Dive into the archives.
- ….You are now listening to Araab Muzik….
Araab Muzik is a talented guy from my hometown. He’s produced a lot for Dip Set, especially Cam’ron and last year released an instrumental album called Electronic Dream that ended up on quite a few critic and artist best of lists. His sound is kind of interesting. A few years ago I probably wouldn’t have been into it, but the fact that American music has been taken over for David Guetta-style oonts and sparkle makes the fact that Araab Muzik somehow manages to incorporate and overpower that sound with hard drums and strip club high hats makes it that much more pleasurable to me. He’s also a barbarian on the MPC. See above.
Get him album off iTunes
Araab Muzik – Streetz Tonight
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- The Power to Make Life a Wonderful Adventure
Charlie Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator
Thanks Galahad for reminding me!
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- Correction:
A couple of years ago, I made a post extolling the polymathic virtues of Nathan Myhrvold. I didn’t know much about him, besides what was explained in his Wikipedia entry, but that was enough for me to conclude that he was a source of light in the world. A couple of readers disagreed and made strong cases for why Myhrvold is not the hero I naively presented him to be. Andrew explained:
Nathan Myhrvold is a jerk. He files for useless patents just so he can use them to sue and shake down other companies that actually are innovating. He doesn’t actually invent or create anything. His company Intellectual Vultures does perform a service or make a product that people use; all it does is manufacture litigation.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time, but earlier this week I came upon a fascinating and deeply depressing profile of Intellectual Ventures by NPR reporter Laura Sydell and This American Life producer/Planet Money co-host Alex Blumberg. The piece is called When Patents Attack and, in the words of its creators, it asks
Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries.
Listen up:
Inspired by this piece, the website FrugalDad posted an informative and pretty infographic on the subject.
This infographic discusses some of the facts behind the patent industry and how it’s changed as software, technology, and the internet have developed at an incredible pace. I find the information to say a lot about the state of development and innovation; both how important it can be to everyday life, and the problems it can face on a larger scale.
Source: http://frugaldad.com
Thanks to Andrew, Frank Lee and everyone for opening my eyes to this and punching holes in my hero worship.
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- Baby Beats Vol 2
Hot on the heels of holiday season, here is the second installment of Baby Beats, my mix series for 5′s and under. Like the first one, Baby Beats 2 is inspired by my nieces Natasha and Arielle and dedicated to kids and parents near and far.
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- Our Honor
Unnamed exhibitors Eric Adjetey Anang and Shimizu Corporation meet at the Gwangju Design Biennale (Photo: An Xiao Mina)“Unnamed Design” the exhibition I obsessed over for most of last year was named one of the best exhibitions of 2011 by the New York Times in their Design Honors List!:
As for the other design coups of 2011, my vote for the best historic design exhibition goes to the Carlo Mollino retrospective at Haus der Kunst in Munich. The outstanding contemporary shows were “Unnamed” at the Gwangju Design Biennial in South Korea, in which the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei [and co-curator Brendan McGetrick - ed.] challenged traditional definitions of design; and “Talk to Me,” a survey of the frenzied field of communication design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The making of this show was an extremely trying and rewarding experience. The show is now closed and largely destroyed but I’m working on making a publication to provide some sort of legacy. In the meantime, here is an essay I wrote about the exhibition and the experience of making it.
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