Trivia that matter
An unexpected volcanic hazard:
One of the few videos of a phreatic blowout on Iwo Jima turned out to not be phreatic at all. Instead it was heat affecting an old 16 inch shell from Iowa that had fallen into the ocean. As the spot inflated up and became the new beach it dried out and heated and “boom”. Volcanic artillery is something of a novelty. Cryptoshelling with magmatic release…
Years ago, when I was a youngster in Bigamy City, Utah1, I played games stepping on the cracks between sidewalk blocks while walking home from the park. My favorite was as follows:
Step on a crack with the right foot.
Step on a crack with the left foot.
Reverse that: left, then right.
Take the entire sequence so far and reverse it: left, right, right, left.
Now take the entire eight-step sequence, and reverse that: left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right.
And so on.
I could usually keep the sequence straight for 64 cracks or so, but eventually I would either be distracted by something or run out of sidewalk. Later I found that if you arranged black and white boxes in a square grid using the sequence, the sides of which square were a power of two, you’d get a pattern with a high degree of symmetry. You could also use “0” and “1” to represent the elements of the sequence, which led to other sorts of games.
Last night, while browsing around online, I discovered that my game does in fact have a name: the Thue-Morse sequence. I was amused to see that one of the ways of generating it involves the notion of “evil” and “odious” numbers.
Thought for the day, from Francis W. Porretto:
Silo Syndrome is one of the natural consequences of the sense that things are sliding down the slippery slope to Shitville, and there’s nothing one can do about it. The sense might be illusory, of course, but the consequences of it are nevertheless compelling.
The countermeasure is laughter, however administered or evoked. Jokes. Puns. Harmless pranks. General horseplay. Frivolity. Cat videos. The zany impulse indulged in an unguarded moment. Laughter might not be able to cure cancer, but it can make the chemotherapy a bit easier to endure.
Some vile ethnic humor, attributed to John Cleese:
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.”
The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
Years ago I attended a performance of a John Cage piece. The musicians sat on the stage in black turtlenecks while making gurgling noises with conch shells and water to the accompaniment of a recording of pine cones burning. After 20 minutes, one of the performers stood up and blew on his conch for five minutes, at the end of which his face was purple. I’ve also sampled recordings of Cage’s prepared piano music; the sonorities are novel, but the music itself is hard to pay attention to for more than a minute or two. Cage himself was probably aware that his music would not be universally appreciated, which is perhaps why he insisted that auditoriums where his music was performed have easily accessible exits.
Cage’s political philosophy is more interesting than his music, which makes him unique in history of music:
Cage—most famous for his 1952 composition 4’33”, in which musicians sit in perfect silence for four minutes and 33 seconds—was a gut anarchist. Asked about the word ecology, the composer replied that whenever he heard that seductive word he knew he’d soon hear the word planning, and “when I hear that word, I run in the other direction.” He boasted that he never voted.
Continue reading “Miscellaneous nonsense, John Cleese edition”
I came across some startling numbers in an article on politics and dating while skimming though this morning’s Wichita Eagle.
Those in the Clinton camp are more likely to be female (176 percent) and gay (606 percent), and Trump supporters are more likely to be unemployed (82 percent) or retired (96 percent).
I suppose I ought to track down the original Washington Post story to see if the surprising statistics originated there, but I have better things to do with my lunch hour.
There’s been a dearth of Ponies here recently. We’ll have to do something about that.
Other curious works of art can be perused here. (Via Pergelator, who has an eye for girls with guns.)
Fluttershy as a warrior princess. She and her friends can be seen here, and in higher quality here if you do FaceBook.
In addition to occasionally posting music at MuseScore, I also listen to pieces uploaded by other MuseScorians. The quality varies tremendously, but the best are very good indeed.
One composer whom I particularly enjoy is Tuukka Jokilehto, a.k.a. “Rivergrove.” Among other things, he writes many short, colorful pieces for beginning pianists, such as his collection of “skeleton” music. I recently ran his composition “Old Music Box” through Logic, using sounds sampled from an old music box.
Most of Hans Jacobi‘s piano pieces, while not of Lisztian difficulty, are nevertheless not for beginners, and I’m content to let the MIDI player perform them. He writes numerous modernist short pieces that embody his understanding of “wabi-sabi.” He has a subtle sense of humor that occasionally surfaces, such as when he imagines how Wagner would play the blues.
Finally, there’s Cj Brandt, who composes piano rags. He’s from Wichita, and has even written a “Wichita Rag.”
Those who sing pray twice; therefore it stands to reason that those who sing bad modern church songs commit heresy twice.
I’m not especially worried about Skynet taking over the world any time soon given that the current state of the art in AI, with all of the best minds and the most resources behind it, is the autocorrect feature on my phone.
