And all the while the ugly smoke went upwards, the smoke that has stifled Romance and blackened the birds. This, I thought, they can neither praise nor bless. And when they saw it they raised their hands towards it, towards the thousand chimneys, saying, "Behold the smoke. The old coal-forests that have lain so long in the dark, and so long still, are dancing now and going back to the sun. Forget not Earth, O our brother, and we wish thee joy of the sun."
Dunsany, Lord (2004-07-02). The First Lord Dunsany Omnibus: 5 Complete Books (Kindle Locations 2084-2087). Renaissance E Books. Kindle Edition.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Quote of the day
"It's good when you still find a nice old British tradition, then: a warm and flavourful ale, a black cab with a brilliant driver, or a newspaper article shot through with unconscious language prejudice."
- Johnson, explaining that you can't LOSE an accent, you can only train yourself in another one ("Only the mute have no accent.")
- Johnson, explaining that you can't LOSE an accent, you can only train yourself in another one ("Only the mute have no accent.")
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Quote of the day
If Moses showed up as a Republican candidate you'd get headlines like:
"How many drowned during that Red Sea crossing? Cover up?"
or
"Mana from Heaven laced with deadly preservatives"
- Chucklepants
"How many drowned during that Red Sea crossing? Cover up?"
or
"Mana from Heaven laced with deadly preservatives"
- Chucklepants
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Quote of the day
Yeah, from "God, No!" again.
"The Eskimos—or as I think they’re called, the Inuits, or maybe the correct term is now “Frozen-Ass Aboriginal North Americans,” I don’t know—do not have twenty-something words for snow. That’s not true. But the Brits do have more than a hundred and fifty terms for male masturbation. If you’re in England and someone uses a verb and you don’t know what it means, it probably means jacking off. For jilling off, female masturbation, our brothers and sisters across the pond stick to “auditioning the finger puppets.” In the good old US of A, if you have a plural noun and you don’t know what it means, it probably means breasts.
Jillette, Penn (2011-08-16). God, No! (pp. 48-49). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
"The Eskimos—or as I think they’re called, the Inuits, or maybe the correct term is now “Frozen-Ass Aboriginal North Americans,” I don’t know—do not have twenty-something words for snow. That’s not true. But the Brits do have more than a hundred and fifty terms for male masturbation. If you’re in England and someone uses a verb and you don’t know what it means, it probably means jacking off. For jilling off, female masturbation, our brothers and sisters across the pond stick to “auditioning the finger puppets.” In the good old US of A, if you have a plural noun and you don’t know what it means, it probably means breasts.
Jillette, Penn (2011-08-16). God, No! (pp. 48-49). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Quote of the day
"He calls me once in a while and there's that special bond you have with a guy who's played guitar while you've floated around naked in zero G."
- Penn Jillette, "God, No!"
- Penn Jillette, "God, No!"
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Quote of the day
"One important detail is that actions that have not yet been tried in a state s are always assumed to lead immediately to the goal with the least possible cost, namely h(s). This optimism under uncertainty encourages the agent to explore new, possibly promising paths.
- Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Russell&Norwig)
Amusing how theory can guide one's life as well as explain the inevitable disappointments. Of course, Mae West anticipated theory with "Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always like to try the one I haven't tried before"
- Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Russell&Norwig)
Amusing how theory can guide one's life as well as explain the inevitable disappointments. Of course, Mae West anticipated theory with "Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always like to try the one I haven't tried before"
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Quote of the day
"Damn has the syntax of an attributive adjective but the semantics of a scowl. "
- Geoffrey Pullum, Language Log
- Geoffrey Pullum, Language Log
Friday, November 18, 2011
Anonymous (the movie)
Magnificent. Not that I necessarily believe any of it, but it combined delicious snippets of Shakespearean performances, an intricate story with considerable human interest, plausible history (although not 100% accurate, I recommend checking the Wikipedia article for some inconsistencies - but consider that some of those inconsistencies are results of not accepting the reconstruction of publishing orders of the plays), and some interesting variations on the power of the word.
The performances were touching, not only those of Vanessa Redgrave and Rhys Ifans but those of many minor players, some with just a few lines here and there. One criticism is that the transitions between different times were jarring.
Anyway, I loved the way events in the plays found parallels in the events of the story.
The cleverest comment of the critics noted in the Wikipedia article above was "the devious message must be that a shlock-merchant like Emmerich wasn't involved, but, like the film plot itself, must conceal the hand of some more experienced filmmaker, whose identity will be much debated for centuries to come."
