http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en dtoub@mac.com Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:07:56 -0400 Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:08:10 -0400 iBlog 1.4.6 david toub david's waste of bandwidth... david toub's Web log david toub dtoub@mac.com david's waste of bandwidth... Arts & Entertainment http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080405140744/index.html 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... ]]> Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:07:44 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080405140744/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080405005909/index.html Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:59:09 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080405005909/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080328111128/index.html Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:11:28 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080328111128/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080323150139/index.html 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. ]]> Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:01:39 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080323150139/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080319083500/index.html Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:35:00 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080319083500/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080312094737/index.html Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:47:37 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080312094737/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080312092348/index.html Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:23:48 -0400 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080312092348/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080308122050/index.html Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:20:50 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080308122050/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080306125437/index.html Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:54:37 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080306125437/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080229112012/index.html Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:20:12 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080229112012/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080229100946/index.html 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? ]]> Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:09:46 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080229100946/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080228103222/index.html 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. ]]> Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:32:22 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080228103222/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080226171522/index.html Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:15:22 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080226171522/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080222092500/index.html 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. ]]> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:25:00 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080222092500/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080221101938/index.html Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:19:38 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080221101938/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080216111050/index.html Growing up with the visionary music of Charles Ives, I'd heard much about his unfinished Universe Symphony, and that was about it. For years it was considered not just unfinished, but existing as a fragmentary mess, with sketches that were incomplete, on scraps of music paper, etc. The composer Larry Austin made a realization of the sketches, but these were never really accepted as Ives but rather as Austin channelling Ives. The situation changed a bit when Johnny Reinhard, who is a very active microtonal devotee, took up the study of the fragments of the Universe Symphony and eventually found that the situation wasn't quite as bleak as the word on the street would have it. He started to grasp the obscure notes Ives had made indicating how various fragments should be put together, although the challenge probably rivaled figuring out how thousands of small DNA fragments should be put back together as accomplished with the Human Genome Project.

So I downloaded the Reinhard version from Amazon (no DRM, unlike iTunes...I like that) and have been listening to it for several days, including right now. While the entire endeavor has become somewhat politicized, despite an endorsement from the Ives Society, I personally like the work. No, it's not much, if anything, like the Fourth Symphony or any of Ives' other works. It's also fragmented; one thing I don't like about the recording is that there is absolutely no space at the end of each section. At least on the mp3 version, there are just no gaps between tracks. But the music is great anyway. I really like the long movement that is essentially just unpitched percussion for 20 minutes followed by about 10 minutes of music with the addition of non-percussion instruments. This predated Varese's Ionization and Cage's Construction in Metal by years. But at the same time, it is very much unlike Ives, at least the Ives that we knew through his other works.

What is particularly interesting about the Universe Symphony, apart from the idea of having different orchestras playing on separate mountaintops, is that Universe was meant to be worked on by one or more composers besides Ives. In other words, Ives had no qualms whatsoever about someone coming along, taking his music, and running with it. In effect, Ives anticipated the Creative Commons music by almost a century.

So is it Ives? Mostly Ives? Halfway there? Who cares? I find it really enjoyable to listen to and, just as with the Deryck Cooke version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, I'm glad someone took the time to finalize music that otherwise would never have been heard. ]]> Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:10:50 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080216111050/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080216105440/index.html I managed to get out for a few moments yesterday while at a meeting in San Francisco and went for a return visit to the Apple Store on Stockton Ave, my third visit there in four years. As usual, it was busy, and at the front of the store were, you guessed it, several MacBook Air models. What was interesting is that people weren't so much trying out all the usual things one does with a computer, like checking out how fast applications launch, etc. Rather, people tended to examine the MBA with the lid closed, picking it up and turning it over to grasp its thin dimensions.

