jason

The Teenager Audio Test - Can you hear this sound?

Clicking the play button below will produce a tone that is generally only heard by people under the age of 25. It has been used as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering in malls and shops, and sounds similar to a buzzing mosquito. Typically the longer you listen to it, the more annoying it gets.

Try it and let me know. I can hear it, at 46 yrs old with a combined hardware and software hearing loss of 40%.

I just re-found Highway 401 Revisited, and apparently unpublished article that I was interviewed for, talking about a club, Larry’s Hideaway, that I used to play at, and hang out at. I like how someone says “I’ve been to other dives in other cities, provinces and states but there was no other bar that could match the raunch of Larry’s Hideaway. Truly the filthiest, most degrading bar I’ve ever ventured into. It was a legend back then, it’s even more of a cult legend now.” True. But some of my best memories came from there.

NAME: Larry’s Hideaway
LOCATION: 121 Carlton Street
ESTIMATED TENURE: 1980-1986
ESTIMATED CAPACITY: 300-400
CURRENT STATUS: The building that housed Larry’s Hideaway was torn down in the late 1980s as part of an urban gentrification project. The plot of land where it once stood is now part of the northern region of Allen Gardens.

Situated in an area otherwise known for an active flesh trade and a colourful array of street drugs, the infamous Larry’s Hideaway did its part to add to the neighbourhood’s excess and during its heyday of the early to mid-1980s. In many ways, it became as well known for being a potential biohazard as it did for being one of Toronto’s preeminent spots to see live heavy metal and hardcore punk shows. “If it was still standing, they would need to drop a large napalm bomb on it to vaporize all disease,” jokes Aaron Hoffman, a frequent visitor to Larry’s during it’s salad days. “The bar was in the basement and always reeked from no ventilation. The carpet was buckled in many, many places with holes from where people dropped cigarettes and black spots from gum and spilled drinks. The stage was very low, the smell of pot smoke filled the stale air — but it was great!” Larry’s was definite not a place to take Grandma on a Sunday afternoon for a crumpet and spot of tea. However, if you were a music fan in search of the latest sounds from way out, Larry’s was your Xanadu.

The building itself had undergone several incarnations by the time the punks and metal heads moved in during the late 1970s. Reportedly a gay club during the “baby boom” of two decades prior, the building enjoyed a fairly successful run as the Prince Carlton Hotel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was during these years that the hotel would often host the fledgling stadium rockers Rush. However, it wasn’t until the late 1970s when it was rechristened Larry’s Hideaway that things really started to get weird. When the aforementioned Crash ‘n’ Burn was forced to close in August of 1977, many of the local punk acts decided to migrate east and take up residency at Larry’s. Most prominent of these transient types were The Viletones, who made up what they lacked in musical chops with attitude and the self-destructive behaviour of lead shouter Stevie “Nazi Dog” Leckie. Other local upstarts like The Guvernment and The Mods soon followed and eventually out-of-town favourites like Hamilton’s Forgotten Rebels and London’s Demics were on their way to Carlton Street for the opportunity to prove themselves on Larry’s stage. Jason Nolan was in the audience for one of those early Demics gigs and years later, took to on Larry’s stage himself as a member of popular alt-punk outfit Heart of Darkness. “This was around the time that [the Demics' signature song] ‘New York City’ come out and we’d heard it on CFNY back when it was a cool station. Me and my buddy somehow snuck in to see the show,” Nolan remembers before offering some “spirituous” advice. “We had just enough money to buy each of us a pitcher of beer and a shot of bourbon for one big boilermaker. But they didn’t have bourbon, so we used scotch. Never ever make a boilermaker with scotch. It was gross!”

Before long, Larry’s Hideaway had gained a well-soiled reputation for hosting the most outrageous new acts, and they soon began adding well-known international touring bands to their concert itinerary. For example, the club began booking ex-members of the cross-dressing glam outfit, The New York Dolls. Most notably, the band’s well-lubricated guitarist Johnny Thunders appeared for a rare local gig in the fall of 1980. In the midst of a heroin addiction, Thunders was basically a punk version of the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards (less the millions of dollars and doo rags) and was said to have been somewhat enamoured with some of the prostitutes that he encountered in the building’s upper reaches. Other New York bands soon followed including the angular no-wave of James Chance & the Contortions and “psychobilly” icons The Cramps, who paid an offhand tribute to the club by recording their live album Fetishism at Larry’s in July of 1983. A year later, the club booked a then unknown four-piece from Athens, GA, who were making their first Toronto appearance. The band was REM, and their set that night borrowed heavily from their recently released full-length debut Murmur, which would go on to become one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 1980s. Other well known acts to play at Larry’s included the coma-inducing sludge rock of San Francisco’s Flipper, the fury of Minnesota-based speed freaks Husker Du and a virtual of British post-punk groups: Bauhaus, Killing Joke, The Fall, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. In later years, goth-cum-psychedelic rockers The Cult played Larry’s right before their Love album hit the masses in mid-1985.

