10 awesome albums

Disclaimer: These are according to me, and me only. I've been wanting to do this post for a while, and I always love me a good music post, so here we go. Ten awesome albums. What qualified to be on this list? I needed to have the entire album, and needed to know all of the songs on the album. By those criteria alone, my list consisted of ten albums, which seemed easy enough. One honorable mention that I'll make note of at the end, and with that honorable mention, seven of my eight favorite bands have been represented in this blog post. Maybe this post was inspired by the Pandora station I created with said eight bands last night, but either way, here it is.

1. The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, Explosions In The Sky
Average Play Count per song (approx. one year in time): 128.4 (5 songs)
Favorite Song: All of them
I think it's pretty obvious that this is my favorite album of all time. I could talk about this album, and these five songs, for hours, but I'll save some space for the other albums.

2. Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, Explosions In The Sky
APC: 55.7 (6 songs)
FS: "Postcard From 1952"
This was a great album to nap to over the summer, and over the time I've known EITS' latest album, each song has grown into its own meaning. Just like The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, each individual song has its own mood attached to it, but altogether creates one aura of a tone for the entire album. It's really cool, and very well done, as well.

3. Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons
APC: 30.3 (12 songs)
FS: "Awake My Soul"
This album actually has the fourth-highest APC, but I rank it ahead of what's next because of the singing-in-the-car factor. This might be the best album to sing to, ever (something instrumental albums can't have), because all of the songs have a different feel to them. There's a much wider gap of cheeriness and quiet on Sigh No More, which makes it a solid overall album.

4. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
APC: 50.9 (10 songs)
FS: "Perth"
Another album that's solid from front to back.  I really like the idea of places being really important in this album, and the concept that the music is far superior to the lyrics. I think that's different from how we think of music now. It's as though this album's story component is far more prevalent than other albums', which makes it really good.

5. In Your Honor, Foo Fighters
APC: 29.5 (10 songs)
FS: "Best Of You"
The loud, rock-heavy side of In Your Honor is exactly as Dave Grohl planned it to be. He said that it would be the "one CD that's all the really heavy rock shit" and seemed to hit the mark pretty well. I absolutely love that the first three songs are all in the same key, and some of the lyrics throughout the songs are really good as well. I think that "Best Of You" might be my favorite song of all time (remember that NewTunes project?), so this album gets a special nod.

6. Young the Giant, Young the Giant
APC: 25.9 (12 songs)
FS: "Garands"
I had heard a few of these songs at the start of summer, bought the CD only knowing said songs, and fell in love with the rest. It's a different style of music, but it's really cool, and by this point, I like all of the songs. It's their first album, I want to see them on tour, and I think that this will be a really good band for a pretty long time.

7. This Will Destroy You, This Will Destroy You
APC: 17.0 (8 songs)
FS: "Villa del Refugio"
This instrumental band has become my second favorite such band, and these guys have some really cool sounds. You'll have to check out this album to get a true sense of the kind of stuff they feature; the first three songs especially. Really good music to just have playing, even if you're not actively listening.

8. Young Mountain, This Will Destroy You
APC: 27.2 (6 songs)
FS: "The World Is Our"
The first album by TWDY is a little less "really cool sounds"-esque than their second album (see above), by which I mean that it's a pretty conventional-sounding set of sounds. But again, the first three songs have such a strong sound together that you have to give each its own credit. Another fantastic album to listen to, and a great first album by a great band who has been around for a while.

9. Wasting Light, Foo Fighters
APC: 26.8 (11 songs)
FS: "Walk"
Foo Fighters' most recent album is another one that's filled from top to bottom of hard rock songs that you can't help but nod your head along to. Well...if you enjoy this music, that is. I suppose that this is the point of our program where I say that not everyone will like this stuff. Foo Fighters being a prime example. Some people think Dave Grohl screams, some people think it's too loud, but hey, if it's not for you, that's cool. I love it, so it makes the cut.

