Sat - April 5, 2008
new blog domain
OK, it's up: http://dtoub.wordpress.com. Please feel free to
change the feed subscription for my blog to http://dtoub.wordpress.com/feed.
We'll see how it goes...
Posted at 02:07 PM
moving to wordpress
Version 2.0 of iBlog has been in development
for an eternity. It's been promised for probably close to three years now. The
iBlog
Forum has been pretty stagnant, and while there have been reassurances
for at least two years now that version 2.0 is getting there, the reality is
that it isn't there, and likely won't ever be. At the very least, I'm not
holding my breath, not when someone close to the developer is urging folks to move on to WordPress, even
though iBlog 2.0 is “95+% finished.“ The sad reality is that while
it's close, almost doesn't count in software development. I wouldn't hold my
breath that iBlog 2.0 will ever see the light of day. The third release
candidate, while a clear improvement on iBlog 1.x (which is what I'm using for
this blog post), apparently is not compatible with Leopard. And even if iBlog
2.0 were to come out, that would essentially be the end of it; who knows if it
would be compatible with OS 10.6 on
up.
Now to be fair, I've gotten a few years out of iBlog 1.x, and it's managed just fine through several OS upgrades. However, iBlog is limited. While I like the idea of having a blogging app I can use regardless of whether or not I'm connected to the Web, iBlog's limitations and issues have driven me nuts for some time. Working with its XML under the hood, while usually not necessary, is something of a mystic art. I've spent countless hours futzing with XML code just to get things to the point where they are in the sidebar, and even then, it's not like I can remove the useless Technorati search widget in the lower right corner; I don't remember how I got it there in the first place, and that's part of the problem.
On the other hand, iBlog accepts javascript, so that I've been able to place scripts from OneStat and StatCounter to track who comes to this site, etc. That's always interesting. And everything syncs just fine with my iDisk. Also, the table boundaries stretch as needed, so if I place a large graphic in the sidebar, the graphic is still viewable in its entirety.
Still, iBlog is at the end of its life, and without any realistic hope of further development, it's time to thing of switching to something else. And on balance, WordPress.com (rather than the more powerful, but potentially more complex wordpress.org-based blogging system) seems to be the best of all possible worlds. I toyed with the idea of migrating my nearly 600 posts to WP, but that is a really daunting task, requiring a major investment of time to clean up issues with each post. So, rather than try to get my old posts into WP, I'm just going to leave this site up and start a new one with WP. That's the same tack that the online new music community Sequenza 21 took when it outgrew its previous system.
So the new site is essentially there, after a bit of work. WordPress has some quirks---not all my code changes stuck, so I had to keep playing with it, reloading the page to see if the changes took, etc. For the most part, I just gave up and resorted to developing my code edits using DreamWeaver, and that seemed to do the job, even with DW's inefficient HTML. I also finally realized that WordPress won't accept javascript, so there's no way to use OneStat or StatCounter to track who comes here. WordPress has built-in Web stats, but they are really meager by comparison. And I had to slim down some graphics to fit in the side column, since the template I'm using can't resize itself or be resized by me (unless I pay to have write access to the underlying CSS). On the other hand, the layout is much nicer than iBlog's templates. And I'm used to using WP from blogging for Sequenza 21, so it's not that strange.
So look here in the coming days for the link to the new blog. I have to adjust some links on my other Web pages to point to the new blog, and then I'll go live with it. The old blog (ie, the one you're reading) will be readily accessible from the new blog, so nothing will be lost. Personally, I'd be fine with making a fresh start and ditching all my previous posts from the Web (although I'm sure they'd be accessible via archive.org). But I still can't believe how much traffic I get every day from an old post about some logic board issues I had had with my iBook; guess there are still folks out there having the same trouble with their iBooks.
Here's a sneak preview:
Now to be fair, I've gotten a few years out of iBlog 1.x, and it's managed just fine through several OS upgrades. However, iBlog is limited. While I like the idea of having a blogging app I can use regardless of whether or not I'm connected to the Web, iBlog's limitations and issues have driven me nuts for some time. Working with its XML under the hood, while usually not necessary, is something of a mystic art. I've spent countless hours futzing with XML code just to get things to the point where they are in the sidebar, and even then, it's not like I can remove the useless Technorati search widget in the lower right corner; I don't remember how I got it there in the first place, and that's part of the problem.
On the other hand, iBlog accepts javascript, so that I've been able to place scripts from OneStat and StatCounter to track who comes to this site, etc. That's always interesting. And everything syncs just fine with my iDisk. Also, the table boundaries stretch as needed, so if I place a large graphic in the sidebar, the graphic is still viewable in its entirety.
Still, iBlog is at the end of its life, and without any realistic hope of further development, it's time to thing of switching to something else. And on balance, WordPress.com (rather than the more powerful, but potentially more complex wordpress.org-based blogging system) seems to be the best of all possible worlds. I toyed with the idea of migrating my nearly 600 posts to WP, but that is a really daunting task, requiring a major investment of time to clean up issues with each post. So, rather than try to get my old posts into WP, I'm just going to leave this site up and start a new one with WP. That's the same tack that the online new music community Sequenza 21 took when it outgrew its previous system.
So the new site is essentially there, after a bit of work. WordPress has some quirks---not all my code changes stuck, so I had to keep playing with it, reloading the page to see if the changes took, etc. For the most part, I just gave up and resorted to developing my code edits using DreamWeaver, and that seemed to do the job, even with DW's inefficient HTML. I also finally realized that WordPress won't accept javascript, so there's no way to use OneStat or StatCounter to track who comes here. WordPress has built-in Web stats, but they are really meager by comparison. And I had to slim down some graphics to fit in the side column, since the template I'm using can't resize itself or be resized by me (unless I pay to have write access to the underlying CSS). On the other hand, the layout is much nicer than iBlog's templates. And I'm used to using WP from blogging for Sequenza 21, so it's not that strange.
