Big Wheel

Strangely, the Doctor's wikipedia page now claims that he is a convert to Sikhism and cites a story at the Russian news site rt.com. Which means of course that dozens of other Sikh-related sites are now proclaiming Lonnie Smith is a "White Sikh" and citing...wikipedia. Is there any truth to this? I thought the official word was that the turban itself may be "authentically Sikh", but the Doctor wears it simply because he looks awesome in a turban.

Listening to this on Spotify. Are my ears deceiving me or did someone around the end of disc 1 very audibly ask Brian for a hash joint? Confirmed. Awesome.

But our laws don't codify our morality. That's why we have the (n/2 + 7) rule for such cases.

Perhaps greed was their motivation. Perhaps not. The Washpost's Erik Wemple offers his take: Wemple further indicates that the discrepancies in the way Romenesko used attribution were brought to Moor's attention by the Columbia Journalism Review. It was only after that point that she began to look into it. I'm not sure I would arrive at the conclusion that greed was Moor's motivation, given this description of events. You (and Wemple) are two steps behind. CJR's Erika Fry emailed Moos saying, in essence, "hey, I have some background questions for a piece I'm writing about Poynter, which I am interviewing you about this week. I noticed Romenesko+ (the blog that includes multiple writers) now does X, Y, and Z. It didn't used to. What is the deal? Doesn't doing that kind of constitute over-aggregation?" Then Moos jumped in front and publicly chewed out Jim Romenesko for attribution issues - *not* over-aggregation - while not answering the rest of her questions. And it's worth noting that Jim Romenesko was not the only person to have adopted this style on the blog - the other contributors often did too, but Fry hadn't happened to use them as examples because she did a quick perusal of the last two weeks of the blog to make her (different) point to Moos. Yet Moos never bothered to do any of her own legwork here to find them. Instead she just bitched out Jim Romenesko. Fry to Moos: "Uh, hi. Can I have that interview now? And what does yelling at Romenesko about attribution do to fix the over-aggregation problem I'm asking you about? Putting everything in quotes doesn't do anything to get people to read the original story. You're still copying-and-pasting large, multiple-paragraph chunks of the writer's work onto Poynter's website." Moos: "I already answered your questions in the blog post." (Which she hadn't, not all of them.) As for why Poynter wanted a style change in Romenesko+: what besides greed can explain it? Romenesko worked great when it was just giving people two sentences and having them click through for the rest. It just didn't soak up the eyeballs for Poynter because nobody in their audience gave a shit about reading lots of their analysis.

I am saying that what Romenesko was doing in the past barely even qualified as a "blog post." It was just a pure digest of stories with one or two sentences quoted. There was never any question of attribution because there was little to no editorial analysis to speak of that would have muddied the waters on whose words were being posted. Just like the automated weekly email I get from Youtube telling me what videos my favorite accounts are posting doesn't contain paragraphs telling me what Youtube thinks of the videos. Poynter has a lot of gall chastising their writer for something he would never have done in the first place if it hadn't been for their ordering him to do it out of greed.

The musician circles I used to travel in loved to hate Money Jungle. The first time I heard of it was someone poo-pooing it. Lots about the legendary fighting between Mingus and Roach and how everyone is playing on wildly different parts of the beat (Mingus way behind, Max way in front (I think), Ellington right on the beat). The things I'm noting on another listen are: -listen to how much room the ride cymbal takes up. It's almost suffocating on the midtempo tunes. -On the ballads Max is often laying out. On Solitude when they go into the swing section and Max starts playing, Duke is so forceful starting with the second 8. Maybe I'm overinterpreting this from what I've heard about the legend of this session, but to me it's almost like Duke is saying "goddamn it you bastards, the beat is HERE. RIGHT HERE. I was TRYING for elegance on this thing. Fuck it." -the UA mixing sounds very different from how most studios recorded piano back then. Duke sounds extremely hot to me here, which is helping the piano cut above the other instruments. -In a lot of ways, Duke's style works well with what Max is playing. The way Duke is soloing here on most of the cuts is almost how he soloed behind his whole big band. Not really any linear playing, instead lots of rhythmic punching from both hands. I mean, Jesus, the playing on Caravan is HUGE. Duke is slamming the shit out of the lower register in ways that would typically sound muddy and bad. There's one part at the climax of it where it sounds like he's playing a half step away from the intended chord (I'd have to transcribe it but it sounds like maybe he's playing the "wrong" diminished chord here - Cdim instead of C7b9.) It's an inspired harmonic choice, but my sense is also that he has to play stuff like this because building yourself a fortified concrete bunker is the only way to stay alive during Hurricane Max.

