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Posts Tagged ‘music’

unbecoming expert

In edumication, essays, science on 22 November 2008 tagged art, artists, careers, credentials, education, expert, expertise, music, pop-music, professions, science, scientists with no comments

The idea that knowledge can be effectively broken down into categories is deeply rooted in our attitudes about the world. We taxonomize knowledge and skill very early on, and we see it everywhere. Driven by the increasing economic pressure for specialization and the fundamental role we let career play in defining our identity, [...]

overheard in 4-251

In slush on 20 November 2007 tagged college, music, overheard, physics, schooling, TA, university, violin with no comments

I know these are normally depressing, but this exchange between a girl and her TA was heartening:

G: Yeah, logs are pretty fantatsic.
TA: They’re pretty cool.
G: They made playing violin more fun.
TA: How do logs connect to playing the violin?
G: The notes that you play, on the string, where they are proceeds logarithmically. 1
TA: No way.
G: [...]

i realized something obvious–

In slush, technology on 16 October 2007 tagged last.fm, music, music-genome-project, pandora, recommendation-services, regina-spektor, vanessa-carlton with 1 comment

So, most people agree that music recommendation engines aren’t so great (or at least, not consistently). That’s fine by me: I don’t really expect them to be. I’m looking to find music I haven’t heard before so that I can deliberately explore specific artists.
But, I was listening to the “Regina Spektor” station on [...]