So look here in the coming days for the link to the new blog. I have to adjust some links on my other Web pages to point to the new blog, and then I'll go live with it. The old blog (ie, the one you're reading) will be readily accessible from the new blog, so nothing will be lost. Personally, I'd be fine with making a fresh start and ditching all my previous posts from the Web (although I'm sure they'd be accessible via archive.org). But I still can't believe how much traffic I get every day from an old post about some logic board issues I had had with my iBook; guess there are still folks out there having the same trouble with their iBooks.
Here's a sneak preview:
Posted at 12:59 AM
Fri - March 28, 2008
100%
To be fair, Opera got to 100% at the same time as the current WebKit build of Safari 3.1. So if Safari is now so much better, why won't the current IMAX theater schedule at the Franklin Institute load in my browser? Guess it's that issue with Java applets or something...
Posted at 11:11 AM
Sun - March 23, 2008
a quick perspective on Reverend Wright
Just to provide some grounding to the
incessant noise about Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright in
Chicago:
1. When listening to Wright's assertions that the HIV virus and widespread drug availability in lower income neighborhoods represents a government plot against Blacks, people should keep in mind that approximately 50% of Black Americans in one study believe that HIV is man-made and at least a quarter of them believe that drugs are made available in poor Black neighborhoods to oppress the population. Rather than express shock at what the Reverend said, why not ask why so many Black Americans believe the same thing? Clearly, the legacy of the Tuskegee Experiment is not lost on many Blacks, while so many Whites seem to have forgotten what our government scientists did.
2. If Wright's beliefs are so outrageous and indefensible, how about the statements by the evangelical leader Rev. John Hagee to the effect that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for a New Orleans gay pride parade, and that America is damned because we tolerate Muslims? I should not that the good reverend was not only embraced by John McCain but actively courted, Same with the Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, who said that ”...America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed.“ I don't see anyone calling on McCain to reject and denounce these two influential religious figures who have endorsed him. And then there were, of course, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who said that America is damned because of our embracing the ACLU, feminists, gays and abortion. How many politicians embraced these two demagogues?
Were Rev. Wright's words provocative? Absolutely. Was his declamation and oratory fiery? Of course. Did he say some things many folks disagree with? Certainly. But he also said many things that either were indeed correct or else widely held within the Black community. Our lack of understanding of our minorities is abominable, and associating Obama with whatever prejudices and fears we project onto Rev. Wright is similarly unfortunate. I am now hoping to educate the Jewish community that Obama is the best hope we have for a rational, compassionate and progressive presidency. Sure, some in the Jewish community are skeptical of Obama. Some of this has to do with the Rev. Wright debacle. But truth be told, it goes much deeper than that. An e-mail campaign that stoked unfounded fears and concerns about Obama's stance on the Middle East took place several months ago in the Jewish community, and was immediately renounced by many Jewish leaders in a counter-campaign of e-mail. This obviously predated the Rev. Wright videos, and builds on many undercurrents that emerged from the breaking down of the traditional Black-Jewish alliance. This was the alliance that Obama poignantly recalled in a recent debate with Hillary Clinton when Tim Russert tried to make an issue out of Minister Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. An endorsement that, unlike McCain';s endorsement by John Hagee and Rod Parsley, was neither solicited nor celebrated.
So there's lots of work to do in terms of rebuilding racial alliances and getting past the nonsense that divides us. We are a diverse country. It's time we truly celebrate this diversity rather than allow the right wing pundits to focus in on it in order to split us apart.
1. When listening to Wright's assertions that the HIV virus and widespread drug availability in lower income neighborhoods represents a government plot against Blacks, people should keep in mind that approximately 50% of Black Americans in one study believe that HIV is man-made and at least a quarter of them believe that drugs are made available in poor Black neighborhoods to oppress the population. Rather than express shock at what the Reverend said, why not ask why so many Black Americans believe the same thing? Clearly, the legacy of the Tuskegee Experiment is not lost on many Blacks, while so many Whites seem to have forgotten what our government scientists did.
2. If Wright's beliefs are so outrageous and indefensible, how about the statements by the evangelical leader Rev. John Hagee to the effect that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for a New Orleans gay pride parade, and that America is damned because we tolerate Muslims? I should not that the good reverend was not only embraced by John McCain but actively courted, Same with the Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, who said that ”...America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed.“ I don't see anyone calling on McCain to reject and denounce these two influential religious figures who have endorsed him. And then there were, of course, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who said that America is damned because of our embracing the ACLU, feminists, gays and abortion. How many politicians embraced these two demagogues?
Were Rev. Wright's words provocative? Absolutely. Was his declamation and oratory fiery? Of course. Did he say some things many folks disagree with? Certainly. But he also said many things that either were indeed correct or else widely held within the Black community. Our lack of understanding of our minorities is abominable, and associating Obama with whatever prejudices and fears we project onto Rev. Wright is similarly unfortunate. I am now hoping to educate the Jewish community that Obama is the best hope we have for a rational, compassionate and progressive presidency. Sure, some in the Jewish community are skeptical of Obama. Some of this has to do with the Rev. Wright debacle. But truth be told, it goes much deeper than that. An e-mail campaign that stoked unfounded fears and concerns about Obama's stance on the Middle East took place several months ago in the Jewish community, and was immediately renounced by many Jewish leaders in a counter-campaign of e-mail. This obviously predated the Rev. Wright videos, and builds on many undercurrents that emerged from the breaking down of the traditional Black-Jewish alliance. This was the alliance that Obama poignantly recalled in a recent debate with Hillary Clinton when Tim Russert tried to make an issue out of Minister Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. An endorsement that, unlike McCain';s endorsement by John Hagee and Rod Parsley, was neither solicited nor celebrated.
