Beautiful Album Packaging

So - I finally received my "Louisville is for Lovers" compilation album today, and it's wonderful. I especially enjoy the album art/packaging. Check it out:

Super Excited for a Super Article

I don't usually become giddy when reading articles. Really.

That all changed today.

In the technology world, people are giving Amazon.com a lot of flack for the text to speech feature of the Kindle 2.0. Lots of people are saying that such a feature will kill (what's left of) the audio book industry and old fashioned paper books in general.

Slate debunks such a myth by recounting the history of Speech Processing.

I now LOVE Slate even more than I already did.

Read the article here.

The Man Hug

The friendly folks over at The Art of Manliness discuss the proper technique to give another man a hug. You can read the article here.

The most amazing thing is it's totally true!

In other news, The Art of Manliness is really a fantastic blog. All Gentlemen should bookmark it.

Zebra Writing Utensils

Behold, the almighty Zebra. For those of you who do not know, I have a similar love for pens/pencils as I do for independent music and cooking. I love pens. I really do.

Anyways, I hadn't had much experience with the Zebra brand until I noticed almost every graduate student has one. I decided to give it a go and fell in love. It's smooth - but most importantly - writes extremely small. This makes the construction of note sheets to be used on tests much easier!

But - I must admit - I'll never totally prefer the Zebra over my Sensa 9.

So - on to the Zebra pencil. If heaven parted and angels sang, the result would not be as awe-inspiring as this pencil. It's 0.5mm lead and also is designed in a way so the graphite doesn't always break!

The perfect pencil. I'm in love.

I've Never Felt Dirty Listening to Music Until...

One of the most interesting aspects of music is that everyone can make it. The great John and Alan Lomax spent the majority of their adult careers traveling around and recording the music of the people. They would approach railroad workers, former slaves, farmers, criminals, &c - asking them all about their life and the songs that were significant to them.

Some of the most amazing music you'll ever hear can be found in these recordings.

The Lomaxes opened Americans' minds to the "every man a musician" concept.

Anyways, last night, I discovered that Charles Manson had a moderately successful music career before going crazy and killing a lot of people. I listened to the album LIE and have never felt dirtier. Granted - these jams were pre-killing - but the damage to his image has already been done. (For the record, he also has post-killing jams, but they suck).

What's scariest is the tunes are actually really good. Think of Nick Drake mixed with a good Devendra Banhart.

For the curious: Charles Manson - Look at Your Game Girl

Anyone can be a musician.

Oh My God, Look at This

Everyone likes bacon.

That's amazing. My brain hurts.

The New Hipster & Return from San Diego

I just returned from an ISI conference concerning the Executive Power and the Constitution. I'll blog more about this in the upcoming week, but - for now - I have two quick comments.

1. In San Diego, I was talking about how I wasn't a fan (to say the least) of hipsters. I mentioned the fact that they are (typically) trust fund babies who renounce their roots of socio-economic standing by refusing to bathe, shopping exclusively at Goodwill, and by listening to independent electro-dance pop music.

Someone then piped up and said: "Oh, we've always called people like that 'bobos' - short for Bourgeois Bohemians."

And so shall I.

2. This site kicks ass.