A Grateful Dead analysis: The relationship between concert and listening behavior

This article presents a comparative analysis between 1,590 of the Grateful Dead’s live concert set lists from 1972 to 1995 and 2,616,990 Grateful Dead listening events by last.fm users from August 2005 to October 2007. While there is a strong correlation between how songs were played in concert and how they were listened to by last.fm members, the outlying songs in this trend identify interesting aspects of the band and their present-day fans.

Lessons from Groundhog Day

Economists, meanwhile, have argued that Groundhog Day highlights the unbridgeable gulf between classic economics and real-world behavior. They point out that the first time Phil Conners lives out Groundhog Day, he knows nothing about how events will unfold, and acts accordingly—self centered, short sighted and rash. But by the time Conners lives out his last Groundhog Day, he has perfect knowledge of how everyone around him will behave. He acts accordingly—maximizing his happiness and the happiness of those around him. The metaphor gets pretty loose, but in this interpretation, Phil’s last day is analogous to classical economics, where people act with perfect knowledge and rationality. But we never know what’s going to happen in the future, or exactly what people will do, so instead, we live more like Phil does on his first Groundhog Day: We muddle through using half-baked assumptions and habitual attitudes.

At the Movies: Slumdog Millionaire

The show, in other words, provides the narrative structure of the film, but also something more: an atmosphere of chance and suspense, where the sheer tackiness of the trademark mode of presentation gives us a kind of parody of destiny. The vaguely threatening sci-fi music, the eerie lighting, the repeated questions, the long pauses, the parade of the four possible answers, and in this case the acting of Anil Kapoor as a wonderfully creepy Indian version of Chris Tarrant – it all looks like bad media magic.

La Dolce Video

“My passion was the introduction to my new community in U.S. of my film love,” he said. “This kind of passion is no longer welcome, due to the new technology of the Internet.” He looked off into the distance. “The future of the video rental business is really dying and declining so fast, so fast,” he added. “I realized this thing so late.” But he also knows that for his collection, bright days may lie ahead 3,000 miles away. Of the group from Salemi, which he described as “very serious and sincere,” he said, “I don’t have any doubt that they will have a great program with my collection.” And as for his former customers in the East Village, he added, “One day, I hope they understand.”

The Invasion from Outer Space

As we follow the reports from day to day, the feeling grows in us that we deserved something else, something bolder, something grander, something more thrilling, something bristling or fiery or fierce, something that might have represented a revelation or a destiny. We imagine ourselves surrounding the tilted spaceship, waiting for the door to open. We imagine ourselves protecting our children, slashing the tentacles that thrust in through the smashed cellar windows. Instead, we sweep our front walks, hose off our porches, shake out our shoes and sneakers.