So there's lots of work to do in terms of rebuilding racial alliances and getting past the nonsense that divides us. We are a diverse country. It's time we truly celebrate this diversity rather than allow the right wing pundits to focus in on it in order to split us apart.
Posted at 03:01 PM
Wed - March 19, 2008
Wed - March 12, 2008
it's been three weeks...
...and still no response to my LinkedIn invite to connect with Hillary Clinton. But that's fine, since I no longer want to connect with her. I'm royally offended by many of the tactics her campaign has taken to in the past two weeks. Like her half-hearted denial about Obama's alleged Islamicism (as if being a Muslim should disqualify you from elected office in this country?). And her refusal so far to axe supporter Geraldine Ferraro, despite Ferraro's offensive statements that clearly pander to the background racism that exists. So it's imperative for Obama to fire someone who called HRC “a monster,” but what Geraldine Ferraro said is acceptable?
I won't even discuss her hinting of her desire to sway committed Obama delegates towards supporting her, contradicting the will of the folks who elected them to vote for Obama at the Democratic Convention. Or her calculated comments about Obama being her VP candidate, words that her confidant Howard Wolfson spun to suggest that Obama isn't really ready now to be President, but would be by the convention, so he would then be an acceptable VP choice.
Hillary, we're done. There was a time not too long ago when I, despite being an Obama supporter, would have supported you as the Democratic nominee should that have been the fair and proper outcome of the primaries. But you're not overtaking his lead; indeed, he is way ahead of you. And even if somehow you managed to finagle and cajole your way to being the nominee, there is now no way in hell I'd vote for you. I don't want someone who represents more of the same, who subscribes to the same deceptive nonsense that has been typical operating procedure in politics within this country. Now, that doesn't mean that I'd do as many Democrats are suggesting they will do, namely casting their votes for McCain in place of Clinton should she connive her way to the nomination. Instead, I will write in Obama's name for the general election. I can't give McCain my vote in good conscience---a few years ago, sure, but not anymore, now that he's nothing but an extension of the Bush '43 disaster.
Besides, I need Obama to win. I have a bet on with a good friend in Canada that Obama will be the nominee and beat McCain. If I lose, I have to send him a Philadelphia cheesesteak and clog his coronary arteries. if I win, I have to figure out what I want from Canada as my prize (as a vegetarian, smoked meat from Montreal isn't really an option). So a vote for Obama helps me win over a friend in Canada, making every Obama vote a vote for US national pride, right?
Posted at 09:47 AM
morton feldman widget
This is so very cool. There is a dashboard widget for OS X that provides daily quotes from the writings of Morton Feldman. Having just reread the compendium of his writings, Give My Regards to Eighth Street, for the 10th time or so, this is a great way for me to get my daily fix of MF's wisdom.
It can be downloaded for free here. Thanks to Charles Allen from the Vertical Thoughts listserv for this tip.
And as you can see from one of my dashboard widgets, the cheapest price of gas in the Wyncote, PA area isn't good. And it's only getting worse.
Posted at 09:23 AM
Sat - March 8, 2008
la monte young: trio for strings (1958)
I'm listening to one of the seminal works of the 20th century, La Monte Young's Trio for Strings from 1958. This was the work that made a lot of Young's classmates and his composition teacher Seymour Shifrin think he'd gone nuts. It's a long work for sustained tones, punctuated by long silences. There was nothing in Western classical music like it before Young wrote this work, and if it wasn't the starting point for minimalism, it's pretty damn close. I've heard that Young is considering releasing a version of the Trio using just intonation. That's his right, of course, but I think it sounds just fine in its original version. Actually, the recording I know is of a version Young made in 198 for Trio Basso, as group from Germany, and is scored for viola, cello and contrabass rather than the original violin, viola and cello.
What seemed messhugah in those days is actually pretty tame by today's standards. But at the time, it provoked a lot of controversy. I've seen a page or two of the score, which appeared in the booklet for the tapes of the first recording of The Well-Tuned Piano, and it's indeed a 12-tone work. Interestingly, a lot of minimalist composers started off writing 12-tone music, and while many ended up dissing it, Young actually has always held serialism in high regard as best I can tell. I find this interesting in light of my rereading of Feldman's compliation Give My Regards to Eighth Street, in which he writes some pointed criticism of those who have systems, those who (like Boulez and Babbitt) are more concerned with how a piece is constructed than how it sounds. My favorite observation of Feldman's is that unlike artists, composers are always fixated on analyzing how pieces are made; artists could care less about what paint brush Rothko or Guston used.
Posted at 12:20 PM
Thu - March 6, 2008
webkit 3.0.4 (523.12) and acid3
I've been downloading the nightly builds of WebKit, the work-in-progress version of Safari, for quite some time now. Today, the Web Standards Project released its Acid3 test for Web browsers. Safari has generally been ahead of the curve in achieving Acid test compatibility, which indicates compliance with Web standards, and I'm glad to see that based on the test I just ran today, the version of WebKit I'm running (the 523.12 build) is 90% compliant with Acid3. That's really remarkable, when you figure that Safari 2.0.2 was the first browser to pass the Acid2 test and that came an entire six months after Acid2 was announced. And to be perfectly fair, the latest nightly builds of FireFox are also running Acid3 scores in the 80-90 range.
So what's this background noise I'm hearing about the forthcoming IE8 being Acid2 compliant? Yawn...
Posted at 12:54 PM
Fri - February 29, 2008
fun with translation
I was just looking at some recent Web stats
for site visits to my music page, and I noticed that one of the pages viewed (by
someone in Germany) was listed as ”Musik von David toub.“ So I
figured I'd go there, and sure enough, it's a Google-translated version of the
page.