I certainly did the same, and yes it is definitely thin. The display is excellent, as is the keyboard. For all the dismay about the slower hard disk speed and older Intel CPU, I found it to be pretty fast, although a few minutes' of messing around is certainly not going to give an accurate picture as far as performance. I figured I'd try the new trackpad gestures that are like those on the iPhone, including the ability to move forward and backward in browsers with the trackpad. Surprisingly, this was not enabled on the machine I was using, so I went into System Preferences and tried to enable this. Maybe it was the particular MBA I was using, but the trackpad preference window was illegible, since the previous System Prefs window continued to merge with it. I quit and relaunched System Preferences, and same thing. Another attempt didn't even load the trackpad preferences; rather, it just said Loading... and after a minute of that, I bailed. Granted, it's clearly a software glitch, most likely on that particular unit, and I didn't get to try another one i the short time I was in the store. But I felt like I was back at Circuit City years ago playing with a demo Mac that was neglected and buggy. Maybe it's something with 10.5 (Leopard). But I was really surprised that a relatively new demo model in one of the main Apple Stores out there didn't have one of its salient features enabled, and couldn't be enabled due to a software glitch anyway.

Am I nitpicking this? Sure. But I've always been struck by how choreographed everything is in an Apple Store. The lighting, the design, which computer models are placed where...everything is arranged for maximum effect, as it should be. But very importantly, all the computers I've ever used at an Apple Store worked flawlessly. System glitches just never happened to me before in that setting. Maybe there's a first time for everything.

Anyway, back to the MBA. It's a lovely machine, although I have to say that apart from the extra weight and perhaps a more scrunched keyboard, my 12“ iBook G4 that I'm typing this on at 39,000 feet is a pleasure to use on a long flight. Plus it plays DVDs, which would require a USB-based Superdrive for an additional $99 on the MBA. Then again, my iBook was just over half the price of the base MBA, so if you have money to spare on a new MBA, what's another $99 for a Superdrive?

And as I think about it more, my initial negative reactions to the MBA perhaps were a bit too harsh. The point of having a MBA isn't to replace one's desktop machine or even one's laptop workhorse. It's for schlepping around so that you have all the basic stuff you need and no more. It's a minimalist computer, and what it does retain is very good. I suspect the price will come down in a few months, and that would likely spur more sales of the MBA. Right now, I think many people are gawking at it but haven't gotten to the point where they understand the logic of a more minimalist laptop. ]]> Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:54:40 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080216105440/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080215221220/index.html I had a long flight today to San Francisco and am flying back tomorrow morning. On the flight, I finally had an opportunity to look over the finished score of ushabti and as best I can tell, it's ready to go. I'll probably find something to fix on the flight back tomorrow, but I just uploaded it to the server, so feel free to take a look. ]]> Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:12:20 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080215221220/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080215174846/index.html Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:48:46 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080215174846/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080211130741/index.html I'm probably taking a bit of a hiatus from writing new music, since I don't have any major musical ideas at hand, and I also really want to finally finish inputting some older works of mine into Finale. I'm almost halfway done with my first postminimalist piece from 1981, which was a long piano piece. Until I get it all digitized, I don't even know how long it would take in performance, since I've never played it through start to finish. I suspect it's on the order of 2 hours, but it remains a mystery. I also have an old set of songs I wrote around the age of 17 to poems by Joyce. You can hear the first and only performance here. It is from an old cassette tape that's seen better days, was not professionally recorded, and the pianist is pretty horrendous (it was me but then, I've never every claimed to be a decent pianist, since I'm not). Some other old works I'd like to get into Finale format: a piece for violin and piano (12-tone; what do you want, I was a kid!) and a postminimalist work for chamber ensemble called canonical ensembles.

Funny stories about both of these: I dedicated the violin and piano work to the scientist George Beadle, with whom I was doing a research project on the origin of corn (and just so there's no misunderstanding, modern corn is indeed related closely to teosinte [zea mexicanus], regardless of what those misguided folks at Harvard thought at the time). Beadle showed it to a neighbor of his (he lived just across the street from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which is one of the best science museums on the planet) who was a professional violinist with an orchestra. It apparently provoked a bit of a reaction. Beadle was, of course, a midwestern gentleman from Nebraska; apart from those sadly mistaken Harvard folks, he never said anything negative about anyone or anything. So I suspect my score, which admittedly is excruciatingly difficult to perform from a violinist's perspective, went over even worse than Beadle was going to relate back to me, being a gentleman and all that. So it's sat for almost 30 years in a box and I'd love for it to at least be seen if not heard. The other work is a pun; there are no canons whatsoever in the entire piece. Not a one. The term “canonical ensemble” is a statistical mechanics term from a physical chemistry class I took in college. At the molecular level, things are determined more by probability than anything else, but it isn't an indeterminate piece, although that would have been a nice idea I suppose.

