Discrimination among lawyers? I've finally realized what's been bugging me about this study of the failures of black lawyers to achieve partnership at major law firms. The study, reported in the New York Times, compared the success rates of white men, white women and blacks in obtaining partnership at large law firms. In short, white men are on top, white women are doing ok, while black do poorly. Hispanics do almost as poorly, and as usual, it isn't mentioned that Asians have the highest grades and do well.

The Times article, and the study, by Richard Sander, don't separate blacks into male and female. That would be a much more useful measure that could separate the effects of race and sex, since women frequently give up or pause careers to raise children. (Or not, as the numbers would show.)

The study itself is worth reading. It is well written and there are more than 20 tables summarizing his statistical analysis. There is a good discussion here.

Labels: discrimination, law, race, sex

  ¶ 10:51 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Extrawelt - 8000 It's official, Extrawelt's "8000" is completely burned into my brain. And that's a good thing, because it is a totally amazing track. I woke up in the night and I heard it in mind. I woke up this morning and I heard it again in my mind. And that's a good thing.

Out next week on Traum. Beatport will probably have it. So will Bleep.

Labels: Extrawelt, Music, Techno, Traum

  ¶ 9:47 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Borat's multi-pronged attack I finally got see all of the Borat movie. Last week's viewing was aborted by a fire alarm, so I only saw 3/4 and had to go back again. Since everybody already knows it's very funny, I would like to say that it

1. made me laugh very hard. Many times.
2. made me feel sympathy for a prostitute.
3. broke up a marriage.
4. has movie critics under the delusion that they're intelligent. Every review I'ved read has had the obligatory worrisome paragraph stating they're worried people will understand it's only satire. Imagine that, movie critics thinking they're smarter than someone else.

I don't know of any other movie that can do all those things.

Labels: Borat, movie, review

  ¶ 9:56 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 165 - November 27, 2006 Pub - Summer (Vertical Form)
Avia Gardner - The Weight of Hours (Intr_version)
Jeff Samuel - I Think They Are Trying To Say Something (Trapez)
Marcel Knopf - Lloyd (Rrygular)
Lee Van Dowski and Quenum - Muvo (defrag)
Extrawelt - 8000 (Traum)
Ellen Allien and Apparat - Jet (Ben Klock mix) (Bpitchcontrol)
Lazy Fat People - Dark Water (Border Community)
Tom Pooks - Docker (Kompakt)
Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Get Physical)
Audiojack - Robot
Martin Landsky - 1000 Miles (Poker Flat)
Thomas Fehlmann - Pristine (Kompakt)
Cedric Gervais - Experiment (Ultra)
Laurent Garnier - Flashback (Mute)
Two Lone Swordsmen - Spraycan Attack (Rotters Golf Club)
Shinjuku Zulu - Make Me Shake (Neuphoria)
aMute - The Floating Boat (Intr_version)

Labels: House, Music, Tech-house, Techno, Tracklist

  ¶ 11:05 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Jesse Jackson is crazy Really, he is. The only thing that not buying the next set of Seinfeld DVDs to protest Michael Richard's recent rantings will help is Jackson's own sense of importance, which clearly doesn't need more inflation.

Labels: jesse jackson, kramer, seinfeld, television

  ¶ 10:58 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  The speed of links Everybody else is doing it. Link to this! It's science!

Labels: internet, links, science

  ¶ 10:55 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Princess Superstar's rocking mix As usual, Princess Superstar rocks. Check out this great mix of, um, everything.

Labels: Music

  ¶ 10:29 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Test your ability to hear tones Here is a neat test for tone deafness. It is designed by Jake Mandell, formerly a producer of electronic music, now a medical student.

I scored 75% correct, which put me in the 43 percentile. About what I expected.

Via Music Thing.

Labels: biology, Music

  ¶ 9:53 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 164 - November 20, 2006 Trentemoller - Take Me Into Your Skin (Poker Flat)
Bola - (Skam)
B. Fleischmann - Pass By (Morr)
DJ Koze - Djungle Froot (Kompakt)
Solenoid - Bezoar Tides (Orac)
Two Lone Swordsmen - The King's Mob Files (Rotters Golf Club)
Maetrik - How Much
Shinjuku Zulu - Be My Woman Be My Man
Jeff Samuel - Those Were The Days (Trapez)
Mike Shannon - Esprit d'Escalier
Stephan Bodzin - Papillon
Rodamaal - Insomnia (Ame remix)
Antena - Camino del Sol (Todd Terje mix)
Audion - Mouth to Mouth (Spectral)
Avia Gardner - My Please (Intr_version)
aMute - Hit My Country(Intr_version)
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet (Ben Klock mix) (Bpitchcontrol)

Labels: House, Music, Techno, Tracklist

  ¶ 11:06 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon back episodes now online Due to a recent upgrade in storage capacity and bandwidth, I can now make episodes of Swoon available online. I have decided to put the most recent two months up. So if you missed an episode, or simply want to discover new and cool music, check it out.