Google's translation did a decent enough job, although not being a German speaker, it's kinda hard for me to be perfectly sure. So here's some of the translation I'm seeing on that page, followed by the English name of the piece:
Dieses Stück wurde absichtlich leer gelassen (this piece intentionally left blank)
Philip für Glas (for philip glass)
MF (mf---note the difference in capitalization)
Fünf Noten für hans fong (five notes for christina fong) sorry, Christina!
Bäche des Bewusstseins (I needed Google's help to figure this one out: streams of consciousness)
Zwei Sätzen (two sets)---interesting that ”sets“ gets translated into what I know is the German word for ”movements“
Lehrbuch: Musik von einsamen Landschaften im Hyperspace (Stück für IPS-2h) (8') (textbook: music of descending landscapes in hyperspace [piece for IPS]--not bad, except that Google's translation parsed the timing of the piece incorrectly, so one might think that this piece only takes eight minutes, rather than its 2h, 8 minute duration
Vergessenheiten (oblivions)---personally, I think it sounds even better in German
Which brings up an interesting point---when we give musical works interesting titles, do they play well in other languages? The two composers I first think of for having written some really interesting names for their works are Feldman (Crippled Symmetry, Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, False Relationships and the Extended Ending, Half a Minute It's All I've Time For) and Babbitt (All Set, Sheer Pluck). I mean, I'd wonder what Google's translation algorithms would do to Babbitt's The Joy of More Sextets or Four Play?
Google's translation did a decent enough job, although not being a German speaker, it's kinda hard for me to be perfectly sure. So here's some of the translation I'm seeing on that page, followed by the English name of the piece:
Dieses Stück wurde absichtlich leer gelassen (this piece intentionally left blank)
Philip für Glas (for philip glass)
MF (mf---note the difference in capitalization)
Fünf Noten für hans fong (five notes for christina fong) sorry, Christina!
Bäche des Bewusstseins (I needed Google's help to figure this one out: streams of consciousness)
Zwei Sätzen (two sets)---interesting that ”sets“ gets translated into what I know is the German word for ”movements“
Lehrbuch: Musik von einsamen Landschaften im Hyperspace (Stück für IPS-2h) (8') (textbook: music of descending landscapes in hyperspace [piece for IPS]--not bad, except that Google's translation parsed the timing of the piece incorrectly, so one might think that this piece only takes eight minutes, rather than its 2h, 8 minute duration
Vergessenheiten (oblivions)---personally, I think it sounds even better in German
Which brings up an interesting point---when we give musical works interesting titles, do they play well in other languages? The two composers I first think of for having written some really interesting names for their works are Feldman (Crippled Symmetry, Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, False Relationships and the Extended Ending, Half a Minute It's All I've Time For) and Babbitt (All Set, Sheer Pluck). I mean, I'd wonder what Google's translation algorithms would do to Babbitt's The Joy of More Sextets or Four Play?
Posted at 11:20 AM
more on ”cosmetic gynecology“
As I've expressed before, I'm not a supporter
of including cosmetic surgery services within gynecologic practice. This issue
came up on the physician forum sermo.com and I figured I'd weigh
in:
My $0.02: WTF has our specialty come to? I won't heavily criticize our colleagues who are now including a range of cosmetic procedures outside of gynecology; they're just responding to crappy reimbursement rates, tough cash flow issues, declining operative volumes, etc. From a business perspective, it makes sense. From a medical perspective, it sucks.
What I've heard from friends is that it's considered easy and lucrative--after all, we're surgeons too, right? No one is going to harp more on the fact that we're surgeons than me. However, if we're going to suddenly pull this ”we're surgeons“ stuff, then why don't we instead take back breast surgery rather than get into a new area? Many of us used to do breast surgery---I was trained to do mastectomies, axillary node dissections, tylectomies, etc. Why don't we generally do them nowadays as gynecologists (aside from the difficulty with getting privileges for these procedures)? Because we acknowledge that general surgeons who do these every day will do them better. Conversely, I've seen general surgeons do hysterectomies, and sure, they're surgeons and they are technically competent to do them. But I wouldn't suggest that they can do them as well as we do, nor manage the complications.
It's not just the technique, but also the judgment. Doing a suction curettage at 10 weeks is not that difficult, but I don't think anyone should be doing them unless they do them in a reasonable volume and after appropriate training, because we gynecologists need to know how to prevent complications, how to manage them when they occur (and complications can always occur, of course, with any procedure) and have the sound judgment to know how, when, and why to do these procedures in the first place.
Cosmetic surgery can kill people. It can maim and disfigure people. Just as I think surgeons should respect the procedures we do as gynecologists, we should respect the things they do, and only do them when we really have the training and judgment to proceed. No weekend course on ”cosmetic gynecology“ (whatever the f that is) is going to provide skills and judgment comparable to someone who is boarded in cosmetic surgery and plastic/reconstructive surgery. As it is, the folks who are boarded in cosmetic surgery are rightfully pissed at those cosmetic surgeons who are doing this without board certification or a decent background in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Why are we adding to this nonsense?
As an example in terms of judgment, you're mentioning the possibility of doing ”gspot injections“ (sic). This is inappropriate and has no place in modern practice, cosmetic surgery, gynecology or otherwise.
To my point exactly. We have no business doing this crap. I sympathize with those who do, and understand their motivation in terms of a cash business. But we're surgeons and professionals, NOT car dealers trying to make a fast buck. Or are we?
My $0.02: WTF has our specialty come to? I won't heavily criticize our colleagues who are now including a range of cosmetic procedures outside of gynecology; they're just responding to crappy reimbursement rates, tough cash flow issues, declining operative volumes, etc. From a business perspective, it makes sense. From a medical perspective, it sucks.
