My old posts at this site will remain up here for the foreseeable future.

And now that grad school is done, I've come back. A lot has happened. More later…

But let me just clue you in on some changes.

I'm now a graduate student working towards a Master's in Economics at San Jose State University. What's a Berkeley alum doing at a school like San Jose State? To be sure, the convenient location was the reason I first started taking classes there. But then I started hearing good things about their economics department. It specializes in the Austrian School, which has been very influential in the libertarian movement. And I like a lot of the professors I've met so far (many of which got degrees from George Mason, one of the other schools I was considering). Yeah, my original plan was to take classes for a year and a half before applying to grad schools, but I think that was mostly because I was overly afraid of picking the wrong field yet again. I am pretty obviously an econ dork.

Being a grad student is, obviously, one reason I haven't been blogging. As Dan Drezner says:

Sure, some blogs burn out and fade away, while others become pale imitations of what they once were. Rather than think of these kind of inexorable trends, however, I suspect that blogs, like much of life, are cyclical. Attentive readers can surely point to days or weeks where it's clear that blogging has not been at the top of my priority list. This doesn't mean that I'm fading away… it (hopefully) means I'm acquiring new forms of substantive knowledge that trickle down onto the blog.

Okay, unlike Dan, I haven't written anything that's gotten published. But then again, he already has a Master's and a Ph.D. I'm probably not going to pursue the Ph.D. because I'm pretty leery of academia and instead have an eye towards working on policy analysis at a think tank, where a Master's would be enough. But regardless, less blogging now should hopefully mean better and more substantive blogging later. I don't want to write too much about topics I don't know very much about. So I'm expanding my knowledge. That's the plan.

Another excuse for lack of blogging: I never finished my planned WordPress migration from Movable Type. This means trackbacks are still disabled, which is somewhat of a disincentive for me to write brilliantly. I did start messing around with WordPress, but I ran into problems getting the Textile 2 plugin to render my old posts correctly. Anybody know Perl who wants to help me out? I'm willing to pay. I also want a site redesign. That stupid logo is cute, but unprofessional, and I no longer think I'll ever have enough spare time to actually draw a better one, even though I probably could.

And there's one more reason which surprises me the most. My stats (such as they are) haven't suffered. I haven't updated since April, and yet my stats since then have remained pretty steady. Yes, that's one reason (along with my starting school full-time) that I added Google ads to this site. It's not a lot of money, but hey, I'm not doing any work for it, so I can't complain. Note that I do not choose the ads, and I will make every attempt to continue to write my own thoughts independently of any financial incentives. For those of you who really don't like the ads, sorry! All I can suggest is to use Firefox with the Adblock plugin.

As always, I can't promise any regular updates. I'm tentatively planning on posting some of my better photos from the last year as well as some of the links of the better blog posts I've read as I've been slowly wading back into the blogosphere. But there's a lot going on in my life right now that is likely to intervene. E-mail me or friend me on LiveJournal if you really want to know.

Update 6/14/06: Added point about hiring of editors, and clarified a few minor things.

I guess I didn't mention it here earlier, but I'm a staff photographer for The Spartan Daily at SJSU this semester. I wanted to see explore my recent obsession with photography, but I think this semester has all but confirmed that my true calling likely lies in economics (see my LiveJournal for more on that). I've always doubted photojournalism was the way I was meant to change the world. After all, only a small slice of it is visible to cameras (try illustrating comparative advantage or opportunity cost with a photograph). Because of that, photos in newspapers are often used merely to fill space or as eye candy to draw readers (it's telling that the best paper in the country by far, The Wall Street Journal, hardly runs any photos and indeed used to run none altogether). It's a useful function, but it's not the primary one of journalism, which is to inform and educate.

I still think my true calling will involve writing. Of course, I don't intend to write for the Daily, because to tell the truth, it's just not a quality publication. To be sure, it's a bit unfair to compare it to the WSJ (required reading for my Public Policy course) or even The Daily Californian (which I probably didn't judge as critically when I was there), but almost every time I attempt to read The Spartan Daily, I find it a poor use of my time. Erika agrees, saying that most of the stories read little more like press releases. Heck, at the Don Edwards Lecture featuring Terence Smith on Wednesday night, political science professor Terry Christensen couldn't resist making a crack at how far the Daily has fallen.

Given that I haven't worked on the writing side, my various theories as to what's going wrong and how to address them are probably not worth much to anybody (which is why I blog). But there's one thing that really sticks out as an obvious flaw. I may regret saying this, but I've generally been underwhelmed by most of the opinion columns (which tend to make up an unusually central role in this paper, for some reason). And I think there's one really obvious reason behind this. You see, the paper is currently in the process of selecting the editors for next semester. Once that's done, the editors then get to select the opinion columnists — inevitably themselves.

1) This is about as fucked up as Bush asking Dick Cheney to head up a task force to decide who should be the VP candidate.

2) The skill sets of editors and opinion columnists have very little overlap.

3) Leaving a hiring decision up to a single person is worse than our system of selecting professors for tenure or choosing Supreme Court justices.

Now okay, Ryan Sholin (a Daily staff writer who's not columnist but is a lot more insightful than most if not all of our current columnists) tells me that it doesn't really work that way, saying that the editors don't choose the columnists but simply get to do it themselves. If that's the case, that's even more fucked up. At least making good hiring decisions is a managerial skill valuable to a future editor. Having an editor automatically be a columnist makes about as much sense as designing a cell-phone with a built lawn mower or a fax machine with a built in egg beater.

I mean, how many top opinion columnists are former editors and vice versa? Okay, the question sounds like I meant it rhetorically, but I actually don't know the answer to that question because I have to admit that I don't read opinion columnists. In my mind, Paul Krugman is a poor man's Brad DeLong and David Brooks is a partisan hack compared to Dan Drezner (and don't get me started on the real partisan hacks out there). For that matter, I think some of the best columnists don't even have a journalism background.

And to top it all, there's a bit of a journalistic ethics issue here. Many newspapers have a policy of strict neutrality, requiring all their employees — except their Op-Ed columnists and editorial writers — to refrain from expressing any opinions publicly (and I'd argue that this is even more important for editors). For example, the New York Times doesn't want their staff seen at protests or wearing campaign buttons. Indeed, this strict separation between the editorial department and the news department is one reason I think newspapers ought to get out of the opinion business altogether, leaving that to the bloggers. Of course, I guess it's obvious where my loyalty lies in the blogging vs. journalism divide.

