The Shanty's Bar

There's this bar. Not a hero, cause what's a hero, anyway? But there's this bar that just seems to fit right in there.

It's known as The Shanti Bar. We will be visiting it in two weekends.

Oliver Sacks on The Daily Show

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Oliver Sacks
thedailyshow.com
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Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia, appears on The Daily Show.  I don't know about you, but after seeing this segment, the book has shot to the top of my reading list.  It's almost like Sacks had taken a look at The Shanty Blog and then wrote Musicophilia because we inspired him.  At least a few Shanty pieces came to mind after watching the clip.  Sacks' most obvious debt to The Shanty was reflected by his reference to the resilience of musical capacities over linguistic capacities.  

I was a little wary when he made the claim that dancing is a purely human characteristic (fuckin' a, we got ourselves another specist here).  His comments about the fundamental nature of our sense of rhythm forced me to adjust my views on non-human dancing.  Snowball may not have been "dancing," in Sacks' view.  But the clip left open the possibility that while dancing is an exclusively human achievement, rhythm may be a more widespread animal characteristic.  Snowball has undeniable rhythm.  Suck it, Sacks.  May be time to revise the first edition.

Regardless, the way I'm seeing it, Musicophilia draws attention to and neurologically demonstrates our collective capacity and appreciation of music.  Our hunger for the stuff extends beyond language and culture.  One world.  

Pat yourselves on the back, Shanty writers.  

25 Best Blogs 2009

Yes.  A blog about blogging.  Indeed, it's trippy.  But follow me for a second on this one.  Time magazine has ranked the 25 best blogs "in the world" about anything really that you can think of, from politics to economics to frugal living to foreign living to popular culture to very unpopular culture.  The 25 best include:

• Talking Points Memo
• The Huffington Post
• Lifehacker
• Metafilter
• The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan
• Freakonomics
• BoingBoing
• Got2BeGreen
• Zen Habits
• The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
• Crooks and Liars
• Generación Y
• Mashable
• Slashfood
• Official Google Blog
• synthesis
• bleat
• /Film
• Seth Godin's Blog
• Deadspin: Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion
• Dooce
• Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
• Said the Gramophone
• Detention Slip
• Bad Astronomy

I haven't read any of these.  Ever.  Liberal estimates indicate that I've heard of four (TPM, Huff, Freak and Boing). Whatever happened to my favorite blogs? Like:

   Wired Blogs, like Threat Level or This Day in Tech

    Eric Goldman's Technology and Marketing Law Blog

    Truth on the Market

    FML

    Pitchfork

    And of course, The Shanty Blog

By the by, why isn't Twitter considered a top 25 yet?  At least I've heard of that one, and visit it quite frequently (check me out @brncnnr)  Jay Mac n' Cheese (or @jlm08726), gonna back me up on this one?