Scientific Aesthetic

White is Winsome: Discounting Black Plastic Skin

2010-03-10T13:06:28Z

Walmart are being accused of Racism for marking down a Black Barbie to $3.00USD while selling the White Barbie for the full price of $5.93USD. Some argue Walmart needed to be more sensitive to issues of Race in the marketplace and that the company needs to sell all Barbies for the same amount. Walmart replied, with a stone ear against a burning fire engulfing them, that they needed to move inventory and the Black Barbies had to be discounted so they would sell better.

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Are we taught at an early age White is better than Black?

In 1970, Toni Morrison wrote "The Bluest Eye" and, quite clearly, made the case that traditional European features -- light skin and light eyes -- torture young Black children with the preference of exclusion right in the midst of their own culture.

Why do all children prefer to play with White-skinned dolls over Black-skinned dolls? Is it because they are innately Racist or have they been genetically pre-assimilated into the "White is Winsome" from the moment of birth?

If Light-Skinned-Black Beyonce Barbie outsells Pure-White Barbie -- is that a sign of a sea change in thinking -- or it is just a momentary fluke stoked by the facade of popularity?

If we ever hope to get along with each other, we need to figure out his skin preference color thing because it is not only infecting our now, but also our future children, and our daily choice in discounted plastic as well.

Cuffed for Money: Privacy and the Public Record

2010-03-03T12:47:44Z

You can buy the new "Cuffed" magazine for a dollar to ogle the faces of the recently arrested. There are some who believe "Cuffed" is an inappropriate invasion of privacy while others argue the mug shots are part of the public record and any right to privacy was lost upon arrest.

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The particular outrage against "Cuffed" is that copies of the magazine are being sold for a dollar. Making money off of mugshots, in some jurisdictions, appears to be illegal but I don't understand the how or the why of that argument.

If mugshots are part of the public record, how can we determine what it means to "make money" using a mugshot? Local newspapers publish mugshots every day as part of their mandate to preserve the public record -- for profit -- and they accordingly sell advertising and charge subscription fees. Are newspapers in violation of the "making money meme" off an "invasion of privacy" found in the public record?

Websites like Mugshots.com and TheSmokingGun.com owe their entire success to publishing mugshots wrapped in advertisements -- so there seems to be a long history of mugshots being available for use and publication by anyone interested in making the effort to find them.

I would prefer no mugshot be made available as part of the public record unless someone were actually found guilty. Merely arresting someone should not trigger a public record mugshot because the temptation to trifle with criminal processing and the judicial system for personal gain is too ripe for exploitation by the mean as well as the politically tempted seeking misguided public retribution.

Oedipus Resurrecting: A Mother Stealing a Dead Son's Sperm

2010-02-24T13:47:29Z

While we are alive, we are free to do what we choose and live with the consequences of our actions. After we have passed away, we would hope that it would not be possible to have choices about our future life made for us. This is precisely why it always bothers me when books are published after the passing of authors -- particularly when the author requests that his notebooks be burned after his passing.

]]> Nikolas Evans, it went a little deeper than that. At the young age of twenty-one, Nikolas died a brutal death at the hands of thugs. His mother could not bear the loss.

I sat at a picnic table and bawled for an hour. I never cried so hard. I talk to him four times a day and see him twice a week and now nothing. I couldn't lose him. It was too important.

She decided the best course of action was to find a surrogate mother to bear the grandson she would not naturally have now that her son was dead. All she had to do was to have her son's sperm taken from him and then use it to impregnate a surrogate, who would then have her grandchild.

I cannot think of a creepier thing for a mother to do.

"Everybody is telling me it's unethical what I am doing," said Evans. "But I raised him and he wanted children. I can't get him to film school at UCLA and I couldn't help him live his dream because someone has taken it away from him."

How does stealing his sperm and creating a grandchild or even multiple grandchildren going to help Nikolas Evans live out his dreams? His dreams are gone and no grandchildren from stolen sperm will help to bring them back.

The Haitian Massacre of We Are the World

2010-02-17T13:57:44Z

Am I the only one disturbed by the celebrity media over-saturation to help Haiti while New Orleans is still rotting in the mold and muck of hurricane Katrina? Did I miss the breaking news that New Orleans was put back to average after years of malicious neglect? Where is the ongoing emergency celebrity effort in Louisiana?

