Whoops!

The March issue of Racecar Engineering has an "exclusive" that isn't so relevantGreat moments in bad timing:

Just saw on newstands the latest edition of Racecar Engineering magazine, which features an "exclusive" look at the new car from U.S. F1. "Inside a New Breed of Grand Prix Team," the teaser reads.

One problem: U.S. F1 earlier this year missed deadlines to race in 2010, and earlier this month laid off all employees.

D'oh!

"How to wreck a nice beach"

Souncheck has a fun and illuminating segment on the vocoder that tracks the history of the technology from Trans-Atlantic communication and military security to pop-music abuse by the likes of Cher and T-Pain.

Dave Tompkins is author of "How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks" -- the core title is a play on bad translation of "How to recognize speech" -- and chronicles all kinds of wrinkles on a technology that started out to clean up speech but now is used artistically to distort speech.

From the book's website:

"We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, Solzhenitsyn, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, JFK, Eisenhower, Neil Young, Kanye West, the Cylons, Walt Disney, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on V-E Day, 'We must go off!' "

Fascinating stuff. Let's hope society takes the vocoder back in a better direction, such as restoring voice to people, like film critic Roger Ebert, who can no longer speak.

Ricky Gervais has another winner

It's taken me three episodes but I've finally fallen for "The Ricky Gervais Show," the latest HBO venture from the British comic who brought us the original "Office" and "Extras."

This time around, the self-titled show flips the traditional chat show on its head, animating actual conversations between Gervais, longtime sidekick Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. These aren't normal conversations, but discussions triggered by Pilkington's half-sane, half-crazy musings about life.

It's the low-fi animation (more on that in the clip below) that makes all the difference in the world, because it allows Pilkington's ideas to come to life. Gervais, whose animated self looks a whole lot like Fred Flintstone, takes his mocking tone to new heights, puntuated by frequent fits of laughter that have me regularly thumbing down the volume. Pilkington is subdued and slack-jawed when not sharing his wisdom, and mostly immune to the verbal bashings he receives from Gervais and Merchant. 

Merchant, who was brilliant in "The Office" and "Extras," is mostly subdued in an Andy Richter kind of way. I'd love for him to take more of an active role in sharing his wit. We'll see as time goes on.