I have some old works that I doubt I'll ever get around to digitizing. And that's probably all for the best. I have the only completed work for orchestra I ever wrote, which is pretty long and has some great parts. But it would be a bear to dump into notation software and even worse to try to use to generate an audio file that's worth anything. Maybe when/if I retire...

So while I want to get 1-2 of these things digitized already, having planned to do so at least two years ago, I also want to do some new things. I've been interested for some time in setting some Palestinian poetry to music, more as a political statement and as a means to try to build bridges than anything else, but have yet to find texts that I would want to set. So I started thinking: what about setting some blog posts from around the Web? Not that I care about or need precedent, but there is ample precedent for taking everyday texts and using them in music (Partch's Barstow, the third movement of Berio's Sinfonia, some of the 70's music of Rzewski, etc). So perhaps that's what I'll end up doing; hopefully it will be the first new music composition using blogs as texts. Just a thought... ]]> Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:07:41 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080211130741/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080131084800/index.html Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:48:00 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080131084800/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080128120111/index.html Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:01:11 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080128120111/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080126175015/index.html Just finished a new piece. I need to listen to it in its entirety a bit to see if anything needs to be tweaked, but I think it's there. It's for violin and piano and clocks in a few seconds shy of 40 minutes. Once I'm convinced it's there, I'll post it. ]]> Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:50:15 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080126175015/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122162127/index.html Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:21:26 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122162127/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122085957/index.html For probably 2-3 years, I've been saying that within the next decade, commercial support of CME was going to die off and like nurses, lawyers and other professionals, physicians will have to pay their own way for CME, which will also become much more oriented towards performance improvement, making a difference in clinical care.

All but two people to whom I've said this, besides Debbie, have left thinking I'm from Mars.

Well, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation agrees with me.

So there. QED. ]]> Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:59:57 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122085957/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122085533/index.html Nothing personal, but ever since I was a kid who listened to a ton of new music, the works of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and a few others summed up the worst in contemporary music for me. These guys were taken as the epitome of “new music,” the leading composers of the 60's and 70's if not later. And they ruined it for the rest of us for decades. This “creepy music,” as Philip Glass would term it, served as the paradigm for modern music: thorny, theoretical, very hard to play, lacking a beat, no obvious melodies, etc. Nasty, nasty stuff.

Now, I've studied Carter's scores in detail. In the late 70's he was considered the great American composer, the true heir to Aaron Copland, who was essentially MIA at that point and soon to pass away. Carter's scores are a marvel to look at, particularly works like his Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras, the Piano Concerto, and the Third String Quartet. Without question he had interesting ideas about rhythm, and it always amazed me that his music could be played at all, given that something like Cowell's beautiful Quartet Romantic waited so long for its premiere, and when I attended it the performers had to listen to click tracks since the rhythms were so hypercomplex. But Cowell's work is enticing, Carter's music never grabbed me at all. I'd listen to it over and over again, hoping to find something in it to keep me engaged, since he was clearly so celebrated and all that. But nothing. Maybe a few measures of his Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord. But that's it. Carter's certainly a nice guy, and it's great that he's still actively composing as he reaches his 100th birthday. But nothing works for me...sorry, Elliott. I even remember a student of his whom I knew, who shall remain nameless, who blew me off as soon as he heard me say that I wasn't a fan of Carter's music. That's all it took, and perhaps that's evidence to support my feeling that there was a cult of Carter at the time that broached no discord.