]]> Louisiana 1927" -- where he sings about the turbid, historic, drowning of a beautiful city that should serve as a grave reminder for us all of the work that still must be done:

What's lost on me in the Haiti effort is how the emergency of the international moment is meted out and met in the media. New Orleans is dry old news while Haiti is fresh and bloody and exciting -- that is, until the next earthquake in China or the next Ethiopian water urgency replaces it in our fleeting, public relations, memories.

What is it about the American need to intervene into international crises while we have similar harrowing matters of destruction right here at home?

Do we really believe we can heal the world with music and dancing while we just take it for granted that the suffering at home will heal itself because we're such good can-do cheerleaders?

The most egregious effort in the Haiti melodrama is the re-recording of the classic song -- "We Are the World" -- because you can see it is nothing more than a blatant begging off of real talent for second chancers who do not respect the history or the heritage of the original song.

We know you cannot play the same moment twice, but that hasn't stopped celebrity malfeasance in the past and it is certainly present once again:

What a cruel massacre of a sacred song! The first rule of copying is to not destroy the intent of the original! The song is unrecognizable and disavows Michael Jackson, its dead creator.

That video redefines "intentional vileness." Have you held a creepier moment in your eye than Janet Jackson singing next to her dead brother? Ugh!

That sort of musical massacre hasn't been seen or felt in such tragic form since Elton John took "Candle in the Wind" -- honoring Marilyn Monroe in 1973 -- and twisted a few lyrics to force the song to fit the killing of Princess Diana in 1988.

Are we so unoriginal and uninspired that Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana can't each have their own song?

Are we so broken and bored that we have to reuse "We Are the World" to make it apply to Haiti?

Here's the original "We are the World" from 1985 -- and it's a complete classic that should have remained pristine in its intent and untouched in its production:

The hallmark of any classic song is: "Can I sing along?" You can sing along with the original "We Are the World" -- but you can't with the horrible remake because of all the screaming.

The lesson from "Haiti: The Vile, Rewarmed, Version" is that celebrities should stay home and shut up.

If they truly want to help -- let them send in their money anonymously -- and do their public works and private suffering first at home and then bid it all outward bound into the world.

Our first loyalty must always be to our immediate community that constructs us and hopes to make us whole again and when we trivialize who we are and what we stand for just to rip off an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, we all lose in the total failure of the misguided effort.

The Erotic Whisper and Your Hearing Skin

2010-02-10T13:28:37Z

A whisper, if performed the right way, isn't about hearing something at all. A whisper is all about feeling. A whisper is a public intimacy between two people wrapped in secretive sharing and a sensational tickling as puffs of warm words are delivered to the skin surrounding the receiver's ear.

]]> science behind the secret of your whispering skin:

People listen with their skin, not just their ears. Air puffs delivered to volunteers' hands or necks at critical times alter their ability, for better or worse, to hear certain speech sounds, a new study finds.

Tactile and auditory information, as well as other sensory inputs, interact in the brain to foster speech perception, propose linguists Bryan Gick and Donald Derrick, both of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

In many languages, speakers expel a small burst of air to make aspirated sounds. In English, for example, aspiration distinguishes "ta" from "da" and "pa" from "ba."

Volunteers were more likely to identify aspirated syllables correctly when they heard those syllables while receiving slight, inaudible air puffs to the skin, Gick and Derrick report in the Nov. 26 Nature. Air puffs enhanced detection of aspirated ta and pa sounds and increased the likelihood of mishearing non-aspirated da and ba sounds as their aspirated counterparts, the researchers say.

Deaf children are taught to "speak" with their mouths using this "puffs of air" technique.

A piece of paper is placed in front of the child's mouth, and when the child successfully produces the "pah-pah-pah" and "buh-buh-buh" and "teh-teh-teh" sounds, the aspirated air from their lips will billow the paper away from their mouths.

Speech comes in waves and rivulets, and the movement of sound through the air pushes understanding, creates intimacy, and hoards secrets we long to keep but can never hope to hold.

