Tag: The Breakfast Club

It’s been a bad week for Marine Mammals.

Icelandic plan to ship whale meat to Japan angers environmentalists

AFP

Tuesday 19 May 2015 13.41 EDT

The Icelandic whaling company Hvalur HF plans to ship 1,700 tonnes of whale meat via Luanda in Angola, repeating a similar controversial delivery of 2,000 tonnes last year which sparked protests along its route.

…

Iceland and Norway are the only nations which openly defy the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC’s) 1986 ban on hunting whales.

Icelandic whalers caught 137 fin whales and 24 minkes in 2014, according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), an anti-whaling group – compared with 134 fin whales and 35 minkes in 2013.

Japan has used a legal loophole in the ban that allows it to continue hunting the animals in order to gather scientific data.

But it has never made a secret of the fact that the whale meat from these hunts often ends up on dining tables.

Consumption of whale meat in Japan has fallen sharply in recent years while polls indicate that few Icelanders regularly eat it.

Yup, Japan has warehouses full of whale meat nobody wants to eat and they can’t sell.  Now there may be a very thin and specious argument about the necessity of keeping a domestic whaling industry for the financial benefit of the whalers (though simply paying them off would be cheaper and easier), but what the heck is the reason to import it?

Dolphin-hunting Japanese town may start farming them on the side

Reuters

Thu May 21, 2015 12:47pm IST

A Japanese town notorious for killing dolphins may set up a dolphin breeding farm after zoos and aquariums decided to stop buying their animals caught in the wild, but it has no plans to halt the controversial hunt, its mayor said on Thursday.

The western port town of Taiji, the location of an annual hunt featured in the Oscar-winning 2009 documentary “The Cove”, may suffer a loss of income because of the Wednesday decision, which Japanese officials said came in response to foreign pressure.

The decision by Japan’s zoos and aquariums came after the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums threatened Japan with expulsion unless it stopped buying dolphins from Taiji. That would have meant Japan might lose access to zoo animals such as elephants and giraffes from overseas.

In 2013, 1,239 dolphins were caught in the Taiji hunt, according to the Fisheries Agency. Most of them were killed for their meat but 172 were sold alive, mainly overseas, at a price of at least $8,200 each.

…

“We plan to protect our fishermen, who have authority from both the nation and the local government,” Sangen said, emphasising the tradition of the hunt.

“We believe it can become the world’s main provider. I believe in 10 years our town will have changed its role in all this.”

Despite the bid to develop the live-animal business, the hunt would still go on, he said.

Like the legal market in ivory, this is simply another way to enable poaching.

Study Links Dolphin Deaths to Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR, The New York Times

MAY 20, 2015

The findings are the latest results from the Deepwater Horizon National Resource Damage Assessment, an ongoing investigation by NOAA into the spill, the largest offshore oil spill in United States history. Combined with previous studies by the agency, this paper provides additional support to a link between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and mass dolphin deaths in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

“The evidence to date indicates that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused the adrenal and lung lesions that contributed to the deaths of this unusual mortality event,” said Stephanie Venn-Watson, a researcher with the National Marine Mammal Foundation who was the lead author of the report. “We reached that conclusion based on the accumulation of our studies including this paper,” she added.

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A third of the Gulf Coast dolphins had a thinned or damaged adrenal gland cortex compared with only 7 percent of the so-called reference dolphins, the researchers said.

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The researchers also found that about a fifth of the Gulf Coast dolphins had lung lesions caused by bacterial pneumonia, and that 70 percent of that group died because of that condition. Only 2 percent of the reference dolphins had any trace of bacterial pneumonia.

The researchers said that the dolphins most likely inhaled the fumes from the petroleum products on the ocean surface. They added that exposure to oil fumes is one of the most common causes of chemical inhalation injury in other animals.

“These dolphins had some of the most severe lung lesions I have ever seen in wild dolphins throughout the United States,” Dr. Colegrove said.

