11 July 2008

Listening, reading, watching: July 2008

Listening: Pandora radio

I just learned about Pandora (internet) radio from a friend of mine. This coincided with Inari and I getting faster internet at home, and I now listen to Pandora basically every day. It's really neat - it allows you to fine tune your "radio" to listen to music that you like. It's a great way to learn about musicians. Right now I have three stations: pop, cuban, and electronic. I'm sure that will expand with time. No more advertisements, no more top-40 playlists, no more pre-processed mass-produced music.


Reading: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Speaking of mass-produced culture, I'm now reading Fast Food Nation, which doesn't exactly instill pride in our culture. The book is a very thorough account of the history of fast food and how it has affected American culture. It covers everything from treatment of employees to health to agriculture. Schlosser has a very obvious left-wing bias, so I am left wondering exactly how truthful he is, but on the other hand he does seem to have done very thorough research. I'm anxious to finish the book so that I can begin reading critiques.


Watching: WALL-E

This sci-fi Pixar animation is fantastic. I wasn't sure if Pixar could top their last animation (Ratatouille), but I think they have. Of course I'm a little biased - some of my favorite movies throughout my life have been sci-fi (e.g., E.T., Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey) - so any movie that makes fun of or mimics these movies is likely to make me laugh.

2 comments:

jason said...

pandora is great! it's on pretty much every day at work. soon you will need more then three channels for sure. even though it's not top forty, it starts to sound like it. repeats and all.

e told her coworkers about it a while back, and they are hooked too. They blame her for their pandora addiction.

there are other pandora-like sites, but I haven't ventured over yet.

-js

jason a said...

I can imagine that Pandora would get repetitive, especially if you don't add enough musicians to your playlist. When I first tried using it I didn't realize that you could add additional musicians, so it just ended up playing Mason Jennings and Jack Johnson over and over and over and over. Got a little tiresome.