freakytigger: Culture Yoghurt Roundup

ELK ROKK (

freakytigger) wrote,
@ 2008-04-22 10:26:00

Culture Yoghurt Roundup
- Life without an oven, day 4: last night I had the microwaveable "Prawn Jumble Jambalaya" from Waitrose, it was OK, very dry though.

- I'm not going to kick off the Poptimists discussion on Madonna until the album's actually released, but it's OK: on first hearing I like the tracks where she's singing about being 1x TOUGH OLD BIRD best. I like the ones where she's down with the kids least, oh and the one where she bafflingly rewrites "Into The Groove" to be more boring and pedantic (tho the actual groove in it is fine).

- Listening to Santogold's album now: it is 100% phoney and really REALLY enjoyable in places. OMG surf guitars - this is the record Tangled Up should have been maybe? Obviously she very very much wants to be MIA but who cares (except MIA as this will sell more than her). (EDIT: OK the second half of the album has some really annoying stuff on it which dampens my goodwill some.)

- Almost finished Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics: I am in no position to judge any of the physics on display though he makes it all sound quite exciting but as a study in community norms, groupthink, etc it's very interesting and pertinent. The chapter I've just finished talks about Feyerabend and is basically a philosophical justification of trolling. Also relevant to scenius v genius, as I understand that idea.

What will I do today? I feel very sleepy and I don't have much work on.

(45 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	santogold jauntyalan 2008-04-22 09:53 am UTC (link)
	has she popped up on poptimists before? i saw a brief bit of her on Sound the other day, and i liked the sound of the track a lot. can i borrow the smolin book? i'll give you your book on the history of robots back in exchange ;-) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: santogold freakytigger 2008-04-22 09:59 am UTC (link)
	The video to "LES Artistes" showed up on Poptimists in one of the 3-vids-at-a-time post. Certainly you can! I'll have finished it today or tomorrow I would think so if I see you or Emma in a pub at all this week I can pass it on. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: santogold alexdecampi 2008-04-23 08:38 pm UTC (link)
	The LES Artistes video is one of my favourite of the past month - I have a big directing crush on Nima (he who also did the guilty pleasure Hot Chip "Ready For The Floor" video) Where do you stand on Sia's "The Girl You Lost To Cocaine"? I'm crushing on it hard, and I'm afraid I love the Kris Moyes video for it too. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	dubdobdee 2008-04-22 09:53 am UTC (link)
	oo i adore feyerabend! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-22 10:00 am UTC (link)
	Where's a good place to start with him (if such a thing exists) - Smolin makes him sound pretty intriguing. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dubdobdee 2008-04-22 10:18 am UTC (link)
	"against method" is the book i read and loved 25 years ago (eep) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-22 10:19 am UTC (link)
	How could I possibly have guessed you'd like a book called that! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dubdobdee 2008-04-22 10:26 am UTC (link)
	haha well PF is a classic case -- for me -- of "gives reader permission to be the way they totally want to be anyway" <--- no such thing as influence (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jauntyalan 2008-04-22 10:29 am UTC (link)
	this (and its environs) is exactly where my mistrust of 'influence' comes from too! unless you were taught and worked with X you were not influenced by X, you read X's book and came to your own conclusions. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jauntyalan 2008-04-22 10:26 am UTC (link)
	the phil of sci i did had feyerabend as a must read, but then once done hardly mentioned again. i.e. he has 1 point, we get it, ok move on. wait are you still going on about that, old man? :-) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

dubdobdee
2008-04-22 10:36 am UTC (link)

i shd dig out my reading list -- i did phil of maths not phil of sci -- cz i am fairly sure kuhn was on it (as the naughtiest outlier) and i found feyerabend on my own recognizance (hence = never put off him) (ACADEMIC GUILTY PLEASURE)

imre lakatos WAS on our reading list and i absolutely recommend his "proofs and refutations: the logic of mathematical discovery", not least bcz it is in the form of a PLAY -- puppetshow moar laik -- and is, despite forbidding title, very funny)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jauntyalan 2008-04-22 10:57 am UTC (link)
	all on phil sci reading lists too. lakatos is quirky but on sci was very persuasive when i first read him. not read any of this lot since then. perhaps a 'going back to the source' project is needed - i did re-read kuhn (and Latour) last year... (Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 05:22 pm UTC (link)

