Musing about how people find things out

I love coffee. Haven’t had a cup since October 2006, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love coffee. Probably something to do with my South Indian roots, and being served fresh “decoction” coffee first thing in the morning for 16 of my 23 years in Calcutta. Wonderful stuff, I can still smell it. So when people tell me “wake up and smell the coffee”, I usually do. I can bring that aroma to mind at will.

[It took me a while to realise that my recidivist craving for nicotine was so deeply intertwined with that for caffeine; once I figured that out, and abstained from coffee and tea, the nicotine stayed given up. Cold turkey given up after a 31 year habit.]

So where was I? Yes, coffee. Here’s how it was made at home,  courtesy of Latha Narasimhan at the Yum Blog.

Nowadays I spend my time learning about different teas, training myself to distinguish my gunpowders from my silver needles. A part of me, nevertheless, keeps an eye on what’s happening in the world of coffee. Which brings me to the point of this post.

This little character. The luwak, a type of civet. Coffee beans that have been digested and egested by these creatures are treasured for their taste, treasured to the tune of $600 USD per pound. The most expensive coffee beans in the world.

That’s all right then. You get some coffee beans. Give them to your local friendly neighbourhood civet, wait for them to be digested and defecated. Then you collect the faeces, separate out the beans, make coffee with them. All’s well that ends well.

That wasn’t the part that got me. What got me was something far simpler. Questions like “How did they know? What made them try to make a drink out of the detritus in animal droppings? What else did they try? What are they going to convince us about next?”

Answers on a postcard. Preferably undigested.

more on why retarded hippies like me use Twitter; and a defence of the Long Tail

Today I “met” someone via Twitter. Dallas W.Taylor. The Dallas Taylor, as in “Crosby Stills Nash and Young Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves“. The Dallas Taylor who played drums on that album shown above (Deja Vu),  on the first album Crosby Stills and Nash, on the first Stephen Stills album, and on the two Manassas albums.

[And not the Dallas Taylor who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for a short while in 1953. Or any other Dallas Taylor.]

I’m delighted to learn that there’s a new band in the works and that there’s new music to come. For sure I will be buying it, I want to support a childhood legend. My wish to support him grew even stronger when I found out what Dallas has been doing in the decades since. Go here if you want more information on the work he’s been doing on addiction intervention.

An aside I can’t resist, germane to this discussion. I read an article in the Times today trashing the Long Tail, referring to a study I studiously avoided mentioning till now; it smelt of trolling. But now I can’t resist. The headline was, believe it or not, Long Tail Theory Contradicted As Study Reveals 10m Digital Music Tracks Unsold.

Turns out the study was done by Will Page, Chief Economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance. Yes, as in the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and the Performing Right Society.

Now I shall resist the temptation to say that it’s a bit like reading a report on why cigarettes don’t cause cancer written and published by Philip Morris, or maybe on why gas guzzlers have no impact on climate change written and published by General Motors. I won’t say that. Having successfully resisted that temptation, I will state that what I can glean about the study looks quite reasonable. Except for a couple of points. A couple of big points.

First, Long Tail actually requires you to make the right Long Tail things searchable, findable, sellable, buyable. Not just any old things hanging around in inventory like elephants-without-colour. The right things. Too much of past inventory management focused on what was sold, what wasn’t sold. Whereas what should be measured is intent, not sale or purchase. How many things, Long Tail things, didn’t get sold despite the intentions of buyers? Mary Modahl, in Now or Never, a worthwhile book written at the turn of the century, makes that point very well. Nowadays, understanding buying intentions is at the heart of VRM, particularly unfulfilled intentions.

The Long Tail may not always be visible in a business environment that has been Hit Culture dominated, at least partly because industries in such environments are so far away from the customer and her intentions. How else can we explain the fact that it would appear no one considered that it would be worth while to re-release the Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen versions of Hallelujah as physical CD singles last week?

