No Green nomination for you!

In a stroke of good fortune, the Green Party has shown the good sense not to nominate Nader as their presidential candidate.

This makes it all the less likely that Nader can muck up things around the country like he did in 2000.

Ineffective choral writing 101

As a general rule, a good way not to hear low notes (like the E-flat below the bass clef, for instance) is to make them part of a four-way divisi within a single section. An even better way to way to ensure they are not heard is to have tenors and sopranos singing fortissimo at the top of their range (like a B-flat) against said low notes.

I don't understand what's the point of even bothering at that point. It's a cute effect, but unless you have about a hundred times more basses than sopranos and tenors, it's just not going to work.

[The offending piece: Boulanger's Du fond de l'abîme.]

Ghost town

In other news, my department seems to be relatively empty today--I can't find any traces of most of the normal occupants of the building. On the other hand, at least it's relatively quiet (though I suspect I'm jinxing myself by writing this down).

Conservation is for dummies

Imitating Cheney's absurd line that "conservation is a personal virtue," and not a sound basis for setting policy, the EPA is now promoting ads that make fun of fuel efficiency standards, even though the fact that most households have multiple cars means that their vehicles output more emissions than their house.

Still believe that everything this administration does is based on sound science?

Hmm . . . not so good at understanding statistics, are we?

From a NYT article about John Kerry's plans, if elected, to revoke Bush's stem cell funding ban, and the Nobel scientists supporting that move:

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, did not respond to the criticism of the president's policy prohibiting research on stem cells. . . . The issue has split his party, with many Republicans signing on to legislation to lift the limits. . . . Mr. Schmidt answered the attack by pointing out that 22 of the 48 Nobelists who signed the pro-Kerry statement also signed a statement in January 2003 opposing war in Iraq, and 16 had given money to Democratic candidates.

Well, my math tells me, then, that more than half of the Nobelists involved here did not oppose the war, and two-thirds haven't given money to Democratic candidates.

How this isn't a fair cross-section of the American political spectrum, based on these statistics, is beyond me. It just sounds like Mr. Schmidt can't say anything nice about his own candidate's views, so he has to smear his opponent's supporters. Not the slickest move when the election is still over five months away.

Two musical rants

[1] I don't understand why the classical music world is so infatuated with John Eliot Gardiner. He's a decent conductor, but not a great one.

While I respect his work with "historically informed performances," it seems just as apparent to my ear that he's too much of a literalist. I just listened to a recent disc where he conducts psalm settings by Boulanger and Stravinsky--and it's some of the flattest performances I've heard in recent months. The pieces just drag on unconscionably; when a dramatic surge in intensity is called for, Gardiner either prefers to chug along as if nothing was happening, or overdo it and go over-the-top. The result is heavy and cold, not brooding and despairing (as these pieces should be).

[2] Having finally heard the piece, I don't understand the music critics who have described Peter Warlock's The Curlew as the bleakest piece of vocal music ever written. I respectfully disagree.

It's true that The Curlew makes you want to jump off a cliff (in the proverbial sense). However, by contrast, in Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony (really a song cycle with chamber orchestra), someone actually does jump off a cliff. By the end of the symphony, you want to slit your wrists, before the music rips your heart out in the penultimate movement and then bashes your head in for the finale.

Now that's what I call bleak.

Good to know you care

It seems that making a buck off of spam is too inviting an opportunity even for AOL employees to pass up.

It looks like a good 93 million e-mail addresses were forked over by the alleged perpetrator for the tidy sum of $100,000. Somehow I think the Internet will be the big loser in this scenario. [The list apparently was sold several times over.]

Xenophobia and the right-wing

I hate to admit that I've been spending a bit of time in the right-wing blogosphere lately, but what I've learned there has been eye-opening.

The greatest problem with conservatives today is that they are xenophobic. Anything that goes against their views must be repressed with the broadest brush possible. This runs from pro-choicers to gay marriage activists to Muslims.

However, although I should have known this by now, but targeting Muslims seems to be the right-wing haters choice de la décennie. The amount of hatred for all Muslims is astonishing. It's even more disheartening because they seem to believe all Muslims are violent radicals, but yet refuse to see how there are fringe elements in their own (generally Christian, sometimes Jewish) faith that are just as worthy of being denounced.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to shout down the hate. It seems all-consuming; I just hope that it doesn't lead to a real clash of civilizations like it did the last time things got out of hand (remember the Crusades, anyone?).

Victory.

Two manuscripts are down.

Thankfulness. Not without grief.

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Seriously, though, I'm almost (finally!) finished with the second of two manuscripts I've been working on recently. And just in time, too because I don't think I can look at these things much longer.

Fortunately, all I have to do is revise one figure and remove one unnecessary discussion on multidimensional wavelets from this second manuscript and I should be done with it--until my advisors review it and hack it to pieces.

Big surprise

According to a recent article from the AP newswire, it appears that yet another romance on The Bachelor has gone down the drains.

Except for the (relatively decent) ratings it engenders, since it's pretty clear that the bachelor's choices never seem to work out, why would anyone do this--except, perhaps, for the chance to pick up some entertaining VD's?