Labels: House, Music, Swoon, Techno

  ¶ 11:23 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Jeff Samuel - Step

The thought of an entire album's worth of Trapez's typically weird glitches (which I like in small doses) made me think I was in for a brutal listening experience, but I was wrong. Jeff Samuel's Step album is actually very smooth tech-house, and a very enjoyable listen.





The album starts out in a strong techno style with "Those Were The Days". It's a great, punchy opening. It's got the electrohouse bassline so many tracks have this year, plus a nice soft synth melody.
"Right Then and There", "The Cave" and "Night Ride" are proper, modern tech-house tracks. Not clicky, not minimal, just simple electronic house.

"You Will Never Know" and "Month to Month" are among the grooviest tracks, which work simple melodies and noises to make very successful tracks.

To break up all the four-on-the-floor, is the downtempo groover "Just Try". It's got some interesting farty noises. "Power Ballard" is slower, with cute percussion.

"Off the Mark" is the only weak track.

It all ends with "I Think They Are Trying To Say Something", which works a lovely harp loop through many variations, while accompanied by soft synth chords and cleverly processed percussion. It's one of the highlights of the album.

Overall, it's a classy album. Released on November 13.

Labels: Jeff Samuel, Music, Step, Tech-house, Techno, Trapez

  ¶ 11:01 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Nick Warren, one half of Way Out West, will be DJing tonight at Dragonfly Nightclub in Niagara Falls, at the Fallsview Casino.

Hence all the Way Out West tracks on Monday's Swoon, below.

Labels: dance, dj, Music, Nick Warren

  ¶ 9:43 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 163 - November 13, 2006 Way Out West - Domination (Mururoa mix) (deconstruction)
Faithless - Salva Mea (Way Out West mix) (Cheeky)
Way Out West - The Fall (WOW)
Way Out West - Domination (Bonkers Break Beat mix) (deconstruction)
Way Out West - Intensify (Nettwerk)
Goldfrapp - Fly Me Away (Mute)
Neosupervital - Now That I've Found It (NSV)
Thomas Melchior & Luciano - Father (Cadenza)
Lee Van Dowski & Quenum - The Torque Machine (defrag)
Lazy Fat People - T.V. 20 (Wagon Repair)
Maximilian Skiba - Randez-Vous (Zimmermann's Raumsabotage mix) (Boxer)
Minisystem - Wher Where You
Djuma Soundsystem - Les Djinns (Trentemoller mix) (Get Physical)
Paolo Mojo - 1983 (Eric Prydz mix) (Pryda Friends)
Martin Landsky - 1000 Miles (Poker Flat)
Thomas Schumacher - Red Blue (Spiel-Zeug Schallplatten)
Stephan Bodzin - Tron (Systematic)
Enigma - Feel Me Heaven (EMI)

Labels: House, Music, Techno, Tracklist

  ¶ 9:07 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Philosophia Naturalis #3 is up and ready The third issue of Philosophia Naturalis has been posted at Geek Counterpoint. Check it out, for the best in the physical sciences on the web.  ¶ 9:15 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Marking xDNA's spots Researchers from Stanford University have solved the structure of xDNA, an unusual synthetic form of DNA. Normal, or natural, DNA comes in A, B and Z forms, which define how the double helix coils in space.

xDNA may have the properties that will allow it to replicate like B or Z DNA, the researchers think. Its unusual fluorescent properties could make it useful as a probe or diagnostic marker.

The synthetic xDNA is eXpanded by adding benzene molecules to the bases on the nucleotides, and is a bit larger than the regular B form.

Space-filling surface models showing the helix shape and grooves of xDNA (cyan, left) compared with B-DNA (orange, right): (A) view of the backbone with the major groove at the top; (B) minor groove view showing the exceptionally wide and shallow minor groove of xDNA.

The research will be published soon in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Science Biology Chemistry DNA xDNA

  ¶ 10:31 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Efston Science needs to learn some science Efston Science, a large retailer of microscopes, telescopes, and other scientific gadgets in Toronto, had this ad attached in the latest issue of SkyNews which contains numerous errors.

The ad is for a device called a Radiometer. I've had one since I was a kid. It's pretty simple. Put it in sunlight and it spins. The glass case protects it from wind, and the sunlight shines on the vanes, powering it. The question is, how?




Efston's ad gets it wrong, two different ways. One, light is not made of atoms, it's made of photons. Two, light does not have a pressure that forces the vanes. (Sunlight (or any light) does have a pressure, but it is not strong enough to have any effect once it has passed through Earth's atmosphere.