Long Tail is about what happens when the costs of discovery and contracting drop in an environment where inventory can be managed flexibly and dynamically, making the case that there’s a lot of people wanting to buy a lot of things that they can’t buy because of unavailability, high search costs, high fulfilment costs and so on.

Second, even if the study’s conclusions were right, they will not continue to be right. Because people like me will buy the songs and albums of people like Dallas Taylor, even more so if he starts connecting up with the Greg Reeves and Chris Hillmans and Joe Lalas and Al Perkins and Paul Harris and Fuzzy Samuels.

You see, these people are part of the Long Tail. Many today have not heard of them. But enough have. Even measured in readers of this blog, there are enough. Even measured in Facebook friends, there are enough. Even measured in Twitter followers, there are enough. Enough to form a Long Tail.

So people will buy their music. And not necessarily through traditional routes either.

In the meantime, I will continue to relish the sensation of being in touch with someone whose name used to adorn my wall as a teenager.

Versions of Hallelujah: A definitive list in the making

So today history was made, as Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah went in at No 1 (Alexandra Burke) and No 2 (Jeff Buckley) in the Christmas charts in the UK, and with the original version at No 36. Some of us tried to make the Buckley version No 1, tried and failed, failed gloriously; remember it made No 2 on download sales alone, unlike Alex’s version.

It was worth it: from what I’ve gathered so far, it looks as if Leonard Cohen will earn over $2m in royalties from the week’s sales, with more to come. Given that he’s 74, given that he was allegedly cleaned out of his savings by his erstwhile business manager, that he sued her, Kelley Lynch, and won $9m in damages, that he has apparently not collected a red cent from her since; given all this, one could surmise he’s not rolling in it. So the money’s going to come in useful. [Yes, he’s under new management since!].

With the song so much in the news, I kept hearing that there were over a hundred versions of the song recorded; not as many as for Suzanne, but a substantial number anyway. Now I believe that the Buckley version is outstanding; Cohen is rumoured to have told Buckley’s mother that once he heard Buckley, he never needed to sing the song again. But that does not mean that other versions are awful, there are many different treatments, each to their own. I thought there must be a definitive list: but when I looked around, I could not find one.

So I thought I’d build one up and put it on Wikipedia, with as much detail as possible. Could you take a look at the list below and help me crowdsource this task? I promise to take all the inputs and load it up over the holidays, as a labour of love. If one of you would prefer to do it instead, be my guest, just let me know.