Now of course, columns shouldn't be given out to just anybody. You need to pay your dues and prove your worth (as long as it's not hazing, like depriving young doctors of sleep). But c'mon, you don't call up a prize shortstop prospect and then stick him at catcher. Just contrast the skills and qualities that make a good editor with that of a good Op-Ed columnist. A good editor should work well with a variety of different people in order to be an effective manager (meaning that an abrasive personality is generally undesirable). A good columnist doesn't need to work with others, and indeed ought to have a strong personality (so an abrasive personality can be a plus). A good editor needs to know how things work in the newsroom to know who to turn to get things done. A good columnist need never have ever set foot in a newsroom, and can indeed work completely remotely. A good editor doesn't necessarily need to be a strong writer. It helps if they used to write, but they don't need to be good at it as long as they can recognize bad writing and work with the writer to improve it. A good columnist, of course, needs to be a strong writer. A good editor is objective, but a good columnist is highly opinionated. A good editor needs a good eye for design and layout, whereas this is an utterly useless skill for a columnist.

Do you get the picture yet? Egg-beating fax machines. And when you're talking about a photo or copy editor, the disparity in skill sets is even wider.

I don't expect this to change. It's been this way since at least back when Erika was at SJSU (she graduated in 2004). No, she wasn't at the Daily, but she was on the “to call” list of almost every writer there when they needed a source, so she knew how some things worked. And besides, I don't expect anybody to listen to lil' ol' me as a once-a-week photographer who isn't a journalism major. But that won't stop me from calling things the way I see it. Indeed, I think it frees me up a bit to call things the way they are.

Now I have to admit that there's probably some sour grapes going on here. I do think it'd be cool to write a column for the Daily and be read by other students (hopefully impressing some cute ones, since I know I'd be pretty good at it). However, the opportunity costs for all the time required by editorial duties would be prohibitive for somebody not eying a career in the field. So I am admittedly a little disappointed by this arrangement, especially since it makes no sense whatsoever.

But I also know that my writing style would be sorely crimped by the 800 word limit (if this post wasn't evidence enough, peruse these pieces, particularly The Case Against Bush which I wrote before the 2004 election). So career-wise, I'm much more suited to writing in-depth policy analysis pieces aimed at the movers and shakers instead of the Average Joe (something like Tim Lee's absolute must-read piece on the DMCA). So it doesn't really bother me too much, especially since I can always submit a guest column (which I'll hopefully do next semester when I don't take such a high workload). So I think I have a semblance of detached objectivity in pointing out what should already be obvious.

Of course, it's easy to criticize, but harder to suggest how to fix things. So how do I think the decision ought to be made? Well first of all, don't have individuals make the decisions. Create a hiring panel for that. This prevents editors from choosing themselves and makes it harder for people to get the position merely because they happen to be buddies with one.

Secondly — and this is key — make sure that panel is made up by people with a strong incentive to select the best candidates. In other words, eliminate or weaken any other conflicting incentives. So obviously you'd want journalism faculty on it, as they are much less likely to have any conflicts of interest than students. Although students will have relationships with faculty, they are already trying to build good relationships with faculty in order to get good grades and letters of recommendation and gain access to their network for post-college careers, so this doesn't change anything. Indeed, you might want to include some professors from other fields of expertise, like political science, economics, sociology, etc. And you probably also want to include alumni who used to serve on the Daily, as they are less likely to have close friendships with any of the current candidates but will have an interest in the Daily actually being well-regarded as a publication.

Certainly, you can't get around having at least some current students on the panel. Although these will create possible conflicts of interest, the other members will help mitigate this effect, and you can also have a policy where panel members must recuse themselves when a conflict occurs. Now the executive, managing, and opinion editors obviously ought to be on it, but besides them, I think the only other students you want on the panel are a random sample of readers (where each vote counts as a fraction of that of the other panel members).

Then you have the columnist candidates submit sample columns on a variety of pre-selected topics and have the panel judge the samples blindly (not that they have to close their eyes while reading, you smartass, but where they don't know who wrote what). Given that everybody and their grandma wants a column, you should get a broad array of talent to choose from. And if you want to go further, have the final candidates come in and be given a limited time to write a column on a topic chosen by the panel. And of course, the final decision can also weigh things like what journalism classes they've taken and whether they've served at the Daily.

There's probably many other ideas to consider, but I think you get that it's a system that can be greatly improved. The logistics aren't even that complicated when you consider that this panel never has to meet in person, but can make all decisions via e-mail. And that's just the opinion columns. A similar process ought to be used for selecting the editors as well, instead of just leaving it up to the executive editor as Laura describes, which, as she points out, lends itself to the “good ol' boys club” problem. In the private sector, a hiring decision of any importance in an organization this large is hardly ever completely left to one person (sure, one person may have the final decision, but always after input from multiple interviewers).

Plus, the news coverage itself would take a whole other monster of a blog post to talk about (it very obviously doesn't even attempt to be fair and balanced with its coverage of A.S.). But I think I've said plenty for now. I mean, I'd like to continue shooting for them next semester, although I wouldn't be too broken up if they kicked me out. I think it'd be their loss anyway. Not that I'm a great photographer, but econ geeks are generally pretty good at spotting procedural inefficiencies like this.

Yeah, yeah, I know. There's already RSS or Yahoo! 360. But it's a pain to track down all the feeds, and you've already done the work of adding them as a friend already. Besides, what percentage of the users out there know and use RSS?

Update 3/3/05: Whoops, I'd copied it from Rich's version, which was missing some of the categories. Added those in, but I'm sure I screwed up the order of everything.

Okay, when I get tagged twice, I guess that's a sign I really oughtta participate. So, without further ado:

The Four Things Meme

Four shows I enjoy:

• Mythbusters (oh, I suppose you knew that already).
• Lost
• The L Word
• Battlestar Galactica
• How I Met Your Mother
• Grey's Anatomy
• Weeds
• Robot Chicken

Oh, sorry. Television rotted my brain to the point where I forgot how to count! Or maybe it wasn't the television?

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Finding Nemo (okay, truthfully I actually liked Monsters, Inc. better, but I can't hurt the feelings of the fishies)
• Garden State (this should not be a surprise to anybody)
• Aliens
• Beauty and the Beast

Four jobs I've held:

• Paper-hatted grill dude at McDonald's
• Word-processing/data entry temp
• Software Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer (which, come to think of it, is an awful lot like Software Engineer, but I haven't had any other jobs that I can recall).

Four cool toys:

• My Canon Digital Rebel (yeah, to me, it's still a toy).
• Astrojax.
• Magz magnetic construction toys.
• The hopes and dreams of other people, bwa ha ha ha!

Four of My Favorite Dishes:

• Tortellini pomodoro alfredo from Frankie, Johnnie, and Luigi Too!
• Halibut sushi (hirame). But don't tell the fishies!
• Couscous with Artichokes, Feta and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (well, Erika makes it without the artichokes).
• Caprese.

Four Web sites I visit daily (uh… not counting Gmail and my Sitemeter stats):

• Last.fm (powered by Audioscrobbler).
• LiveJournal.
• del.icio.us.
• And Flickr of course!

Four places I've lived:

• New Hartford, NY (next to Utica, which is not too far from Syracuse)
• Diamond Bar, CA (about 15 minutes north of Disneyland)
• Berkeley, CA
• Sunnyvale, CA (no, not Sunnydale)

Four places I've vacationed:

• Amsterdam (honeymoon counts as a vacation, no?).
• San Diego.
• Seattle.
• uh… does staying in a hotel in San Francisco count? Or Mountain View? We don't really vacation much.

