Worst song ever

According to CNN, Blender has compiled their list of the 50 worst songs of all time. The Blender site only lists numbers 50 through 40, but CNN lists the top ten (not in order):

• "We Built This City" : Starship (they report this as being the #1 worst song ever)
• "Achy Breaky Heart" Billy Ray Cyrus
• "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" Wang Chung
• "Rollin'" Limp Bizkit
• "Ice Ice Baby" Vanilla Ice
• "The Heart of Rock & Roll" Huey Lewis and the News
• "Don't Worry Be Happy" Bobby McFerrin
• "Party All the Time" Eddie Murphy
• "American Life" Madonna
• "Ebony and Ivory" Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder

I've discussed this topic at many parties over the years. I always submit "We Built This City" as worst song ever, and always get appreciative head nods on doing so. It's an utterly inane and soul-less song, polished to shine like cheap plastic. It's an insult to Marconi and to San Francisco.

Gaps in the record

Found this comprehensive rebuttal of the creationist talking point that there are "gaps in the fossil record" (which they claim disproves evolution) : http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html. And by comprehensive, I mean exhaustive, encyclopedic, sweeping and thorough. Whew.

In the fat part of the curve

So, I thought I was having a big revelation, all by myself, when I discovered the pleasures of Random Shuffle on my iPod. How silly of me to think my experience is unique.

Wired pops my bubble:

Napster revolutionized music distribution, but massive libraries of digital music and capacious players like the iPod are upending listening habits through something very simple but profound: random shuffle.

When music lovers first discover the iPod, or software like Winamp or iTunes, they often rhapsodize about the joys of randomly shuffling tracks.
"I have seen the future, and it is called Shuffle," writes Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, who seems to have recently acquired an iPod.

Stuffy old listening habits -- like listening to albums from beginning to end -- are being thrown out in favor of allowing machines to choose songs at random, which often leads to unexpected, and magical, juxtapositions of music.

Then, this guy comes along to kick me when I'm down:

James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati and author of a study about tunes that stick in your head, said the appeal of random shuffle is likely generational.

Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged."

Oh great. Like I needed to hear that the same week I hear this:

People who drink the equivalent of three large glasses of wine a night can suffer brain damage similar to that seen in chronic alcoholics, research suggests.

Scientists found that people who consumed more than 100 drinks a month — around 130 units — suffered from loss of memory, reduced intelligence, poor balance and impaired mental agility.

While not getting too personal, let's just say I'm within striking distance of that 100/month.

Wax on

I am a MASTER of the English language!

While my English is not exactly perfect,
I am still more grammatically correct than
just about every American. Still, there is
always room for improvement...

How grammatically sound are you?
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That'd be a lot more meaningful if you couldn't get the "master" rating by simply choosing the first option for each question: as I did while trying to get to the results page while attempting to fix the picture (which wouldn't let me link directly, for some reason).