  1. Jeff Buckley
  2. Leonard Cohen
  3. John Cale
  4. KD Lang
  5. Gord Downie
  6. Daisy Chapman
  7. Espen Lind, Askil Holm, Alejandro Fuentes, Kurt Nilsen
  8. Rufus Wainwright
  9. Nora Foss al Jabri
  10. Regina Spector
  11. Bob Dylan
  12. Willie Nelson (Ryan Adams and the Cardinals)
  13. Alexandra Burke
  14. Imogen Heap
  15. Katherine Jenkins
  16. Anthony Michael Hall
  17. Kathryn Williams
  18. Allison Crowe
  19. Happy Mondays
  20. Diana Vickers
  21. Fall Out Boy
  22. Bono
  23. Blake
  24. Il Divo
  25. Barrel House Mamas
  26. Patricia O’Callaghan
  27. Bon Jovi
  28. Christina Marie
  29. Dresden Dolls
  30. Damien Rice
  31. Sheryl Crow
  32. The Junebugs
  33. Tony Lucca
  34. Elisa
  35. Chris Botti
  36. Clare Bowditch (Australian)
  37. Eric Beverly
  38. Erik Flaa
  39. Euan Morton and Denise Summers
  40. Arooj Aftab
  41. Gavin de Graw
  42. Jack Lukeman
  43. John Jerome
  44. Kate Noson
  45. K’s Choice
  46. Late Tuesday
  47. Lucky Jim
  48. Macbrolan
  49. Ari Hest
  50. Street to Nowhere
  51. Jennifer Terran
  52. Brandi Carlile
  53. Jay Clifford
  54. Gord Downie (Tragically Hip) duplicate
  55. Steffen Brandt and Tina Dickow (in Danish)
  56. Ulf Lundell (in Swedish)
  57. Enrique Morente (Spanish, flamenco style)
  58. Brigyn (in Welsh)
  59. Espen Lind, Askil Holm, Alejandro Fuentes, Kurt Nilsen duplicate
  60. Nosfell and Jane Birkin
  61. Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
  62. Kevin Max (DC Talk)
  63. Alex Lloyd (Australian)
  64. Eugenio Finardi (in Italian)
  65. Blue Jupiter
  66. Myles Kennedy
  67. Lincoln Brewster
  68. Alpha Rev (Casey McPherson, Austin)
  69. Sara Gazarek
  70. Jennifer Scott
  71. Peter Joback (in Swedish)
  72. Kermit
  73. Zach Wiedeman
  74. Birchwood Band
  75. Blumfeld (in German)
  76. Michael McDonald
  77. Glenn Hansard (The Frames/The Swell Season)
  78. Jason Castro
  79. Kate Voegele
  80. David Bazan
  81. Zach Condon (performs as Beirut)
  82. I Am The Lost Sea
  83. Karen Ann
  84. Noam Peled (Israeli)
  85. Naomi Hates Humans
  86. Christine Collister
  87. Amanda Jenssen
  88. Paramore
  89. Advent Children
  90. Krystal Meyers
  91. Lucy Lawless
  92. Alter Bridge duplicate, same as Myles Kennedy
  93. Martin Sexton
  94. Pain of Salvation
  95. Amanda Palmer
  96. Tim Minchin
  97. Phil Wickham
  98. Vocal Line
  99. Sharon Janis
  100. Robin Olson
  101. Popa Chubby
  102. Rea Garvey
  103. JLS
  104. Eoghan Quigg
  105. Lisa Hordijk
  106. Tangerine Dream
  107. Bobby Andonov

I stopped at 100, I am sure there are many more. I’ve taken care to make sure that all versions that predate 1984 and therefore couldn’t possibly be the same song are removed from the list, whether it’s from Handel’s Messiah or even from the Deep Purple one. Similarly I’ve excised all of the Lordi and other Hard Rock variations that are unrelated to the Cohen one. There is a rumour that Prince once recorded it, but I have not been able to find anything to back that up; there is evidence that he sang it but none of his recording it.

Incidentally, I spent some time going through a number of sites on the web to get this far. So if you want to listen to any of the versions, you’re best off visiting these sites first: here, where there’s a fine post on the subject, here, where there’s a good discussion,  and of course YouTube.

[My thanks to www.sweetandbitter.com for the silhouette image].

musing about education and learning useful things

This is one more of those vulnerable posts, where I share something close to my heart. There is every risk that some of you will disagree violently, flame me, stop reading my blog. There is every risk that some of you will think less of me because of the things I say. I think of this blog as a community, a place where I know many of the regular readers personally, a place where I can share things like this without fear. For those of you I know less well, and for those of you I do not know, please bear with me.

I loved school. I loved the thought of going to school, of spending time there, being with friends there, working, playing. I loved everything about school. Being at school was something I really looked forward to. It was a wonderful time, and I was privileged enough to be able to spend nearly 15 years in one Jesuit institution, from primary school through to university: St Xavier’s Collegiate School, Calcutta.

It was one of those places that truly deserved being called an institution. There was something about it that was destined to transcend time; it was a living piece of history by the time I got there, at which point it was barely a hundred years old. A wonderful location, a wonderful set of building and grounds, and wonderful staff. We were privileged to have some really great teachers. [It was with some sadness that I learnt of the death of Thomas “Tommy” Vianna a few weeks ago, he was one of those greats. [Tommy Vianna, Requiescat In Pace].

