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Assorted links
1. Scott Sumner, standing on one (?) foot. And here is a Sumner podcast with Russ Roberts.
2. The physics of free throw shooting.
3. A mathematician discusses string theory and many other matters.
4. Is older music crowding out newer music?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 9, 2009 at 01:03 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I've always thought older music (and artistic endeavors in general) should crowd out newer music. The flow of music contains high quality and low quality music yet to be sorted. The stock of older music contains only the high quality stuff because we discard and forget the low quality stuff.
Given the choice of what to listen to, I can be pretty well assured if I listen to the Oldies station, they'll have weeded out the crappy music of the period and play the good music. If I listen to the new rock station, the weeded out is at best, just begun.
Posted by: MikeDC at Nov 9, 2009 2:00:52 PM
The Oldies stations have weeded out to such a degree that much of the music that was once good now sounds crappy merely because you have heard the song 10,000 times already. Even artists like the Stones who have an immense catalog only get play from about 1% of it. There's too much weeding going on. And if I hear a Boston song one more time I'm going to...
Posted by: rob at Nov 9, 2009 2:17:11 PM
I absolutely love having instant download access to excellent, lovingly compiled anthologies of proto-jazz, delta blues, and afro-beat music that a generation ago would have been much harder to get my hands on.
Having access to old music increases the average quality of music listening (by greatly increasing the number and diversity of possible listening experiences). Also, it increases the average quality of newly produced music by giving musicians access to a broader range of styles.
To say old music crowds out new is sort of like saying that understanding history undermines your appreciation for current events. It's just false, and backwards. A taste for history enriches and enlivens the present.
Posted by: mk at Nov 9, 2009 2:38:22 PM
Why did they study free throws in three dimensions? Aren't two enough? Did they really suspect the optimal throw would not be over the center of the rim?
Posted by: Asher at Nov 9, 2009 2:47:40 PM
Sort of a more expansive version of the old/new music question was posed by director Mike Figgis in this talk broadcast on the BBC in 2007: "Is There Too Much Culture?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/freethinking2007/pip/crxww/
A nice summation of it here:
http://www.truetalkblog.com/truetalk/2007/12/overly-cultured.html
Posted by: Jonathan at Nov 9, 2009 3:36:31 PM
" In 1972, I was listening to music that was almost exclusively made in 1972."
"This relative lack of need for current, innovative culture can cause, has caused, is causing - maybe - the innovative culture to slow down,"
Is John Taylor simply projecting his own inability to innovate? Or perhaps he's unfairly comparing today's inventory of musical creativeness with what is, in 2009, a much larger base of personal musical experiences than he possessed in 1972.
As I remember it, the early 1970's popular music industry included many artists who covered hits from earlier decades. Linda Rondstadt became the most successful female artist of the 1970's by covering earlier hits of the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holley, Martha and the Vandellas, Roy orbison, and others.
Posted by: John Dewey at Nov 9, 2009 3:49:37 PM
Why did they study free throws in three dimensions? Aren't two enough?
Maybe because the ball is released slightly off-center, so the angle matters, especially if you hit the rim? Just a guess.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Nov 9, 2009 4:00:49 PM
Re 2:
"The engineers used hundreds of thousands of three-dimensional computer simulations of basketball free-throw trajectories to arrive at their conclusions. After running the simulations, Tran and Silverberg arrived at a number of major recommendations to improve free-throw shooting."
By (insert your own imaginary God or other object of worship here), I hope Tran and Silberberg's 'peer reviewed paper' wasn't funded by the taxpayers. It probably was.
Posted by: US at Nov 9, 2009 5:11:03 PM
Anyone who has ever played basketball on a middle school team could have told you everything those researchers assert. How can this kind of "research" seriously be justified on any level?
Posted by: tn at Nov 9, 2009 5:38:50 PM
Scott Sumner is not standing on one foot. He is practising what may turn out to be some fascinating pirouettes
Posted by: David Heigham at Nov 9, 2009 6:08:06 PM
in order for there to be popular, innovative musicians there need to be innovative listeners.
the absence of such killed most new classical music in the 20c.
Posted by: babar at Nov 9, 2009 6:41:26 PM
Scott Sumner is the kind of prof who positively raises the visibility of a school.
And in the future, more of the smaller, less well known schools will hope they have blogging faculty like Scott Sumner.
I know that MR was intitially and partially responsible for one out of state high school senior making GMU his first choice. And he had other choices.
Faculty who blog well, with good and solid substantive writing, with humor, who treat the serious commenters with courtesy and respect, are a real asset to the recruitment efforts of many colleges and universities.
