Giuseppe di Stefano, 1921-2008

Once again, a great singer has died and somehow I don't find out about it until much later...

The Italian tenor Giuseppe di Stefano died on March 03, aged 86. Di Stefano was one of the great tenors of the "pre-Pavarotti" era. In fact, Pavarotti became well known after he stepped in for an ailing di Stefano at Covent Garden in 1963 (in what would become one of his most famous roles: Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme). He's not as well known as Pavarotti or Domingo partially due to his relatively early retirement (in the mid 1960's) due to, well, "vocal fatigue" pretty much describes it (due at least in part to his choice of roles that were really too heavy for his lyric tenor voice). He'll be remembered for inspiring Maria Callas' ill-considered decision to come out of retirement for a final concert tour (in the mid 1970s). The tour was ultimately to end early as in reality neither singer was capable of sustaining it. Still, his portrayals of Donizetti and Bellini roles, like Nemorino (in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore) will remain as some one of the greatest performances in opera history.

Links:
BBC Obituary
NPR Obituary (with additional pictures and links to recordings)

The Geometry of Music

When I was an undergraduate in college, many of my non-music-major acquaintances and friends used to tease me with jibes about the alleged low academic status of my chosen discipline. "You're getting class credits for singing?? You take classes on how to pronounce words?? Man, I wish I was a music major...that must be easy!"

Of course, I explained that in addition to the music courses, I also had to matriculate and succeed in non-music academic courses, but such protestations fell on deaf ears. Music? Come on, that's just easy!

Oh, yeah?

Exactly how one [musical] style relates to another, however, has remained a mystery--except over one brief stretch of musical history. That, says Princeton University composer Dmitri Tymoczko, "is why, no matter where you go to school, you learn almost exclusively about classical music from about 1700 to 1900. It's kind of ridiculous."

But Tymoczko may have changed all that. Borrowing some of the mathematics that string theorists invented to plumb the secrets of the physical universe, he has found a way to represent the universe of all possible musical chords in graphic form. "He's not the first to try," says Yale music theorist Richard Cohn. "But he's the first to come up with a compelling answer."

Tymoczko's answer, which led last summer to the first paper on music theory ever published in the journal Science, is that the cosmos of chords consists of weird, multidimensional spaces, known as orbifolds, that turn back on themselves with a twist, like the Möbius strips math teachers love to trot out to prove to students that a two-dimensional figure can have only one side. Indeed, the simplest chords, which consist of just two notes, live on an actual Möbius strip. Three-note chords reside in spaces that look like prisms--except that opposing faces connect to each other. And more complex chords inhabit spaces that are as hard to visualize as the multidimensional universes of string theory.

Here's the abstract from the paper itself:

A musical chord can be represented as a point in a geometrical space called an orbifold. Line segments represent mappings from the notes of one chord to those of another. Composers in a wide range of styles have exploited the non-Euclidean geometry of these spaces, typically by using short line segments between structurally similar chords. Such line segments exist only when chords are nearly symmetrical under translation, reflection, or permutation. Paradigmatically consonant and dissonant chords possess different near-symmetries and suggest different musical uses.

The entire paper is extremely interesting (to those with a penchant for music theory). You can read it at the above link. Additional materials can be found at Dmitri Tymoczko's Princeton webpage.

Take that academia!

The Forbidden Kingdom

Okay, I have to confess: I enjoy martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Fearless, Hero, House of Flying Daggers,etc. I'll even occasionally watch the ones that come on late at night and feature such awful acting and even worse voice dubbing. I'm not sure why I enjoy them. I am something of an asiatophile, but I suspect it's more to do with the action as I enjoy the Westernized versions of such films as well (Blade, The Matrix, Underworld, etc).

So I'm pleased to see a new movie coming out April 18 that features both Jet Li and Jackie Chan, two of the biggest names in the more common branch of the genre (what we see in the West): The Forbidden Kingdom. The plot involves an American student Jason Tripitakas* (Michael Angarano) looking for bootleg Kung-fu DVDs in Chinatown. Instead he finds an ancient weapon belonging to a great sage and warrior, the "Monkey King" (Jet Li). Through the power of this talisman he is sent back in time to ancient China where he finds that he must free the Monkey King who has been imprisoned by the evil Jade War Lord (Collin Chou). In this quest he is joined by the Kung-fu master Lu Yan (Jackie Chan) and Silent Monk (also played by Jet Li as either a different character of the Monkey King in disguise; not sure which) who will together teach Jason the true secret of Kung-fu so that he can defeat Jade War Lord and find his way home.

