Taylor Kate Brown

… I’m pretty consistently processing what I’m reading and liking on my Google Reader shared page. It’s a much lower impact way of thinking through what comes down the transom of news and blogs and marking posts for later discussions.

That being said, I need to do some rearranging of my RSS feed. My general interests are anything NYC based, video journalism, international news, television and culture in general. What’s your recommendations, dear readers?

Alissa Walker has a quick-turnaround piece on the obliviousness of Apple execs, engineers, marketing reps to name their new wonder tablet the iPad. As in, a popular option for ladies’ monthly period.

Obvious jokes aside (and oh, how they have been made), I have to agree that the naming reeks of the unintended consequences of low representation of women in computer science and engineering jobs, and in the tech industry in general (one would think they had to go through market research, but who knows). When the joke is so obvious it trends on twitter within minutes, and the first reaction of tech-oriented women is “they named it what?” you probably have a branding problem.

The naming process, however, is really a small drop in the bucket of issues surrounding women and tech. danah boyd, researcher in social media extraordinaire, brought out some of the secondary, more insidious issues around cultural norms, innovation, and self-promotion in response to Clay Shirky’s rant on similar themes (Shirky’s an important thinker on larger sociological implications of tech trends, but I find a lot of issues with the post, regardless if he labels it as a rant.)

Boyd’s discussion a much more thoughtful exploration of the problems that iPad turns into an easy joke.

[Apophenia] whose voice do you hear? gender issues and success

[Clay Shirky] A Rant About Women

(Original article via Jenny 8. Lee’s twitter)

After watching the fantastic last show of Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show, I predict two things will now occur:

1. Upon listening to “Freebird” in the next year or so, I will spontanteously burst into tears

2. Leno’s show will initially win back ratings and then very slowly, die along with NBC. Or television in general.

I’ll back up assertion number 2 there, but first, a word from CoCo himself:

read more »

Syndication is one of the greatest inventions of television, but also the dark horrid secret of hours lost to America’s Next Top Model marathons and the nightly search around a section of cable for a “new” episode.

When I first watched Criminal Minds, I immediately noticed the pattern of main characters. “It’s NCIS-lite”. There’s the stoic and grizzled team leader. The new-ish younger male genius, the wacky individualistic geek/tech girl, the attractive brunette woman who’s transferred in, etc. etc.

But thanks to A&Es $650,000 per episode syndication buy-in, I’ve caught up with a good portion of the show’s past episodes. I’m in syndication’s sweet spot – I’ve seen enough to build a timeline of the show, but each episode is new to me. While the show still does bring to mind the team dynamic and self-contained case style of NCIS, I’m warming to Criminal Minds in its own right.

Thomas Gibson will never not be Greg (from Dharma and Greg) for me, so his unrelenting seriousness and even deeper voice makes me laugh, which is the probably not what the actor and show had in mind.  I’m not the target audience for  Tyler Perry movies, so I’ve missed out on the great acting of Shemar Moore until now, and Matthrew Gray Gubler, well, is just a strange, wonderful duck.

Joe Mantegna, who shows up later to take the place of Mandy Patinkin (who, does not at any moment, say he is here to kill any one’s father), who’s character gets so burnt out he walks off into the woods and doesn’t tell anyone where he went. Criminal Minds is more intensely disturbing than NCIS, because it deals with the pathology of criminals and often deals with criminals who are so psychologically damaged, yet can’t be found until the team whittles down levels of statistics and figures out the motivation of each.

Plus the show has this habit of starting and ending each show with a philosophical quote. I’m almost expecting them to start an episode with “Derrida once said, ‘the author is most certainly dead when television shows deem themselves experts in the mind’*”

It’s easy to guess why cable networks pay over half a million per episode for procedural crime dramas like Criminal Minds. The satisfaction of a mystery and a resolved case every hour made Law and Order creator Dick Wolf a very rich man. The CSIs, NCIS, and Criminal Minds of television add onto that grim satisfaction by moving beyond the basics of simple law and order. The BAU (Criminal Minds‘ unit at the FBI) is understood to be the nationally elite profiling team. They have their own private jet. The mystery and tension are higher, because the stakes are assumed to be bigger.