My own child was swayed in his first choice of a school by a faculty blogger, and disssuaded from another school by a faculty member at the other school who regularly commented on another blog with dripping condescenion.
It isn't just the kids who need to be thoughtful about what they post on the Intertubes....
Posted by: anon at Nov 9, 2009 6:44:22 PM
He thinks Cole Porter and swing are stunting his son's musical growth? Seriously?
Also, to his anecdote there's plenty of anecdotes that people's tastes are becoming more varied. I can now access new French blues online, African choral music, hymns from a congregation in Palestine, the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, the Beatles, Seth Walker, Pink Martini, etc etc etc. And odds are his son is listening to all sorts of music he couldn't imagine either.
Posted by: agm at Nov 9, 2009 7:42:35 PM
US, tn: are you effing serious? What makes you think you're qualified to judge the worth of that study?
I highly doubt 'any' middle-schooler knows how to perform rigorous sensitivity analysis on their freethrow shot. Or perform high-fidelity 3D simulations for that matter.
Posted by: a goddamn communist at Nov 9, 2009 9:18:13 PM
Exactly. String theory, a/k/a mental masturbation, like its physical counterpart leaves the devotee with nothing to show for his efforts but a sticky mess and a lot of frustration.
Posted by: Thanatos Savehn at Nov 9, 2009 10:34:56 PM
Way to read the interview, Thanatos.
Posted by: chyeah at Nov 9, 2009 11:36:14 PM
"Also, to his anecdote there's plenty of anecdotes that people's tastes are becoming more varied. I can now access new French blues online,"
Way off topic, but not really, and I don't care anyway, but the reduction in costs for things like music that increase our musical taste by lowering the transaction costs of finding variety don't actually mean we are a richer society as many people assume and some write books about. It emphasizes how poor we actually are, but how we can make do with less.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 9, 2009 11:55:51 PM
Music article: Another "there goes the neighborhood" piece. If all there was to listen to was music of the past 6-12 months, no doubt you'd always be starving for the next new song or group.
String theory: I have some quibbles where he brings up Calabi-Yau manifolds, but I think they'd be over his head.
Posted by: John at Nov 9, 2009 11:57:45 PM
@Andrew: Poorer for having wider and deeper access to culture? That's damn near my definition of increased wealth. How could wealth be defined such that we are poorer for having the opportunity to sample music from many times, places, and styles?
Posted by: Dan at Nov 10, 2009 1:37:20 AM
Dan,
It's taken me 10 years to come up with that theory. Don't expect me to communicate it effectively for perhaps another decade or so.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 10, 2009 2:46:48 AM
3.: if only economics could be as scientific as this stuff...
Posted by: abc at Nov 10, 2009 4:02:44 AM
It's taken me 10 years to come up with that theory. Don't expect me to communicate it effectively for perhaps another decade or so.
Andrew, you had me worried with your first comment. It's also the first comment of yours to which I reacted negatively.
Posted by: anon at Nov 10, 2009 8:22:36 AM
a goddamn communist:
Foregive me if I came off harsh, but I certainly never stated that "any middle-schooler knows how to perform rigorous sensitivity analysis on their freethrow shot. Or perform high-fidelity 3D simulations for that matter."
I believe that scientific inquiry should be performed if it would be of value to someone other than the researchers themselves. This may include other researchers, so if this study in some way helps answer other questions that require things like "rigorous sensitivity analysis" or "high-fidelity 3D simulations" than I will accept that this paper was worth the time, money, and energy expended. However, the idea (as expressed in this article) was to provide difinite knowledge of the optimum way to shoot a free throw.
Ideally, this paper should be most appealing to basketball players. However, as I said earlier, the conclusions of this paper state nothing about the correct technique for shooting free throws that wasn't already widely known. I really did learn every technique this article mentions while I was in middle school. The information unique to the paper, such as the ideal shot having three backward rotations before hitting the rim, are not helpful to players. We don't determine the exact amount of rotations, we get a "feel" for the right amount of spin.
What this paper has done is confirm, through rigorous scientific analysis, that the current methods for shooting free throws are the correct ones. That must have some value, but when considering the other problems these researchers could be addressing, my opinion is that the paper has little value.
Posted by: tn at Nov 10, 2009 1:34:04 PM
That the internet stiffles innovation by drowning future musicians in too much inspiration must be the crappiest argument ever.
Posted by: Marcus at Nov 10, 2009 4:49:37 PM
That the internet stiffles innovation by drowning future musicians in too much inspiration must be the crappiest argument ever.
Posted by: Marcus at Nov 10, 2009 4:54:40 PM