Four places I'd rather be:

• Washington D.C., making a real difference in this world.
• New York City, living the urban life.
• The engine room of Serenity.
• Behind the wheel of a McLaren F1 car, kicking the arses of both Schumi and Fred.

Four bloggers I'm tagging.

Well, I don't know if they do memes or if they read me, but I'm tagging the four SJSU student bloggers that I know of. San Jose State reprahzent!! Yeah, yeah. This from a guy who was wearing a Cal hat today (well, I haven't bought any SJSU gear yet).

• Dan Esch.
• Dan Sato.
• Lawrence.
• Ryan.
• Shaminder.

Oops, that wasn't four. Yeah, me are an kollij gwajuwett. I suppose that's why I'm going back again to get it right this time.

Myths are debunked by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, two silly geeks who are special-effects experts and love building stuff. I mean, really love building stuff. They will not just debunk the myth, but will go to great lengths to build whatever it takes to show what it would actually take for the myth to happen.

For example, take the myth about the guy who overfilled his washing machine and then fell into the machine and got violently spun around. Well of course, washing machines won't spin if you open the lid, so they could've just stopped there. But no, they decide to override that safety mechanism, only to find that washing machine engines don't have nearly enough torque to spin a person. They could've stopped there, but no, they decide to hook up a car engine to the washing machine to see if that would be enough…

You get the picture. Best part, the narrator makes fun of them for all this! It's great fun for the viewers and the Mythbuster team as well, and they also do a great job clearly explaining the science behind everything with amusing animations (and yes, they do get the science right). Both Erika and I enjoy it thoroughly, and there are not too many shows we both love (although I finally got her hooked on Battlestar Galactica — but goddamn, they took their sweet time before finally doing another decent episode).

So check it out! It's just icing on the cake that Kari Byron is cute and cool beyond words (and quite a talented artist as well).

Oh, is she a redhead? I hadn't noticed.

Yes, your worshipfulness. I know that excuses mean nothing to you. Yes, I know fully well that you can kill me with your brain. I am correcting the issue as we speak. Yes, I know you are displeased that I am reduced to blatantly ripping off Fafblog! for my material.

Anyway, this was always reflected when I made mix CDs or tapes. I'd just pick a bunch of my favorite songs, mostly alternating the slow and fast ones to provide for a more shuffle-like variety. I never really put too much thought into the order or picking songs specifically to fit with each other, and I had no idea there was a whole art to that. And I suppose this showed on My 2004 Mix CD (although it still single-handedly propelled Howie Day's “Collide” and the Killers' “Mr. Brightside” into big hits).

Anyway, armed with the knowledge that the order matters, I actually put some thought into it for my 2005 mix (no, it's not all rise — the structure is a bit more complicated). I don't know if that means I actually did a good job, but I figure some thought has got to be better than hardly any. And this was probably necessary with a mix that runs the gamut from folk pop to post-hardcore to psytrance to prog metal.

Yeah, I have a pretty eclectic taste in music and love to inflict it on other people who give me funny looks and then try to sidle away without me noticing out of the corner of my eye, but then I do notice unless they were sneaky enough to distract me with… hey, where do you think you're goi… ooooh, chocolate and peanut-butter cookies!! munchmunchmunchmunch!

Mph gralpho mphaorlp… sorry, Erika keeps having to remind me to not to talk with my mouth full. Anyway, I also explored a lot more new music this year. As I had mentioned, I didn't add too much music to my library last year because I was short on hard drive space on my primary music-listening machine. But this was rectified early in 2005. Also, not too many of my favorite artists released albums in 2004, but in 2005, four of my top five artists (according to last.fm) released new albums this past year, as did several other long-time favorites of mine.

And the ridiculously low pricing of allofmp3.com also helped tremendously. Ten cents a song in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis at the bitrate you'd like, and with no DRM. Yes, it is legal — due to a loophole in Russian law that isn't likely to be closed anytime soon. Still, the songwriters and artists are required to get a cut through the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS) — but the record labels don't. Which is fine by me. Let's not forget that copyright law was intended to protect the creators in order to foster creativity, not the publishers, who are nothing but middle-men becoming increasingly marginalized by the Internet.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough, so witness my Best of 2005 Mix CD. Click on the image at the top of the post for a larger view and to see which picture is which artist. Note, I didn't spend as much time arranging the images cuz I spent more time on picking the songs. And here's the playlist. Let me know if you'd like a copy of the CD. I've also made an iTunes iMix, so if you want to buy any of these songs from the iTunes Music Store, use that link (although note that they don't have the Feeder and Kate Bush songs). Enjoy! Or don't. But if you don't enjoy it, it's not cuz the mix sucks, but because you do, you music snob you.

1. Jonatha Brooke - It Matters Now

From Back in the Circus. I've been a fan of hers for a couple of years, discovering her listed by AMG as a similar artist to my fave folk pop artists, Shawn Colvin and Dar Williams. Her expressive voice has a quirky character, and she sometimes uses exotic chords (which was something I liked about Liz Phair), which sets herself apart from the more mainstream Lilith-Fair-ish folk sound (which I'm also fond of). This song is probably not the best example of the latter, but it's easily the best song off the album, which I think is her best one to date (her albums can be uneven).

Also check out the electronic-tinged “Less Than Love is Nothing” and the title track. She also does an absolutely awesome cover of “Eye in the Sky” that was the impetus for my cover song CD.

2. Death Cab for Cutie - Different Names for the Same Thing

From Plans. Darn, this one was my one collision. Courtney also included this song on her mix. Indeed, the other two Death Cab songs I considered were “Marching Bands of Manhattan,” which is on Rich's mix, and “Brothers on a Hotel Bed,” which is on Andrew's. Well, when there's that much consensus about the band, it's not too surprising that everybody also likes the same songs by them. Oh, and “Soul Meets Body” is also a great song, but y'all knew that already. I liked how this song goes into double-time and decided to mirror that later in the mix (not that anybody would've noticed, but that's why I'm mentioning it now).

3. Tori Amos - Cars and Guitars

From The Beekeeper. In case you don't know me, Tori is, by far, my all-time favorite musical artist. I discovered her music in college when my roommate gave me his copy of Little Earthquakes (he thought it would be religious because her father was a preacher and the first song was titled “Crucify”). I was instantly hooked (as well as smitten, what with her being a quirky redhead), and she's the only artist for whom I'll rush out and buy new albums the very first day they're released.

And The Beekeeper was no exception. Suffice to say that it was a given that I would include a song off of it on the mix. Since she always seems to promote just one song off of every album (presumably just make sure everybody in her sizable fan base notices the new album), it's never hard to find gems that haven't had airplay. To be sure, this album is a notch below Scarlet's Walk but is still a great album (in addition to “Sleeps with Butterflies,” also check out “Ribbons Undone” and “Parasol”). Thus further confirming my theory that To Venus and Back and Strange Little Girls sucked only because she was trying to fulfill her record contract with minimal effort before jumping ship. A double album with live tracks and b-sides and an album of covers? Think about it.

