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Thanksgiving: Psychology, Gratitude and Funky Music
by Robert Lamb | November 22, 2011
So once more residents of the United States find themselves on a collision course with the Thanksgiving holiday. Some of us make a point of celebrating it, some are obligated and others disregard it as much as possible. Between the traditional turkey gluttony and America’s historical mistreatment of Native Americans, there are certainly some good excuses to abstain. Growing up. I didn’t really care about the whole gratitude thing to be honest. Today, however, it feels appropriate to think a bit about what’s good in life and how little I’ve done to diverse any of it — and it looks like science backs me up on that.
Why are so many musical minds also so well suited for crunching numbers? Whether it’s Art Garfunkel’s masters degree in mathematics or the structure of the chromatic scale, it’s easy to correlate music and math. But what’s the truth of the matter?
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I venture into the overlap between the world of song and the world of calculation. We discuss what’s going on the brain, what surveys have to say about it and we’ll even call back to the interview I did with DJ Irk on the subject.
What does English sound like to foreign ears?
by Robert Lamb | June 14, 2011
We’ve all heard examples of fake Chinese or German from speakers who lack familiarity with either language. While typically cringe-worthy, these examples do raise interesting questions regarding our own language. What does English sound like to non-English speakers? After more than 40 years, Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” remains one of the most illuminating examples. Prepare to rock out and sorta kinda rap with an Italian comedian:
Today’s episode is something of a puzzle, and we need you guys to helps us piece it together. What happens when we plug into our electronic gadgets and tune out the rest of the world? What kind of world do we live in when everyone gets to pump their own continuous, custom soundtrack in and alter reality’s emotional decor. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I discuss the so-called Walkman Effect and the manner in which our precious music and personal electronics alter the reality we live in.
Monday’s TechStuff episode was all about South by Southwest (or SXSW), an enormous, chaotic and amazing conference that the city of Austin hosts each year. The conference’s original focus was on music. Austin is known as a live music town and has an abundance of bars, restaurants and clubs with dedicated stages for music acts. It was a natural fit for Austin to host a week-long music event. Since 1987, bands from around the world have converged on Austin to play music, hang out with fans and eat their weight in BBQ. And as waistlines have grown, so too has the conference.
Recently, I asked our editors and writers to forward me their favorite travel tunes. Here’s a sampling of songs they sent my way: “Holiday Road,” “America,” “On the Road Again,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Don’t Go Back to Rockville.”
Click ahead for more …
So, you’ll probably get sand in your shorts. But if you sit down at the top of a 150-foot sand dune in the desert, then push off and slide down the dune, you might hear something familiar: the sound of the televised 2010 World Cup — aka, a whole lot of people blowing vuvuzelas.
Seriously, that’s what a booming dune sounds like.
This weekend I watched an amazing video on YouTube. It is called Talking Funny, and it had been broken up into 4 parts and posted. It features Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais sitting together in a room talking about their craft. It is utterly amazing because it lets you get inside [...]
If you could make a modification, what would that modification be? See also the gallery of bizarre instruments
Well, isn’t this clever? An app that plays a special soundtrack for you as you tour the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Indie band Bluebrain is behind this “location-aware album,” as it’s called, which will sync up with your iPhone’s GPS capabilities to play certain music at certain tempos as you move around the National Mall. Hundreds of zones on the mall will be tagged, according to the band’s Web site, and the sounds that hit your ears will change as your proximity to those zones changes.
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