1) Arcade Fire — Intervention
2) The National — Fake Empire
3) Bruce Springsteen — Radio Nowhere
4) Spoon — The Underdog
5) Jay Z — Blue Magic
6) Kanye West — Flashing Lights
7) Feist — 1, 2, 3, 4
8 ) Kings of Leon — Fans
9) Rihanna — Umbrella
10) Amy Winehouse — Rehab
11) Wilco — On and On and On and On
12) Modest Mouse — Parting of the Sensory
13) Arctic Monkeys — 505
14) Avett Brothers — Die Die Die
15) White Stripes — You Don’t Know What Love Is
Posted in Music
‘Tis the season for year end lists. I’m going to start rolling out mine over the next few weeks. If I have any readers, please feel free to debate in the comments.
1. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
2. The National – Boxer
3. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. The Avett Brothers – Emotionalism
5. Jay-Z – American Gangster
6. Bruce Springsteen – Magic
7. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
8. Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
9. Kanye West – Graduation
10. Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
11. The New Pornographers – Challengers
12. Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
13. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black
14. The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
15. Feist – The Reminder
(Deserving further listening: LCD Soundsystem — Sound of Silver, MIA — Kala, The Good, The Bad & The Queen — The Good, The Bad & The Queen)
Posted in Music
I think the Carolina basketball program gets a bad rap for its defense. Statistically, we are very, very good — even last year.
The most important defensive statistic to me is opponent points per possession. For the last three years, Carolina has led the ACC in this category. In 2006-2007, that number for us was 0.96 — the next best team (dook) was three-tenths of a percent behind us. You keep your opponents below 1 point per possession, you rebound extremely well, and you’re going to win a lot of games. Read more here.
Our defense looks bad because we want to encourage the kind of game where each team has a lot of possessions. Occasionally, that means we’re going to run into a team that is shooting the lights out, which means they can run with us, and we’ll catch a loss. Occasionally, we’ll play a team who is so good at some facet of the game, we won’t be able to force the tempo at all, and we’ll catch a loss. But on any given night, there are only a handful of teams that can run with us at all. Our defense and our offense are why we win basketball games.
Our style of play is entirely by design. We overplay on defense, constantly trying to disrupt the passing lanes. The point is to create turnovers and changes of possession because they’re the fuel for the offense we run. Even if we’re playing this kind of defense perfectly, we’re going to give up some back door cuts and some jump shots.
We also like to trap, a lot. Against an elite ball handler or an exceptional passer, that means we will give up the occasional open look or lay up. But again, it also forces turnovers and changes of possession — often right at half court, which generally means buckets for the Tar Heels.
People who don’t really understand what they’re watching complain that our guards (particularly Bobby and QT) get beaten off the dribble, when in actuality, they are forcing their man to the baseline, where one of our big guys will slide over in support. Alex and Tyler have done a particularly good job with this kind of help side defense this year. We also haven’t had a seven foot shot blocker since Brendan Haywood, and we play with a true power forward, which means we don’t make some of the splashy defensive stops that show up on SportsCenter. But this has been a Carolina strategy under Roy, under Matt Doherty, and Bill Guthridge. They all learned it from Coach Smith, who obviously knew what he was doing.
I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement week to week, month to month, and season to season. And fundamentally, there are things we could certainly do better. But I am saying that we play the best kind of defense for our team, and that is in fact some of the best defense in the country.
Posted in Sports
My review of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics is up on The Democratic Strategist. I’d love to hear what you think. Either here or over there.
Posted in Books, Politics, Television
Then We Came to the End has been dethroned.
Though the debut by Joshua Ferris is still wonderful, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is the best novel I’ve read this year. At turns hysterical, heart-wrenching, crazy, and powerful, it’s just an incredible work of literature. From start to finish, I read it in just a matter of hours, my attention hopelessly captured by the breathless way that Diaz writes. Consider this one highly recommended.
Diaz’s novel together with Matt Bia’s The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics (finished at roughly the same time) puts me at 60 books on the year. That’s 1.7 books a week for all of you keeping count at home.
I’m currently reading Dennis Johnson’s doorstop of a novel Tree of Smoke — which is beautifully written and evocative but struggling to hold my attention after 350 pages — and just starting The Most Nobel Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe by Greg Behrman.
Posted in Books
I should be used to it at this point. Every year, just before kickoff of the first football game of the season, Nike rolls out a new commercial for its gridiron line. They’re always visually arresting. They’re always envelope-pushingly creative. And they never fail to get me jacked up.