Below you will find a report from The Guardian on the close ties between the British government and BP and Shell.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Stone Tools From Kenya Are Oldest Yet Discovered, By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times
• For an Octopus, Seeing the Light Doesn’t Require Eyes, by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times
• Retraction Sought in Study on Views of Gay Marriage, By BENEDICT CAREY and PAM BELLUCK, The New York Times
• Spacecraft sailing on sunbeams begins test flight, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Amazing Waves Discovered in Deep-Ocean Trench, by Becky Oskin, Live Science
• Rare Supernova Burst Shines Light on Its Mysterious Origins, by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com
• Scientists Create Liquid Metal Antenna, by Sci-News.com
• A practical history of plane hacking: Beyond the hype and hysteria, By Violet Blue, ZDNet
• Tech Giants Urge Obama to Reject Policies That Weaken Encryption, By NICOLE PERLROTH, The New York Times
• Mozilla gags, but supports video copy protection in Firefox 38, By Gregg Keizer, CITEWorld

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Charles Lindbergh begins his trans-Atlantic flight; Amelia Earhart starts her trek across the Atlantic; Freedom Riders attacked in the South; Explorer Christopher Columbus, comedienne Gilda Radner die.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Gilda Radner

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Actress Marilyn Monroe sings a sultry ‘Happy Birthday’ to President John F. Kennedy; Black militant Malcolm X born; Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis dies; The Who’s Pete Townshend born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

A fool and his money are soon elected.

Will Rogers

I’m extremely happy that I’ve finally dismissed Wagner who was no more than a third rate hack with no talent except for shameless self promotion (hey, it takes one to know one), but he codified The 3 Rules of Opera in a way that led Chuck Jones to create the best cartoon of all time (I’d embed it, but it never stays up for long).

Sung by Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht, and Bugs Bunny (from Flatbush Brooklyn by most accounts though some say the Bronx or even shudder Poughkeepsie New Joisey), there are Three Acts and as I recall it goes a little something like this (Elmer in Italics, Bugs in Normal; Singing Centered, Spoken Left Justified)-

Be vewy quiet I’m hunting wabbitsWabbit tracks!!!Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbitKill the rabbit?Yo ho to oh! Yo ho to oh! Yo ho…O mighty warrior of great fighting stockMight I inquire to ask, eh, what’s up doc??I’m going to kill the wabbit!!Oh mighty hunter t’will be quite a taskHow will you do it, might I inquire to ask??I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!Your spear and magic helmet?Spear & magic helmet!Magic helmet?Magic helmet!(Dismissively) Magic helmetYes, magic helmet, and I’ll give you a sample

Stage direction: General Devastation

Bye

That was the wabbit!!!

Stage direction: Bugs Cross Dressed

Oh Brunhilda, you’re so wuvelyYes I know it I can’t help itOh Brunhilda be my wuveReturn my wuve a longing burns deep inside meReturn my love I want you always beside meWuve like ours must beMade for you and for me(Harmony) Return won’t you return my love for my love is yours

Stage direction: You tip your hat to this Teuton son and all them ears come out from underneath

I’ll kill the wabbit!Arise stormsNorth winds blow, south winds blowTyphoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, SMOG!Flash lightning strike the wabbitWhat have I done?? I’ve killed the wabbit…Poor little bunny, poor little wabbit…

Well what did you expect in an opera, a happy ending???

That HTML is more complicated than it looks.

Now you might suspect this is the introduction to some Wagnerian Opus and I’ve already said it will be a cold day in Muspelheim.  He represents everything bad and overblown about Romantic Art Music.  No, it’s simply to remind you of The 3 Rules of Opera which are-

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

Today’s subject is Lucia di Lammermoor, also Romantic but from a time when Wagner was a struggling nobody and Gaetano Donizetti was the last remaining “genius” of the Italian School after the death of Vincenzo Bellini and the retirement of Gioachino Rossini.

While the plot bears some similarity to a mashup of Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth it is in fact lifted from Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor.

