The Data Port

Pandora Rocks

Thanks to the Music Genome Project you can have music wherever you go, delivered on internet “stations” that not only reflect your musical tastes, but actually offer suggestions that let you discover music that you didn’t know.

It all begins with the MGP. The Project started ten years ago when a group of “music loving technologists”…

….set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Here’s how it works.

You sign on to Pandora at: www.pandora.com. This is free, supported by ads that appear off to one side of your “station list.”

If you are using the service for free you are limited to …I believe…forty hours a month. I popped for the Pandora One service, add-free music 24/7, for 36 dollars a year.

Since I am a Jazz fan I began by entering the names of a couple of Jazz musicians I like… I think it was Muggsy Spanier and Joe Venuti…and Hey, Presto! I was off and running. When I couldn’t think of new artists to add, Pandora suggested new ones and I began to discover music I hadn’t known before.

As I write this I am listening to Jerry Mulligan and Stan Getz on my “Cool Jazz” station. I have also built, and continue to build, a general jazz station and a station devoted to string jazz.

Using Pandora has broadened my musical experience. I started my String Jazz station by entering “Stephane Grappelli” and “Django.” Pandora suggested artists I hadn’t known. Who knew there were so many great jazz string men?

Pandora “shuffles” the music on each of your stations so that you are not always listening to the same order. It will also shuffle music between any number of your stations if you wish. If Jazz is not your thing, there are all sorts of alternatives: Classical, Rock, Country, Reggae, Latin, R&B, etc etc etc.

Want Pandora on your iPod/iPhone? They have an app for that.

Give Pandora a try…I think it’s terrific.

There was once a small boy who loved hats. Cowboy hats, fireman hats, coonskin caps, yachtsman hats, baseball caps and so forth. He would often wear  two or three hats at the same time. When he helped his Daddy work around the house he would wear his “construction man” hat. If he was helping in the yard he would wear an old Cubs baseball cap backwards and that was his “garden man hat.”

One day his father said to him, “You have lots of hats. Did you know that you have a hat that I can see but you can’t?”

The little boy didn’t know this and he was puzzled. He reached up and rubbed the top of his head, but he couldn’t feel anything. He looked at himself in the mirror, but he couldn’t see anything. He got down on his hands and knees and scooted over to Amy, his dog, to see if Amy could smell anything.

Amy just rolled over to have her stomach scratched.

The little boy asked his father what sort of hat it was and his father said  “It’s a Hug-Me-Kiss-Me Hat” and you always have it on when I look at you, even under your other hats, and even when you’re asleep and even when you swim under water in the ocean.

On May 18th Arizona voters will go to the polls to decide if a temporary (three  year) increase in the sales tax will go into effect. Data Port would like to know how you think you’ll vote.

Use the comments for your rants or cool-headed arguments about the brilliance or stupidity of this move.

The Pitch Man

I have a weakness for really great pitchmen. I love the inspired con artist on the street corner urging passersby to find the queen in the three-card shuffle; the woman selling cookware at a county fair who keeps the spiel rolling while she slices, shreds, boils and otherwise destroys perfectly good food.

I go to fairs and expos for the pitchmen. I have miracle polishes to make my wheel rims look like silver. I have a supply of magically absorbent sponges that suck up soda spills and doggy errors from rugs. I have a small jar of anti-fogging goo guaranteed to keep eyeglasses fog free.

I can be spellbound by a bible thumping evangelical preacher conjuring up images of hell and damnation like a modern day Jonathan Edwards.

Why do I buy that stuff or drop money in the collection plate? Because it seems only fair to repay an artist for his performance.

As wonderful as these masters of the pitch are, none of them can match the selling performance of the Greatest Pitchman in The World: Apple’s Steve Jobs. Jobs is the master of the laid back pitch.

I watched Jobs launch the iPad twice just for the pleasure of the pitch, slowly forgetting that what was being pitched was a big iPhone I couldn’t make a call on. I didn’t care… the pitch was just so neat.

A “pitch” is not just an advertising gimmick. The Geico Gecko is a wonderful advertising campaign, but it’s not a pitch. A pitch is word-driven, it’s a performance, a seamless oratorical flow. It is acting of the highest order, leading to belief. And now we will all want iPads.

Except the Fuhrer, who is very disappointed. (Click)

In his State of The City address Mayor Bob Walkup had a message for the Catalina Foothills: Annex or Incorporate. Our communities are losing out on state revenue sharing… money which goes to incorporated areas.

The message was directed at other unincorporated areas as well, Vail, Green Valley and Casas Adobes…but it was the call to the foothills that grabbed the attention of the local press.

Some historical perspective is needed here. If you are a relative newcomer you probably don’t know that in 1997 there was a major move to incorporate the Foothills as an independent city.

Other unincorporated communities moved to incorporate, as well. Groups in Casas Adobes, Tanque Verde, and Tortolita organized incorporation campaigns, but it was in the Foothills that a kind of battle royal ensued.

(Journalism sidebar: The Star’s current political beat writer, Rhonda Bodfield, covered the story then.)

From this distance it’s hard to determine exactly what the motives behind the incorporation movement were. At the very least it’s safe to say that the organizers wanted to put paid to any possibility of annexation by the city.

Rightly or wrongly folks viewed annexation as costing them money in higher taxes. They also feared that joining the city would lead to to denser housing zoning. The foothills were then predominantly Republican and saw no future in being swallowed up by Democratic Tucson.

