I didn't read that article, but the two paragraphs linked infuriate me at least as much as Gladwell does.
And not just because they used the magic acronym-of-infuriation "fMRI" (or, I guess "f.M.R.I."), either.
Infuriate? But why? The quoted paragraphs made me think this was terrific insight to transform my teaching, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise...
It's because you get all the answers wrong on the fMRI test, isn't it?
Heh, as a not very good non-professional musician, I pretty much do do the things listed. I focus a lot on technique, go through periodic reappraisals of the same, etc. I'd be willing to bet my friends who just play music are easily better players in _many_ ways [technical and non-technical], and have more fun. So colour me skeptical.
Oh, so many reasons.
First: referring to a part of the brain responsible for "conscious decision making". Second: using fMRI data to back up a set of forty year old studies. Third: promoting a simplistic and overly reductive model of skill acquisition as if it is fact. Fourth: mentioning fMRI, like, at all, in a non-scientific context.
That's just scratching the surface, really.
Anybody else work somewhere that instituted a program of CQI, which stands for Continous Quality Improvement? This reminded me of that.
Oooh, is Gladwell going to show up here? He's shown up on some of the legitimate academic blogs in the past year or so, but we're probably too lowbrow (or something, there has to be a better word) for that.
7: To live out this program I will improve comment 7 by spelling "Continuous" correctly.
A few years ago there was a PDF which circulated on some music blogs and written by some geek engineer on practice methodology for piano that seemed to employ similar principles. It was, tbh, a pretty useful read in that it made explicit the sorts of principles that I imagine most self-taught musicians largely develop anyway.
I expect 6 gets it right re: the article, though.
Like, if you were to sum things up (as nosflow did) by saying "in order to keep getting better at something, you need to find ways to challenge yourself and focus on what you still cannot do perfectly", then that's fine! It's the bullshit armchair psychology that annoys me.
Somebody invented a term for the misuse of neuroscience jargon to make a point seem more convincing, but I haven't been able to find it.
8.10:Maybe if I slander or libel him.
Gladwell is a yellow absentee war correspondent!
There.
Somebody invented a term for the misuse of neuroscience jargon to make a point seem more convincing, but I haven't been able to find it.
Isn't that the same as misuse of any scientific terms. I should be able to find that.
The quoted paragraph is very close to my understanding of how chess players get to title-level. Endgame studies, the search for theoretical novelties, a self-examination that goes beyond the mistakes to find the reasons mistakes are made, like overconfidence.
Oh I am enraged now. Surely a society which allows its Sunday magazine articles to be posted online the Tuesday before print publication can not much longer thrive. I simply will not read NYTM magazine articles in any format but print, so if you want my invaluable response to this material, I'm going to have to ask everyone to stay on topic until Sunday morning. Although to be fair, I usually read the front page, Week in Review and Sunday Styles before I tuck into the magazine, and then often the crossword first, so let's say Sunday afternoon.
Sifu, if you want to give me some leads on non-simplistic and just reductive enough models of skill acquisition, that'd be downright swell of you.
K-sky's rage versus Tweety's fury.
Which is more justified? Which burns hotter? How would their fMRIs compare?
I would say something insightful, but I write blog comments on autopilot now. No conscious reasoning is behind the words you are reading at this moment.
I simply will not read NYTM magazine articles in any format but print
And don't get me started on ATM machines. Ahem.
19: What can do we do to engage the part of essear's brain responsible for conscious decision-making?
15: Josh Waitzkin makes many of the same points in The Art of Learning. It's kind of an annoying book, because it's stuff you've heard before (much as the excerpt seems to be), yet presented as jewels of wisdom from this child chess prodigy turned tai chi master. I mean, yes, we've heard about this before; the difficult bit is actually implementing this process. Getting people to stick with it would be impressive.
17: I don't know enough about it, at all. This review seems like it might delve into some of the details of the way of thinking pioneered by Fitts and Posner (and actually talks in an approximate way about what experiments have been done), but that I think doesn't really scratch the surface of the work that's been done.
16 gets it exactly right. Well, except for 16.last, which is all kinds of wrong. (You start with the magazine.)
Fourth: mentioning fMRI, like, at all, in a non-scientific context.
What do you have against fMRI work?
23: If some topic takes 27 pages of journal space to scratch the surface, I'm not about to rule out reading the over-simplified version in the Sunday paper.
Surely a society which allows its Sunday magazine articles to be posted online the Tuesday before print publication can not much longer thrive.
By contrast I really liked the cover article in the March Harper's, but I can't send a link to anyone because they have the February issue up on their website (granting that Harper's doesn't make much of their content available).
So I encourage everyone to look for the article.
I just finished the article. Most of it is not about neuroscience. There is science in the background, but Foer's training methods are more like scientific management for personal memory than cognitive science.
Or maybe I've forgotten the more science heavy parts.
17: Lots of related stuff in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Sifu's brain is hard-wired to be infuriated by popular conceptions of neuroscience.
Some say, Sifu's brain is hard-wired to be infuriated by popular conceptions of neuroscience.
The media thread has convinced me of the wisdom of the "objective" approach.
My guess is that the 10k hours thing is just because most people start doing hobbies in early adolecense, and reach physical/mental peak in their twenties. spending more time won't help after that.
33: except that in many cases (certain sports, face recognition, probably others) people's skill demonstrably peaks later.
Yeah, but most people don't start recognizing faces until their mid teens.
And there are lots of cases of people who've become successful and famous with way less than 10,000 hours practice. Like almost every pop and rock musician ever.
Seems like quite a claim, ttaM. I honestly haven't read any bios or autobios of musicians, but what gives you that impression?
Well, given how many 'virtuoso' rock musicians became famous while still in their teens, and often only started playing a few years before, it'd stretch the imagination to believe they'd gotten in 10,000 hours of practice in 3 or 4 years. Some, sure, but many or even most? I doubt it.
None that are instrumentalists are coming to mind.
Again, however, I'm not that musical.
Even indisputable geniuses of the likes of Django Reinhardt: he only started playing the guitar three years before his first recordings. He was already a teenage musician [banjo] so would have had a fairly experienced ear but he started again on guitar after his hands were burnt, in 1929.
