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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Here is a picture I am getting of the political landscape in the US right now. Bear in mind when reading it that I have been wrong about politics... Not sure exactly how often but way more frequently than not.
That said it seems to me like the wheels are really coming off the Southern strategy. I noted previously how the Republican racist innuendo tactics don't look like they're getting any traction -- tactics that have played a major role in not all, but several big national political contests I can remember. Frank Rich writes today (in an excellent column, I really recommend reading the whole thing) that "In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included." -- This statistic really makes me do a double-take. It makes "white men" seem like a Republican voting bloc, one that is crumbling. And it seems obvious to me based on (again bear in mind that my political literacy is lacking in some key ways) that this bloc has been maintained over the last three decades through appeal to various bigotries. The Republican party has been banking on the strength of ignorance and god willing, they are going to see their investments go down the drain.
The right wing is almost certainly scared that this is exactly what's happening. Take a look at Belle's examination of this fright playing out at the National Review. The Apostropher links to an examination of what's going on at the top levels of the Republican party. 2004 made me extremely leery of hubristic thinking about political victory; but I am hoping against hope that Nixonland's publication marked the beginning of the end of the phenomenon it describes.
(And just to note: I have been waiting for this thing to happen, the thing that I'm speculating is about to happen, since I was 13 years old or so. Wishing for it is a major part of my political consciousness; this is part of the reason I'm skeptical about my accuracy of analysis. And anyways, well, I can still hope for some simulacrum of my dream...)
posted morning of October 26th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Politics
I am finding In Hovering Flight to be very strongly a book about one single character, Scarlet; all the other figures seem to be present in service of her story. This is a pretty common state of affairs with novels, and not something I hold against the book; but it's striking me as odd that so much of the book is devoted to people who are not the primary character -- when I started Chapter Nine this evening I had an immediate reaction of "Oh yeah, now this feels like a novel again!" as Scarlet re-entered the picture, after a long expository section about Tom and Addie's history.
Also in Chapter Nine, beautiful timing:
The oriole's nest, that delicate, swinging pendulum woven from plant fiber and hair, made Scarlet cry every time she saw it. She could still see Richard's face as he held it up for everyone to view one evening at dinner, swinging it slowly back and forth and following it with his eyes, a look of rapture on his face.
"They must build it this way so the wind can rock it back and forth like this, to soothe the babies," he said as he watched the nest. "Like the cradle in the treetop."
Everyone smiled, enjoying the thought, and also Richard's obvious pleasure. No one said anything about how "Rock-a-Bye Baby" ends.
Sylvia has been absolutely absorbed with reading and listening to and watching the Harry Potter books and books-on-tape and movies for a couple of months now. This is my introduction to the series as well -- I am pretty familiar with the plots of books 1 and 6 now from hearing Sylvia's tapes repeatedly, and have a glancing knowledge of the rest of the series from her narration of the events. Somehow it's not really drawing me in to read them myself -- some interesting bits but the overall structure doesn't really appeal to me.
But I did recall having Pullman's His Dark Materials series recommended to me time and again, and that seemed like it would have enough points of similarity to Harry Potter to be generate interest quickly. So we've been starting to read that together over the last few days. Really nice language and plot, and Lyra's character is starting to come together. Sylvia's totally interested in the dæmons, what they are and what they do.
Here are a couple of funky covers of the disco classic.
Tragedy bill themselves as "the #1 heavy metal Bee-Gees tribute band" -- I'm willing to accept this claim at face value as I would never have dreamt of the category existing to begin with. They have some hot tunes; "Stayin' Alive" is my favorite of the ones I've listened to.
...And here is a cover by Ozzy Osbourne, Frank and Dweezil Zappa -- surprising me again: I had no idea any pair of these three had worked on a record together. (I also don't have any verification that it's true, beyond the YouTube caption -- obviously Ozzy is singing the verse and playing guitar, someone else is singing on the break -- possibly this is Zappa père and/or fils. A quick Google search turns up a lot of references to the record (though not all of them mention Frank Zappa being involved) but no dates or personnel information.)* Either way it kicks ass:
* Zappa-head Apostropher confirms this is not a Frank project; it is on Dweezil's 1991 record Confessions. Apo says Dweezil's "actually an excellent metal guitarist, though his guitar playing sounds really, really different from FZ's. There are several live shows where they play together, swapping solos and while they're both impressive, there's never any doubt who's who."