I wonder though, how problematic the explosion of daily and higher-stakes crime procedurals is towards actual law enforcement. Of course CSI techs don’t perform interrogations, but what else is elided for time and dramatic tension in shows like Criminal Minds is unlikely to be obvious.

*not an actual Derrida quote

The Moth Podcast, for when a week is too long between This American Life episodes, except done on stage, completely without notes.

A video interview with Camille Utterback, a digital artist and 2009 MacArthur Fellow:

Standard listening procedure here at Chez Ahlan denotes treading carefully to find songs that fit within categories that what we already know we like (the time-suck of listening to songs you don’t end up enjoying is that much more painful) and once a winner is found, playing said winner into a mp3 pulp. I’ve got to branch out more in my music discovery.

The latest to go through this spin-until-drop-dead repeat cycle is a mashup from the Hood Internet, which Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog turned me on to. THI remixes and mashes prolifically, releasing individual tracks once a week, and then compilation volumes that turn into nifty (and automatic) party mixes.

Good Ol’Fashioned Rump Shaker is a mix up the Beastie Boys and Matt & Kim. To show you how single-oriented minded I am, I mistook the Matt & Kim song in the backgroundfor “Daylight” (seen in that Bacardi commercial) instead of “Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare”.

The song shows why in hip-hop, the sample is make-or-break. Beastie Boys are a few years too old for my music background, but put a sample that sounds familiar, just enough to catch my ear, and I’m newly impressed by the Beastie Boys.

Going through my bookshelf yesterday I remembered one of my more cherished books – and also my most frustrating find.

First semester of senior year I took an American Drama class. One of the plays assigned was Long Day’s Journey Into Night, one of Eugene O’Neill’s last plays. One of the great things about English classes was that even though their were more books, there were more widely in circulation, and much cheaper.

I stopped by Collected Stories, a used bookshop in Milford’s downtown area to pick up Journey and several other books I needed for my literature classes. The version I bought of the play was quite old, but I didn’t think much of it.

A few months later, actually sitting down to read the book, I found this inscription on page 2:

September 28, 1956

Darling;

Please find as much enjoyment reading this as, as it was for me to give it to you.

Perhaps in 1978,  when you turn to this page for one more time, you will think of us now and think of our love.

Gene

Yes, that was my first thought too. But Eugene O’Neill died in 1953. Two pages later is the actual Gene’s (the writer of the play that is) dedication to his wife Carlotta. Either the dedicator had the same name, or was playing a joke on the receiver.

I just called Collected Stories and unfortunately, they do not keep records of who sold or gave them books. The only other clue is that the page before the dedication, the book is inscribed with the name Mr. and Mrs. S.A. Di Roma. I would have bought the book at Collected Stories around July or August of 2007.

Any ideas or leads?

by bewarenerd

It’s the fourth day of the year, and yet when I foolishly faced the cold this afternoon to go to school, the place was humming along regularly, people working and writing, eating at the cafe and smoking out on the front steps, ignoring the dead silence of the rest of the Columbia campus.

I spent the back half of December as a nomad along the East Coast. Christmas in Connecticut (oh my god, it’s a Lifetime holiday special!), second Christmas in West Virginia, a quick visit in DC, and a friend’s birthday and New Year’s outside Philly. Then another night and back to New York.

Things learned along the way:

Hedgesville, West Virginia: exactly as small as you think it is (still beautiful, though)

Possible conflict-of-interest or proof that econ wonks and journalists are made for each other?

This photo I took was plagarized by the director of the Malyasian National Dancesport council and then quickly taken down when a fellow Flickr-ite emailed him about it. Bizarre.