Ah, for the meritocratic days when 10,000 hours of practice by age 21 really was the ticket to success for, say, Tony Banks, or Tony Kaye.
When I think of rock musicians being successful in their teens I think of a group like the Replacements who were clearly successful, but not virtuoso.
The 10,000 hours rule just seems silly, doesn't it? It isn't a very plausible notion that across all fields of endeavor, the amount of time one has to devote to become expert is the same. Being a classical violinist is not that much like playing the bass in a rock band, and even less like being a basketball star or a poet or a sculptor or a mathematician. On the other hand, human lifespans extend over roughly the same order of magnitude, and it shouldn't be surprising that people who are passionately devoted to one pursuit above all others turn out to have spent a similar length of time on it. This seems like a much more plausible explanation of the supposed observation that experts in many fields say they've put on the order of 10,000 hours into their pursuit.
I guess I'd guess that roughly the logs of the time in hours should be around the same. What with logs being so compressy.
Being a classical violinist is not that much like playing the bass in a rock band
Yeah, the violinist, for instance, probably gets laid, least occasionally.
Re: 44
Most of the big British bands of the 60s, including people like Jeff Beck, Clapton with the Bluesbreakers, Peter Green, etc to pick people feted at the time as players rather than singers or writers, were all teens or very very early 20s.
Re: 45
Yeah, exactly.
Jeff Beck, Clapton with the Bluesbreakers, Peter Green
Re: 45 Yeah, exactly.
If you don't think that the 10,000 number is magic (and I don't), it isn't that implausible that a star instrumentalist would have quite a bit of practice time under their belt by the time they're in their, "very very early 20s."
Clapton, for example, probably did have at least 5000 hours of practice by the time he was 20. I have the sense of him as a pretty intense music geek.
I have no problem believing that anyone dismissed from school because of their monomaniacal focus on music might have accumulated several thousand hours of practice in a few years. Especially a teen male.
I doubt anyone really believes "exactly 10000 hours, no more, no less" is necessary to achieve expert performance.
I will also bow to your impression, ttaM, that many rock and pop phenoms didn't practice that much, as I have a feeling you are much more informed on the topic than I.
Not being a snot, there, either.
Have any of us put 10,000 hours into reading and commenting on this fucking blog? I think it's just barely possible -- 1300 hours/year for every year since inception in 2003 gets you more than 10,000 hours.
10,000 hours sounds roughly right to me. I just calculated that I spent about 7,000 hours at tkd, and I was national but not world class. Another couple years might have done it, although I think they would have had be two more years at the beginning, not the end. (Or maybe I never had the body for it, and would never have reached the next level. There are lots of people who put in their 10,000 hours and still don't get known for it.)
I don't know about dismissing pop phenoms, either. I bet Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake put their hours in, considering that they started as kids.
The 10,000 hours rule just seems silly, doesn't it?
Well, of course.
But, look: the 10,000 hours things is a rough heuristic. Even in its strongest form, Gladwell is saying that all else being equal the number of hours somebody has spent performing an activity is the best predictor of whether they will have reached the highest level in that activity, right?
Was Gladwell claiming 10,000 hours to achieve expert performance? The NYTM article neb links mentions speed typing, for example: something that takes 10,000 hours?
Anyway, I took the point of the article to be that you're never 'done', you never actually achieve a state of experthood: you keep on challenging yourself.
Many of the activities mentioned are competitive ones, in any case, and the measure of excellence is widely variable. I never thought of Clapton's awesomeness as a function of his outstanding virtuosity on the guitar. He's competent.
I was loosely trying to work out a post on how many writers mistake smooth, glib writing for the goal, instead of focusing on sharp, developed content. I think this difference parallels the musician example in the OP.
I never thought of Clapton's awesomeness as a function of his outstanding virtuosity on the guitar. He's competent.
??
That's why they call him Slowhand, Nick. Because he's not very fast.
I heard a terrible Clapton joke this week. I can't bring myself to repeat it.
If smooth, glib writing were the goal, I would have given up years ago... laydeez.
61: I saw an improv show that drew gasps and groans with what I bet was a similarly themed joke.
I suspect I've heard this joke, but I can't remember it.
It wasn't funny.
I know the one. Really awful.
54: You missed a whole thread where grazing, precipitation, and drainage were relevant.
I bet Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake put their hours in, considering that they started as kids.
True dat. The Mickey Mouse Club ain't beanbag.
When I think of rock musicians being successful in their teens I think of a group like the Replacements who were clearly successful
Setting aside the fact that I believe only Tommy Stinson was still a teenager when they released Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, I feel compelled to note that your definition of "clearly successful" seems somewhat broader than most. Before they were signed to Sire they didn't even cover expenses.
I realize all of this is beside the point.
After Lie To Me came out (Tim Roth's character is based on a psychologist featured in Blink) my writing partner and I talked about pitching a procedural called 10,000 Hours. A consultant to the police is brought in to help solve the case of the week, determines what skill he will needed to solve it, then sets about practicing.
I've got a bad case of loving you!
59: A mild joke. I've never been a Clapton fan, and never found myself blown away. Probably I haven't listened properly.
On the question of expert achievement, I want to repeat that this is a contingent matter, and crops up in discussion of matters of competition. The NYT article is at pains to point out that back in the old days, one committed things to memory as a matter of course: an oral tradition demanded it. Similarly, growing up in one of the African running tribes would mean that one would blow any western-world long distance runner out of the water no matter how much the westerner practiced. To say that the westerner needs 10,000 hours of practice in order to achieve expert proficiency makes no sense outside of a given context.
If the claim is that most people in the western world spend about 10,000 hours when they become what counts as expert in whatever the endeavor in question is, okay. It's kind of a boring claim then.
I've got a bad case of lovin you...
10000 hours also is close to the amount of time spent in graduate school (at least in science). Gladwell is wrong about all kinds of things, but I really tire of criticism that just amounts to "he oversimplifies shit". Of course he does. That's called "writing for a general audience".
A pretty face don't make no pretty heart
I learned that, buddy, from the start.
You think I'm cute, a little bit shy...
