Monthly Archives: March 2018

FACE BOOK

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This is an email I put out there………..

Why is everybody surprised by the data mining scandal on Face Book?

Isn’t the whole Face Book business model based on the mining and selling of their client’s data?
If people are so concerned about their own privacy why do they so willingly put it on the internet?
This is a response I received
The surprise is twofold: People mistakenly think of Facebook as an advertising platform. While they vaguely understand that Facebook collects information from them, the exact mechanics and details are fuzzy to them. In their mind, they may tell themselves “I don’t reveal that much through Facebook—I don’t post that much, I don’t fill out much of my profile, what’s the harm? And, frankly, if that helps them show me ads for things I actually want as opposed to crap I’m not interested in, all the better!
What they don’t realize is that Facebook tracks them everywhere they wander on the web via their web browser because Facebook’s tracking cookie is embedded on millions of web sites. That reach is extended to web and mobile apps that allow you to log into them using Facebook. Facebook literally tracks you across the web, mobile space, and if you have the mobile app on your phone, it’s also tracking where you are physically at times. And Facebook has a multitude of apps that people don’t even realize are owned by Facebook: Instagram, WhatsApp, and many others, which further extends its reach. Even if you’re not a Facebook user, they are creating a shadow profile of you as you travel the web to enable ad targeting. Finally, Facebook purchases data from other data aggregators (mortgage sales data, public record, and other) that they use to augment the data their own apps generate.
Facebook is not an advertising platform that tracks you to show better ads; it’s a surveillance platform that happens to make its money through advertising. Knowing users better than anyone else is its moat against competitors.
People are unwilling to admit how easily they can be manipulated.There is a chasm in people’s mind between the type of simplistic persuasion they are willing to admit that advertising is capable of effecting and the sophisticated priming and influence peddling that is possible via Facebook. Facebook’s in-depth demographic and psychological profiles on people around the world (2B+!) coupled with its capability to execute large-scale, programmatically-driven multi-variate testing enables advertisers to be highly selective in targeting specific audiences with particular psychographic profiles, and test the effectiveness of messages with previously impossible scale and precision. Cambridge Analytica was testing something like 150,000 versions of specific campaigns to find just the right combination of images and messages to trigger statistically significant response from its target audience.
The average person cannot comprehend things at that scale. They cannot internalize that while the influence on them of a particular ad might be small, its aggregate effect might be huge, or at least significant enough to trip over the boundary required to, say, win a voting district. They are incapable of crafting a mental model of how any particular technology can be used for nefarious purpose. They are bad at estimating risk.
And when they find out that people can do that, it kind of blows their mind—“Why—<clutches pearls>—who would want to do such a thing?”
If you’re interested in a good read on how people’s brains work in funny ways, check out “Thinking Fast and Slow”, or the more approachable Michael Lewis coverage of the same topic, “The Undoing Project”.
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I deleted my Facebook account several years ago and have not been interested in Twitter or any of the social media. It is not because of any privacy concerns but rather because I found the sites a huge reservoir of trivia and misinformation that is just a waster of time. I don’t really need to know the minute details of everybody’s life.  So what if you had a muffin for lunch and now have a need to go to the bathroom. Who cares?
Although the today’s outcome is slightly different. Never-the-less, the era of GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984 and BIG BROTHER has finally arrived. And what’s more to the point,  it’s worse because people willingly participate, and even buy the hardware (computer, mobile device) and connectivity to enable the massive surveillance,  monitoring and manipulation that is now possible.
DO YOURSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE A FAVOR – DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT .
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YouTube Pick (#24) – A Clawhammer Banjo Tune

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I am not so sure about banjos. I don’t care too much for the mechanical five string Bluegrass styles. To my ear they don’t sound very musical, and yet, in the hands of a master like Bela Fleck I am forced to re-evaluate that statement. When he steps outside the Bluegrass box his music is sublime. On another note (pun intended) the Irish adopted the banjo and, being Irish, they changed it by getting rid of the fifth string, tuning it like a mandolin and playing it with a pick. The Irish Tenor Banjo sounds great in Celtic ensembles where it adds punch and drive to the melody line but to hear it practiced solo in one’s basement it sounds frightful. Then there is the the open backed Clawhammer Banjo with the melody floating atop of nice chunking rhythms. It is capable of producing the very best in banjo music. Despite the subversive activities of the Irish the banjo is still the most American of musical instruments. It’s origins may be African but in practice it is absolutely American with a solidly American repertoire. I am so attracted to the sound of the Clawhammer Banjo that I own two and I always have the hope and ambition to one day actually play a tune in the appropriate style.  The only thing that puts me off is that I have no real desire to play American tunes. The world does not need another stumbling musician trying to play Old Joe Clark, Cripple Creek or any of the many other standard banjo tunes. So it was nice to come across a video of an Irish tune played on the Clawhammer Banjo. It is a tune composed by Thurlough O’Carolan .  For those who don’t  know of O’Carolan or his music he was a blind traditional Irish Harper living way back in the late 1600’s. He was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and he left us with a legacy of many wonderful tunes. They may not have the contrapuntal complexities of a Bach composition but they have a melodic strength that has kept them very much in circulation right up to present times. Acoustic guitar players love O’Carolan tunes and with the introduction of the DADGAD tuning system on the guitar they have adopted O’Carolan tunes with a vengeance. So here it is, Thurlough O’Carolan’s  tune Morgan Magan (Morgan Megan) played on the Clawhammer Banjo.