Lucy Ashton’s (Lucia) family is feuding with the Ravenswoods.  She’s in love with Edgar Ravenswood (Edgardo) who is observed sneaking into the Castle by Norman (Normanno) who duly reports this to her brother Henry (Enrico) who is consumed with a deep and abiding hated of all things Ravenswood.

Lucy waits for Edgar by a fountain with her maid Lisa (Alisa) and tells her (or rather sings her because this is an Opera after all) that she has seen the ghost of a girl killed on the very same spot who was killed by a (now also dead) Ravenswood out of jealousy.  Lisa replies that this is an omen and Lucy really ought to ditch Edgar.  Edgar arrives and tells Lucy he must leave for France and that he hopes to convince Henry of his sincerity and marry before he goes.  Lucy says- ‘Are you nuts?’ and instead they exchange rings and pledge eternal love.

While Edgar is away, Henry arranges to marry Lucy off to Arthur (Arturo).  Worried she is still in love with Edgar (which is true), he shows her a forgery that ‘proves’ Edgar has forgotten her and is shacking up with someone else.  He leaves it to her old pastor Raymond (Raimondo) to make the argument that she should go through with this for the good of the family.

Arthur arrives to pick up his bride Lucy but she’s behaving, umm…, erraticly.  Edgar assures Arthur she’s just upset over the death of her Mom.  Arthur signs on the dotted line and Lucy follows reluctantly.  At that point Edgar shows up and Raymond steps in and shows Lucy’s signature on the contract.  He yells at her (well, sings, you know) and demands she return his ring and takes hers and tramples it on the floor.  At this point the bouncers show him the street.

Henry is still pissed and challenges Edgar to a duel.  He tells Edgar she is already doing it with Arthur and likes it very much thank you.  Edgar replies- ‘I’m going to kick your ass’.

Well, Lucy is not enjoying it and has killed Arthur.  Raymond comes in and tells everyone what she has done and proclaims her ‘Mad’.  Then Lucy shows up and cops an insanity defense, singing passionately of an imagined happy life with Edgar.  Henry enters and is at first enraged and then softens as he becomes convinced his sister truly is insane.  She collapses and Raymond blames Norman for the whole tragedy.

And now, dear reader, I’ll ask you to pause.

Is Lucy dead?

Mental Illness is a bad thing and very real, leading you to suicidal and homocidal impulses and self destructive behaviors, but it doesn’t generally strike you down like a brain aneurysm unless that’s what caused it.  There’s no reason to think Lucy’s actions anything but rational (if a bit psychotic) in today’s culture.  Sure juries find people like that guilty and pack them off to the pen or execute them all the time, but they’re not stricken down by the lightning bolts of Zeus or the Hand of God.  Keep that in mind as I tell you what happens next.

Edgar has resolved to die in order to kill Henry.  He hears of Lucy’s sudden breakdown and then instead of Henry, Raymond appears and tells him Lucy is dead.  Edgar stabs himself fatally so he can be reunited with Lucy in Heaven.

Hmm…, ironic and gruesome enough for you?

“Don’t stop, belie“.

Embedding disabled by request.  Told you things don’t stay up.

My personal theory is that Henry, still hating Edgar and the Ravenswoods as much as ever and unwilling to risk a duel with a kamikaze, sends Raymond out just to provoke the reaction he got.  Does he marry Lucy off to someone else?  Does he send her to a nunnery?  Does she commit suicide herself?  Henry is evil through and through and is not above doing anything to get what he wants.

At this point I don’t care either.  It’s been two and a half hours and my butt is sore and I gotta pee.

Sure Il dolce suono is considered one of the greatest arias ever and is a staple of every famous soprano you’ve ever heard of except for Tony, but it’s Scene 2 of the Third Act!

I suppose you can linger over dessert and get that second cup of coffee without guilt.  You won’t miss anything important.  Oh, and don’t bother sticking around for the last credit to roll in Age of Ultron either.  Once Thanos says he’ll do it himself it’s Third Grips and Craft Services until they close the curtains.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Lots of bad environmental news this week.  I don’t really know much about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) so I’ll let the pieces speak for themselves.

