|| General || § ¶The Economist Endorses Kerry
The incompetent or the incoherent?
"With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd....
It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush."
Read the entire article.
|| General || § ¶Local Winemakers Made Famous!
Winemakers in our neighborhood got written up in the NY Times. We've got many gallons of red sitting in one neighbor's basement, fermenting. And the whole 'hood is collecting wine bottles in the meantime. Click on the picture to see the article in today's Escapes section of the Times. (You may have to register at the site, which is ok.. its free.)
|| General || § ¶Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal today on Laura Flanders' Your Call program on KALW predicted that the election will not be decided by Nov 3, and instead will go into the courts for an extended period of litigation, during which the Bush Administration will declare martial law and suspend the Constitution. Its happened in other countries before. And ours is still a young country. Interesting things can happen in interesting times. Gore Vidal is always amazing. Catch the show if you can. Here's the audio link.|| General || § ¶Whose Reality Is It, Really?
1. Iraq, WMD, and al QaedaA large majority of Bush supporters believe that before the war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for building them. A substantial majority of Bush supporters assume that most experts believe Iraq had WMD and that this was the conclusion of the recently released report by Charles Duelfer. A large majority of Bush supporters believes that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda and that clear evidence of this support has been found. A large majority believes that most experts also have this view, and a substantial majority believe that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Large majorities of Kerry supporters believe the opposite on all these points.
2. What the Bush Administration is Saying About Pre-War Iraq
Large majorities of Bush and Kerry supporters agree that the Bush administration is saying that Iraq had WMD and was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. In regard to WMD, these majorities are growing.
3. The Decision to Go to War
Majorities of Bush supporters and Kerry supporters agree that if Iraq did not have WMD or was not providing support to al Qaeda, the US should not have gone to war with Iraq.
4. World Public Opinion on the Iraq War and George Bush’s Reelection
Only three in ten Bush supporters believe that the majority of people in the world oppose the US going to war with Iraq, while an overwhelming majority of Kerry supporters have this view. A majority of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people in the world would like to see Bush reelected, while a large majority of Kerry supporters believe the opposite. Bush supporters also lean toward overestimating support in Islamic countries for US-led efforts to fight terrorism, while Kerry supporters do not .
5. Candidates’ Foreign Policy Positions
Majorities of Bush supporters misperceive his positions on a range of foreign policy issues. In particular they assume he supports multilateral approaches and addressing global warming when he has taken strong contrary positions on issues such as the International Criminal court and the Kyoto Agreement. A majority of Kerry supporters have accurate perceptions of Kerry positions on the same issues.
I'm not making this up. Its all in this report from PROGRAM ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY ATTITUDES (PIPA) A joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland
|| General || § ¶Sea Ranch!
Spent the weekend at a rented house up at Sea Ranch, on the Sonoma coast, about 200km North of San Francisco. We try to get up there whenever we can. This time with friends. Weather was perfect. Time to recharge.
|| General || § ¶Deep Depression!
There is no joy in Mudville tonight.How could it have happened. Maybe they were just too sure of themselves. Maybe the Sox pitching was just too good. Maybe the Sox wanted to win that much more.
But now I've got my evenings back. And my blood pressure can return to normal.
Ugh. Well, I guess there's next year.
|| General || § ¶The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush
Most of the problems President Bush has caused for this country stemmed not from his belief in God but his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interest of the wealthy, and of large corporations over and above the interests of the American people. It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency. ... Al Gore, Oct 18, Georgetown UniversityThis speech is really something to read!
>>Transcript.
>>>Video: copy/paste this URL into your Real Audio player:
rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/project/c04/c04101804_gore.rm"My friends, there are now 15 days left before our country makes this fateful choice for us and the whole world, and it is particularly crucial for one final reason: the last feature of Bush's ideology involves ducking accountability for his mistakes. He has neutralized accountability by the Congress by intimidating the Republican leadership and transforming the Republican majority into a true rubber stamp, unlike any that has ever existed in American history. He has appointed right-wing judges who have helped to insulate him from accountability in the courts. And if he wins again, he will likely get to appoint up to four Supreme Court justices. He has ducked accountability from the press with his obsessive secrecy and refusal to conduct the public's business openly. So there is now only one center of power left in our Constitution and in our country capable of at long last holding George W. Bush accountable, and it is you, the voters. There are 15 days left. Help me and help John Kerry and John Edwards take our country back."
|| default || § ¶The Agony, Agony, Agony
I haven't been able to do anything in the evenings for days now except chew my fingers! Every night I've been watching The Game. Cliff hangers to the very end. Even tonight. Last night went 14 innings. Sunday went 12. Now it all comes down to the seventh game tomorrow. Who says baseball is boring? But can I survive it!?
|| General || § ¶Compromise, Hell! - Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry has a new essay in the latest issue of Orion Magazine."WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY -- I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so."
