog about SOMETHING, or else this blog would be truly dead. So, the natural choice for blog content when there's no content to be had is... an album review!

My first though in the shower this morning was to review Kanye West's latest effort, "My Dark Twisted Fantasy". But, what's the fun in that? A lot of people are talking about it, everyone has an opinion, and I haven't listened enough to really say anything useful. But then, I realized that there's another album that I haven't really spoken to any of you about of which Kanye's new album truly reminds me (and I don't know why). The album we'll discuss today is a seminal effort within hip-hop, considered to be one of the best albums of all-time, a double platinum debut effort by the one-time candidate for the Haitian presidency... the album we'll discuss today is Wyclef Jean's 1997 record "The Carnival".

Let me preface this review by telling you that this album is my favorite, without question. I can be in the midst of a heavy musical boredom, on a multi-day road trip, and pop in The Carnival and suddenly feel renewed. I can sit at home and be sending out job applications while wondering what music I should be listening to, pop in The Carnival, and be set. This album is versatile - just as it could accompany job applications, you could play it at the right party and people would a) think it was the perfect music, and b) be surprised that they'd never heard half the songs before. It's a concept album - it follows a storyline and should actually be listened to in one go.

The Carnival starts with perhaps one of the best album intros of all the time, setting the story for the story to be told over the proceeding tracks. The story is simple: The Carnival is a trial pitting Wyclef Jean vs. The People to determine whether or not Wyclef is "a playa and a definite bad influence". Let me just say, what a baller for making that the theme for your DEBUT album. Anyway, the intro just rocks. It makes you wanna listen and it gets you so psyched to hear the rest of the tracks.

The intro builds, builds, and builds some more, and then breaks into some calm, chill notes for the intro of the first song "Apocalypse". This pattern is prevalent throughout the album - a contrast between strong, loud, intense sounds, cutting to calm, chill, light guitar, and then breaking into sweet flows of melodic rhyme.

Wyclef is a master of sampling, and uses this to his advantage. Tracks throughout the album take advantage of past tunes, everything from the Latin classic "Guantanamera" to the Beegee's "Stayin' Alive", and Willie Nelson's "To All The Girls I've Loved Before". This mix of classic hip-hop lyrics from Wyclef and the rest of the Refugee All-Stars is, for me, amazing.

Sprinkled throughout the album are Interludes that continue the trial concept of the album and pull the music together. In some albums that are meant to be listened to as one, the songs don't actually connect at all (obviously) and artists just say that because they're stuck-up and arrogant. This album is not one of those. The songs actually work, and serve as evidence within Wyclef's trial. Furthermore, the Interludes are hilarious and at times make fun of the Caribbean French accent. Good stuff.

Sticking to his Haitian roots, Wyclef even throws in a few songs in Haitian French. While I don't understand what he sings, they're great tracks that make you want to move. They certainly contribute to the album as a whole.

Bottom line, I think everyone needs to listen to this album. I know that all you Stadium dwellers will be able to appreciate it, and furthermore enjoy it. I still don't know how I've neglected to mention it until just now. It's truly a stable in anyone's listening "quiver", and definitely can serve as one of those trusty fallbacks that will solve any music-enjoyment ennui.

Blog Revival Part 1

Does anyone have hobbies anymore? Back when my dad was a kid, he collected stamps. How boring is that? When I was a kid he tried to get me to have a hobby. I started out by collecting pennies. To jumpstart my collection, he bought me 2 penny collecting books that dated back to the 1940s. I’m pretty sure the oldest penny I found was from 1945, which is pretty old, but I really don’t care about pennies. But I did need a hobby, correct? Every adult I knew had a hobby. My dad likes building furniture (bed frames, cabinets, etc) and my mom loves cooking (seriously, it’s a hobby for her. She watches food network and spends so much time looking up recipes on the web). But I didn’t have a hobby! How was I going to be a responsible adult and contributing member of society? Fortunately pogs came along, but I’m pretty sure I only liked those because everyone did. Then I got pokemon. But collecting pokemon is pathetic. I also didn’t like professional sports, so I couldn’t collect baseball cards like my friends. What was I to do? Here’s what happened: I played video games.

Years have passed. Since my days of collecting pennies, I have learned to drive, gotten laid, tasted the rainbow, and graduated college. I am a somewhat adult who somewhat contributes to society. And guess what? I have a hobby! This leads me to the main purpose of this post, which is about my new hobby, fishkeeping.

The hobby really got started when I thought about how cool it would be to have my own ecosystem. This was back in June. When I was bored at work, I would google search aquarium stuff, but nothing too serious. Then I came upon pictures of something called “aquascapes.” This is by no means what I want my aquarium to look like, but it really caught my attention and caused me to think more seriously about making a nice environment for fish. Here are some good pictures: one, two, three.

As I mentioned, those pictures aren’t anywhere close to what I have right now and it is likely that I never will have something like that, but I do now have two aquarium tanks in my apartment.