10. Babel, Mumford & Sons
APC: 13.4 (15 songs)
FS: "Below My Feet"
This seemed like a little bit of a stretch, since this is such a recent album, but I think that this will turn out pretty well. I'm not perfectly in tune with everything, but I do know each song with a little effort. A lot of these songs sound like each other, in contrast to Sigh No More, but that doesn't mean they're not good. A solid effort by M&S, and one that's worth a listen.

Honorable Mention: Daughtry, Daughtry
APC: 9.8 (13 songs)
FS: "Home"
There's something about self-titled albums, I guess. Four of the eleven albums here are self-titled, and this is the only Daughtry album on the list. If I had to put my favorite Daughtry songs (from all three albums) onto one album, it would likely be much higher on this list. I just only like a subset of the entire album, so it gets the recognition it deserves, but not much more.

Alright, so there it is. Feels good to actually work through an entire post, much like the one I produced not too long ago today. Pretty solid couple of posts heading into spring break, and I'm sure that there could be something over break that I'll conjure up. Until then, enjoy!

Making the cut

In golf, a cut is something that you want to make. For if you miss it, you're usually in the bottom half of the tournament pool. This sense of the usage of a cut is what the four major sports have as their playoff system. If you're in the top 8 (NBA, NHL) or 6 (NFL) or 5 (MLB) in your conference/league, then you make the playoffs. Everyone falling short of those teams doesn't. But what also happens in golf, and more interestingly so, is a cut relative to the leader after two rounds. Anyone who is ten or more (usually) shots behind the leader misses the cut after two rounds. The remaining two rounds are played with whoever is within single digits of the leader.

What if the four major sports worked like this? What if they all went off the same system that golf does? Let's try and take a look through this. According to this somewhat arbitrary golf tournament I found, the winning score (in terms of strokes) was 268. The cut, that is, the number of strokes by the end of 2 rounds to be eliminated from the tournament, was 142. Or, 52.99% of the strokes of the winning score. Now, I know this is one golf tournament, but let's assume that this 53% holds true for most cases. Furthermore, let's say that each team with a .530 winning percentage or higher makes the playoffs. (Disclaimer: Practically, I know that this wouldn't work. With scheduling, travel, television, and everything else that goes into the world of sports, this realistically could probably never happen. But theoretically, it's really cool to think about.) Here's how the four major sports' most recent playoffs would be different if they went with the 53% system:

MLB
2012 playoff teams: 10
Lowest win % of a playoff team: .543 (Detroit, St. Louis)
2012 playoff teams, under 53% rule: 13 (Tampa Bay .556, LA Angels .549, LA Dodgers .531)

NFL
2012-2013 playoff teams: 12
Lowest win % of a playoff team: .625 (Washington, Minnesota, Baltimore, Cincinnati)
2012-2013 playoff teams, under 53% rule: 14 (Chicago .625, NY Giants .563)

NBA
2011-2012 playoff teams: 16
Lowest win % of a playoff team: .530 (Philadelphia)
2011-2012 playoff teams, under 53% rule: 16

NHL
2011-2012 playoff teams: 16
Lowest points* % of a playoff team: .561 (Ottawa, Washington)
20112012 playoff teams, under 53% rule: 20 (Calgary .549, Buffalo .543, Dallas .543, Colorado .537)
*2 points for a win, 1 for a tie makes for 164 possible points

What I get out of this is that every playoff team already had a win % of .530, so the 53% rule would just open the door for a few other teams. Teams that you could make an argument for to succeed in the playoffs. While there might not be much coming out of this data, it's certainly something really interesting. In other news, it felt really good to do a sports/stats blog post. Seriously, someone needs to start paying me for this.

Diary of June

If there is anything in the world that could even come close to an upset over the #1 ranked team in the nation, it's the beginning of my third and final year as a Peer Mentor, kicking off with our Meet and Greet this afternoon. First off, let me give the Bentley game its fair share of blog space. HOLY GOD was that game amazing. The Bentley game is my favorite event at Stonehill, but to have it come against the best women's team in the country at home is something special. To knock off a 24-0 rival on your home court is something special, and to be part of the crowd that made a difference in the game is something special. I talked about this after the nationally televised football game, and I'll say it now - THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THE EXCEPTION. Granted, there are just playoff hopes for Merkert Gym, but for years to come, any and all sports teams at Stonehill should have the fan support they deserve.