I wonder if the reason that so many characters in The Wind Rises smoke so much is that Miyazaki wanted to annoy health nazis, such as the ones who placed the full-page ad above in The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s another blasted Monday morning. Here’s a concert performance of music from Girls und Panzer to wake you up.
Recently we heard Japan’s Charan Po Rantan. Today we have the Russian band Nol’ providing the soundtrack for a not-quite-safe-for-work animation.
(Via Willy or Won’t He)
Aside from GATE, none of the current shows that I’ve sampled thus far are worth mentioning. Fortunately, Crunchyroll this week added one I can unreservedly recommend, Shingu. Tatsuo Sato has directed much noteworthy anime, including Martian Successor Nadesico and Mouretsu Pirates (both recommended), and Shingu is his best. It’s long been one of my favorites, and I’ve probably rewatched it more often than any other show, anime or not. If none of the new series catch your interest, spend a little time with Hajime and his family and friends, human and alien, in quiet town of Tenmo.
Here’s Ubu on what didn’t happen when Shingu was made.
The French-Canadian company Plogue has entered the vocal synthesizer business. So far, no occidental virtual singer is serious competition for the Vocaloids, 2 but Plogue’s Alter/Ego shows promise. The software is free and runs on both Macintosh and Windows. (Yamaha’s Vocaloid software is still Windows-only, though Hatsune Miku and her family are usable on Macs with Crypton’s PiaPro software.) “Daisy,” the first Alter/Ego voice bank, is also free. It’s not particularly expressive, but its English is generally intelligible. Alter/Ego is also easier to use than Miku.
Recently, VoxWave announced ALYS, a voice bank for Alter/Ego, which is intended to be a French counterpart to the Japanese Vocaloids. ALYS’s languages are French and Japanese, but according to the CEO of VoxWave, “… we also ALYS to sing in English too thanks to an alias system” (sic). If ALYS’ English is tolerable, it might be worth considering when it’s released in March.
Wolfgang Palm’s entry into vocal synthesis also looks very interesting, and rather different from the other systems I’ve looked at. Then there’s Plogue’s chipspeech for old-style computer voices.
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Here’s a list of common chord progressions with numerous examples from popular music. The site features partial analyses of a wide range of music. I was particularly interested in the many Touhou tunes.
If you’re interested in what’s going on in Beatle tunes, go here.
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Marty Friedman, formerly of Cacaphony and Megadeth, got bored with metal, learned Japanese and became part of the J-pop scene. Here’s a brief, unsatisfactory but interesting NPR interview with him I recently came across.
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See how many tunes you can identify:
(Via Dustbury.)
Every January I visit the calendar shop at the regional shopping mall and pick up a few at half-price to provide a variety of art on my walls for the coming year. This year, I struck out. Everything of any interest was gone — no medieval or renaissance art, no pre-Raphaelites, no Edward Gorey, not even Ansel Adams. There were plenty of puppies, of course, but I prefer dogs as friends, not as artistic subjects. Fortunately, I earlier ordered this year’s Girls und Panzer calendar, so I do have a way to keep track of passing time.
Although there are only six pages (seven if you count the cover), they are poster-sized, 24″ tall (including the binding strip at the top) and 16.5″ wide. (Right-click and open the links in new windows to see the images at high resolution.)
While going through my archives, I came across an egregious example of cultural appropriation, recorded several years ago at a performance by a local ballet troupe. Be sure you’re sitting down before you view the horror, lest the shock stagger you.
Unsurprisingly, a search online for “peter pan cultural appropriation” turns up many exposés and testimonies, from The Smithsonian on down.
It’s not just Native Americans who are victimized in Peter Pan. Pirate culture is treated without utterly without respect. An otherkin is labeled a “fairy” and reduced to an object of moe. This toxic tale in its various forms has warped the sensibilities of innumerable impressionable children for generations.
More fun with Helicon Focus. The picture of Hatsune Miku below the fold was composed from a stack of 76 f/5.6 slices. The figurine is eight inches tall, including the base.
I recently discovered that LED light bulbs are available in “daylight” varieties, with a color temperature of 5000 K. I used them in taking these pictures, and I didn’t need to do any color correction. Previously, when I did series of pictures indoors, I had the choice of using flash and waiting increasingly long periods as the flash recycled between shots, or using incandescent lights and fixing the colors in Photoshop.
Years ago I grew cacti and other succulents under lights in the kitchen, all of which I started from seed. The collection eventually became too large to maintain, and the plants are long gone. Recently I’ve been considering starting another indoor garden, on a smaller scale and focusing on the more diminutive mammillarias and turbinicarpus and perhaps some mesembs. If I do, I’ll order the seeds from the same source as before, Mesa Garden in New Mexico.
I came across the above interview with Mesa Garden’s Steve Brack earlier today. It’s an amateurish video, hand-held and ending abruptly, and the soft-spoken Brack is often difficult to hear, but it does offer a glimpse of a fascinating place.
The ancient Yuletide carol, illustrated.