More...
|| General || § ¶Other Minds 11 in February
Other Minds 11 festival of new music will take place February 24-26, 2005 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.
Featuring composers Michael Nyman, Phill Niblock, Daniel Bernard Roumain, William Barton, Maria de Alvear, Fred Frith, John Luther Adams, Evan Ziporyn, Billy Bang, SO PERCUSSION and others. Plus a centennial tribute to Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964).
Other Minds 10, last March, sold out. Tickets are now available.
I think its going to be the best festival to date, altho I'm a bit biased, being one of the directors of OM. We have been working towards becoming one of the leading new music festivals on the west coast. I'll have more to say about OM 11 later.
In the meantime, here is the preliminary concert schedule.
|| default || § ¶Solar Minimum Coming! It's About Time, Too!
Something strange happened on the sun last week: all the sunspots vanished. This is a sign, say scientists, that a solar minimum is coming sooner than expected.Left: The blank sun on Oct. 11, 2004, photographed by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
"Solar physicist David Hathaway has been checking the sun every day since 1998, and every day for six years there have been sunspots. Sunspots are planet-sized "islands" on the surface of the sun. They are dark, cool, powerfully magnetized, and fleeting: a typical sunspot lasts only a few days or weeks before it breaks up. As soon as one disappears, however, another emerges to take its place." Read more on the NASA website.
Amateur radio operators (like me) have been waiting to get through this minimum because sunspots cause the kind of ionospheric phenomena that make long distance ("DX") communication on the short wave bands possible. A couple of years ago I could talk to hams in Europe in the mornings and Japan and Russia in the afternoons. Best I can do right now is Texas. So why bother.
|| General || § ¶Who Serves?
Many of those politicians and pundits telling us how much it is our destiny to go to war and our moral duty to serve our country managed somehow to avoid the draft and serving at all. There is a list going around the internet naming who did and did not serve in the military. It makes an interesting list to read. Draw your own conclusions.There is another list I'd like to see: which members of Congress and the current administration who have close family relatives now serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. I've heard its a very very small number.
Who gets to choose?
|| General || § ¶Composing Music is Like Programming
My music for Threads is almost done. And now I'm thinking about some new pieces. Composing (and performing) with Reason has helped me make a great breakthrough. Things now seem possible that weren't before. This is very exciting.It has been maybe 30 years since I last wrote a piece of music and had it performed.
I was never comfortable with the standard workflow: pencil on music paper. Which only makes me even more appreciative and fascinated by the phenomenal accomplishments of other composers. Music composition is all about details. Like programming, in a strange sort of way. And the similarities are striking.
Both deal with sets of instructions. Music composition is parallel programming: instructions for independent processors working simultaneously. Issues relating to synchronization are common to both.
Both involve writing in some code. But musical notation is very ambiguous. And poses a major inhibitor to creativity, I think. Still, to see a score on the page sometimes takes my breath away.
For example, this full page from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, from 1911 (click on image for larger picture)
is just one bar long. Yet it takes a full page in the score to display all the detail. Six beats, it takes less than 5 seconds to play. And it sounds like this. It is very complicated at first glance. Further analysis breaks it down into just 5 separate lines with some instruments copying some of the notes of these main lines (threads?). How in the world did Igor figure this out? (Practice, practice, practice!) Close examination shows a fine level of detail everywhere. The composer must be conscious of the actual sound of each instrument alone and in combinations. Some brass instruments are told to play with mutes, others without. The violins play sul ponticello, very near the bridge, to give a scraping sound. The French horns play with "Le pavillon en l'air", pointing up to the ceiling. And the flutes double the violins playing a nervous figure of 12 notes to the beat. (Why 12? Why not 16, or 10?)Could Stravinsky have heard what this was going to sound like when he was writing it? I know that the original draft was for piano, but extrapolating to a full orchestra is mind boggling.
Unlike computer code, musical notation has serious limitations. Complex rhythms and counter rhythms result in very complex notation that is not easy to parse. And going from sounds in your head to marks on a page is a practice that has to be learned, worse than learning a foreign language.