But Orientation, that's like one day of special that happens a lot longer than one day. Something that I realized today is that there's no one on the team who's already gone through what I (and the fellow third years/eventual rising seniors) will this semester/summer/next year. When I was in my first two years of Orientaiton, there were plenty of older PMs who gave me advice and stuff. But now that it's actually my turn to be one of those people makes it simultaneously cool and strange. I wouldn't say that I'm scared to be a third year - I think it's something that I already know I want to make the most out of - but it's definitely a new experience.

And I absolutely love that it's a new experience. One of the best things about programs that have constantly moving pieces is that you always have to adapt to your components. It's the exact same thing as college basketball teams. You could be a defensively-minded team one year, relying on play in the post, and then be a guard-oriented, fast-break team the next year. It all depends on who you have and what their roles are. And with new members and new roles, it's going to be an entirely new team, and entirely new experience. Which I'm all about. Something else that I'm all about is wordplay. Despite the fact that "Diary of Jane" has absolutely nothing to do with Orientation, being able to refer to my third-year experience as the Diary of June is exactly my kind of thing. Because reflection is cool and stuff, you know. More to come on this periodically throughout the next near-dozen months. All I can say for now is that I'm more than excited for all of this, one more time.

Revolution

Yes, I should probably be writing about the Peer Mentor Team, and the beginning of my third and final year as a PM. I'll get to that. Eventually. This weekend will be great because of the PM Meet and Greet, as well as the Bentley games on Saturday. But right now, I need to go off about this.

For those who don't know, there's this really cool program going on at Stonehill concerning Democratic Education. Which is, to make a half-semester's worth of seminars short, students taking control of their learning. I have the pleasure to teach a class in baseball statistics with seven other students who are just as passionate about the game as I am, and we test the conventions of the game from a statistical standpoint - something not often done in the game. What's interesting about this course is that as late as three weeks into this semester, I still felt as though I was running some sort of baseball club. But over the past month or so, it's become so much more than that, and that all took hold tonight in our seminar.

We discussed "critical thinking," and to what point thinking is actually critical. And we talked about what a liberal arts education meant; that is to say, the somewhat horizontal, broad-spectrum nature of a liberal arts education, as opposed to the vertical, specialized structure of a more specific training and education. Eventually, it turned into everyone taking turns about what bothered them, so here's what I have to say. I'll start with a question that I've been asking myself for three years now, which is "Why are we here?"

The answer I've always stuck with has been "to learn." We're at college to learn. What we learn about is obviously different for each student, major, discipline, and courseload. But what I'm actually starting to think about this semester is how we think about our learning. I get the sense that too many students show up to class, nod their head and smile at whatever the professor is saying, get the homework in on time, take their tests, and that's that. What the hell does that accomplish? You show up to class. Why? Because all throughout high school, we were made to go to class? Because someone told us we had to? Why do we nod our heads and smile at what the professor says. Is it because they're at the front of the room, and we're not? Is it because a piece of paper says that they're better at whatever subject it is than you are? Why do we do our homework on time? Because we'll be penalized if we don't? What happens if we need more than the allotted time to fully understand it? Why do we take tests? Namely, the SAT? How is a four-hour exam on a Saturday morning supposed to determine more than a body of four years of learning in high school? WHY ARE THESE THINGS IN PLACE? Everyone seems to adhere so stringently to the concept of getting good grades. What difference will it make between a B and B-, ten years down the line? Maybe this is out of a pent-up rage stemming from our seminar, but I think that we go to college, aim to have high grades, participate in resume-boosting activities, because that's what you do in college. I'm not telling you to sit in your room, eat chips, and watch movies all day. I'm not saying to put zero effort into your schoolwork. It's important, but it's important for reasons that you might not be thinking of. I wasn't thinking of these reasons until just recently, but now that I can see it happening right in front of me, I feel so passionately about this kind of thing.