The performances were touching, not only those of Vanessa Redgrave and Rhys Ifans but those of many minor players, some with just a few lines here and there. One criticism is that the transitions between different times were jarring.
Anyway, I loved the way events in the plays found parallels in the events of the story.
The cleverest comment of the critics noted in the Wikipedia article above was "the devious message must be that a shlock-merchant like Emmerich wasn't involved, but, like the film plot itself, must conceal the hand of some more experienced filmmaker, whose identity will be much debated for centuries to come."
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Quote of the day
"The more often you swear in everyday life, the less it reduces pain when you're hurting"
Yes, you've got to be an economics fan to make sense of the title of the piece where I found the original: Toward a theory of optimal swearing seigniorage
And yes, that not only sounds clever but refers to an actual study.
Yes, you've got to be an economics fan to make sense of the title of the piece where I found the original: Toward a theory of optimal swearing seigniorage
And yes, that not only sounds clever but refers to an actual study.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Quote of the day
"We found it populated mostly by innocent and well-intentioned, if confused, young people. Then again, that's how "Lord of the Flies" began."
- James Taranto regarding OWS
- James Taranto regarding OWS
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Quote of the day
Cribbed from The Economist:
Inspiration for the € symbol itself came from the Greek epsilon (Є) – a reference to the cradle of European civilisation – and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to ‘certify’ the stability of the euro.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Leonard Cohen of the Day
"Well the last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get
a woman's education, but he's not a woman yet
and the last time that I saw her she was living with a boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy"
(Death of a Ladies Man)
a woman's education, but he's not a woman yet
and the last time that I saw her she was living with a boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy"
(Death of a Ladies Man)
Quote of the day
"...the famed Russian hospitality is mostly just the Russian love for seeing a foreigner drunk."
- Bruce Chatwin?
- Bruce Chatwin?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Quote of the day
I know you need your sleep now, I know your life's been hard,
But many men are falling where you promised to stand guard.....
-LC
But many men are falling where you promised to stand guard.....
-LC
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
A few REAMDE excerpts, to get across the flavor of his writing...
A few of my favorites, lets me use the "copy" feature of my Kindle software (glad they added that to the PC version):
The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 15). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Video games were a more addictive drug than any chemical, as he had just proven by spending ten years playing them. Now he had come to discover that they were also a sort of currency exchange scheme. These two things—drugs and money—he knew about. The third leg of the tripod, then, was his exilic passion for real estate. In the real world, this would always be limited by the physical constraints of the planet he was stuck on. But in the virtual world, it need be limited only by Moore’s law, which kept hurtling into the exponential distance.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 34). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
But each had a kind of confidence about him that was not often found in young men who had followed the recommended path through high school to college and postgraduate training. If she had wanted to be cruel or catty about it, Zula might have likened those meticulously groomed boys to overgrown fetuses, waiting endlessly to be born. Which was absolutely fine given that the universities were well stocked with fetal women.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 160). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Zula asked Yuxia what a Hakka was and learned that they were the only Chinese who had refused to take up the practice of foot binding. So “Big-Footed Woman” was not just a throwaway line. Not only that, but they would buy the unwanted female children of their Cantonese-speaking neighbors and raise them. Yuxia was not the type to deploy terminology like “feminist” or “matriarchal,” but the picture was clear enough to Zula.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 242). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
...Sokolov recognized, in the black jihadist’s movements, a sort of cultural or attitudinal advantage that such people always enjoyed in situations like this: they were complete fatalists who believed that God was on their side. Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what, and that they had better just make the best of it anyway, but not seeing in this the hand of God at work or the hope of some future glory in a martyr’s heaven.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 340). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn’t afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology. You simply couldn’t go to a gun range without being cornered by a man who wanted to talk to you for hours about the ballistics of the .308 round or the relative merits of side-by-side versus over-and-under shotguns.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 603). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
What he wasn’t so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans was that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn’t have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn’t need to get involved.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (pp. 893-894). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 893). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 15). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Video games were a more addictive drug than any chemical, as he had just proven by spending ten years playing them. Now he had come to discover that they were also a sort of currency exchange scheme. These two things—drugs and money—he knew about. The third leg of the tripod, then, was his exilic passion for real estate. In the real world, this would always be limited by the physical constraints of the planet he was stuck on. But in the virtual world, it need be limited only by Moore’s law, which kept hurtling into the exponential distance.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 34). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
But each had a kind of confidence about him that was not often found in young men who had followed the recommended path through high school to college and postgraduate training. If she had wanted to be cruel or catty about it, Zula might have likened those meticulously groomed boys to overgrown fetuses, waiting endlessly to be born. Which was absolutely fine given that the universities were well stocked with fetal women.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 160). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Zula asked Yuxia what a Hakka was and learned that they were the only Chinese who had refused to take up the practice of foot binding. So “Big-Footed Woman” was not just a throwaway line. Not only that, but they would buy the unwanted female children of their Cantonese-speaking neighbors and raise them. Yuxia was not the type to deploy terminology like “feminist” or “matriarchal,” but the picture was clear enough to Zula.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 242). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
...Sokolov recognized, in the black jihadist’s movements, a sort of cultural or attitudinal advantage that such people always enjoyed in situations like this: they were complete fatalists who believed that God was on their side. Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what, and that they had better just make the best of it anyway, but not seeing in this the hand of God at work or the hope of some future glory in a martyr’s heaven.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 340). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn’t afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology. You simply couldn’t go to a gun range without being cornered by a man who wanted to talk to you for hours about the ballistics of the .308 round or the relative merits of side-by-side versus over-and-under shotguns.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 603). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
What he wasn’t so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans was that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn’t have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn’t need to get involved.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (pp. 893-894). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
Stephenson, Neal (2011-09-20). Reamde: A Novel (p. 893). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.