Saucony Jazz Sneaker Review

2010-02-03T15:37:34Z

I have never been much of a picky shopper when it came to shoes. When I was a child I always wanted to get the "popular" shoes but never got anything overpriced as that was just outrageous and not to be considered. In the last few years this has translated into my only buying shoes from such places as Zappos and warehouse store locations, never paying more than one hundred dollars for a pair of shoes. I certainly did not think that I would ever buy a pair of shoes based on an e-mail message from a record store.

]]> buy vinyl records -- I sometimes notice that they have ad banners for other companies. One day I happened to notice an ad banner for Saucony shoes, which they touted as the sort of shoes you might wear when searching for rare, out of print vinyl.

I am no fool and I knew exactly how they knew that I was the sort of person who would go out of his way to search for rare, out of print vinyl. It wasn't too far of an imagination stretch to guess that such a person might also have interest in the sort of shoes he would wear while doing the vinyl hunting. I searched for the shoes on a few online stores and found them to be reasonably priced.

I showed them to a few friends and got a mixed bag of reactions, going from one person saying that they would make me look really nerdy to another person saying that they would look really weird on me. Perhaps mixed bag is not the best way of describing it considering that nobody had anything particularly positive to say about them on me. There was nothing wrong with the shoes per se -- it was when the people tried to imagine them on me that it all went wrong.

A friend of mine who tends towards vegan clothing whenever possible pointed out that the same company made a vegan version of the shoe and that they looked a lot better than the "regular" version of the shoes. He even found the shoes at an old fashioned brick and mortar shop called MooShoes, a vegan only store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It turned out that the shoes were on sale there that week.

I went to the store with my friends and asked if they had the shoes in a size thirteen -- yes, I have fairly large feet. They brought out the shoes and I was absolutely sold from the moment they were on my feet and tied up. Normally shoes have an adjustment period from when you first put them on and when they start feeling comfortable. These were completely comfortable from the first moment I put them on my feet and have been ever since then.

The shoes come with two different color shoelaces -- one black and one white. I have only used the black shoelaces, but I will probably switch over to white when the black laces get tired. The high point of wearing the shoes thusfar was when a woman in the same building as my office, who worked for a fashion related company, told me that my shoes were very stylish and looked good on me --

-- and to think that they came without a hint of animal product.

Meat-Adaptive Gene Outlives the Apes

2010-01-26T12:43:31Z

We are known for our monkey love and for our Lucy love; but yesterday the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology revealed the reason we are able to outlive our ape relatives: We have a meat-adaptive gene and they do not.

]]> Comparing the life spans of humans with other primates, Caleb Finch, ARCO & William F. Kieschnick Professor in the Neurobiology of Aging in the USC Davis School of Gerontology, explains that slight differences in DNA sequencing in humans have enabled us to better respond to infection and inflammation, the leading cause of mortality in wild chimpanzees and in early human populations with limited access to modern medicine.

Specifically, humans have evolved what Finch calls "a meat-adaptive gene" that has increased the human lifespan by regulating the effects of meat-rich diets. ApoE3 is unique to humans and is a variant of the cholesterol transporting gene, apolipoprotein E, which regulates inflammation and many aspects of aging in the brain and arteries.

"Over time, ingestion of red meat, particularly raw meat infected with parasites in the era before cooking, stimulates chronic inflammation that leads to some of the common diseases of aging," Finch said.

However, another expression of apolipoprotein E in humans -- the minor allele, apoE4 -- can increase the risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's disease by several-fold, Finch explained. ApoE4 carriers have higher totals of blood cholesterol, more oxidized blood lipids and higher rates of early onset coronary heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

"The chimpanzee apoE functions more like the "good" apoE3, which contributes to low levels of heart disease and Alzheimer's," Finch said. Chimpanzees in captivity have unusually low levels of heart disease and Alzheimer-like changes during aging when compared to humans. The study goes on to explain the average lifespan of apes and chimpanzees in captivity is rarely longer than 50 years and that humans generally live twice as long as wild chimpanzees and apes in the wild.

I wonder what this means for strict Vegetarians and Vegans? Are we more ape-like than human because we are not red meat eaters and our lifespan will diminish over time?

