on the real source of the american economy...

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Just shoot me - Cringely on technology:

Last night I was surfing the web and came across a news story titled Ten Things Americans Waste the Most Money On from a web site called 24/7 Wall Street. I’ll save you the trouble of reading the story: we Americans waste our money (in monetary order from most to least) on restaurants, gifts, audio/video equipment, pets, hotels, entertainment admission fees, alcohol, sporting goods, tobacco, and apparel. Or in other words eating, having family and friends, enjoying music, having a dog or cat, experiencing the world, knocking back a dirty martini, exercising, and replacing our worn-out clothing is a frigging waste of money.

Just shoot me.

If we didn’t spend all that money what would happen? The way the folks at 24/7 Wall Street evidently see it, we’d be better-off because we wouldn’t be wasting so much money. Of course being such careful spenders would not only make us dull and uninteresting as Hell, it would also destroy our economy.

Great advice coming from a financial site.

on sound in film

Renewable Music: Oscar rant obligato:

I do listen closely to sound editing and mixing, however, and find, as a composer, that the sound design is often the most interesting, subtle, and complex part of a film. As far as I'm concern, last year presented some classic examples of mainstream sound design done both very well and very poorly, particularly in the mix. But my ideas of what works or doesn't in a sound track seem to go against the grain: Inception took both sound Oscars this year, but boy, I thought it had a dog's breakfast of a mix.

I'm probably getting old, but increasingly I'm finding the sound levels in films to be overwhelming. If the original mix is muddy and indistinct (or filled with uninteresting elements), adding more volume (and more subwoofer) to the room is not going to help it.