Not glad to make that acquaintance

Yesterday at lunch I was introduced to the durian, or rather durian in candy form. Even with my relatively conservative food preferences (born out of the inability to tolerate spicy foods to any degree), I have to say that the durian is one food I don't think I'll ever really be able to eat.

Why? Because it reeks. We're not talking about unpleasant odors here. We're talking the kind of stuff that you can smell several tables over. I thought that somebody had released some hydrogen sulfide outside, it smelled so bad.

But that was not the worst moment of all. That came when I was invited to try a piece of durian. Everyone was claiming that the candy tasted better than it smelled--albeit only marginally. However, when I brought the bag close enough, I learned the ugly truth. What I had smelled heretofore of the durian was just a fraction of the mighty, awe-inspiring true reek of the durian. It was so overpowering that I thought I would never be able to smell anything again.

Fortunately, my exposure to the noxious odor was ephemerally short, and no lasting harm was received.

But it was definitely a close call.

This blog has been changed

Another annoying quirk: those phone tree menus that say "listen carefully, because the menu has changed." Since most of those menus change every year or so anyways, why bother to announce the change? Everybody knows that they're subject to change--despite our wishes to the contrary. Just spare us the few seconds so that we don't use up extra minutes on our calling plan.

Listening to the sound of one's own voice

I have to admit that I've been spending a lot of time lately listening to the CD from my choir's last concert, and in particular the commissioned piece which I narrated.

It's a bit of a trip--after all, how many narrators have conversations with themselves in the context of a musical piece, or get to give a lecture. The material might be a little odd (philosophical ruminations on the concept of zero meets flight logs from Apollo 13), but it's certainly worth a listen to the two excerpts (see links).

Grumble, grumble

There are five desks in my office--three are currently occupied. A new student has come into our lab, and has decided to take the free desk next to mine, as opposed to the one in the corner that has lots of free bookshelf space.

It's a little annoying, because it means that my attempts at manifest destiny are now doomed to failure.

On another, unrelated food note

Note to self: never have baklava before lunch. It just leaves you hungry an hour later, and you get a wicked post sugar-high crash.

Quote of the day

"I can think of worse world leaders than a bowl of fries topped with cheese and gravy."

So that's where it came from!

It turns out that the final project for the C programming course I took as an undergraduate was based on one of the winners of the Obfuscated C Contest.

And, while my game was quite entertaining, I find that the original game which inspired the project is much more interesting, as is this other entry.

To use or not to use stem cells for research?

Here's the fundamental question I have with using embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures to advance stem cell research: what is the fate of the embryos if they're not used for research?

Are they given to other couples? Unlikely. Are they used for anything else? Probably not. As a result, this means that most of the embryos are kept on storage indefinitely, or thrown away. In either case, that's either destroying a living being, or denying it the right to do anything.

Now, if people are quick to accord a days-old embryo the rights of a full-grown person, why is there no outrage at throwing away these fertilized embryos? And, if they're just going to be discarded anyway, why not give them the chance to be useful in medical research?

I've yet to see a coherent argument from the "pro-life" camp as to why this should be a major problem.

Daily rant number n

Another thing that's bugging me recently (as if there weren't enough already: there's a persistent cell-phone-like ringing noise in the courtyard outside the building where I work. Every fifteen to thirty seconds, there's this upward trill that sounds very much like a cell phone going off, except I can't pinpoint its location or determine why the ringing is so insistent. It's driving me nuts, though, every single time I cut across the courtyard to go to the libraries.

Aargh.

A brief announcement

I wish to make it known that the mailman management system officially rocks, because it can block spam from entire obnoxious domains, not just individual posters.

That is all.

Huh?

Can someone fill me in here: why does the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning also own the Detroit Pistons?

Stanley Cup indifference

Currently watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Halfway through the second period, with Tampa Bay up 1-0 over Calgary.

I can't really say which team I want to win this one. Calgary is definitely much more of a hockey town than Tampa Bay, so it's more fitting that they should get the cup. But, at the same time, it's always fun to root for the upstart.

Random thought for the day

What does it mean that Bush's ads are already three-quarters negative? Shouldn't an incumbent president have a record of accomplishments to build their early ads on?

Oh, wait, that's right--Bush doesn't have any accomplishments to promote, except upper-class tax cuts. And we all know that those will go over well with John and Mary Q. Public, who, if they're lucky, have only been treading water for the last three and a half years.

I guess he doesn't have anything but attack ads to run.

Unintentional Irony Department

I just discovered something inordinately curious.

In spell-checking my previous post, it was brought to my attention--by the spell checker, of course--that the word blog is not in the spell checker's vocabulary.

You would think that such a frequently occurring word in the blogosphere would have at least been entered into the dictionary of a site called blogger.com, wouldn't you?

Mystère et boules de gomme, as some might say.

Oh, yeah

In case anyone was wondering why the blog slowed down to a trickle last week, it was because I was home visiting my family last week.

Seeing the Red Sox?

I wouldn't mind seeing the Red Sox--but I'd rather not pay $44 per seat to do so. Especially not against the Padres. [Not that they're a bad team or anything like that: there's just no chemistry involved in such a match-up for me.]