Music: Concerts and Dancing
People experience traditional music by creating it, dancing to it, and listening to it. Generally people have preferences among these, but I think listening is probably the most popular. What brings...
View ArticleDebt Relief Is Bad Means Testing
Forgive student loans! End foreclosures and let people own their homes free and clear! Allow the free coinage of silver! The idea of reducing debt, either outright through forgiveness or indirectly...
View ArticlePaying With Donations
If I plan to donate $X this year, it doesn't actually matter that it comes directly from me. What matters is that it's money going to the organization of my choice that they wouldn't otherwise get. So...
View ArticleRecording and Consent
I was recently at an event which was mostly recreational singing. The organizers announced that no one was to be recorded (audio, video, photos) without their consent. The organizers emphasized that...
View ArticleVisual Support
When I'm in a group where people are talking about something, often my preferences for who would speak are not the same as who actually speaks. When the thoughtful people are shy, uncertain, or...
View ArticleSimple Satisfying Dances
Some events will draw both people who have danced before and want "real" contras, and people who are new and just want to have fun. These are very difficult to call for, because of the mixed...
View ArticleAssymetrical Visiting Costs
Traveling is both expensive and unpleasant: my house is more comfortable than a bus or plane, and much cheaper. If people visit each other with similar frequency, then this all balances out, when...
View ArticleAdjustible Rate Everything
When I wrote about inflation before, people pointed out that inflation is different from swapping currencies because debts aren't updated. Imagine I lend you 10 credits to buy a house. If we decide...
View ArticleUnlinking Stereo Channels III
Success! I can now display eight independent mono channels to the user while internally representing that as four stereo channels. Before I was struggling with how to extract the underlying equations...
View ArticleWhy Does Inflation Matter?
If we switched to a new currency, decidollars, where every price was numerically 10x higher but wages were also 10x higher, that would be a bit annoying as we adjusted our expectations, but would it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unlinking Stereo Channels II
I have stereo channels I want to unlink. Simple linear interpolation turns out not to be the answer, so I need to determine the relationship between gain, pan, and the output levels experimentally. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Express Escalator
Consider a case where you have long escalators, with at least one spare. This example, Porter Square in Cambridge MA, has three escalators in parallel: While in general we probably run escalators at a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Free Raisins CD: Live Summer 2012
The Free Raisins now have a CD: Live Summer 2012. We recorded it live, and edited dance-length sets down to be a better fit for a CD. We're also having a CD-release dance, Sunday February 24th at the...
View ArticleRole Names in Contra
At a recent BIDA dance one of the experienced dancers helping out during the beginner's workshop objected to calling the roles "ladies" and "gents" and wanted "lead" and "follow" instead. And now...
View ArticleDeciding to Organize
One sophomore fall afternoon I was walking with a group of friends to the dining hall. I asked why we didn't have more contra dances on campus and someone said "that would just be more work for the...
View ArticlePortable Emergency Food
I carry a backpack with me most places, and in it I keep a few things I always want to have with me. One of the more important things is a few food-bars. When people are hungry they don't think well...
View ArticleAnnealing
Flexible and pliable in youth, rigid and set in age. When an organization is founded it usually has a purpose and little else. The founders have some ideas about how to run it, but try many things....
View ArticleUnlinking Stereo Channels
I have a bunch of stereo channels represented as (volume, pan) and want to convert back and forth between this representation and (volume_left, volume_right). All values are between 0 and 1. I want to...
View ArticleBisexuality
We treat sexual orientation as categorical in a way that we don't treat other mate preferences. If Pat is most strongly attracted to mid-30s atheist Greek-American men who are witty and good swing...
View ArticleRazr M on T-Mobile
Update 2013-04-04: This way is limited to EDGE/2G; there's a better way. Perhaps you have a Motorola Razr M. It supports GSM in addition to Verizon's CDMA, so it should work on T-Mobile and ATT except...
View Article