So, how does it work? Wikipedia has a good explanation involving some of history's great physicists. Theory 2 is the one I've known since I was a kid. Sunlight strikes the sides of the vanes. The black side absorbs more heat than the white side, so it heats faster. Air currents flowing around the vane's edges push it along.

Ultimately, it comes down to two forces:

1. A partial explanation is that gas molecules hitting the warmer side of the vane will pick up some of the heat i.e. will bounce off the vane with increased speed. Giving the molecule this extra boost effectively means that a minute pressure is exerted on the vane. The imbalance of this effect between the warmer black side and the cooler silver side means the net pressure on the vane is equivalent to a push on the black side, and as a result the vanes spin round with the black side trailing. The problem with this idea is that the faster moving molecules produce more force, they also do a better job of stopping other molecules from reaching the vane, so the force on the vane should be exactly the same — the greater temperature causes a decrease in local density which results in the same force on both sides. Years after this explanation was dismissed, Albert Einstein showed that the two pressures do not cancel out exactly at the edges of the vanes because of the temperature difference there. The force predicted by Einstein would be enough to move the vanes, but not fast enough.

2. The final piece of the puzzle, thermal transpiration, was theorized by Osborne Reynolds, but first published by James Clerk Maxwell in the last paper before his death in 1879. Reynolds found that if a porous plate is kept hotter on one side than the other, the interactions between gas molecules and the plates are such that gas will flow through from the cooler to the hotter side. The vanes of a typical Crookes radiometer are not porous, but the space past their edges behave like the pores in Reynolds's plate. On average, the gas molecules move from the cold side toward the hot side whenever the pressure ratio is less than the square root of the (absolute) temperature ratio. The pressure difference causes the vane to move cold (white) side forward.

Strangely, scientists still aren't sure which is providing more force.

Labels: light, physics, science

  ¶ 9:26 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  King Unique and Mashtronic - Elektrik 02 I've been enjoying this two-disc mix a lot in the past month. The King Unique disc has been getting much more play than the Mashtronic one.

King Unique are an English duo (Matthew and Matt) who have been making music in the house, techno, and genres that fall in between there for quite a few years. I've enjoyed their singles a lot, especially Sugahigh. Their mixes are quite good too.

On their disc they travel through what everybody's calling minimal and electro house. It's a good mix, with lots of great tracks from 2005-6. There are plenty of great ones, but I'll point of Claude VonStroke's "Who's Afraid of Detroit?", Booka Shade's "In White Rooms", Kupon's "Zoom In", with Felix da Housecat's "Rocket Ride" layered on top, as the highlights. The mixing is well done, and their transitions between songs and different genres come easily.

I keep picking it up and listening to it again and again, so it must be good!

Mashtronic's disc is a different style, the sounds are a bit harsher and there are more breakbeats. They are an Australian trio, so it's not surprising that there's a preference for breaks. Still, it's well-mixed, just not in a musical style that appeals to me as much as King Unique's selection.

Music House Techno  ¶ 3:53 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 162 - November 6, 2006 Bola - Fonk (Flower) (Skam)
Plaid - To (Warp)
The Album Leaf - Into the Sea (Sub Pop)
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Bubbles (Bpitchcontrol)
The Black Dog - Remote Viewing (Dusted)
Luke Vibert - Am I Still Dreaming? (Mo'wax)
Scala - Fearsome (Touch)
Leftfield - Chant of a Poor Man (Hard Hands)
Sebo K - Horizons (Exercise One Sleepless in San Juan mix) (Mobilee)
Mike Shannon - Suddenly Hosed (Wagon Repair)
Shane Berry - Fillertet (Gabriel Ananda mix) (Trapez)
Lee Van Dowski & Quenum - Dachschund mix (Num)
Lee Van Dowski & Quenum - Jeremy P. Caulfield mix (Num)
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Rotary (Bpitchcontrol)
Lazy Fat People - Shinjuku (Wagon Repair)
My My - Serpentine (Aus)
Gabriel Ananda - Tropophonie (Platzhirsch)
SCSI-9 - Railway Two (K2)
Marcel Dettman - Quicksand
Maxime Dangles - Noemie (Kompakt)
Pan Pot - P.O. Box (Mobilee)
Scott Solter - Wire Cloth (Home Tapes)

Music Tracklist Techno  ¶ 3:13 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  House fatigue I'm getting a little tired of House. Cameron hasn't contributed a useful suggestion all season. Forman is wrong all the time. Chase is mostly window dressing. Who cares if Cuddy gets pregnant or not? And Wilson isn't very good at pointing out House's flaws any more.  ¶ 9:22 AM 2 Comments Links to this post