Bees Are Dying and We’ll All Pay for It

Kiona Smith-Strickland, Gizmodo

5/13/15 3:55pm

Bee colonies are still dying, and food may get more expensive as a result.

Beekeepers in the U.S. lost 42.1 percent of their bee colonies between April 2014 and April 2015, according to a recent annual survey. Those losses continue a trend of die offs among bee colonies, which beekeepers say could drastically affect our food supply.

Without bees to pollinate crops, we stand to lose many staple foods that we eat every day, from apples and tomatoes, to onions and berries.

…

Winter losses tell only part of the story. In fact, U.S. beekeepers lost enough colonies during the last two summers to make up for the improvements in winter losses. Last summer, about 27.4 percent of colonies died out. Large-scale commercial beekeepers, those with more than 50 colonies, seem to be especially prone to losing bee colonies during the summer.

Why are bee colonies dying? Several reasons: sometimes they succumb to winter cold, and sometimes a colony falls prey to mites, viruses, or fungi. Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is one of the biggest problems, and it’s actually pretty creepy. Colonies that have succumbed to CCD are eerily deserted. The adult bees are gone, but there aren’t any bodies. It’s likely that the workers died elsewhere, but they left with unhatched young in the brood chamber, ample supplies of food in the hive, and the queen all alone in the hive.

Researchers think CCD is the product of an unfortunate combination of pesticides, parasites, pathogens, and nutritional problems caused by less diversity and availability of sources of pollen and nectar. Any of those causes could also contribute to more ordinary kinds of colony loss.

A Sharp Spike in Honeybee Deaths Deepens a Worrisome Trend

By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times

MAY 13, 2015

In an annual survey released on Wednesday by the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of universities and research laboratories, about 5,000 beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies in the 12-month period that ended in April. That is well above the 34.2 percent loss reported for the same period in 2013 and 2014, and it is the second-highest loss recorded since year-round surveys began in 2010.

Most striking, however, was that honeybee deaths spiked last summer, exceeding winter deaths for the first time. Commercial beekeepers, some of whom rent their hives to farmers during pollination seasons, were hit especially hard, the survey’s authors stated.

“We expect the colonies to die during the winter, because that’s a stressful season,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant entomology professor at the University of Maryland who directs the survey for the bee partnership. “What’s totally shocking to me is that the losses in summer, which should be paradise for bees, exceeded the winter losses.”

…

Dr. vanEngelsdorp said increasingly poor nutrition could be a factor in the rising summer death rate. Rising crop prices have led farmers to plow and plant millions of acres of land that was once home to wildflowers; since 2007, an Agriculture Department program that pays farmers to put sensitive and erosion-prone lands in a conservation reserve has lost an area roughly equal to half of Indiana, and budget cuts promise to shrink the program further. Dr. vanEngelsdrop and other scientists cite two other factors at work in the rising death rate: a deadly parasite, the varroa mite, and pesticides.

In recent years, some experts have focused on neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides used almost universally on some major crops in the United States. The European Commission has banned the use of three variants of the pesticide on flowering plants, citing risks to bees, and questioned whether they should be used at all.

Honeybees dying, situation ‘unheard of’

By Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post

May 14 at 3:11 AM

Just last year, it seemed there was something to celebrate despite planet Earth’s ongoing honeybee apocalypse: Bee colony losses were down. Not by enough, but they were down.

…

“One year does not make a trend,” Jeff Pettis, a co-author of the survey who heads the federal government’s bee research laboratory in Beltsville, Md., told the New York Times.

Turns out Pettis was right. VanEngelsdorp and other researchers at the Bee Informed Partnership, affiliated with the Department of Agriculture, just announced more than 40 percent of honeybee hives died this past year, as the Associated Press reported. The number is preliminary, but is the second-highest annual loss recorded to date.

“What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems,” study co-author Keith Delaplane of the University of Georgia told the AP. “We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”

…

The state worst affected was Oklahoma, which lost more than 60 percent of its hives. Hawaii escaped relatively unscathed, losing less than 14 percent.