Which brings me to Milton Babbitt. Again, I'm sure he's a nice person, even if he is known to be conservative in his political views. But his works never sounded anything to me other than a bunch of notes rather than music. I've been giving it another shot recently, listening to a ton of his piano music that spans his career, along with some chamber works and his brief song Philomel that everyone under the sun seems to think is the greatest thing since tofu. Well, none of this music works for me. I can sort of get into his Three Compositions for Piano that represents the first total serial piece, preceding a far better work by Messiaen (Mode de Valeurs et d'intensities). But that's about it. Babbitt, unlike Carter, is a devoted serialist. That's fine, since I have nothing against 12-tone music or serialism in general, and indeed wrote a number of 12-tone works, some of which I still am very fond of (such as Ineffabiities). I love nearly everything Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Dallapiccola, and a few other early serialists wrote. I gave up writing 12-tone music around 1981 because I just reached a dead end with it; I had done everything I wanted to do with it, and my musical inclinations were heading much more in a postminimalist direction. And I certainly appreciated the academic rigor of serialism, being a geek and all that. But after awhile, when I want to geek out, I'll turn to something in the sciences. Music isn't something I like to partake of in an academic sense. It's much more important than making it an academic exercise.

So while the music of Ralph Shapey, which is certainly born of an academic wannabe setting, is generally compelling for the most part, that's as academic as I'm willing to have my musical listening experiences go. In other words, it's Shapey and nothing further. No Babbitt. No Carter. A small amount of Boulez can be ok (I like his piano sonatas, but the jury's still out of Le Marteau Sans Maitre, his most widely accepted piece). Even Luigi Nono can work for me. But not Babbitt. I'm giving up with my experiment and won't force myself to listen to his music over and over again in the hopes of finding something that takes me in. It's not about his writings, like the one unfortunately titled by a publisher “Who Cares if You Listen?,”or the academic papers I've read that maintain that combinatoriality and other aspects of 12-tone music are superior to all else. But it is about the music, which is all that matters.

If you like Babbitt's music, then good for you. I can respect that. Please respect my lack of interest in his music. I'm not criticizing something I'm not familiar with. I've tried to like his works. I've really tried. ]]> Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:55:33 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080122085533/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080119172341/index.html I'm really liking NNW after a little over a week of use. The sync with newsgator.com works perfectly, which means that I can read my RSS feeds anywhere and not have to see the same ones again when my newsreader downloads them. Even better---there's a version of NNW for my BlackBerry. While it doesn't work as smoothly as NNW on my laptop, it works well enough for me to read my feeds wherever I am with my BlackBerry. My only gripe with the mobile version is that the unread list doesn't update itself automatically, although the individual threads automatically get marked as read when I read them.

Minor things on my wish list for NNW:

* Being able to flag and item or mark it unread by simply clicking on the flag or read status in the thread window (which can be done when using the Vienna RSS reader)
* For some reason, when I post to this blog and then refresh my subscriptions, I don't see my post in NNW. It comes much later, presumably at least 30 minutes later (the earliest NNW will automatically refresh itself) for some reason

Neither of these are major issues, just nice to have for a future release. So NNW has replaced Vienna as my default newsreader for now. I still keep Vienna handy only to get the URL of something I just posted, since it won't show up in NNW for awhile. ]]> Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:23:41 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080119172341/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080116091604/index.html Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:16:04 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080116091604/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080112171447/index.html Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:14:47 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080112171447/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080111194320/index.html No, not me and Debbie. Rather, I'm referring to me and the open-source Vienna RSS newsreader. I've left Vienna for NetNewsWire. I've blogged about the wonders of Vienna before, and indeed it's a great newsreader. I'd used NetNewsWire Lite before, but there were more features in Vienna than in the lite version of NNW, and the full version of NNW cost money that I didn't have. So Vienna it was, and it was a great run. Vienna is regularly updated, has smart folders and tabbed Web pages, and runs off of WebKit.