When you write something that cogent, thoughtful, and memorable, but you mess-up by hitting "Post" twice, that's just the worst, isn't it?
75: I really tire of criticism that just amounts to "he oversimplifies shit"
Fair enough, but the only other criticism available would be that he's wrong about the 10,000 hours: maybe it's 5000, or 15000! I've been suggesting that he's wrong-headed to talk about the achievement of experthood in terms of number of hours spent in the first place.
Also, I really don't think you want to cite grad school norms as a measure of the achievement of expertise, unless you're just saying that that 10,000 hours is how our society marks these things or something.
really tire of criticism that just amounts to "he oversimplifies shit"
I guess the thing is that I can't come up with any more nuanced statement lurking behind the 10,000 hours thing that's even remotely interesting or meaningful.
I guess the thing is that I can't come up with any more nuanced statement lurking behind the 10,000 hours thing that's even remotely interesting or meaningful.
"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
Doctor, doctor, give me the news!
I really want to thank whoever's providing us with Pauly's comments, by the way. I don't usually see the originals. Thanks.
70 is brilliant. 75 gets it right. As for the P.Shore comments I like them better when they're neutral than when they're derisive, but big raps to whoever replaces them.
How have multiple people heard a certain Eric Clapton joke in the same week, six weeks before his 66th birthday? That seems random.
Regarding the premise in 70, wasn't there a show like that? The protagonist was amazingly able to be a doctor, or a Wall Street executive, or a professor or foreign correspondent or sculptor.
As I recall, he was a renegade of sorts, not working with the police, but some sort of independent agent (I may be misremembering this - the cops were often trying to track him down); and he was a super-freak intelligence-wise.
90: There you go. It struck me, not just in connection with that show, though it highlighted the matter, that a good portion of competence in any given field has to do with the ability to mimic.
Most of us smart types probably know about the mimicry thing.
59: A mild joke. I've never been a Clapton fan, and never found myself blown away.
I'm not a fan of Clapton either, and I would certainly question his taste, but I think he can play guitar, and I am fond of Cream.
Clapton seems competent, not brilliant.
I would agree with 94 if I weren't afraid of incurring someone's wrath. I don't know what people see in Clapton, but there it is.
I don't see what's so difficult about saying someone is both respected as brilliant among musicians and not one's cup of tea. I'm not a Clapton fan, but I'm not a serious musician either, so I tend to buy their arguments from authority without feeling obligated to share their appreciation.
And obviously it's silly to take the number 10,000 literally, but the general idea that skills take practice is one that people tend to forget outside of sports and piano recitals. There's a tendency to replace it with vague notions of natural ability and talent and brilliance. It's not all that easy for us to justify putting serious time into something that doesn't make us a buck, and a b.s. number like 10,000 at least puts the importance of a lot of practice into perspective for people. It's taking the story of the ceramics teacher dividing students into groups concerned with quality vs. quantity(I know, kottke, it was the first example online I googled up) and repackaging it as a metric.
But to tie the two ideas together, this sort of practice just leads, at best, to a mastery of craft. And highly polished craft isn't always an unmixed blessing; people often still prefer three-chord punk to Clapton. And also, what neb said in the OP.
45
The 10,000 hours rule just seems silly, doesn't it? It isn't a very plausible notion that across all fields of endeavor, the amount of time one has to devote to become expert is the same. ...
Doesn't seem that implausible to me. Since expert generally means relative to others it seems reasonable that you have to put in about the same number of hours to stand out in any popular endeavor. Of course the field has to have some complexity, it doesn't take 10000 hours to become an expert tic-tac-toe player.
I don't see what's so difficult about saying someone is both respected as brilliant among musicians and not one's cup of tea.
Exactly. You don't have to be a fan of of 80's big hair rock to acknowledge that E. Van Halen is a bit of a standout on the guitar. Likewise I had a college roommate who was an excellent jazz sax player. He'd gone to a music camp that Kenny G showed up to and maintained that Kenny G was easily one of the best sax players he'd ever heard.
I'm not sure why people hate on the 10K hour thing. The principle that people who are good at things probably spend a ton of time working on it is a good one. I think 96 gets it right.
E. Van Halen is a bit of a standout on the guitar
I'm curious what someone like ttaM thinks of John Mayer's solo on Fall Out Boy's cover of "Beat It" (solo starts around 2:10). I like his playing here but tend not to like his originals much and wish he had a better song writer/chooser.
maintained that Kenny G was easily one of the best sax players he'd ever heard.
I've heard he plays a bit sharp.
98:
maintained that Kenny G was easily one of the best sax players he'd ever heard.
The music is still shit though, technical virtuosity not withstanding. Bit of a problem with Clapton as well; technically brilliant, but you really, really have to like blues being made by white Brits trying to sound like they were born in the Mississippi delta to appreciate the music he made his reputation with. Hasn't aged well at all, because a lot of it is trying to be faithful to a percieved style of music and the emphasis is all on mastering this music rather than creating something interesting with it.
It's only when he was in Cream, with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce that Clapton managed to actually be interesting for more than just his guitar playing.
And then of course he turned out to be a rightwing asshole.
I'm not sure why people hate on the 10K hour thing.
Because it seems like an attempt to be clever by attaching a numerical value to the uncontroversial connection between practice and proficiency regardless of the nature of the task or the abilities of the practitioner. Take, for example, learning a language: obviously you need to put in a lot of time to achieve fluency, but the amount of time will differ greatly depending on the setting, the similarity to your native language, and your experience of and aptitude for learning languages. Could be a lot less than 10k hours, could be a lot more.
I'm guessing that Yuja Wang and Lang Lang have spent roughly the same amount of time playing piano, and it's well over 10k hours, but she's way better than he is.
103 gets it right.
There's clearly a strong correlation between practice time and skill, but it's going to vary a lot between people and depending on the skill concerned.