“Most of the major commercial beekeepers get a dark panicked look in their eyes when they discuss these losses and what it means to their businesses,” Pennsylvania State University entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster, who didn’t participate in the survey, said. Her state lost more than 60 percent of its colonies.

The USDA estimated that honeybees add more than $15 billion to the value of the country’s crops per year.

“If losses continue at the 33 percent level, it could threaten the economic viability of the bee pollination industry,” the department said. “Honey bees would not disappear entirely, but the cost of honey bee pollination services would rise, and those increased costs would ultimately be passed on to consumers through higher food costs. Now is the time for research into the cause and treatment of CCD before CCD becomes an agricultural crisis.”

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• U.S. Will Allow Drilling for Oil in Arctic Ocean, By CORAL DAVENPORT, The New York Times
• Alaska’s Tricky Intersection of Obama’s Energy and Climate Legacies, By CORAL DAVENPORT, The New York Times
• Shell’s Record Adds to the Anger of Those Opposing Arctic Drilling, By JOHN SCHWARTZ and CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times
• Seattle Port Votes to Delay Drilling Rigs on the Way to Alaska, By KIRK JOHNSON, The New York Times
• Port Of Seattle Votes To Delay Arrival Of Shell Oil Rigs, But The Fight’s Not Over Yet, by Natasha Geiling, Think Progress
• Deep-water drilling to resume near site of 2010 BP oil disaster, Al Jazeera
• Enbridge, Michigan settle over 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, by Renee Lewis, Al Jazeera
• Arctic drilling for ‘extreme oil’ is risky – and letting Shell do the work is reckless, by Cindy Shogan, The Guardian
• Fear of Ruin as Disease Takes Hold of Italy’s Olive Trees, By JIM YARDLEY, The New York Times
• First collision data from a new detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, by Jon Butterworth, The Guardian
• Large Hadron Collider Detects Extremely Rare Particle Decay Predicted By Standard Model, By Avaneesh Pandey, International Business Times (autoplay ad)
• Crew Change on International Space Station Is Delayed, By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR, The New York Times
• Sarah Brightman cancels trip to the International Space Station, By Martin Chilton, The Telegraph
• A Grisly Find Under a Supermarket Illuminates France’s Medieval History, By AURELIEN BREEDEN, The New York Times
• Gold-Filled Tomb of Chinese ‘Survivor’ Mom Discovered, by Owen Jarus, Live Science
• PHOTON SPACE SAIL successfully Kickstarted into orbit, by Richard Chirgwin, The Register
• All 5 of Pluto’s Known Moons Spied by NASA Probe (Photo), by Mike Wall, Space.com
• Mercury got very old magnetic field: NASA, By: Parham Dolati, Young Herald
• Oxygen on Mars to Make Human Missions ‘Lighter’, AFP
• New details emerge about Ceres’ bright spots, by Laurel Kornfeld, The Space Reporter
• New type of star cluster spotted in neighboring galaxy, by Kathy Fey, The Space Reporter
• New Dinosaur Is Velociraptor’s Cousin, And It May Have Been Even More Dangerous, By Ed Mazza, The Huffington Post

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Pope John Paul II shot; English colonists arrive at what becomes Jamestown; Winston Churchill gives his first speech as British prime minister; The U.S. declares war on Mexico; Singer Stevie Wonder born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Winston Churchill

I actually have a cousin (of some sort, it’s not a close relationship and it’s a branch of the family we don’t have much communication with) who played in Carnegie Hall and as the dedicated East Coasters (practically everyone else lives in the mid or farther West) we received invitations to be part of the rooting section.

Well, this was interesting.  I don’t recall much about my first visit (there must have been, we didn’t skimp on the cultural stuff), so when we went to the city (there is only one) and met with the immediate relatives at their hotel room that was not just tiny but very, very expensive, it was a novelty.