What I've heard from friends is that it's considered easy and lucrative--after all, we're surgeons too, right? No one is going to harp more on the fact that we're surgeons than me. However, if we're going to suddenly pull this ”we're surgeons“ stuff, then why don't we instead take back breast surgery rather than get into a new area? Many of us used to do breast surgery---I was trained to do mastectomies, axillary node dissections, tylectomies, etc. Why don't we generally do them nowadays as gynecologists (aside from the difficulty with getting privileges for these procedures)? Because we acknowledge that general surgeons who do these every day will do them better. Conversely, I've seen general surgeons do hysterectomies, and sure, they're surgeons and they are technically competent to do them. But I wouldn't suggest that they can do them as well as we do, nor manage the complications.
It's not just the technique, but also the judgment. Doing a suction curettage at 10 weeks is not that difficult, but I don't think anyone should be doing them unless they do them in a reasonable volume and after appropriate training, because we gynecologists need to know how to prevent complications, how to manage them when they occur (and complications can always occur, of course, with any procedure) and have the sound judgment to know how, when, and why to do these procedures in the first place.
Cosmetic surgery can kill people. It can maim and disfigure people. Just as I think surgeons should respect the procedures we do as gynecologists, we should respect the things they do, and only do them when we really have the training and judgment to proceed. No weekend course on ”cosmetic gynecology“ (whatever the f that is) is going to provide skills and judgment comparable to someone who is boarded in cosmetic surgery and plastic/reconstructive surgery. As it is, the folks who are boarded in cosmetic surgery are rightfully pissed at those cosmetic surgeons who are doing this without board certification or a decent background in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Why are we adding to this nonsense?
As an example in terms of judgment, you're mentioning the possibility of doing ”gspot injections“ (sic). This is inappropriate and has no place in modern practice, cosmetic surgery, gynecology or otherwise.
To my point exactly. We have no business doing this crap. I sympathize with those who do, and understand their motivation in terms of a cash business. But we're surgeons and professionals, NOT car dealers trying to make a fast buck. Or are we?
Posted at 10:09 AM
Thu - February 28, 2008
thoughts on north korea
While I applaud the NY Philharmonic's recent
trip to N. Korea (I mean, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), as I've
learned more about N. Korea, I'm horrified. I've always known it to be a
totalitarian state with Kim Jong Il as an autocratic dictator in the Stalin
mode, but the more I read about N. Korea, I'm convinced Kim makes Stalin almost
seem like a lightweight.
N. Korea controls the opinions of its population in ways that even Orwell didn't consider in his novel 1984. Sure, there's the complete control of the press and media. But informers are placed everywhere, and anyone who is considered a potential subversive is removed. From day one, children are taught that their own lives are worthless compared to the state and the lives of Dear Leader. This is manifested by acts such as N. Koreans using their own bodies to try to stop fire from destroying trees upon which the words of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il (father and son) are written. Even if N. Korea were liberated tomorrow, I'm not sure most of the population would understand that this is a good thing.
Then there are the concentration camps, such as Camp 22 and many others, in which approximately 200,000 political prisoners and their families are held, tortured and often executed. If someone is a subversive, the entire family is punished, which is a powerful incentive for others to keep in line. Anyone with physical deformities or special needs is relocated to special towns where they are isolated and often brutalized. Only the elite can live in the capital Pyongyang, and even then, there are electrical outages at night and very few cars. Indeed, if one looks through the streets of Pyongyang on Google Earth, there are hardly any cars to be seen. But one can certainly see the Ryogyong Hotel, or rather what exists of it. This was built at an estimated cost of $750,000,000 but ran out of funding in the 90's and sits dormant with a crane on top of it. In fact, it's actually crumbling as the cement used in its construction is of poor quality. Official N. Korean publications photoshop the hotel out of any views of Pyongyang, and no one in N. Korea will really talk about it, since it represents an abject failure. Nearly one billion dollars wasted in a country where approximately 2 million people have literally starved to death over the years.
A few years ago, in the DMZ that separates N. and S. Korea, some US troops decided to cut down a tree that was blocking their view of a N. Korean outpost. Some N. Korean troops assembled and, as there are no weapons allowed in the DMZ, they took the soldier's axes and used them to kill two US military personnel. This was referred to as the Axe Murder Incident. I'm amazed we avoided war over this.
And that's just it. We went to war, unprovoked, against Iraq to liberate the Iraqis from the actions of Saddam Hussein. Now, Hussein was a brutal murderous dictator. But so is Kim Jong Il. The brutality and cruelty of the N. Korean government against its people is unparalleled in modern times except by the actions of Nazi Germany. I even think it might top the atrocities committed under Stalin. Yet we went to war against Iraq, which has no nuclear arsenal. Go figure. I'm not suggesting we attack N. Korea, and think our invasion of Iraq was the most brazen, idiotic think our country has done in some time (and trust me, there are plenty of runners up). But how could someone justify invading Iraq for human rights abuses (which was the excuse when the WMD thing was proven to be a delusion), when things are as bad if not worse in N. Korea?
So I'm glad the NY Philharmonic played in Pyongyang. It would be wonderful if some mutual understanding comes out of it. But the reality is that N. Koreans live under an oppressive dictatorship that controls their minds through terror and indoctrination. I don't see much hope that that will change anytime soon. Nor am I hearing consistent outrage from the world powers at the ongoing executions and concentration camp atrocities taking place in N. Korea on a daily basis. A shame. These people deserve better from the world community, a community that does little or nothing about human rights abuses in Darfur and other parts of Africa, Myanmar and too many other nations.