Over the years I've attempted pen and paper composition many times. I have a drawer full of started but never completed attempts. One loses the focus after awhile. I am amazed to marvel at a Mahler symphony and to read the score, realizing that his focus had to be maintained not over days or weeks but over years. How impossible is that? Or that Beethoven was deaf when he composed most of his greatest works, including the last string quartets, which are a marvel of complexity and simplicity together.
The programming analogy is an interesting one. Like programming, conception begins by fooling around with data structures, and ways to express them. In a sense, this is true with composition. And the composer has to think in a multiprocessing environment. Everything is happening at once. Its the score (and the conductor) that keeps it from becoming chaos. (And unlike programming, sometimes chaos in music is a good and intentional thing.)
Working with software like Reason, unlike some of the scoring programs like Sibelius or Finale, encourages fooling around as a foreplay to composition. Sibelius and Finale are not composing aids, but are more concerned with presentation of the final score for publishing. They do have some WYSIWYG-type features, but you really need to start with something written. Reason, on the other hand, encourages experimentation. And not everything needs to be score- or event-driven. You can rig up a synthesizer that generates varying sound events on its own. You control the meta parameters, like filter, envelopes, and modulation ranges. And it is amazing what you can do with signal delays, echoes, and peculiar reverberations that defy physics.
Composers have designed their own peculiar notational systems to get around the difficulty expressing orgainized sound with a given limited instruction set. This is even more apparent in the 20th century. Performers have to spend many hours studying and learning the meaning of these unique notational systems. And I often wonder if the effort is worth it.
What I love about working with Reason is that the process of composition becomes plastic. You work directly with the sound material. This is what attracted me to tape music back in the early '60's. You made a piece of music much the same way a sculptor works with clay. Your medium was plastic tape, which you could cut and splice and rearrange. And with electronic signal processors that could transform and rerecord sound back onto the tape medium for further cutting and splicing. Some of the masterpieces of the Musique Concrete are still marvels of the technique, like Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. And they survive on their own as significant works of pure music even when you ignore how they were produced.
I'm deep into working with Reason now, and with Melody Assistant, a software package that allows me to use standard notation to generate digital events that can be input into Reason. I'm very excited about where this is taking me. Stay tuned.
|| General || § ¶Yankee Fan
I really don't know why people seem to hate the Yankees so much. But I must admit to being a life-long Yankee fan. Here's why:
(1955, when I was 11)See, I was born in shouting distance from Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. How can I be otherwise a Yankee fan.
Besides, when the Yankees play baseball, its never boring.
Say what you will, but I am a Yankee! And I hope they win the Series!
|| default || § ¶Fire Season
Most people in the Bay Area dread October, season of fires and earthquakes.Now there are fires in Yolo and Napa counties. Yesterday the winds changed bringing smoke and foul air to the San Francisco area. Here was the view from the Lawrence Hall of Science web cam:
Note the temperature and humidity. Very scary.
The winds have changed today, but the haze lingers. In October the winds shift from on-shore to off-shore, bringing pollen, smoke, and heat from the Valley. Typically we get no rain between May and October. But the sun hangs much lower these days making a very different light. The fire danger is extreme. Everything is dry. The wind from the east is hot, and it pushes the fog out to sea. A mixed blessing.
|| General || § ¶In a Parallel Universe
How different things would be if we had ...
|| General || § ¶Threads: Progress
My music for Threads (see this, and this other item below) is almost done. 9 sections: 2 are original music of my own, 4 are from other recordings, and 3 are my own electronic "orchestrations" or "treatments" of other people's music (Bach, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev piano pieces). It all comes out to about 55 minutes.
Today I had the opportunity to attend a rehearsal at the ODC theater in San Francisco, where the piece will be performed Nov 12/13. It was fantastic to hear these sounds in the hall with their sound system. I will need to make some adjustments. But now I know what the music will sound like.
It needs to be loud, but not so loud that it distorts. The dynamics of the sound I'm generating is quite wide. Extreme bass and treble.. a very wide spectrum. I hope their speakers are up to it.
The week before the performance we'll have time every evening for rehearsals and technical checks. I've yet to see the lighting and set designs. But its all very exciting so far.
Stay tuned.
|| default || § ¶The Republican Message
In case you haven't had time to get the Republican election message, it is now provided here in a nutshell, as a public service:
http://tinyurl.com/484by
|| General || § ¶Richard Friedman - The Early Years
Some people know that for many years I did radio programs on KPFA in Berkeley. I started in 1969, and did my last program in 1995. These were programs on new and avant-garde music.