Soon enough it was time to unpack the sardines and head to the big show where we spent a very informative interlude at the museum which was already quite high enough for me.  Oh, have I mentioned I suffer from severe acrophobia?  It’s not that I can’t, it’s that it is very disturbing and difficult.  Anyway, as the designated ‘country cousins’ we got the extra tickets which happened to be in the uttermost nosebleed section next to the rail.  And the chairs were canted forward so you could get a good view of the stage.

So I can fairly describe the overall sensation for me as being dangled off the precipice of a bottomless pit, except of course for that well lit stop at the end.

After courageously assessing the situation I informed my family I would be watching from the aisle and I went to the nosebleed lobby and told the usher of my decision to which she repiled, in a very sympathetic way mind you, “Yeah, we get a lot of that.  Do you need to sit down?  A paper bag?”  So I, at various points, got as close as I dared and stared at the ants of whom I would hardly have recognized my cousin with binoculars because, as I said, our families weren’t that close and I barely knew him.

After that we went out with my Aunt (again not a blood relative) for my first experience of Thai where I was not really able to tell what dishes contained Bell Peppers (I’m EpiPen allergic).  Thank goodness peanuts are ok.  Ah, I could go on and on, this Aunt told my Dad not to mention his brother’s death days before at her Marathon party because it would ruin the vibe.  Her daughter (not at all the same cousin) has been on The New York Times Best Seller list twice and I’m terribly jealous…

I have issues, but everyone is damaged in some way and what you strive for is high functioning.  So you want to play in Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.

Which brings us to Études.

Études are an artifact of the late Romantic period which are deliberately designed to be difficult to perform to showcase the virtuosity of the performers so musicians use them to practice.  Since many of the great composers were also outstanding performers, they would write Études for warm up pieces before their concerts.  They were frequently written for piano which is the most complete instrument and the easiest to orchestrate and transpose for other instruments.

Among the more obscure composers whos works are still regularly used are Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi while some of the better known ones are Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy,

The Debussy ones are particularly interesting and often performed together as a part of a concert program.  Liner notes–

Book One

• I. Pour les cinq doigts (after Czerny)
• II. Pour les tierces (2:52)
• III. Pour les quartes (6:28)
• IV. Pour les sixtes (12:06)
• V. Pour les octaves (16:23)
• VI. Pour les huit doigts (19:35)

Book Two

• VII. Pour les degrés chromatiques (21:08)
• VIII. Pour les agréments (23:15)
• IX. Pour les notes répétées (28:13)
• X. Pour les sonorites opposées (31:35)
• XI. Pour les arpèges composés 2 (36:57)
• XII. Pour les accords (41:48)

Early in 1915, disheartened by the menace of World War I and gravely ill with cancer, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) nevertheless managed to compose. The fruits of his labors, 12 Etudes (study pieces or exercises), would be his last important works for solo piano, and would represent a distillation of the composer’s musical legacy. It was appropriate for Debussy — the most original composer for the piano since Franz Liszt — to join the ranks of etude composers. Equally fitting was his dedication of his two volumes to Frederick Chopin, noting that the serious nature of the exercises was offset by a charm reminiscent of the earlier master.

The etudes are divided into two books, each different in conception. Book I is devoted to exploring the technical problems and musical possibilities inherent in different intervals (thirds, sixths, etc.), while Book II engages in the exploration of musical syntax and style. In all, the etudes are witty, challenging, and inspired. Though academic in nature — and perhaps less easily digested than other of Debussy’s works — they fall closely on the heels of his popular Préludes and Images, and reflect the same aesthetic concerns: complex harmonies, fragmented melodic lines, and colorful textures.

