Music Fridays – Scorching Guitar

Every man-child harbors a wannabe voodoo guitar warrior inside, and I’m no exception. Here are some recent discoveries that flip my switch when it comes to rousing the warrior and banging my head. First up is Gary Clark Jr. who puts a whole lotta fuzz and soul into the blues. Beautiful voice, killer guitar. Next is Sonny Landreth who strikes me as grunge meets Eric Johnson meets Louisiana slide guitar. (Sheesh, I should be an industry pr flack, or a fawning music hack.) The uploader boldly named the video, but it is pretty dang good.

As always, reader suggestions for (the spotty and irregular) Music Fridays are welcome.

More on Google Suck ™ (as in sucking up all your privacy)

A couple more links about Google’s assault on privacy; which is appropriate because today, March 1, is the day they enter their streamlining mode, sucking up all the info about you they can.

First, the muddlerambler sends this link: Why Google+ Doesn’t Care If You Never Come Back and he adds some commentary:

One thing mentioned in the article that bears repeating is that it’s not only the information you volunteer, it’s what you do while online. Many of your habits are tied to your user profile based on the system you are using, rather than name you sign up as.

Secondly, is this Morning Edition (NPR) bit from last week, about the scandal wherein Google circumvented Safari browser settings to place cookies despite privacy settings preventing cookies (Safari is the browser that comes with Apple products).  Stanford PhD student, Jonathon Mayer discovered the transgression and has since been a popular interviewee. Here is a bit of the transcript:

MAYER: There’s an exception to Safari’s cookie-blocking policy.

HENN: If an ad network creates an online form and builds it into a website, and then you fill that form out, that network’s allowed to give you a cookie.

MAYER: And there are some totally legitimate-use cases for this exception. But there was a known abuse, where you could create an invisible form and then submit the form without any user click – just using script. And we noticed that four companies were doing just that.

HENN: Google was one of them – submitting invisible forms and planting cookies, without permission. Google says it was just trying to make its social- networking services and ads work on Apple computers, but its engineers goofed.

But the best part of the segment – and a reason for a whole lotta (cautious) optimism – is this other thing Mayer said:

HENN: So privacy advocates have been pushing the idea of a do-not-track list. And Jonathan Mayer came up with a simple technology to make it work.

MAYER: It’s kind of like planting a no-trespassing sign on your lawn – only, for your Web privacy.

HENN: One click on your browser…

MAYER: …and you check off: Tell Websites I Don’t Want To Be Tracked. And then your browser handles the rest.

HENN: It sends a signal to every site on the Internet saying: Stop.

Last week, some of the biggest sites out there said they’d listen. The Digital Advertising Alliance, which includes Google, announced it would adopt Jonathan Mayer’s do-not-track technology. But…

MAYER: …what they have to do when you turn on the do-not-track feature is not quite settled yet.

Kung Fu Privacy

I dunno how accurate this is, but I once heard that Kung Fu isn’t about throwing punches, like an offensive martial art such as Tae Kwon Do. Rather, Kung Fu uses the attacker’s moves against him/her, drawing a thrown punch in and using the momentum to throw the attacker off balance.

In my thread on Microsoft Bing and (do no evil, ha!) Google aggregating all of its products into a big data suck, Mark L alluded to an idea I’ve already been forming. If we can’t hide, then throw them off balance by giving them what they want – data. Lots of yummy, gooey data. Silly data. Inaccurate data. Make shit up. In honor of the Leap Day, I am re-joining Facebook, but this time my profile will reflect that I live in London and design jet skis for a living.

Actually, Kung Fu is a poor analogy, especially for a child of the Cold War. What I really mean is that Middlerage is setting up a Ministry of Disinformation. If I had the appropriate entrepreneurial spirit (I don’t) this could be a business!

Time to start searching for information on Rolex watches, battling Tse-Tse flies, Haitian lesbian genre fiction, and camel training.  And I need to send off for catalogs. Smiley needs catalogs.

A Quick Frenemies Update

Via the NYTimes: Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery.

Visiting China? Use a disposable cell phone, a loaner laptop, disable wireless AND the microphone AND the camera. But be sure to get a number six with extra shrimp sauce.

The Word(s) of the Day is “Pedantic Karma”

I had intended the word of the day to be Barbicide, but…

I got schooled in Latin.

