cultural pillaging - Ravel: String Quartet (part 2)
Ok, some cell phone manufacturer turned the first couple bars of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nib9yHmCytc

(or a better version here, but it takes a few seconds to get started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSvNu4VfYvk)

...and turned it into one of the default ringtones on their handsets.

I'd greatly appreciate it if the person responsible would go ahead and quietly expire, thank you. The piece (I knew it best from the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack) will never be the same for me again, and I've only heard it in ringtone form a few times at this point... bastards.
- posted by vcmc @  2/25/2008 11:22:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
Neuroscience and poverty
Speaks volumes about the class system and why poverty is such a vicious circle.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/62c45126-dc1f-11dc-bc82-0000779fd2ac.html

The question now is: what does this change? Is the reasoning behind the structure of our current governmental/economic/social systems fighting poverty fundamentally challenged by this finding? To what extent? How would we then change the existing structures to account for that?

Let's just say the can of worms looks more like a 55 gallon drum here...

More here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html
- posted by vcmc @  2/22/2008 07:21:00 PM  |  1 comments

 
wow
ok, so today, i got an email from one of our possible democratic presidential candidates. Actual headers:

To: StupidSpamSucker SlutFace
From: Barack Obama

Awesome. Needless to say, regardless of my political leanings, I never actually signed up for this... I'm totally signing all my non-work emails with that name for the next week. It'll be amazing.

- posted by vcmc @  2/20/2008 12:36:00 AM  |  0 comments

 
autism-fest
You know the hotel is full of nerds when the in-room net connection is completely saturated... "Just try to stream video, I dare you", it taunts.
- posted by vcmc @  2/17/2008 11:20:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
Warren Buffett: "poetic justice" for banks
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0631767220080207

Spot on. Except I don't think the consequences of poor stock performance are quite enough; the lack of consequences on the individual level, for the most part, of the execs and decision-makers largely responsible for the current financial crisis creates very little incentive for banks to create checks and balances for when the next financial fad/bubble comes along. Then there's the Fed's bailout of the corporations themselves... I want to see a bank actually go into financial insolvency. Full chapter 7 shit - none of this chapter 11 restructuring, and not just a small company like etrade - someone with a $10B+ market cap.

More ranting to follow, with plenty of links to posts/articles highlighting exactly the kind of structural dysfunction which not just allows this behavior en masse but actually reinforces and encourages it. The financial system is broken, and it's much bigger than the minuscule $7B problem at SocGen.

(ps - apparently "drinking the kool-aid", or some variation thereof, is the new hot phrase everyone's using. I've seen it in at least a half-dozen news stories/posts in the last couple days...)
- posted by vcmc @  2/08/2008 12:56:00 PM  |  0 comments