I haven't read Feyerabend in a quarter of a century. I was excited at the time whereas I have a feeling that now I'd be more skeptical. He and Kuhn independently thought up the concept "incommensurability" for competing incompatible paradigms, and of course they're right about the concept even if I wish they'd chosen a different word. But unlike Kuhn, Feyerabend then takes a really stupid leap, which is to say that I think the title Against Method is quite ridiculous, since there's no good reason to go from

(i) There is no overarching universal scientific method; rather, just different paradigms for different sciences and subsciences, with different and incompatible methods

to

(ii) There should be no established methods in science

This'd be like saying that if there's no universal form of government there should be no established governments.

Of course, as I recall it, despite declaring himself for scientific anarchy, Feyerabend isn't actually saying that there should be no established methods but rather that for the sake of progress in science the methods ought to be under continual challenge from competing methods. But this doesn't make sense to me either. When people actually do formulate competing paradigms it's because they have compelling reasons, either because the established paradigm has anomalies that the new paradigm seems to eliminate or because there are new, external ideas, possibly from a neighboring discipline, that someone wants to incorporate, and to do so he needs to disarrange the old paradigm. But this "progress" isn't because the old paradigm was continually under challenge but rather because it developed itself so well that it was able to generate problems that it itself couldn't solve. (Not that I know enough about actual sciences to know if what I've just said is right.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 05:38 pm UTC (link)

I think you would find the Smolin book interesting Frank - I would lend it to you but I am less likely to see you in the pub than Alan.

What Smolin is saying is that without the continuous challenges, science can find itself in a sitation where it is generating problems it can't solve but in which it has also burnt the bridges that would enable it to solve them: in (what he says are) Kuhnian terms (I haven't read Kuhn), a non-revolutionary period is where normal science happens. But if you professionalise science so that only normal science happens and only normal scientists are taken seriously, it makes it much harder to recognise the unsolvable problems as being unsolvable, and much MUCH harder for the people who would make the paradigm shift happen to get heard. In the long run they will, and science will be fine, but if you mix a bit of Feyerabend in with your Kuhn (by tolerating continuous challenges even when the theory's working fine), progress will happen faster.

So in other words, as I understand it Feyerabend doesn't have to be right for acting as if he's right to be beneficial.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

koganbot
2008-04-22 06:13 pm UTC (link)

I wonder if there's any way to test Smolin's idea. A counterargument would be that it's mostly the guys doing the normal science who are going to be creating the science well enough to generate the anomalies, and that money you take away from these guys and give to the loonies on the fringe then you won't get the challenges you need. But then again, maybe Smolin is recommending not that you throw money to the loonies but that you encourage the regular guys to act more loony. But also, "normal science" and "professional science" are different concepts that shouldn't be confused. Einstein was a patent clerk when he started working on special relativity, but he had totally mastered the normal science of his day. Kepler and Copernicus were professionals, though I don't think the profession matched up with modern academia (and I think Copernicus wrote his major cosmological work in his spare time, but not because there was anything elicit about it, just that it wasn't what he was being paid for). In any event, Einstein got hired on pretty soon, and as far as I know everyone involved in the quantum revolution was getting paid by universities.

Does Smolin have any particular ideas about what physics should be talking about but isn't?

My guess is that if I were brilliant in physics rather than whatever it is I'm brilliant in it would be easier for me to crash the party à la Einstein than it would be in sociology, say, or anthropology, or cultural studies.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 06:18 pm UTC (link)

Yes he does! He's writing the book cos he claims this is the situation that's arisen right now: he thinks string theory is basically a dead end that's unlikely to solve any of the foundational problems in physics, and it's hogging funding and tenure - he would prefer more time and effort go into addressing foundational problems. He argues pretty well, though I am completely unable to make a judgement on whether he's right or not. He does give some examples of approaches which were discarded when string theory got going that have since yielded very useful results, but a lot slower than they would otherwise have.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

koganbot
2008-04-22 08:14 pm UTC (link)

He does give some examples of approaches which were discarded when string theory got going that have since yielded very useful results, but a lot slower than they would otherwise have.