Because I'm a bit of a guitar nerd, I'm singling that out because I happen to have a decent idea how many hours some well-known players put in before they became famous, based on interviews, how old they were, etc. And it varies wildly. For a lot of them, 10K hours isn't plausible at all unless you assume they were practicing 10 or 12 hours a day at an age when that just wouldn't be plausible [school, jobs, etc]. Also, I know how many hours I put in to reach a certain moderate level of technical competence, and how many friends who were better players put in. It was a lot -- a couple of hours a day for 2 or 3 years -- but it wasn't 10K by any means.
I get why the 10K thing floats about -- it pushes against the 'natural genius' line, which can be equally dumb.
re: Clapton
I don't actually like him, at all. Famous out of all proportion to his talents, and even if you really like white Londoners trying to play like one of the 'Kings' [Freddie, BB and Albert], he's not the best even of those. But, and it's a big but, the Bluesbreaker's 'Beano' album he's on, has some fantastic stuff. The coming together of fairly slavish imitation of Freddie King, with a cranked up Marshall amp sounds pretty epic for its time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkulcvRkd4I
Still, it's amazing that someone's built a career as long as his out of being slightly ahead of the game vis a vis high-octane bluesy playing circa 1965 and the basically coasting since.
He did do some good work with Cream, which only broke up 40 odd years ago. Even then, as Martin says, it was largely a product of the environment he was in. I've seen it said that Bruce and Baker, in the intervals of beating the shit out of each other, had a clear musical project which Clapton didn't begin to understand, but they regarded him as a sort of loyal musical poodle who could be relied on to produce the right stuff with suitable prompting.
But the Bluesbreakers album was paradigm changing at the time. Again, though, Clapton was playing with a fairly awesome band.
But the Bluesbreakers album was paradigm changing at the time.
Yeah, definitely, although the contrast between what Clapton did after, starting from that British blues boom beginning, and what, say, Jeff Beck* did starting from the same point, is remarkable.
* to pick everyone's favourite 'stick to beat Clapton with'.
* to pick everyone's favourite 'stick to beat Clapton with'.
Yeah, but who else are you going to pick out of that generation? Paige got duller the older he got, Green crashed and burned. Alvin Lee? There were plenty of other fine guitarists around, but most of them weren't doing the "close your eyes and pretend I'm Buddy Guy" thing.
One thing that Clapton has going for him over Beck is that he ruined far less weddings with "Layla"or "Wonderful tonight" than Beck did with "Hi-Ho Silver Lining".
Green crashed and burned.
But what a great guitarist until then; didn't appreciate him until that recent BBC4 documentary led me to seek out his work again.
Yeah, but who else are you going to pick out of that generation?
Hendrix and Clapton were basically contemporaries.
110. True, but Hendrix was American, and we were talking about the 'British blues' crowd. If you allow Americans in, the game changes considerably, because blues is basically an American music, so you've got dozens. Michael Bloomfield FTW!
109. Oh, Green was certainly the pick of the bunch. Even his album with Mayall was better than Clapton's, although it wasn't so noticed because Clapton's came first.
111: But he was doing business in London, and Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding were English.
OK, then, if you want to concede Hendrix as British, I'll happily concede he was the best of the bunch.
Never. Much as I hate to admit it, however, The Jimi Hendrix Experience was a British band.
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Nir Rosen issues an apology for his Lara Logan tweets, but seems unclear on the concept of an apology. Christ, what an asshole.
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Hendrix was always pretty vocal about the fact that his sound essentially was his take, as an American blues/r'n'b player, on the British sound, which in turn was a bastardised take on the US blues sound, and so on, with wheels within wheels. Cream, the Who, the Kinks, with that over-driven guitar and 'Mod' take on US black music all predate Hendrix. Hendrix is certainly my favourite _writer_ of the lot, irrespective of his considerable gifts/innovations as a player. Much as I like Beck, I'm much more likely to listen to an entire Hendrix album.
Every time someone objects to a "round-number" heuristic, Malcolm Gladwell kills a kitten.
It took him 10,000 kittens to find the quickest way to kill one.
111: Michael Bloomfield FTW!
Somewhat tangentially, heard an interview recently in which Elvin Bishop talked about getting a National Merit Scholarship and then specifically choosing University of Chicago (he was from Tulsa at the time) for the Chicago music scene. Not clear if he graduated. Possibly this is well known among the U of Cmites.
119: I hear it it best if you just go ahead and follow your first intuition to kill the kitten without thinking about it too much.
120. His website suggests he didn't graduate. his latest record, however, more than makes up for this disappointment.
It took him 10,000 kittens to find the quickest way to kill one.
119: I hear it it best if you just go ahead and follow your first intuition to kill the kitten without thinking about it too much.
Unlike ttaM, I think that practice in different but related disciplines probably transfers at some discount. So, really, we should ask that polymurder Moby Hick what the best way is.
123: Kittens is teh cute. Cats are what I have issues with.
Somebody needs to check Stormcrow for signs of a stroke.
I've had Layla stuck in my head for an hour now. You could kill me instead.
I always have "One Night in Bangkok" stuck in my head. You wouldn't believe the savings over the years of not buying cassettes, CDs, and iTunes.
130. Diddle-iddle-iddle-diddy-iddle-diddy-iddle-diddy-daaaah-dee-dee!
One thing that Clapton has going for him over Beck is that he ruined far less weddings with "Layla"or "Wonderful tonight" than Beck did with "Hi-Ho Silver Lining".
We can only interpret this as a statement of "Wonderful Tonight"'s objective excellence, as it's been played at most weddings I've been to, whereas I've never heard that last song in my entire life.
I've had Layla stuck in my head for an hour now.
Don't worry, there's only about 20 minutes left of the guitar chorus at the end.
The bit of Layla that always gets stuck in my head is the 'coda' section that Scorsese used in Goodfellas. The second half of the song, basically.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbwFXngs9Lw
I end up with earworms that I suspect nobody else in the world has at that particular moment [week/month]. February's has been Carly Simon's "You Know What To Do". Contemporary!
"Wonderful Tonight" - an exciting exercise in self justification by a passive-aggressive alcoholic (with some competent guitar). If I were a woman and my intended suggested playng that at the wedding I'd move to another continent.
Actually, come to think of it, I do like the Clapton/Kamen soundtrack to Edge of Darkness.
