Preposterous Universe

 
Friday Random Ten: Late In So Many Ways Edition

Greetings from Washington, D.C., where I gave a colloquium yesterday at Goddard Space Flight Center. Had fun catching up with old friends, and listening to NASA scuttlebut. (Science-wise, things are looking pretty gloomy right now, although not completely hopeless.) Less fun was when my laptop, for the first time ever, balked at transmitting my talk to the projector. I managed to convert my OpenOffice presentation to PowerPoint, saved it to a flash drive, transferred it to another laptop, and used that. (I don't have PowerPoint on my computer, and nobody else has OpenOffice.) So it was salvageable, but about 10% of my figures didn't show up, which was disconcerting.

In lieu of substantive blogging, the good news is that I am now empowered to participate in everyone's favorite blog game: the Friday Random Ten, in which you put your iPod (or whatever) on shuffle and list the first ten songs that show up. I think I saw it first at Rox Populi (who disowned it, but can't seem to give up), but also at Feministe, Pandagon, Pharyngula, Grammar.police, Majikthise, Yglesias, and Crescat -- so an eclectic crowd indeed. After buying the damn iPod six months ago, I have finally gotten around to downloading my CD's to it (half of them, anyway), and am now equipped to play along. Day late, dollar short, whatever.

1. Pat Metheny Group, Double Blind
   
2. Maria Papadopoulou, Maskaremeni
3. Aretha Franklin, Hello Sunshine
4. Cecilia Bartoli, E' Amore Un Landroncello
5. Living Colour, Time's Up
6. PJ Harvey, Is That All There Is?
7. Duke Ellington, Wig Wise
   
8. Yes, South Side of the Sky
9. Isaac Hayes, Chocolate Chip
10. Lauryn Hill, I Used To Love Him
    

Not sure how accurate a window into my soul this is supposed to provide. But any technology that juxtaposes Yes with Isaac Hayes can't be all bad. The world needs more progressive soul. (Or hot-buttered pretension, depending on your view.)

~ posted by Sean Carroll at 1:03 PM ~ link ~ ~ ~