Children of the Mind

The feature in iPhone 3.0 that resulted in the biggest change in my life is the little "1X" button when playing podcasts (and audiobooks) that switches to "2X" when pressed, enabling the audio to play back at "double speed". (The pitch is adjusted so there is no "Alvin and the Chipmunks" effect.)

I've found I enjoy listening to most of the long list of podcasts I download in iTunes just as much at 2X. (I've heard Leo Laporte say that some study has shown that retention is higher when listening to audiobooks in this fast mode. Perhaps he was referring to this.) That has resulted in quite a bit more time to listen to audiobooks. So the conclusion of this long-winded introduction is that after only getting through about a quarter of Children of the Mind in five weeks, I got through the rest of it in less than a single week.

I blogged about finishing Xenocide and starting Children of the Mind in "Xenocide". I wrote then that my expectations for Children of the Mind were raised after enjoying Xenocide more than I expected. Unfortunately Children of the Mind continued the streak of Orson Scott Card novels "proving" my thesis in "The tyranny of high expectations".

Unlike Xenocide, there wasn't much interesting science in Children of the Mind (and that's probably what I look for the most in an SF novel). Again, there wasn't much action. [SPOILER WARNING] I was more interested than I might have predicted in the fate of Peter and Wang-Mu (and Jane and Ender), but I found the characters agonizing over each other's fate tiring. And the mystery of the nature of the creators of the Descolada virus is never revealed.

In an afterward to the audiobook written and narrated by Orson Scott Card himself—I believe each of the audiobooks in the Ender's Game series have such an afterward—states that he intends to someday write one more book in this series. Children of the Mind was not so disappointing that I won't want to read that when it comes out. But if the future me reads this blog post first, I advise me not to re-read Children of the Mind before that.

Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Barenaked Ladies

I remember first becoming aware of Barenaked Ladies when CBC Radio began playing If I Had $1,000,000 and Be My Yoko Ono and interviewing the band before the album Gordon was released. I was struck by their humour (Canadian spelling intentional) and their musical skill was evident.

I bought Gordon as soon as it was available, and it's still one of my favorite albums (by any group or artist). It was very popular in Canada, especially with my circle of friends. I've seen them live twice, and enjoyed their improvisation and sense of humor—they seemed to really enjoy performing, playing music and each other's company.

The Wikipedia article on them is very interesting reading. Don't miss the first two paragraphs under "Indie Origins". I searched YouTube and found this short excerpt of their Speaker's Corner performance of Be My Yoko Ono. (See the last paragraph under "Indie Origins".)

I admire the group for the unabashed Canadian references in their music, even after their success in the U.S. They seem proud of their origins, but are not humorlessly patriotic. Growing up in Canada I was always aware of Canadian artists, and it irked me when (it seemed to me) they forced American references into their music as if they were ashamed of where they were from. (I should collect examples of this. I don't think it would be hard to find several.) Now, of course, I realize this wasn't out of shame but was probably a desperate attempt to increase their chances of commercial success south of the 49th.

My father mentioned during my parents' recent visit that the band had broken up. Actually (at least according to Wikipedia), Steven Page has left the group. I'm sorry to hear that—the band of course won't be the same without him—but I wish him and the remaining BNL members good luck in their continued careers. I'll follow them all with anticipation of more good music.

A couple more of my favorite songs of theirs:

• You Will Be Waiting
• Call And Answer

I also recommend their childrens' album Snack Time. I'm always happy to listen to that with the kids. The song The Canadian Snacktime Trilogy i) Snacktime is a lovely tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. And Crazy ABC's is hilarious.

Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Leonard Cohen

The choice for my second RCCotW blog post was easy. Leonard Cohen is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Canadian or not.

I was introduced to Leonard Cohen fairly early, but I guess I wasn't ready for him. A grade 7 a teacher whose name I can't recall (and who I didn't appreciate at the time) split us into groups and had us do a presentation comparing two artists. I wasn't assertive enough at the time to choose two artists I liked (and at 12, if I was aware of the creators of the music, books, movies and TV I enjoyed, I'm sure I didn't think of them as artists), so my partner (who I also don't recall) and I asked (or more likely whined) that we couldn't think of anyone. The teacher suggested two artists that I would enjoy comparing now, but back then I had never heard of: Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood. I'm sure our analysis didn't go very deep—we may not have done much more than describe their biographies and that in addition to them both being Canadian, that they are both poets. I think I recall showing an 8 mm movie about each (that the teacher found).

Unfortunately I missed that opportunity to discover the music of Leonard Cohen. I'm sure I heard it occasionally on CBC Radio, but neither of my parents listened to him so I didn't hear his music around the house.

I finally didn't come to enjoy his music until I heard an interview on CBC with Jennifer Warnes, who was promoting her album Famous Blue Raincoat, which is "a tribute to Leonard Cohen, with whom Warnes had toured as a backup singer in the 1970s." (That must have been late 1986 or early 1987.) I bought the CD (one of the first I bought as I began to replace my vinyl collection) and it became one of my favorites. As so often happens, I over-listened to it until I was tired of it, and I haven't listened to it much since then. (It would be interesting to come back to it and see if I enjoy it.)