The first etude of Book I, “Pour les ‘cinq doigts’-d’apres Monsieur Czerny” (For Five Fingers-after Mr. Czerny), is inspired by the five-finger exercises of Carl Czerny. Debussy pantomimes the pedantic works by placing figurations in grotesque juxtaposition and introducing bizarre modulations. “Pour les Tierces” (For Thirds) presents an extraordinary variety of patterns in parallel thirds, excepting those already encountered in “Tièrces alternées” from the second book of Préludes. “Pour les Quartes” (For Fourths) exercises the pianists ability in parallel fourths. Almost needless to say, quartal harmony abounds, making this etude more tonally adventurous than many of the others. “Pour les Sixtes” (For Sixths) is a slow and meditative work with two fast interludes, and one forte interruption. “Pour les Octaves” (For Octaves) combines chromaticism, whole-tone harmonies and complex syncopation. Probably the most brilliant etude of both books, it is equally difficult to play. “Pour les huit doigts” (For Eight Fingers) is meant to be performed (the composer’s suggestion) without the use of the thumbs, due to the division of the figuration into four-note scale patterns. It finds humor in its rigid insistence on four-note groupings and sudden ending.

Book II begins with “Pour les degrés chromatiques” (For Chromatic Intervals), an essay in the use of the chromatic scale, both compositionally and technically. “Pour les agréments” (For Ornaments) is one of the most fiendishly difficult works in the repertoire. The entire fabric of the music is created by juxtaposing musical embellishments, arpeggiations, and miniature cadenza-like passages. “Pour les notes répétées” (For Repeated Notes) requires a performer able to execute repeated tones with great rapidity while still maintaining the piece’s humorous, scherzando atmosphere. One wry melodic fragment balances the otherwise relentlessly staccato texture. “Pour les sonorités opposées” (For Opposing Sonorities) emphasizes the kind of multiple-layered textures found earlier in the second set of Images and many of the préludes. “Pour les arpéges composés” (For Composed, or Written-out, Arpeggios), easily the best-known of all the etudes, redefines the arpeggio to include a variety of non-harmonic tones (such as the added second or the added ninth). “Pour les accords” (For Chords), is probably the nearest thing to a Romantic virtuoso piece that Debussy ever produced. Mammoth in conception and brutally difficult, this etude juxtaposes relentless perpetual motion with an almost uncomfortably still middle section. A truncated reprise precedes a driving conclusion that puts even the most skilled performer to a grueling test, both technically and interpretively.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

I think I should make it clear up front that I’m not a big fan of self driving anything and part of it is because I’m a programmer.  The wonder of computers is not that they screw up (Blue Screen of Death anyone?), it’s that they work at all.

In many respects I’ve had an advantage in the applications I’ve created because I’ve rolled my own from User Interface to Processing Input to Formating Reports and I intimately know each of the variables and the transformations they’ve been subjected to.

Mistakes are easy to make at each stage of the process producing unexpected results that must always be tested to make sure they conform with reality.

There are at least 3 primary points of failure (the examples I provide are just that, examples, nor is this list intended to be comprehensive).

• Unexpected Input- If I ask you for a number and you type in ‘Strawberry’ what do I do?
• Unintended Consequences- I accept unlimited input (High Frequency Trading) and I overflow the limitations of my infrastructure or reporting capabilities (Flash Crash).
• Cloning of Errors- Every copy of a program is exactly the same, so a single error is duplicated in every installation.

This is why, though modern planes are theoretically capable of landing themselves and have (under test conditions), we insist that they have not only a pilot, but a co-pilot and flight engineer.  Now this is no safeguard against a crazy pilot locking everyone else out of the system and doing something suicidal (I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers) but it does mitigate against computer failure with the exception that the control systems must function as expected.

You read a lot of stories about pilots attempting emergency interventions that computers decide the airframe is not capable of.  How safe is that?  The human response is to try harder and most reports blame the pilot.  The aircraft crashes just the same, usually killing everyone on board.

Now extend the limited universe of planes to the wider universe of cars and trucks.  295,900 trucks in 2009 were involved in accidents.  Now I’m sure most of those may be blamed on intoxication or exhaustion and computers never get drunk or tired but while computer assisted flight controls have been extensively tested and refined but are still flawed, vehicle controls are in their infancy.

This is not a technology that is ready for prime time however much big trucking desires to fire all their drivers and send double trailer semis careening down our highways.

Hell, even trains have engineers and they run on rails.

Are you ready to get side swiped by a driverless truck into the guard rail and who will you blame?