But this past week NNW (the full version) became freely available. It's much faster than Vienna---there was a very long pause every time I'd switch to another feed in Vienna, particularly one with a lot of entries (like The Daily Kos). And if a blog post had an embedded video and I then switched to another blog post in Vienna, the previous one with the video would continue to display. NNW also syncs via NewsGator, and has similar style sheets to Vienna.

So I reluctantly switched after a fling last night in a hotel room in Seattle. Yes, I had an affair with another newsreader in a nice hotel room, and well, you know how those things go. But in this case, it wasn't a one-night stand. The speed difference with NNW was compelling, and as much as I've loved Vienna for all this time, my need for speed trumped everything. The sync ability was the icing on the cake. Now, Vienna does do a better job with searching within articles, plus it keeps old posts until you decide to delete it (NNW archives things, but I haven't played with that feature yet...give me time). But overall, it just felt like the right time to make a switch.

But I'd like this divorce to be amicable. I harbor no ill will towards Vienna---it's a great open-source RSS and Atom newsreader, and I stand by all the praise I've ever showered upon it. But NewNewsWire, now that it's free, is just a bit more adorable. It performed magnificently last night in my hotel room...What can I say. Now that I'm 47, I guess male menopause is setting in and I'm getting fickle about RSS newsreaders. I guess I like my liquor hard and my RSS browsing fast. And boy is NetNewsWire fast. It gives great thread.

Of course, like all geeks who have affairs, if an even better newsreader as compared to NNW comes along...oh well... ]]> Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:43:20 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080111194320/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080107203409/index.html Just some random thoughts, without relation to anything in particular or to Pascal's book. And besides, his “proof” of god's existence, which is better known as “Pascal's wager,“ is something I always thought was pretty lame, although many of the Pensees are pretty profound, like the one that goes ”He lives on the other side of the water,“ which is really all about how inane war is. Here goes:

* I'm now only rarely seeing crashes in Safari 3 ever since I disabled the input manager-based add-on Safari Stand. It's a shame I had to disable it, since it is really cool to have little thumbnails of every Web page I've tabbed running along the left side of my browser window, but the crashes just got to be too much. I'm actually running nightly builds of WebKit so I can stay on the bleeding edge.

* Good for Obama

* Glad TDS and Colbert are going to be back tonight, even sans writers. Life has really sucked without them these past weeks.

* People really need to see the South African movie Tsotsi. While disturbing to the max, it has to have been one of the best movies I've seen in 2007. Plus there's a great soundtrack with Kwaito music by Zola and a few others.

* There's a lot of great, free new music to be had online, including some real treasures. Like this. And this. And even this. I'm also very much taken by Phill NIblock's flute music and this golden oldie.

* Indispensable digital audio tools: iTunes, Max (now that it doesn't crash on me all the time), Flaac, Audacity, WIreTap Pro, JoinTogether, Cog. Really awesome but too expensive: WireTap Studio. WTS has a great feature, namely the ability to hear the audio track while scrolling, which is really nice when you're editing digital audio (since you can easily find where to splice). But 70 bucks is too rich for my blood when I can do my editing with free tools like Audacity and the (now end-of-lifed) WireTap Pro. Still, I'm going to miss the audible editing cues when the trial runs out. Sign...

* Who knew Mentos and Diet Coke would provide a great demonstration of the physics of nucleation? And yes we tried this at home yesterday (I might have to post the footage when I have a moment). ]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:34:09 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080107203409/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080107195107/index.html Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:51:07 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080107195107/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080105105642/index.html Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:00:42 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080105105642/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080101005408/index.html Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:54:08 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20080101005408/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071231182158/index.html As promised last week, preview here. It's about 27 minutes and I'm not done with it, but this file provides a pretty good idea of where the piece is going. Parts of it are really quiet, so if you don't hear much going on, crank up the volume a bit. ]]> Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:21:58 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071231182158/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071230231945/index.html Thanks to LinkedIn, I managed to come across and link to the profile of Robert Voisey, who runs an online new music collective called Vox Novus. I noticed that several folks I know of are members and have links to their works on the Vox Novus site, so I figured I'd join the party. My page has some links to my music, and I'll be interested in seeing how Vox Novus progresses over time. The more sites that actively mention, promote and provide access to new music, the better. ]]> Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:19:45 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071230231945/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071228075741/index.html Steve Layton, who did such an awesome alternative realization of my 80's piece textbook: music of descending landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS), took a fancy to darfur pogrommen and did his own realization with electronic organs and vibes. It sounds great, and Steve also took one or two minor liberties in the last few minutes to extend the piece, so I guess he liked it 8-)