I went for a haircut today, and as I pushed open the door, I snickered at the decal advertising “Barbicide,” letting me know I was in safe hands with a thoroughly disinfected barber shop.  I know Barbicide is a product for killing germs, but it’s advertising the murder of Barbers*. Poor barbers. Hah! This could be a fun blog post, I said to myself. It made sense by inductive reasoning – if fungicide, insecticide, and parricide all mean killing fungus, bugs, and dad, then it seemed they were offering to snuff Barbers. Hopefully not in mid-snip.

So my newly trimmed self came home and fired up Google Translator just to be sure my pedantic snickering was on firm footing (I know, I’ve recently railed against the Goog, but Babelfish doesn’t do Latin, and I found nobody on the web does Latin translation for free except Google).

I know Barbi is just a trade name, but I was curious to see if it had a meaning in Latin…and it does. It means “beard.” Ohh. That kinda puts the kibosh on my snickering. Not only that, but when I ran cide through the translator it came out as meaning “cut.” Double Ohh.

“Beard cut” is not nearly so unintended and hilarious as “kill Barbers.” Sure, the “cide” in fungicide must come from somewhere, and running “kill” backwards through the translator produces “occidere.” If you are expert in Latin and do some second, third or fourth declensions, on a full moon, on a Tuesday, I imagine you get to “cide.” But I ain’t. And I won’t.

Let me assuage my pedant self by opining that “decimate” doesn’t mean “wipe out,” and the plural of “Octopus” isn’t Octopi. (Answer: tithe or kill every tenth, and octopodes, because octopus has Greek roots, not Latin).

So there.

However, modern dictionaries will counsel that decimate does mean to wipe out, and the plural of octopus is octopuses. Anything else is just pedantry.

*I belatedly realize Barbicide could also be a threat to Barbie dolls.

Music Fridays – A Few Favorite Womack Covers

Some of the biggest names in Soul/R&B history were not merely frontmen or singers or instrumentalists, but full on composers. For example, Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, and Maurice White (of Earth, Wind & Fire) were (are) polymaths who do it all – sing, play, arrange, write, and compose. These folks are musicians’ musicians, and I love their original work. Not only that, when they turn their talents to non-original work, the result is dynamite. I especially love what Bobby Womack does with some cover songs; his changes are amazing, taking the songs in a new direction. If I made a Faustian deal, I would want Womack’s particular sense, stylings, and musicianship.

Herewith, some songs like you’ve (maybe) never heard them before, courtesy of Bobby Womack. And remember, this isn’t some production team arranging for a pop artist – this is Womack doing it all; arranging, producing and performing:

The Tragedy of the Empowered Introvert

When you have young kids in school or pre-school, they start to attend birthday parties. Lots of them. Nowadays, harried, hard-working parents have no time to make a nice clean home, and nearly 100% of the birthday parties are in commercial establishments that cater to this sort of thing: indoor bouncy houses, party rooms, indoor ziplines, train tables, play stores, and more bouncy houses.  Hey, the pundits keep saying our new economy will be based on service…

So what I notice is that the modern (harried) parent is trooping to these engagements with kid, gift, and a smart phone. They sign their kid in, say hello to a few parents, acknowledge the poor sludge who is paying for the shindig, and then zone out to the world of online escapism. It’s sad.

I’m not judging. Kid’s stuff can (is) be boring. I completely understand the attraction of being able to escape into the more adult world of surfing, texting, or sadly working. I know I’d do it too if I had a smart phone. I have done it before with the Guttenberg smart phone (aka book). It’s the perfect solution, you can make sure you kid is getting out and you can save your mind at the same time.

I guess not having a smart phone made me lucky enough to observe the other parents zoning out. Dads are especially bad. I think the extrovert moms come and engage with other moms, but the extrovert dads go golfing, leaving the rest of us to come make awkward conversation, or escape into the interwebs.

I wonder if the commercial aspect has allowed it to be “socially okay” to zone out at a business.  Would we be comfortable doing this at someone’s house? Who knows, the smart phone is new enough that maybe there is still time to adjust behavior and folks will zone out at home parties too.

It’s sad, really, because it is empowering us to simply not engage with our fellows. As well as our children.