Nevada clears self-driving 18-wheeler for testing on public roads

by Sam Thielman, The Guardian

Wednesday 6 May 2015 14.24 EDT

Drone trucks could soon be plying US highways after Nevada authorities on Wednesday granted a license to test self-driving trucks on public roads.

While companies such as Google and luxury brands like Lexus have dominated the headlines with advances in driverless cars, Daimler board member Wolfgang Bernhard told reporters autonomous trucks were likely to hit the roads first.

Daimler’s 18-wheel Inspiration has now been certified for use on public roads in the state, and yesterday the non-human (well, less-human) big rig rolled out across the Hoover Dam, negotiating some (but not all) turns and twists all by itself. For the tougher curves, it had some help from a driver inside the cab.

…

The licensing process was a lengthy one, said a Nevada department of motor vehicles spokesman, David Sierro. “I’m just getting out of the truck now,” he told the Guardian. “You’re talking about a series of different technologies; crash avoidance, blindsight, camera technology,” he said. “Rather than being a single autonomous [device] it’s a series of technologies they’re developing. They’re building it in an incremental way.”

Sierro said Daimler tested the truck on areas like the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the trucks could read pavement markings without endangering other drivers or pedestrians. “It’s fascinating to see how it’s reading the lines,” Sierro said. “When there’s something [too complex for the autopilot] coming up, there’s a warning that lets the driver know he’s going to have to take over.”

Tony Illia, of the Nevada department of transportation, said the state gave Daimler the option to start out simply. “There are huge stretches of empty, government-owned land [in Nevada],” he said. “Our population is centered in the Reno area and the Las Vegas area”, so trucks going between the two mostly have to navigate long straightaways. Daimler had a request of the Nevada government, too: “The one thing [Daimler] did ask was to brighten up the lane-striping and the buttons, to make sure they were clean and bright,” Illia said. “I think that helps the cameras on the truck.”

…

Companies like Lowell, Arkansas-based JB Hunt have reported a driver shortage across the country and are looking at consolidation in order to meet demand. The company is also worried about changing emissions standards for Class 8 trucks (that’s the class of truck demoed today, which Daimler says is more efficient), so a vehicle with a driver who has to do less work, or requires no driver at all, could provide companies like Hunt with a cost savings on labor.

“Could provide companies like Hunt with a cost savings on labor.”

There you go.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Ghostly Voices From Thomas Edison’s Dolls Can Now Be Heard, By RON COWEN, The New York Times
• Russian Spacecraft Nears a Fiery Re-Entry, By REUTERS
• Russia’s failed Progress spacecraft plunges into the Pacific Ocean, Reuters
• Under the Sea, a Missing Link in the Evolution of Complex Cells, by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times
• Grass-Roots Push in the Plains to Block the Keystone Pipeline’s Path, By MITCH SMITH, The New York Times
• How to solve Einstein’s Election Riddle: are you in that two per cent?, by Alex Bellos, The Guardian
• ‘Captain Kidd’s treasure’ found off Madagascar, by Jessica Elgot, The Guardian
• Far out, man: 13.1bn-year-old galaxy is most distant yet seen by humans, by Alan Yuhas, The Guardian
• Android ‘M’ could return privacy control to users, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian
• Hubble finds massive halo around the Andromeda Galaxy, by Marissa Gebhard, University of Notre Dame
• Science now helping to develop better chocolate, by Michelle Starr, CNet
• ALIEN HUNT: Water similar to life-bearing Earth lakes FOUND ON MOON of Saturn, by Alexander J. Martin, The Register
• The philosophy of privacy: why surveillance reduces us to objects, by Michael P. Lynch, The Guardian
• Sony should not be able to tell journalists what to print, by Trevor Timm, The Guardian
• Mercury’s mysterious magnetic past goes back 4 billion years, study finds, By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

The Lusitania sunk in World War I; Nazi Germany signs surrender in World War II; Vietnam’s Battle of Dien Bien Phu; Composer Peter Illych Tchaikovsky born; Glenn Miller records ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Robert Louis Stevenson