Little white headphones and multi-talented professors

Everywhere! It's incredible. Call iPods what you want: symbols of upper-middle class yuppiehood, an integral piece of the generic college student, or even a part of the holier-than-thou neo liberal anti-American movement (according to one source). Never before has there been such a seamless and flexible vehicle for appreciating music. Having one has an interesting and entirely visible effect on a person's musical horizons. With the iPod comes the ability to own more music. Where before you could reasonably only carry so many cds, now all of a sudden you have this space to fill, and with that comes the desire to listen to more. This is especially true on the college campus, where a massive range of music is available across the networks. I may be generalizing a bit much, but this is simply what I've seen: people who suddenly have this capacity (whether from an iPod or even just iTunes or some other easy way of organizing digital music) start snatching new music at an incredible rate. And that's pretty cool.

Related to that, you might be interested to learn that (at least at McGill) the Music Library has unlimited rights over the cds they check out, so if you bring a laptop with you (you can't leave the library with the cds), you can rip as much music as you want. They have a respectable selection of jazz and classical; not surprising considering that's what they teach. At McGill, the Music Library is on the 11th floor of the Blue Cross building, across Sherbrooke from the Music Building itself.

Yesterday, I found out that, in addition to being a world-renowned researcher, award-winning comic artist, comedian, and all around ego fiend, my Psychology of Cognition Professor Daniel Levitin also happens to be a Grammy/Academy Award/Platinum Record winning record consultant, musician, and producer. Umm, ok. He wrote a midterm review song for our class, and performed yesterday. Meetings with people like this make me beg one question: do I ever get to be like that?