Well, some of these programs are now available on the internet at RadiOM.org and the audio collection of the Internet Archive at archive.org.
It sure is strange hearing yourself 34 years later!
In 1970 I introduced a performance by Steve Reich and his group at the UC Berkeley Art Museum at the occasion of its grand opening. That program is here A photo of the label on that tape is the picture you're looking at. (You might have to register to log into the RadiOM.org website; its painless and free, and it gives access to the rest of the RadiOM website. Or you can go to the Internet Audio Archive site. The link is given below.)
In 1971 I joined Charles Amirkhanian in the KPFA studio to interview John Cage, one of many opportunities I had to meet and talk to John on the air. That program is here
Other Minds' RadiOM project now has possession of the KPFA music archives of tapes. About 4000 hours of interviews, live performances, and special events from 1940's to the mid 90's. Many of the tapes are in bad shape and have to be specially handled. And there are some mystery tapes where the label doesn't seem to match what's in the box, and what's on the tape is anybody's guess! Slowly and carefully, OM is going thru these tapes, baking them in special ovens when necessary to keep the metallic and plastic layers together, and digitizing them. Eventually most of these programs will appear on the Radiom.org website. The programs are also found on the Internet Archive.
For example, an interview from 1970 that Harvey Matusow did, probably in New York at WBAI, with the avant-garde cellist Charlotte Moorman is a riot. And it gives you a good idea of what the scene was like in NYC in the 60's. You can hear it here.
Stay tuned, there's more to come!
|| General || § ¶California Stem Cell Research Initiative
Apropos the previous entry, the issue of stem cell research comes to a vote in California this November with the Stem Cell Research Initiative, Proposition 71 on the ballot.Stem Cell research is a major breakthrough in medical knowledge. It may make current therapies for cancer, blindness, heart disease, etc look barbaric in the future. This research must be supported and furthered. All Californians should look closely at this proposition.
|| default || § ¶Stem Cell Research and Not Going Blind
According to this week's New Scientist (the article will be on their website archive next week), researchers at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Mass. have managed to produce retinal pigment epithelial cells from human embryonic stem cells. Why this is a really important breakthrough is that when transplanted into eyes, the cells could be used to treat the commonest cause of blindness in the elderly, macular degeneration (MD).
Nearly all the women in my mother's family and one of my mother's brothers have gone blind by their 80's due to macular degeneration. With my mother it started in her late 80's and her eyesight degenerated slowly, leaving her blind (but able to see light and color) when she died at age 96. (She'd be 100 this month, by the way.) Two of her (younger) sisters also became blind in the same way, and now my 85 year-old uncle is in a similar situation. All due to age-related macular degeneration.
With this in mind, I go to the eye doctor once a year. But MD is very widespread. It's said that as people live longer the material in their eyes starts to exceed their natural usability. That is why this news in the New Scientist is so exciting.
However, the current god-fearing administration in the US sees stem cell research as sinful, and has banned the cell lines that ACT needs to use. These cell lines are banned for use in federally funded research in the US. "We would not have made this discovery if we had stuck to the lines approved by the Bush administration" says ACTs head of medical and scientific development.
ACT's website includes links to government officials and the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, and asks everyone to write demanding openly funded research in these areas.
|| default || § ¶Bloggage at Work
A new phenom is haunting Corporate America. Blogging. That is, blogging by employees. More and more companies are allowing their employees to publish their own public diaries, web logs, whatever. It gives the public an opportunity to eavesdrop on a form of life within. Some of the entries have nothing whatsoever to do with work. People discuss their children, cars, garden, recipes, the usual "around-the-water-cooler" stuff. And those without a life discuss work. Work in excruciating detail.
You'd think that the internal corporate lawyers would shudder in fear about this public airing of thoughts from the factory floor. They do. Still, execs are encouraging this public laundry line (as long as no trade secrets are revealed) as a new form of marketing.
At Sun Microsystems, where I work, blogging is encouraged. At blogs.sun.com you can access all of these diaries. And a new bit of blogging technology, the aggregation of all these blogs, can be found at planetsun.org. This blog of mine, which lives outside the Sun network, is linked into the Sun blogosphere. So this entry, on blogging within Sun, will be self-referential in a strange way. That sort of blogs the mind!
Microsoft too has its own employee blog at blogs.msdn.com
It's extreme geekiness all around, if you're into that sort of thing.