|  |
I'm sending a care package to a friend who is going through a crappy crappy time. Any ideas for cool/cute/weird/day-brightening things to put in there? I have my own ideas of course, but wanted to tap into the vast array for anything particularly creative...
6 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
Conservatives complain that the left "blames America first." I'm sure there are some on the left who are guilty of going too far in that direction, like saying that 9/11 is all our fault. But I just don't think these conservatives realize how damaging it can be to go too far in the other direction.
I was surprised when I came across Glenn Beck's website The 9/12 Project -- I could agree with almost all of the project's principles. The only one I straight up couldn't agree with was "I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life" (why do conservatives insist on tangling government with religion?). The one that made me a little queasy is "America Is Good."
To say "America Is Good," full stop, makes me queasy, not because I think America is bad or because I feel the need to "blame America first," but because it is a blank check. It is unqualified. Regardless of what we actually do our country is good, according to this attitude.
To me that attitude leads straight to this quote from the elder George H. W. Bush:
I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy. "I don't care what the facts are," and in this case the facts were that a U.S. warship had just shot down a civilian Iranian airliner ( Iran Air Flight 655) that was operating according to its scheduled flight plan. It was transmitting a "friend-or-foe" beacon indicating that it was a civilian aircraft. The U.S. ship launched the missiles from within Iranian territorial waters. If Iran had shot down a U.S. commercial airliner, we would have been very angry. And in fact, we were very angry when the Soviets shot down Korean Air 007 five years earlier, even though that aircraft had ventured into Soviet airspace due to a navigational error. Ronald Reagan said at the time: I'm coming before you tonight about the Korean airline massacre, the attack by the Soviet Union against 269 innocent men, women, and children aboard an unarmed Korean passenger plane. This crime against humanity must never be forgotten, here or throughout the world.
[...]
This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations. --Address to the Nation on the Soviet Attack on a Korean Civilian Airliner. If shooting down a civilian airliner is so bad (which it is), why do we refuse to apologize for it when we do it? Why does any American excuse the position "I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are"?
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
ingdirect.com: "We gave our site a minor facelift. So if you notice anything different after you sign in, don't freak out. You're in the right place."
youtube.com: "We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we'll be back 100% in a bit."
Did my bank seriously just tell me not to freak out? When did this happen? When did websites become my homeboyz?
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
The Internet gets more amazing all the time, in ways that I'm not necessarily even paying attention to. So one day I'm thinking to myself "I wonder if the Internet can help me learn math," and to my great delight you can now watch video lectures from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and probably others. You can watch them anytime, you can shop around until you find the best professor, and you can work at your own pace.
I always wished I had more time to take math and physics in college. Now I have the chance to fill in the gaps in my understanding. Currently on the docket: - Linear Algebra from MIT. I took Linear Algebra in college, but didn't come away with nearly as strong an intuition about it as I wanted to. For example, the first time I read the Wikipedia page on eigenvectors I was totally floored, because it has this picture that visually illustrates what an eigenvector is. I learned how to calculate eigenvectors, but didn't understand what they actually represent. This MIT course is taught by Gilbert Strang, who appears to be very good at explaining high-level concepts and cultivating intuition.
- Differential Equations from MIT. I've never taken differential equations, and have almost no idea what they are or what they're used for, except that they're somehow closely tied to many physical phenomena. I'm interested because they seem to have some relation to the ultimate prize, which is:
- The Fourier Transform and Its Applications. I've desperately wanted to be able to write programs that analyze the frequency content of sound since I was in high school. I'm currently working through the book Understanding Digital Signal Processing, which is very good, but I want a chance to hear it explained in video lectures also.
- Computational Science and Engineering I. I don't understand entirely what this class is about, but it seems to be engineering-oriented and also covers Fourier Series.
The only thing I need now is a little discipline.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
So here I was, watching the inauguration, getting distracted for a moment and not paying attention, when all of the sudden, this:
I know I have a weird sense of humor, but when he said "when the red man can get ahead, man" (with the little pointy finger) I bust up laughing, uncontrollably, for a good 30 seconds.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
I went to an anti-prop-8 rally and parade today, and it was so awesome. It was just full of love and positive energy. For a bunch of people who just got a royal "fuck you" from the state of California, it was a surprisingly upbeat event.