I remember raving about it online, and someone else responded that I should really listen to Leonard Cohen himself. Later I remember enjoying the song "Everybody Knows" in the movie Pump Up the Volume (in 1990). But it wasn't until 1993 (or maybe late 1992) that I bought my first Leonard Cohen album The Future. Wikipedia tells me it is one of his most popular, so I guess that makes sense.

Not long after that I bought The Best of Leonard Cohen (and noticed how much his voice has changed since he was young) and later More Best of Leonard Cohen. A couple years ago I bought the soundtrack to the Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man movie, which I haven't seen.

I recommend all of these albums, but I recommend you start with The Best of Leonard Cohen or maybe The Essential Leonard Cohen.

The songs I've marked 5 stars in iTunes are:
Famous Blue Raincoat
Take This Waltz
Hallelujah

And these two tributes from Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man:
Antony's If It Be Your Will
Rufus Wainwright's Chelsea Hotel No. 2

What did I leave out?

Update: I remembered a very good interview of Leonard Cohen with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Geeky things to do on a first-time visit to the Bay Area

A friend of mine is making plans to visit the Bay Area for the first time, and asked me to recommend some things to do here. I explained that now that I have (young) kids, all I could recommend are toddler-friendly places not too far from home in Scotts Valley. (My memory of life pre-kids in San Francisco and San Jose is pretty cloudy.) But I had what turned out to be the good idea to ask for suggestions on the "fun-list" mailing list at work.

I don't think my friend would mind if I described him as a geek. (I'm one too, and I believe we both wear the label with honor.) And he doesn't have a driver's license. Not having a car limits one's choices in the Bay Area. But my co-workers (many of them also geeks, and not into cars) responded with many good ideas:

First a list of places to go or things to see...

In San Francisco:

• California Academy of Sciences ("Night Life" at the Steinhart Aquarium on Thursdays from 18:00-22:00)
• Exploratorium
• SFMOMA
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
• The Cartoon Art Museum
• Alcatraz
• Pier 39
• Musée Mécanique
• USS Pampanito Submarine Tour
• Fisherman's Wharf
• Ghirardelli Square
• Chinatown
• Union Square
• The Castro
• AsiaSF
• Point Break Live!
• Spamalot
• Golden Gate Park
• Get a bike from Blazing Saddles and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and come back by ferry
• Or get a "proper bike" at Pacific Bicycle and try one of these tours (if he's really in good shape he might try riding up the road to the top of the Marin Headlands for an amazing view)

Recommended San Francisco walks:

• Hippie Hill (or DeYoung Museum) <-> Haight/Ashbury
• hippies! druggies!
• Giant Robot
• Kid Robot
• Amoeba Records
• Thrift stores
• If he wants a *long* walk, go all the way to Lower Haight for the urban / hip hop scene and Indian Oven
• Castro <-> Dolores Park
• gays! lesbians!
• upper class shopping
• The Castro Theater, as seen in Milk
• dogs & sunshine in the park
• Valencia St
• hipsters! indie kids! moustaches!
• The Pirate Supply Store (826 Valencia) (this is a must)
• Four Barrel Coffee
• Ritual Roasters
• Spork, Dosa, Herbivore are good dinner places
• Burrito joints

Napa Valley:

• Sonoma Segway
• Segway Napa
  
• Napa Valley Wine Train

On the Peninsula:

• Computer History Museum
• Winchester Mystery House
• Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia
• Stanford Campus

In San Jose:

• Tech Museum of Innovation

Web sites with ideas:

• 511.org
• California Do-It-Yourself Tours (see San Francisco and Berkeley)
• Weird Treasures of the Bay Area
• Free Walking Tours of San Francisco
• Dr. Weirde's Guide to Mysterious San Francisco
• Caltrain Pub Crawl

Some recommended books:

• Stairway Walks in San Francisco
• A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco: Dr. Weirde's Weirde Tours (I have this one.)

Did I leave anything out?

Update: added The Cartoon Art Museum

Update #2: added Segway Napa

Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Blue Rodeo

Several weeks ago I took Gabe to San Francisco to participate with his t-ball team in a "Little League Day" at AT&T Park. Claire had the great idea of Gabe and I driving up Saturday and staying at a hotel so we could get to AT&T Park early Sunday morning for the Q&A with Giants coaches and players. (And then return in the early afternoon to sit in the bleachers with his team for the game.) It was a weekend of firsts for Gabe: riding in a "subway" (the Muni Metro), riding on a cable car, going to the top of a skyscaper, walking through Chinatown, going across the Golden Gate Bridge. Hopefully some of it made some lasting memories.

