Mozart's Diary

If Mozart were alive, he'd be celebrating his 250th birthday this year, with all kinds of 18th century-style debauchery: wine, women in frilly dresses who aren't afraid to show some ankle, and classical music played really loud. In commemoration, the British Library has scanned in Wolfie's diary at their website, along with audio clips of many of his works. The site also has scans of Jane Austen manuscripts, 16th century Mercator maps, and Leonardo's sketch books available. Go check it out.

ABS and Traction Control Make You Lazy

Of course, old timers said the same thing about automatic transmissions... The Times (UK) took 30 drivers out on a closed course like the ones used to show off new cars in the commercials and found that most of them are so spoiled by the anti-lock brakes and traction control systems on their late model Volvos and Subarus that they couldn't keep control of a "vintage" 1991 BMW 3-car, which relies solely on Sir Isaac Newton to hug the road, on rough and loose road surfaces.

FYI, ABS is an air hammer to quickly pump and release the brakes when braking suddenly; in the vintage car, you have to do this yourself if the brakes lock. And traction control brakes the power wheels when it senses the wheels are spinning faster than the speedometer is accelerating; shifting to a lower gear on the transmission works, or you can just left off the accelerator and then accelerate slowly on the second try. The "heading into 360 spins" the article mentions is prevented by stability (yaw) control in modern braking systems; turning into the yaw curve as you back off the accelerator and then reapplying the accelerator acheives the same thing. Nothing a human driver can't do with training.

Or buy the "ultimate geek car," which you just power on and gently steer toward your destination according to Mercedes-Benz.

Dumbass Design Infecting California, Too

So-called Intelligent Design--we love the rechristening by BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin, btw--is spreading like the avian flu [good old reliable InstaTesticle's paranoia about the subject insures that there will always be a post about it near the top of his page]. Despite Judge Jones's definitive statement of the obvious last month, the LA Times reports on a California county where they have designed a philosophy class for the sole purpose of attacking evolution.

They didn't teach philosophy in our public high schools. In fact, they had a hard enough time getting us Georgia rednecks to learn to make change of a $20 and pump gas without spilling ("career ed," they called it). But let's give the Lebec Schools the benefit of the doubt, since a philosophy class isn't a bad idea. Starting with Plato and Aristotle, they could gloss over all the world's philosophies in a year long course, which we think would leave about 2 minutes to discuss the footnote that is American Christian Fundamentalism.

Fight Telemarketing

There is a beautiful moment in Seinfeld where he picks up the phone, listens to a telemarketer's introduction, then says it's not a good time to talk but could he have the telemarketer's number to call him back later. No. "Oh, I guess because you don't want strangers calling you at home," Seinfeld shouts as he hangs up the phone.

EGBG has a script to use the next time a telemarketer calls you that directs you to question them about their life's details, with instructions for how to handle people who aren't interested in revealing much about themselves to you, such as, "I appreciate your concern, Mr/Mrs So and So, but didn't you call me?" As you question them, you complete the survey form, then rate the telemarketer's enthusiasm, wordchoice, etc, and send it to them. Or to EGBG for laughs.

50 Free Songs at eMusic

emusic.com, a music site that casts itself as the indie alternative to iTMS and normally sells mp3s for 25 cents each, is running a special to get new users: Sign up for a free two week trial and download up to 50 songs, which you can apparently keep forever. You can then pay the subscription fee if you want to download more, or you can take the 50 mp3s and run. We're trying it out now--we'll let you know if there are any DRM issues to worry about.

In the Eye of the Gadget Storm

The Consumer Electronics Show has wound down and rumors of Apple's latest, greatest iThing are cresting like so much storm surge before we little people wait to learn what Steve has in store for us. In the middle of this orgy of science fiction come to life, these scans of old Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazine covers seem strangely appropriate, with their retro futuristic imagination.

Did you hear? It is now illegal to be annoying

No joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity...

Consider this civil disobedience, then.

UPDATE: Once again, Caesar and the boys over at ars technica have shown us the way with all things technomalogical. The law is essentially a paraphrase of crank-call laws already on the books: Thou shalt not email that which would be damnable if spoken over the telephone.

Ovid's Metamorphoses, Chicago-Style

Mirabile dictu! Chicago jazz pianist and singer Patricia Barber has created a series based on myths from Ovid. If you can't get to Chicago, watch for the CD from venerable Blue Note this summer.

The Best of What You're Missing

Finally, a good idea for a Best of 2005 list: Underrated CDs. npr polled a handful of music critic-types, including Alexandra Patsavas, who may have the best job in the world, namely Music Supervisor to nearly every TV show of the 00s and the genius behind the Music from The O.C. (Judging by her pic at npr, she is as easy on the eyes as her taste is on the ears.) We discovered The O.C. mixes almost by accident, since we don't watch the show (we've already watched the same material, thank you): the Garden State soundtrack CD couldn't use Alexi Murdoch's Orange Sky since The O.C. had already licensed the song, so we had to track down that first mix.