For those who maybe interested here is the melody for the tune.

I haven’t yet managed to get to grips with playing the tune on the Clawhammer banjo but I suspect it will sit well on a banjo tuned ADADE. It’s another one of those things on my ever lengthening wish list. It just might be that one elusive tune that I am destined to play on the banjo.

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YouTube Picks (#23) – The Cavaquinho

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The Cavaquinho – It looks like a Ukulele and so it should. The Cavaquinho is a Portuguese instrument that has, in one form or another spread around the world. In the hands of Portuguese immigrants it traveled to Hawaii in the nineteenth century and under went some changes. With the adoption of gut (nylon) strings and tuning systems peculiar to the islands it became part of a whole new genre of music – Hawaiian music.  The sound of the Ukulele instantly conjures up images of the islands – trade winds, surf, palm trees, grass shirts and hula girls. Of course since that time the instrument has traveled back across the world and, in recent years, has undergone a resurgence in popular interest. In the meantime the original Cavaquinho has remained popular in Portugal, Brazil and the Cape Verde islands. Although Portugal had colonies in Angola and Mozambique the Cavaquinho doesn’t seem to have become part of their folkloric traditions. But it is in Brazilian Choro  that the instrument has it’s most noticeable impact. Choro is the most Brazilian of all musical styles and it grew out of the European Salon music tradition imported into Brazil and spiced up with local samba style rhythms. In one form or other the style has been around for a hundred or more years. In that genre of music the Cavaquinho, the Pandiero (Brazilian tambourine), the Seven String Guitar and the Bandolin (5 course mandolin) create music that is very melodic, rhythmic and harmonically sophisticated and somewhat uniquely Brazilian.

Although the instrument is not in common use in Canada, Godin Guitars in Quebec manufactures a unique version of the instrument that can hold its own in the company of the more traditional instruments. It is a hybrid steel strung instrument tuned Brazilian style D G B D. Basically, that is an an open G tuning,  a octave higher but almost identical, to the top four strings of the acoustic guitar. The difference is that the top  string on the Cavaquinho is tuned down  to D. Speaking from experience it was tempting to just tune the guitar like a Cavaquinho and play it as such. It was good idea at the time but basically it doesn’t work.  The Cavaquinho has a very short scale length and the normal Cavaquinho Choro stretches from the 1st  and 2nd to  seventh fret are dam near impossible on the guitar. Beside it does not have the nice high traditional Cavaquinho sound. D’Addario manufactures stainless steel ball end strings (EJ93, gauges 11-13-23w-28w) specifically for the Cavaquinho and are available from a number of on line sites. It is unlikely you will find them in your local music store.  The Godin instrument is equipped with their signature on-board electronics that is virtually free of feed back. In that regard, and in  other manufacturing details, the Godin Cavaquinho is similar to their acoustic and semi-acoustic  Nylon Classical, Multi Oud  and Seven String Guitars.

So, that’s the background so now for the sounds. The first three videos below demonstrate, for me, the attraction of the Cavaquinho and Brazilian music in general. These young musicians look like they are having fun. The guitar in the first and third videos are obviously Godins. In the third video the guitarist is throwing in some very interesting chord progressions. All three tunes are pretty well classics in the Brazilian Choro repertoire.

There a lots of Cavaquinho tutorials on YouTube and the approach they use to teach the tunes has, for me, a lot of appeal. The first tutorial, Garota de Ipanema is better known as the The Girl from Ipanema, by the well known Brazilian composer Tom Jobim. The tune is probably the most recorded composition on the planet. I have lost count of the number of Cavaquinho and Brazilian Guitar tutorials that are available on YouTube so there is plenty out there to explore.

I know local musicians aren’t likely to stumble on or acquire a Cavaquinho but the above videos might just attract some interest in the instrument  or also in that very rich and varied world of Brazilian music. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

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