134. I linked a video of Beck playing Silver Lining with Dave Gilmour here a couple of months ago.
138: I'll see your "Wonderful Tonight," and raise you "Wild World," by Jimmy Cliff. I don't know about the alcoholism, but he had the asshole part down.
And by Jimmy Cliff I meant Cat Stevens.
At least Cat Stevens had the decency to quit music and take an alias after the horrors he imposed on the world.
141. Jimmy Cliff did cover it, but at least to his credit he didn't write it. The Nice Guys' national anthem.
Does James Taylor take a hint? No, he does not.
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Allow me to be the first to wish myself a happy birthday.
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Happy birthday Kraab. May you be spared all kinds of boomer age rock anthems for the next 24 hours at least.
I do take delight in music that contrasts with the meaning of accompanying lyrics. I just laugh all the way through. I'm somewhat simple.
Michael Bloomfield FTW!
My father reminisces fondly about seeing Bloomfield, that other guy and, most notably, the debut of Johnny Winter at the Fillmore East in 1968 , but he'll usually stop if one mentions putting him in a home.
116: "With 480 characters I undid a long career defending the weak and victims of injustice."
And that's when I clicked "close tab." I'll sit still for that kind of thing from Superman; all others pay cash.
that other guy
Paul Butterfield? Elvin Bishop? Al Kooper? Bob Dylan?...
Paul Butterfield? Elvin Bishop? Al Kooper? Bob Dylan?...
One of those guys, I think. Not Bob Dylan. Damned dirty hippies!
I'm going to guess Al Kooper and this concert. The review mentions, Bloomfield and the group are joined on B.B. King's "It's My Own Fault" by a then-unknown Johnny Winter and things get really interesting. Although apparently Stephen Stills was there as well.
People play "Wonderful Tonight" at weddings? That's disturbing.
159: I think it is more of a thing you play at the reception than the actual wedding.
I enjoy Clapton's guitar sound and technique. It's interesting, though, that while he's only provided occasional evidence over the years that he's any kind of song writer, two of his better written songs, "Wonderful Tonight" (yes, lyrically horrible if you pay attention) and "Tears in Heaven" (which I don't enjoy as a song, but I think is inarguably well crafted), don't particularly trade in his virtuousity. It's almost as if his skills were orthogonal somehow...
I also like Blind Faith a lot, but I don't know what role Clapton played in producing that sound (other than the whole guitar playing thing).
159-60: Yes, in my experience people play "The Rose" at weddings.
but I don't know what role Clapton played in producing that sound (other than the whole guitar playing thing).
On the basis of past familiarity with early Traffic, I'd guess not much.
Happy Kraabday!
My earworms can be a bit perverse as well. For a long time I'd get stuff from Verdi's Macbeth wedged in my medulla oblongata* for hours when I was tired or down.
*sorry, Sifu.
163: I have also heard multiple reports of "Every Breath You Take" being played at weddings.
164: Speaking of which, how do you music snobs aficionados rate Winwood? i saw him in Traffic in the early '70s and consider it as one of the best concerts I've attended. He came across as this almost nerdy kid noodling around up there producing great music and an understated but great show. Nice contrast to much of the other crap I was going to at the time.
167. You cannot be serious! I'd prefer Roxanne.
I bet Clapton could really go to town on "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," or some Lohengrin.
167: It's like sending an S.O.S. to the world.
167: see this thread for more ill-advised choices.
169: I've heard "You're Just Too Good To Be True", which is funny if you're from North Knifecrime Island because the song was used on a very funny and long-running series of lager commercials.
168. As a musician, in his prime he was second to none IMO. I also saw them in the early 70s and the blew me away. I can still remember every note of their take of Uninspired from that night. I saw Blind Faith too, meh... But Traffic were seriously underrated.
As a guy, I believe he was quite difficult, which contributed to Traffic constantly splitting and reforming. Nothing to do with becoming a rock star at 15, I'm sure. Irrelevantly, I once met his girlfriend and she was the hottest human being I've ever seen at close range by a country mile.
re: 168
The young Winwood had a great voice, considering he was what, 14 when he joined Spencer Davis, and 18 or so when they released 'I'm a Man'?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzN0mMx-sJg
As bad Police wedding songs go, though, maybe "Don't Stand So Close To Me" would take the cake?
I'm sad that I didn't see the other thread in time: I would have definitely had "Love Will Tear Us Apart" play at my wedding.
176: If you were a high school teacher marrying one of your students, I don't see how you could play anything else.
169: I think I've mentioned here before, but my favorite drinking game to watch in college was "Roxanne." You could be either team Roxanne, or team red light. It was...destructive.
176: "Mother" would definitely make the roster.
All the music liked to on this thread sucks. Now this is music.
If you were a high school teacher marrying one of your students
I feel a "Half + 7" mix forming.
Well, "Just Like a Woman" and "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" obviously have to be on it.
re: 183
A suggestion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DVDmHdaQpc
"I don't wanna have to wait ... till I'm too old"
A voice and a half.
Kiss' "Christine Sixteen" and Winger's "Seventeen".
Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, possibly the second creepiest song after He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), which also probably wouldn't be good at a reception.
About half the output of Serge Gainsbourg, of course.
"House of Fun", if it's a female teacher and a male student. And, of course, "Mrs Robinson".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOVQ4vAmM7Y
Lulu - 'To Sir, with Love'
"Cherry Pie." Motherfucking Warrant.
Surely, the openly pedophiliac"Young Girl" goes on the list.
Johnny Get Angry doesn't go on the list, but I'll bet it's responsible for a whole bunch of abusive relationships.
Lord Creator, "Don't Stay out Late"
'Little girl, ... it's getting late and you are underage" etc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2kIAJEIpk
192 is such a great song. As to 190, yes, Serge Gainsbourg pretty much wins any "creepiest song" argument so it's a good thing it's all in a foreign language.
"Cherry Pie" is the only song so stupid that MTV mocked without even waiting for it to get stale.
I feel a "Half + 7" mix forming.
"If I Could Fly" has to be on that.
My Sharona (I'd go with the Ramones cover).
We are making a terrible songs for weddings list, no? Emphasis on terrible?