The weather was beautiful, and from what I hear was even more stunning in San Francisco, which also had a rally. God clearly voted today, but unfortunately s/he is not a citizen of the state of California.
I climbed many trees and other city habitat to get good photos (feeling a bit like Zaccheus in the process), temporarily putting myself in more danger of falling than I normally would. But it all turned out ok.
My favorite sign: The only people I could find who weren't having a good time:
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Check out my pictures from Phil and Mary's wedding. They turned out awesome, thanks in no small part to this snazzy $1500 lens that I rented for $30. I never could have gotten those low-light portrait shots without it.
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Whoa this is getting ugly from the Republican side: At rallies this week in Florida, crowds jeered and taunted members of the news media. One man hurled a racial epithet at a black television crewman, telling him, "Sit down, boy".
Yesterday, for the second time in three days, a speaker at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania referred to Obama's middle name, Hussein, in an effort to cast doubt in his religion and background. Obama is a Christian.
At the same rally, shouts of "terrorist" and "liar" could be heard following references to the Democratic candidate. On Saturday, McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought to link Obama to Ayers. "Kill him!" one man in the crowd shouted, not specifying who.
--The Guardian Holy crap, it's the two minutes hate! It is sad and truly frightening that this is what the Republican party has come to. They have turned themselves into the party of xenophobia and hate. They are spreading insinuation about Obama's link to a 1960s "domestic terrorist" without recognizing that they are breeding a new brand of extremism themselves! If guys at their rallies are shouting "terrorist," "liar," and "kill him," how far are they from actually doing something violent? The McCain campaign is taking a scorched earth strategy here, which is dishonorable and wrong. One lesson I take from this is that no matter how decent a guy is when he's nominated to the Republican ticket, he'll never survive the experience with his decency intact. Because winning on the Republican side requires "mobilizing the base," and the base demands red meat. The base thrives on culture wars. The base has this need to find an "other" and demonize them. It's a dark moment on the Republican side of the aisle.
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Dear Sarah Palin,
You want to talk about questionable associations? How about addressing a political party whose founder openly hates America, and who died buying plastic explosives on the black market?
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Stop winking at me Sarah!!
Yep, you really said all those things:
Why does Senator Obama believe that McCain and Bush agree on almost everything?
Finally, FOXNews attacks Obama with the same attacks they used on Kerry:
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Check out this really interesting video from the New York Times about the debating styles of Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. It shows some highlights of their previous debates (Palin for Governor of Alaska, Biden in the primaries).
One thing to take away from this is that despite her embarrassing performance over the last week or so, Sarah Palin has in the past been a formidable opponent who has a maddening way of being being cutting and aggressive in a way that viewers love. The LA Times article Underestimate Palin at your own risk, former rivals say comes to the same conclusion. That article ends with: "When you try to prove she doesn't know anything, you lose, because audiences are enraptured by her," Halcro said. "And her biting comments give you a sense of how competitive she is. Anybody who doesn't take her seriously does so at their peril." So playing the expectations game that the campaigns love to play, I'd say that we should expect to see an aggressive and in-control Sarah Palin, judging by her previous performances.
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Not quite two weeks ago I stepped on an airplane that would eventually (after two layovers) take me to Montpellier, France, a town on France's Mediterranean coast halfway between Spain and Italy. ( My account of the week )
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Any fans of The Usual Suspects? I love this movie, but I'm always confounded by trying to piece together the plot given the ending.
( Spoilers )
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
To add to the thoughts about the Georgia/Russia thing, here's a video on YouTube where FoxNews interviews South Ossetians who take over the time slot by condemning Georgia and thanking the Russians.
12-year-old girl: "but before I say anything else I just want to say that I was running from Georgian troops bombing our city, not Russian troops. I want to say "thank you" to the Russian troops that were helping us out."
Not saying this thing is simple or one-sided, but there definitely is another side to this.
Sarah, did you get in touch with your Georgian friend?
11 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
What the heck is going on with our American response to this Russia/Georgia thing? Now maybe I'm just getting bad/biased information from the Wikipedia article on the South Ossetia war, but to me the situation is:
* South Ossetia is a part of Georgia that is ethnically different from the rest of Georgia.
