Rehab Albums

The Wall Street Journal reports how a number of musicians in recovery are finding new success with "rehab albums," some of which feature songs about hitting bottom and personal redemption.

Even in film, last year's movie Crazy Heart was about a boozing country singer, Jeff Bridges' Oscar turn as Bad Blake, whose song writing and life turned around after getting in a 12-step program.

Excerpts from wsj.com:

"Heading into the Grammy Awards Feb. 13, one-time bad boy of rap Eminem has 10 nominations and the top-selling album of 2010, with 3.4 million copies sold. Now 38 years old, Eminem describes his tailspin with lyrics that sound like quotes from group therapy, turning his infamous verbal machine gun on himself: "I'm wallowin,' self-loathin' and hollow. Bottoms up on the pill bottle. Maybe I'll hit my bottom tomorrow," he raps. It may be the biggest album ever to deal explicitly with getting sober.

"The record, called "Recovery," is the latest in a time-honored musical category: the rehab album. Just as drugs and alcohol have fueled much of popular music, so, more quietly, has getting straight. Many artists have flourished, commercially and artistically, after they got clean. Critics who dismissed Eminem's previous album, the aptly titled "Relapse," include the rapper himself, who pronounced it "ehhh" on "Recovery." Eminem declined to comment."

Not mentioned in the article is Alejandro Escovedo's recovery from alcoholism, drugs and Hep C which were followed by the albums Real Animal and Street Songs of Love.  Years before that there were Escovedo's songs like "Put You Down."

You know I just can't put you down
I rub my wounds with alcohol
You know I just can't put you down
I just can't put you down
There ain't a pill that'll cure that pain
But I just can't put you down
Some people say
That money can buy anything
All the drugs to cure the pain
Money can buy anything
Then some people want
All the sin and pleasure in this world
They don't care about the price
They pay for all the sin and pleasure in this world
But I've gotta say
You know I just can't put you down
I don't care how far I fall
You know I just can't put you down
And I don't care if they call back at all
I just can't put you down
All the women can forget my name
You know I just can't put you down
You know I just can't put you down
You know I just can't put you down
You know I just can't put you down

Faceborg

World domination continues . . .

As does exploiting new ways to monetize Facebook users.  According to the Associated Press:

"Facebook users who check in to a store or click the "like" button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers.  Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature.

"Involving users in advertisements without their consent has been a thorny issue for Facebook. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in this case the company is making money off a person's name or likeness without their consent. He calls it "subtle and misleading" and says users should object."

Nattering nabobs of negativism

2011 is shaping up as a good year.  It's only January and already President Obama has penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed about less regulation and smaller government, Nancy Pelosi has been dethroned as House Speaker, and now Keith Olbermann has "left" MSNBC's Countdown.

The New Yorker, whose political leanings are a liberal lay up, had a little fun with his exit:

"As for Olbermann’s future, there was a good deal of speculation about that, too. Some supposed that he would be recruited by CNN, which could certainly use the audience infusion he would bring, and it even has been suggested that he may go to Fox News (an end-of-times signal if ever there was one). It also has been reported that Olbermann would use his $14 million MSNBC payout to start his own media venture. Given his history of driving his bosses crazy, the prospect of Olbermann working for himself is by far the most intriguing possibility."

New owner Comcast (as of January 28) must be delighted since Olbermann had recently proved both an embarrassment and ratings disappointment.

• In 2010, Fox News owned the top 12 cable news shows in average total viewers and swept the top 10 among 25-54-year-olds (MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" came in 13th and 11th, respectively). Even the nightly repeat of the “O’Reilly Factor” averaged more viewers than MSNBC and CNN shows.  While moving ahead of CNN, several shows in MSNBC’s primetime lineup took a bit of a ratings hit in 2010.  "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" fell 25 percent in the 25-54 demo, 11 percent overall.

100 Years Young

The Jerk

Watson

IBM's Deep Blue computer beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.   Now the company is taking on the champions of the popular TV quiz show Jeopardy.

At a practice round this week at IBM's Watson Research Center in Westchester County, New York, IBM's Watson system - a Power7 computer using Watson Question Answering artificial intelligence software, defeated Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.  Watson will face off with Jennings and Rutter again on the televised Jeopardy program this February 14 - 16, kickstarting IBM's Centennial this year.

Watson has a lot under the hood.   The room-sized system is powered by 10 racks of 90 IBM Power7 servers using 360 chips, runs on the Linux operating system, and has 15 terabytes of RAM .  Over the last four years, Watson has been boning up for its Jeopardy run with encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, news and movie scripts - the equivalent of 200 million pages of content. Watson is not connected to the Internet, so it does not do Google-like web searches to find answers.  And it "clicks" its own Jeopardy buzzer.

The media have been making comparisons between Watson and the HAL 9000 computer in Arthur C Clarke's 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, published with the release of Stanley Kubrick's film.  Rumor had it the HAL name was a clever one-letter shift from IBM.  In the film sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, Clarke dispelled that through the character Dr. Chandra, who said this idea is "Utter nonsense! I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic."

Last week Watson's principal inventor David Ferrucci was asked about comparisons to the Hal 9000.  "That's science fiction. We're not even close to that."  He did add that Watson was inspired more by the benevolent computer on the TV series "Star Trek" than by Hal. "Watson tries to help you."

Three feet and counting

We've had more than three feet of snow since Christmas.  Running out of places to put it all.

Hanny's Voorwerp

Another mind blower from the Hubble telescope.

According to NASA:

"The bizarre object, dubbed Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), is the only visible part of a 300,000-light-year-long streamer of gas stretching around the galaxy, called IC 2497. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a searchlight beam of light from the galaxy's core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar, a bright, energetic object that is powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off about 200,000 years ago.

"This Hubble view uncovers a pocket of star clusters, the yellowish-orange area at the tip of Hanny's Voorwerp. The star clusters are confined to an area that is a few thousand light-years wide. The youngest stars are a couple of million years old. The Voorwerp is the size of our Milky Way galaxy, and its bright green color is from glowing oxygen.

"Hubble also shows that gas flowing from IC 2497 may have instigated the star birth by compressing the gas in Hanny's Voorwerp. The galaxy is located about 650 million light-years from Earth."

Lists and more lists

Lotsa lists about 2010 stuff from fimoculous.com

Russian Spies

The Politically Correct Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The publishers of the Mark Twain classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have made two word changes to the new edition.  Nigger has been changed to slave (219 times), and injun to Indian.

The New York Times covers the angles well in their Room for Debate opinion section.

I hope the publishers don't listen to rap music.

And what kind of a name is Huckleberry?  I think it should be changed to Bobby, Steve or maybe Dwayne.

Out with the old, in with the new

And it couldn't come soon enough.