Wow...listening to this record all the way through for the first time. I definitely hear Monk and also Nichols's rhythmic feel in the right hand, but also shades of Andrew Hill on some of the more out and meditative sections...and even Jaki Byard - in terms of the two-fisted approach to the instrument, letting the left hand provide density. I don't hear quite so much Hope - but I need to listen harder to Hope; to be honest I've actually found Hope at his most attractive and "honest" when he's playing more conventionally. I know that sounds odd but there it is. One other thought: Max's best/most interesting work after Bird was all outside conventional bebop playing. It's not an accident that that post-Sonny quintet of Max's eventually ditched the piano entirely. If I were a swinging pianist in the mode of Wynton Kelly, I think playing with Roach in the late 1950s/early 1960s, especially in a trio context, would make me exhausted and miserable. The drums would just overpower everything and hold back any attempt at fluidity. Even a classic like Saxophone Colossus feels to me like Roach is one tiny fraction of a beat away from dragging Tommy Flanagan to the bottom of the ocean when Sonny is laying out. But if you have a guy who ditches fluidity altogether - Nichols, Monk, Hassan - the herky-jerky feel can stand up to what Max is doing. That kind of piano playing takes some serious muscle.

Except...this is basically always how Romenesko has formatted his items. Everyone who reads him knows that's how he presents things and why he does it this way. Did this editor just never ever bother to read her own writer? The point of attribution is to make it clear where the information is coming from. Nobody was unclear on where the info was coming from with Romenesko's blog. In fact it looks like Romenesko had been much clearer with the attributions until Poynter themselves imposed a format change from above onto him - as noted by the writer who Poynter credited with "bringing this matter to their attention." http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_romenesko_saga.php In other words, Poynter seems to have realized that pure aggregation like old-school Romenesko, short and sweet, doesn't do you any good, financially speaking, unless you are Google and can make money off redirecting people to the stuff you're aggregating. So they told Romenesko to make everything longer to keep people on Poynter's site, thus ruining the point of his original concept. Then when a reporter simply asked them if this really was a sensible idea they scolded Romenesko for it and wrote a haughty blog post to secure even more pageviews. And they threw the blog post up there in a way that appeared specifically timed to scoop the reporter who was asking them these questions so she could write her own story. And it sounds like Romenesko was planning on bailing anyway before all this went down. Why am I not surprised?

It's getting to be about that time again...

There are two different decisions McQueary made that are getting conflated. 1) To bail out of the locker room. Dan thinks he can sit in his armchair and judge someone for "not doing the right thing" upon witnessing probably the most fucked-up shit he'll ever see. That's dumb. 2) To refer the matter to Paterno and leave it at that. Most of us agree that he should have pushed harder after he got home and was able to process what had actually happened. And gone to the police once it was clear Paterno wasn't getting it done. I think McQueary probably deserves most of the criticism coming his way for this, although I also think that most of the people ripping McQueary a new one aren't thinking very clearly about all the forces that were pulling at him. You've got a young guy who has no power or influence compared to Sandusky and especially compared to Paterno. He owes his entire success as an adult to Paterno. Presumably he trusts Paterno to make things right. And he probably thinks that he will be forever ruined if he stakes his reputation on a he-said, she-said kind of accusation against Sandusky and nobody wants to believe him (based on Paterno's account of the McQueary conversation to the grand jury, it sure sounds like Paterno didn't want to believe him). McQueary won't be the Hero Who Took Down A Monster. He'll be the Washed-Up Lunatic QB Who Made Shit Up. (Lest this seem like a trivial worry, keep in mind that people are threatening McQueary's life, right now, for telling the truth! Can you imagine what he'd be facing if it was widely thought he was lying?) None of that means that staying silent until a grand jury got involved was in any way acceptable. But it's hard for me to just ignore all that, too.

The idea that McQueary is a personal failure for a split-second reaction is implying that there's some norm of human behavior that goes, "hey, you better do the right thing when you are thrust into an unthinkable situation with no warning." It's like expecting that an untrained civilian suddenly thrust into a combat situation has certain responsibilities that they morally should live up to. Have some empathy.