I also uploaded a very slightly revised version of the realization I did in Reason 4.0 that fixes a few incorrectly tied beats in the bass line during the first few minutes (not sure how that happened, since the MIDI output seems fine), and that version is here. There are now three realizations of this piece for open instrumentation, and if you're really taken with it, could listen to these versions end-to-end in just around 2 1/2 hours. ]]> Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:57:41 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071228075741/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071226093933/index.html Classical Discoveries, a music program on Princeton University's WPRB-FM, will be featuring 24 hours of new music beginning Thursday, December 27th at 6 PM EST and ending on Friday at 6 PM. Sometime around 3 PM on Friday, Marvin has let me know that he will be airing the recording of my string quartet piece mf as performed by the Rangzen Quartet. It's a very nice performance, and I'm glad it's getting more air time (it's also been played on Richard Friedman's awesome new music program Music from Other Minds on KALW-FM in San Francisco). The broadcast will be streamed, so anyone outside of the range of the station can listen.

Ending the year with new music is always a great idea. On that note, I'm well into a new work for violin and piano. While it is not finished and what I've written still has some rough edges, I might post a preview later this week.

So please listen to WPRB during its new music marathon. Any station that programs new music is to be welcomed, since this stuff needs to be heard and enjoyed more often. ]]> Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:39:33 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071226093933/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071223162058/index.html Just after arriving back home from an overnight trip to an indoor water park in the Poconos (it's our third time there---very surreal being in a water park with all this snow outside and below freezing temperatures), a friend of mine came over and gave me a copy of a DVD by Anna Baltzer entitled Life in Occupied Palestine. Anna is an American member of the tribe who has been documenting abuses against the Palestinians under occupation.

I'm looking forward to watching it, and am reminded of a recent thread I was involved in on sermo.com, a physician-only forum, in which several physicians were discussing the recent issue involving a British teacher in Sudan who was arrested and sentenced to public flogging for allowing her students to name a stuffed animal “Muhammed.” I had no objections whatsoever to anyone on the forum taking offense at the treatment of this teacher (who fortunately was finally pardoned by the Sudanese government and urgently flown back to the UK for good), so long as it was on the basis of freedom of speech and the inherent intolerance shown by religion in general. But several physicians, and one in particular, went on a rant about how Islam is largely a religion of violence, that Muslims preach hatred and tolerate terrorism, etc. I weighed in over and over again that Islam is hardly unique in terms of being misinterpreted in a way that permits violence, nor is it the only Western religion that has committed acts of intolerance. I brought up the Inquisition, the Crusades, the actions of several Popes who forced Jews to live in ghettoes, etc. But that largely fell on deaf ears. These people believe that a large majority of Muslims are out to convert the West to Islam, destroy whole cities, bring gloom and doom, etc. It's amazing any of them can get out of bed in the morning, since the paranoia and fear must be overwhelming.

That this is what several physicians believe really concerns me, since I had hoped that it was just the mindless Ann Coulter types out there who held such fundamentally ignorant and intolerant beliefs. But I'm apparently mistaken. I was accused of being a liberal apologist for Islam, and by suggesting we try to at least understand what is motivating terrorism, I was accused of excusing it. That's nonsense. As physicians, we try to understand what are the root causes of medical errors, and I've never heard of any physician involved in such efforts as being an apologist for medical misadventures. So I'm not at all sure I understand how trying to understand why some fundamentalist Muslims are so angry at the US that they would blow themselves up is condoning their acts of violence.

