So the Internet tells me that there’s crazy rain in the Bay, which means that it looks like Becky and my flights will probably be delayed by a couple of hours tomorrow. Argh.
A year in review
Readers of this blog will note that most of my posts (like the ones from earlier today) are largely lengthy pull quotes from articles that I’ve been reading as of late. It’s not often that I sit back and reflect on what’s going on in my life. But this year has brought a lot of change to my life both personally and professionally. I began a book project and my career as a full-time freelancer in January 2007, and it’s gone surprisingly well.
January 2007: I celebrated my 25th birthday, began my book research, and spent a few days in Morocco en route to Senegal. I even ate camel liver in Mauritania.
February 2007: I spent the first half of the month bouncing around Europe, including my first trip back to Switzerland since 2001. I also hit up Berlin en route to returning to Estonia and even made it to Riga for the first time.
March 2007: I returned home, made my first awesome tadiq, saw Barack Obama speak in Oakland, conducted a burrito tasting, and celebrated Persian New Year.
April 2007: I visited South Korea, made new friends, ate freshly-killed octopus, and even visited the DMZ.
May 2007: I covered the Estonian cyberattacks for Slate and watched the I-580 connector get fixed in record time.
June 2007: I traveled to Mexico City with Martin, and before that, New York City. I was also wowed by Knut’s cuteness.
July 2007: I was back in Europe, this time with a few days in the Netherlands, two weeks in Estonia (where I opened up a bank account!), a couple days in Berlin, and a night at the new Yotel.
August 2007: My piece on taco trucks aired on Latino USA.
September 2007: I destroyed the OLPC, again, also in Slate. Before that, I bought, and unlocked, my iPhone.
October 2007: I covered cell phone unlocking for The New York Times, I started working again with NPR, and I got glasses.
November 2007: I, um, got engaged and interviewed MC Hammer and Mohammad Ali Abtahi.
December 2007: I attended the opening of The Trappist, and Becky and I spent our first Christmas together.
Today, the second day of 2008, I celebrated my 26th birthday — and thanks to the magic of Facebook received far more well wishes than I ever have in the past. Thanks to everyone who IMed, emailed, called, or left Facebook messages!
My mother used to have a tradition of keeping printed copies of newspapers on me and my brother’s birthday — but in the interests of how the world is evolving, I’m going to start a new tradition, taking a screenshot of the top few stories on The New York Times site on my birthday.
I spent a lazy Wednesday with my family here in Connecticut that concluded with an interesting dinner at a Bosnian restaurant in Hartford (more on this later), a few gifts and dessert with family at home, and then a couple of rousing rounds of the Settlers of Catan. Basically, my kind of evening.
So what will 2008 bring for me?
Hopefully, more freelance work, including more radio. I’d also like to start getting into more of some of the big league pubs, like more stuff for The Economist, Wired and The New York Times. My book is also due to my publisher in July 2008 — yikes! Oh yeah, and Becky and I have a wedding to plan. Plus, we’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do this coming October, most likely after our wedding.
Right now, options include teaching English in France, teaching journalism in Estonia, doing a fellowship at MIT, or keeping the status quo in Oakland.
A happy new year to all from snowy Connecticut — I’ll be back in Oakland on Friday night.
Again, I am reminded of just how lucky I am.
Rolling Stone: The Death of High Fidelity
David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he’s not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud.
Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. “They make it loud to get [listeners’] attention,” Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. “I think most everything is mastered a little too loud,” Bendeth says. “The industry decided that it’s a volume contest.”
Producers and engineers call this “the loudness war,” and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn’t the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today’s listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. “With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse,” says Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. “God is in the details. But there are no details anymore.”
. . .
Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic Monkeys’ debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional peaks that usually stand out in a song. “You lose the power of the chorus, because it’s not louder than the verses,” Bendeth says. “You lose emotion.”
The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness, says Daniel Levitin, a professor of music and neuroscience at McGill University and author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But the effect doesn’t last. “The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness,” Levitin says. “If you hold one of those constant, it can seem monotonous.” After a few minutes, research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song.
“If you limit range, it’s just an assault on the body,” says Tom Coyne, a mastering engineer who has worked with Mary J. Blige and Nas. “When you’re fifteen, it’s the greatest thing — you’re being hammered. But do you want that on a whole album?”
Pico Iyer: Across the World in 36 Hours
NYT’s Jet Lagged:
Jerusalem these days is barely a day away from Santa Barbara. In 36 hours or so I moved from a society that seems to have annulled history — and even parts of reality — to a place a millennium away where the very fury of human hopes and grievances, the constant debate of this world and some other, give reality and history a moment-by-moment urgency that reminds us why the Sabbath and holidays were first called into being. I could have made the same trip at home — these days (thanks partly to air travel) a drive across most American cities will take you through most of the cultures of the world. But to move from winter to summer, from a comfortable nation to an unsettled one, overnight is to put both into startling perspective.
. . .