I realized a difference between my guitar playing and my fiddling while I was practicing today -- I approach the guitar from a framework of the music's structure, where I just go with the feel of it on violin. I don't have much clue of what measure I'm playing or often even where the beat is, when I'm playing melody on violin. This is a major shortcoming; and yet I believe I am a much better violinist than I am a guitarist. I am the same with singing -- I think I can sing pretty well, but I don't understand what is happening with the structure of the melody I'm singing. Something to work on -- I would like to be able to understand (and to feel) the chord changes going on under the melody.
posted evening of October 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Guitar
Tonight we're watching Independent Lens' Chicago 10, a dramatization of the 1968 Democratic convention and the Chicago 7 trial. It's very well done, I recommend watching it -- Channel 13 is airing it again tomorrow night.
posted evening of October 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Nixonland
Saramago posts today about current abuse of Judge Baltasar Garzón, asking "Do executioners have a soul?" It is a long post and beyond my limited translating ability; but it did get me to look up Garzón and find out what the context is.
Garzón has ordered exhumation of a number of mass graves containing the bodies of people slaughtered by the fascist militias during the Spanish Civil War, and has furthermore declared that these massacres were crimes against humanity and thus prosecutable -- his conservative critics reply that the war crimes are covered by an amnesty that was declared "during the transition", which I think refers to the transition from Franco's dictatorship to democracy. I guess declaring something a crime against humanity would supercede a declared amnesty.
Barbara Ehrenreich [Oh my gosh! Barbara Ehrenreich has a blog!! It's close to a year old.] explains the Socialist International Conspiracy to destroy the economy.
Things were going swimmingly until about a week ago, when the capitalists suddenly staged a counter-coup. We had thought that the nationalization of the banks would bring capitalism to its knees, but instead, the capitalists were craftily using it to privatize the government. ...
Ah well, we socialists still have the election to look forward to. After months of studying the candidates' economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses John McCain!
At The Fiddler's Companion, I found another Napoleon-themed Irish reel: "Napoleon Crossing the Alps". I've been playing it this morning and have uploaded the music in PDF format. I am curious what it means that the key signature is one sharp, but the tune resolves to A -- is this some kind of wacky modal thing? Also weird: The source at Fiddler's Companion has an accidental sharp marked at every occurrence of F♯, which seems redundant and makes the music difficult to read. I removed the accidentals.I was thinking it might be possible to make a medley of "Napoleon Crossing the Rhine" with this; but I'm not sure what kind of transposing I should do or alternately, how to modulate between the two.
Update: My mom (who knows about such things) says, this is Dorian mode:
A tune can be built (and resolve) around any of the notes in the
scale - this is modal writing. The mode that resolves to the 1st
note of the scale is what we call major. The one that resolves to the
6th note is what we call minor. the one that resolves to the second
tone of the (major) scale is called dorian. This modal writing is
used a lot in traditional tunes.
You can get the idea of the sound by playing a scale using only white
notes. First play c-c, that's ionian (major). Then play d-d,
that's dorian. e-e is phrygian , f-f is lydian, g-g is mixolydian. a-a
is æolian (minor), and b-b is locrian.
(Edited with some suggestions from my brother, who also wants to point out that ionian and æolian modes are Not Really major and minor, because tonal music is different from modal music. My sister wanted to point out in this regard that "we have the nerdiest family EVER.")
posted morning of October 19th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
The NY Times today has a brief profile of Murat Belge -- the Turkish scholar whose quote I had chosen to adorn my Pamuk page without knowing anything about him. Interesting dude.
Pandora Brewer eats chili in Cincinnati and 