a thaumaturgical compendium

This is awesome: redeeming not only (as Boing Gadgets notes) Feist from repetitive iPod commercials, but Sesame Street from small red monsters that start with the letter E.

So, I was watching a BBC show on the “Secrets of the Sexes” (below), and realized that I hadn’t done a self-indulgent online quiz in a while. So, I went over to the site and took a battery of quizzes. What were the results? Apparently, I have a lesbian brain trapped in a man’s body. The equal length of my ring and index fingers indicate woman hands, and suggest that I had too little testosterone in the womb; which, in turn, means that I won’t be winning any footraces soon.

So, has this brought on any deep introspection? Well, for a moment I was reminded of an old Steve Martin number, the I’m me song, during which he stops and says “But wait. What if I’m a girl?” I just don’t happen to fit well on their scales. I’ve got very manly spatio-visual awareness, but also, apparently, a colossal corpus callosum, which may or may not, be more prevalent among the ladies.

At any rate, I’m not going to take much stock in it. My hairline suggests that whatever testosterone I may have missed in the womb was more than made up for later on.

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I know a lot of people think this is corny, but it makes me happy, so I’m posting it. If you haven’t seen the original one, it’s here.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I’m interested in this new guitar from Moog for a few reasons. First, I’m curious as to how it will affect music: will we be hearing this instrument to a much greater extent? Given that similar music could be produced in post-production or digitally, why is it that this will happen? Is it a question of defaults?

I’m also wondering about the loss of creative instrumentation. If virtuosi performers on traditional instruments (not that electric guitar is “traditional,” but it is far more traditional than a desktop computer) become more rare, will there still be people who develop instruments like this?

Finally, there are lots of people inventing musical instruments: a kind of makers’ market of such beasts, both using electronics (including circuit bending), and using either constructed or found physical objects (like buildings!). With rare exceptions, these tend to be played only by their inventors, since the sunk cost in learning to play a new instrument requires some common cultural value that can be exchanged. By evolving an existing instrument that is widely known into something that produces a different musical effect, does this encourage greater diffusion? I think the answer is clearly “yes.”

You know how to get my attention:

encephalopod robot dirigibles

Those three keywords are enough to get me excited. But who wouldn’t get excited by this:

There’s still a chance to vote on the finalists in the Obama in 30 Seconds contest for Citizen-created political ads.