Serge Gainsbourg pretty much wins any "creepiest song" argument so it's a good thing it's all in a foreign language.
Maurice Chevalier clawed his way into contention for that honor by singing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" in English.
I was going to nominate France Gall for "Les Sucettes", but it turns out that Gainsbourg wrote that one. Give him a lifetime achievement award!
re: 203
Yeah, notoriously France Gall has always denied she understood the innuendo in Gainsbourg's lyrics.
Wow, 185 is great. Off on a Stax kick for a bit.
"Cherry Pie" is the only song so stupid that MTV mocked without even waiting for it to get stale.
But "I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater" is pretty great.
re: 205
Yes, indeed. She died recently, sadly.
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Editorializing with an unflattering photo par excellence:
http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/01012320727-nicolas-sarkozy-s-enflamme-sur-l-islam
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203 -- I met someone recently who is named Gigi, "after the movie." Nothing like naming your kid based on a musical about a charming child prostitute.
re: 210
Someone I knew as a teenager was called Lolita. Her family were part Indian, so I guess there was some sort of implied reference to the similar Indian name, too.
Serge Gainsbourg pretty much wins any "creepiest song" argument so it's a good thing it's all in a foreign language.
Lemon Incest Nothing like doing a song about pedophilic incest with your twelve year old daughter. Complete with a video with you and your daughter half naked on a bed cuddling and singing.
209: I'm sure his finger feels like it's finally get its due.
212: Holy fuck. Wikipedia tells me the song "achieved success in France." WTF France. I'm pretty sure he would have been arrested here.
146: Happy birthday, Sir Kraab.
And if we're doing that sort of thing, allow me to be the second to wish myself a happy birthday. Really.
I didn't know we shared a birthday, SK.
A White Bear's suggestion of Gravy Train!!!!!!!!!!!'s "Sippin' 40s" is always appropriate.
Happy Birthday, laydeez. May your day be Clapton-free.
Happy shared birthday to the birthdayers. And John Travolta.
May your day be Clapton-free
Because I'm mature. Also, happy birthday!
happy birthday to the birthday people
That's okay, dq. I figured someone would pick that low-hanging fruit.
"A Younger Girl" by the Lovin' Spoonful
"And should I hang around/ Acting like her brother?/ In a few more years,/ They'd call us right for each other./ And why, If I wait I'll just die, yeah."
Happy birthday Megan and Sir Kraab.
It's sad that the in Winsconsin in-joke died out just before it became most relevant.
225 me, obvs. Following the link in 90 last night, I discovered that I share a birthday (maybe not; see footnote) with the Great Imposter. Dude actually performed successful major surgeries while masquerading as a trauma surgeon on a destroyer during the Korean War. Hardcore.
228: There was an episode of MASH about that. Hawkeye found out and reported him.
And note that he learned to do them from speed-reading, not from training for 10,000 hours. Demara 1, Gladwell 0.
Alan Alda has spent way more than 10,000 hours acting.
Holy joint birthdays, Megan! Hope you have a good day.
Happy birthdayz.
Not a lot of music from Mrs Robinson's point of view-- Grace Jones' sensibility seems about right, but My Jamaican Guy is pretty specific and Nipple to th Bottle is just weird-- fun, but lyrically incoherent. Oh, wait, Kid by Chrissie Hynde, but it's regretful.
235: There's both Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks.
When I was 15, the band I was in played "Driven to Tears," "Orange Crush," and "Jane Says" at my brother's bar mitzvah reception. Not quite "Every Breath You Take" or "Cherry Pie," but still.
Speaking of John Travolta, the New Yorker has a piece on Scientology that's interesting to me for the detail on their cultivation of celebrities, which goes back farther than I'd realized, to 1955. I don't think there's anything terribly new in the article, but Scientology's strategy of claiming credit for members' success in Hollywood has succeeded brilliantly.
(Awesome detail: "During auditing, Haggis grasped a cylindrical electrode in each hand; when he first joined Scientology, the electrodes were empty soup cans.")
235.last: Actually her whole latest project probably qualifies via the +7 rule*. J P Jones of JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys is 32 and she is 59 (or they were when this article was written) and a lot of the songs are about their relationship.
*I'd argue that the rule stops when both people are over 30 (even though it has "built in" relaxation, for instance in this case when she's 68 and he's 41 they're good to go).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: sqrt + 12 is a much better rule.
238: You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion. (or some variant thereof, also disputed)
- L. Ron Hubbard as a late '40s scifi hack.
sqrt + 12 is a much better rule
Lowers my floor from 28 to 18, so I guess there's no arguing the point.
241: He was raised less than an hour from where I was.
And ceiling from 70 to 900, so win-win!
240: Using math towards creepy ends. I like it.
Oh hey, Megan, that sweet bike you liked a while back? I got two for my daughters, and they turn out to be totally bitchin'.
Happy birthdays! So, what, like half the Mineshaft's parents boinked on a Memorial Day holiday or something?
We were having such a nice innocent celebration until Stanley showed up.
hey megan is back, hi.
and i didn't know sir krab was a female. i assume if people go to the trouble of gendering their pseud, its the same as their meat gender.
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"Bingaman is the fourth Democratic (or Democratic-aligned) Senator to announce that he will not run for re-election in 2012, joining Sens. Jim Webb (Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) on the sidelines."
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also, speaking of creepy age sex stuff, berlusconi?
M/tch, I think yoyo just called you a homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
250: Everyone locally is getting all excited that Perriello (just defeated congressman) will run for Webb's seat if Tim Kaine bows out. I'm not at all sure Perriello can win against George "Macaca" Allen, but if he did, he'd make a swell senator.
If your senator swells, apply a cold compress.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: sqrt + 12 is a much better rule.
Yes, it's important to parse who can date the 16.24-22 year olds with a very fine comb.
sqrt + 12 is a much better rule
No, they're both creepy rules.
No rules! Love the one you're with!
We can make it sqrt + 14 if you want, prudes.
If your senator swells, apply a cold compress.
If swelling persists longer than four hours, seek immediate medical attention.
Youtube informs me that Jeff Beck is performing in April at the Fillmore.
