December 2009
12 posts
My Weekly Top 5 Artists →
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (47)
Volcano Choir (16)
Doveman (16)
Efterklang (15)
Dirty Projectors (15)
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Christmas Teasers
Here are a couple of puzzles to mull over during the festive season:
1. Nicolette, my twin sister, is older than me (in fact, she was born 9 minutes before me). However, in a particular year earlier this decade, Nicolette celebrated her birthday two days after me. These birthday celebrations occurred on our respective actual birthday dates, so how was this possible?
N.B. Only certain parts of...
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Answer: Tuesday Teaser #9
This game is one that you should never pay to play! If you discard the pairs of red and black cards that are drawn, you leave exactly the same number of red cards as black cards remaining. Therefore the player will always end up with the same amount of cards in their pile as the dealer. And hence the $100 prize can never be won.
My Weekly Top 5 Artists →
Doveman (37)
Fleet Foxes (29)
Sufjan Stevens (16)
The Very Best (9)
Brett Dennen (5)
My Albums of the Decade
Is This It? The Strokes Reservoir Fanfarlo The Midnight Organ Fight Frightened Rabbit Funeral Arcade Fire () Sigur Ros The ‘59 Sound The Gaslight Anthem In Rainbows Radiohead Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Narrow Stairs Death Cab for Cutie Challengers The New Pornographers Up The Bracket The Libertines I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning Bright Eyes The Stage Names Okkervil River Ys Joanna...
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Tuesday Teaser #9
A casino has just launched a new game in which the single player draws pairs of cards from a standard 52-card deck. For each pair, if both cards are black, they are placed in the dealer’s pile, if both cards are red, they are placed in the player’s pile and if one card is red and one card is black, they are both discarded. The player goes through all 52 cards (and hence 26 pairs) this...
2009 Soundtrack of the Year
Ever year I create a list of some of my favourite songs that were released over the previous twelve months. I listen to a huge variety of music, so I hope there’s something in here for everybody. Take a listen and let me know your thoughts. If you’d prefer to listen via some other means:
[Link] Playlist on Spotify
[ZIP] MP3 files for every song in one handy download (106MB)
My Weekly Top 5 Artists →
Doveman (44)
We Were Promised Jetpacks (10)
The Beach Boys (9)
Tune-Yards (9)
Bear In Heaven (6)
WatchThe Cove Official Trailer
The Cove
On the plane to the USA I saw a quite fantastic film called The Cove. It won the Audience Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and is unlike any other documentary film I’ve seen in that it’s set up to be rather more like a thriller than a documentary. I had just watched a two and a half hour epic so I put it on purely to have a quick look to see what it was like, but it ended up...
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Story of the Decade
I’ve just got back from a short trip to the States, which involved trips to New Haven (for Yale vs Harvard), New York and Boston. I’m creating a gallery for all the photos from that trip, although in the meantime you can see them on Facebook. I previously posted a photograph from the trip (that I entitled The Dominating Feature) which shows the extent to which the Empire State Building...