You might be in for a surprise...

This interesting tidbid was hidden in an NY Times article on using the population of Utah as an ideal gene pool for scientific study: By Accident, Utah Is Proving an Ideal Genetic Laboratory.

On average across the United States, about 5 percent to 10 percent of people who have DNA tested for various reasons are not really the sons or daughters of the person they had thought of as dad, scientists say.

In Utah, the non-paternity rate is below 1 percent.

Exercise left to the reader: from this statistic, construct the case for gay marriage.

Extreme Ironing

Some time ago, Stephen Herschkorn introduced me to Extreme Ironing. Check it out:

Welcome to the home of extreme ironing - the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt.

Of course, since the NY Times has commented on it, it is no longer news...

When I was last in London, I actually saw two guys in matching fake moustaches running out of a Tube station carrying an ironing board and a video camera. They were clearly off for such an extreme adventure.

Making a Meal of Spam

Check this out, if only for the title: Spamgourmet - free disposable email addresses, spam blocking.

It's a simple idea: you create an account with them, give them a username (say, "brad"), and your real e-mail addres (say, well, never mind), and then whenever you are asked to fork over your e-mail address to some random site in order to get their content, you simply invent an e-mail address of the form "word.count.user@spamgourmet.com". For example, if I tell the NY Times my address is "nytimes.3.brad@spamgourmet.com", SpamGourmet will forward 3 messages to me and "indelicately consume" the rest. I don't need to create the aliases in advance. Just make 'em up and use 'em.

But utility aside, I liked the name.

Political Uses of Psychology

Maggie Fox at Reuters reports that Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, on a study from the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Here's a summary of one of the studies, by Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College:

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

So now I understand why Bush's ad campaign is about fear and death, and why the Democrats focus on hope and optimism.

Psychologists demonstrate that we are easily manipulable in this regard, but education is a defense:

"If people are aware that thinking about death makes them act differently, then they don't act differently," Solomon said.

A sensible suggestion

A sensible suggestion from Barbara Ehrenreich in The The New Macho: Feminism (New York Times):

First, let's stop calling the enemy "terrorism," which is like saying we're fighting "bombings." Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower.

Because language matters, that's why.

Skype Grows Up

Speak of the devil. I was just thinking about internet telephony (see this), when I get an e-mail from Skype announcing that their 1.0 release is ready for free download, and they now support calls to ordinary telephones (you pay cheap local phone rates, priced in euros).

Of course, skype-to-skype calls are still free, and the software is free.

Favorite promo quote:

“I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype,” Michael Powell, chairman, Federal Communications Commission, explained. “When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it’s free – it’s over. The world will change now inevitably.”
Fortune Magazine, 16th February 2004

I guess that means it's no longer a toy... They still need to interoperate with my address book, though (the only way to place telephone calls I can see is by typing in the number; how last century).

Awesome and scary Republican Flash

An amazing and scary flash video (it's got a beat, you could dance to it) on the corrupt purging of the Florida voter rolls in 2000: GRAND THEFT AMERICA.

This is one of the most effective uses of Flash I've ever seen.

Regarding the content, it's based on a report by Greg Palast, which has been widely discussed. Kathleen Harris had her response published in Harper's Magazine giving her side of the story, to which Palast replied. (But watch the video first).

Poetry Break

I don't read poetry often, but I was for some reason struck by this stanza in Love in Our Language, by Judy Goetz Sanger(I threw it in my bag while rehearsing the Veil, along with six volumes of Veil score and a copy of The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels, which seemed appropriate for the breaks). Anyway,

Nobody baked anymore. In kitchens,
her Mother always suggested, Keep the Vanilla High Up. Out of the way.
Saffron too. She had a Créole woman for years,
called Eugènie, who drank Vanilla. Her mother said
there was nothing she could say. She was a wonderful
cook and honest in every way, but she couldn´t resist
Vanilla. What a thing.

The whole poem is a long and sensitive and beautifully crafted piece about ordinary lives. The language is mellifluous, only slightly heightened, just enough to make the characters worth considering.

It made me think back to when I read the 1986 poem-novel The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth, years ago. I think I'll read it again.

Internet Telephony in the News

Here's technology that matters (to me, at least): The Battle Brews Over Rules for Phones on Internet.

