Category: uncategorized

~ Mark

There are three kinds of critics: those who have importance; those who have less importance; those who have no importance at all. The last two kinds do not exist: all critics have IMPORTANCE.

[…]

How could one imitate a Critic? I ask myself that. Well, at any rate, the interest in doing so would be rather thin–very thin: we have the original–HE IS SUFFICIENT.

A Hymn in Praise of the Critics: Those Whistling Bell-Buoys Who Indicate the Reefs on the Shores of the Human Spirit, by composer Erik Satie. Vanity Fair, September 1921 [pdf]. If you only know him via his Gymnopédies, you might not expect him to be such a goofball.
~ Mark

Q. Does President Obama make for a good Auto-Tune?

A. You know, what was great from Obama was the campaign speeches. His campaign speeches were excellent, because he was sort of using that almost gospel-preacher rhetorical style.

Since he’s been president, he’s been so relaxed and sort of so laid back and cerebral and sort of intellectual. He’s not been quite as excellent for Auto-Tuning because there’s a lot more of a mumbly tone about him. A lot less of the “Yes we can!” and a lot more of the “Weeeeell, as we see …”

Interview with the Gregory Brothers of “Auto-Tune the News” fame.
~ Mark

We had a few complaints that the MP3s of our last record wasn’t encoded at a high enough rate. Some even suggested we should have used FLACs, but if you even know what one of those is, and have strong opinions on them, you’re already lost to the world of high fidelity and have probably spent far too much money on your speaker-stands.

Jonny Greenwood on digital music.

Nancy Pearl’s The Rule of 50

~ Mark

austinkleon:

When to give up on a book (from Book Lust):

“Believe me, nobody is going to get any points in heaven by slogging their way through a book they aren’t enjoying but think they ought to read. I live by what I call ‘the rule of fifty,’ which acknowledges that time is short and the world of books is immense. If you’re fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before deciding.

Heartily agree. This is why my reading log has so many DNFs. I still think I need to raise my standards, though.

Nancy Pearl’s The Rule of 50