Okay, I suppose I could have confirmed all this much earlier if I had simply checked Wikipedia — even if its salad days are almost over.

4. Jill Sobule - Jetpack

From Underdog Victorious. Not strictly 2005. She released the album late in 2004, and I didn't have a chance to listen to it enough to pick a song for last year's mix (so I squeezed in an older favorite instead). Yeah, she's not the flash-in-the-pan that she appeared to be after “Supermodel” and “I Kissed a Girl,” but a consistently good artist who has a knack for witty lyrics about interesting characters. This album is not quite as strong as Pink Pearl, but still a solid outing (and it comes with a real crossword puzzle!). Check out the title track as well as “Strawberry Gloss” and “Cinnamon Park.”

5. Dar Williams - You Rise and Meet the Day

From My Better Self. I absolutely adore Dar (she's not a redhead, but she is quirky), and have ever since Mortal City. Even though she's toned down her quirky humor over the years, she's concentrated on improving her songcraft, and with simply beautiful results. Her lyrical wit is still put to good use on this album in the song “Empire” that skewers the Bush administration (not that this is exactly hard to do these days).

I originally was going to select the catchy “Echoes,” but then decided she'd be a good candidate to end the mix with something stripped down (which would be more representative of her style anyway). This song was the best candidate, but since it didn't end with the finality I wanted, I decided to use it as a breather point before the mix slowly ramped up.

Other songs to check out include “I'll Miss You till I Meet You,” her cool cover of Pink Floyd's “Comfortably Numb” (featuring Ani DiFranco), “Teen for God, and the country-tinged “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”

6. Athlete - Twenty Four Hours

From Tourist. Okay, tossing a bone to the crowd with a pair of britpop songs, since britpop seems to be all the rage among the geek crowd for some reason. Or is it the pretentious hipster crowd? Whatever. I'm not sure how I discovered these guys, either via the AMG or through last.fm. Their stuff isn't anythinig particularly special, but this song just kept growing on me and insisted that it appear on the mix. So who am I to deny it? Other good tracks include “Half Light” and “Yesterday Threw Everything at Me.”

7. Feeder - Feeling a Moment

From Pushing the Senses. And I know I discovered these guys via a Last.fm recommendation. I suppose we're getting into ear candy territory here, albeit a bit harder rocking (and I suppose you must have noticed by now that I tend to like soaring vocals). Good to see these guys releasing another solid album despite their original drummer, Jon Lee, committing suicide a couple of years ago. A similar sound to the band, Embrace, featured on Buzz's mix. I think they're both going become faves of mine. Also check out “Pilgrim Soul,” “Morning Life,” and the title track.

8. Thrice - Of Dust and Nations

From Vheissu. Thrice is an interesting band (and another Last.fm recommendation). I suppose they're categorized as post-hardcore, whatever that's supposed to mean (until MP3s support sub-genres — a good idea for Flickr as well — I'll generally throw everything into rock just to separate it from jazz and classical). They read a lot of literature and the album title comes from Thomas Pynchon's V (which I haven't read). The vocals on some of their songs descend into screaming, but this is one of the exceptions. Another standout track is “Between the End and Where We Lie” which features some complex time signatures (hey, I'm a big Rush fan, so I really dig that stuff).

9. Nine Inch Nails - The Collector

From With Teeth. This wasn't a particularly outstanding album or song, but I thought that this spot in the mix was a good place to put a familiar face while keeping the sound harsh. So far it seems to be a better album than The Fragile, anyway.

10. Dream Theater - Panic Attack

From Octavarium. Dream Theater is the ultimate prog metal band. I've been a big fan of progressive rock (Rush, ELP, Yes, Pink Floyd, and Genesis) for almost as long as I've listened to music. I never got into heavy metal beyond the pop-metal hair bands of the 80s and Metallica after they went mainstream. I was fine with the crunching guitars, but I never liked screaming so much. But since James LaBrie's singing is closer to classical than metal (and his incredible voice is one thing that sets this band apart), this band quickly became one of my all-time faves after I first heard “Pull Me Under” on KFOG in college. And fortunately, they released an album in 2005 that was not a concept album, so it wasn't too hard to pick a suitable track.

John Petrucci (guitar) and Jordan Rudess (keyboard) have to be heard to be believed (although I still feel kinda bad for Derek Sherinian), and this song features one of Dream Theater's signature instrumental breaks where the two of them run through a thrilling (and obviously technically challenging) passage in unison. Yes, I know the song clocks in at 8:13 (largely due to said instrumental break), but I think the 4-minute song structure is just as creatively stifling as the 800-word column. While you can accomplish a lot within the structure, a multitude of possibilities open up when you free yourself from those constraints (just look at Green Day).

And so it's not surprising to me that the two best songs on the album clock in at 10:43 and 23:59 (and believe me, I was tempted to pick one of them).

11. Infected Mushroom - Horus the Chorus

From IM the Supervisor, which is listed as released in 2004 in some places and 2005 in others. Whatever (it's not like the Grammy's stick to the calendar year). I started listening to some psytrance two years ago and decided early in the song selection process for this mix that I wanted to somehow squeeze a track in. Some of you might think it might have something to do with this discovery, but I will deny it (albeit a little bit too emphatically). But really, the main impetus was that if I was going to have such a diverse mix, I might as well go all out. No, really. Okay, now you're just imagining things.

Anyway, although psytrance is definitely best listened to while dancing and/or on drugs (err… not that I condone either behavior, just stating a fact), I've found it actually is also good music for me to code and write to. Being a long-time Rush fan, I used to have a bias against non-human drummers, decrying all dance and electronica as repetitive. Well, I'm finally over that. And really, psytrance isn't really that repetitive at all. Plus, like many prog-rockers, these guys are classically trained, so there are (thankfully) chord changes, plus always something interesting going on to mix things up.

I'm probably crazy to put two eight-minute songs on a mix CD, let alone put them back-to-back. Indeed, I thought of setting the Dream Theater and Infected Mushroom songs apart to be the dual peaks of the mix, with a lull in between. But when I picked a Dream Theater song that transitioned so well into electronica, I couldn't separate them.

12. Imogen Heap - The Walk

From Speak for Yourself. She's the lead singer for Frou Frou, and indeed, had a solo career before she joined the group. Usually solo work will stray quite a bit from the group work, but in this case, much of the album sounds quite a lot like Frou Frou. It's an excellent album, though — considerably better than Frou Frou's debut. Practically every song is a gem. You may have heard “Hide and Seek” already, and I'm sure “Goodnight and Go” will be a smash hit. I chose this one instead to try and get off the beaten (or soon-to-be-beaten) path. Its intro also happily provides a better transition to help you come down from the Infected Mushroom song. For those of you who really disliked the prog metal and/or psytrance, I imagine her voice will sound like an angel breaking through the clouds.