Do what you love, and love what you do. Or some cliche like that. But seriously though, if you just care about a GPA or a grade or a degree, how far are you really getting yourself? Do something for its own sake. Do something because you feel strongly about it. Do something because you know you'll be putting a part of yourself into it. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen. Being part of this seminar of students who are taking control of their own learning has put some giant force within me that has made me feel so strongly about this. (You know, in case the giant blog post wasn't enough, I'll be explicit and say it point blank.) I just know that there's work to be done, and that I want to be one of those people leading the charge.

"I think revolution is always taking place, it's like evolution, baby...it's what gives me faith because you can't stop it, it's slow, it's painfully slow, but the revolution is definitely underway."
 -John Butler

5 funny autocorrects

In the middle of my homework I was typing on Word, I typed something like "tlakedabout" and waited for Word to immediately correct to "talked about." Instead of critiquing the expectations we've set on technology, here are five instances in which technology simultaneously fails us, yet gives us something fantastic to look at.

7 things I'm glad I did at Stonehill

I was giving a tour last weekend, and in the middle of it, just thinking to myself, I realized how much I've done in my time at Stonehill. With plenty of time left, there may still be more work to do, but at this point, I feel as though I've done a ton of stuff. Stuff I can be really proud of, and can get all excited about when talking to others about it. Here are seven of those things.

1. Peer Mentor Team. Sure, every college has an Orientation Program, but no one does it like we do. Being a Peer Mentor is fantastic on so many different levels and across so many different aspects of college life. But more on this eventually. This just needed to be first, because of how incredible the program is, has been to me, and hopes to be in my third and final year as a PM.

2. Broadcast sports for 91.3fm WSHL. I've been broadcasting since freshman year, which is one of the few things I will have done for all four years here. Being a radio broadcaster for our men's and women's basketball teams, as well as our baseball team in the spring, is one of the most fun things I do. Nothing beats college basketball, so being able to talk about it to anyone who wants to listen is awesome. I think that it's made me a bigger fan of Stonehill athletics, which is super awesome, because the one thing I knew I wouldn't get at Stonehill was something like this.

3. Student Ambassador. I mean, it's pretty awesome to be able to actually get people to want to come to Stonehill. Sure, as Peer Mentors, we get first-years super excited for their freshman year, but to actually start that interest as someone who gives a tour to prospective students is also very cool. I'm hoping to work in Admissions over the summer, giving tours and doing other work in the offices, and I think it'll be really cool to see what kinds of things are going on to make Stonehill even more appealing than it is.

4. SPES and Baseball Statistics. I probably should have blogged about this before we got four weeks into the program, but if you're far behind on the times, students are teaching classes at Stonehill to other students, and I'm one of them. I'm teaching Baseball Statistics to seven students (including two suitemates and three people in our fantasy baseball league) who are just as interested in what's going on in the game of baseball as I am. The program itself is about changing how we learn, and how we think about our learning, and to challenge the conventions that are in our fields of expertise. It's awesome to be able to actually facilitate discussions about baseball, to see other people who are just as passionate about it as I am, and to actually have some concrete results that may change how the game is played, coached, managed, and thought of.

5. Double majored with Psychology. Granted, I submitted my form to double major with Math and Psych about three days ago, but I plan on getting two degrees when I get out of here. Which is one more than I thought I would get as a freshman, so that's pretty cool. Psychology has just kind of happened for me, and the opportunities I've gotten through the major have been pretty cool - sitting in at KinderCare for 15 hours over the course of a semester for Developmental Psych, conducting an experiment as part of my Learning Community, doing further research directly stemming from said LC...psychology has always been really fascinating, and I'm glad I'm going farther with it than I thought I would.

