Interesting fact of the Day

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for the pointer.

"Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live...Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world."

Go, Iceland.

Death Cab for Cutie: "Narrow Stairs" Delivers

Death Cab for Cutie (DCfC) released their new album Narrow Stairs last week. Those interested in the strong, melancholy aspect of true indie rock, are bound to not be indifferent to this Seattle-based band. They are inimitable, poetic, and what true indie stands for.
Postal Service is another band Ben Gibbard is associated with and he leaves an indelible mark of excellence on both bands.
The Rolling Stones review of the new album says:
"Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard is the poet of a particular purgatory — the holding cell in your head that's filled with failed relationships and wrong roads taken. Death Cab's most memorable songs contain snapshots from its walls: Gibbard has sung about an incriminating kiss in a photo booth, discovering forgotten pictures of an ex in his glove compartment, and an especially bleak Kodak moment from a doomed marriage."

Their previous albums Plans and Transatlanticism made a believer out of me. Their new Narrow Stairs album is making me love them even more. I didn't think it would be possible as they have dominated many a playlist of mine the past 3 years. Other DCfC fans seem to think that Narrow Stairs is qualitatively inferior to the previous albums. I don't. I see it as a step forward on a path already marked by musical choices the band has stayed true since the beginning. Gibbard's uniquely inspiring voice, the confident guitar choices, and existentialism-ridden lyrics are as DCfC as they could be. I'm the kind of fan who appreciates consistency first and foremost.
Ergo, if you're interested in great lyrics, sheer poetic substance, and harrowing vocals and guitar, well, you better hurry and get the new album.
I do *heart* it.
graph per rolling stone

A Doctor After My Own Heart

This is my kind of guy.
The talented 30-year old surgeon who also holds a doctorate in Music and is an accomplished pianist, does everything to music. I fully understand why. I cannot perform good work sans music. It needs to accompany all I do and grabbing the iPod is the first thing I do when about to leave the house as I face the day. Music is not a luxury, it's a necessity.
Breakfast I can skip, lunch too, but my iPod, no. If I do, I have been known to change my route and go in search of it till I have it on my person again.
Good work or good anything for that matter, I have been conditioned to think and sense, can only happen in the company of sound.
Having stated that, the NY Times article I just read this morning made me nod after every paragraph. It is about a German surgeon, Claudius Conrad, who also does research on the soothing effects of music on patients. A most fascinating read and a true testament to multidisciplinarity. Here are some snippets,
"When Dr. Conrad operates, he brings an iPod stocked not just with Mozart, Liszt and Scarlatti but also with gigabytes of European techno-rap bands his colleagues have never heard of (and cannot understand), including Klee, M.C. Solaar and Armin van Buuren.

Asked if he could actually work with that kind of music, he replied, slightly sheepishly: “Well, that’s not the music you want when you’re in the middle of a delicate procedure. But once you’re through that part and you’re closing up” — he shrugged — “it’s a good time to liven things up.”
Read the full exciting feature here.
graph per ny times

What Do Brands Reveal?

Sticking to what one knows saves one time, energy, and resources, eventually.
An example of economy of space and time, has it: "Ben Sherman, Apple, fruit and Steve Jobbs-related concepts."
Defining the 'do-s' renders the 'don't-s' irrelevant, I find.

Dan Ariely, author of the soon-to-be reviewed book Predictably Irrational, wrote the following on his blog.
"So now we have two roles for brands: they help us tell other people something about ourselves, but they also help us tell ourselves a story about who we are."
I concur. Especially with the latter part.

A Peculiar Map

And the review is here.

Tori Amos' Video Outs Her as Just Cool!

I was happy to discover today that the Times made a reference to Tori Amos' A Sorta Fairy Tale song. I first discovered the video back in 2003 and have included it in many a playlist ever since.
The video features anthropomorphized limbs, the city, Tori, and the very gendered Adrian Brody, whose the facial expression almost match those he sports in the film Dummy.

So, here it is. Tori Amos in all her uniqueness.

Starsailor Band Members Know About Music and Haircuts!

