Social Iciness Is Found to Alter Perception of Temperature - NYTimes.com

For every congenial character who can warm a room, there’s another who can bring a draft from the north, a whiff of dead winter. And even if the thermometer doesn’t register the difference, people do: social iciness feels so cold to those on the receiving end that they will crave a hot drink, a new study has found.

So I guess that explains my coffee addiction. Norwegians are notoriously icy.

Pink Floyd keyboard player and founder member Richard Wright has died aged 65 from cancer.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Floyd founder Wright dies at 65

So many famous people dying at the moment.

I guess it feels like it, because I’m approaching a certain age (in my late 30s), and a lot of the artists who influenced me growing up are getting old - approaching their 60s and 70s.

When I was young, only old vaudeville entertainers and pre-war Hollywood stars died. How the times have changed.

High prose skills over on allmusic:

allmusic ((( Brother Where You Bound > Overview )))
Lyrically, it can be interpreted as Davies’ feelings of betrayal at Hodgson’s departure, but the piano, percussion and horns are superb.

Well, I suppose as long as the piano, percussion and horns are superb, anything goes.

schiing has been suffering a bit after I started writing for Popdose, so I thought I’d try something new. I’ve installed a couple of Firefox plugins that enables me to post links - text, images and videos directly from my browser - in addition to writing regular posts. I hope that it will increase my productivity a bit, but I’m not really sure how it will turn out. I don’t have a plan as such, I’m just experimenting, but I hope it’s perfect for microblogging - linking to an interesting site or expressing some random thoughts. We’ll see how it turns out.

I may post a couple of posts that are more or less meaningless just to set up my new blogging tools. Hey, maybe my blog will turn into a long line of meaningless posts now. Like Facebook. Maybe it already is, come to think of it. Anyway, thanks for reading.

thistexttopreventtheposttointerferewiththepagelayoutthankyou

Visit Popdose, one of my favorite places on the internet, on Thursday and find out what’s happening!

Robert Scoble is the kid up the street with all the answers. You know, the kid with ALL the Commodore 64 games, a gigantic Lego model railroad in the basement and whose father apparently owns a flying Citroen CX? I’m pretty sure that’s him.

Well, this kid is all grown-up now, and he’s on the web. And, as in childhood, once you learn to filter the bullshit from the actual content the guy is a real treasure.

He’s a pioneer blogger, a tech guru, a social media evangelist - and quite possibly the #1 human link aggregator on the web. He introduced me to Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Friend Feed and probably a dozen other more or less meaningful services on the web at an early stage in their development - heck, I even think it was Scoble who introduced me to the concept of RSS feeds.

I’m not a tech guy, but thanks to Robert Scoble I have practically turned into the prototype early adopter on the web (yeah, right.)

He’s extremely extrovert on the web, he’s opinionated as hell and he shoots from the hip. His writing is temperamental and personal, he’s potentially ill-tempered but usually enthusiastic, even ecstatic over some new development.

It’s easy for a non-tech guy like me to enjoy his rants and share his enthusiasm for what is, let’s face it, some seriously geeky stuff.

He makes friends easily - it’s one of his main concerns regarding Facebook: The 5,000 friend limit, which he exceeded months ago (I hear you! I’m rapidly approaching that limit myself - getting close to 40 now!) He has a huge following, one of the original "A-bloggers" - me plugging him is, like, Caveman Eremite in the Desert plugging the New York Times. It seems as if he’s making enemies just as easily as he’s making friends, though.

But he’s a very entertaining guy, he’s working his ass off bringing us the latest from Silicon Valley or wherever all these tech startups pop up. And nobody hits that j-button more than Scoble. Yeah, I know. You probably don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about.

Be that as it may, if you want to know when the next Facebook arrives or maybe just add a little tech, controversy and flavor to your rss feed, Scoble’s your guy.

I should write him a song - that would definitely get my stats up.

The New York Times has a wonderful blog called "Measure for Measure" where Andrew Bird, Darrell Brown, Rosanne Cash and Suzanne Vega share their thoughts on songwriting and tell some great stories about some of their songs.