Okay, sounds a little hokey...well, maybe more than a little hokey. But still, Jackie Chan AND Jet Li? I mean, c'mon!

Anyway, the trailer looks good. You can watch at the film's website or on YouTube.

*Little bit of interesting trivia: the American student's last name, Tripitakas, is a play on the name of the Buddhist scripture, the Tripitaka (also known as the Pāli canon).

War!

A religious war has broken out on YouTube. Proponents of two conflicting ideologies are engaging in video battles of words and images by which they hope to utterly destroy their opponents and secure victory for their own worldview.

Sound familiar? It should. It's an old, old story. A person or group claims knowledge of some Great Truth (tm) that by definition excludes or subsumes all other truths while some other person or group denies said Great Truth in favor of another, Greater Truth (tm) that, again by defintion, excludes or subsumes the Great Truth and all other truths. And the war is on. Judaism, Christiantiy, Islam, Buddhism...the names vary, but the story is all too familiar. In the case of the ongoing YouTube war, the stakes are far higher and the disagreement far older and more contentious. I speak, of course, of the relative superiority of cake or pie...

FrisbeesANDflipflops* fired the opening salvo in this video, wherein she expounded the superior qualities of cake and denigrated pie. Ostensibly her video was a response to a declaration of Pie faith she noticed on eddiegoombah's profile. Of course, Eddie didn't take lying down this attack on his beliefs and responded with an attack of his own. And from there the war has escalated.

Now I personally have no skin in this game. I have perhaps a slight preference for cake, but pie can be equally satisfying. But I would like to point out to both sides that while they each believe themselves to have valid points to make in the Great Debate, both are equally misguided. For you see the valuable qualities that both claim for the respective objects of their worship are but dim reflections of the ultimate confectionery glory that is Chocolate!

As a confectionery syncretist, I hold that all good comestible qualities are subsumed and brought to full perfection in the transcendent reality that is Chocolate. The Cakeist or Crustian may believe he or she have found the Ultimate Truth, but in reality they are peering through a glass darkly.

All glory be unto Thee O great and wondrous Cacao!

* Interested readers should check out her other YouTube videos. She's an intelligent and articulate young woman.

Funny O' The Day

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted...just too busy in Real Life (tm). I'll try to get back to more regular posting, but in the meantime, please enjoy the following YouTube videos.

The first is Eddie Izzard's classic routine on the cafeteria in the Death Star (yes, from Star Wars).



The second is the same routine, only this time animated with Legos! How can you not love Lego animation?

Happy (Belated) Birthday Tom!

Like Chris, I meant to post on this yesterday, but time just got away from me.

Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The American Crisis pamphlets, was born January 29, 1737. His writings were instrumental in rousing the inhabitants of the British colonies in North America to take up the cause of liberty, declare themselves independent, and engage in the greatest experiment in democracy and freedom the world has yet seen. His reputation as a Founding Father has been unduly stained by controversy connected with his monumental indictment of Christianity (The Age of Reason) and today not a single monument to his memory exists in Washington, DC a city whose government he had as much a place in creating as Benjamin Franklin or John Adams.

In a similar post, Ed Brayton quotes from The American Crisis I:

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

This is eloquence; this is rhetoric at its very best. How stark the contrast between these moving words, poetic in their composition, and the speeches and writings of today's political figures!

Paine stands as one of the paramount figures of not only the American revolution, but also of the Enlightenment in general. It's a genuine shame that he's not better known than he is.

Additional information can be found at the Thomas Paine National Historical Association website.

There are no words...

Possibly NSFW, so caveat clicktor.


I...um...errm...

nothin'...I got nothin'...

Amusing Diversion...

