Review of Smashing Pumpkins Concert

The week of Halloween, I won tickets to go see the Smashing Pumpkins in concert at Constitution Hall in DC. The concert was on Veterans Day, 11/11/08 (they played two shows down there, so if you by some chance saw the other one, which may have been different, maybe what I’m going to say doesn’t apply). Let me just say right off that I’m not a huge fan of the Pumpkins. I have respect for them as musicians, which is why I am willing to see them. But I hate Billy Corgan’s voice, which is why I will never actually pay to go see them. My free seats were pretty good. I was on the floor, but not so far back that I couldn’t see the stage, and not so close that I was wishing I wasn’t.

So we all know that the man is weird. He started the show wearing something that made me think he was trying to be an Egyptian. This long white skirt thing (which he wore for the rest of the concert as far as I could tell) and a gold sun headdress. The thing had to be the size of my 30-lb Corgi, and heavy. He wore it for a few songs, and then took it off. I imagine it’s hard to headbang with something like that on. But when he did take it off, he reminded me a bit of Moby. A little bigger version of Moby. Skinny and bald. I really did expect him to be bigger than that.

The sound was done very well. You could hear each instrument. And it wasn’t all guitars and drums either. There was a trumpet, a trombone, and a flute player. And the flute player was hot. Also, he held the flute like people were going to make fun of him for playing it (I think there may be some issues he has to work out there, but hey, he can do it, he made it this far). The drummer was also hot, but he was usually behind the huge drum kit (which, incidentally, was very well micced. I would love to know what kind and how they used their microphones on that puppy). He came out a few times from behind it – to play the tambourine – and also, apparently, to show off his muscley arms.

The lights – not so much. They seemed to have been prepared for a much larger, maybe outdoors-type, facility. The lights were loud, bright, and colorful. But also, there was this repetitive, colorful, strobe-light-the-audience effect that I did not appreciate. A lot of the time I had to keep my eyes shut to prevent a migraine; I can only imagine if I were prone to seizures what could have happened. It was nice though, that there was no smoke machine. As a person with asthma, those things can cause me to have to actually leave.

The musicians were all very good (BC’s voice notwithstanding). I have learned to live with the voice. And he didn’t sing the whole time. Sometimes he actually played for 10 straight minutes - and you thought this is nice - and then he would sing again. What was strange to me though, because I have never, ever, experienced this before in any concert that I’ve been to, is that he played for the first hour and a half. I mean played. No talking, no break, just played. It was like a feat of stamina. I don’t even know if he took a break for water (which he definitely did afterwards). It was weird. There were the people in the audience, those people who annoy the crap out of me, that act like they are the only ones at the show, who know every line to every song, and dance and jump, and pump their fist like they are the only ones there (that’s what mosh pits are for people!). And after 1.5 hours of music, BC was still hopping around stage, and they were tired. That was cool to see, but other than that it was just plain weird.

After the 1.5 hours there was a few minute intermission (water break) and something I can only assume was vocal/mouth exercises. BC was 1)beatboxing and 2)making the popping sound that you practice as a teenager to impress your friends, only he did it up on stage in front of everyone. And then he passed it off as a song he made up, right there on the spot, just for us. Which just goes to show you that he is just as weird in a normal way as the rest of us, but not afraid to share the normal weirdness either. Which I find reassuring.

But what followed that was this ten minute screechy-screechy thing (evolution? Is that one of their songs?) that was so awful I about left in the middle of it. When they were done angsting, things softened out and I was glad that I had stayed. I do appreciate the range of their musical ability. I mean, the fact that they can get up there and do what they do, and have that many people pay them for it has to say something.

And now, I have to confess that I only lasted for 2 hours. I have no idea how long the concert went. But they’re job is to be up there on that stage, and I got there for free, so I feel like I got what I paid for. I am glad that I went to see them. And although I may never love the Pumpkins, I can appreciate them and I definitely respect them as musicians.

License Plates

In the past week I have run across two license plates that I think are worth mentioning, if only because they keep running across my mind. Perhaps by posting them I will be able to get them out of my brain. They are both MD plates, so limited to 7 letters.