Or are we already genetically coded with the meat-adaptive gene that will protect us from an early grave even though we eat like the apes?

21st Century Guilds: Companies Pay For Your Education

2010-01-10T19:16:12Z

When you think of the word apprentice, what comes to mind? For me, sadly, the first thing that comes is the image of Donald Trump telling some celebrity that they are fired in an obnoxious tone. The term goes a bit further back than that, however -- many centuries before the ridiculous 'reality' show came to be. Teenagers were sent to learn a particular trade -- they could spend a good number of years learning how to be a proper blacksmith, or a shoemaker, for example.

]]> this contract from seventeen fifty-nine:

...during all which Term or Time the said Jesse Cook his said Master he shall faithfully Serve and all his lawful Commands everywhere Gladly Obey. Neither shall the said Jesse Cook frequent Publick Houses, Contract Matrimony or Commit Fornication during the said Term.

Mr. Cook pretty much belonged to his teacher and master. Though it could be said to be a mutually beneficial relationship, it can be easily argued that the master was getting a bit more out of the deal than the apprentice.

This sort of apprenticeship doesn't exist anymore, at least not in the United States. The essence that drove the movement, however, still exists to a certain extent -- in different forms.

Last Friday, the social web site Facebook announced via its blog it would be offering a number of $30,000.00USD fellowships for Ph.D. students studying certain areas of academia, all of which are applicable to the long term growth and sustainability of Facebook as a company. As the blog explicitly states:

As Facebook engineers, we are surrounded by engaging technical problems to solve. We've recently tackled efficient photo storage, distributed computation and crowdsourced translations, to name a few. While we're working on inventive solutions on a daily basis, we can't do it alone.

The really jaded side of me says that this is just an easier way to get people who can do what they want without having to pay the higher salaries of people with years of experience that would ask significantly more than thirty thousand dollars a year. I don't know. It seems like a great program, much like the official Google Fellowship.

My eyebrow arched just a little bit when I read the following line from the Google announcement:

The Google Fellowship will provide them with funding to cover their tuition and expenses, plus an Android-powered phone and a Google mentor.

How incredibly kind of them. I wonder how likely it is that the mentor will guide them toward working for Google?

On the plus side, these fellowships do not prohibit the frequenting of public houses... yet.

The RevAbs Review

2009-12-07T11:51:34Z

On November 15th, I started a new workout program called RevAbs. It's not that I was unhappy with my morning workout per se, I just wanted to invest a solid three months into a structured workout regime -- moreover, I specifically wanted to target an area of my body that I felt had been really hit hard by poor diet and lack of physical activity for the majority of the time that I lived in Seattle -- my abdominal area. What better workout program to use than something called RevAbs -- right?

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At the time, I had a neighbor who was a fitness expert who assured me that her detailed in depth research had brought proof after proof that muscle confusion was closer to a good thing that worked than hype.

I ordered P90x shortly thereafter and then started with a very hopeful review. Unfortunately, I was all too right in my early review -- the lack of equipment would catch up to me, as I noted in the second review. The next big problem was coming up only a few weeks after the second review and that was the fact that I was going from Seattle slicker to New York vagabond, and I wouldn't have a set home base from where I could work out.

This turned out to be a bigger problem than I had anticipated. From the time I moved to New York until the time I had a place that I could call my own, nearly a year passed and I was worse for the wear. I thought about starting up P90X again and restarting the review process.

While I was waiting to get my own home base back, I did some different workouts that centered on cardiovascular activity and focusing on the core -- i.e., the center of the body from which our entire body springs forth. I'm pretty sure that doing these workouts prevented me from getting out of shape but I felt that I needed some kind of structured program to really help me get going.

A few weeks ago I discovered a DVD program called RevAbs, which was developed by a fitness instructor named Brett Hoebel with the express purpose of getting the audience's abdominal area in excellent shape in a matter of ninety days -- the caveat being that the person using the program has the obligation to follow the program as closely as possible to schedule.

That was exactly the sort of schedule I wanted to follow. I also took note that the course did not require anything other than a couple of free weights or a tension band, of which I had many. I decided that I wanted to give it a go because I have been unhappy with my abdominal area for years now and I wanted to try to do something about it.