The reality is, no one is trying to commit terrorism against Iceland as far as I know. And to my knowledge, Iceland is also a Western democracy. So the perception that terrorists are doing all their stuff because they hate our democracy just isn't ringing true. They're doing their violent acts because they hate our policies. And it just happens that they are willing to pervert their religion to justify their acts. Christianity certainly has done this, and the same is true of Judaism. Acts of violence are incompatible with most religious teaching and should be condemned. But let's not single out Islam, as much as I am appalled by many of the recent acts of violence and intolerance (such as the recent sentencing of a rape victim in Saudi Arabia, who also ended up being pardoned after an appropriate world outcry). I'd rather suggest that religion is generally associated with violence and intolerance, regardless of the religion. I could probably even dig up some badness on the part of some fundamentalist Taoists, although I've never heard the term “fundamentalism” and “Taoism” in the same sentence. And while I'm at it, could some right-wing folks give up their use of the term “Islamofascism?” Fundamentalism is bad, period, but equating Islamic fundamentalists with fascism shows an ignorance of both Islam and fascism. The terrorists are some pretty bad people, but fascists? Really? As Paul Krugman wrote in the NYT, “Islamofascism” is a figment of the neoconservative mind.
]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2007 16:20:58 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071223162058/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071223113938/index.html 1. Fake Steve Jobs is in trouble. Just as Apple closed down Think Secret, they're apparently going after Fake Steve's blog claiming that on three occasions he published "trade secrets." Like predicting that there would be only one button on the iPhone. Stuff like that. Big whoop. At first, I thought this was a joke by FSJ himself, but now it really does appear to be real. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by Apple. Fake Steve's blog, which has been on overdrive lately, makes me laugh at least several times a day. Nothing else, other than The Daily Show, manages to do that for me, and TDS is still in hiatus due to the writer's strike. Not that anyone from Apple will read this, but my message to the real Steve Jobs would be: stop being a frigtard already. Leave Fake Steve alone and peace out already.

2. As I've said multiple times before, iBlog is probably toast. A new version has been in the works for something like two years now, and it seems to have been derailed due to some major issues with Leopard. I'm writing this in iBlog 1, and while it works fine, I've long wanted a new and improved version that would deal with several limitations inherent in the current application. Development has been on again, off again for months, and while it now might be "on again," I'm not holding my breath. I've seen this sort of thing with open-source applications (such as Camino) that had very limited development support, but this is a commercial product, not OSS. It's a bummer, and I'll continue using iBlog 1 for now. But eventually, I'll probably have to bite the bullet and go to WordPress or something like it. I've looked at the possibility of exporting my 539 blog entries to WP, but it ain't pretty...

3. Been listening to a lot of Stockhausen's music lately, not surprisingly, given his recent death. I'm saddened by any composer's death, and am glad to see all the outpourings of positive comments, even bordering on canonization on the Web. Indeed, there are many people whose musical outlooks were transformed by Stockhausen's experiments. However, with no disrespect intended, I'm going to confess that I never much had the same transformational experience with his music, albeit with a few exceptions. I like Stimmung, although it's a bit similar to music by Meredith Monk and a few other downtown composers (I have two different recordings, including the latest one by Paul Hillier and the Theatre of Voices). I used to really like to follow the score of Kontra-punkte when I was young, and would love to hear it again, except that it is almost nowhere to be found except through Stockhausen's site and perhaps a few other sources, and is prohibitively expensive (Stockhausen's page charges $18 just to place an order). No question that Stockhausen was a very important composer. But I'd be less than honest if I didn't say that I'm in agreement with those who raised questions about his work being taken too seriously. I've listened to Gesang der Jünglinge multiple times, and while it's interesting, I don't agree with those who have expressed the opinion that it is the greatest work of electronic music ever. It doesn't do anything for me in the way that, say, Pauline Oliveros's I of IV or Reich's It's Gonna Rain do. Or any of a number of other pieces. Same with Stockhausen's other works like Mantra or Hymnen, although there are parts of Mantra that are very compelling. Klavierstücke IX is a takeoff of La Monte Young's X for Henry Flynt, for example. It's a nice piece, but I don't find it as original. So while Stockhausen is an important composer, my opinion of Stockhausen's music is closer to that of Feldman's. I'm sure there are going to be some out there (among the five people who actually read this blog) who will accuse me of new music heresy. But I think the point of writing a blog is to be honest, even if the opinions expressed aren't going to fly with many others. And I do listen to Stockhausen's music, so he fares better in my iTunes collection than, say, Carter or Babbitt.

