Justin Leaves Little to Believe In

June 17, 2012 • Music • by
0 Comments

It would be easy to listen to two tracks from the new Justin Bieber release, slag the whole album as pop garbage, and leave it at that.

At just over 48 minutes long, Believe does plenty of things right. A small army of producers, including big names Diplo, Zedd, and Bei Maejor, give the album’s 13 tracks an impressive range of beats and synth lines. Try as you might, you can’t find an unsatisfying chord progression or drumbeat anywhere.

The album is consistent, but this turns out to be more of a drawback than a virtue. Too many of the tracks are nothing more than half of a verse followed by a neverending chorus. “As Long As You Love Me,” one of the album’s better cuts, teases the listener with a dubstep-inspired beat that never develops beyond the first minute.

Read More...

Hans Rosling, Data Superhero

May 25, 2012 • Insight • by
0 Comments

For many, data is a chore–the stuff of spreadsheets and long-forgotten stats lectures. For Hans Rosling, data is the quickest way to change the world. Rosling is a professor of global health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and his work with data has made him an international superstar.

Read More...

The Best Of The Net: The Webbys 2012

May 22, 2012 • Events • by
0 Comments

Once a year all of the world gets together to celebrate the best of the lovely Internet we call home. Monday night, the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York played host to comedians, musicians, journalists, and all manner of web professionals gathered to present the 16th Annual Webby Awards. The awards reflect Internet achievement and meaningful social and cultural contributions as judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Read More...

You Are What You Read (And Watch And Play And Listen To)

May 16, 2012 • Insight • by
0 Comments

The last book I bought was David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. I’m only about 80 pages in, but so far it’s a terrific read. For me, it seems to be just a book, but recent research suggests it may be much, much more.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby claim that the books we read can transform our personalities and redefine our perspectives. Their research centers on the process of “experience-taking,” or the idea that when people read they “[assume] the identity of a character in a written narrative and [simulate] that character’s subjective experience while immersed in the world of the story.” So what’s the big deal? Immersion in literature is as old as literature itself. How does this change anything?

Read More...

Commentary Ticker

  • You Think You’re So Pretty: What Dove’s ‘Sketches’ Video Got Wrong
    May 23, 2013 | 5:02 pm

    “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty” one woman concludes after participating in the Dove Beauty Sketches. In fact, the woman, Florence concludes that natural beauty “couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.” Florence came to these undesirable conclusions through participation in a commercial released as part of Dove’s campaign to promote “real [...]

  • The Story of the Slurpee
    May 21, 2013 | 5:37 pm

    It might surprise you to hear that the Slurpee was an accident. Yet the beloved concoction, as a matter of fact, got its start when a Dairy Queen soda machine kept on malfunctioning. Its operator, Omar Knedlik of Kansas City, placed bottles of soda in his freezer as a failsafe. The bottles came out a [...]

  • We Are More Germ Than Human
    May 16, 2013 | 11:50 pm

    The human body is one of the most fascinating and puzzling ecosystems in the universe, a complex community of cells, germs and microbes that is still being mapped and decoded. Recent discoveries in this field have caused scientists to reevaluate the way we look at our internal functions, and perhaps we aren’t as much ourselves [...]

  • Daft Punk Streams New Album ‘Random Access Memories’
    May 13, 2013 | 1:42 pm

    The robots are back. The internet has been abuzz with hype for Daft Punk’s long awaited follow up to 2005′s Human After All, and today we finally get to hear it. While the official release date is still a week away, iTunes is offering fans the chance to stream all 13 tracks early. Simply follow [...]

  • The Bluths Return: Watch The First ‘Arrested Development’ Season 4 Trailer
    May 12, 2013 | 11:28 pm

    I’m afraid that I just blue myself. It’s the final countdown until the Bluth family is back and as dysfunctional as ever. The resurrected cult classic will return on May 26th for a fourth and final season released exclusively on Netflix. It’s been a long and painful time since the show was cancelled in 2006, [...]

  • RSSArchive for Commentary Ticker »

Trending on The Airspace