This year is no exception. The damn thing is directed by Michael F’ing Mann. It’s set to the song “Promentory” by Trevor Jones — you might recognize it from the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack. And the last frame left me jumping out of my seat, fist in the air.
Enjoy.
Posted in Sports, Television
Last week, Apple held a big event in San Francisco where Steve Jobs simultaneously introduced a new version of the each of the existing iPod products (the Shuffle, the Nano, and the newly-dubbed Classic), unveiled a completely new iPod called the Touch (with the revolutionary touch-screen interface that made the iPhone a hit), and announced a dramatic price cut for the iPhone — all in advance of the holiday sales season.
The announcement getting the most attention was the price cut for the iPhone. Just two months after the device went on sale, its cost was reduced by $200 completely without warning from the company. The early adapters were pissed, media coverage was sympathetic to their plight, and the next day, Steve Jobs announced all those who paid the original price would be getting a $100 Apple Store credit.
The iPod Touch is also newsworthy. The new interface is the iPhone without the phone — complete with wireless Internet access, the Safari browser, and a miniature version of OSX. You can check email, browse YouTube, and of course, listen to music and watch movies. Jobs also introduced a wireless iTunes store, which will allow owners of the Touch and the iPhone to buy music on the go without ever connecting to a computer.
The final announcement at the event was for another new feature on the Touch and the iPhone — the Starbucks button. While Apple owners are waiting in line to buy their lattes, they can use their devices to get the name of the song the baristas are playing, see the coffee shop’s recent playlist, and of course, buy anything from that list. Compared to the price-cut drama or the new product excitement, it has received very little attention on the press. But long term, this might be as big a deal as the iPhone itself.
As a feature, the Starbucks button is admittedly kind of lame. But that’s not the right way to think about this — it’s not about technology or music. It’s about advertising — specifically, the rise of location-specific advertisement — and that is both fascinating and a little bit frightening.
Right now, real location-based advertising is straight out of science fiction. In Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, the Tom Cruise character walks into a Gap, the store recognizes him, and a virtual sales associate asks him how his last purchase worked out — that’s a vision of what’s to come.
But this thing with Starbucks and Apple isn’t too many evolutionary steps away. You, proud owner of an Apple device, walk into a Starbucks, the store recognizes you and a new button appears on your iPhone. Like most advertising, you can always ignore it, but you can’t make it go away. Every time you go to buy coffee, you’ll be prompted to buy music, too. How long before the Starbucks button starts flashing notices of the hot new drink? Is it a stretch to think of Disney offering a similar deal with Apple, where you walk into a Disney Store, and a new button appears allowing you to download the new Pixar movie? How about Barnes & Noble — a new button pops up and you’re downloading audio books from their bestseller list?
There are companies working to tie advertising to the GPS-system in your car — you drive by a McDonalds and you hear a Big Mac jingle. Google is developing a service which to put the same technology in your cell phone — walk by the Gap and you get a text message with a coupon. Supposedly, Google will introduce a gPhone sometime before the year is out, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the company’s secret weapon — a slick, feature-packed, ultra-cheap phone in exchange for permission to deliver the advertisements.
On some level, this is a better way for customer to receive advertisements. Like the best of Google AdWords, they can be unobtrusive, relevant, and occasionally exactly what you’re looking for.
But again, this can be scary too. What happens when the advertisers always know where you are, always know what you’re buying, and never stops pushing the ads at you? At what point then, does your privacy completely evaporate?
Posted in Future, Technology
A couple weeks ago, Ed Kilgore, the managing editor for The Democratic Strategist, asked me to become a blogger for the magazine. My first post is up, and the theme is something you’ll see me repeat — I’m going to be writing about the intersection of technology and politics a lot.
Yesterday, I finished number 50, which means that I’m exactly on pace to read 75 books this year. Obviously, I’m a little behind schedule if I want to finish 80. But it’s doable.
So far my favorites are:
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
I’m very much ready to get into the fall book season.
Posted in Books
After starting off a little bit behind schedule, two weekends worth of road trips has put me back on pace to read 80 books this year. As we begin week 14, I’m about halfway through book 21.
I suspect this current pace will continue. After being in DC for a week, I’ll be on the road each of the next two weekends. Plus, I have 5 days of vacation coming up in May.
A couple quick reviews:
Posted in Books
Matt Compton 