How Scandinavian of me.

My students applauded for me today. It was a little weird. A bit of a strange moment. It was the last day of class, I was wrapping things up; the last half of class had been a little surreal, because there was some sort of cheerleading or dance group right outside our window, and they were dancing to "I Want Candy", which was a) loud, b) incessant. It was a little distracting, and I think led to some of the students not really being as engaged in Parfit's "What Makes Someone's Life Go Best?" as they might otherwise have been. Oh well. In any event, after we were done talking, I sort of wrapped things up, and told them I'd see them at the final, and they applauded. Which was, as I said, strange. I've never been applauded for teaching before, and I didn't know that students still did it. They did it in that movie The Paper Chase, but that was Harvard, and probably had some sort of tradition of something. In any event, I like the tradition. I say students should applaud after the last lecture of a course. Views?

Math Rock has had a running description of artistic/mechanical items he considers perfect. I want to add one thing to the list: the first 2:00 of Bjork's "Hunter". That huge, lifted chorus is the absolute perfect complement to the somewhat sinister bits that came before it. I'm not as compelled when the song goes back to the A section, but the transition from A to B, and then the B, is absolutely sweet. Perhaps that doesn't count as labelling something as perfect, because I still made a critical comment about the whole song. But that first two minutes is unimpeachable.

I also did a mixdown of the latest thing I've been working on in Cubase. This one I've played around with for a considerably longer time than the other ones, so I think the production is much better all things considered. We'll see, though. I can't post it to the web because my web server dude hasn't gotten my account up and running after his server crashed. Ugh. In any event, I'll post it when I can.