Also, Oingo Boingo's "Little Girls".
Of course, we're each with our computers.
258: Stop trying to take away my teenagers, Tweety!
How about: Don't sleep with anyone who has slept with 5x more people than you have, until you're old enough to think this rule is dumb.
263: what if the very act of sleeping with someone will bring them within range?
Stop trying to take away my prostitutes, heebie!
Or perhaps f(x)=3x+3 would be a better rule. Until you're old enough to dismiss it.
264: It's cute that nosflow still thinks he's going to get laid someday.
Don't take away my dreams, Stanley.
263: "baby, I want you, but I have an ironclad rule, so let me introduce you to four of my friends."
Dude actually performed successful major surgeries while masquerading as a trauma surgeon on a destroyer during the Korean War.
Seems to me that's not masquaerading as a trauma surgeon so much as being a trauma surgeon.
How about: Don't sleep with anyone who has slept with 5x more people than you have, until you're old enough to think this rule is dumb.
Could be a problem for virgins, unless you have an infinity exception.
We can make it sqrt + 14 if you want, prudes.
That would be awkward for anybody under 18.5
Could be a problem for virgins, unless you have an infinity exception.
?
Virgins can sleep with each other.
D'oh.
Still, it does limit the pool rather more dramatically than for anyone else.
Supposedly n/2+7 comes from the Nation of Islam and was a recommended target for marriages rather than a floor. (If I remember correctly, this is in the autobiography of Malcolm X.)
It definitely was originally a target, and not a floor, but I don't think it was originally a Nation of Islam thing.
Of course, we're each with our computers.
I'm with a room full of test takers, many of whom would be forbidden under most of the rules we are considering.
When I met my wife she was indeed n/2+7. Not that I knew the 'rule' until years after we met, but still, handy.
274: Social engineering at its finest.
275: I don't know where the NOI got it from, but I think it's in Little Women.
274 stolen (again) for all my facebook birthdays.
A quick scan of Little Women for "seven" does not turn up confirmation.
281: I was just doing the same thing!
Now I'm really curious how far back it goes. It's kinda funny that the formula stayed the same even as the meaning changed. Somehow it's just the right amount of complicated, while still being a computation most people can do easily.
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Ever since hearing "Born This Way" I've had Madonna's "Express Yourself" stuck in my head. Do you advice listening to "Born This Way" again to transform the Madonna earworm into a Gaga earworm, or would that just dig me deeper into the same hole?
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I heard there was an Islamic source too. Maybe Labs knows.
281, 282: I think you must have spelled seven wrong.
283: I've heard multiple people point out the similarity of the two songs. If it wasn't on purpose (an homage?), it's quite the blind spot.
When I met my wife she was indeed n/2+7. Not that I knew the 'rule' until years after we met, but still, handy.
Whereas Jammies and I could have banged each other as babies.
285 was trolling because I found the idea of somebody investigating the link between NOI and Little Women more amusing that you'd think.
Huh. I remember it being from Little Women, but on introspection I'm remembering that as something I know from somewhere, rather than recalling anything about how it came up in the book. I wonder if there's a similar source, and I've got the title wrong.
"that you'd think" s/b "than you'd think"
Gaga says it was on purpose, and that Madonna Ok'd it. My problem is just that I think the Gaga song is marginally better (mostly in terms of production and lyrics) and I wonder if I can transform the earworm easily.
The proper course of action is to listen to some Janelle Monae (however you spell it) and get some good music stuck in your head. Her Grammy performance was excellent.
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It seems weird to pause/play this, since it relates to the OP, but anyhow: a good post that gets indirecty at the problem with the way fMRI is popularly understood.
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I believe the rule elog3n is perfectly adequate and easy to calculate.
293: If your skull weren't dimpled over the sagacity organ, I'd be able to explain why fMRI is great.
I like fMRI! That's not a dimple! I was dropped on my head as a child!
Make it the rule floor(.5+elog3n), perhaps. Note that, unlike many of the other rules discussed here, this rule never results in someone only being allowed to date older people.
296: I've actually never had anything to do with fMRI. I know next to nothing about it.
I looked through Google Books. The half-your-age-plus-seven formula is mentioned as far back as 1902, in precisely those terms. It's variously called French, or Oriental, or just an old saying. I couldn't find it in Little Women, Little Men, or Jo's Boys (Gutenberg HTML versions, since Google Books search seems faulty), though a number of people online also think it comes from Alcott.
I've participated in an fMRI study. Something about locating the region of the brain activated by hearing annoying sounds while in a claustrophobia inducing tube thing and freezing your balls off. Important stuff, no doubt.
299: Ah, then you can contribute to this discussion of it among the Wikigentsia which reveals far more about that culture than the rule.
But I did find this nebroll there.
If you conceive while your balls are in an fMRI tube, your baby is automatically able to skip the second grade.
397: Yeah, but your rule is undefined at birth.
304/5: My rule can be rewritten as floor(0.5+n1/ln 3), so that problem can be avoided.
299: I found it a couple of places in 1901 both from a Max O'Roll in Her Royal Highness, Woman (one looks to be a short form). Is that your 1902 guy as well?
I love how when google books says there's over 100 results, which magically changes to saying that there's 25 pages of results (so, 250+ results?) as you click to the second page in the list, you are then given only 3 pages of results that you can actually click to. Good thing they have more or less a monopoly or someone might be unhappy with their search quality and complain.
Also, that is simply not a practical problem, since your age is only zero for a single infinitesimal moment anyway.
(Actually though it is true that if your age is less than one but greater than some number near but slightly less than .5, this algorithm will result in your only being allowed to date people older than one year old, so my earlier statement was incorrect. However, I again deny that this is a practical issue the way that ten-year-olds only being allowed to date those over twelve, while twelve-year-olds are only allowed to date those over 13, is for the 1/2+7 rule.)
These archaic provenances are interesting. I always presumed it was from an internet-generated set of pinciples, like "ladder theory
"/.
My rule can be rewritten as floor(0.5+n1/ln 3)
Sure, if you recklessly let the domain change willy-nilly during your computation.
Also, that is simply not a practical problem, since your age is only zero for a single infinitesimal moment anyway.