Despite all of the underground favourites that passed through Larry’s doors over the years, it’s the intangible aspects of the bar that truly stand out in the minds of Torontonians. “Larry’s was an ideal venue in many ways,” asserts Nolan without so much as a hint of irony. “Low, dark, dirty and smoky. Just off the main street. No bull from the people running the place. No attitude from the bouncers. And, of course, no one went there for any reason other than the music. It was too much of a hole to dance or to pick up chicks or drink. If you didn’t want to hear the music, you’d go someplace else.” Hoffman further supports this contention by continuing to point out some of Larry’s other unique features. “Used condoms and dirty syringes were scattered amongst the urine puddles upstairs at the run-down hotel. [There were] always lots of hookers around and rooms without doors led to these dirty, rotten, stained mattresses on the floor without supports. The upper rooms all had busted windows and when it would rain, water would pour in all over.” Yet in spite of it all, Hoffman still holds the bar on something of a pedestal, albeit one likely caked with cigarette smoke and various bodily fluids. “I’ve been to other dives in other cities, provinces and states but there was no other bar that could match the raunch of Larry’s Hideaway. Truly the filthiest, most degrading bar I’ve ever ventured into. It was a legend back then, it’s even more of a cult legend now.”

idle.slashdot.org | Student Arrested For Classroom Texting

A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she refused to stop texting during a high school math class. The girl denied having a phone when confronted by a school safety officer, but a female cop found it after frisking her. The Samsung Cricket was recovered “from the buttocks area” of the teenager, according to the police report. The girl was banned from school property for a week, and is scheduled for an April 20 court appearance for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. I applaud the adults involved for their discretion and temperance in this heinous case of texting without permission.

The Smoking Gun article has more info and police report scans.

This is hilarious, imho. Are schools now so dysfunctional in places where police are required to stop people communicating in class. What happened to being sent to the principal’s office?

AppleInsider | Apple settles disability lawsuit over San Francisco store

Apple has agreed to make changes to its San Francisco store and retrain its entire retail workforce as part of a settlement in a long-running disability lawsuit filed by two wheelchair-bound customers.

Oakland residents Jana Overbo and Nicole Brown-Booker, together with Apple, signed an agreement late last week to make three pages’ worth of changes to the actual store on Stockton Street, the Cupertino-based company’s employee training procedures, and its retail website.

The two women had separate but identically frustrating experiences in May and July of 2007. According to the original suit, neither could reach products or service desks from their wheelchairs, the store’s presentation theater lacked accessible seating or passageways, and elevator buttons were placed too high to reach, resulting in wasted trips and added difficulty.

Check out this post from MindHacks, and the article, but perhaps not the book: Mind Hacks: The myth of the concentration oasis

The myth of the concentration oasis:
Wired has an interview with author Maggie Jackson who’s recently written a book called ‘Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age’ in which she argues modern life and digital technology constantly demand our attention and are consequently damaging our ability to concentrate and be creative. The trouble is, I just don’t buy it and it’s easy to see why.

The ‘modern technology is hurting our brain’ argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It’s based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted.

The trouble is, it’s plainly rubbish, and you just have to spend time with some low tech communities to see this is the case.

In some of the poorer neighbourhoods Medellín, my current city of residence, there is no electricity. In these barrios, computers, the internet, and even washing machines and telephones don’t exist in the average home.

Pretty much everything is done manually. By the lights of the ‘driven to digital distraction’ argument, the residents should be able to live blissfully focused distraction-free lives, but they don’t.

If you think twitter is an attention magnet, try living with an infant. Kids are the most distracting thing there is and when you have three of even four in the house it is both impossible to focus on one thing, and stressful, because the consequences of not keeping an eye on your kids can be frightening even to think about.

The manual nature of all the tasks means you have to watch everything. There is no timer on the cooker, so you need to watch the food. The washing has to be done, by hand, while keeping an eye on everything else.

People call all the time, because, well, there is no other way of communication. Street vendors pass by the house and shout what they’re selling. If you miss out on something, it might mean your days food planning has gone down the drain.

On top of this, people may be working to make a living in the same building. Running a shop, mending stuff, selling food, or whatever their business might be.

The difference between this, and the “oh isn’t email stressful” situation, is that you can take a break from email and phone calls. You can switch everything off for an hour so you can concentrate. You can tell people you won’t be available.