It has now been three full weeks since I began the program and I am happy to report that it is working quite well. I would like to update you with more photographic goodness towards the end of the ninety days, but until then think about how I looked before I started P90X.

I look quite a bit better now, I think. So, how does the program actually work? It is 90 days which is broken up into two forty five day periods. There is an accompanying calendar that you can use to help with the daily motivation -- it starts on Monday and ends with a rest day of Sunday, so I modified it just a little bit so that I started on Sunday and ended with a rest day of Saturday.

There are a total of seven actual workout DVDs, though there is an option to buy a deluxe edition that comes with two extra DVDs. The first 45 days puts you through three of the DVDs whereas the second 45 days gets you through the next four.

Things that have been getting me through each workout include the length of the workouts, the motivation offered by the instructor, and the fact that I have really been feeling it as I work out. The workouts range in length from between half an hour to forty five minutes. This works well with my morning schedule -- I wake up at five in the morning and work out right away.

I get into the shower and get ready for the rest of the day. If the workouts were longer I would feel as though I had to skip certain parts of them just to get through them. There were some P90X workouts that were over an hour long and despite having no set clock for my work schedule, I felt really badly for taking so long to work out.

The instructor, Brett, offers excellent motivation. He continually offers you reassurance that if it is too difficult, there is a modified option available. Every workout has one person in the video doing the modified workout and Brett goes out of his way to explain what the modification is, should you wish to do it. The key point that he drives across very well is that it is better to do the modified version of the workout than to do no workout at all.

I really do feel the workouts as I am doing them. Many mornings I wake up and I feel like not getting up out of bed at all. I force myself to do it and about ten minutes into any given workout, I am actually already up and active. I breathe in deeply and, as silly as it feels, exhale forcefully -- and push out my abs as I work out. I will discuss this technique more in depth in my next review of RevAbs.

Has RevAbs worked for me? I can tell you that as of now, I am thinner in the waist than I was when I started the program and I feel a lot better every morning when I wake up. Whether I will have "ripped" abs at the end of the ninety days is something that will be determined -- in about 68 or so days!

Eyes as the Sign of Life

2009-11-18T15:09:38Z

We used to think breath was the sign of life -- and while that may be true in real life -- online, your life is found in your eyes. I know you have no idea what I'm talking about, so go to -- MP Change -- and look at the lifelike image. The eyes are alive and stalking you!

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"3D Face" is a code phrase for "we're adding really creeptastic, lolly, eyeballs."

Here's the image I uploaded of our favorite comely face.

Here she is with creepy, living, eyes!

Eyes that move and follow you everywhere!

You can click on one of those crazy, drifting, balloons and enhance your googly-eyed doe.

Eyes are the sign of life on the internet, and by using MP Change, you can morph your legal life into a lawless avatar that will give everyone else the stink eye.

The Evidence Audio Cables Review

2009-11-10T15:42:33Z

If you get into music full-bore to make up for 20 years of lost time, your effort quickly begins to ascend into the monetary stratosphere as costs pile up to bowl you over in that everlasting and neverending chase for "that sound." The latest example of my overweening ear interest is demonstrated in my new obsession with Evidence Audio amp, speaker and guitar cables. This is my story.

]]> David Gilmour Black Strat.

Included with the Gilmour guitar is a Melody cable from Evidence Audio. Melody is the same cable David uses in performance. I was especially intrigued by this claim on the cable's packaging:

Cables sound best after carrying a signal for approximately 40 hours. This is due to dielectric forming. As the conductor's insulation material stores and releases an electric signal, its molecular characteristics stabilize with regard to how they store and release the energy applied by the conductor. Expect any cable to sound its best only after passing a signal for 40 hours. Note that (approximately) 80% of the change occurs during the first 10 hours a signal is presented to the dielectric. Don't expect too much after that.

Say what?

I couldn't believe what my eyes were reading. I was fully prepared to call "Snake Oil" on that Evidence Audio claim.

I went to my favorite online guitar forum to ask for more experienced feedback from the gut of the group. Here is what I asked:

Do amps and speakers need to be "broken in" to get great sound?