Again I'll speak way over my head, not having read the book and not knowing the physics, but now I don't think Kuhn and Feyerabend are even relevant to Smolin's case. I'm guessing that he misunderstands them. String theory is not a dominant paradigm in the Kuhnian sense, it's just a popular area of interest within modern physics. In a science that's in what Kuhn would consider a "normal" rather than "revolutionary" period, the norms are what everyone in the science buys into, and the people who don't buy into those norms are not considered to be within the science. Before Copernicus no astronomer believed that the Earth was a planet. Before Planck and Einstein and Ehrenfest, no one was giving a thought to a quantum of energy. After 1928 everyone in physics understood quantum physics, and if you didn't, you weren't considered a physicist. If modern physics now is in a period of "normal science" rather than "revolutionary science" (I honestly don't know, but I'd expect the former) then an antagonism towards or indifference to string theory doesn't put you outside normal science - since physicists who have that antagonism or indifference are still considered physicists, and can work in other subareas and can use other approaches. The guys looking for the Higgs boson are physicists, whether or not they're working on string theory. Whereas you would not be considered a physicist if you haven't mastered general relativity and the standard model (which is the name given to the current model of quantum theory). My understanding is that string theory is one attempt (or one family of attempts) to find a common structure that will explain both the standard model and general relativity. But it's not the only attempt. So unless those "approaches that were discarded" aren't attempts to deal with the problems created by the standard model and general relativity, and were discarded because they didn't seem to match up conceptually with the problems of physics, I don't see where supporting them or not has anything to do with Feyerabend. They'd just be a part of normal science that Smolin thinks needs more attention. They'd not be outside the paradigm, despite their being relatively neglected.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 08:51 pm UTC (link)

Some of the approaches are suggesting that special relativity and quantum physics don't work!

Anyway, Smolin's position is that the sting theorists are acting like science is in a normal period (as it was between general relativity and the development of the quantum model) and that people working outside string theory are outside the science - they won't employ people working on other theories, won't attend their conferences, won't take them seriously, will ignore even prominent theorists who change direction. Their position - according to his hostile testimony - is that string theorists are acting as if string theory has already won out over the other approaches, when it hasn't. And the non string theorists are acting like science is in a revolutionary period, and so are trying to explore lots of different ideas and find a new paradigm.

Now I haven't read Kuhn, but presumably in Kuhn the people who get to decide whether science is in a normal or revolitionary phase are the scientists - and according to Smolin the scientists basically don't agree on this.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-22 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	Anyway I do see that my interpretation of Feyerabend isn't relevant to the Kuhnian "normal" phase of science - but I think it's me misunderstanding Feyerabend and Kuhn, rather than Smolin. (I might be wrong though) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	koganbot 2008-04-22 09:23 pm UTC (link)
	Not necessarily. My memory is telling me that Feyerabend feels that "normal" phases should be made revolutionary, whereas Kuhn would consider that to be ridiculous (not that he'd think the normal phase should never shift into a revolutionary phase, but that he wouldn't find anything inherently wrong with a normal phase). (Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 09:20 pm UTC (link)

This is fascinating. Last year I read Lisa Randall's Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, and she was saying that a lot of the antagonism between string theorists and others had dissipated. I recall her saying that she was on the non-string-theory side of things, but in her online bio she says "Her research concerns elementary particles and fundamental forces, and has involved the study of a wide variety of models, the most recent involving extra dimensions of space. She has also worked on supersymmetry, Standard Model observables, cosmological inflation, baryogenesis, grand unified theories, general relativity, and string theory." But she does believe that once CERN gets up and running some her ideas might get confirmed or disconfirmed, whereas a huge complaint against the string theories is that there's no way to test them.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 09:28 pm UTC (link)

Smolin has also worked in string theory. One of the things he says is that the "non string theorists" don't usually reject string theory entirely, they think some of the ideas that come out of it (like supersymmetry) are valuable for the approaches they are pushing (just like completely wrong cosmological approaches in Kepler's time apparently taught us useful things about topology as a bonus - he gives an example). And Randall sounds like one of these too: Smolin gives examples of various upcoming tests for the stuff he's working on, too.