Driving home after the game Sunday, Gabe fell asleep (and slept all the way home—he was exhausted after a couple long, busy days). I didn't want to listen to my usual podcasts and risk waking him up (as I did on the way up Saturday), so I set my 5-star music playlist to shuffle. I enjoyed listening to a subset of my favorite music, something I don't make time to do very often.

I was struck by how much of it is Canadian. So I came up with an idea for a series of blog posts, each describing a favorite Canadian band or artist. My idea was to do this weekly, but since it has taken me weeks to finish writing up this first post, don't expect them that often. I'll do what I can.

Several of the tracks that played during my drive were by Blue Rodeo, and I've since noticed that there are more songs by them in my 5-star music playlist (13) than any other group or artist. (Runners-up are The Beatles and Louis Armstrong with 9, and R.E.M. with 8.)

I remember first noticing Blue Rodeo when Much Music took a liking to them after they released their first album Outskirts over 20 years ago. Their album with the most songs I've rated 5-stars (5) is Five Days in July, but I've over-listened to that album and need to leave it alone for a few years before I can enjoy it again.

If you buy only one song of theirs, I (currently) recommend Bulletproof from Palace of Gold. But I also recommend...

From Tremolo:

• Falling Down Blue
  
• Dragging On

From The Days In Between:

• Cinema Song
• Sad Nights

(I'm a sucker for ballads.)

Xenocide

Last week I finished listening to Xenocide, over 6 weeks after I started. I blogged about "reading" (listening to) Ender's Game and Ender in Exile in "Pleasures of a poor memory" and about reading Speaker for the Dead in "The tyranny of high expectations". To continue the expectations theme, I'll remind you that I went into this with low expectations. And again, the book exceeded them.

I found this book had the most interesting science of any of the series (so far). And while there wasn't a lot of action, I found certain sections moving, especially [SPOILER WARNING] the description of the riot that burns down the Pequeninos' forest. I found the "creation" and reintroduction of a new Valentine and Peter Wiggin contrived, but towards the end Peter at least began to get interesting.

Now I'm on to the last (audio)book in the series, Children of the Mind. (But a fairly large list of podcasts continue to take priority.) I guess my expectations are higher now. We'll see if they're exceeded.

The tyranny of high expectations

Have you ever suspected that expectations can shape your opinion?

I think I remember first running across this idea while reading a book on skiing about 20 years ago. (I thought it was something like “The Chi of Skiing”—I remember noting that it did not use the more common eastern religion words like “Tao” or “Zen”. But I can’t find it online. Maybe it’s long out of print.) The book talked about avoiding expectations, and instead trying to anticipate. I’ve learned in the 20 years since first encountering that idea that like so many prescriptions for living, this is much easier said than done.

It’s impossible to definitively test the influence of expectations on experience, of course, since we can’t rewind time and re-experience something with different expectations. But it could be statistically measured. It would be interesting to expose one group of people to negative reviews of a movie, for example, and another to positive reviews (and have a control group that knows nothing about the movie) and then analyze their ratings afterward. I suspect that (if most people are like me), negative expectations can often lead to my enjoying something more. (Provided it’s not completely horrid or absolutely great. I think this effect is strongest on shaping one’s opinion of a mediocre experience.)

But enough philosophizing. The reason I bring this up is that I’ve noticed this expectation effect twice lately. Last Thursday, while I was in Chicago for PyCon, I took the afternoon off and walked around the city. As it got late (and as I tired from all the walking) I decided I was in the mood for a movie. (I hadn’t seen one in a couple months.) I chose Watchmen. I enjoyed the graphic novel, which I read last year after I read a glowing recommendation of a friend. (He wrote something like “best graphic novel ever”, or maybe even “best novel ever”.) My expectations were high, especially after I saw that it is the only graphic novel to appear on Time’s “All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels” list. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. (I suspect I would have enjoyed it more without such high expectations.) But I went into the movie with low expectations. I had seen some middling reviews, and heard some of a very negative review on the Slate Culture Gabfest (no. 29) before I skipped it to avoid spoilers. I enjoyed the movie immensely. It wasn’t great. But I had a very good time, and didn’t notice that it was long. I suspect I may not have enjoyed it as much if I had high expectations.

Yesterday I finished listening to Speaker for the Dead. I wrote about listening to the audiobooks Ender’s Game and Ender in Exile a little over a month ago in my Pleasures of a poor memory post. I had completely forgotten it. It was like reading (or hearing) it for the first time. But I had high expectations. I remember noting it as perhaps my favorite SF novel. Sadly, I wouldn’t rank it so highly anymore. Perhaps Orson Scott Card’s observations of human nature aren’t as impressive to me after I’ve acquired 25 more years of experience (and perhaps a tiny bit of wisdom). But I suspect the damping effect of my high expectations had a lot to do with it.

I guess my lesson is that to maximize my enjoyment, I should always expect the worst.

Speaker for the Dead did finish well though. Well enough that I just downloaded Xenocide (the next in the Ender series). I’m going to try not to expect much. (My expectations are lower actually, since I recall the series goes downhill after Speaker for the Dead.)