I'm an old time radio guy and there was -- and is, I guess -- always an argument if new headphones had to be "broken in" or not to get the best sound out of them. I was always on the side that an older set of cans sounded better than those fresh out of the box, but others said it was/is physically and scientifically impossible that "breaking them in" had any effect whatsoever on the quality of sound produced.

I know some people think a tube amp needs burn in time and that any sort of speaker also need to be "exercised" with sound to produce the best results -- but is there any truth in that or is it all a folk tale?

To complicate matters a little in my mind, the Evidence Audio cable included with my Gilmour NOS claims you won't get the best sound out of the cable until you've used it for 20 hours! Huh? They enclosed card claims 10 hours is enough to start to really "hear" the capabilities of the cable, but it will take 20 to fully break in the sound. That whole paragraph I wrote sounds like the definition of witchcraft! SMILE!

I bought a second, more expensive Evidence Audio cable with "silent plug" technology -- turns out the Evidence Audio cables are quite noisy! I went back to my 100% Mogami cable setup and everything is quiet again. The Mogami Silent Plug Platinum guitar cable is worth every cent spent in the pops, bangs, and hisses it cures.

Here is the most prescient reply I received in the forum:

Hi Boles, if it's okay, I'd like to touch on the break-in subjects. It's my experience, that the speaker will need 10-20hrs, at various volume settings to flex the surround sufficiently. The electronics of the amp (all functions) just need to be run up to operating temps and tested at their full sweep.

One way, is to play and test for 15min, take a break but leave amp on (in play mode), play again and test, and so on. You're just checking for early component failure. I agree with you about the headphones, it's the same case as the surround on speakers, especially the larger old ones. The ones I use for recording are from the early 70's, and make me look like I should be out on the taxi-way directing jets. But they're sweet and easy on the ears.

That deal about the guitar cable is great! Does the cable need to have 20 hours of a 0.1V peak signal to align it's molecular structure? The George L's are good low capacitance cables. ART

I confessed my love of Mogami cables in that forum -- I have had a 100% Mogami cables setup -- and that was an expensive proposition. One Mogami cable can cost $150.00USD and you certainly need more than one.

Or two.

And so on.

And that's why you always see hardcore musicians arguing online about the best cable available and it is usually the first brand they paid down a lot of good money to buy that they love the most. You never forget -- or forgive -- your first guitar cable love.

Replacing all your amp, speaker and guitar cables is slightly more silly than having all your amalgam tooth fillings removed in favor of a safer "white composite" material that won't give you mercury poisoning -- and so I decided to do just that: Forsake all my Mogami and spend my own hard earned money to fly 100% Evidence Audio to hear it all with my own ears: If Evidence Audio is good enough for David Gilmour, it is certainly fine for me!

So, here I stand with several Evidence Audio cables in hand and "dielectrically dialed-in" for the requisite 40 hours and I am, frankly, delighted and surprised.

Here's why:

Evidence Audio Siren II cables now run between my speakers and my amp. The sound is cleaner and truer. There's more "there" there now that I never knew was missing!

Evidence Audio Lyric HG cables now tether my guitars to my amps. I get a sharper, spinning, shine and a greater, glistening, chime from the Lyric cable than with the Mogami -- even though they fall into the same price range. The bass lines also thump just a little bit heavier and more forcefully with the Lyric HG.

In my non-scientific testing, the Evidence Audio Melody cable was muddier than the Lyric HG, but the Melody is also less strict in its want to hold its shape and that might be important to some musicians.

The Lyric HG cable sounds the best, but it is also the most ill-behaved in situ in that it retains its looping arc even in the unwound state and those elevated, thicker, twists can cause a tripping hazard on stage, but I say, "Who cares?" -- this is all about the chase for the absolutely right sound -- not the reason for stumbling in performance.

Yesterday, in anticipation of this article, I contacted Evidence Audio to ask a few questions. I was impressed that a few hours after my inquiry, Tony Farinella, the one-man Wizard behind Evidence Audio, answered all my questions.