4. Just finished Israel's Secret Wars by Ian Black and the Israeli revisionist historian Benny Morris. It's out of date by now, but still is fascinating reading. What amazes me is how all these governments really do repeat their past mistakes. The section on the 1982 Lebanon incursion reads just like the 2006 Lebanese War---same mistakes, same problems, etc.

5. Staying home for the holidays, and hopefully will have some time to get more work done on a new work for violin and piano. I'm trying to dump the sequencer file from Reason 4 into notation via Finale, which unfortunately is a painstaking process, but it's coming along little by little.

6. I've come to prefer the Reason 4 version of darfur pogrommen compared with the (at times stuttering) realization through Finale and my KS-32 synthesizer. I've posted the MIDI file, so anyone can create their own realization---it's an open instrumentation piece, so there are a multiplicity of possible versions. ]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2007 11:39:38 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071223113938/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071215005753/index.html Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:57:53 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071215005753/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071214083430/index.html I wasn't happy with the latest audio file of my new piece darfur pogrommen. For some reason, perhaps because I imported a MIDI file into Finale 2008 of an improvisation I did in Reason (which is how much of the piece was composed), some of the playback was erratic, with skipped notes and irregular beats. A steady stream of eighth notes, as occurs at the beginning and end of the piece, should playback more or less steady. This wasn't.

Fortunately with Finale, one can go in and clear the MIDI data, which I did. The MIDI file I'm listening to now is pretty good, and I actually like how the piece sounds on a piano (the default QuickTime sound), although it needs something that can sustain notes in some parts. So what I'm going to do is dump it back into Reason 4 and add some instruments in the coming days, and hopefully get a really nice combination of instruments (?piano, vibraphone, strings, electric bass) that won't be plagued by inaccurate rhythmic playback. We'll see what happens. If anyone is interested in playing around and making their own realization, which I always encourage, the MIDI file is here.

Reason 4's sequencer is ok. Better, I suppose, than Reason 3, but it's still not the easiest or most intuitive thing to use. Still, it's really cool to have a virtual rack on my iBook. ]]> Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:34:30 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071214083430/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071211003058/index.html Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:30:58 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071211003058/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071201103333/index.html I finally had an opportunity to make a decent MP3 file of my newest piece for open instrumentation. After toying around with my KS-32 synth to have the work played by a Farfisa organ, marimba, bass guitar, strings and a variety of other instruments in combination, I wasn't as happy with the results as I'd like due to the inherent limitations of my synthesizer, so I went with a string orchestra patch that I had used before on earlier drafts of the piece. There are a few areas in the beginning where there are very slight irregularities or skips in the stream of continuous eighth notes. I attributed this to FInale 2008's inherent ability to work against me when recording my music, as is the case with every version of Finale since 2004. However, while Finale does continue to have its issues with playback, I suspect that the MIDI data are getting messed up somehow because parts of this piece were imported in as a MIDI dump from Reason 3, and I hypothesize that Reason's MIDI doesn't play along as well with that of Finale. No idea if this is really the case, but most of the work was step-entered in straight from my synth to Finale, and does not suffer any irregularities.

That one small caveat in mind, the recording is now up on the music site, and can be directly downloaded for the grand price of $0.00 here. The score is here.

Next up, a piece for violin and piano I originally thought of doing as a solo piano work, and may even develop it as two different arrangements (since both of these work). ]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:33:33 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071201103333/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071129214215/index.html Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:42:15 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071129214215/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/blog/C1162157567/E20071123084754/index.html