“Christina Aguilera Clears The Air About Lady Gaga, Diddy Defends ... - Starpulse.com” plus 1 more

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Christina Aguilera Clears The Air About Lady Gaga, Diddy Defends ... - Starpulse.com Posted: 21 May 2010 09:59 AM PDT Weekly Music News: Earlier this week, BET announced their nominees for their 9th annual award show. Much like other award shows, these nominees were chosen for reason's some fans can't understand. Beyonce who released her album I Am…Sasha Fierce in 2008 is nominated for 4 awards while music mogul Diddy and his group Dirty Money are nominated for best group. Here's the weird part, Diddy and his group haven't released an album or a hit single yet. Confusing much? Christina Aguilera talks Lady Gaga, Diddy defends Justin Bieber, and Beyonce's alternate "Halo" video round's out this week's music news. Christina Aguilera doesn't have a problem with Lady Gaga You know that feud people have been trying to conjure up between Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga? It might have failed. Since her official return on the scene, it seems like every interview Christina participates in she gets the daunting Lady Gaga questions or worse a comparison. Christina is no stranger to being compared to her fellow performers, Britney Spears anyone? In her interview with Out magazine, Christina called Lady Gaga a "newcomer" and said "she's really fun to look at." Nothing bad there right? Then, when Christina released her soft x-rated music video people continued comparing her to Lady Gaga accusing Christina, who has been performing for well over a decade, of copying Lady Gaga's style. Tired of all the "she said" rumors, Christina took to her website to set the record straight. "It is very easy for comments to be taken out of context and create unnecessary drama-especially between us women," Christina wrote on her website. "So I would like to tell you all directly so my words cannot be misconstrued to sell someone else's story…I have absolutely nothing against Lady Gaga or any other female artist in this business." She then said: "I think she is great, and I appreciate any woman fearless enough to go against the norm. She has earned her success with hard work and a clear focus and I have nothing but respect for that. There is room for all of us on everyone's iPods." Well, not so much mine Christina. My iPod is pretty full so who should I erase? Diddy defends Justin Bieber Getting back to what was brought up earlier about the BET Awards, Justin Bieber was one of the artists that was nominated for an award. Justin's nomination is for Best New Artist and he will be going up against Canadian singer Melanie Fiona, DC rapper Wale, Lil Wayne protégé Nicki Minaj and his group Young Money. Many have been wondering why Justin would receive a nomination when others didn't. Some have blamed Justin's skin color for the reason why people are questioning his nomination but that isn't valid enough seeing that Robin Thicke, and Justin Timberlake have both received nominations on the network's award show. Even Lady Gaga didn't get a nomination and she has been dominating the radio waves. At a press conference following the announcement of the nominee's, Diddy defended Justin's nomination to the New York Daily News saying that Justin simply deserved it. "… if Justin Bieber's hot, then he deserves to be on that stage," said Diddy. Sometimes, at other award shows, the color of your skin or the type of music you make takes away from getting the accolade you deserve." You Choose: Which video version of Beyonce's 'Halo' do you prefer? Yesterday, an alternate video for Beyonce's song "Halo" was released and delivered a storyline and a darker side to the original version. In the original version of "Halo," Beyonce and her co-star – actor Michael Ealy – are seen cuddling and sharing loving moments, leaving mostly females feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. That version was released in December 2008 coupled with her video for her song "If I Were A Boy."    The alternate version of the video probably won't leave most feeling warm fuzzy but a little sad if you care to feel that way. In the alternate, Michael Ealy is seen running away from a group of men and later being attacked by a pretty buff pup. The great part about it is that it gives more meaning to the original.   Which one has your vote? Mini-Review: Nas & Damian Marley take it back to Africa with Distant Relatives Nas and Damian Marley's collaborative album Distant Relatives finally hit store shelves after various push backs left fans fearful of the project being shelved. The album combined the genres of Hip-Hop and Reggae and added an African element which is seldom used by the popular genres of music. The tracks off of Distant Relatives are very powerfully driven and encourage the listener to not only enjoy but to also think. Promoting positivity and love for one another, Distant Relatives might just have raised the bar when it comes to collaborative albums. What's best about the project is that it is thematic and not one artist outdoes the other. Both Nas and Damian deliver an impressive collection of songs that is not only entertaining but also educational. Distant Relatives is available in stores and online now. Video Premiere: Alicia Keys 'Unthinkable (I'm Ready)' Here is the new video from Alicia Keys for her song "Unthinkable (I'm Ready)' off of her album The Element of Freedom in stores now. The video provides a storyline that explores the subject of interracial dating.   Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Britney: The Unauthorized Biography: How do you solve a problem named ... - Philippine Star Online Posted: 20 May 2010 08:42 AM PDT The mind is a meat machine," said Marvin Minsky, an artificial intelligence researcher. "The brain's functions simply aren't based on any small set of principles. Instead they're based on hundreds or perhaps thousands of them," he goes on to explain. "In other words, I'm saying that each part of the brain is what engineers call a kludge — that is, a jury-rigged solution to a problem, accomplished by adding bits of machinery whenever needed, without any general, overall plan." His conclusion concurs with that of François Jacob, a Nobel laureate in physiology, and Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and named by Time as one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today," in asserting that the human mind is indeed an example of the aforementioned kludge. However, there are those who dispute this. Dr. Leonid Perlovsky is one of them, claiming that the idea that our minds are kludges — or, in his own words, "a diverse collection of pre-existing faculties and functions inelegantly adapted by evolution to work together" — is merely a metaphor for the "complex nature of the mind-brain" and "have no scientific basis." According to him, it's a lazy approach that oversimplifies the problem and thus gives inadequate answers, i.e. a "quick fix" solution. He believes that "the mind is optimal, but not in any simple way" and "has had billions of years to evolve optimally to solve a wide set of unknown future problems." Whatever the case, the case study presented in Sean Smith's Britney: The Unauthorized Biography will not perhaps further Perlovsky's belief that the mind is "the optimal device we know." The author, whose previous credits include books on Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, Jennifer Aniston and Victoria Beckham, traveled to Mississippi and Louisiana, talking to the locals and even former boyfriends to solve the problem named Britney Spears. On that very first visit (to Britney's hometown), I discovered there were two Britneys," writes Smith in his introduction, comparing the bifurcated parts as "squaring up to each other like two boxers preparing for a big fight." There was the nice "small-town girl" from the Deep South that would answer, "Yes, ma'am" after being told by her first agent Nancy Carson to stop doing something; and then there was "the Britney Spears" (italics being one of the author's favorite stylistic tics) who he describes as "the world's most successful singer, smoldering sexpot and multi-millionairess, and an iconic figure for a generation." He also reiterates that his glimpse into Britney's bifurcated personality didn't take "a genius in psychoanalysis; it was obvious." Given that the book details her humble beginnings, her climb to stardom and the subsequent public meltdowns following the collapse of her relationship to Justin Timberlake and her marriage to dancer Kevin Federline, it does seem to suggest that the two "Britney" personas that Smith extensively maps out were the result of haphazard construction, thrown together not so much by talent and ambition as by circumstance and luck. By tracing both, the author is successful at teasing out the contradictions as well as highlighting the charisma of its subject. She's not that innocent, but to what degree was she still clueless? With no access to the star herself or her immediate family, and despite his exhaustive efforts, Smith doesn't really serve up anything that we didn't know about Britney. From her pronouncements of being a virgin while she was with Timberlake (now known to be as truthful as that other famous person from the South, Bill Clinton, with his refutations of an illicit affair with Monica Lewinsky) to her losing custody of her children because of her erratic behavior, it's all been heard before — and very publiclly. The fact that Britney's been through bad times is only remarkable because we all know about it. Too much, actually. Considering that Minksy's famous pronouncement was made to make a point about the possibility of developing A.I., it's worth noting that Spears fame gets its impetus from technological advances, even more than her idol Madonna's ever did. Perhaps in Spears, we have been witness to the ascendance of a truly cyborg celebrity, whose popularity was fed on her real life being consumed when there wasn't any music left to devour. If it's true, as Mallarmé once said, "Beliefs are ideas going bald," then "the Britney," the only one we really care about, was only right in following suit and in the process — oops — just doing it again. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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