The first thing I wanted to know was how he was able to quantify his dielectric claim about wearing in the cables for 10 hours to get the best sound and this is what he said:

I can only quantify my claim by relaying personal experience which is fortunately an experience shared by others. This is not a methodology which will satisfy the scrutiny of the engineering community. The dialog between the subjectivists and objectivists gets quite heated. Almost religious. I see both points and try to keep an open mind and healthy skepticism. But at the end of the day I don't deny what I hear and can demonstrate to others. I find it easier to accept the phenomenon of break-in than the existence of God; for in my experience I have more proof of the former. ...

When I take lengths of bare metal between plugs and compare them (by ear), and the only variable is the amount of "time" a signal has been applied to bare copper, I can't hear a bit of difference between them.

The only time I notice the effects of "time" on a conductor material is when it has an insulation material extruded on top of it. I'd be a bit shy making these claims if I were the only one doing so. Probably not the quantifiable data that would put to rest a team of E.E.s.. but at least I'm not crazy AND alone.

I also asked Tony about his cables versus Mogami -- here is his reply:

As for Mogami: Fine cable. Warm and forgiving. Well-engineered and you can make/record/pass perfectly wonderful sounding music with it.

I personally like mine better for what I hear against various models and configurations they make: notably articulation and speed in the bottom end. I hear that first. Their midrange is a little rounder and out of focus. Less dimensional. But hey a guitarist may wish to paint with those colors. Nothing wrong with that.

That final observation by Tony was the sealing cut against Mogami and the reason for my permanent switchover to Evidence Audio: If you want to hear your guitar's genuine, clean, unguarded, personality -- you don't want anything blocking the natural being between bonding fingers binding ears. Evidence Audio cables ring out the true sound of your guitar while Mogami dresses up the sound just a little bit to match the middling, midstream, mainstream, untrained, wringing, ear.

It takes bravery, not bravado, to use an Evidence Audio cable because those cables exposes the reality of your amps, speakers and guitars in ways you might not really enjoy if you've previously been fooled by your cables setup.

When we talk Evidence Audio, we're discussing the necessary need for a naked, pure, sound without masks or mysticism -- and some ears cannot, and will not, handle that reality. Those frightened folks are happy enough to mash down the impurities of their sound with stompboxes and cables that yearn to please with a predetermined, dull, aesthetic.

Those "musicians" will purposefully never care about the potential richness of their sound, and they will never hope to submit the guts of their gear to the stunning difference between Evidence Audio and all the rest -- because they can't begin to regret what was never risked or wagered to hear.

Google Wave on your iPhone

2009-10-28T16:30:14Z

Did you know you can use Google Wave on your iPhone? Just point your Safari iPhone browser to wave.google.com and dismiss the "incompatible browser" warning and click on the "take your chances" link and you're in on the Wave!

]]> Google Wave is quick and nasty on the iPhone. Navigation is natural and easy.

Creating new Waves is simple and intuitive.

Google Wave on the iPhone works just as you would expect it it behave based on your computer interaction with Wave. Click on the giant "+" sign to add people to your Wave.

Or click on the "Contact" link and pick your participants with your finger and you're set!

You can also use the keyboard to search for participants.

Replying to a Wave on the iPhone is a surprisingly spry and witty experience.

Here's the Wave navigation panel. You bring it forward by touching on the "Google Wave" logo:

Oh, and even though Google plays coy in saying iPhone is unsupported for Wave, your good common sense tells a different story.

In Safari, choose to add Google Wave to your iPhone "Home Screen" and you'll get a delicious and delightful, Google-created, "Wave" logo as you can see in a screenshot below from my iPhone.

Fire up your iPhone and start Waving your life away! You won't regret a moment of it.

The David Gilmour Black Strat Review

2009-10-14T12:35:12Z

It's always a magnificent moment when art and science come together to form a greater entity, and today I'm going to share with you the story of such magnificence in the being of my new Black Strat -- the David Gilmour of Pink Floyd famous Black Strat -- that I just purchased from Troy Benns at Wildwood Guitars. The beauty to be held is down below.

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He knows how to make his black Stratocaster bend a mood and blend beliefs into a whole new way of interacting with the world.

That is the mark of a great musician and the brand of a red-hot mystical talent: Gilmour leaves us greater than he found us.