13. Aimee Mann - She Really Wants You

From The Forgotten Arm, which is her attempt at a concept album, a love story between a John, a drug-addicted boxer, and Caroline. The title refers to the boxing tactic of attacking with one arm while leaving the other one unused but in full view, ready for a surprise strike when your opponent has forgotten about it. Personally, I don't think it's one of the best concept albums (hmm, maybe that would be fodder for a future blog post), but it's still a solid Aimee Mann album — definitely a marked improvement over Lost in Space but perhaps not quite as good as my fave, Bachelor No. 2. And despite being a concept album, all of the songs stand on their own quite well, although it takes several listens to really get into them. Other tracks to check out include “Goodbye Caroline,” “Video,” “That's How I Knew the Story Would Break My Heart,” and the track Andrew included, “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas.”

14. Coldplay - Fix You

From X&Y — which was released with DRM (albeit easily circumventable DRM, but still… DRM is bad). This was a big strike against them, never mind the fact that they're ridiculously mainstream, and I've always considered Coldplay to be a poor man's Radiohead anyway. Still, I really liked the new album, which is good enough for me to stop calling them that. This song immediately jumped right out at me as a good climax to the mix (well, at least until my inclusion of Dream Theater and Infected Mushroom relegated this to more of an aftershock). But if that bridge doesn't send chills up your spine, you are dead. Dead, I say!

15. Kate Bush - Sunset

From Aerial. Whoa. Kate Bush released another album! And, unlike The Red Shoes, it doesn't suck! Life is good. I think I discovered Kate back with The Sensual World but was really grabbed when I explored her earlier stuff. Aerial sounds like a throwback to that era, with maybe a mellower touch. I liked the jazzy feel of this song, which I thought would be good for the “chill-out” part of the mix. The whole album is more of a mood piece, so it's hard to pick individual songs, but another good track to check out is “Nocturne.” I would've included that one instead if it weren't for the double-time section of this track, which I though would nicely echo that of the Death Cab song that helped lead us into the mix

16. Sheryl Crow - Wildflower

From the album of the same name. As I mentioned earlier, I originally wanted a folky Dar song to end the mix, but when that didn't work out, I went with the prettiest song off of Sheryl Crow's new album. Don't be turned off by the overexposure of “Soak Up the Sun” (from her last album, C'mon C'mon). Sheryl is the real deal, and this is one of the best albums of the year.

And that's the disc. Hope you enjoy it (if you have a copy, of course — and if you don't, let me know if you want one).

Stuff that almost made it in (aka Honorable Mention)

Ani DiFranco

Gotta love somebody who thumbs her nose at the record industry and comes away on top. Of course, Ani seems to release an album every day, so I don't even try to keep up. But since I haven't featured her on a mix yet, I checked out Knuckle Down. I like it a lot better than the eclectic Evolve, but not nearly as much as her earlier stuff (I think Out of Range is my favorite by far). And besides, she does make somewhat of an appearance on my mix CD of cover songs doing the backing vocals for Dar's cover of “Comfortably Numb.”

SXSW

I never quite finished getting through all of last year's SXSW tracks they made available via BitTorrent, and so far I've flagged a whopping 63 songs that I liked. Since I haven't finished, I also haven't gotten around to listening to any of these a second time, let alone exploring more work from those artists.

Antwon and the Antwonettes

These guys are soooo overrated, being a one-hit wonder with the gimmicky “Naked Bea Arthur.” They don't even have real drums! That drum-like sound is nothing but Antwon banging on Rich's laptop.

Okay, I'm just being bitter because I didn't think of it before Elke did.

Liz Phair

Yeah, everybody knows what a seminal work Exile in Guyville was, but then how she decided to “cash in” by hiring Avril Lavigne's songwriters, The Matrix, for her 2003 self-titled album. I, for one, didn't mind her adopting Avril Lavigne's sound since I actually enjoy Avril's music, but nothing from the new album grabbed me enough to make the cut (maybe cuz she wasn't working with The Matrix anymore). “Return to Innocence” was close, though.

Bloc Party & Depeche Mode

I enjoyed Bloc Party's latest album, but judging from their stats on Last.fm, they already have a much wider following than many of the other artists I was considering. Ditto for Depeche Mode, which I wanted to include in order to add some more electronic sounding songs in the leadup to Infected Mushroom. I don't know either artist that well anyway.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I loved the soundtrack by Danny Elfman and really wanted to include “Veruca Salt,” but I think it would've stuck out like a sore thumb. Besides, this song really belongs on a mix that also includes “Seether.”

Idlewild

Discovered Idlewild as a recommendation from Last.fm, so I checked out their 2005 album, Warnings/Promises. I enjoyed it, but nothing jumped out at me, as it mostly sounded like a cross between REM and Morissey. I like REM, but not overly so, and I never liked Morissey much. I hear their earlier stuff is supposed to be much better, though.

Others

I'm fond of the Foo Fighters, but like Coldplay, they're a mainstream artist who released their album with DRM. Grr. Coldplay's album was too good to deny, but I don't think this is one of the Foo Fighters' better albums. I also like Alanis Morissette a lot, but her 2005 acoustic redo of Jagged Little Pill didn't actually sound as interesting as the idea did. What I would've liked to see would be for her to redo “Ironic” with lyrics that actually described ironic situations. I really love the Bloodhound Gang's “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo,” especially the video, but I decided this time around to only include songs if I've sampled the entire album. As for Beck, I was never a big fan of his, but I do appreciate his talent and creativity. Still, it seemed like practically every track off of Guero got plenty of airplay, so it seemed kinda pointless.

There was some other stuff as well, but I'll add them to this post later as I remember them.

Other mixes:

Yes, this was a mix CD exchange, so there were other people there:

• Rich Thomas created a data disc of MP3s this time so that he wouldn't have to burn a gazillion discs per person.
• Elke likes Elvis Costello more than I like Tori Amos.
• Courtney mix gets a bit more exotic than your typical pretentious hipster material.

Also, Andrew Thomas (no relation to Rich) and Buzz also made End of Year mix CDs but haven't yet blogged about it as far as I know. I'll post their playlists later if they don't do it themselves.

And there you have it. Again, if you want to buy these songs from the iTunes Music Store, check out my iMix. And as always, if you're curious to see a bigger picture of the music I listen to, check out my last.fm profile.

The economist-wanna-be in me of course would consider this a perverse incentive to write a lot — even if you have nothing to say and even about subjects you don't know anything about. While the political-scientist-wanna-be in me would notice that, like many politicians, I was rewarded for making bold promises that I did not intend to keep. And the journalist-wanna-be-in-me would notice that the blogging medium rewards post-frequency over credibility — much like how journalists are incentivized more by deadlines than really understanding the fields they're writing about. This reinforces the obvious fact that the blogosphere has a long, long way to go from becoming the ideal meritocracy that will unseat traditional media (which is something I admitted even when I pronounced journalism a dying field).

