Word for the day

Today's word is lethargic, which pretty much describes how I felt all day.

Upswing? What upswing?

Pollyannas such as Bill Safire must be looking at this 404 page when saying everything is about to bounce back.

The fact is, even in industries (such as mine) where there is usually more demand than supply, the jobs are unusually scarce and hard to come by this year, which does not bode well for our economic recovery in the short term. If anything, I suspect we'll be stuck in a jobless recovery for a while to come.

It's about time

It looks like the mainstream media is finally starting to take the administration to task for its shoddy handling of the developing "morass" in Iraq.

Just when you think you've heard it all

The horror story that is the New Jersey foster care and adoption system has just taken a horrifying turn for the worse.

Warning: I have to admit I was furious after reading it. It's definitely not for the easily offended or incensed. However, what strikes me as so bizarre in this case is the absolute disparity going on--the boys are treated as fifth-class vermin, the girls--relatively speaking--as little princesses. It makes you wonder what astonishing cruelty mankind is capable of.

Tantus sudor! Tantus umor!

If anyone wondered how rap might work in Latin, have a gander at this.

I have to say the line "sub quo manifestus globus" is my personal favorite.

Take that, DMCA!

In a rather impressive feat of obeying the letter of the law while poking an eye at its spirit, a pair of MIT students have developed a means of distributing music online via cable television. Unfortunately, since I don't subscribe to MIT cable (as I live off campus), I will be unable to benefit from this technological boon.

Be careful what you wish for

Has there been any statement more hideously arrogant this year than Bush's horrid statement "Bring 'em on!"? I'm sure it makes everyone feel so much safer now, doesn't it?

And this at a time where the White House is trying to block people from viewing information on its web site about Iraq. No, no quagmire here, folks, just move along now. . . .

Lovely. . . .

It looks like my bank, FleetBoston, has just been acquired by Bank of America. Another example of me having to change banking information. Wunderbar.

My worst nightmare

People are now searching for dunk tank costumes. Given that this site is already a top choice for people looking for dunk tanks and costumes suitable for clogging, this is not good news.

Overheard

A recent discussion regarding the dorms at MIT, and the names of living groups within those dorms, ultimately led to the rather disturbing comment:

"It's hard to steal an orgy from a convenience store."

I'm not going to pursue that one any further.

And on the fourth day, he did not rest

Must have been a heck of a night to be Josh Beckett. Twenty-three years old, and not only does he pick up the win in the deciding game of the centennial World Series, he pitches, on three days' rest, a complete-game shutout, and to top it all off, even picks up the final out, tagging Jorge Posada on his way to first.

A fitting end to New York's season. One can only hope that Steinbrenner is suitably crushed by his failure to win it all.

Girls lead to divorce?

Apparently, some econometricists have found a striking gap in the divorce rate that depends on the number of children a couple has. The more children, the greater the disparity--6 percent for one girl versus one boy, 8 percent for two, 10 percent for three, and 13 percent for four.

It makes one wonder what the cause of the discrepancy is. [Only partially facetiously, one might say that this argument gives the lie to the ubiquitous break-up excuse, "It's not you, it's me."]

Grrrr. . .

It's October 23, and it's snowing as I right this. This is unfair. Two days ago, it was 70 degrees outside. This morning, it's snowing.

"A light dusting north and west of Route 128." Yeah, right. The meteorologists should be rounded up and taken out back and dealt with.

Huh?

Apparently, for dinner, one of MIT's dining halls is serving tonight, at the same meal, Belgian waffles, and roast leg of lamb.

I don't see the connection.

Earworms

Tim has an interesting post about "earworms," those annoying tunes that get stuck in your head.

For me, earworms tend to be just a few bars in length, but I get the whole thing (orchestration, dynamics, texts, you name it), and usually the key for me to get rid of it is to figure out what the piece is. Often times, I don't even need to listen to a recording to do it; I just remember how the piece goes on in the following few bars, and then my memory kicks in.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way--particularly if it's a piece I don't know well enough. I once ended up having the bridge between movements of the Delius piano concerto stuck in my head for the better part of a month because the piano wasn't playing in the earworm fragment, and I couldn't remember where I heard the bridge.

Of course, when this topic came up between me and my voice teacher a few weeks back, she remarked, "only you would get Delius stuck in your head." Which may be true, given his not-very-well-known predilection for writing for baritone, and my being a baritone. . . .

Bizarro-world

The latest strange searches:

• "Red Sox fan jumping off a building"
  
• "Breakdancing classes in Boston"
  
• "Dunk tank" Oklahoma October 2003 [I don't get this one]
  
• Nextel "reduced Shakespeare" ad
  

It's been surreal

I saw the strangest thing this morning. I had just turned the corner from the street on which I live to Massachusetts Avenue, when I saw a tractor--in the middle of rush hour traffic, crossing the street. The guy sitting on the tractor didn't seem to feel the least bit out of place driving a tractor in the middle of Harvard Square; not paying the least bit of attention to the strange looks he was getting from the pedestrians crossing the street.