N. Korea controls the opinions of its population in ways that even Orwell didn't consider in his novel 1984. Sure, there's the complete control of the press and media. But informers are placed everywhere, and anyone who is considered a potential subversive is removed. From day one, children are taught that their own lives are worthless compared to the state and the lives of Dear Leader. This is manifested by acts such as N. Koreans using their own bodies to try to stop fire from destroying trees upon which the words of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il (father and son) are written. Even if N. Korea were liberated tomorrow, I'm not sure most of the population would understand that this is a good thing.
Then there are the concentration camps, such as Camp 22 and many others, in which approximately 200,000 political prisoners and their families are held, tortured and often executed. If someone is a subversive, the entire family is punished, which is a powerful incentive for others to keep in line. Anyone with physical deformities or special needs is relocated to special towns where they are isolated and often brutalized. Only the elite can live in the capital Pyongyang, and even then, there are electrical outages at night and very few cars. Indeed, if one looks through the streets of Pyongyang on Google Earth, there are hardly any cars to be seen. But one can certainly see the Ryogyong Hotel, or rather what exists of it. This was built at an estimated cost of $750,000,000 but ran out of funding in the 90's and sits dormant with a crane on top of it. In fact, it's actually crumbling as the cement used in its construction is of poor quality. Official N. Korean publications photoshop the hotel out of any views of Pyongyang, and no one in N. Korea will really talk about it, since it represents an abject failure. Nearly one billion dollars wasted in a country where approximately 2 million people have literally starved to death over the years.
A few years ago, in the DMZ that separates N. and S. Korea, some US troops decided to cut down a tree that was blocking their view of a N. Korean outpost. Some N. Korean troops assembled and, as there are no weapons allowed in the DMZ, they took the soldier's axes and used them to kill two US military personnel. This was referred to as the Axe Murder Incident. I'm amazed we avoided war over this.
And that's just it. We went to war, unprovoked, against Iraq to liberate the Iraqis from the actions of Saddam Hussein. Now, Hussein was a brutal murderous dictator. But so is Kim Jong Il. The brutality and cruelty of the N. Korean government against its people is unparalleled in modern times except by the actions of Nazi Germany. I even think it might top the atrocities committed under Stalin. Yet we went to war against Iraq, which has no nuclear arsenal. Go figure. I'm not suggesting we attack N. Korea, and think our invasion of Iraq was the most brazen, idiotic think our country has done in some time (and trust me, there are plenty of runners up). But how could someone justify invading Iraq for human rights abuses (which was the excuse when the WMD thing was proven to be a delusion), when things are as bad if not worse in N. Korea?
So I'm glad the NY Philharmonic played in Pyongyang. It would be wonderful if some mutual understanding comes out of it. But the reality is that N. Koreans live under an oppressive dictatorship that controls their minds through terror and indoctrination. I don't see much hope that that will change anytime soon. Nor am I hearing consistent outrage from the world powers at the ongoing executions and concentration camp atrocities taking place in N. Korea on a daily basis. A shame. These people deserve better from the world community, a community that does little or nothing about human rights abuses in Darfur and other parts of Africa, Myanmar and too many other nations.
Posted at 10:32 AM
Tue - February 26, 2008
Fri - February 22, 2008
random thoughts for a snow day
Working from home today in Wyncote due to the
snow. Nice that we finally have some snow---it's been more like living around
the equator for the past two
months.
* I find the universal horror about the NYT article on McCain and the lobbyist interesting. A lot of people are blaming the messenger, calling it a smear campaign, etc. Well, where was the mass outrage when Fox News repeatedly made innuendoes about Obama being a Muslim (as if that would be a crime)? And where were these people when those Swift Boat folks were smearing another war hero, John Kerry? The sad thing is that this is coming from the Times, which these people perceive as left-wing and hate it about as much as the ACLU. Why couldn't this have been published first in the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post? Even better, the Washington Times.
* I'm about to crack 300 connections on LinkedIn. Amazing, since one year ago I had maybe four connections. Barack, you could be #300 (yes, he is on LinkedIn)
* Hillary's closing remark yesterday was eloquent, and truthfully bested Barack's standard remarks about his experience that really didn't answer the question
* Been listening a lot to Copland's Piano Fantasy lately. I still prefer the earlier Piano Variations, but the Piano Fantasy is starting to grow on me. I still think it rambles at times, and I wish he had done more with the 1-2 ideas that really blow me away, but it's definitely a great piece. The greatest piano work of the 20th century? I don't think so. To me, the best examples would be Ives' Concord Sonata, Feldman's Triadic Memories and Piano (For Bunita Marcus and Palais de Mari are also great pieces), Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, Ligeti's Etudes, Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano as a whole, Schoenberg's op. 23 Klavierstucke, Webern's Variations, Stockhausen's Klavierstucke IX (I like IX better than XI, so there), Shostakovich's Sonata #1, Shapey's Fromm Variations, Charlemagne Palestine's Strumming Music, La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano and perhaps Wolpe's Form and Form IV: Broken Sequences. I'm trying to get into the piano music of Gunnar Berg a bit more. I like it, but haven't made total contact yet.
OK, I've procrastinated enough---time to shovel the snow. Maybe I'll finally see a Yeti.
* I find the universal horror about the NYT article on McCain and the lobbyist interesting. A lot of people are blaming the messenger, calling it a smear campaign, etc. Well, where was the mass outrage when Fox News repeatedly made innuendoes about Obama being a Muslim (as if that would be a crime)? And where were these people when those Swift Boat folks were smearing another war hero, John Kerry? The sad thing is that this is coming from the Times, which these people perceive as left-wing and hate it about as much as the ACLU. Why couldn't this have been published first in the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post? Even better, the Washington Times.