* South Ossetia has been de facto independent from Georgia since the early 90s (though not internationally recognized)
* South Ossetia overwhelmingly favors independence from Georgia, as evidenced by a 2006 referendum in which 99% of registered voters voted for independence with voter turnout at 95.2%.
* after escalating tensions and small-scale fighting, Georgia launches a full-scale attack against the South Ossetia capital in the middle of the night.
* Russia retaliates by pushing back the Georgian invasion and attacking Georgia.
This is a complicated situation, but all we as Americans are offering in our media and from our leadership is a simplistic "evil Russia invades democratic Georgia" story. Our leaders and our presidential candidates give tough talk against Russia, without acknowledging the fact that Russia was retaliating against a Georgian invasion and attack against a city.
At first I thought I was just crazy and missing something major, but apparently apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Geez, the last thing we need is to introduce more tension in our relationship with Russia. How would we react if Cuba or Venezuela invaded the Bahamas? You'd better believe that we'd not only drive them out, we'd launch strikes against military targets in their home countries. And how cynical would we be at that point if Russia spun it as "US aggression"?
11 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
My phone is currently a brick. I made the mistake (in retrospect) of trying to update it this morning for the new iPhone App Store. It succeeded in installing the new software, but it appears that it is now needs to be reactivated or something. But unfortunately the iTunes store is completely h0rked and unavailable. So I now have no phone, on a day when I was going to try to sign papers on my condo. This sucks!
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Not sure exactly how this happened, but it's strangely appropriate. There's been a lot of parsing techniques, compilers, optimization, and unicode in my life -- not so much getting things done.
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
My voice isn't horrible right now, but it's definitely not great. My standards of "great" are higher now, because the day I got back from Iowa my voice felt way better than it ever had. It was amazing! It was so clean, so resonant, was much better in tune (from having much better control), and felt so good! I was determined to figure out what a week in Iowa had done to make it so much better. That evening, it still felt really good but not quite as much, and by the next day things were pretty much back to normal.
I have to figure out what happened in Iowa!
Whenever I wake up in the morning my voice and nose feel pretty dried out. At first I thought this was due to a lack of humidity, but I've been running a cool mist humidifier in my room for almost a year. I bought a hygrometer and it consistently tells me that I'm running 55-60% relative humidity, which is pretty high. I also run an air purifier constantly, so hopefully that means that I'm filtering out airborne allergens.
I feel like the status quo for me is a less intense version of what happened two summers ago when I "lost my voice" for four months. The symptoms are similar, though less intense: my voice feels bulky and hard to control, I feel dried out in the morning, and hitting high notes is especially hard.
It's time to take no prisoners and do absolutely everything "right" in an attempt to recreate my post-Iowa voice: - Drink water constantly. At least six glasses per day, every day
- absolutely no eating within three hours of going to bed, to reduce the possibility of acid reflux. I can't decide about drinking -- I've heard it said no, but it seems like it would help me stay hydrated going into the most dehydrating part of my day (sleeping)
- run the humidifier within a couple feet of my head (one doctor's website I saw recommended this)
- use saline nasal spray before going to bed, to keep my sinuses lubricated
- change all my bedding and wrap the mattress in plastic, in case there are allergens hanging out there. it recently occurred to me that I got that mattress from a cat owner, so there could totally be allergens in it that are irritating my sinuses.
I have to recreate the day after Iowa!
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
I saw Chanticleer last night in Portland with E*beth. It was a really enjoyable concert, and an educational experience about how choir singing can me made accessible. And to top it off I got to talking with some of the singers afterwords, and they answered some burning questions I had about countertenor singing. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
For people who don't know them, Chanticleer is one of the best-known choirs in America. Consisting of 12 men (they sing full SATB -- more about this later), they are one of the few American choirs that employs its singers full time, and the choir tours extensively nationally and internationally. Their repertoire is quite varied, ranging from early music to spirituals to pop to contemporary music by living composers. All that aside, they know how to please a crowd and I think this is a big element of their success.