For people trying to work and run a family at the same time, not only are the consequences of missing something more important and potentially more dangerous, but it’s impossible to take a break. A break means your kids are in danger, your family doesn’t get fed and you’re losing money that buys the food.

Now, think about the fact that the majority of the world live just like this, and not in not in the world of email, tweets and instant messaging. Until about 100 years ago everyone lived like this.

In other words, the ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted, is the strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development.

New technology has not created some sort of unnatural cyber-world, but is just moving us away from a relatively short blip of focus that pervaded parts of the Western world for probably about 50 years at most.

And when we compare the level of stress and distraction it causes in comparison to the life of the average low-tech family, it’s nothing. It actually allows us to focus, because it makes things less urgent, it controls the consequences and allows us to suffer no more than social indignation if we don’t respond immediately.

The past, and for most people on the planet, the present, have never been an oasis of mental calm and creativity. And anyone who thinks they have it hard because people keep emailing them should trying bringing up a room of kids with nothing but two pairs of hands and a cooking pot.

I’m so happy mind hacks said this. I tend to not read silly books, because I prefer to concentrate on more important things… doing yoga, taking photos, playing with by bouncing baby tenure application file, teaching, writing papers, and the like. Oh, and preparing the quiz for my courses.

I do find that I get much more done, and spend much more quiet time, than my unconnected friends and colleagues. And I think it has very little to do with technology either way. I also get more done than many of my overly wired colleagues. Tech or not, I like to get shit done. There’s no reason or excuse for it. Blaming tech distraction is just blaming a symptom. The problems are varied but no doubt have more to do with not having skills, interests or options to concentrate. I have one friend who has never concentrated on anything, and I realized finally that it was not tech, it was the desire to avoid things. Most distracted people I know who are long term distracted, not just trying to bring up a child, are avoiding something. Distraction is just a method to an end.

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead (Part One): Media Viruses and Memes

Use of the terms “viral” and “memes” by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries may be creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers. Definitions of ‘viral’ media suffer from being both too limiting and too all-encompassing. The term has ‘viral’ has been used to describe so many related but ultimately distinct practices — ranging from Word-of-Mouth marketing to video mash-ups and remixes posted to YouTube — that just what counts as viral is unclear. It is invoked in discussions about buzz marketing and building brand recognition while also popping up in discussions about guerilla marketing, exploiting social networks, and mobilizing consumers and distributors. Needless, the concept of viral distribution is useful for understanding the emergence of a spreadable media landscape. Ultimately, however, viral media is a flawed way to think about distributing content through informal or adhoc networks of consumers

Oh, I DO like this. I’ve never liked these terms and thoughts. They make the mundane sound too sexy, and a whole bunch of things…

Mr Pants Yawning, originally uploaded by jasonnolan.

He just looks so happy.

Flashmobs still $9mil in 30 min (http://tinyurl.com/blznwb) Very much like Larry Niven’s Flash Crowds (http://tinyurl.com/7qpml) in fiction!

globeandmail.com: Iceland’s new government takes office

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — A new centre-left government took office in crisis-hit Iceland Sunday, headed by the country’s first openly gay national leader.

Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir and her cabinet were officially appointed by the head of state, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, after a tumultuous week that saw Iceland’s previous conservative government collapse over the country’s economic meltdown.

Ms. Sigurdardottir said one of her first acts “will be to change the leadership of the central bank.”

Central bank governor David Oddsson, a former prime minister, is disliked by many Icelanders, who say authorities helped cause the economic crash by failing to rein in reckless banks and businesses.

Ms. Sigurdardottir, 66, is a former flight attendant and union organizer, and served as social affairs minister in the previous government.

She is Iceland’s first female prime minister, and her cabinet is the country’s first to be split evenly between men and women.

Ms. Sigurdardottir also is the first openly gay national leader of modern times, apart from Per-Kristian Foss, a Norwegian politician who briefly served as his country’s prime minister in 2002.

The new government is a coalition of Ms. Sigurdardottir’s Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green movement, and will hold office until elections April 25.

Iceland’s economy’s an absolute mess, according to my friend lilja. I really hope that Sigurdardottir can do something.

I was out with a bunch of friends for an evening talking about media and technology issues. I’d told yuka that I’d be home too late to cook, so she was on her own. Unfortunately I was hungry by 8:30, when I got home, but yuka let me go back to Gamelle for dinner. First time I’ve had that luxury twice in a week. We got our seat in the corner, to watch the people go by, amazing wine that I’ve never seen before, and the rest is history. I’m stuffed.