* I'm about to crack 300 connections on LinkedIn. Amazing, since one year ago I had maybe four connections. Barack, you could be #300 (yes, he is on LinkedIn)
* Hillary's closing remark yesterday was eloquent, and truthfully bested Barack's standard remarks about his experience that really didn't answer the question
* Been listening a lot to Copland's Piano Fantasy lately. I still prefer the earlier Piano Variations, but the Piano Fantasy is starting to grow on me. I still think it rambles at times, and I wish he had done more with the 1-2 ideas that really blow me away, but it's definitely a great piece. The greatest piano work of the 20th century? I don't think so. To me, the best examples would be Ives' Concord Sonata, Feldman's Triadic Memories and Piano (For Bunita Marcus and Palais de Mari are also great pieces), Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, Ligeti's Etudes, Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano as a whole, Schoenberg's op. 23 Klavierstucke, Webern's Variations, Stockhausen's Klavierstucke IX (I like IX better than XI, so there), Shostakovich's Sonata #1, Shapey's Fromm Variations, Charlemagne Palestine's Strumming Music, La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano and perhaps Wolpe's Form and Form IV: Broken Sequences. I'm trying to get into the piano music of Gunnar Berg a bit more. I like it, but haven't made total contact yet.
OK, I've procrastinated enough---time to shovel the snow. Maybe I'll finally see a Yeti.
Posted at 09:25 AM
Thu - February 21, 2008
perspectives on new music
I have access to old copies of the music
journal Perspectives on New
Music, and first became familiar with it
in the 80's when I purchased a paperback collection of selected articles
(”Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky“). I still have that
book, and it manages to creep me out every time I read through it. There are
articles by Milton Babbitt, Claudio Spies and others expounding upon and
diagramming all sorts of intricate serial structures and combinatorialities in
the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, all to demonstrate how wonderful it all
is. Now, I adore a lot of late Stravinsky (the serial stuff, like
Movements,
Variations for
Orchestra,
Abraham and
Isaac, etc) and certainly am fond of
Schoenberg's
oeuvre.
However, I like these works because they succeed as music, expressing something
of interest to me and just, well, sounding enjoyable to my ears. Same with late
Copland; while there are those people who despise his “conversion”
to serialism as exemplified by works like
Connnotations
or
Inscape,
I have come to like these works, but because I like listening to them, not
because they are well constructed from a theoretical perspective. By the same
token, the scores of Babbitt and Carter are very cool to look at, but do little
or nothing for me as a listener. As I write this, I'm forcing myself to listen
to Babbitt's Arie da
Capo, and it might as well be muzak for
all I care, since it's totally forgettable and just plain boring.
So back to Perspectives on New Music. What strikes me, having looked through the tables of contents for everything from the early 60's to the last issue a few years ago, is how much this publication summarizes everything I despised about academic music growing up. I noticed an article in there somewhere trying to prove that even early Schoenberg had serial structures. I guess if you work hard enough, you can analyze any piece of music to justify a particular position, kind of like how statistics can be misused. There are tons of articles either by Milton Babbitt or about his muisic, yet hardly anything about Feldman (even after his death in 1987, there was no tribute to Feldman while tributes to lesser-known composers abound in back issues of PONM). There are, to be sure, a few token articles on what I would consider to be “new music,” including a smattering of articles by or about Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, Conlon Nancarrow and even a very authoritative article on La Monte Young penned by Kyle Gann. But that's it; even Berio doesn't make out that well, with only an article or two on his music. Yet there's tons of stuff relating to Arthur Berger, Kenneth Gaburo, Charles Wuorinen, and others in the uptown crowd. Glass, Palestine, Riley, Meredith Monk, Leach, Chatham, Branca, Curran, Garland, Johnson, Annea Lockwood, Spiegel, Duckworth...where are they?
When people dispute that there really was an academic, uptown bias that pervaded the music world in the last half of the 20th century, I would simply refer these folks to PONM. There are pages upon pages of mental gyrations that seek to justify total serialism to the exclusion of all else. It was even sort of a polemic. I have nothing against anyone going through a score and analyzing it. All of us do it; it can even be fun, sort of like finding buried treasure or seeing the hidden picture in one of those computer-generated 3D images that were popular a few years ago. Webern wrote some amazing canons, probably the best of any since Bach, and there is certainly great beauty not just in how the music sounds, but how it was constructed. But all the great composers like Webern and Stravinsky were more concerned, at the end of the day, with how their music sounded. Serialism was just a tool to get there. The problem I have with most of the articles in PONM, aside from its large-scale exclusion of what really constituted “new music” at that time, is that it fosters the notion that if one doesn't rigidly construct a piece of music, it's not as worthy of being heard. Sure, there is a certain genius in how Carter generates his rhythms, or how Babbitt puts together his pitch structures, dynamics, and other elements. And it's cool to analyze it. But the amounts of analysis make all this stuff seem like a mathematical exercise. Math is beautiful, to be sure, but it's math, not music.
I don't construct my pieces, preferring to write music through improvisation. I will, from time to time, write palindromic measures, and even use some serial forms in terms of trichords, where four trichords form a series of 12 tones. But other than a canon or two here and there, that's about it. I used to do that sort of thing all the time; there are several types of 12-tone canons in ineffabilities and in four landscapes for six instruments:
And I'm sure the folks who wrote all those articles about pitch class and rhythmic serialization would really love to take a crack at my later stuff like for philip glass or even ushabti, both of which occasionally use some serial structures. But really, I'm over this stuff. There's nothing worth analyzing in anything I've written since ineffabilities back in 1981. And even ineffabilities deviates from the row all over the place. After writing it, I was so drained by the entire 12-tone approach that I didn't think I would ever write anything again. I was basically tired of intricately manipulating rows to sound like what I wanted to write, and I finally just gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted without any formal constraints like serialism, tonality or basic musical structures (like sonata form, etc). That I felt I needed permission to do this is really sad, but that was the musical world I was living in at the time. There were plenty of people who were writing some amazing things that would never make it to the pages of Perspectives on New Music, all of whom didn't care about the sorts of formalities I described. But a lot of this was underground, and was certainly not being taught in most academic centers. Certainly not where I was attending college at the time.
