Geek Love

Letters of Note: The Vision of Sin 
Charles Babbage gently takes to task Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Vision of Sin": for a verse "which reads – "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born." and suggests changing it for accuracy to "Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born."

While in the Guardian, Simon Singh corrects Katie Melua's song "Nine Million Bicycles" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/sep/30/highereducation.uk). He finds the "little ditty is deeply annoying, because [Katie] demonstrates a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method." Read the rest of the article at the link above - bloody awesome plus it has a poem!!!

Australians world's worst for illegal music downloads
The link has the coolest interactive graphic - where you can click on the country to find out the most popular download. As for Aus:

According to a survey of downloads from bit torrent sites conducted by Musicmetric, a self-described data and analytics company, Australia, with just over 19 million downloads, placed sixth in the top 10 for music downloads in the past year. The top downloading nation was the US which, according to Musicmetric, downloaded music 96,681,133 times, more than double the next nearest nation, Britain, which had a little over 43 million downloads.

However, by size, Australia with a population of 23 million for those 19 million downloads was comfortably the most frequent user of unofficial or illegal sites. And the most popular artist downloaded in Australia was Adelaide hip-hop group the Hilltop Hoods.

Pop music is getting sadder and more emotionally ambiguous

From the anals of the BPS aka British Psychological Society's latest research digest -  Pop music is getting sadder and more emotionally ambiguous with noteworthy points below:

Have you heard older generations lamenting the way pop songs don't sound like they used to? There's a sense that the hits from yesteryear had an innocence and feel-good quality that's missing from today's pop offerings. Now Glenn Schellenberg and Christian von Scheve have confirmed what many suspected - pop music over the last five decades has grown progressively more sad-sounding and emotionally ambiguous.

.......Happy sounding songs are typically of fast tempo in major mode, whilst sad songs are slow and in minor. Songs can also be emotionally ambiguous, having a tempo that's fast in minor, or vice versa.

Schellenberg and von Scheve found that the proportion of songs recorded in minor-mode has increased, doubling over the last fifty years. The proportion of slow tempo hits has also increased linearly, reaching a peak in the 90s. There's also been a decrease in unambiguously happy-sounding songs and an increase in emotionally ambiguous songs. The findings complement an analysis of pop lyrics from 1980-2007, published last year, that found a drop over time in references to social interactions and positive emotions, but an increase in angry and anti-social words.