For this project I used some programs to help me save time in finding the right cats. Anyway, first I downloaded every video of a cat playing piano I could find on Youtube. I ended up with about 170 videos. Then I extracted the audio from each, pasted these files end to end, and then pasted this huge file onto the end of an audio file of Glenn ( Read more... )

The New York Times introduces its readership to The Russian Language (PDF), in the year... 1877!

The word "quaint" comes to mind. Still, how nice of a newspaper to devote a couple of paragraphs to introduce people to an unfamiliar language, even attempt some technical details.

Hey, did you get rid of those early 80s punk goth clothes? You know, the ones you used again in the 90s? No? OK, then don't. Oh, you already dropped them at the Salvation Army? That's a shame.

CNN headline: U.S. soldiers held as Nazi slaves reunite for honors.

Nominees to the US Supreme Court with foreign-sounding names are making English sound unnatural. Luckily, Mark Krikorian and The National Review are here to point out this insidiousness in what has to be the worst hodgepodge of faux sociolinguistics ever.

Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first ( Read more... )

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula [Ed: Formula!] Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees ( Read more... )

There are 2 things someone in New York City, in their right mind, would never give up. One is a rent-controlled apartment. The other, the post of food reviewer for the New York Times. And yet, that is exactly what Frank Bruni is about to do as he steps down to avoid conflict of interest while ... uh ... he promotes "Born Round," his food memoir? (I ( Read more... )

In 1964, a stoned Terry Riley got on a bus to get to a gig in San Francisco and began to hear "patterns." He later sat down and notated 53 such patterns, briefly enough to fit on a single sheet of music, and In C, one of the most revolutionary pieces of music of the 20th century was born. On Friday night, to celebrate the piece's 45th anniversary, ( Read more... )

detskiy_dvor is a LJ community containing posts of extremely creepy (and awesome if you didn't have to play there when you were 5, I imagine) Soviet-era children playgrounds. It's in Russian, but you'll hardly need the language.


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The list of 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners is in, and Steve Reich has won the music prize for his Double Sextet.

The Double Sextet, which Reich believes is one of his best pieces and was glad the Pulitzer committee felt the same way, is a piece scored for either 12 live musicians, or 6 live musicians plus a recorded tape (or 6 live and 6 dead ( Read more... )