REAMDE read
No, I spelled that right. The author, Neal Stephenson, named it after a fictitious virus (which was a misspelling of the "README" common in computers, and probably a reference to "reamed" as well). It's a roller coaster ride involving a young couple, a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, Russian mafiosi, Chinese hackers, spies, and an Al Qaeda cell headed by a Welsh terrorist. Oh, and currency exchange.
This may be his best written novel yet, although some people were disappointed in it (it was not as brimful of technological flights of fancy as his usual fare). Perhaps the cast of characters is a bit large and hard to keep track of, but he ties everything together splendidly. Don't expect very deep character analysis, but do expect to be surprised by his sudden turns and made thoughtful by some of the ramifications of technology that he exposes (such as using computer games to facilitate real life crime).
This may be his best written novel yet, although some people were disappointed in it (it was not as brimful of technological flights of fancy as his usual fare). Perhaps the cast of characters is a bit large and hard to keep track of, but he ties everything together splendidly. Don't expect very deep character analysis, but do expect to be surprised by his sudden turns and made thoughtful by some of the ramifications of technology that he exposes (such as using computer games to facilitate real life crime).
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Arild Begins
Just got back from the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's first performance with Arild Remmereit in his new role as Music Director (apparently he has guest conducted on 3 previous occasions, but I do not believe I saw any of them). He is from Norway, but spent much of his life in Vienna, Austria.
I'm always willing to give a guy a try, and like to start with an open mind, but when he mentioned that all the programs he would be doing this season would have a FEMALE composer I was not pleased. Not that I have anything against female composers (honestly, I didn't really know there were any in the classical field, but they have certainly done fine in pop) but I find the idea of choosing music on the BASE of the composer being female no less loathsome than choosing on the base of the composer being Aryan. In Arild's defense (and please do not think I am being overly familiar by using his first name, the program calls it "Arild's Inaugural"), from the very beginning of Amy Beach's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, "Gaelic", Op. 32 I was impressed.
This was music I had never heard before, but it was fascinating, stirring in a mildly disturbing way. There was nothing weird about it, she did not seem to feel she had to be different than the men, just very good. Symphonies are not my favorite form of music, I think my attention span is just a bit too short for works of that length, but this one did not drag at all, and it often enchanted. The conductor mentioned before beginning the symphony that this was not part of the standard repertoire and our applause might be what makes that change....or not. I quote from memory: "So if you do not like this piece, be sure to boo loudly!"
I don't think I've ever been encouraged to boo at a classical concert before, especially not by the conductor, but his efforts seem to fall on deaf ears: at the end all he got was loud applause and a standing ovation with not a single "boo" to be heard in the crowd.
After the intermission we got four shorter pieces on the program: two by Norwegian composers (Halvorsen and Svendsen - both unfamiliar to me but I was glad to get to know them...the first was a quirky march that almost made you want to find some battle to march into, the second a romance featuring the concertmaster as soloist) and two by Strauss (and unfamiliar waltz and a familiar polka). While no single song left you quite as impressed as the symphony that started it, each one was really unpretentious and enjoyable...you regretted having to sit instead of being on your feet and moving with the music. I think that this is actually more in spirit of the times of the compositions, these guys were the rock stars of their centuries, and people listened to them to party.