How sad that music came to this, where formalities and rigid structures essentially put a lot of people into straightjackets where they had to write music that reflected this sort of analytical process. There's a review of Irving Fine's Symphony in one of the issues of Perspectives that notes its use of the 12-tone system, but also remarks on its deviations. But the ultimate comment by the reviewer was as follows:
“It is not in the ”path-breaking“ category of contemporary works. But it has every right, I feel, to find a place in that much needed repertoire of modern music–among those works, developed within a vital and active tradition, that reveal a markedly personal idiom.”
Glad they cut Fine's symphony some slack. I think it's one of the better orchestral pieces by an American composer in the last 50 years, even if it isn't “path-breaking.” Sheesh...isn't the music all that matters, rather than how it's composed? Is a novel that uses some intricate forms, like Ulysses, necessarily superior to something that doesn't, but is a good read nonetheless?
This is why reading stuff like Perspectives on New Music gives me the willies. I'd like to think we've moved on past this sort of cold, calculating approach to new music.
So back to Perspectives on New Music. What strikes me, having looked through the tables of contents for everything from the early 60's to the last issue a few years ago, is how much this publication summarizes everything I despised about academic music growing up. I noticed an article in there somewhere trying to prove that even early Schoenberg had serial structures. I guess if you work hard enough, you can analyze any piece of music to justify a particular position, kind of like how statistics can be misused. There are tons of articles either by Milton Babbitt or about his muisic, yet hardly anything about Feldman (even after his death in 1987, there was no tribute to Feldman while tributes to lesser-known composers abound in back issues of PONM). There are, to be sure, a few token articles on what I would consider to be “new music,” including a smattering of articles by or about Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, Conlon Nancarrow and even a very authoritative article on La Monte Young penned by Kyle Gann. But that's it; even Berio doesn't make out that well, with only an article or two on his music. Yet there's tons of stuff relating to Arthur Berger, Kenneth Gaburo, Charles Wuorinen, and others in the uptown crowd. Glass, Palestine, Riley, Meredith Monk, Leach, Chatham, Branca, Curran, Garland, Johnson, Annea Lockwood, Spiegel, Duckworth...where are they?
When people dispute that there really was an academic, uptown bias that pervaded the music world in the last half of the 20th century, I would simply refer these folks to PONM. There are pages upon pages of mental gyrations that seek to justify total serialism to the exclusion of all else. It was even sort of a polemic. I have nothing against anyone going through a score and analyzing it. All of us do it; it can even be fun, sort of like finding buried treasure or seeing the hidden picture in one of those computer-generated 3D images that were popular a few years ago. Webern wrote some amazing canons, probably the best of any since Bach, and there is certainly great beauty not just in how the music sounds, but how it was constructed. But all the great composers like Webern and Stravinsky were more concerned, at the end of the day, with how their music sounded. Serialism was just a tool to get there. The problem I have with most of the articles in PONM, aside from its large-scale exclusion of what really constituted “new music” at that time, is that it fosters the notion that if one doesn't rigidly construct a piece of music, it's not as worthy of being heard. Sure, there is a certain genius in how Carter generates his rhythms, or how Babbitt puts together his pitch structures, dynamics, and other elements. And it's cool to analyze it. But the amounts of analysis make all this stuff seem like a mathematical exercise. Math is beautiful, to be sure, but it's math, not music.
I don't construct my pieces, preferring to write music through improvisation. I will, from time to time, write palindromic measures, and even use some serial forms in terms of trichords, where four trichords form a series of 12 tones. But other than a canon or two here and there, that's about it. I used to do that sort of thing all the time; there are several types of 12-tone canons in ineffabilities and in four landscapes for six instruments:
And I'm sure the folks who wrote all those articles about pitch class and rhythmic serialization would really love to take a crack at my later stuff like for philip glass or even ushabti, both of which occasionally use some serial structures. But really, I'm over this stuff. There's nothing worth analyzing in anything I've written since ineffabilities back in 1981. And even ineffabilities deviates from the row all over the place. After writing it, I was so drained by the entire 12-tone approach that I didn't think I would ever write anything again. I was basically tired of intricately manipulating rows to sound like what I wanted to write, and I finally just gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted without any formal constraints like serialism, tonality or basic musical structures (like sonata form, etc). That I felt I needed permission to do this is really sad, but that was the musical world I was living in at the time. There were plenty of people who were writing some amazing things that would never make it to the pages of Perspectives on New Music, all of whom didn't care about the sorts of formalities I described. But a lot of this was underground, and was certainly not being taught in most academic centers. Certainly not where I was attending college at the time.
How sad that music came to this, where formalities and rigid structures essentially put a lot of people into straightjackets where they had to write music that reflected this sort of analytical process. There's a review of Irving Fine's Symphony in one of the issues of Perspectives that notes its use of the 12-tone system, but also remarks on its deviations. But the ultimate comment by the reviewer was as follows:
“It is not in the ”path-breaking“ category of contemporary works. But it has every right, I feel, to find a place in that much needed repertoire of modern music–among those works, developed within a vital and active tradition, that reveal a markedly personal idiom.”
Glad they cut Fine's symphony some slack. I think it's one of the better orchestral pieces by an American composer in the last 50 years, even if it isn't “path-breaking.” Sheesh...isn't the music all that matters, rather than how it's composed? Is a novel that uses some intricate forms, like Ulysses, necessarily superior to something that doesn't, but is a good read nonetheless?
This is why reading stuff like Perspectives on New Music gives me the willies. I'd like to think we've moved on past this sort of cold, calculating approach to new music.
Posted at 10:19 AM
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