You would think a guitar is just a guitar. It's just a cobbling together of wood and hardware and electronics and that each one made is no different than the one that came before it.

I have learned, thanks to the intervention of Troy Benns, that not all guitars are created equal.

There are both subtle and drastic differences between identically crafted guitars that the eye rarely catches but that a trained ear and hand can always discern.

When I decided to buy my David Gilmour Fender Black Strat -- the standard NOS version, not the relic'ed one that replicates David's actual guitar -- Troy offered to play the Gilmour Strats he had in stock at Wildwood to find a "Killer" one for me.

It was then I understood the value of having your own Guitar Guy on your side and on scene. Troy could do what my eyes on the Wildwood website could not: Hear the tone and feel the vibration of the various Black Strats in stock.

Troy chose a killer Black Strat for me, and when it arrived yesterday, I was awestruck. Here's part of the email I shot off to Troy:

The Gilmour arrived today, Troy.

I am shocked and stunned.

Can't stop playing it. It looks, feels and sounds absolutely eerie. That's precisely what guitar should do: Transform you.

You not only picked a killer Gilmour for me, you found a divine one. I was toodling around with it right out of the case and I said out loud to myself, "This sounds so fantastic and loud." Then, I realized... the guitar wasn't plugged in! This guitar is so well-made AND LOUD it sings in the essence of its wood like an acoustic without amplification! It is soooooooo easy to play. Shocking! ...

I should buy two of these Gilmours because this one is just that good -- but I know I'd be tempting The Gods to try to replicate my luck with this one. The difference between this Black Strat and my Custom Shop Clapton is huge. In every way -- playability, case candy value, neck, body, pups, string, action -- the Gilmour stuns the Clapton out of the water. Shocking! I now have a new all-time favorite guitar and I've played it less than half a day.

Yes, I was hyperbolic and breathless -- I still am! -- but wait... I wasn't done. Here's part of the follow up reply I sent to Troy a few hours later in the day:

The guitar amazes. It's like it controls me and teaches me how to play it. Shocking. The EJ [Eric Johnson] strat you sold me [last week] is very close for that kind of directed musicianship, but the Gilmour is truly something out of this world. Scary good. I thank you again and again for taking the time to find the right one for me and them embedding bits of your talent in the wood.

So there you have it: My Gilmour Black Start plays me instead of me playing it -- and that is an experience few people in the world are ever able to live once -- let alone along a lifetime of plucking strings that vibrate wood.

I'm grateful to Troy Benns for taking extra time and effort to find me the right guitar and I also thank Fender and David Gilmour for letting us ordinary mortals in on the secrets of The Black Strat.

I have now learned to tell Troy what guitar I want and then let his hands and ears do the choosing for me.

The proof is in the playing and with my Black Strat there's no stopping the promise of greatness the guitar offers me in my own hands. This David Gilmour Strat is my blessing in black.

SMS for the Blind

2009-10-02T12:51:58Z

Nokia have developed a SuperGenius SMS Braille reader for the Blind and Visually impaired for cellphones.

]]> Nokia Braille Reader gives SMS for the blind and visually impaired. It captures received SMS messages and brings them to the foreground for reading using Braille and tactile feedback.

The application has been developed in a joint project between Nokia, Tampere University and the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired. We celebrate Nokia's dedication to the disable and we honor their service to innovation.

Nokia certainly proves the divine notion of a "Scientific Aesthetic" -- their phones are technically beautiful -- even for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

MIT Gaydar Golden Recipe

2009-09-24T12:21:36Z

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is watching you. They're following you on the social networks and making note of your friends. MIT also has divined if you're Gay or not -- based solely on who your friends are and what relationships they have besides yours.

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Using data from the social network Facebook, they [two MIT students] made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person's online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person's friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively "outing" themselves just by the virtual company they keep.

"When they first did it, it was absolutely striking - we said, 'Oh my God - you can actually put some computation behind that,' " said Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at MIT who co-taught the course. "That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information - because you don't have control over your information."

I wonder how many straight men are now actively pruning their public friends list of any and all males -- just in case the MIT Gaydar points their way?