From Big Al to Sweets to Killa Keith

If you're familiar with popular music nowadays, you'll know that the program Auto-Tune is really popular. Originally designed to clean up and fixed errors in performances, it is used to deliberately alter an artist's voice. T-Pain is an example. I actually like the effect.

Of course that means parodies of the promulgation of the voice effect. Here are two videos I found on YouTube. They apply Auto-Tune to their news parody for comedic effect. First video is on the men's basketball championship (go TarHeels!), Joe Biden, the economy and the Pentagon. The second is on gay marriage, drug legalization, the Somali pirates, Katie Couric and global warming.





update: another parody; (nsfw; explicit lyrics)

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous (who's only a few years older than me, guess I'm getting old) was on C-Span Monday. Haven't watched the whole thing, but what I saw I really enjoyed.

http://cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=WJE-A-15523

So a writer for Forbes magazine got the weird idea that Rock Band ripped off Guitar Hero. Or rather, in his words, "EA also teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band, a shameless knockoff of Guitar Hero that added drums, bass and a microphone to the world of make-believe rock stars." Of course he was really wrong, but even after hundreds of people wrote in to correct him, he refused to acknowledge his error.

The facts: Harmonix was the original developer of Guitar Hero, specifically Guitar Hero I, Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. Red Octane published the games. In the summer of 2006, Activision acquired Red Octane and the Guitar Hero title. Development for Guitar Hero was taken over by Activision's Neversoft. Harmonix, the original developer of Guitar Hero, was acquired by MTV. EA teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band. How could the Harmonix developers knock off their own product? In fact, if anything is a knock-off, it's Guitar Hero World Tour, the newest version from Activision. Regardless, both were predated by several years by Konami, who released GuitarFreaks and DrumMania. These games from Konami allowed session linking, so a drummer, guitarist and bassist could play at the same time. There was even session linking with the short lived Keyboardmania, allowing up to two keyboardists to join in on a limited song set. All this information was found with minimal searching on Google about Guitar Hero.

Plus, Stephen Colbert plats Rock Band, so there!

My man Tavis Smiley was on Washington Journal yesterday morning talking about the America I AM exhibit, a touring museum chronicling 400 years of struggle and achievement of African-Americans. It starts off in Philadelphia's Constitution Center. He talked about stuff like reparations, the mythical "post-racial" America, blacks in journalism, holding America and people in power accountable, hypocrisy, and of course Obama.

"A true patriot. is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins."--Frederick Douglass

I came across this interesting article about academics and athletes. Specifically, it looks into how the GPA and SAT/ACT scores of athletes across the board are lower than their peers. It talks about what the requirements and standards should be for student-athletes, the fairness of the special admission standards for athletes, whether or not this means jocks are dumb or if they are just highly focused on athletics rather than academics. Programs with high academic standards like UNC and UVA have high academic performing athletes, but they too lag behind their institution peers. Women are closer to their peers than men, and football players are the worst of the sports programs. Georgia Tech is the best of the BCS schools, but even that is not much to brag about. To quote the article:

"Georgia Tech’s football players had the nation’s best average SAT score, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0 in the core curriculum. But Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower on average than their classmates."

Some things just never change. After a college student from Kansas returned some shoes to his local Journeys store, he noticed on his receipt that the clerk had selected a racial slur as the reason for the return. Even more disturbing was that the option was selectable. It was programmed into the application.

http://www.kmbc.com/video/17768384/index.html

So, Senator Diane Feinstein wants to crack down on people selling fake tickets to Obama's inauguration in January. I'd like to go to DC, though I know I won't be able to get a ticket. I'd probably go just to be a part of the atmosphere and witness history. I remember listening to GWB's inauguration speech because I was on my way to the mountains to go skiing.

Tickets are free, demand is high, the number available is. That of course leads to selling of free tickets at their free market value (aka ticket scalping), and scams. I think Feinstein has a good idea. In the best situation they would merely need to say "hey folks, tickets are free, don't pay for tickets unless you're sure they're legit. there's a good chance tickets for sale are fake. you've been warned." After all, why should we give Joe the Ticket Scalper a hard time? Caveat emptor, buyer beware, as Judge Joe Brown likes to say. Joe the Scammer, he's the one to watch out for.

The election was crazy. Didn't realize I'd be so excited, but when CNN announced that Obama had won, all I could do was smile. How many more kids can now truly believe they too can become President? When they say they want to be President, I can say "Yes You Can!" I also smile for those that didn't make it to see this day. My parents have told me of how they went to segregated schools (elementary, middle and high) in the late 50s and early 60s. After all, they did grow up in Alabama. I can only imagine what it was like for my recently passed grandma. If only she could have made it a few more weeks, but it w as not meant to be.

I do find it curious that some people are upset Obama got 95% of the black vote, saying that black people voted for him solely because he is black. That Colin Powell supported Obama only because he is black. They seem to forget that Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes garnered limited support during the primary season. Or that Hillary Clinton had support from prominent Congressmen in the Congressional Black Caucus like Charlie Rangel, Alcee Hastings, Kendrick Meeks, Stephanie Tubbs Jones (she was Clinton's National Co-Chair until she passed away in August), Diane Watson, Maxine Waters, Sheila Lee Jackson, etc. They did not back Obama until after Clinton conceded. Or that Al Gore and John Kerry also got over 90% of the black vote.