Patsavas's taste runs to indie music, which means that she will find the cheapest music licenses possible for your prime time soap opera, and she truly does have a golden gut. We suggest you listen to Callas's Collisions like the woman says. That is all.

UPDATE: Seems Slate's Jody Rosen did a similar list of overlooked CDs of 2005 last week as well.

Friday Tipple

Maker's Mark, the official Bourbon of NO. Add vermouth for the official Manhattan.

Tribute to New Orleans

Allen Toussaint, Charlie Miller, and other NOLA musicians have put together a tribute CD to benefit Habitat for Humanity's efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Check out that page at npr for Miller's "Prayer for New Orleans," and then tell us you can resist picking up the whole CD. The album is also at iTunes Music Store, where all the reviewers are rebutting an earlier, apparently deleted review that indicated anyone who buys music to help rebuild New Orleans is going against God's will.

Did Jesus Exist?

'Cause if he didn't, the Catholic Church may be guilty of impersonation and conning people by exploiting a popular belief. So the Italian courts are considering this important question as we speak... Frankly, we're not sure what to say about this.

2006 Bloggies

From now until January 10 you are all invited to nomiate us for Fairvue Central's 2006 Bloggies, in any or all categories. Of course, plenty others are more deserving than we. We'll be nominating the usual suspects--Madpercolator for great writing, Gubbins for food, and Shandy for, well, he has to fit some category--but we will not be nominating any of Nick Denton's blog whores this year. We suggest you do the same and nominate only real bloggers.

Parallels: Awesome Photoblogging

Parallels is a collection of Zen-like photos of nature that simply rock. If the current cathedral of the forrest pic doesn't grab you, you are dead inside. Other favorites are There Is A Shadow Under This Red Rock, It Paints My Simple Spirit, and the eerie Death Is Like An Insect. Browse the whole collection, though--we know you're not doing anything productive at work, anyway.

Letterman to O'Reilly: 60% of What You Say Is Crap

The other night O'Reilly was on Letterman, where they talked about why O'Reilly wants us all to be "very careful of what we say at this important time in America's history [or else]" and Letterman told him he was an ass for not having boundless sympathy for people like Cindy Sheehan. They went back and forth about the intelligence that got us to Iraq, then Letterman hit a homer:

Letterman: “I’m not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have the feeling, I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap. [audience laughter] But I don’t know that for a fact. [more audience applause]

Paul Shafer: “60 percent.”

Letterman: “60 percent. I’m just spit-balling here.”

Go straight for the video clip at the bottom of the post.

Why Japan Doesn't Fear Robots

Awesome article at The Economist explaining why the rest of us will be slaves to Japanese robots in another 20 years. Link from Shandy.

UPDATE: See also The 50 Best Robots Ever from Wired. Okay, okay, so some are fictional characters, like HAL 2000 and the Terminator. But the top of the list are all real, functional robots. And they are almost all Japanese, naturally.

Gypsy Musyc

When The Gipsy Kings were recommended to us this weekend, we were skeptical. But we found some of their stuff, which Wikipedia describes as "Rumba Catalana, a pop-oriented version of traditional flamenco music," and it is good stuff. They were, unbeknownst to us, top of the Billboard charts in the late 80s... We are always looking to branch out in our musical tastes, and world music is a huge ocean we know next to nothing about, but the Putumayo crap (which is to world music what mall food court fare is to ethnic food) peddled in so many places had almost soured us on it.

And on the topic of world music, we'd like to plug Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Brazilian composer who found that a handful of Brazilian folk songs have identical chord progressions to Bach's cello suites, meaning that the folk songs can be sung with Bach as the accompaniment. The resulting Bachianas-Brasileiras are fkn incredible music. Go have a listen.

More On Christian Fundie Education

Christine Rosen grew up in a Bible-belt fundie school where the faculty bragged that students didn't have to lug around heavy science books and staged a boycott of the local 7-Eleven because the place stocked Playboy. (When we stopped in a 7-Eleven for a Diet Coke and a Moonpie during a recent drive through the Carolinas, the Playboys were piled up in front of the fountain machine, so we understand how the innocent school teachers came to know of Playboy's whereabouts.) Thankfully, she survived, and, somewhere along the way--despite the best efforts of her teachers, we suspect--learned to write so that she could tell us the tale. Salon has the review, which indicates the book is in fact aimed at the Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker crowd:

"My Fundamentalist Education" promises a glimpse into a world we soy latte addicts don't understand but can no longer dismiss. Controversy about evolution, Christian blockbusters in Hollywood, a president who speaks in biblical code: Christianity is hot, and Rosen's background is, suddenly, marketable. With her intelligence and tongue-in-cheek tone, she comes across as the ideal liaison: a former insider who will explain fundamentalism while allowing us to chuckle at it.

At any rate, we chuckled when we learned that Christine's mother discliplined her by telling her, "Well, if I get raptured and you don't, there is nothing I'll be able to do about it."