Anyway, I would like to point out that I did actually intend to post every day. I just knew that it wasn't bloody likely with my schedule. Indeed, I was a total idiot and added a class (Beginning Photojournalism) to push my course-load at SJSU to 18 units before realizing it was past the drop deadline. Um, yeah. I guess as an engineer at a startup, I got used to ignoring deadlines as being ridiculously unrealistic. So I get a rude real-world lesson after leaving the real world to go back to school. Go figure.

Also, I ended up spending the bulk of my allotted blogging time working on the write-up for my 2005 Mix CD, which is almost done. Stay tuned for that. No, really. I am almost done. Aw heck, who needs credibility anyway?

So that's why no update so far.

Well, I promised the Top 6 of my favorite kitty photos, so you'll still get a Top 6. I just probably won't finish all 6 within Sweeps Week (“Oh, boo hoo!” you say). And as I have way too many favorite Natalie Portman photos, I'm not going to actually go through the trouble of ranking them. Instead, I'll just upload 6 of them in no particular order. I hope none of you mind (not like you got much choice in the matter).

So, in case you hadn't already noticed, here's a random photo of the hotness that is Natalie Portman. It's not a great quality scan, but I love the picture anyway. And of course, now that I'm obsessed with photography, I now can tell that this is a nice use of depth of field, having her dreamy eyes in sharp focus and the rest of her gradually getting out of focus.

Anyway, here's my number 5 favorite kitty cat photo (yeah, if you've already gone through my Flickr account, all of these will be familiar). Ready? One… two… three… Awwww!

That's all for now! Come back later! How much later? How should I know? That's why they invented RSS feeds.

Aside from that, I know posting more frequently would help, and of course, kitty cats and sex are always money in the blog world (thus the banner). To tie this in with my first and my second obsessions, I think I'll also post my favorite photos my kitty cat, Miette, as well as my favorite photos of the hotness that is Natalie Portman (alas, none of which were taken by me). But to keep y'all coming back, I'm going to spread these out throughout the week. I would do a top 7, but because I'm a day late, I guess it'll be top 6.

So without further ado, here's my Number 6 favorite photograph of my adorable kitty cat, Miette. Click on the photo for a larger version. This was from a few years ago. Isn't she cute? She's soooo cute! Come back for more!

Speaking of cute, stay tuned later today for the Number 6 picture of Natalie Portman.

Gosh, grubbing for traffic feels so degrading.

I didn't see it when it was in the theatres, instead only catching it on the TiVo — yes, for the sole purpose of ogling Kate Beckinsale. I hadn't heard very many good things about it, so instead of sitting down to watch it from start to finish, I just caught it in bits and pieces at a time when I had a spare moment. To my surprise, I found myself swept up in it. The action wasn't all that impressive, especially in a post-Matrix action-film landscape. Indeed, several key fight scenes were over just when you thought they were going to begin. But the plot, while not exactly Hitchcockian, was far more interesting and unpredictable than in your run-of-the-mill action flick. It featured several scenes that I thought I had pegged but ended up going in a different direction than I had expected. And it was all backed with a rich mythology that felt like it had depth well beyond what we were shown. I was looking forward to seeing this history fleshed out in the sequels.

So it is to my great disappointment to have to say that the sequel is pretty much the converse of the first one. Good action scenes, but an absolute joke of a plot.

At first, it seems that the sequel would carry on in a similar vein, as it's unclear at first who the main adversary is going to be, and the identity of one of the major players is not revealed until late in the film. But the resolutions of these questions are disappointingly mundane. And nothing is done to build upon the history and mythology woven by the first film, seemingly overlaying new historical details over the old, essentially ignoring much of the developments of the first film to create a new cliche-ridden story.

Especially because key characters from the first film (like Raze and Erika) are nowhere to be seen in this installment — and with no explanation. Indeed, the fact that this is an epic war between races is hardly apparent as we don't see any of either army. The movie instead focuses purely on Selene and Michael racing against and then battling a powerful new adversary. I've seen numerous Buffy episodes with a far more interesting plot. The feeling you got that the first film was but a small piece of an ambitious larger whole quickly evaporates and you are left with the sense that sequel did not go in the direction intended by the original. And left wondering whether the absence of Kevin Grevioux from the story credits (and cast) has anything to do with it.

That being said, although it sets its sights far lower than the first film, it's still pretty well executed. The acting is not bad. Derek Jacobi steps in to do a nice job in the role of the new mysterious character. Tony Curran does well as elder vampire, Marcus, but his performance suffers in comparison to Nighy's in the first film (and from the fact that the first film over-hyped his eventual introduction). Beckinsale and Speedman do fine in the leading roles, but the first film required much more emotional subtlety of Beckinsale. And yes, she still looks mighty fine in that sexy tight-fitting outfit. And yes, there's the love scene where you finally see her out of the costume — but alas, due to strategically placed limbs and creative camera angles, you don't get to see any of the yummy parts. Don't say I didn't warn you (the scene is still pretty hot, though).

And as I mentioned earlier, the action is far improved. It's still not quite Matrix or Crouching Tiger caliber, but it's considerably closer. And the climax of the film provides you with a genuinely suspenseful, exciting, and yes, climactic scene — a huge improvement over the anticlimactic finish of the first film. The effects are also top-notch, immersing you believably in this world (except perhaps for a weak moment or two). The stylish look of the first is still there as well. But the combat is hampered greatly by a weakness shared by the first one: most of the battles occur between monsters whose capabilities are not fully known to the viewer. So instead of seeing fights with tactical storylines that ebb and flow as the combatants attack and parry, we instead see fights where it's simply not revealed which beast has the superior strength and/or abilities until the winner emerges. It's still exciting in the sense that the viewer doesn't know the outcome, but it feels more akin to a pre-determined wrestling match than a sporting event where the outcome was ever in doubt.

So in a nutshell, if you want to watch a fun action film with a little more skin, a lot more action, and a lot less plot than the predecessor, this is your film (I expect that's true of most of the target audience). It's also a good film for action-film buffs who haven't seen the first film (as I said, it does little to further the storyline and despite that, they still fill in first-timers with a preponderance of flash-back shots along with some expository voice-overs to boot). But if you thought the first film was a pleasant surprise due to the characters and storyline and are looking forward to more, be prepared to be greatly disappointed.

Overall rating: 6 out of 10 cute smiley fishies.

But I do have a few things to say about the whole nomination process.

At his hearings, Roberts sounded the notes of “humility” and “modesty” repeatedly. Over and over, he emphasized the need for judicial deference—to precedent, to the other branches of government, and also to his colleagues on the court. He declined to answer dozens more questions than did Alito. But his casting of himself as a modest cog in a vast and complicated machine afforded real comfort even to those of us concerned about his substantive views.