But I think Randall may well be closer to it - reading between the lines of Smolin it seems like many string theorists DO admit that there's a problem in physics, that new ideas are needed - and this shift in thinking is quite recent. So his clarion call should be more - 'how can we stop this happening again' rather than 'how can we change this'. That would make for a less exciting book though.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 08:50 pm UTC (link)

Over on the Thomas S. Kuhn thread I talked about this a bit, trying to make the point that what Kuhn means by normal science and dominant paradigms is a lot stronger than what we generally mean by "normal" and "dominant." Sterling was trying to relate our talk on Kuhn to rock, and we were talking about "disciplinary matrices." ( (When Kuhn decided that his own multiple usages of the word "paradigm" had confused things too much, he switched to "disciplinary matrix" for meaning "the whole constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community." The thing is, as far as I can tell, you only get such a disciplinary matrix in the "hard" sciences, and only in their "normal" rather than "revolutionary" periods. There are too many competing beliefs, techniques etc. in other endeavors. (So what would Kuhn make of modern physics? Damned if I know.) Anyway, this is what I said in response to Sterling.) Sterling had said: "So then maybe there's no one ruling 'disciplinary matrix' of rock but a set of competing discourses and languages. Or maybe there IS a disciplinary matrix." Here was my response:

No, this makes no sense whatever. As the rest of your post shows, rock criticism isn't within a megazillion light years of being a disciplinary matrix. I don't get why you'd say otherwise. It's as if we were discussing how to distinguish left hands from right hands, and you suddenly said, irrelevantly, "Or maybe left hands ARE right hands, but with their digits reversed and on the other arm." In trying to understand what Kuhn means by "ruling paradigm" and "disciplinary matrix," you need to wipe from your brain the idea of "majority vs. minority," or "mainstream vs. fringe," or "culture vs. counterculture." If there are competing paradigms, then there's no ruling paradigm, even if one side gets all the seats on the student council and gets to threaten the other side with being burned at the stake.

If I consider myself a rock critic, and if my ideas put me at odds with the core ideas of other people I consider rock critics, then there's no ruling paradigm, no disciplinary matrix. Period. Even if no other people agree with my ideas, or know of them, even if I'm a madman scribbling in the attic, if I think my ideas are good and that they are rock criticism, then I can't say that there's a disciplinary matrix without contradicting myself. "Ruling paradigm" means (I'm quoting Richard Rorty here) "solving problems against the background of consensus about what counts as a good explanation of the phenomena and about what it would take for a problem to be solved." If you and I aren't part of the consensus, then there isn't a consensus. Kuhn uses phrases like "working within a paradigm" to distinguish sciences in their normal phases both from sciences in their revolutionary phases and from relevant nonsciences; in the latter two, people don't share an overall disciplinary matrix. So you're not doing any good to claim that revolutionary sciences and nonsciences also have ruling paradigms, unless you're doing so in order to jettison Kuhn. Which you're allowed to do, but most people who want to do so try it from the other direction, by claiming that no science has a ruling paradigm and that the premises of a science are always under attack.

("Relevant nonsciences" might be psychology and economics and, um, semiotics, disciplines in which some members aspire to be "scientific" but which have not achieved consensus. I'm wondering if some sports can be said to have ruling paradigms. Or whether mathematics can. Rock criticism isn't even trying for consensus. Rather, it builds itself around maintaining basic disagreements.)

