A Thousand Suns

I'm not a music connoisseur. I like my Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and even a little Justin Bieber once in a while (one million screaming teenagers couldn't be wrong, could they?). I'm pretty bourgeois and if you were looking for something that was musically "edgy" or "hip" I'd have to point you to a couple other friends who are much more discerning (i.e. picky) than I. But that's not to say that I'm with out taste. :) I recently picked up the new LP album. Awesome. The new Linkin Park album is beautiful, stirring, passionate. I don't share the same political views as LP but there latest offering is compelling, courageous, hopeful, imaginative, passionate… Things that I embrace as fundamental to what it means to be human. Most folks aren't into the rap/rock, nu-metal genre which LP is known for so the initial reaction might be that they would never listen to A Thousand Suns. But part of the courage of this album is that LP moves away from the sound that they are known for: the music is still LP but most tracks are unlike Meteroa and Hybrid Theory. A Thousand Suns is a concept album, meaning that the album is to be taken in as a whole; the separate tracks, unlike most albums, are closely related to one another. ATS is about to war. It moves from the frightening to the sorrowful to the wrathful and, finally, to the hopeful. The album is a little less than 48 minutes long. If you want to listen to it, I recommend listening to it when you have time to just sit and listen. Some highlights:

• ATS has some memorable and historical sound bites from Mario Savio, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Oppenheimer mixed in. Oppenheimer's quote in The Radiance is particularly eerie.
• I love the piano mixed in with the choral background in Robot Boy.
• Iridescent has this soaring chorus at the end that reminds me of ColdPlay.
• Wretches and Kings: It's Rage 2.0. Awesome.

I've been reading several reviews: people either love it or hate it. Part of the criticism is that LP seems to have eschewed it's roots by pursuing a more pop-friendly sound. That's debatable, though LP is more accessible, there's enough screamo, rap, and drums to keep many people away. Part of genius is surfacing this dichotomy of love and hate. I've been listening to it over and over for the past half week and I am consistently reminded how meaningful this album is. It reminded me of why I love Rage Against the Machine. These people care about their music and they think their music can change, not just individuals, but humanity.

Family Portraits

Make your own: Kim & Kim @ BigPicture

Being in College

This semester I'm taking two "non-language" classes. The hope is that I'll be able to practice my listening and speaking in contexts that aren't exclusively language focused. This is, obviously, a little harder than my usual language class but it's more fun since I get to see language in action.

My first class was my computer science class. The first thing I noticed was the relationship between the teacher and the students. First, she lectured them about coming in on time (they still come in late). It's interesting how most of these students are 18 or 19 (or 20) but they still get treated like seniors or juniors in high school. There was this one point where she basically said: "I know you guys are all lazy..." and I totally snorted in class and these girls stared at me. Haha.

Second, a lot of the interaction reflects a rote learning style. The teacher asks a question, and if the answer is obvious, everyone answers in semi-unison. Or if the teacher is repeating a point, she'll ask a question and then proceed to answer it herself with everyone joining in unison.

There is a complete emphasis on practicality. This is fine, but when I was in college the emphasis was completely different. There was an attempt to make the concepts taught language agnostic and we used an "unpractical" language (Scheme) to get us to focus on the concepts instead of the implementation. The emphasis on practicality means that they talk a lot about C language constructs, how to use Borland's C compiler and the importance of programming in Windows. The computer lab totally reflects this emphasis on practicality: there's no internet access in it and the machines are all running these old (probably pirated) copies of XP with old copies of Visual FoxPro, Visual * programming tools, Borland, etc.

It made really thankful for UNIX and how I got started on UNIX; I felt a lot of the concepts and tools learned were useful in a way that transcended the specific idiosyncrasies of each tool. I certainly don't feel that way here.

As we think about developing relationships and possibly hiring here, it makes me a little apprehensive; there was a huge learning curve for me in going from the university to working. I appreciated the work ethic (e.g. staying up all night, being committed to deadlines, etc) that being at Cal gave me (I was a lazy bum in high school). With all the culturally acceptable plagiarism here as well as varying degrees of work ethic, I hope we can find the right folks to network with here.

Basketball class... that's for another post!