Recently, I took YK to a party. Because I had already been thinking about this issue, and observing disengaged parents, I purposely left the reading material at home. I’m not gonna bang a tambourine and talk about the spiritual epiphany of engaging with my kid – it was indeed boring at times, and work, and well below my intellectual interest. But it was also nice, and I felt true joy at watching my kid play. The boringness faded as I got into the rythym, and I indeed felt closer and more bonded to my kid. I also struck up conversations with surprised parents. They weren’t great conversations, but I felt more fulfilled than an hour on the web. I completely understand the convenience of not having a kid party at one’s own house, but I think we are missing something tribal and ancient and valuable when we don’t.

To reiterate, I’d be an asshole if I judged parents on smart phones. There is a real chance the smart phone makes drudgery palatable – maybe some parents just wouldn’t attend parties at all. But our world is becoming so cocooning and asocial. What I wouldn’t give for a good old-fashioned, Amish Barn raising. One every other week oughta be just about right. Leave your phone with the Sheriff.

My Friend Microsoft? Ba-Da-Bing

A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of hoopla surrounding Apple, which even resulted in a thread on this blog. Drowned out in all the Apple bashing was something more dear to my heart – privacy – Google announced it was combining all of their irons (google search, Gmail, YouTube, etc) into one big bonfire of tracking us and our web habits.

Here I am, wringing my hands over Facebook and going on a hiatus because of their privacy stumbles. Meanwhile I exclusively use google search, peruse YouTube videos, and yep, my email client is Gmail. Gag. It’s an onslaught – we can’t f*ckiing win! Somewhere in virtuality, an electron database of me is coalescing into a highly specific ,accurate, and completely un-anonymous profile.

What to do, what to do??

I love google search, been using it for years, it has always returned way better information than anything else I tried. After years of denigrating Microsoft – those thieving, bloatware monopolists – I am now wondering about switching to their search engine, Bing.

It isn’t as if Bing won’t gather data on me, but at least it can’t combine that data with my other surf habits (I think). Thus I will be giving Bing a go for the near future. Have any of you been using it regularly? Thoughts?

Meanwhile, do I migrate over to another email service? Sigh. Then I have to send out “I’ve Moved” letters to all my friends and companies.

A Couple of Cool Photos

I wanted to share two photos, I recently found, that really struck me as awesome. The Atlantic has a monthly series called InFocus that gathers together about 40 high definition large photos. Each series has a theme; they’ve done everything from WWII to the Civil War to our recent conflict in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan War series spans 13 monthly segments from January 2011 to January of this year. Interestingly, I think the most moving, heart-rending photos are not of dead children or wounded soldiers. Rather, the throat-catchers are of families at graveside services for their sons/husbands killed-in-action. For me, there is no better way to say “war sucks” than the incongruous combination of polished metal, pressed formal clothes, and manicured lawns with sobbing fiances and shattered parents. But I also think it would be patronizing and insulting to highlight those for my readers. My readers already know.

Instead, here are a couple of photos that are just… wow. And for interested readers, they can go here, Afghanistan January 2012 In Focus The Atlantic, to see all of the super quality photos from this epic time:

Credit Cpl Reece Lodder, USMC, via The Atlantic. Marines taking a nap with their IED detecting dog. Best buddy picture I’ve ever seen. Makes me want a dog. Man’s best friend indeed.

Credit AP/Musadeq Sadeq via The Atlantic. World’s largest copy of the Koran at a ceremony in Kabul. A beautiful exotic land with exotic features.

My 300th Wave Crashes Your Beach

Yessirree. This is my 300th post.

I wanted to mark the occasion, but it has taken some effort to get to the keyboard. One of the petri dishes brought home a fever from school, and I got it. I haven’t been this wiped out in a long time: bone rattling chills, sweat drenched bedclothes, and a desire to eat nothing, absolutely nothing. Nature’s miracle diet.

Somewhere in that feverish interlude, my mind mentally wrote a post celebrating number 300; it had imagery of crashing waves, and turgid depths, and lobe finned monsters crawling out onto shore. The above title is a remnant from that trip. There were also references to North Korea, punk bands, and lots of crazy stuff. Zounds. It may be that Irish poets wrote some of their best stuff high or hungover, but I don’t think anybody ever wrote anything good from a virus.

Anyway, much thanks for sticking with me, and here’s to 400?

In honor of Music Fridays (which I haven’t been keeping up with) and in a nod to the mystery North Korean references of my fevered dreams, I leave you with this video. The players are talented, but the sum of the parts is so tragi-comic I can’t listen to more than a bit: