The Mighty Mos Def at the 9:30 Club

Concert reviews are not something I envisioned for this blog, but this one is worth it, and maybe it'll become a regular fixture.

Last night my roommate, Chris, and I traveled to northwest Washington, D.C. in order to attend a Mos Def concert at the 9:30 Club.

The opening act was a hip hop artist out of Philadelphia named Hezekiah. He was pretty good and didn't make us wait too long for him to finish. Unfortunately, after Hezekiah finished his short set, we had to wait upwards of 90 minutes for Mos Def to arrive, due to his flight being delayed. When the rather lame 9:30 Club MC announced this, I was skeptical. However, Mos Def later called attention to his boarding pass which he had left in his pocket, and all (or most) was forgiven. Needless to say, after approximately three hours of standing, we were all ready to rock.

First, let me say that if you haven't heard much or any Mos Def before, you're missing out. Mos Def is a rare breed of performer. A rapper, an actor, and a poet, Mos Def is part of the "socially conscious hip hop" movement. I don't know how he feels about this term, but I feel that it makes it seem too exceptional, although it does draw attention to how far mainstream rap has fallen.

Mos Def's set was, for lack of a less pretentious word, sublime. The fun he has doing what he loves is infectious. His live lyrical style alternates between goofy and profound; reverent and irreverent. After his first or second song, Mos Def turned to his DJ and asked him to find some Chuck Brown, showing the D.C. crowd that he knew his Go-go as well. Several songs later, the funk-inspired strains of the proto-Go-go* song "Bustin' Loose" came through the speakers as MD riffed over it. Later, during a transition into a new song, Mos Def revisited this style while sampling "Get Out Of My Life, Woman" as performed by Joe Williams followed by "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles. For the very last song, off his upcoming album The Ecstatic, MD showed off his musical talent by starting his lyrics right on the first beat, a rare occurrence in rap and hip hop.

*This sounds like an indie album title.

In the end, Mos Def made it clear that he was very grateful for our patience and he seemed genuinely sorry that the show had to be shorter than expected due to the late start. I had been standing, at this point, for about five hours, my back and ankles were screaming at me, and I needed to pee pretty badly, but when I was standing there, a mere twenty feet from this genius of hip hop, I probably could have put up with it for another hour at least. Definitely a good night.

Professors' Delusions Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

Normally, I won't be posting twice in one day, but this article from the New York Times caught my eye and my ire, and I couldn't resist.

As the child of a professor, I have been keenly aware of the song-and-dance surrounding grades in college for years. Mere hours after fall semester grades are released (usually when we are on a New Year's vacation) my mom will receive at least one, if not many, requests from students asking to talk about their grade (for those who don't know, that's code for "how can I convince you to give me a better grade"). However, I am also currently enrolled at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and know well the myriad of reasons a student might expect a higher grade. In this sense, I have a unique (read: superior) point of view on the matter.

The thing that set me off was Professor Marshall Grossman's comments in the beginning of the article. Let me be blunt so my ideas aren't misconstrued: If you think that a C is an average grade, you need to remove your head from your ass. Sure, we all remember the key in the corner of our grade school report cards (A = Outstanding, B = Above Average, C = Average, D = Below Average, E/F = Fail), but even a cursory analysis reveals this to be a steaming pile of horse shit.

The biggest problem is this: When is the last time you thought of a C-average (a 2.0) as acceptable? Which leads me to the second problem: If you think a C-average is acceptable, you definitely didn't go to Law School, Med School, etc. When has any post-secondary school ever seen a 2.0 as enough? If Prof. Grossman wants to crusade about the purity of the grading scale on his own time, that's his business, but in the meantime, he's putting students' futures in jeopardy.

The other thing that set me off (once I cooled down enough to read the rest of the article) was the litany of quotes from various professors and deans who, apparently, never went to college themselves. Here were a couple that stuck out:

"[Dean Hogge] said that if students developed a genuine interest in their field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically motivated learning could take place."

Sure, in a perfect world we'd all just sit around, get high, and expand the shit out of our minds, but as long as employers, grad schools, parents and the students themselves care about the quality of the learning that, supposedly, takes place, grades will never take a back seat.

Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that students must “read for knowledge and write with the goal of exploring ideas.”

