Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Stars and how to be cyberstalked on Foursquare...the old debate about privacy or exposure

UK-led international team of astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one which at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, with the name of R136a, frankly not a very attractive name considering we are talking about the largest piece of something existing in the universe as we know it so far.

Almost at the same time, I made another discovery almost as important as that, at least in this side of the universe: It is in this article in The Guardian about how easily you can be cyberstalked on Foursquare...scary!? For those who are not familiar with this social network, Foursquare allows you to "check in" in every place you go in your city, and getting some discounts by checking in hence visiting certain places, generally restaurants, cafes or bars. The thing is that the social network is made to let your friends know where you are and let you know where they are as well, but...what happens when you also have among your so called friends people who aren't, or are just acquintances? The writer of the article, Shea Sylvia, a frequent blogger and twitter user explains how she received a misterious call when she was in a restaurant from someone called Brian, who resulted to be also at that moment in that restaurant. of course Shea was scared to death and Brian never showed up, but that made her realized how expose we all are (me included, it's just that i don't have stalkers so far...) but actually...do we care?

We all have probably be involved in esterile debates about privacy admitting how easy is for anyone to know about you and how dangerous it is, but, are we restricting our comments on Facebook yelling we are here or there? The answer is no. Maybe we all need a stalker at a certain point to change some habits, but even with that, and as Shea says, in the long term we are not going to change our level of involvement in on-line communities whatsoever!

However, i would like to respectfully recommend Shea -and to you too dear readers- to think it twice when you click on "accept as a friend", at the end it is in your hands to open your data to whoever you want, it's needless to say that privacy options on Facebook are there for a reason and if you guys don't use them is because you just don't care...!

This is a song's blog, and these are today's picks: Miranda! is an Argentinian band almost unknown in Spain but very succesful across the ocean, and "Enamorada" with a very catchy melody that keeps lingers in my head and just pops out of it from time to time. Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater is (or should be) a classic of 20th century (of course i am biased, specially since i saw them again live in Madrid a few months ago for the second time 12 years after the first time - in the FIB 1998-)







Sunday, July 18, 2010

Summer and Los Directivos


Finally writing again after some weeks of intellectual holidays, and after having seen Spain win the World Cup. This weekend is being the B-day parties weekend, seeing some people i haven't seen since 2008 when i went to live to Kuwait. By the way, people say it's a very hot summer, I shouldn't complain about this weather, my friends in Kuwait are struggling now with temperatures of...41º....during the night! 54º during day hours.

Although they shouldn't have released their album until next world cup (they promised to do it only when Spain got kicked off the world cup, which never happened) the new album by Los Directivos is finally available online. And why should i care about that? Because Los Directivos are actually friends of mine and because not every day friends of mine release an album. And because the album is freaking different. Sorry, foreign readers, but this album can be only understood by spaniards, and not by many, by the way. Referees, Olympic games, Guardiola, Royal family, Lofts...everything fits in the most subversive album since Derribos Arias released their "En la guía, en el listín" (GASA, 1983)

You can -and you must- download it at islam records, if you want to pretend you are cool, (although the songs are actually making fun of people like YOU or me), and because it is a matter of time that their songs start appearing on the worst programs in La Sexta or Telecinco (sometimes with the best music).

HOWEVER, i miss a number of things in the album:

- A song about Esperanza Aguirre
- A song with Iñaki singing
- A date for a future concert, which I am not sure if will be possible one day because one has become a father recently and lives abroad and the other isn't a father (as far as he knows), lives in Madrid but just don't like playing live.


Do listen to their album and don't ask questions, if Los Directivos say it, it must be right. Lo indie es lo indie y el resto es el resto.

Today's songs are here: http://www.islamrecords.com/