Missing the point entirely. What I'm saying is that if you see what McQueary saw, all logical reasoning functions have a nonzero chance of going out the window. That kind of thing is pure emotion, fight-or-flight, adrenaline takeover territory. Not "I'm gonna think about exactly what I'm seeing" territory.

My point is that it's easy for us to second guess a split-second reaction from our own comfortable seats at home. Would your brain even be able to correctly process what McQueary saw? I don't have the hubris to say mine definitely would.

Oh for heaven's sake. Like you would be in any way mentally or emotionally prepared for walking into your college team locker room and see a guy you've known and probably looked up to for half your life doing what Sandusky was doing. McQueary's reaction in the moment was regrettable but let's not pretend that it wasn't within the range of "normal" human responses to seeing what he saw.

Fine. I took a look at the grand jury report and here's the relevant statute, 23 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 6311, subsection (d): http://law.onecle.com/pennsylvania/domestic-relations/00.063.011.000.html So while it seems plausible (and I suspect this is what Paterno's lawyers will argue) that Paterno did not legally fall under the description of a person required to report child exploitation to PA authorities, based on this section it really seems like a ridiculous stretch to think that the court system is not going to be favorably disposed to someone who: -falls under subsection © as a subordinate rather than sections (a) and (b) as a legally required reporter -goes above and beyond their legal requirement to report by subsequently going over their superiors' heads to report the suspected crime directly to the police -got fired for their trouble -IS JOE PATERNO FOR CHRISSAKES. Do you really think Joe Paterno would have had to worry about getting fired because he went over Schultz/Curley's head about this?

Are you kidding? It would be one thing to hold a big press conference and declare Sandusky a pederast, but I find it extremely hard to believe that there are no legal protections for those who bypass their institution's chain of command to report this kind of crime directly to the police. Paterno not only did nothing once it was clear the administration had decided to sweep the whole Sandusky thing under the rug, he appears to be saying Mike McQueary lied to the grand jury about what McQueary specifically told Paterno.

I can understand McQueary freezing in the moment. If I were in his shoes, I probably would have been so shocked to see what he saw that I might have just bolted too. But I definitely can't understand how he could continue to coexist with Sandusky at practice and so forth. That's messed up.

Can't remember now who said it but someone noted how whenever you see a "cult of personality" coach like Paterno, treated as being in a different category because of his personal morality rather than simply a skilled football coach, it's invariably a sign that something is deeply rotten within. The main case I'm thinking of is Jim Tressel, who was portrayed as this saint by Ohio State fans and then found of course to be just as corrupt as everyone else in college football. Thought this was a good if slightly melodramatic piece of writing on the current scandal: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7205085/growing-penn-state

Which Verves fall into this category? I have a soft spot for the Latin sessions compiled on South of the Border but haven't heard many of the others like Bird with Strings, etc.

Macroeconomic Disturbances Triggered By Low-Probability Credit Events at Some Time Subsequent to Q411 This Unspecified Thing I am Presenting? I Would Like To Make You Aware That It Is The Percussion Instrument

Listen Up, Jews

Some people also buy mid-grade gas and put mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich...but that don't make it right. back when i used to play more, i remember pretty regularly playing Cmin(Maj7) at the top. always liked that sound there... Right. Any tonic minor is acceptable. I usually play it with the raised 7th, as well. Playing it with a major third, though...at the very least is going to sound strange when coming back to the top after the head, because the last bar of the head outlines the D locrian scale which screams C minor. If you are going for this as a deliberate effect that's one thing, but if you are trying to sound like Miles in 1957...it's going to sound odd.

Some people also buy mid-grade gas and put mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich...but that don't make it right.

How many CDs do you have? I haven't done the math in a while but a FLAC is typically about 30 MB for a 5 minute song, right? That means if each CD has 10 songs (300 MB), you will fill up a 1 TB hard drive with 3300 CDs. Whatever you do, I would find an online cloud player to sync up all your files with as you rip to a hard drive. Most of them compress the files I think but you might as well start uploading. If you can use a work or university network to do much of the uploading it will go much faster, accomplishing in hours what it took me about two weeks to do for a modest-sized collection.

Not unlike "Solar". (Which, incidentally, has me sure that Miles understood anthropogenic climate change and the need for alternative energy sources.)