Maybe what I'd said was too extreme. But basically what I'm getting at is that in a period of normal science a dominant belief is really dominant. Before Copernicus, a planet is a nonmaterial body in the heavens above the Earth. After Newton, planets are material bodies that orbit the Sun, and the Earth is one of them. And if you think otherwise, people doing physics and astronomy can ignore you.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-22 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	Because dominance is enforced socially and politically within the discipline, the symptoms of dominance presumably change, don't they? No scientist now is going to be burnt at the stake, but they might be ignored, refused work, etc. (Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 06:16 pm UTC (link)

that money you take away from these guys and give to the loonies on the fringe then you won't get the challenges you need

er, let's say "that money you take away from these guys and give to the loonies on the fringe won't to the guys likely to provide the challenges you need"

(and I'd add why assume that the guys in the dep't won't be the ones to be the Galileos who come up with the new physics?)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 06:22 pm UTC (link)

He says because the politics and power structures of physics (and academia) mean that only people working within the existing paradigm get to be in the big departments and (in the case of string theory) have a lot bound up in its working - so it's not impossible for them to be the Galileos, but it's a lot less likely.

It seems reading him that string theory is a special case, where because of the relative vagueness of the theory anyway it's possible to shift assumptions around when a problem comes up that looks from the outside like it invalidates the theory: string theorists can then say, "no the theory is still right if you assume this and this and this" and the list of "this"s gets bigger and bigger.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 05:42 pm UTC (link)

Er, I forget actually where Feyerabend was on the Kuhnian idea of "exemplars," which is what he'd originally meant by "paradigm" until he expanded the idea. By "exemplar" Kuhn meant a particular solution to a particular problem that then is used as a model for a solution to a similar but not identical problem. And Kuhn argues that what you don't abstract a method from the first exemplar that you then apply to everything, but rather that you find resemblances between A and B and go with them when working on B, and then you find resemblances between A and C and go with them when working on C, but they don't need to be the same resemblances. So Kuhn could say that he sees science as an anological rather than a methodical, rule-bound activity (though "method" is such a vague word, you could always talk about the "resemblance" method). But of course none of this gives you a good reason to abandon a working exemplar or paradigm - or rule, for that matter. And if Feyerabend is arguing that scientists should think analogically rather than by following rules, according to Kuhn they already are. So there's really nothing to be against. (I'm not claiming that this is what Feyerabend is arguing, since I don't remember.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	katstevens 2008-04-22 10:06 am UTC (link)
	BLIMEY I have just seen on Popjustice that Basshunter have done a cover of KWS's Please Don't Go. It's not as bad as they make out but it's still kind of jaw dropping. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	carsmilesteve 2008-04-22 11:22 am UTC (link)
	dammit, look, now i can't remember who the original is by [checks everyhit] oh i knew it KC&TSB, honest... (Reply to this) (Parent)

koganbot
2008-04-22 04:45 pm UTC (link)

A listener from Michigan writes:

Wikipedia says that Santi White (Santogold) has worked with Ashlee--do
any of you know on what?

btw, the Santogold cd is quite great! i liked her old Stiffed EP (despite its Gwen-biting) but this cd is just on a whole new level.

Haven't heard the CD myself. I've heard and like two Santogold - "You Will Find A Way," quite well, though there's something too clumsily Gang Of Fourish indieish punkiness about the bass playing, which isn't necessarily totally bad, but I can't imagine this wouldn't be better with more actual bounce in its bottom. I like her hectic foreground and pretty backup singing. "L.E.S. Artistes" is more standardly mixbeats-w/-quirky vocals, but then the version I've got is the remix.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

freakytigger
2008-04-22 05:45 pm UTC (link)

I like those two too - there is actually a remix of "You Will Find A Way" on the album which kind of illustrates my problem with her: when she turns up the dubbiness and gizmos and slows things down she sounds like bad imitation MIA (the MIA of "The Turn" or "20 Dollar" or "Hussel") but when she's doing upbeat poppy stuff she's like a bubblegumification of MIA in a really good way, incorporating lots of trendy Gang-of-Fourish influences but making them shiny and entertaining and fun. (I'm not getting much emotionally out of the record yet)