(Since then the state of Arizona has changed our election laws so that each city council rep will be elected on a ward by ward basis and not city-wide.)

The pro-incorporation forces had no really clear idea of what the long term costs of incorporating would be. Their opponents argued that the pro forces thought governing a city would be something like running a very large homeowners’ association; almost, but not quite, like something that could be done by volunteers working in a storefront office.

When the vote was held the incorporation forces were soundly defeated in every single precinct. It became clear that becoming your own city might be more trouble and expense than it was worth.

(The other incorporation efforts failed as well.)

All that was then, and this is now. No one fears being annexed because there is no such thing as a ‘hostile annexation.’ Before the Foothills could become part of Tucson,  fifty percent plus one of the properties involved would have to sign off on it; as would properties representing fifty percent plus one dollar of valuation.

Become part of the city? It might be a really good thing, but it ain’t goin’ to happen.

Text of Walkup speech.

RIP Adult Education

The Data Port recently received a note from Melisa DeNinno who is the Communications Coordinator for Literacy Volunteers of Tucson. It was ominously headed: Arizona Plans to Plummet to Fame.

“The budget cuts Governor Jan Brewer is proposing are painful, but one will earn us national recognition.  Not only will Arizona have one of the highest high school drop-out rates in the nation, if the proposed cuts are approved, GED classes and testing will no longer be offered in this state.  Arizona would become the only state in the country without this service.”

Paula Stuht, Vice President of Business Development of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, adds:

“The economic impact of NOT educating the nearly 800,000 Arizonans who do not have a high school diploma is enormous.  The elimination of Adult Education will prevent the development and re-training of a prepared workforce that we urgently need to attract and keep existing businesses in Arizona.”

“Without a GED it is nearly impossible to go on to further training or to get a job.  70% of welfare recipients and 65% of the state prison population don’t have high school diplomas.  18% of all high school diplomas issued in Arizona in 2008 were GED diplomas, nearly 1/5 of Arizona’s high school graduates.

GED grads earn $5,000 more per year on average, resulting in approximately $70 million additional taxable income in Arizona.  Arizona benefits from over $8 million in additional tax revenue from GED graduates which is almost double the return on investment.

If the Governor’s recommendation to totally eliminate its $4.6 million adult education program is ultimately approved, Arizona will sacrifice $11 million of federal funds for adult education that are directly based on the state’s commitment to maintain its funding level.”

Arizona plans to set a new record.

“Not only will have one of the most abysmal drop-out rates, we will effectively dismantle the only entry point into immediate employment and job training for the approximately 22,000 adults that are served by Adult Education annually.  At a time when more than 1 in 5 people in Pima County is living in poverty can we really afford this?” says Ramón Valadez, Chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

Cutting Adult Education and the GED will not help the state’s deficit, it will deepen it.

Republican Policy Makers

An old Russian proverb goes this way: To a man whose only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The Republicans in the state legislature are a one-tool party and that tool is the tax cut. Want to stimulate business? Cut taxes. Need to balance the budget? Cut taxes.

There is, in all honesty, a corollary to this principle: If the hammer won’t work, pull out the nail. Cut services to women, children and the poor; cut health care, education, and public recreation facilities.

After years of Republican tax cutting Arizona is beginning to feel like some down-at-heels fourth world backwater. No one likes paying taxes but if we spread the cost over all of us the pain will be less than if we have to pay privately for such things as our children’s education.

Most importantly, we won’t be letting any of our fellow Arizonans fall through the cracks in a decaying health and education system.

It’s simply outrageous that the Republican legislature hasn’t been able to solve our budget problems, but the reason is clear to everyone but a Republican. If first cutting taxes and then cutting services won’t work it should be clear that doing the same thing all over again won’t work, either.

“Well, that didn’t work, let’s do it again.”

Good Grief!

A happy accident…a visitor from out of town…took us on a family outing to Tucson’s “Mini-Time Machine,” a Museum of Miniatures. In the dear dead days beyond recall I was an ardent maker of scale aircraft miniatures and a fan of beautifully crafted miniature railroad engines.

The idea of little models of big things has always appealed, but I wasn’t sure how interested I’d be in dolls’ houses. Okay…my first mistake. The rooms and their contents are not really doll houses. That is, most of what is on display was not intended to be played with in any ordinary sense.

John Bellamy Complex (ca.1880) Photo by Amy Haskell

The miniatures are detailed recreations of homes and their contents many, but not all, done to a scale of 1 inch to a foot, which has become  a preferred scale by many miniaturists. They’re fascinating.

In the Exploring the World room you can see examples of Georgian and Regency homes and furnishings and chateaus. Not to be overlooked are “The Load of Mischief Pub” and a room designed as an homage to Erte’.

Museum of Miniatures

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The location: 4455 E. Camp Lowell. There is an admission charge of $7 for adults, $6 for Seniors and $5 for young people 4-17.

A New E-Journal comes on line. Survivors of the Tucson Citizen have launched a new news source for Tucson readers.

This new project is a not-for-profit undertaking that from the get-go is asking for tax-deductible donations. This doesn’t mean there won’t be advertising on the site, but if the business plan works the operation will be more like public radio than like a purely advertiser-driven newspaper.

The Sentinel has a nice clean look…even more to my taste than the new Star format, which I also like. Foreign news coverage will be provided by The Global Post and health coverage by Kaiser Health News.

The Sentinel is also inviting participation by citizen journalists.

Read the Sentinel here.