Some of the music I'm currently listening to as per some of your questions comes mostly from Rilo Kiley, Nada Surf, Tegan&Sarah, Keane, and Starsailor.
Starsailor has been a favorite for a while but I'm especially enjoying them these days for some reason.
Check out these vids: a poetic blend of indie rock and not-to-be-ignored aesthetics.
I want to know who cuts their hair.
Well, that, and who helps with the fusing of the classical bits in Four to the Floor.
I fully recommend their stuff. If you enjoy British Invasion sounds a la Keane, Coldplay, Stereophonics or even The Killers and The Bravery from the States, you're bound to like these guys. Starsailor hail from Manchester and here is their Myspace page.
Yes, I do like them better than Oasis. But then again, I like most music better than Oasis these days. Sorry, Liam!

The Uber-creative Rauschenberg Takes the Final Bow

The world of art suffered a great loss yesterday. Robert Rauschenberg, the very influential American artist, died at the age of 82. The NY Times notes:

"A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life."

And here's one of his statements that I truly appreciate and with which I fully concur:

“Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

He will be missed. Thank you for your uninhibited and honest art, Robert Rauschenberg!

Read full tribute here.
graph per ny times

Because ALL One Needs IS Music - Todd Haynes' I'm Not There

I don’t think one chooses music. I truly believe it chooses one. I was asked recently why I'm such a fan of indie music. I remember saying something like, 'well, I suppose I was born that way. Or something. It's one of those truths, you know? You just know it. Sort of like knowing your name, you just do, you know?' The awkward-sounding answer made full sense to me. Can't say the same for my interlocutor.
And it didn't matter. I had my playlist to fall back on and therein there's safety.
Having a soundtrack for the quotidian experience is as indispensable as air. This is one of my inalienable truths. Without it there can be no inspiration, hence no good production of creativity and forward-moving notions.

I remember growing up feeling no ounce of attraction to traditional music. Yet, many around me were all about it. I suppose it was one of those truths I wouldn’t be able to decode till much later. And I did. The reason why I’m a full endorser of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, the Bob Dylan-inspired and –informed film is because it provides a beautiful 'reading' of music.

When Dylan, while portrayed by Cate Blanchett, utters the below-quoted text, I thought, ‘yes, I now know fully what this means.’ It was one of those very rare moments when cognitive and experiential truths align ever so perfectly, and as the film also says, "yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all in the same room."
Blanchett's version of 'Dylan' says:
“Traditional music is too unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected.
I mean, in that music is the only true valid death you can feel today, you know, off a record player. But like everything else in great demand people try to own it.”
I fully concur. Just like the music-loving Socrates in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy I, also, believe that music is, indeed, the ultimate form of expression, more adequate and capable of capturing human emotion than language could ever be.

And while I meant the post to be a review of the Haynes' film, it turned out to be a modest tribute to music, the ultimate expresser of thought and emotion.
Having stated that, I'm Not There is not just a must-see, it's a need-see and need-study. And who else to 'Virgil' us through the portals than the master himself, Bob Dylan?

graphs per rolling stone and vh1

Why Don't Married Women Work?

From Tyler over at MR. Too interesting to pass up. What do you think?

" If you're a married woman living in the New York City area, there's a better than 50 percent chance that you don't work, according to a recent analysis of Census data by economists affiliated with the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

More specifically, only 49 percent of white high school-educated married women in their prime working ages were holding down jobs in the New York area as of the 2000 Census. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 2 million woman over 15-years-old who are married in the New York area.

The national average for this particular demographic is 67 percent. At the other end of the spectrum is Minneapolis where almost 80 percent of these married women are employed -- that's larger than the percentage of working men aged 25 and older in the U.S.

And why is this?

Surprisingly, the economists argue, the most important specific thing seems to be traffic.

And if you do work in these traffic-heavy areas, you are likely to work more hours. But is it all causal?

With all due respect to The Walker Art Center, if I wanted to be a kept woman I would not start my quest in Minneapolis. High density, as you find in Manhattan, means lots of fun things to do in your copious free time as a kept woman and also a higher degree of income inequality and thus the hope of snaring a rich man. There's a reason why they didn't set Sex in the City in Paramus and most of the women there will be working even when the traffic gets worse."
Tyler got the pointer here.
chart per portfolio.com