At the end the applause was a bit awkward...we were kind of expecting to do the applause (not standing ovation this time, but only because it feels a bit odd to do a standing-o for a three minute polka no matter how damn good it is) with the standard two calls back for additional bows and pointing out the star performers in the orchestra, but he didn't let us....each time he jogged back from leaving the stage he started another piece without giving us time to stop clapping, and they were all fun, slightly silly pieces (one involving the whole orchestra chanting "tick-tock" repeatedly throughout an otherwise quiet part of the piece). One was concerned that unless the audience learned just the right applause techniques he would never let us leave...and one wasn't entirely sure that would be a bad thing.
He capped these pieces (I think there were four in all, including this last) with the Radetzky March, with the audience clapping the beat, and him turning around and conducting the audience to do quiet little claps for the quieter section and thunderous claps for the fortissimo. This guy is a master.
One thing puzzled me, and he alluded to it. Beach's Symphony No. 2 was the first symphony composed by an American woman. Why did she start with No. 2? My current working hypothesis is that she wrote a Symphony No. 1 while she was on steroids, and this one was disqualified by the Olympic committee on that ground...but I don't think the Olympic committee existed yet, and if it did probably would not have extended it's influence over classical music.....inquiring minds want to know!
I'm always willing to give a guy a try, and like to start with an open mind, but when he mentioned that all the programs he would be doing this season would have a FEMALE composer I was not pleased. Not that I have anything against female composers (honestly, I didn't really know there were any in the classical field, but they have certainly done fine in pop) but I find the idea of choosing music on the BASE of the composer being female no less loathsome than choosing on the base of the composer being Aryan. In Arild's defense (and please do not think I am being overly familiar by using his first name, the program calls it "Arild's Inaugural"), from the very beginning of Amy Beach's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, "Gaelic", Op. 32 I was impressed.
This was music I had never heard before, but it was fascinating, stirring in a mildly disturbing way. There was nothing weird about it, she did not seem to feel she had to be different than the men, just very good. Symphonies are not my favorite form of music, I think my attention span is just a bit too short for works of that length, but this one did not drag at all, and it often enchanted. The conductor mentioned before beginning the symphony that this was not part of the standard repertoire and our applause might be what makes that change....or not. I quote from memory: "So if you do not like this piece, be sure to boo loudly!"
I don't think I've ever been encouraged to boo at a classical concert before, especially not by the conductor, but his efforts seem to fall on deaf ears: at the end all he got was loud applause and a standing ovation with not a single "boo" to be heard in the crowd.
After the intermission we got four shorter pieces on the program: two by Norwegian composers (Halvorsen and Svendsen - both unfamiliar to me but I was glad to get to know them...the first was a quirky march that almost made you want to find some battle to march into, the second a romance featuring the concertmaster as soloist) and two by Strauss (and unfamiliar waltz and a familiar polka). While no single song left you quite as impressed as the symphony that started it, each one was really unpretentious and enjoyable...you regretted having to sit instead of being on your feet and moving with the music. I think that this is actually more in spirit of the times of the compositions, these guys were the rock stars of their centuries, and people listened to them to party.
At the end the applause was a bit awkward...we were kind of expecting to do the applause (not standing ovation this time, but only because it feels a bit odd to do a standing-o for a three minute polka no matter how damn good it is) with the standard two calls back for additional bows and pointing out the star performers in the orchestra, but he didn't let us....each time he jogged back from leaving the stage he started another piece without giving us time to stop clapping, and they were all fun, slightly silly pieces (one involving the whole orchestra chanting "tick-tock" repeatedly throughout an otherwise quiet part of the piece). One was concerned that unless the audience learned just the right applause techniques he would never let us leave...and one wasn't entirely sure that would be a bad thing.
He capped these pieces (I think there were four in all, including this last) with the Radetzky March, with the audience clapping the beat, and him turning around and conducting the audience to do quiet little claps for the quieter section and thunderous claps for the fortissimo. This guy is a master.
One thing puzzled me, and he alluded to it. Beach's Symphony No. 2 was the first symphony composed by an American woman. Why did she start with No. 2? My current working hypothesis is that she wrote a Symphony No. 1 while she was on steroids, and this one was disqualified by the Olympic committee on that ground...but I don't think the Olympic committee existed yet, and if it did probably would not have extended it's influence over classical music.....inquiring minds want to know!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Quote of the day
At this point, I should repeat my long-standing conviction that speech errors, by politicians and others, are rarely if ever worth the fuss that they sometimes generate
- Mark Liberman
- Mark Liberman
Monday, September 19, 2011
Quote of the Day
"You can get rid of a surprising number of kittens on Craigslist. In fact, the capacity seems unlimited."
- Bob Armstrong
- Bob Armstrong
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