I started out by simply going to the public library and picking up a couple books about fishkeeping. It got me really excited. I ended up buying “Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies” and read it cover to cover. Once I had a good idea of what I wanted, I got on craigslist and found a sweet deal. It was $100 for a 30gallon tank + power filter + heater + stand + accessories like nets and artificial plants. Now it might not be obvious, but a good stand is very important because the 30 gallon fish tank can weigh about 300 lbs. The same night that I got the tank, I went over to petco and bought some gravel, chemicals, test kits, and filtration stuff for the filter. Then I filled the bitch up. After letting the tank run for a few days, I bought my first 3 fish. They are zebra danios and they are good starter fish because they can handle beginner mistakes and can withstand a wide variety of water conditions. I basically had these fish for about 3 weeks before I got any others. This was important because the tank is going to become an ecosystem. When the fish pee/poop, they release ammonia into the water. If this ammonia builds up, it becomes poisonous to the fish. Fortunately, bacteria are present on the fish when you buy them, and these beneficial bacteria break down the ammonia into less harmful nitrites. However, nitrites are still dangerous (which is why you should not eat too much beef jerky). There is ANOTHER type of bacteria that breaks the nitrites down to nitrates. Nitrates are even less harmful, but the way you reduce the nitrates is by simply changing the water in the aquarium. This whole thing is called the nitrogen cycle if you’re curious. I like to call it the circle of life.

So I couldn’t buy all the fish I wanted (and still haven’t) because I didn’t want them to all die (I’m such a sweetheart). In the meantime, I wanted to make my tank look nice. I had some fake plants in there and this out-of-place looking coral-imitating structure that I got with the tank. I hated it. So I went to a local streambank and picked out a bunch of rocks. Then I made some cave-like structures in my tank and tried to make it look somewhat like how I think a nice environment for fish would look. Having caves/rocks is important for 3 major reasons. 1) its more natural, namely, you don’t find treasure chests and sunken castles in nature, 2) it gives the fish places to hide, and 3) it provides natural boundaries for territories. I set up some of the rocks into tunnels while the others I kind of scattered around the tank.

I bought another type of fish at this point: a red-tailed shark. Unfortunately its not a real shark. It looks more like a catfish because it has little whiskers. And it will only grow to about 4 inches long, which is still pretty big for a tropical aquarium. In terms of behavior, it is not very social and tends to fight with others of its species, so I bought only one. It also is slightly territorial, but mine doesn’t show too much of that because it is still young/small. Finally, it is a bottom dweller, which is something I needed because the danios are hyper-active fish that swim in all areas of the tank, but tend to make the top of the tank look like a racetrack. I had been sharing all this with my friends in grad school, and one of them commented that he used to have a fish tank that is at his parents’ house. So, after thanksgiving break, he came back to Maryland with a 10 gallon tank and all the accessories and sold it to me for $20. So I set up this tank pretty much how I set up the other one. I transferred the danios to this tank so they could start up the nitrogen cycle there so bacteria colonies could form.

I’m getting out of chronological order here, but at some point before this new tank arrived I bought new fish called platys. They are live bearers (no eggs, males have a dick they stick in the females) and come in a wide variety of bright colors. I bought 2 breeds of platy: mickey mouse platys and gold wag platys. I don’t know why the latter is called gold wag, but the other is called mickey mouse because of the markings near the tail looking like mickey mouse’s head and ears. Anyway, these fish are supposed to give birth every 4-6 weeks. I’ve had them for about 8 weeks and they haven’t had any babies yet, but I’m remaining optimistic. Right now I have them in the 10 gallon tank by themselves. I’ll admit, it is possible they have already had babies and ended up eating them all. This is part of the reason that I put them in the tank by themselves.

The 10 gallon tank is also special because it has a very bright light on it. This means I can put live plants in it! So I did this about 2 weeks ago. I bought two types. One is called micro sword. As you can see, it pretty much looks like grass. I bought one big bundle of it and broke it into 3 pieces. I hope they create a lawn effect in my aquarium. I’m not entirely sure what the other type is called, but it is a taller plant with short, narrow leaves. Anyway, I’m hoping that the plants will give the baby fish lots of places to hide so they don’t get eaten by mommy and daddy.

I have two other species in my tank that I haven’t mentioned yet. They are called neon tetras and spotted corys. The neons are very small schooling fish (so I have 5 of them) that aren’t particularly active, but they’re so pretty! It is cool watching them move together. The corys are bottom dwellers that are very playful. They have little whiskers by their mouths that help them find food on the bottom of the tank. Their bodies are slightly awkward shaped and its amusing to watch them swim around.

This post is getting a little long, but I’ll post pictures of my tank in the future. Wish me luck! And enjoy finding a fun hobby!

Well... YES

I tried I really did. I waited for ted's post about musiz or about christmas tunes. but it never came or it will come.

but i promised alredo or was it tim or was it toto? i saw them all in the last week. that i would drunk blog. it happned. now. but it will all be good. i challenge all to look back a ytear ago and see drunk blogging to the extremem. its awesome.


well to us, i guees..
i cheered to stadium with the rainbow.
yes.