At first blush, Alito's approach appears simply to be a different flavor of judicial modesty: Where Roberts spoke repeatedly of deference to other institutions, Alito persistently defers to the legal process itself. He tells us, over and over again, that he approaches cases with an “open mind.” He says he would start analyzing any issue by closely scrutinizing the relevant statute. He insists—time and again—that he hasn't yet fully studied the issue at hand and cannot therefore offer an opinion.

Of course, both of these approaches are symptomatic of a process where a candidate needs to be as bland and inoffensive as possible to avoid drawing too much opposition in the confirmation hearings. Any nominee voicing firm opinions on anything would draw instant controversy just like a Natalie Portman draws a fling93. This is how we end up with “stealth candidates” of “humility,” “modesty,” and “open minds” instead of more outspoken candidates.

Tenure

This flaw in the process reminded me of a similar flaw in the tenure process that I brought up in a comment a few months ago at Dan Drezner's blog when he found out he was denied tenure by University of Chicago (by the way, since I keep track of all of my blog comments using del.icio.us, I was able to find it quickly). So, with the caveat that I don't have any first-hand knowledge of the tenure process, this is what I said about it:

It seems to me that tenure hardly resembles a system that was designed by anybody with even a basic knowledge of markets. Just like with SCOTUS nominees, the incentives are to hide all of your political opinions. Is this really a desired quality in the ideal academic?

This is what happens when the goal of candidates is to not get shot down by anybody. The emphasis is moved away from brilliance and towards inoffensiveness…

After all, a brilliant legal scholar voicing strong opinions on abortion would immediately draw loud Democratic opposition (although minority opposition might not seem to matter in terms of the final outcome, a President may have political reasons for the confirmation hearings to not attract much public attention). Similarly any academic candidate known to have strong political views is more likely to draw opposition of somebody on the tenure committee. And it takes strong opposition from just one person to make a shambles out of your chances.

As I said in a subsequent comment:

The process will filter out a lot of outspoken people and those who embrace risk. Why would you want to do that? Heck, a person who desires tenure is likely to already be risk-averse in the first place, because people are rewarded amply for taking on risk in the non-academic marketplace. And as for outspokenness, what's the point of protecting academic freedom of speech if most of the people who gain that freedom aren't bold enough to use it?

The root of the problem is that the process focuses on finding negatives instead of positives. And of course, if you have enough people looking, somebody is likely to find something in almost anybody. Almost. Because potential candidates know about this process, some of them, like Roberts, will make sure to have as little of a paper trail as possible.

And this is true of a good deal of our political process. With all our special interests demanding the right to shoot down anything they object to, we end up with mediocre policies to go along with our mediocre candidates. Policies and candidates that nobody hates — but nobody likes either.

Condorcet

And this brings up yet another reason I hadn't been blogging very often — the Condorcet method. As long-time readers might know, I'd planned a series of posts on electoral reform. So far, I'd covered the problems with plurality and also discussed one alternative, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). I had meant to continue on to illustrate why the Condorcet method and Approval voting were both even better in selecting candidates that satisfied more of the electorate. But then I hit a snag.

Recall that plurality's big problem is that it cannot handle more than two candidates gracefully. A strong third-party showing ends up spoiling the outcome, thus discouraging many excellent candidates from running (for example, McCain could not have run against both Bush and Kerry without handing the election to Kerry). IRV addresses this by using ranked ballots to simulate runoffs, eliminating the weakest candidate one at a time until there is only one left. It does a pretty good job, but is still susceptible to the spoiler effect, albeit to a lesser degree.

Condorcet uses a ranked ballot as well, but instead of performing runoffs, it runs simulated head-to-head races between every candidate (kind of like a round-robin tournament) and selects the candidate who would beat every other candidate (the tie-breaking process is a bit complicated, so I won't go into that here). This does a better job of eliminating the spoiler effect, and my Condorcet post was going to illustrate that.

However, before I could write that post, I came across an argument against Condorcet that was articulated by Professor Matthew Shugart:

As for Condorcet, I must confess to knowing too little about its actual mechanics and how a voter might respond to it. I think a flaw that both Condorcet and approval share is the likely favoring of colorless, offend-no-one candidates. While I dislike plurality…I am no more favorable to a method that encourages candidates to avoid taking any clear stands in order to avoid losing in the simulated one-on-ones…

And he made other good points as well. So I think I'm going to revise my position and endorse IRV ahead of Condorcet (although Condorcet may still be useful in selecting policies instead of candidates — more on that in a future post).

Professor Shugart, by the way, is an expert on electoral systems and has an excellent blog. Be sure to check out his posts on how Proportional Representation (PR) would address our polarized political situation by giving voice to moderates (for more on PR, see the PR Library).

My mistake was to focus purely on the incentives of the voter (Condorcet is one of the least susceptible to tactical voting) and ignore the incentives on the candidates themselves. An important lesson if economics is going to be my field of study (or perhaps this is a sign that I'd be better off in political science?).

Incentives matter

After all, economics is all about incentives. Indeed, I finally read Freakonomics over the holidays. It's that New York Times bestseller by “rogue economist” Steven Levitt along with Stephen Dubner. I thought I'd love it since I'd always had a thing for Rogue from The Uncanny X-Men, but instead I was rather disappointed (my take is pretty much the same as Antonella Pavese's).

I did, however, enjoy the early sections where he talks about incentives and how policies can have unintended consequences due to their effects on incentives. This has long been a fascination of mine (for example, I think economic benefits intended to encourage marriages end up weakening the institution of marriage by encouraging people to marry for bad reasons). I thought the most interesting anecdote of the book was how a day care center tried to combat tardy parents by following the advice of economists and implementing a $3 late fee, which merely caused the tardiness to double because the economic incentive of the fee itself was more than outweighed by the fee's detrimental effect upon the moral and social incentives. After all, the guilt that parents used to feel about being late could now be assuaged by a mere $3.

Likewise, both tenure and the confirmation process of SCOTUS nominees have unintended consequences on incentives. These systems appear to be designed to select candidates that satisfy the interests of those in power. Sounds fine in theory, but just like I overlooked the effect of Condorcet on the incentives on the candidates themselves, so, apparently, did the designers of these processes. And if there's one thing that economics teaches us, it's that incentives matter.

How to fix this?

How would I change things? Well, I need to give this more thought, but my idea would be to shift the focus away from negatives and towards positives. Don't have a process where a tenure review board or a legislature searches for holes and weaknesses, but instead use a broader starting point where everybody involved lists those they think are most deserving. Note that brilliant and outspoken people are much more likely to make such lists, because they are more likely to inspire admiration from some and hatred from others. But avoiding hatred would no longer be a criterion. And nor should it be, lest we want to end up with nothing but flavorless candidates.

This will create a long and varied list, of course. So how do you narrow the list? Well… maybe this would be a good place to use IRV?