Who would win in a battle between God and Muhammad? Between Buddha and Jesus? Well, now you can find out! Try out Faith Fighter and you get to choose your deity and duke it out with other contenders for the title of Supreme Being!

HT: Pharyngula

The Ineluctable End of Collectivism

In his provocative and closely-argued book, The Road to Serfdom, Austrian economist Friederich Hayek lays out and defends his thesis that the logical and unavoidable end of collectivist economic systems is totalitarianism. This is so, in a nutshell, because such systems require centralized economic planning which, if it is to be effective, will require the acquisition by the State of more and more power over the lives of individuals until eventually liberty is extinguished.

While it is certainly true that there has yet to exist a State whose economic and political infrastructure aligns perfectly with Communist ideology, we can certainly see enough of the results of existing collectivist states to, at the very least, lead us to wonder if perhaps Hayek was on to something after all?

Welcome to North Korea is a documentary which won an International Emmy award in 2001 and which shows a, for the most part, unexpurgated view of what life in the North is like under the rule of Kim Jong Il, the current "leader for life". The video is rather long (about 50 minutes), but well worth watching for a reminder of how precious is liberty and why our Constitution and Bill of Rights must be defended from enemies both without and within...



Side Note: the embedded video is hosted at YouTube, but you can find a downloadable copy at Archive.org, which is a veritable treasure-trove of public domain music, videos (including full-length movies!), and other assorted materials.

HT: Positive Liberty

Parody of a Loon

If you haven't seen Tom Cruise's Scientology spiel by now...under what rock have you been hiding? But just in case you've only recently crawled out, here's a link to the rather disturbing, albeit humorous (in a schadenfreude-istic sort of way), train-wreck of a video. It's engendered much discussion on the inter-tubes over the last week or so, but the take on it I much preferred was this one by actor Jerry Connell:



I think I was probably one of about five people who thought Joe's Apartment was actually kind of funny, but I've got a new respect for O'Connell now...

Astonishing!

We live in amazing universe filled with astonishing and wonderful things. The last minute or so of this video is incredible evidence of the creative power of evolution.

How NOT to defend the Moral Argument

A comment at Debunking Christianity calls our attention to an article by William Hawthorne wherein he makes the following statement:

My view is that objective moral properties exist and that they would be unexpected, and indeed inexplicable, in a world in which atheism (or more precisely, naturalism) is true.

It's likely that's the view of many theists. I have certainly seen similar sentiments expressed by theists on blogs and in debates. But is it true? And even more to the point, isn't such an argument self-defeating?

In order to get around Euthyphro (and indeed to have any chance of alleged moral facts being "objective"), theists will seek to ground moral facts in God's nature. That is to say, to ground it in characteristics or essence that is NOT subject to God's whim or will.

Fair enough (and it seems to me that this is the only possible successful answer to Euthyphro's dilemma). However, in what way is this functionally different than a non-theist's claim that moral facts are grounded in the nature of existence? I.e., in brute fact (that's just the way things are)? The question "why is God as He is?" is functionally the same as "Why is existence as it is?" Moral facts grounded in the nature of existence would therefore seem to be ontologically equivalent to those grounded in the nature of God.

What therefore could serve as any relevant difference between "God" and "existence" that could satisfy Hawthorne's condition such that the existence of moral facts would be "unexpected" and "inexplicable" if God were NOT to exist? The only difference appears to be will or intent, yet that is specifically what we must rule out if we want moral facts to be objective. So doesn't it seem self-defeating to argue that "objective" moral facts only make sense if they're the product of will or intent, thus rendering them non-objective?

(Also posted as a comment at DC)

No Fair!!

According to Arno Widmann, Julia Fischer (a professor of violin at Frankfurt's Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Tanz) performed at a New Year's concert in Frankfurt in which she played Saint-Saëns Third Violin Concerto on the first half and the Grieg A-minor Piano Concerto on the second half! These are both rather difficult pieces of music, even for the professional and by all accounts, Prof. Fischer acquitted herself admirably. In fact, again according to Widmann, both performances were dazzling.