And apparently, there have been sightings of a Delorean made to resemble the one from Back to the Future in the last week or so in the Boston area. I think it's probably the result of a few MIT students working too hard to have fun. But hey, that's just a typical day in the life in the Hub.

Cleverer, but not cleverer enough

Just received yet another attempt at the Nigerian 419 scam. Now they're resorting to pointing me to web sites to see that funds are actually available. Moreover, because the money has come from fines levied on oil companies for environmental pollution, you have a little bit of the "Robin Hood" phenomenon working in their favor. However, they still haven't figured out how to get past the whole "give us your bank account information so we can rob it blind" problem.

Nice try, but it still doesn't work. I give it an F+.

First thoughts aren't always the best

So, I finally managed to get my hands on the new Richard Hickox CD that features Ralph Vaughan Williams's 1908 Nocturne, an orchestral setting of Whitman's "Whispers of heavenly death."

The reason this was of such interest to me is that one of the works in a recital I'm working on for the spring is RVW's 1925 setting of the same poem, for baritone and piano. The differences are amazing--the two settings are like night and day, except for the fact that they each end in an Impressionistic blur. The earlier setting is (unsurprisingly) louder, busier, and quite moving. But the most startling difference is length--the earlier version is twice as long as the later version, which, at nearly four minutes, is already quite long for such a short text (about a dozen lines). Perhaps the relative "compression" of the later work, amongst many other qualities, makes it is by far the more effective of the two settings--it has a hypnotic quality to it that isn't found in the earlier setting, and the simpler forces make the quirky harmonies even more startling. [I find it's quite possibly RVW's most "French" work.]

Ooh! Ooh!

Now that I'm in the final months of my Ph.D. program, it would figure I'd start getting spam mail from "diploma mills" offering such tempting subjects as "Your PhD is just a click away!"

Let me think about that. I've spent the better part of six years of my life trying to get a real Ph.D. Sure, I'll spend a couple hundred or thousand dollars now to get a fake one from a prestigious, non-accredited university. Sounds like a winner to me.

Morons.

What the world needs now . . .

. . . is not some random idiot sticking fliers advertising L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (or should that be Diuretics? I can never remember), the day of a rainstorm. Darn thing almost ended up completely stuck on my windshield.

From the goat's mouth

As reported in the Washington Post, from Pedro himself: "'You can't blame Grady,' Martinez said in a rare public comment. 'If anyone wants to point the finger, point it at me. I was the one out there. I'm responsible for my pitches.'"

Huh. . . .

On a more personal note, I think that this also the first year that I've actually been angry at the Red Sox when they've been eliminated. I think there's definitely a part of me that's furious at them for having blown it when they had such an amazing chance.

What I need to do is find something (like work, perhaps) that will take my mind off of this for the next week, or year, or decade or so until the pain recedes a bit. . . .

Not meant to be

Here I was, all ready to root for an "End-of-the-World Series" between the Cubs and Red Sox. Instead, we have to deal with a bloody New York-Florida World Series. Fox is, I'm sure, not looking forward to this--it's their worst-case scenario (as far as ratings are concerned).

Now, while everybody in Red Sox Nation (and others) are going to make manager Little the goat in this scenario, people are probably also going to forget the fact that Pedro was given the opportunity to go quietly under his own choice in the eighth--and refused. I think, more than anything, that the game was lost not because of Little's decision, but because of Pedro's hubris. He had no business even starting the eighth inning when he was clearly so tired, let alone stay in long enough to give up four straight hits and blow the game. He should have been content to have gone seven innings and given up only the pair of homers to Giambi, and then turn the game over to the bullpen to let them close it out.

Going the distance to win the pennant shouldn't have been the only goal in Pedro's mind. Unfortunately, that seems to have trumped all other concerns last night. And, like Little said, who really wants to tell Pedro "no?"

The interesting thing, though, is that the question now becomes, what does Epstein do next year? Clearly you don't need to do much retooling of the offense--and we finally actually have a decent closing crew in Timlin, Embree, and Williamson (although its ability to hold up over long periods of time has not yet been proven). More importantly, I'd be loathe to tinker around too much with the team--they have the kind of team chemistry that can't be bought or imposed which makes them so much fun to watch (except for last night, perhaps).

So, what does the team need right now? One or two more good starters (anybody know if Beckett or Zito or will be available next year?), a solid middle reliever, and perhaps a more improved Little (or another manager) capable of dealing with the enormous ego of one Pedro Martinez.

Twenty lashes with a wet noodle

I just attempted to use "it's" as a possessive pronoun. I will submit myself to twenty lashes with the aforementioned soggy pasta forthwith.

I don't get it. . . .

Microsoft has just disclosed four new security flaws, yet its stock rose by 55 cents yesterday? Huh? Are they being rewarded for their incompetence?