And of course, that was topped by the fact that, despite still running a fever of 102, I was going to try and tackle some of the homework on Sunday when I found out that our home PC didn't boot anymore. Instead, I heard the hard drive doing this:

“scritch scritch scritch scritch”

(pause)

“scritch scritch scritch scritch”

(pause)

This repeated over and over again before I finally got a message that Windows couldn't boot because some important file was missing or corrupted. Not good. And a Windows XP reinstall (which I performed despite a temperature of 102) only worked temporarily before I got the same problem again (yeah, it's gotta be a bad drive).

So… no, it was not a good weekend at all. But still, there was a bright side.

But still, things weren't all that bad, and they did get better. I only lost a couple of problems worth in my stat homework, and was able to get enough of it done via paper and pencil to get most of the credit, and I think I did well enough on the finals to ensure solid A's in both classes (I probably could've failed the econ one and still gotten an A). So my night classes are now done, and I have but one more week left of full-time work there. Yay for some breathing room!

And yes, after another several days of lingering coughing and congestion and barely being able to talk, I can finally physically breathe freely again today (although my voice isn't completely back yet). Ahhhhh… Such a relief.

So I think this calls for a celebratory Top Ten list of songs about breathing. I've been in the playlist creating mood for a few months now, with Rich's End of Year Mix CD exchange coming up and also after brainstorming some airplane songs. Also, this playlist idea was actually something I'd actually been putting together for a while. I'll add links to the iTunes Music store and other places later. Anyway, here we go…

10) The Silent League - Breathe

If you've seen my last.fm profile (formerly Audioscrobbler), you know I've been working through last year's SXSW songs that were made available via BitTorrent here. This is one of the keeper songs I found, and it happened to have “breathe” in the title, and so here it goes. That's all I have to say about that.

9) Shania Twain - It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing

From Up! (Red Album), but this is the only song I own off of it. Okay, this song doesn't really fit my situation so much, but the song is so pretty and so is Shania.

9 redux) Melissa Etheridge - Breathe

From Lucky, and again, this is the only song I own from it. Geez, are Melissa and Shania singing the same song? I mean, the chorus to this one is “I'm alright, I'm alright. It only hurts when I breathe,” and from the music it sounds so upbeat and happy. Furthermore, I think both songs were released around the same time (which was the impetus for my thinking up this playlist). Crazy world. This is why I'm cheating and counting these both as #9.

8) Anna Nalick - Breathe (2 AM)

From her debut album, Wreck of the Day, but again, this is the only song I own. She might seem end up being a one-hit wonder, and none of her other songs I sampled caught my ear, but since she's a fan of Tori Amos, I have a feeling she'll be around for more some time. In any case, I like this flowing song as well as the video, and it fits this list quite nicely.

7) Michelle Branch - Breathe

Geez, it's about time I got to a really upbeat one. From her second album, Hotel Paper, from which I only own a few selected songs. I am a sucker for Michelle Branch, and although this is not her best song and was probably somewhat overplayed (I don't listen to radio much, but the fact that I heard it at all is some indication), it's still as catchy as heck, cuz I'm also a sucker for extended high notes with the chords changing underneath, as she does in the chorus.

6) The Prodigy - Breathe

From Fat of the Land, which I'm sure you already own (and should, if you don't). This was the band that finally got me to drop my snobbish snubbing of all music that did not feature a human drummer (well hey, I'm a big Rush fan), and I don't think I'd have given psytrance a chance otherwise. This song was a big hit, so I probably don't need to say much about it.

5) Sia - Breathe Me

From Colour the Small One and Six Feet Under, Vol.2: Everything Ends, neither of which I own. I was thinking of putting this on my 2005 Mix CD, but as I'm thinking it's not going to quite make the cut, I'll give it consolation status by including it here. Yes, this was the song used at the incredible montage ending of Six Feet Under while Claire is driving. I do have to say, the song is not quite as powerful without the visuals, but any fan of the show has got to have it if only because it reminds you of that amazing ending. And it's a pretty darn good song, too.

The iTunes Music Store is poopy about it, only offering it if you buy the whole album (not a palatable option for me since I already owned a lot of the other songs). So I bought it at All of MP3. You prepay $15 (I had problems trying just $10) and can download songs at the encoding of your choice (various bitrates of MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats are available) at only $0.05 to $0.10 each, depending on the file size which is just really cool (and legal, as far as I know). And a surprisingly decent selection.

4) Dream Theater - Just Let Me Breathe

From Falling Into Infinity. Being a classically trained pianist (albeit one who let his skills rust badly), I've always been a fan of progressive rock from the likes of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. It's such a rush (pun intended) to hear technical brilliance of multiple players melded into a complex, yet cohesive, musical mix. And it's so cool to have a great band like Dream Theater soldiering on, melding the sound with a hard metallish edge. John Petrucci is just an amazing guitarist, and this song just rocks.

3) Frou Frou - breathe in (Watkins Vocal mix)

From their excellent debut album, Details. Since Frou Frou is all about Imogen Heap's breathy vocals (combined with Guy Sigsworth's studio skills), they're a perfect fit for this list. While I do appreciate the laid-back version of this song on the album, I've always greatly preferred this uptempo remix. Check it out.

2) Bush - Machinehead

From Sixteen Stone, which I will probably never buy. What, a song without some from of the word “breathe” in the title by a band that shares the name of our President and is little more than a generic Nirvana wannabe? What, is fling smoking crack? Does this mean he's retracting his 8,000-word essay criticizing Bush? Um, no. Chill out, this is just a list of songs, and let's remember that the beginning of this song (yes, by an unremarkable band with a bad name) features a memorably rhythmic “breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.” And it's the part that makes the song, in my opinion.

Well, if I'm going to include a song without “breathe”, I might as well pull a Spinal Tap and crank this Top Ten list up to eleven for that extra push over the cliff and include…

1) Radiohead - my iron lung

A great rocking song from a great band and from The Bends, a great album. Not so much about breathing, but since I can't seem to work in a Tori song, I gotta work in a Radiohead song somehow. It's freakin' Radiohead. Nuff said!

Argh, eleven whole songs and I didn't work in Tori Amos like I did the last time I did this (gosh, that was a long time ago). I mean, the best fit is probably “China” from Little Earthquakes which features the lyric, “I can feel the distance as you breathe” but that just wasn't enough for me to squeeze it in.

Oh well. I was going to suggest anybody else who wants to come up with their own lists of songs about breathing to go ahead, and to also offer a burned CD of this to anybody who might possibly want one (um, assuming it fits), but as you know, Tori Amos not being featured #1 on a fling music list can mean only one thing: the universe is about to cease to exist. Which is too bad, now that I can finally breathe again and was about to embark on a new life journey, and I just know I was surefire bound to attract Natalie Portman's attention any time now.

Oh, wait! I've just received word that I was mistaken! The universe isn't ending, as I previously feared. It's just that hell is freezing over. Well, that's actually way cool. I'll just learn how to play hockey down there. And then create a list of songs about hockey…