It was relaxing as a week and a half break could be, but honestly, with the exception of one major project, I had checked out. Now to get back into the momentum of life that I’m truly enjoying.

Tonight’s the U.S. premiere of David Tennant’s last episode as the Tenth Doctor and the last episode under the helm of Russell T. Davies.

While the official relaunch of Doctor Who started with Mr. Ecceleston (and indeed, he still holds a soft spot in my tv-watching heart) it’s the Tennant-Davies combo that’s defined the latest iteration of the longest running science fiction show.

But what did that mean? Davies has been called the “gay Michael Bay”, but I’d like to put forward that’s giving Michael Bay too much credit in the “what did I just watch” category. Bay does ridiculous car chases, machine gun fights and the oft explosion (with robots of course). Davies writes all the planets in the universe being dragged to one location and evil human mechanical balls  from the end of the universe attacking present day Earth under the just elected alien Prime Minister. Bay wishes he was Russell T. Davies. Nobody’s going to out do him.

Tennant’s Doctor is both manic, mean and sweet. Like all other Doctors humans are his favorite. It took about two thirds of his series’ for me to realize that he’s been written as a megalomaniac asshole, intentionally or nto. The last special, Waters of Mars wrote that literally; the uneasiness of how much power he holds as the last of the Time Lords ™ and shows he can’t wield it objectively. Who could?

Doctor Who’s reprise from the original run also moved BBC into the map of what I’m going to call the newly globalized (English language) world of television. It made a mark outside PBS reruns of the shows. Four years ago it was unthinkable that the Stateside premiere of an episode would be less than 24 hours after it’s broadcast on BBCone. Not because the technology wasn’t available, but because nobody cared. Instead the obvious demand created by torrenting allowed channels like Syfy and BBC America to use Who in a whole new way.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s conclusion. Davies has one last chance to redeem Ten. I can’t wait to see what happens, and isn’t that what TV is best for?

After yesterday’s post, I realize some of the blog’s audience (but certainly not all – hey Dennis) might not have a background on the competitive ballroom scene.

Dancesport (yes, the sport of dance, this is not the time or place to argue whether it is or not) is one of the few college sports you can walk onto without a lick of experience, and four years later, be competing at the top of the field. That’s certainly not everyone, but it happens all the time. The year I danced competitively, I technically did so nationally, although at a fairly low level.

Here’s the breakdown. In amateur competitions, the level of difficulty ranges starts at beginner (or pre-bronze), then bronze, silver,  and gold. Each step up means you will be performing different, increasingly complicated moves, known as each level’s syllabus. If I remember correctly, a certain number of say, silver syllabus moves need to be performed in a silver level competition, in addition to bronze moves.

After gold, you move out into open, which means there is no set requirement of moves, although you are using the syllabus base, with extra crazy thrown in. In open you have “novice”, “pre-championship” and “championship”, in that order. At that point, the field is smaller, the costumes more insane and the moves quicker and down to a pinpoint precise.

The dances do not change, and break down in two categories. Standard includes Waltz, Foxtrot, Quick-step, Viennese Waltz, and Tango.  These are the classy, ballgown dances. Latin includes Samba, Rumba, Cha-Cha, Jive, and Paso Doble.  The tiniest dress you can find and suggestive move dances. Collectively it’s “ten dance”. Some couples will focus on one category over the other or try compete ten dance.

For example, my friend Mikey started around the same time I did, but kept with it and competes Latin pre-champ. Competing at champ or pre-champ level from nothing does take a lot of practice hours and partner just as dedicated. Also, a commitment to fake tanning.

This, at least is the college system. People dance in competitions from all types of contexts, often dance studios or independent teachers. There were two ten year olds in Mikey’s pre-champ quarterfinal. They were good, but the looked ridiculous next to the 20-somethings.

Here’s the other thing. The dancesport world is small, possibly smaller than the journalism world.  I hadn’t been to a competition in over three years on Saturday, and I still saw some familiar faces.