I just came across an article by Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000, with has some words of wisdom for those in the McCain-Palin camp.

My dad hadn't celebrated his birthday back home with his mom since he left for the military some 40+ years ago.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33912425@N00/sets/72157608435849783/

R.I.P. Grandma. Just got back from my flight to Phenix City, AL, where they held her funeral.
http://www.legacy.com/ledger-enquirer/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=119260630

Embedded video from CNN Video

Saw this link today for a personality disorder test, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Turned out about how I expected, with a few exceptions. Moderate schizoid and histrionic, but low anti-social? Schizoid means I prefer to be alone, do not secretly wish for popularity, but histrionic means I constantly seek attention. Here are my "results"

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid	Low
Schizoid	Low
Schizotypal	Low
Antisocial	Low
Borderline	Low
Histrionic	Low
Narcissistic	Low
Avoidant	Low
Dependent	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive	Low

I meant to post this back in January when I first heard this podcast, but I forgot. It's from one of my favorites podcasts, Dave and Joel: Fast Karate for the Gentleman. The catalyst for this episode of the podcast is the supposed "sex scene" in the video game Mass Effect, but they easily and often get sidetracked. Dave and Joel deduced that if a president were to reveal they were not human, Barack Obama would be an alien overlord and Hillary Clinton would be a werewolf!

It came up this weekend. We were talking about the debates, and someone mentioned (jokingly) how we should be afraid of Obama. He's a "terrorist" and doesn't share our "values." I replied that no, it's because he's an alien plant overlord.

The whole thing is pretty good, but I broke it down by topic if you only want to listen to certain parts...

0:00 - Clip from Fox News on Mass Effect
1:49 - Intro; Burritos and Processed Foods
3:50 - Previous Show Review
5:25 - Mass Erect or Mass Sex-effect?
6:30 - Video Game Controversies; Internet Vigilantism; Fake Apologies
11:25 - Hookers; Freedom of Speech; George Washington & Thomas Jefferson
13:00 - Fox News responsibility; Video Game Sex Scenes
15:05 - Alien Races; Space Travel; NASA MMO
18:35 - Alien Chicks; Mind Control; Obama & Hillary Part 1
23:20 - Werewolves vs Vampires; Nintendo Light Gun
25:25 - Gender Equality (Real Life and Video Games)
29:18 - Fox News mistakes; Space Jews; Space Suits
33:25 - Wrap-Up; Obama and Hillary Part 2
34:30 - Outro Song "I Got a Crush on Obama"; Post Outro

I was interviewed and quoted for an article in the DTH about Student Congress. It was only in the online version though. Despite the one long meeting two weeks ago and one long meeting in the Spring, the time commitment hasn't been that bad. My committee doesn't meet that often, so it all works out fairly well.

http://www.dailytarheel.com/online_extras/online_exclusives/elections_to_determine_student_congress_seats%252C_homecoming_royalty

Aussie boy breaks into zoo and feeds animals to the crocodiles!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27005221/

Not really stupid. Just really freaking long. It went from 7pm-11pm tonight. Had to approve a whole bunch of nominations for people to serve in University committees, then even more time to approve funding requests. The nominations don't occur every time, so the next meeting shouldn't be as long. And apparently 4 hours for what we did was pretty fast! Ugh.

So, I decided to get back into Scouting. I'm helping with Troop 55 in Durham. They're based out of White Rock Baptist Church, the church from Durham that I went to New Orleans with back in the Spring. Got to go out and buy a new book and uniform.

Yes, I didn't intend for a 4 month hiatus. But now I'm back. And to kick things off, here's a little Jon Stewart.

Also, a weird burglary.

I decided to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. I haven't done a fund raiser in recent memory, so we'll see how it goes. I need to ask my parents who all in our family has survived or died from cancer, as I actually don't know.

Just now filed my taxes. I waited until even later than usual; typically it's the beginning of April when I file. I tried using eSmartTax.com, since it is one of many free sites linked to by the IRS. I used them two years ago and it all went well.

I started last night, filling out my form, and the federal return was meager. Chump change. I forgot my previous return, and I needed that to electronically file (all e-file systems use your previous gross income when generating your new e-file signature). I, of course, waited until this morning to finish since I was so close to being done. I filled out the e-signature and went to the state tax form. Turns out I'd owe over $1000 since I didn't pay NC taxes on my internship in Pennsylvania! That didn't sound right at all, so I went to the TurboTax website and used their free form. My dad sent me a free TurboTax CD last year and that also turned out well, so they seemed like a reasonable second opinion. At least, the federal part is free; the state form you have to pay to file. I got a much larger federal refund and a much smaller amount due to NC. It still turns out to be a net loss, but on the order of $100 rather than $1000. I didn't file Pennsylvania taxes (not 100% sure if I needed to), but I did fill out the form and it turns out I paid exactly what was due: no refund or rebate from them. I couldn't tell if I had to pay extra to file with extra states or what, so I'll just roll the dice.