Don't get me started on the problems with this formula in utero.
If you conceive while your balls are in an fMRI tube
I think 1+n^(1/ln 3) works better than the 1/2. You want 18 (high school senior) to return something closer to 15 (high school freshman) than 14. Though perhaps it's better to modify the exponent than the constant. n^(.93) isn't bad.
though a number of people online also think it comes from Alcott.
I am so ashamed. I just remembered why I thought half-plus-seven comes from Alcott, and why half the internet thinks it does as well, and Googling confirms: Heinlein attributes it to 'Little Women' in one of his stupider books.
So I think to get a good formula you want the key variable to be "years since puberty" rather than "years since birth." To that end I suggest something like: 11.5+(n-13)^(.85)
312: A blanket ban on sibling incest would solve that.
Back to poor choices for wedding reception songs:
Me & Mrs. Jones (Obviously, bonus points if groom's last name is Jones.)
Poor choice for a straight wedding, but it'd make an awesome processional for a gay one: Johnny Are You Queer?
Special request from the best man: Don't Give In to Him
Johnny Are You Queer?
I had only ever heard the Screeching Weasel version until just now. Thanks, Kraab. Good reverse-birthday present.
315 is adorable. That also explains why someone on the XKCD forums thought it.
I have, of course, read Little Women. Repeatedly. But I must have read the claim, not thought about it, and just remembered it as a fact.
315: Good memory. Someone on MetaFilter had claimed, That rule is mentioned in Louisa M Alcott's book, Good Wives when Meg becomes betrothed to John. and the specificity of that led me to read around that part a bit. But when "Good Wives" starts they are already engaged, and although Meg's being "too young" is discussed, I found no variant of the rule in my cursory read-through.
However, in searching for an Alcott reference, I did find this bit of rule-breaking advice from famous dead philosophers in a book by one William Andrus Alcott (a neighbor and second cousin her father):
Aristotle taught that the proper age for marriage, in the case of the male, was thirty-seven; for the female, eighteen. Plato recommended the age of thirty for males, and twenty for females.
Terrible wedding song but, hey, go for the outfits.
Happy birthdays!
Following related videos from what I've linked above led inexorably to an all-too-brief guitar solo by Creed Bratton on "Live for Today". Introduced by Jimmy Durante!
Time magazine in 1968 is the earliest mention I found:
In any event, who needs such folk formulas when science has answered this question definitively:
283, 291: I've only just recently listened to any Gaga (because Leo has a Gaga crush) and it seems inescapable that Gaga is just and extended homage to Madonna.
Булат Окуджава: A как первая любовь... would make for an awkward song for a second or third wedding.
331: Music, an equal at best, mostly a runner-up; visual, an equal, sometimes an advance; spectacle, a better beginning but longevity is of course still in question; politics, an advance.
It seems to me that about 60% of the message of female pop is some variation on "Express Yourself". I support the politics of that gesture as an antidode to the whole Drowning Ophelia business (and certainly as encapsulated in "Born This Way"), but there's a sour part of me that wants to record a similar sounding pop-diva anthem with a chorus that approximates "Shut up until you have something to say."
I think "Love the One Your With" would be somewhat unwelcome at a wedding (although maybe if the band/DJ introduced it with something like, "This is dedicated to the wedding party so many of whom have traveled a great distance to be here.).
I'm always rather nervous at weddings (so many are run like you are in a temporary freaking Pleasantville) that anything that hinted at the dark underside of life and love would be great/utterly horifying to me. Say PJ Harvey's "Down by the Water".
Re 333
I think oudemia said this, and it's true, she's wearing Roisin Murphy as a suit. I'd add without the voice, or the tunes, although the visuals and other schtick are OK.
Not fair to put Bieber's abortion comments without his single-payer health care advocacy. He's kind of the anti-DLC. Catholic Democrat, maybe?
My knowledge of Roisin Murphy comes entirely from Lady Gaga comparisons, FWIW.
In general I think Lady Gaga's use of source material is well within common standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/everything-is-a-remix practice.
334: there's a sour part of me that wants to record a similar sounding pop-diva anthem with a chorus that approximates "Shut up until you have something to say."
I admit I would welcome such a song!
My knowledge of Roisin Murphy comes entirely from Lady Gaga comparisons, FWIW.
Yeah, it's a common comparison, I think, but true nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlFjf1pWk2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpINtHXjLek
Sure, if you recklessly let the domain change willy-nilly during your computation.
This is the difference between mathematicians and physicists: I seriously had to stop and think for a while about why heebie had any problem with this, because my first thought was "if n = 0, then the log is minus infinity, e to the minus infinity is zero, so what's the problem"?
My knowledge of Roisin Murphy comes entirely from Lady Gaga comparisons, FWIW.
This was true of me until fairly recently, but I've bought some of her albums and I'm enjoying them.
Apropos of not much [and somewhat Beck's-style], I heard the last Bryan Ferry single played on the radio a couple of times recently, and despite not being a fan, it's catchy as shit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIkyMLL4ClE
Me & Mrs. Jones
Now I associate that song with John Travolta's character singing to his gun in From Paris with Love.
Shut up until you have something to say.
This is my personal flavor unless I'm with people I like, but there are too many careful cynbics in the world. Some density of smug outgoing funlovers makes the world a better place. Have I really become a greying guy saying vive la differance? Apparently.
Bryan Ferry's cover album a few years back, As Time Goes By, has a few thta are nice, includeing Septamber Song. Not completely sober.
n/2+7 was certainly something my grandfather (born c. 1897) was familiar with as "an old saying".
Donovan's "Superlungs My Supergirl" would also be inappropriate at a wedding.
Also "Jolene". Unless you were named Jolene, and you took him just because you could.
The covers of "Jolene" by (a) Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and (b) The Geraldine Fibbers are both quite good.
re: 347
Especially in the Terry Reid version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajx1Pln0KYQ
Which is great, but a bit rock for weddings.
Further to 16: I'm a little hung up on the crossword and haven't got to the Foer yet, so don't wait for me. I'll probably leave the magazine in the bathroom and find the article sometime in the next 10 days.