6. NOT studied abroad. No knock on studying abroad here; I'm pretty sure that if I went, I would have the time of my life, have incredible experiences, blah blah. I just never felt like it, I still don't feel like it, and even if I did, at this point, I'd be leaving too much behind here. Not just with academics...Stonehill has become a second home for me (sorry, Mom), and I'm not the kind of person to start parsing out something like that to other continents. Just not yet.

7. SURE Program. I always forget that I did the SURE Program...spending the summer at Stonehill was awesome, especially with such a flexible (and possibly non-existent) schedule to do my research. Turns out that pure math research isn't my thing, but that was the whole point of this. And then there was the whole San Diego thing...can't really complain about that.

Alright, so I originally planned to have ten things here, as I do with these sorts of things, but only came up with seven. Which is still a lot, I think, and I definitely left some stuff out - intramural sports, Math Lab...hell, I even considered that living in New Hall could warrant a spot. But these seven things are in a tier above most of the other stuff I do on campus, so here they are. With about a year and a half left, maybe I'll make it to ten (graduating?), but for now, I think this is a pretty damn good list.

Through the looking glass

I just wanted to share this really fascinating article with anyone who has a little bit of time to spare. A cultural anthropologist professor went undercover as a student at her university, and compiled all sorts of data about the students in higher education, what their role meant as a student, what professors' roles meant as such, and more. It's a really cool read, and kept making me wonder how I could do something like this.

How could we, though? Seriously...I know that metacognition exists (thinking about thinking), and I've talked about metablogging before (blogging about blogging), so something like this definitely seems plausible. I dunno. I didn't mean for this to be a lengthy post by any means; I just wanted to share the article, and I had the phrase "through the looking glass" in mind for the title from the moment I read it in the article. It's always good to look in the mirror and really see what's going on, but at times, it's important to do that in ways we might not think conventional.

Murder, we wrote

Yeah, Ray Lewis killed a guy. Two of them, actually, after Super Bowl XXXIV, also won by the Baltimore Ravens. Yeah, that's probably not a good thing for someone to do. Google "Ray Lewis murder" and you can read for yourself what happened that night. And while everyone is on the Ray Lewis bashing bandwagon, many people forget about Torrey Smith, who lost his younger brother to a motorcycle accident in the beginning of the season. Certainly something incredibly difficult for anyone to handle, let alone a professional athlete standing hours before a huge game. Smith would play in that game, a 31-30 victory against the New England Patriots. The same Patriots that would lose to the Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, where all anyone could talk about was Ray Lewis, his career, and the murder in 2000. So I not only bring this up, the fact that all we seem to talk about is the murder story instead of the player coming back from his brother's death, but I ask why? Is Torrey Smith not as juicy a story as Ray Lewis? Is it not as heartwarming a story as Ray Lewis' story is cold? Think about those feel-good stories. Talk about those stories more than the ones about the murderer.

Things I'm scared of

Sure, people are scared of spiders, and heights, and fear itself, but what I realized is that there's something a lot worse than that - an idea. Think about it...

"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world."
-V for Vendetta

At the end of the 1960's, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott told her classroom that people with blue eyes were better than people with brown eyes. She established the implications of this truth, reinforced her parameters, and eventually, the children internalized the rules, and acted according to what they believed. But what they believed was just one thing, spoken from one authority figure. Elliott could have said that brown-eyed people were superior, and the same thing would have happened. Just watch the first few minutes of this video and see how easily people can conform to a belief system on someone else's terms.

Around the same time this was going on, another idea was being exploited; this time, in a high school. Watch from 13:00 to 16:10 in this next video. Ron Jones got his entire classroom to act in ways similar to the Hitler Youth movements. With one person perpetuating propaganda and ideas into the malleable minds of others, a similar turn of events happened.

Although what worries me the most is that watching this, I know exactly where these students are coming from. I know the power of authority figures, obedience, reinforcement, punishments, and the like. I know that people are susceptible to confess to a crime they did not commit because of the pressures of social influence. There's no profile for what kinds of people fit into these categories, because it can happen to any of us under the right circumstances. And the fact that people can be persuaded by socialization to believe something that they never thought they would, scares me.