Ying Yang

Rhapsody took a bunch of Ying Yang Twins offline recently and its really stressing me out. I might even resort to buying real physical CDs.

HAHAHA

Speaking of covers from The New Yorker, as part of the endless parade of turgid media coverage of the Obama cover, I saw this and its hilarious! Just imagine it. For those of you who aren't news addicts, this references the Larry Craig scandal, and you are supposed to imagine Larry Craig's foot sneaking under the stall to try to score some gay sex from Ahmadinejad. I can't imagine anything more exciting than Ahmadinejad getting caught having gay sex with a Congressman in a bathroom. Can you?

Snooty Over Educated Liberals

I am sick of hearing people on cable news yak on and on about this cover from The New Yorker. I could be wrong, but isn't The New Yorker a magazine for snooty, dangerously overeducated liberals? And if you're picking a magazine cover, shouldn't you pick something targeted at your readers? All the news coverage I read talks about how its not satire if no one gets it, but as a snooty overeducated liberal I got it. I thought,

"Hey, heres a caricature of a caricature of the second coming of liberal elitism, it must be making fun of the knuckle draggers in rural Ohio that actually believe these things."

I feel like most other snooty overeducated liberals, when they're not being partisan about the Obama campaign, can see what the The New Yorker was going for. That in mind, you can't really blame the magazine for running it, in the following sense. Why should they worry about certain kinds of people (the humble, the reasonably educated, the conservative) appreciating their cover, when those same people are probably never going to appreciate the magazine? They shouldn't. Not that the cover wasn't a bit much, because it was, but I think its been blown totally out of proportion.

If the people in the media don't get the joke, then maybe they should get another degree, or find another means of becoming more liberal and snooty. Then they might get it, and if they had taken these kinds of steps first, they might have thought twice about plastering these images all over the news. That way, only the snooty liberals that read The New Yorker would have seen the cover (people capable of appreciating it) and we all could have avoided wasting time.

Rock Superstardom

I am becoming more and more convinced that its going to take something extraordinary for Barack Obama to lose this election. Maybe a really extraordinarily awkward remark, an extraordinarily stupid strategic move in terms of message, or maybe extraordinary racism. Barring one of those things, it seems like he has become too much of an international superstar to lose.

During the primaries, my impression is that his public magnetism was what really allowed him to break out. His rallies were described in the media in terms similar to those used for Beatles concerts in the 60s, and it seems lately that that kind of idolization is becoming an international phenomenon. When I was in Germany this past June, it was Obama-mania everywhere. Some German pundit had recently declared Germany "Obamaland" or something that effect; a girl in the subway selling newspapers, on discovering I was an American, proceeded to unleash a cavalcade of Obama questions. And today I read in the NY Times that a lot of big media outlets are covering Obama's trip to Europe like he was President and taking Coldplay and Tom Brady with him.

...which is all good, because I want him to win, but geez...

Crunk Animals

I thought my readership might be interested learning about some obscure animals that I think are cool, so I am compiling a list. Some of these animals are extinct, and some may or may not exist, but all are fucking sweet.

Megalodon
The megalodon was a shark that went extinct a few million years ago, and its main claim to fame was that it was ENORMOUS. The fossil record of the megalodon sucks because sharks have cartilaginous skeletons, but it is believed that they commonly grew to a length of 18m (and some scientists believe this could even be an underestimation). Great white sharks, for comparison, tend to only reach lengths of around 6m. Check out the picture above...isn't that a huge critter? The green is a great white, and the big red one is the megalodon. Its like a goddamn tour bus of shark.

Trunko
This animal has only been sighted once, so I should concede that it probably doesn't really exist. Witnesses described this thing (more or less) as a giant polar bear with a trunk and a lobster tail. As ridiculous as that sounds, a whole boatload of people claim to have seen this thing locked in a 3 hour death match with two orcas, which it eventually lost. If your skeptical about this story, I don't blame you, but it would sure be cool if it was for real. I should also mention that science knows very little about life in the deep ocean, and its very possible there are large and strange animals still undiscovered.

Ambulocetus
This animal is an ancestor of the whales, and I learned about it on one of those TV shows where they computer generate images of extinct animals running around. Its an interesting example of convergent evolution in that its basically a mammalian crocodile; it has a similar body plan and they believe that it lived and hunted in similar ways.