I can actually fumble my way through a Mozart or Haydn concerto and I've even played through the Beethoven First (appallingly, I assure you), but the Grieg is too much for my stupid fingers (although I could play parts of it with my younger, less arthritic hands) and yet here is a woman who, having mastered one instrument to the point of teaching others how to play it, takes on another and triumphs yet again. Oh to have even a portion of her "excess" talent!

HT: MPR's Classical Notes

Funny O' The Day

It's an interesting attempt...

...but I still think Huckabee's campaign is doomed.

P.S. I love Sinfest!

The Great Question

Great thinkers through the ages have pondered the many mysteries of life. Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? Does God exist? What is the capital of Assyria? But none of these questions have come close to the ultimate question of our time: What if the Beatles were Irish?

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007

I'm not sure how I missed this, but the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, often called "the father of electronic music" died suddenly at his home in Kurten on 5 December.

While I'm not a big fan of electronic music, it is impossible to deny or overestimate the impact of Stockhausen's work on the music of the 20th century. He began composing in the 1950s, studying under such luminaries as Frank Martin, Darius Milhaud, and Olivier Messiaen. With such teachers, it seems to me almost predestined that he would produce something completely novel. His composition Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) has been called the first electronic masterpiece and over the next forty years Stockhausen's output continued to be innovative and influential. At the time of his death, he was looking forward to a complete production later this year of Licht, a monumental cycle of seven operas dealing with "traits associated in various historical traditions with each weekday" (according to Wikipedia).

Stockhausen was the creator of an organization founded to advance his creative ideals which will carry on the work he began almost 60 years ago. Alex Ross discusses the composer and his impact here. One of Stockhausen's students attended the memorial service in Kurten and provides some thoughts here.

If you haven't yet finished your xmas shopping...

Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.

-Oren Arnold

HT: Unscrewing the Inscrutable

Who is the superest super hero?

Two cartoonists have created an ongoing competition to draw a continuing succession of "superheroes" each of which has powers which can defeat the powers of the preceding hero. So far my personal favorite is "The Creationist" (above), but check out the entire list here.

HT: Pharyngula

But of course I always knew...

HT: Atheist Jew

In which I join the "far left"...

I've not seen this story on any of the major networks, but apparently Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D. Ohio) introduced a resolution in the House on Tuesday to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney:

Resolved, That Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

See the link for the full text of the resolution which spells out in excruciating detail the actions of the VP that Kucinich believes warrant impeachment.

According to WaPo the resolution ended up being sent to the Judiciary Committee for discussion (from which it will no doubt never be heard of again) after some political wrangling by both Democrats and Republicans. Apparently, Democratic leadership decided some time ago that talk of impeachment was an, "...irresponsible move supported only by the far left" and so they decided to do whatever was necessary to avoid being "embarrassed" by a floor debate.

Again I have to ask: WTF? Aren't these the same Democrats who voters elevated to the majority party largely if not solely due to the deceit, fraud, and utter failure that is the current administration? Based on the polls I've seen, somewhere close to 50% of Americans believe impeachment may indeed be warranted for both Bush and Cheney. A 2006 Zogby poll found 52% in favor of impeachment proceedings based on the illegal wiretapping debacle. A more recent USA Today/Gallup poll found 36% believe there to be enough evidence to hold impeachment hearings. (that last page linked has several polls with impeachment questions; the average in favor seems to be around 30-35%). Does the Democractic leadership truly believe that the "far left" is comprised of between 30-50% of the American population? If Democrats make up about 50% of the voting population, then that would indicate that over half of their membership is "far left". Does that make any sense?

The answer: NO, of course not. Most of the polls I've seen give breakdowns by political affiliation and there are always Republicans in the "impeach" category right along with Democrats. This is not a "far left" issue, it's almost mainstream. What is the Democratic leadership so afraid of?

The "left" is traditionally associated with socialism or communitarian politics. I'm a libertarian (lower-case "l"), so that's about as far from "left" as it's possible to get without being an anarchist. I say it's high time we started talking about impeaching these goons, to say nothing of the possibility of criminal prosecution. By their actions they have repeatedly shown their contempt for both America, Americans, liberty, and the rule of law. I see no reason to allow them to leave office quietly and honorably when their terms expire. If that belief by itself makes me a member of the "far left", so be it.