The first one is "DA TRUF" found on a little yellow sports car, occasionally parked in my apartment complex. I guess it's supposed to be "Da Truf" as in, "You can't handle ---- -----". But to me, it looks more like "Rhymes with 'tough.'" (New Kids on the Block anyone?) And that's how I hear it in my head any time I see it.

The other one I saw on 97 heading towards Annapolis this past weekend. It read "SQRLKER". Now, as I drove on and on and on towards Tuckahoe State Park (weekend destination, take your dog! take your horse!), I pondered the possible meanings of this plate:
- Square liker
- Squirrel liker
- Squirrel licker
I realize that there are not two "L"s in the license plate. But, honestly, it seems more reasonable to have a personal plate about squirrels than squares.

Other suggestions welcome.

Remember those Balloons?

I remember in elementary school, every spring we would release balloons. We would write our name and school address on them, and have this school-wide balloon-releasing fete. It was so awesome, watching all those colored balloons float away, polluting the rivers and streams and trees. Since it was a rural school with lots of trees, most of them probably never even left the school grounds and got stuck in trees to bother local birds. But some made it to other states even, with their postcards, to be mailed back by whoever found them. And they got put up on a map for all the school to see. None of mine ever got found or mailed back. And now they no longer do this, due to concerns for the environment. One less tradition to share with my daughter. (I have, however, managed to find a CD-ROM of Oregon Trail. So, if I can get my old computer running and keep it running until she is old enough to read, we can spend hours trying to kill those pesky squirrels.)

Moving on. Apparently scientists are still creative. Some of this suspected this all along (but hey, we might be prejudiced). Anyway, NASA scientists are working with other scientists around the world to study global warming, particularly in the Jakobshavn Glacier of Greenland. Basically, they want to know where the melting water is going. Their prediction is Baffin Bay, but the high-tech probes that were supposed to confirm this failed. So, instead, they launched a brigade of 90 rubber ducks labeled "with an e-mail address and the words "science experiment" and "reward" written in English, Danish and the native Inuit language." Personally, I think this is awesome, and I hope it works. We'll see where they end up.

I hope they have better luck than I did with my balloons.

Secrets of the Universe, eh?

Well, I'm getting reactionary, older and wiser, or sophomoric. Anyway, this week's article is entitled, "Sept launch for bid to crack secrets of universe" (Reuters, August 7, 2008). Ok, so I understand the need to be dramatic to sell news. But what the particle accerlator supposedly will do is this (again, more quoting), "help explain fundamental questions such as how particles acquire mass. They will also probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe and investigate why there is more matter than antimatter."

So, are these indeed the fundamental questions? What about the ones on my list:
- Why do men think differently than women? (i.e. directions, feelings, raising children, having children, etc. etc. etc.)
- What is it about young children and "why" questions?
- What are people irresitibly attracted to accidents?
- Are humans intrinsically good or evil?
- What, exactly, is the soul? (Do animals have one? If so, what animals? Primates? Lower animals?)
- What makes humans different than animals?

Okay, so I know that a particle accelerator cannot answer these questions for me. But the article writers really shouldn't get my hopes up like that.

Who Cares About Kevin Bacon?

So I just read this article in the Washington Post, confirming that anyone on earth is only about six (in reality its more like seven) degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Ignoring for a moment the facets of Kevin Bacon that make him, to me, a eerily creepy individual (I'm sure he's a nice guy, but there's just something about him...), let's go to how the grand conclusion was made.

Researchers initially did this through mathematical computations (ok).

And then decided to confirm it with a month-long study of our Instant Messaging habits.

The study was conducted by Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec, and published in June 2007. They state that they did not have access to the content of the IMs, but instead, " (1) user demographic information, (2) time and user stamped events describing the presence of a particular user, and (3) communication session logs, where, for all participants, the number of exchanged messages and the periods of time spent participating in sessions is recorded."

Does this freak anyone else out? How did they obtain this demographic information, etc.? Was I unintentionally a part of this study? I don't want to be anywhere near Kevin Bacon, period. Thank you.

Okay, now that I'm done ranting, they did find some interesting things:

1) Some IM conversations contained more than 50 participants (I cannot even imagine that. I can't imagine even a normal conversation with that many people. I would actually like to see the demographic for that conversation. I imagine it is teenyboppers, but that's just me).