Horseshoe Crabs
Horseshoe crabs are cool because they are an incredibly ancient animal; the fossil record suggests they have not changed significantly in approx. 500 million years, which means they are a holdover from a period when animal life was just getting started. They have copper based hemoglobin (like Vulcans in Star Trek) so their blood is blue/green, and they have a crazy ancient and primitive respiratory system. If you're on the beach on the east coast at the right time of year, these guys are laid up out on the beach everywhere, and you should give them props because they are real survivors. And by props, I mean flip them over if you see them on their backs, because they die from that :(

Ocean Sunfish
This is just a really weird looking fish. Its narrow and almost circular when viewed in profile and unlike other fish, it doesn't swim by moving its tail but instead by wiggling its dorsal and ventral fins. These guys are also enormous (they can weigh up to 2.5 tonnes) which increases my feeling that they are weird looking. The sunfish lives and feeds in the deep ocean, but comes up to the surface to lie on its side and bask in the sun for reasons that aren't totally understood. There is a picture of this weird fish and its weird behavior in the linked Wikipedia article, which you might want to check out.

The Greatest Rapper

Rappers all love to claim to be "the greatest." Although its obvious who is famous, who sells a lot of records, or who has a lot of fans, it is not so easy to look beyond those things to say what really makes for "good" or "bad" rap. Attempting to do so has become a hobby of mine, and although I do not have an authoritative system, I think there are a few subcategories of rap ability (rap sub-skills if you will) in which one can say what is good and bad. I also think different fans way these different areas differently, and thus a clearer idea of which components a great rapper should have could clear up a lot of disagreements. What follows is an attempt to do this, to sort of develop a rubric for evaluating rap.

There are a few categories to consider (in no particular order):
Wordplay: Is the rapper's diction varied, obscure, interesting, etc? Is there use of metaphor or other figurative language, and is it clever, funny, subtle, etc? Does the rapper play on words? Are the rappers rhyme schemes varied, complex, etc? This category essentially deals with how creative and sophisticated the rapper is in his choice of rhymes. This is what people are usually thinking about when they talk about a rapper having "good" lyrics.
Lyrical Content: What's the rapper rapping about? Are songs topically cohesive, or does the rapper seem to be just bringing up whatever pops into his/her head? Does the rapper tell interesting stories? Is he/she a good storyteller? Does the rapper talk about topics that are deep or emotionally heavy for the storyteller or audience?
Delivery: This is what I believe is commonly referred to as the "flow" or "style" and it deals with how the rapper actually utters their rhymes. For example, does the rapper seem to have any kind of meter or sophisticated cadence in their delivery? Do they vary their delivery, and is there evidence they do so for deliberate effect? Can they rap really fast? Do they have a cool voice, and do they manipulate it for effect? Do they sound articulate or is their delivery awkward?
Creativity: Is the rapper giving you the same old stories in the same style everyone has been using, or are they an innovator?
Personality: If you are listening to someone rap an album's worth, you are going to get some sense of their personality, or at the very least of the rap persona they are trying to construct. Is your reaction to that personality positive or negative? Obviously, this category is more subjective than the others. Does the rapper seem sincere, or does it seem like their persona is forced and artificial?
Production: How do the beats sound? Obviously, the rappers cant take all the credit for this one, but some seem to have better instincts in selecting their production than others.

Obviously, one would want the greatest rapper to do all these things consistently.

Baller Status

This quote is from Gilbert Gifford, an English dude back in the Elizabethan days who wanted to get into the spy business. He wrote the following in a letter to the Queen's spymaster:

"I have heard of the work you do and I want to serve you. I have no scruples and no fear of danger."

Isn't that baller? He's certainly to the point.

Yay, the government!

In The New York Times

Shrooms

This is from an article about amanita mushrooms, and it reminded me of the Fremen Water of Life ritual in Dune...but way grosser...

"In eastern Siberia, the shaman would consume the mushrooms, and others would drink his urine. This urine, still containing active hallucinogens may actually be more potent than the A. muscaria mushrooms with fewer negative effects, such as sweating and twitching, suggesting that the initial user may act as a screening filter for other components in the mushroom."

Getting that oil!!! pt. 2

In The Washington Post

Extinct Animals

I have been watching a lot of old documentaries about prehistoric animals, and I've noticed something. It seems like when there is a really major to disruption to an ecosystem, like one caused by an asteroid impact, the apex predators and other really large animals are really vulnerable because they need so much food (and thus such a large range). It also seems like if an ecosystem is relatively stable for a long time, there are always bigger niches to fill; if you are a herbivore, being larger takes you out of the reach of many predators (among other advantages), and then being a larger predator brings the larger prey within your reach. It seems like the pattern is that larger and larger animals evolve until there is a major disruption. A lot of them die off, and then the process begins again in the next stable period.

If any of you know anything about ecology / biology and can verify / invalidate this theory, let me know.