A tough group. This could be the “Group of Death” this year.

Post your choices in comments — remember, the top two go through. Results later this week.

Update: Results!

Well, it’s clear that Germany goes through on top, handily. With the near-unbeatable combination of lyrical bombast (Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!), geographical aggression (the rivers name-checked in the first stanza are all in neighboring countries — watch out Lithuania!), and a nod to the finer things in life (German wine, German women, and German song in the little-used second stanza), Das Lied der Deutschen just rolls over the competition. A national anthem designed as a drinking song: true German craftsmanship.

The second slot was a tougher battle. Two Latin American nations versus Poland (which, according to Das Deutschenleid, is actually part of Germany). Poland’s anthem was actually written during a time when Poland didn’t really exist as a state, so that’s a plus. Lyrics about overcoming the enemy and reuniting the nation are pretty awesome, though they lose a few points for name-checking Napoleon. Still, enough to go through against Ecuador and Costa Rica. Those two anthems are really nothing special.

Winner: Germany. Runner-Up: Poland.

Anyway, the anthem contains a few lyrical gems which seem quaint today, but on the whole I still think it’s really great. I guess Russia’s using a watered-down version of the same song to this day, but instead of awesome lyrics about Lenin and Stalin, and fluttering scarlet banners, they’re singing now about how big their country is, and how it has both costal and arctic regions. They’ve traded in one of the great inspiring national anthems for a cheap knockoff of ‘America, the Beautiful’. Shape up, Russia.

Coming soon: the World Cup of National Anthems!

And, here is something that is awful, horrible, embarassing, exploitative, and should be illegal:

Anyone want to step up and explain the difference to me?

Thanks to Andy Baio of upcoming.org for some technical advice. In the future, I hope to inject these events right into upcoming.org, or (in a more perfect world), I expect the venues themselves (or their webmasters) to do the injecting.

February 7, 2005, 10:15 AM

DETROIT (AP) — Karl Haas, who brought classical music to millions of daily listeners through his syndicated radio program, “Adventures in Good Music,” has died, according to the station that produced his program.

Karl Haas was a regular guest at my family’s dinner table when I was young. Usually when we’d just finished eating, just after clearing the plates, we’d sit at the table and the opening chords of his show’s theme would begin to play. There’d be a moment when the three of us would fall silent and just listen.

On OSX, you’ll want the path /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/clivlc instead of just vlc.

#!/bin/sh
mimms -o /tmp/news.asf "mms://216.35.221.84/newscast/newscast.wma" 
vlc -I dummy /tmp/news.asf \
  :sout='#transcode{acodec=s16l}:std{access=file,mux=wav,url=/tmp/news.wav}' \
  vlc:quit
lame -S --preset phone /tmp/news.wav /tmp/news.mp3
rm /tmp/news.wav /tmp/news.asf

Coming soon, an AppleScript that will pause iTunes at or near the top of each hour and play this (or another) mp3.

Can I take a friend’s iPod shuffle and browse or play its content on my machine (like I can with other iPods)?
No, there is no manual mode that allows you to view or play the content from a friend’s iPod shuffle on your computer. This also means that you cannot load music from multiple computers or iTunes libraries onto iPod shuffle like you can with other iPods.

[...]

Can I use iTunes to view the songs on my iPod shuffle like I can with other iPods?
No. The iPod shuffle icon that displays in the iTunes Source list is actually a special playlist (like Party Shuffle).It lists which songs in the library are currently configured to be sent to iPod shuffle, but not what’s currently on the unit. If you see a bullet by a song, it indicates that the song was not sent to iPod shuffle. See “Some songs in your iTunes library aren’t copied to your iPod” for reasons why songs were not sent to iPod shuffle.

In sum, once you have loaded music onto the iPod Shuffle from one computer, you can’t plug the Shuffle into any other computer to listen to the music. You can either load it up with music at home and listen to it on the way to work, or you can load it up with music at work and listen to it on the way home. What you can’t do is plug it into your work computer and listen to the music you loaded up at home. This is different from how other iPods work.

If this situation is someone’s sick idea of copyright protection, it’s just stupid.

If this is a true generalization, it explains to me fully why I have absolutely no interest in satellite radio. In Ohio, growing up, we had a Top-40 station, and then a Top-40 station for people who didn’t like music by black people. Their slogan was “All of today’s best music, with none of the rap”. Satellite radio is this impulse taken to the extreme — how else could you explain a station on XM that is “all about the most important and well known songs in the history of Alternative Music.” Clearly, that’s a sack of horseshit, right?

For me, there are only two reasons to listen to music on the radio, of any type. First, to be exposed to something new, different, or interesting. Second, and an orthogonal point, is to be exposed to something unpleasant, jarring, ugly, or disheartening. What is the point of listening to a classic rock station if they’re never going to play any Eagles? You need to be punished every now and again, when you listen to the radio. For every Whole Lotta Love, there has to be a D’yer Mak’er.

Listening to the radio in the car — if everything that came on was something you wanted to hear, you’d never get to yell “CHRIST!” and almost crash the car trying to avoid the latest band from a British isle that someone, somewhere, thinks is the new Radiohead. And, you’d never get to change channels and catch the last 30 seconds of whatever mischief Pharrell Williams has cooked up for you this month, leaving you with an unreachable itch you’ll spend the next several hours channel-hopping trying to scratch.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go slip some Mariah Carey onto my girlfriend’s iPod.

Besides, everyone knows that use of “Fade into You” is tacky and sad, ever since Paul Verhoeven staged a SPACE FIST-FIGHT to it in 1997′s Starship Troopers. You can’t top that, Alias music coordinator, with your pouty-yet-horsey faced heroine and her perfectly coiffed man-boy teenbeat Baldwinesque co-star. Just give it up.