Pause For the Bar Exam

Heavy Targets will be on a hiatus for the next few months, so I can study for and take the California Bar Exam.

Season 2 of Heavy Targets begins August 1st. Until then…

Challenge Level Versus Skill Level

Great graphic showing the relationship between challenge level and skill level and what types of reactions those relationships create.

via Csikszentmihalyi, M., Finding Flow, 1997.

Why interesting mis-information spreads

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Great article explaining the myth of the Cambridge University meme. Mis-information like this keeps being spread because its so seductive to believe at face-value.

Pixies Reunion

I just love this observation about the resurgence of Pixies fandom after their mid-2000s reunion:

Music appears to be one of the few areas where you can relaunch a (product) band if they were ahead-of-their-time/out-of-sync as Pixies seemed to be first time round.

via conannz (Auckland, NZ)

Little Princesses

“Girl power” in the 1990s was about little girls proving they were worth something and giving the world everything that they’ve got.

“Girl power” in 2011 means finding all the things that are worth something taking everything that they can get.

My daughter got a make-your-own messenger bag for her seventh birthday. It was like a cheap messenger bag kind of thing, and then iron-on transfers to put on it, and the iron-on transfers were like pink and purple and orange hearts and stars and flowers and whatever, and your name, and things like that with letters. But then it said, one of them was ‘pampered princess’ and one of them was ‘spoiled’ and one of them was ‘brat…’

And so there’s this weird way that the ideas that were being put forth in the girl power slogans of the 1990s, which were about self-actualization and self-determination, and being valued for what you do and not how you look, have been distorted so that it’s its own opposite, so that girl power means being valued for how you look instead of what you do. And that being confident is expressed by being spoiled, pampered, bratty, narcissistic.

via Mother Nature Network

What do hip-hop and BitTorrent have in common

Those who want to reform the practice of IP law often say: If users are using BitTorrent to download unauthorized files, target the unauthorized files and the users who want them, don’t target BitTorrent technology.

I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to apply this to other areas of our culture. If you feel that musicians are using rap music to somehow “debase” culture, don’t blame rap, blame only those rappers.

Its 2011. Even if you don’t like hip-hop or electronic music, if you can’t at least acknowledge the positive cultural importance of rap, DJing, remixing you’re going to be severely handicapped working with a large group of creative professionals now and in the future.

I understand that for the generations that proceeded mine, the musicality and dynamism of hip-hop and remix culture may lost on you, so if you can’t make that leap, at least don’t write wholesale hogwash like this:

Rap music is characterized by greed and lust and vanity. Greed for money, and cars, and cribs, and bling-bling. Lust for a crude form of sexual gratification, that is not liberating, but is demeaning and dehumanizing. And a simple-minded form of boastful vanity that would be easily seen as vulgar if, say, a white teenager in Van Nuys exhibited it, but that is somehow an admirable expression of racial pride if a sneering black rap performer prances about with his ego on display.

via Larry DeWitt, Rap Music: Making Excuses for a Degenerate Culture

The Mind of a High Schooler

Ask high-schoolers about Kanye West’s music and persona, and it’s not surprising that they won’t have any insights. Kanye is really interesting for people in my generation because we’ve followed the bizarre career trajectory of this person who’s become one most interesting people in pop music since 2004. To the high school class of 2015, Kanye is just some old egomaniac who hates Taylor Swift.

No matter what age you are, the trends you think are important have been over for years or have never existed at all in the heads of high-schoolers.

Since the release of his first album in 2004, Kanye West has been one of pop music’s most dynamic yet divisive figures; his artistic triumphs and commercial successes are matched only by his outsized ego and inability to self-censor. In 2010, the story was the same. He self-released solid new material to his 1.7 million Twitter followers and his new album garnered perfect reviews from influential critics, but he was also rebuked by George W. Bush in the former President’s memoir, and he botched an interview that he was professionally coached for on the Today Show…

Altogether, my students seemed almost totally unaware of the travails that Kanye West confronted in 2010. Does this mean they are more out of touch with celebrities than I thought? Less connected to social and entertainment media than most adults assume? Unable to see West’s tragic trajectory, which I found self-evident? Hardly. In fixating on the traits that led West to ignite the VMA spectacle of last year, my students pointed toward a truth about this particular artist: Kanye West’s audacity and egotism feed the flame of his artistry, but they also overwhelm and overshadow him. As such, the Kanye we saw in 2010 is the same Kanye we’ve known every year since he became a star.

via The Bygone Bureau

Now is the time to demolish your home

Something is wrong when we’ve gotten to the point that it’s smarter to demolish a $200,000 home than it is to sell or rent it

The Wises bought a new home, and in this market the rent they could charge did not cover the expenses…So, they had the 13-year-old, five-bedroom/four-bath home demolished… [B]etween taxes, insurance, and the headache of having tenants…it makes more sense to get rid of the house, Graber said.

via Herald Tribune

Hardly Working

The goal is to break down the barrier between work and play. Computers can help.

People are more willing to let work invade their leisure time because, for a lot of Americans, working has become more fun, Conley says. He refers to this group of professionals who tend to get more enjoyment out of work as “the creative class…” Their work involves ideas — perhaps helping create a new software product, ad campaign or creative financial derivative.

“This makes their work a source of meaning and fun to them, and thus the work-all-the-time mentality is partly driven by choice and desire,” Conley said.

It’s no coincidence, Conley says, that weisure has been growing simultaneously with the popularity of the personal computer, which has helped professionals with more tedious parts of their jobs — and has made many jobs somewhat more interesting.

via CNN and What Consumes Me

Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddies

The economic downturn has even affected job prospects for Wall Street trophy wives and girlfriends. Even romantic relationships are ruled by supply and demand.

The white marble bar of the Meatpacking District hot spot Bistro Bagatelle is littered with $500 Louis Vuitton knockoff clutches—fakes, but nice fakes. Hovering over them are the anxious blonde women (fakes, but nice fakes too) to whom the bags belong. These are Manhattan’s gold diggers—ladies of little means and big ambitions, who hope to use their looks to nab a rich man, better highlights and perhaps even a real Vuitton clutch. This bar is their mine. But in the middle of the worst financial crisis the city has faced since the Great Depression, there’s little gold in “them thar hills…”

Today, women drinking paid-for saketinis are among the lucky few. Staceys and Sophies all over the city—women who six months ago subsisted on a steady diet of underwritten dinners followed by a night of bottle service at Marquee or Rose Bar—are waiting for their Sidekicks to vibrate. Sophie is broken up about a recently pink-slipped relationship with a Lehman brother. “I was dating this guy for a couple of weeks,” she says, “and all of a sudden he just stopped calling me. For weeks, I waited. Finally he called. He had lost his job and was too ashamed to tell me.”

via NyPost Page Six Magazine