How I will make my Billions: Kara-Better-than-OK

Today I was listening to the English radio station ICR and what should I hear but the pop music of Paris Hilton. Yes, with the marvels of modern sound mixing technology, even a blackhole that can emit no conceivable talent has the ability to make it on the airwaves.

Which got me to thinking about how I will parlay my knowledge of China into billions of dollars. Karaoke here is bigger than Jesus. Bigger than the Beatles even.

The advent of Karaoke 2.0 is nigh. I just need to write a learning AI program that will do real-time sound mixing. Put the right demo[graphic] under brain scanners with IPods that alternate between Pavorotti[sp?] and the average first-round contestant of any TV singing competition. Correlate the sound waves with reward brain activity.

Train the algorithm on attributes of bad and good singing. Second round put the demo back under the brain scanners and feed input direct from lousy singers but train the program to modulate and transform the sound output to correlate to the rewarding music.

It will never happen though. Lousy karaoke singing probably is a key alcohol sales driver for KTVs. Self-medication.

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Too bad columnists can't write unfinished symphonies

When Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics, I have to be there. Not to watch the athletes. Not to watch the dull Great Wall-to-Great Wall coverage. I just want to come in order to experience again Beijing’s perennial unofficial sporting events.

Take the sport of X.J., or extreme jaywalking, for example. I have seen Beijing grannies cross dense traffic in ways that would make an inebriated Bode Miller shout “Are you 480° crazy or just this short of a half-pipe!?”

Outside of the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, Chinese citizens do not have the freedom to question the rule of the Communist Party, but Beijing motorists do have the freedom to reenact driving fit only for a Grand Theft Auto video game. The right of way works a little differently; the vehicle that can crush all other vehicles has the option of driving towards oncoming traffic for short spurts when in a jam or a rush.

While surely the Chinese government can put a damper on the urban motocross with the new sections of subway to open and a People’s Army of traffic whistlers, Olympic visitors are nevertheless sure to be spectators to the People’s Republic’s attempts to control virtual traffic.

My personal web blog, along with thousands of others using the same web host, is presently blocked by firewall feat. Mainland China is now safe from any invidious influences were I to decide to videocast a “Falun Gong Show” – an hour long weekly monotony show where meditators chant mantras until they lose focus and are gonged off.

...


And then my inspiration teeters off and I have no idea where I was going with all that. I'm left with no column to submit to The Denver Post. I can leave it smoldering on my to do list, or can it and look for inspiration elsewhere.

A Taibei day

Today (or yesterday, as it is 2 am) I checked out two apartments, saw a crazy guy walk in the middle of oncoming traffic, found out I'm developing an ingrown toenail, and didn't get ready for my eviction tomorrow.

Wow. Negotiating in broken Chinese with someone who speaks broken English is an experience. Luckily we were both patient. But I think his English was less broken than my Chinese so I should've replyed in both Chinese and English.

I liked the studio apartment. It had a great 18th floor location near the central subway and train station. It was well-designed and modern, if maybe a little too artsy for my taste. But it only had a water heater for cooking, perfect I suppose for the Ramen noodles I would have to eat to live in it with the deposit they were asking.

Walking back late from taking a look at a shared apartment, I noticed a man in his thirties walking bizzarely while crossing the street. He zigzagged across it towards the center of the intersection and didn't pay attention to the lights or oncoming traffic. After a minute of this,I went into a Family Mart on the corner and tried to explain to the clerk to see if he could call the police, but I was making no sense (the same problem I'd have if I called the police directly). I appeared the crazy guy. I went out the door again to see if he was still walking in traffic, but a group of women had also noticed the guy's weird behavior and I confirmed they were calling the police. Last thing I saw of him he was hugging a lightpole, no police in sight.

The hostel/shared apartment I've been staying at is converting to a regular apartment after tomorrow. So I'm back in a hotel because the hostels here are almost uniformly wretched. The place I've stayed the past three weeks was decent but I'm tired of seeing cockroaches when I awake at 3am. And tell me in some Animal Planet special how there has been a worm ("Wormsworth" is my moniker for herma) that managed to worm its way onto the shower floor on the fourth storey of a building.

Most bathrooms in Taiwan and China don't have baths, just showers. But I'm sure in the hotel I'm staying at there's a bath where I can start soaking my toe in warm water. Yay.

Ghost Month Munchies

Walk past the front of many small stores in Taipei this past month and you'll come across altars bearing incense with food and also metal cans filled with burning ghost money.

Sadly for the ghosts, their ectoplasm is only going to get more jiggly on a diet of soft drinks and processed foods. I saw one table that had Pringles on it. Now, I know "you can't eat just one." But damn, once you're in the great beyond I would hope that you don't feel the need to munch on the things for eternity.

I want to break into the ghost food diet shake market here in Taiwan. I think I would call it ecto-Firm. It would be some sort of soy milk with genetically engineered microorganisms that would make the liquid tofu disappear into thin air after mixing.

The Beautiful Metaphor of the Sea Squirt

“Consider the life of the sea squirt. As a newborn, this little ocean dweller swims off in search of a good place to live, all the while struggling to feed itself. When at last it finds a habitat, a little nook or cranny in a piece of coral, it backs in a permanently attaches itself. No longer in need of its brain to get on in the world, it eats it.” (LLH, pg. 100)

I just finished reading two books of popular science: “Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body” and “Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals about How We Become Who We Are.” I would recommend them both to anyone curious about human origins.

“Mutants” details how various congenital conditions (a la the Total Recall triple nipple) inadvertently provide clues to the typical functioning of developmental pathways. Relevant to anyone who ages, near the end, the author Leroi discusses some of the theories of aging and makes the case that part of aging is in effect a constellation of diseases caused by the weak influence of natural selection on “time-bomb mutations.”

“L.L.H.” is a mélange of chapters (that could have been standalone essays) that relate the implications of what the scientist co-authors term cultural biology while providing a background into less contentious neuroscience. They try to distance themselves from the evolutionary psychology and sociobiology camp by emphasizing the malleable aspects of human intelligence.