Has this guy ever been to school? For some reason that needs to be researched, assigned reading is never as fun as reading for pleasure. Also, exploratory writing papers are few and far between. In the real world there are expectations meant to prove that you've done the reading, done the homework, been to class, etc.

Let me be very clear. I don't deny that grade inflation is a problem. On a five point scale, a two/C should be average. However, to say that students expect higher grades because they feel "entitled" to them demeans students. Students aren't that dumb (although they can be). Even if they don't know the reason, they expect B's and A's because they know others do too.

Wikipedia Wednesday: Bloop

About a week ago, my mom lamented/suggested that somebody in the blogosphere should write about interesting stuff they find on Wikipedia. Clearly, this comes from her knowledge of my fondness for Wikipedia and my propensity for wasting hours of my time article-hopping. To this end I am instituting Wikipedia Wednesdays here at Gratis & Libre. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep it up every week, but we'll see how it goes.

To kick off this new feature, I've chosen one of my old favorites: Bloop.

"Bloop" is, perhaps, a cryptid, that is a mysterious, possibly mythical, animal like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. In reality, all we know is that it is an "ultra-low frequency underwater sound" detected by NOAA in the southern Pacific Ocean during the summer of 1997. It lasted about a minute and was loud enough to be detected over 5,000 km (3,100 miles) away. The few people who have studied the phenomenon have said that it most likely originated from something organic (i.e. not a submarine), but that an animal that could produce such a loud and low sound would have to be many times larger than a blue whale.

The Wikipedia article has a link at the bottom which leads you to the NOAA "Bloop" website which used to have the original recording, which turns out to be rather eerie at its normal speed. Unfortunately, they just have just have the version that's been sped up 16 times, but it's still better than the one second clip in the article. The only problem being that the sped up version isn't nearly as low...it sounds like a "bloop".

Share & Enjoy!

Persense

One of the recurring themes of this blog will be posts which are, ultimately, my attempt at achieving immortality by establishing my part in the coining of a new term which, with a little luck, will become part of our spoken language. Much of these will come with help from my awesome roommates, shown here, for reference, in an awkward yet epic picture.


Persense

This word was coined sometime around October of 2008, and most of the credit for its invention goes to my roommate, Chris Cahoon (bottom middle of the above picture). Basically, it was in reaction to the lack of accuracy in the word "sense". For instance, when someone proffers a story, fact, or suggestion of questionable quality you might be compelled to say "Whoa man! That makes no sense." The quality of the remark remains unevaluated except with the seldom used qualifiers as in "zero sense", "almost no sense" and "complete sense". To make matters worse, suggestions or stories aren't totally without merit, but rather are simply not feasible, relevant, responsible, etc.

In order to rectify this bothersome situation, we have adopted the term "persense". Here is how to use it:

per·sense - noun - a part of complete, cogent, sound and practical judgement.

Example:

"This semester, I want to be less stressed. I'm just gonna party and drink and hook up with chicks."

"What about your classes?"

"Well, I'll probably hang on to my grades just enough that I can salvage them enough to pass in the last three weeks."

"Dude, that makes, at most, 5 persense."


You see, in this example, the idea is not totally without redeeming merit or backing evidence. Indeed, many college students attempt this lifestyle every semester, and many of them succeed. However, the conceit that this will relieve stress is, at best, wildly optimistic. Whether you are vaguely stressed throughout the semester or are overwhelmed with work at the end, the net amount stress remains largely the same. (More on the Conservation of Stress in a future post.)

The "persense" of any given scenario is dependent upon the opinions of the user and is, thus, quite subjective. However, to arrive at the number used in the example Chris and I discussed two major factors; (1) the actual persense of the scenario and (2) the success rate of such a plan. We felt that, objectively, this plan made about 2%s (the symbol for persense), but multiplied by an estimated 50% success rate for the average student, we arrived at a rating of 1 persense. Therefore, although it is a subjective term, it is important that the user can back up their claim, preferably with subjective figures and confusing math.

Here's the fun part. Start using "persense" in your daily life. It isn't hard to explain because it makes, at least, 95 persense. In five, ten, maybe twenty years maybe it'll make it into common parlance, or even become Webster's Word of the Year like "truthiness" did.