2) Of course, 99% of the conversations were between only 2 people.

3) One of the pitfalls of many experiments is the lack of large enough sampling size. In this study, this does not seem to be the case. Need proof? "We gathered data for 30 days of June 2006. Each day yielded about 150 gigabytes of compressed text logs (4.5 terabytes in total). Copying the data to a dedicated eight-processor server with 32 gigabytes of memory took 12 hours. Our log-parsing system employed a pipeline of four threads that parse the data in parallel, collapse the session oin/leave events into sets of conversations, and save the data in a compact ompressed binary format. This process compressed the data down to 45 gigabytes per day. Processing the data took an additional 4 to 5 hours per day."

4) For users submitting an age (6.5% chose not too), the age group of 15-35 represents a larger share of the IM population when compared to the planetary population. See the chart pictured for a comparison with the world population (The bars are IM population; the lines down the center world population).


5) Some population demographics: People tend to talk to people of similar age, and older people tend to talk longer. People who are further apart geographically communicate via Messenger more often than those who are closer. Also, people tend to communicate more with people of the opposite gender.

6) The average social distance (i.e. degrees of separation) was measured to be seven between IM users. The longest social distance measured was 29.

They took their information during the month of June 2006. Think to yourself now, were you using IM during that time? If so, you were a part of this study.

So, how many degrees from Kevin Bacon are you? And are you ok with that?

Bees, All the Way

I can remember the last time, before this year, when I was stung. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but it was around seven or eight. I was at my grandparents house in CT, playing tag with my cousins. We were running around their yard, and I fell down in the front yard. I landed on the bee. With my knee. I remember my Aunt D, the nurse, scraping the stinger out and putting a paste of baking soda on it, and laying on the couch with my leg up. But I didn't blame the bee. After all, I landed on it, it didn't try to sting me on purpose.



Last month, I was sitting in my truck doing paperwork, and all of a sudden my bum started to really, really hurt. Enough that I thought I was sitting on something sharp, only I also started feeling naseous. Apparently, a bee had wandered in through my open windows, and I had unknowingly sat on it. Like any good biologist, I did not remove the stinger. And I was not near any ice, so it didn't get ice until at least 20 minutes later. However, besides the stomach issue, there weren't any problems. I was fine by the next day. But I put the dead bee on my dashboard as a warning to other bees.

So, this week. My daughter was out on the patio painting. I went out to see how she was doing. And a yellow jacket (there were a bunch flying around, I have no idea how she didn't get stung) comes out of the bottom corner and attacks my hand. I was a bit angry I guess, and thinking, as it is placing it's stinger in my hand "I don't want it stinging me again, I'd better take it out" I smack it, rendering it dead, and also stuck in my finger. At this point my daughter has noticed the yellow jackets and is a little, well a lot, hysterical. Meanwhile, I've got a bug stuck in and on my finger, and lots more flying around, and a 4-year-old to try to get inside, and lots of pain. After a few minutes of screaming (I would have picked her up, but I only had one hand and she's rather tall for a munchkin), I got her inside and went inside myself. Then I removed the stinger and put ice on, and went back outside for the painting supplies, which were the cause of the hysteria (you try explaining to a hysterical 4-year-old that the "bees" aren't going to hurt her paints).



So, my finger gets all swollen and red. And stays that way for the next 2 days. And itches and hurts. And my hand starts to also swell, and the next finger too. Also, I am still naseous. At this point I'm thinking that this is not an ordinary sting. After a Saturday trip to the doctor, all my worrying and whining about the pain is vindicated. I have an infection. Now, not only was I viciously attacked by that insect, it infected me, and after I did all the correct things. What's the deal? Give me the bees anytime. They are much nicer, and apparently less full of bacteria, at least in my limited (2-to-1) experience.

What is a pet?

Courtesy of the PA State Parks website:

A house pet is limited to any dog or cat commonly kept in household captivity, or a caged pet.

A caged pet is an animal that will not be released from its cage for the duration of its stay in the state park, like birds and hamsters.

A pet is not livestock, like horses, cows, pigs, sheep and goats.

A pet is not a vicious or dangerous animal, like any animal with a history of attacking without provocation.


So, hey, take your hamster camping!