During my time there, as with many others, I had some purple patches, there were times when I was first in class, times when I played well for class and school teams, times when I excelled at something or the other. Of course I remember them well. But there were many times where I did not excel, sometimes because I hadn’t worked at all; sometimes despite my working really hard; and sometimes because I just wasn’t drawn or attracted to whatever it was I was being asked to do.

I remember talking to my maths teacher when I was about fifteen, a time when my sole interest was to become a maths professor, aspiring to do all the things that someone in high school in the early seventies would want to do: grow a beard and long hair; walk around in jeans and t-shirts reading books like Godel, Escher, Bach (which hadn’t actually been published then); learn to play guitar; do something meaningful in the theory of numbers in the footsteps of Ramanujan; and of course solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. Not just solve it, but solve it elegantly, elegantly enough to fit into the margins of a book on Diophantine equations. Maybe smoke a pipe. Have some pastis. Lovingly restore a 16th century book.That sort of thing.

My “hippie maths professor” reverie was rudely interrupted by said maths teacher, who pointed out where he was living, what he was earning, how hard things were. He was adamant that I should go nowhere near teaching; instead, I was to spend time making money; money that I could then plough back into education at a later stage.

And I guess I listened to him. Which is why, when I retire, I will build a school. For sure. It’s something I think about every day. There is something about the sheer inclusiveness that a good education brings; I detest the thinking behind The Bell Curve, I believe with all my heart that everyone has potential; of course social, economic and environmental factors affect every individual’s ability to develop and reach and extend that potential, but not in the way bell-curvers think.

That belief in the power of education is the reason why I got involved in School Of Everything; there is something very fulfilling about the premise behind SoE; I’m also very excited about the possibility that we can create a mechanism to unlock trapped potential amongst people who are otherwise unable to participate, usually because of generation or gender.

That belief in the power of education is the reason why I joined BT; I have this deep-seated belief that ubiquitous, affordable connectivity is an absolute must-have as we strive to improve health, education and welfare worldwide, as we strive to make the world a better place, as we strive to become better stewards of what we have. As we strive to change ourselves.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about education, about what it really means. Not dictionary definitions, not semantic arguments. What does “education” mean to me?

It’s not about “committing to memory and vomiting to paper”.

It’s not about learning to sit tests. It’s not even about learning to pass tests.

These things are useful, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for us to be able to be anything, do anything.

So what is it about?

I think it’s about these things:

  • learning how to learn, which involves a lot of watching and listening
  • learning how to love, which involves even more watching and listening
  • learning how to lose, which involves quite a lot of watching and listening
  • learning how to be with yourself, which also involves a lot of watching and listening
  • learning how to be with other people, which also involves ….watching and listening
  • learning how to solve problems, which also involves ….. watching and listening
  • remembering what you’ve seen and heard, and being able to assimilate it
  • learning how to express yourself in word and deed, how to take the things you’ve learnt and do something with them

The more specialised the things you watch and listen to, the more you’re acquiring a particular skill. Sometimes there’s more watching, sometimes there’s more listening. Whenever I had to concentrate to see or hear or express something, I really felt for people who couldn’t, people who didn’t have the full use of their sensory equipment, people who didn’t find it easy to deal with their feelings. I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for people who are autistic, more specifically people with Asperger’s, because there’s a part of me that feels I belong there.

Just musing. What does “education” mean to you?

Incidentally, this post was triggered by my reading today’s Randall Munroe special:

At the back of my mind was all the recent kerfuffle caused by the publication of Don Tapscott’s recent book, a subject I shall revert to later.

Incidentally, if any of you prefer to take the discussion offline, DM me via http://twitter.com/jobsworth

Going with the flow

I nearly did myself an injury when I saw this:

Randall Munroe is a truly gifted individual. We need to knight him. Or something.

So make a New Year’s resolution you’ll actually keep to. Read xkcd every day. You won’t regret it.

My thanks to Dawn Foster for tweeting it to my attention. [By the way, Dawn, I’m still jealous. Still haven’t met anyone else whose blog is an anagram of their name!]