My first exposure to Chanticleer was when I was 12 years old and singing in the American Boychoir. In the spring of 1994 we went on a tour of the west coast and joined Chanticleer for a series of joint concerts in the bay area. Our joint concert in Grace Cathedral actually became two concerts in a single night when it was discovered that the cathedral had been oversold according to the fire marshall. But what truly made the experience memorable for me was singing for the first time much of the music that I would later focus my adult musical life around. It was my first time singing out of the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems, it was my first time singing Herbert Howells, Thomas Weelkes, Robert White, and John Tavener. These concerts were a formative experience for me as a young singer. I still have my program from this concert, autographed by all the members of Chanticleer at the time.
I risk diverging too far from the point of this post to mention it, but one other thing I'll never forget about those two Grace Cathedral concerts is that they are the precise night I first was able to use my falsetto. I remember straining to hit the high notes for the first concert of the night, but for the second concert I had this brand new voice that felt a little different but could hit those notes with ease. It seems somehow poetic that I first used my falsetto singing with a choir full of some of the country's best falsettists.
But that concert was almost 15 years ago, and I hadn't heard Chanticleer since. My ear has heard many other things in the meantime -- lately it's been mostly early music choirs like The Tallis Scholars -- so I was really interested to hear how Chanticleer would sound to me now.
What struck me most about the concert is how good they are at pleasing a crowd. I understand much better now how they manage to be popular enough to have all full-time singers: a feat other choirs would probably love to emulate. Their formula is a lot like the American Boychoir's: a rich, varied program, enough transitions and surprises that people have reason to keep paying attention, and topped of with some tunes people will recognize. They are very animated and engage the audience visually when they sing. They change formations for almost every piece. They charismatically talk to the audience every few songs. The audience was thoroughly won over by the end; it was one of the quickest standing ovations I'd ever seen.
I don't want to paint them as an act of empty showmanship though; they were technically brilliant. Their ensemble was impeccable, their tuning nearly flawless, and their production at all times sounded so very easy. They had extremely good vocal control: one moment they were singing polyphony in straight tone, and the next they were singing juicy solos of popular tunes with lots of vibrato. Even very quiet entrances were very solid and perfectly together. Every voice of the ensemble could stand on its own as a soloist, and by the end nearly all of them had. And they were extremely well-rehearsed; every detail of every piece was deliberate and artistic.
So at this point you may wonder if I have anything bad to say about Chanticleer, and if I'll now make it my life's goal to join them someday. As much as I enjoyed the concert, I find something about Chanticleer lacking, which prevents them from being my musical Mecca. What they seem to lack is an emotional intensity. This might sound unfair at first, because they where clearly emoting visually, and the concert had some emotional moments to be sure. But something that I can't quite put my finger on prevents Chanticleer from having the depth of emotion that I perceive from other choirs. It's almost that their production is too easy, their tone too light and airy for their phrases to feel real weight. It's a lot like listening to the countertenor Andreas Scholl, a famous and very successful soloist who nonetheless strikes me as a bit sucrose and flippant compared to someone like James Bowman.
Speaking of countertenor singing, with Chanticleer I heard countertenors unlike anything I had heard before. I have sung with 5 or so countertenors in Seattle, and I have listened to recordings of many others, mainly in the context of early music. The countertenors I have heard have been almost exclusively in the alto range: A below middle C to soprano E or F. Not these guys. These guys laugh at your measly E or F. They blow right past it on their way up to As, Bs, and I-swear-I-heard-a-C above the treble clef. And it didn't sound hard or strained in the least -- it sounded easy.
I really wanted to chat with a few of their countertenors afterwords and get some answers to some burning questions I'd had recently. I managed to start conversations with Dylan Hostetter and Michael Match who both turned out to be super nice guys. I asked them both if they considered it important that a potential voice teacher be a countertenor specialist, and both of them replied with a resounding "no," which was great to hear. I was also inspired by Michael's story, which was eerily similar to mine: in college he was a frustrated tenor, then someone suggested he try countertenor, and suddenly all the things his voice teacher had been trying to get him to do made sense. At that point he said he discovered "where his voice belonged."
So all in all, it was a very enjoyable and educational experience. And while I have a great deal of respect for the group, I don't think it will be my long-term ambition. Everything else aside, I don't think I'm built (mentally or physically) to perform the same program night after night, year-round. I remember that touring with the boychoir was sometimes tiresome. I'm happy with my current mix, though I will consider starting voice lessons.
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
