rostasi

Wow! There was a spoof of this out there somewhere, but I can't remember the address. Makes me wonder about some people's "creative" ways of thinking. I guess the Indigo Girls are listed twice because they're both gay women, but hey, doesn't that qualify as "really" gay?

You don't have to go to the site. In the original post, it states that it's at #16.

The "sound 101" site mentioned below is pretty amusing - take the test! [links and formatting in original] http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/2...d-in-the-world/ January 24, 2007, 10:00 am Most Horrible Sound in the World By Tom Zeller Jr. A British researcher says he has uncovered what he believes is the most horrible sound in the world — or at least it was rated the most horrible of 34 sample sounds listened to by over a million Internet participants over the last year. A professor at Britain’s Salford University, Trevor Cox, claims to have reached a new plateau in the understanding of human hearing and acoustics, based on a year of input from of over a million online test subjects: Vomiting is the worst sound ever. Or, at least, vomiting as recorded for Professor Cox’s acoustics tests, and as performed by a hired actor using a bucket of diluted baked beans to recreate the sound of cascading slop. “I am driven by a scientific curiosity about why people shudder at certain sounds and not others,” Professor Cox said at his Web site. “We are pre-programmed to be repulsed by horrible things such as vomiting, as it is fundamental to staying alive to avoid nasty stuff but, interestingly, the voting patterns from the sound did not match expectation for a pure ‘disgust’ reaction.” (Readers who feel brave, and wish to listen to the foul sound clip can do so here, but be warned: it sounds, well, like someone vomiting.) As Britain’s Guardian newspaper put it today: The study … sought opinions on 34 sounds at the Web site http://www.sound101.org in the hope of learning what makes certain noises so objectionable. … The researchers expected sounds that evoke disgust to be near the top of the list, such as vomiting, coughing and spitting, eating an apple with the mouth open and a lengthy blast from a whoopee cushion. Revulsion to such sounds is partly governed by culture and partly an evolutionary legacy that helps us avoid picking up diseases. Indeed, the question of just how much of the “disgust” response is nature and how much is nurture has been a matter of some speculation. In 2004, researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, writing in the journal Biology Letters, suggested that they’d found evidence that the human proclivity to become disgusted by certain things — say, feces or rotting meat — was an instinctive and evolutionary response, developed to protect us from the risk of disease. Other researchers, BBC News pointed out at the time, attribute the disgust response to learned behavior. Clark McCauley, a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr University College in Pennsylvania, spoke to The BBC: “What people today find disgusting goes far beyond what can be understood in the evolutionary sense,” Professor McCauley told BBC News Online. “This biological mechanism was taken up and extended to produce a much broader mechanism of revulsion at different cultural horizons. “For example, what counts for appropriate care of hair in our society is not the same as in some other societies.” (Readers who want to test their own stomachs can take a “Disgust Test” at the BBC, in which they are invited to rate a series of images — from a dirty soccer ball to rotting teeth — on a scale from “Not Disgusted” to “Very Disgusted.”) As for Professor Cox’s disgusting sounds study, it’s worth noting that the classic bad sound — fingernails on a chalkboard — ranked only 16th among the field of 34 horrible sounds. (Note, too, that researchers have explored whether human revulsion to that sound derives from its similarity to the warning cries of macaque monkeys — the idea being that our response to the scraping might be some residual reflex handed down from our ancestors.) Ranking No. 2, just after vomiting, was the sound of microphone feedback. And tying at number three were the sounds of many babies crying, and what was simply called a “horrible scraping” sound.

We're surrounded - literally - by three Powerball states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, but not a damn thing here.

I think nearly all views are welcome and debated here - including news bits about or from other boards. (Tho there is a nasty habit of running off teenagers with interests in jazz).

I was thinking the same thing.

Watched the first season of 24. When the second season started, there were constant televised interruptions - State of the Union address, some sports thing that ran overtime, et al - and you couldn't set up a time to record it to watch later. Anyway, it was clear that I was broadcasting's slave and so I became disgusted with myself and quit watching TV altogether. Except for the local weather report and occasional Sunday evening British comedy, it's stays off. Even the meteorologists are getting it wrong, so that may go by the wayside too. Did notice our local sports guy's glee with the retirement of our Cowboys coach - funny moment.

I was making an omelette.

Great! Thanks for the link. Yeah, FM transmitters are a pain. I'm glad that my car still has a cassette player, but even with those adapters you have to change them out every 6 months or so 'cause they get all loose and rattling.

OK, I've read this explanation over and over and I don't know what you mean by this last statement. What do you mean by "it" - that your iTunes transferred just full albums to your iPod? If that's the case, then you've got your settings set to "albums" in your iTunes for the shuffle feature (or even possibly "Groupings"). I, of course, understand that we're talking about iPods here - check the Newsweek article link - or dozens of other articles concerning the iPod's shuffle feature.