I highly recommend this Rosanne Cash post, where she writes about "truth" vs. "facts" in songwriting and how she, Elvis Costello and Kris Kristofferson decided to get together to write a song earlier this year.

Great, great stuff.

My big head has been working overtime lately (for no apparent reason, as usual), and it’s time to share my new pet theory:

My claim is that over the past hundred years or so, the development of Anglo- and African-American popular music can be divided into highly predictable cycles.

You see, I figure that roughly, there’s been a revolution, a major shift in mainstream popular taste, every 35 years - starting with African American work songs entering the public consciousness around 1885, followed by the jazz revolution in the 1920s, the introduction of rock’n'roll in the 1950s and finally by the rise of rap music in the 1980s.

These 35 year-cycles can be split further into 7-year cycles that each mark the introduction of a significant new stylistic direction. About midway through these 7-year cycles there have been fads that also had a major impact on popular music, but these fads can generally be considered as an amalgam of previously established styles, and not as something inherently new.

So, according to my logic, the next major music revolution will occur around the year of 2025! I can’t wait.

Of course, this is not to be taken very seriously, and, if anything, the theory exposes my total insecurity and lack of knowledge concerning anything released after 1990. I don’t know the first thing about rap/hip hop music. I have no formal background. I have no research to back up my conclusions. I’m just another one of those average, rambling blogger-types.

Bebop is defined at a very early stage of its development (and to call bebop mainstream’s a bit of a stretch, really) , new wave? 1983?, rap/hip hop is defined at a late stage and there are at least a couple of other approximations. So there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to digg me here. You hear me?

It usually takes quite a few years for a stylistic period to be settled in people’s minds, and I think it’s hard to be very precise about the past 10 years, so a lot of question marks there.

Here’s my list. I imagine this list in the center of a musical landscape surrounded by styles that influenced (and were influenced by) it: folk, country, gospel, modern classical music, electronic music. Take a look, see if you agree:

1885 African American work songs

1895 Blues
1905 Ragtime
1913 Dixieland

1920 Jazz

1927 Hot jazz
1934 Swing
1941 Bebop
1948 Rhythm and blues

1955 Rock ‘N’ Roll

(1958 Doo wop)
1962 The Beat
(1966 Psychedelia)
1969 The Prog
(1972 Glam)
1976 The Punk
(1979 Disco)
1983 New wave
(1986 Hair metal)

1990 Rap/Hip Hop

(1993 Grunge)
1997 New School?
(2000 Boyband? Teenage divas?)
2004 The beginning of the demise of hip hop?
(2007 ?)
2011 ?
2019 ?

2025 ?? Cyber Plink Plonk ??

I just started reading a new novel, and it opened with this quote from Samuel Johnson, an English writer in the 17th century:

“Were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, ‘Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy;’ and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, ‘Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;’ a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates.”

I knew instantly that I would never so much as look in Charles’ general direction - I’d follow Socrates with no hesitation or shame whatsoever. And then I started thinking: Is that because I’m a coward who will always choose the easy way out? Have I no sense of honor? Am I nothing but a soft pudding of a man, born and bred in an environmentally and economically safe nonviolent middle-class vacuum, I wondered.

And when it comes down to it, I think that may be exactly what I am.

Thank God.

I mean, I do go out on a limb sometimes, but it’s always within the compound of my peaceful, suburban life. And that’s the only kind of life I know, indeed a very different one than that of an Englishman living in 1750. Would I take a bullet for my king and homeland? Probably not - not voluntarily, anyway. Would I take a bullet for my wife and kids? Yes, no doubt. Do I give a shit about honor? What is honor about, anyway? Would I give up my current comfortable existence for the benefit of a fair world? Nah, not entirely anyway. Yet I do try to show some moderation. I don’t spend money excessively, I use public transportation whenever I can, a small percentage of my income goes to charitable causes, I have a modest house, a small and environmentally friendly car. I’m a social worker, helping people out somehow, hopefully…

I’m sorry mr. Johnson, I don’t want to dethrone czars. I want to live The Good Life. The Simple Life. I don’t want to be courageous, I want to be kind and gentle.

I want to know what Socrates has to say. So sue me.