I want a way to phrase these criticisms without having to constantly fall back on the MIA comparisons, which are a bit unfair to Santogold (though her sleeve designer seems keen to make them too)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alexmacpherson 2008-04-25 10:32 am UTC (link)
	'Hussel' is MIA's best song (and prob best performance) though! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-25 10:34 am UTC (link)
	Wasn't being clear enough - I love "Hussel" but a bad imitation of it is going to me more painful than a bad imitation of some of her other stuff. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alexmacpherson 2008-04-25 10:37 am UTC (link)
	oh yeah I def get that. i still don't know what themes etc santogold deals with, she hasn't enunciated ~at all~ in the two songs of hers i've heard (and they're not compelling enough to find out) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-25 10:40 am UTC (link)
	I don't think she deals with any themes at all!! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alexmacpherson 2008-04-25 10:41 am UTC (link)
	edging back up in my estimation! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	freakytigger 2008-04-25 10:44 am UTC (link)
	I fear one of her themes might be how creative and artistic she is. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alexmacpherson 2008-04-25 10:48 am UTC (link)
	if she goes braggadocious then it's all good! though i bet she's just going to be smug. (Reply to this) (Parent)

skyecaptain
2008-04-23 12:57 am UTC (link)

"Q: He asked you to help write a Lily Allen song - are you still writing for other people?

A: I worked a bit on Ashlee Simpson's record. A song that I wrote on is going to be the first single.

But it's like two different hats that I have to wear. It's like the difference between writing fiction and writing ad copy. It's like a formula versus your art.

In the States, the songs that get on the radio are formula songs. So you have to write like that. You can't use certain words, you can't use crazy harmonies - give them what they need."

Interest in Santogold DECLINES CONSIDERABLY after this response. (By Ashlee's first single, I wonder if she means "Outta My Head," which was ACTUALLY the first single, or "Little Miss Obsessive," which her PR company is CLAIMING is the first single since the first one didn't do well.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	skyecaptain 2008-04-23 12:59 am UTC (link)
	Anyway, I'm not seeing any Santi White ASCAP credits from the Ashlee album unless I overlooked 'em. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	skyecaptain 2008-04-23 01:04 am UTC (link)
	http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?vid=225547 Yep, Santi wrote "Outta My Head," but I'm not seeing her credited anywhere. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Victor Valentine?

koganbot
2008-04-23 06:05 am UTC (link)

It took a while, but allmusic has now got the writer credits up:

"Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)"
Jerome Harmon/Kenna/King Logan/Ashlee Simpson/Santi White

Maybe she should write more formula songs, since this clobbers the two I've heard by her (which I like fine, mind you).

Santi White also co-wrote "Ragdoll," which I'm so-so about. (It's not bad, but not great either.)

FYI:
"Little Miss Obsessive"
Jim Beanz/Karl Berringer/Ashlee Simpson/Victor Valentine
(Victor Valentine must be Vicky Valentine in male drag. But WTF?)

Anyway, gotta research these people. Kenna I've heard of, King Logan I've heard of (writer and producer in r&b, tends to work with Timbo, as does Jerome Harmon, according to Wiki, and were Timbo's handymen on this alb). Looking at Wiki, Jim Beanz is another Timbo protege, tends to do vocal production, played significant role on Blackout including "Gimme More," did lots of vocal production on the Danity Kane album and co-wrote one of my faves, "Bad Girl." He co-wrote five tracks on Bittersweet World including "Rule Breaker" and was vocal producer on a lot more.

(As a matter of fact, here are all the writing and production credits for Bittersweet World. Timbo strangely enough is co-producer on seven of these but has no writer credits.)

Google isn't telling me anything about Karl Berringer, but given that he's cowriter and coproducer on what's so far my song of the year, his is a name I want to remember.

Victor Valentine is not an uncommon name; three Victor Valentines have MySpace music pages, though none seem to be the sorts who'd work with Ashlee.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Victor Valentine? skyecaptain 2008-04-23 01:49 pm UTC (link)
	Could Tom Higgenson be Victor Valentine? I just refuse to believe that's a coincidence! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Victor Valentine? koganbot 2008-04-23 01:54 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I don't believe it either. I suppose it's possible she already knew a Victor Valentine and that that's where she derived the Vicky Valentine moniker. But I would think it's more likely she chose it because of its evoking The St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Some Like It Hot, or something along those lines. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	freakytigger 2008-04-23 08:41 am UTC (link)
	Haha this explains a GREAT DEAL about why the stuff that sucks on her album does I think (i.e. differentiating 'formula' and 'art' will only end up giving you a formula for art). (Reply to this) (Parent)

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