Armageddon averted

So Armageddon isn't nigh. The Marlins win 9-6, to make it to the World Series. Now all the Fox Sports people have to hope for is the Red Sox to pull off a win tomorrow night, to avoid the ratings morass that would be a Marlins-Yankees series. . . .

Spam, glorious spam

Yeah, right. :-P

Anyways, a troubling trend. Right now, the mailing list I administer (for the MIT Chamber Chorus has been getting an increasing amount of spam. I took the step of turning it into a moderated list, only to find that the amount of spam has been increasing [to the point where we're getting six copies a day of the same freakin' virus e-mail. The only good side of the moderating step is that the mailing list doesn't get cluttered with spam; unfortunately, my inbox does, because the auto-discard feature still sends me a record of the e-mail for my convenience.

Sometimes you just can't win--you just have to hope for a draw.

A waste of a perfectly cromulent parking space

So, I was walking home a couple of nights ago, and noticed that a few parking spaces down from my front door was a "booted" vehicle. [I must admit, in spite of the outrage, that it was interesting to see what the boot looks like--and how the depiction of it on The Simpsons all those years ago was so interesting.]

But in any case, the annoying part of me was thinking, "Why would you waste a perfectly valid parking space by booting a vehicle?" Parking in Cambridge (and the entire greater Boston area) is already difficult enough. Why make it any more difficult by booting vehicles in place? Why not just impound them?

Some adage about left hands and right hands

There's something funny about Fox Sports referring to a Yankees fan as "objective," particularly when their news division is known for being as anything but.

Red Sox, 2003 edition

A perceptive quote from today's (or is tomorrow's) New York Times explains why people love this year's Sox so much:

"'That's the fun thing about this clubhouse,' first baseman Kevin Millar said. 'We've got a bunch of idiots in here who go out and play baseball. I don't think anything fazes us.'"

Dream Teams

Wow. Even the New York Times is rooting for Armageddon--they're actually saying they wouldn't mind seeing the Red Sox beat the Yankees and move on to the World Series--against the Cubs.

Total Recall 2

It seems that California has decided to recall Gov. Davis, and replace him with an actor with no political chops whatsoever. Anybody want to start the recall of the recall? I'd be all for it--although, right now, I want to see how Schwarzenegger proposes to get the state out of its current turmoil. I don't think he has the political savvy or capital to pull it off, which means this could very easily become another case of "be careful what you ask for."

Bad Toyota

Not good: their new SUV commercials have the "Dies irae" from Verdi's Messa da Requiem gone completely amok. It sounds horrible--and the vehicle they're trying to peddle isn't much better.

Kardiac Kids Advance

Boston can now suffer its collective coronary. Boston finally shut the door on Oakland. Up 4-3, with bases loaded, two out in the ninth, the game ends with Derek Lowe striking out Terrence Long. And about a million Red Sox nation folk collapsed, because Boston didn't.

Next stop: New York.

To avert Armageddon, we need to hope for a Marlins-Sox series. :-)

But on a serious note, best wishes for a speedy recovery to Johnny Damon, who looked to have suffered a collision about as serious as my cinderblock wall incident.

Idiot-in-chief

"Our National Embarrassment" (as the nice people over at TBogg so nicely put it, apparently doesn't know the name of the guy he has in charge of rebuilding the country he invaded for no particularly outstanding reason (other than he wanted to control its oil reserves).

It's good to know he has his priorities straight. It should make us all feel so much better, knowing that our country is in such good hands.

[Oh, and just in case anyone thinks the TBogg folks are making this up, the full transcript--before the White House decides to do anything with it--says the following:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. What is the purpose of the Iraq stabilization group? And is this an acknowledgment that the effort to stabilize Iraq is flagging? Does it diminish the authority of Secretary Rumsfeld?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes. You know, it's common for the National Security Council to coordinate efforts, interagency efforts. And Condi Rice, the National Security Advisor, is doing just that. And this group formed within the National Security Council is aimed at the coordination of interagency efforts, as well as providing a support group to the Department of Defense and Jerry Bremer. That's the purpose.

Screwing up "The Naming"

In Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens, they claim that "the Naming" would give an object its purpose, its objective.

If that applied to the world of automobiles, then the Oldsmobile folks seriously screwed up when giving their new SUV its name--they called it, of all things, a Silhouette. You'd think that with a name like that, it would be a sleek, smallish SUV, but the truth is nothing of the kind. We're not talking about Unimog-level atrocity, but still, an SUV just really shouldn't be called a Silhouette.

Don't try this at home

OK. A question for all you pianists out there. How easy is it to play off of four staffs simultaneously? Oh, and if that weren't enough, did I mention that the two staffs are in different keys?

Yep, that's right--a bitonal piano part on four staffs. Blame Ferrucio Busoni, another member of the Liszt-Rachmaninov-Chopin "I'm writing for myself, screw anyone who comes after me" school of pianist-composers, and his gargantuan five-movement piano concerto.