The deeper point of air travel, though, is that it shakes up and reconfigures your sense of what is important and how you construe value — or safety or peace. On Easter Island on Jan. 1, 2000, no one I met was fretting over Y2K. In Bolivia, where I’ve celebrated two recent New Years, Paris Hilton was not on many lips. And flying to Jerusalem is costing me less than some friends spend on a night on the town. In Syria, in the 21st century, I traveled for five days across the country, with car and driver and guide, staying in five-star hotels (in upgraded rooms, no less) for $350 in all — barely more than I’d pay for a single night’s stay in an indifferent New York City hotel.
Air travel this season has brought me intense interrogations in private immigrations offices, valuables lost in security checks, an enormous carbon footprint and a 14-hour delay. It’s also brought me to a great clamor of chants and prayers in a city of flickering candles.
WSJ: Stresses From Iraqi Father’s Disappearance Strike Family Hard
This is from my good friend and Columbia classmate, Sarmad Ali, who has written a follow-up piece to his story from last February.
I wasn’t there in Baghdad; I couldn’t be there. I am an Iraqi citizen caught between two worlds. I’m a guest in the U.S., where I have lived since 2004, studying and working for this newspaper. But I have no U.S. travel documents. And my Iraqi passport has been invalidated.
More unsettling, more disruptive than the possibility of my father’s death has been the uncertainty about his fate. I mourn close friends who have been killed in Baghdad’s violence, but sometimes I envy their families for being able to bury their loved ones.
My experience — the distance and uncertainty that corrupt my ability to grieve — isn’t unique. Many people have fled Baghdad and left family behind to survive in a war zone in which people go missing and casualties are often unidentifiable.
Over the past year, my relatives in Baghdad have continued to look for my father without me, his oldest son. I have grown more distant from them, and strains between us have deepened.
Cyrus on The World — TOMORROW!
Dear Friends,
I’ve been informed that my radio piece on the new wireless startup, Meraki, will be airing tomorrow.
It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):
New York – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 2 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org
Will be available on The World’s site later in the day and on my site if you miss the broadcast.
Update: Audio is here.
Jaan Kross, 1920 – 2007
The world has lost its most preeminent Estonian writer, Jaan Kross.
Sadly, I don’t have the eesti keeles skills to have read him in his native language, but on my most recent trip to Eestimaa, I was happy to have been able to find a copy of Treading Air, which I’m currently reading now.
I’m just a little bit into it — so I don’t have much to say about the novel just yet — but my fascination with all things Estonian makes me saddened that the community has lost such a well-respected writer.
[via Itching for Eestimaa]
What’s this? Another Bay Area Belgian bar?
While it may not be as close and convenient and convivial as The Trappist — William Brand points to the recent opening of La Trappe, a new Belgian bar and restaurant in North Beach, across the Bay.
This is definitely going to be my pre-Bimbo’s dining spot. 🙂
Cyrus on NPR – TODAY!
Dear Friends,
I’ve been informed that my radio piece on new WiFi devices will air on Morning Edition All Things Considered today!
It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).
New York – 4 pm to 6:30 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 4 pm to 6 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 5 pm to 7 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org
It will also be archived at npr.org and here if you miss it.
Lemme know if you hear it!
Update: Audio is here!
WSJ profiles Carl Kasell
WSJ:
The 1 a.m. brrrrrring from the alarm clock — no problem. “I’ve always loved working in the morning,” he said. “You’re waking up in Washington, D.C. You’re looking out the window and watching this sleeping giant wake up. And I’m right in the middle of it, starting people’s days with things they need to know.”
The duality of his existence seems to please Mr. Kasell mightily — delivering the news and edifying listeners during the early part of the week, having fun with the news and with those same listeners on the weekend.
“Carl is the world’s greatest straight man. Bud Abbott has nothing on him,” said “Wait, Wait” ‘s host, Peter Sagal. “All these years, he’s been this calm, imperturbable voice reporting the news, and it turns out that this warm unflappable voice has a sense of humor. It’s like finding out that Santa Claus is real.”
Mr. Kasell, who goes to Chicago almost every Thursday morning to tape “Wait, Wait” (there are also occasional road shows), now has “premier executive” status at his airline. Of almost equal value is his new-found status as a sex symbol, complete with groupies. Take that, Ira Glass.
“Women — and not just women, young women — swarm him,” observed [Executive Producer Doug] Berman. “There are shrieks in the audience when he’s introduced. Whatever it is, Carl’s got it. Peter is insanely jealous. But,” he admitted, “I haven’t yet seen anyone throw underwear.”
The hottie — one mustn’t be fooled by his spectacles and striped seersucker shirt — takes it all in stride. “I just want to keep going to work,” said Mr. Kasell, who’s about as likely to retire as to fumble a word in his newscast. “I tell Daniel Schorr,” NPR’s 91-year-old political analyst, “that he’s an inspiration to us kids.”
[via Peter Sagal]