Which Tex? Rod --- Now playing: Luisito Quintero - Our Love

Gonsalves, Terry, and Hamilton! Bonus tracks - everything well-remastered in stereo. Original and new liner notes. It's a real gem. Rod --- Now playing: Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds - Royal Garden Blues

She used to appear pretty often on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. She was not only charming and smart, but she told some really hilarious stories about her old hippie days. She appeared to be a real sweetheart each time I saw her on that show (some of which I have on VHS somewhere around here).

Tell me about this "USA Spec" thing? Been using a cassette adapter (which is better than the FM transmitter which I use in rentals). For one week in my old car, I had a direct link that was great! (but I sold the car soon afterwards). It's always listed in my sig file under each post. If you have sigs off, then you can click here. If the link doesn't open up for you, then you can put the address directly in your favorite audio player. I've bought a simple router that I have to make some adjustments to, but until the time comes when I'm fiddling with that, you should be able to listen now.

Hi Marla, don't worry, it has little to do with anything that you're doing. A player that holds one-tenth the amount of info will naturally seem to appear to be less "random" (actually, I think that you mean "chaotic" or a "least likely" scenario). You're 80GB will appear more "random" than your 20GB and this continues as the storage increases. This seems to be one of the reasons that many folks like a larger and larger size. Even tho it is downright difficult to actually go thru a large iPod's complete library (the library seems to too easily reset to track 1 after some basic routines - song transfers, recharges, etc.), the larger the storage, the less likely that you'll seem to get repeating songs, artists, et al.

It's become kind of a humorous topic that's come up so much on various Apple forums and in the various magazines, NPR, and even a thesis. Here's one from Newsweek from a year ago. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/ I'll try to find the funny article that quotes Steve Jobs' comments about how people don't seem to really want true randomness, but, rather less randomness in order to give people the feeling that it is random - He tells of the frustrations that the tech guys were going thru trying to implement this random function. BTW, in the newer versions of iTunes, there is almost a kind of "explanation" that was born out of these discussions about randomness. In it's playback preferences, it now has an explanation of what the "smart shuffle" feature does: Notice that "random" is smack dab in the middle. From a personal point of view - I know that just a few years of use isn't really a lot of time - but I've done my own tests with files that have been given numbers for names - sometimes songs, sometimes artists - and carefully looking at what comes up both on mine and my sweetheart's iPod. it seems to really be as close to true randomness as is necessary for an item like this (after all, it is not generally used for physics or astronomical calculations). When it comes to true randomness, you should be more surprised that it hasn't played the same song twice in a row! Which, if it hasn't happened yet, will eventually happen. Also, tho the above article uses "Wilco" as an example of repeated artists (tho the "Steely Dan" ref is closer to believable - the letter "s" being one of the most frequent letters), if the random element is "artist-name" centric in it's decisions, then it's more likely that you'll get, as I said before, more Monk than Zorn even if you have half the amount of Monk. Random calculations based on mathematics alone have a tendency to favor the center 67 to 75% of the spectrum. This has some flexibility based on various quantities of course, but in general this is the rule.

He da hip gahn!!

Thanks for sharing this, but as a guy who's devoted his life to randomness and statistics I can tell you that the iPod random feature is as close to random as can be without using physics or astronomical methods. The fact that you hear the same songs often is randomness. The two alternative methods mentioned are good because they give the illusion of complete chaos, but will still produce the same type of results - only they'll be restricted to an area that you won't easily notice. In the second suggestion, that would be time. If you were as keen to time as you are to the sound of an artist, then you could later say, "Hey! My iPod keeps playing tunes that are between 4 and 5 minutes long" or some other mean time span. It's a common mis-perception about randomness. There's also a tendency for randomness to favor the middle areas. Artists on the alphabet fringes may not appear as often. For example, you can have Monk show up more often than Adderley or Zorn even if you have half as much Monk on your iPod.

Her playing on Turiya and Ramakrishna from Ptah the El Daoud is so achingly beautiful that it'll bring tears to your eyes.

The story goes that a couple discovered that their monthly water bill was becoming HUGE and they couldn't ever figure out why! So, one day, when they were both home, they apparently, finally, heard what the problem was. They went downstairs and discovered this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpV4FBzP958

Good article from David Byrne in 1999: I Hate World Music

Well, you do get another 20 minutes or so. ...and you get the wonderful Slow Drag, but that's totally your call on it - find it cheepy and give it a try. I was listening to this today on my way to the grocers and lunch. The drumming felt a little disjointed (in a bad way), but it could've been not a good disc to listen to during driving.

I'd do a Froogle search.

I'm a Penguin guy myself.

Should be interesting (or not) to see where a guy who spent 20 years in the biscuit business will take this company. His claim to fame is his "invention" of this: