Gold-diggers and Beethoven stretchers

The Freakanomics Blog has a nice little post on the economics of "gold diggers" (the types Kanye rapped about, not cranky bearded prospectors). It's a great little response to a craigslist poster asking for unspecific advice on how to snag a man who makes $500,000 or more per year.

Fun with music: A couple of Norwegians have taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony and stretched it into a looooong and slooooooow 24-hour-long orchestral piece. You can listen to it online and apparently it will actually be performed live eventually.

On a related note, another software wizard compressed every Beatles album into a trippy one-hour MP3. Instead of speeding up the recordings (which would make McCartney and Lennon sound like Alvin, Simon and Theodore they used software that with a little logarithmic magic can cut out the unimportant bits of audio data and allow users to change tempos without affecting pitch. (This has been around for a few years and the program Acid is particularly useful for this kind of basement trickery.)

Also, I'm starting a new tab for any money/economics related posts called "c.r.e.a.m." Fellow Wu-Tang fans will understand.