Josh Witten

The Science of Weezer

On the 537th episode of the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast, Marc Maron has an interesting conversation with Rivers Cuomo* of Weezer about his method for songwriting, particularly in the gap between Pinkerton (1996) and The Green Album (2001).

What I find so captivating is Cuomo’s application of a scientific mindset to “solving” his creative process in the hopes of working more efficiently and effectively. He fails, but does not conclude that his art cannot be understood by science. His problem was a classic scientific problem of too many variables, too small of a sample size (ie, n=1), and too little time. Cuomo also defies Maron’s efforts to portray his analytical quest as potentially maddening. It simply wasn’t productive enough.

I’m going to recommend the whole interview, but the segment I have described starts at about the 34:50 mark.

*Promoting Weezer’s new album Everything Will Be Alright in the End.

Hunger Games Victory

Earlier this month, our resident chef, Ben Witten, mentored a team from GrayHair Software to victory in “The Hunger Games”, a charity cooking event that raised $15,000 to support child nutrition programs at the Food Bank of South Jersey.

The contest provided seven teams with a typical box of food from the food bank. Audience members could also “buy” (i.e., make a donation) additional items to help their favorite team.

The GrayHair Software team produced a breakfast hash that they called GrayHair Sunrise:

“We made an autumn vegetable hash with apples and topped with a sunny side up egg, sprinkled with basil and feta.” – Valerie Capasso, GrayHair Software (Kelly Roncace in South Jersey Times)

The dish surprised the judges by surprise with the simple elegance of its flavors.

As Ben’s brother, I am not surprised. I can see his influence as a team mentor. While I have never had this particular dish, I have had eaten many varieties of vegetable hash that he has prepared for breakfast. They are simple. They are elegant. They are flavorful. And, they all taste like victory.

SOURCE: South Jersey Times (Kelly Roncace) and my proud sister-in-law.

#casLABlanca

We took some time off from corrupting classic(ish) films with science, but we came back strong this past Friday with #casLABlanca – a noble effort to science-fy the 1942 classic Casablanca. Despite the risk this posed, I was pleased with the results (measured by my lack of productivity on Friday), but I amuse easily.

You can read the Storify of #casLABlanca, or even add your own “scinematic” efforts to the hashtag.

The Scinema Veritas ouevre includes:

#SciWars (Star Wars)

#ConanthePostDoc (Conan the Barbarian)

#TheGrantfather (The Godfather Trilogy)

#SciFace (Scarface)

In which, Rep. Rice plays to my vanity

I know it is boring, but it is my policy to publicly post any correspondence I receive from one of my elected representatives, especially the form letters. This one is from Representative Tom Rice, who represents those of us living in South Carolina’s House District 7, on the topic of NSA domestic spying.

In addition to voting the way I wanted him to on HR4870 to stop funding for certain NSA surveillance programs, Representative Rice called me “Dr. Witten”. No one ever calls me “Dr. Witten”, including most of my students. Continue reading “In which, Rep. Rice plays to my vanity”