When I'm on the road, especially outside the US, I am using Dialpad to place almost all my phone calls from my laptop (just hook up headphones+mic, and I'm set). I can call anywhere, and it's cheap. The sound quality is decent (it has improved a lot over the past couple years), but it occasionally drops calls. I especially like that I can click on a name in my address book, and Dialpad places the call.

As a road warrior, one of my smartest moves was to forward my regular phone to Innoport, which collects my voice mail and faxes, and forwards all all them to my e-mail inbox (I have no idea why Verizon doesn't offer this).

I took a look at Skype. It seems like a great technology (it uses Peer-to-Peer model, rather than a central exchange, and end-to-end encryption), but it doesn't interface with the telephone network, so you can only talk to other Skype users. So for the moment, it's a toy.

The regulatory issues seem so boring. Who's going to pay for 911? (We don't pay for fire and police services with a telephone surcharge...) What about interconnection fees where IP hits the local phone system? What about universal service? Blah, blah, blah. Of more concern, what about regulation of encryption of voice communications (easy and common for IP voice, in the same way that web access is commonly and unregulatedly encrypted).

Of course, as soon as the regulatory battles are hashed out, and Verizon and AT&T squash everyone, I'll probably feel about internet telephony the way I and my friends feel about cell phones: the tool is handy, but the infrastructure behind it (both hardware and institutional support and customer service) is unstable and crumbling from the day it's born.

Subway Sandwiches

My friend Homey is my reliable source for far-left sound bites. His latest struck a chord: Subway: The New King of Junk Food.

Basic claim:

We agree with Commercial Alert's Gary Ruskin that it's "not the proper role of the federal government or public health groups to hawk Subway or any other form of fast or junk food."

Now, I'm actually a Subway fan, and I consider myself a pretty healthy eater (having been weaned on Body For Life, etc). I associate McDonald's with grease: greasy burgers, greasy fries (which, I agree with many others, have lost all redeeming gustatory value since the demise of beef tallow), greasy buns, greasy counters. On the other hand, Subway has (at my local store), great fresh bread and, mirabile dictu, fresh veggies (which, in New York City, are almost impossible to find).

Of course there are chips and soda. Same with any restaurant and deli in NYC. I just appreciate the fact that they don't make it so hard to have a bite on the run that doesn't taste like library paste with a pickle.

Their real complaint is that the American Heart Association is in bed with industry:

According to the AHA, Subway has given $4 million to the American Heart Association (AHA) since 2002, and will gave an additional $6 million through 2007. That's a total of $10 million. In exchange, Subway gets to put the AHA "fighting heart disease and stroke" logo on its materials throughout its chain of stores, according to an AHA spokesperson.

So why, then, is the headline not AHA Sells Out?

That america lives on fast food is so last season, the current SuperSize me hoo-ha notwithstanding. From 1996 Sunday Telegraph (UK), quoted by McSpotlight:

Last year, 96% of Americans ate at McDonald's; more than half the American population lives within a three-minute drive of a McDonald's; 7.5% of the entire USA potato crop goes to McDonald's. McDonald's accounts for one in six meals eaten out in the USA. Five hundred million tons of beef.

Give me a subway sandwich any day, or at least once in a while.

Sad News

William F. McCarthy, a fellow board member with the New York Festival of Song, passed away yesterday, after a long battle with cancer. His optimism and common sense saw both him and NYFOS through many challenging times, and his generous spirit will remain with us.

Portfolio Diversification

I love listening to common sense financial planning columnists (I think Suze Orman is a goddess with a grating voice).

Jonathan Hoenig, in his TradeCraft column at SmartMoney.com: Hot Air Buffoons

Indeed, there's a difference between being diversified and just being plain disorganized.

You'll excuse me while I go clean up my portfolio...

Veil reviewed by NY Times

Anthony Tommasini wrote a review of the Veil of the Template performance in the New York Times. When he asks, "How do you critique a vigil?", he sets out his main problem here. I think it was Laurie Anderson who said "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." His description of the music and the complicated environment is right on: some of the music does invite napping, but he says that like it's a bad thing. I beg to differ. Around 4:00AM, a baritone processes the length of Avery Fisher Hall carrying a giant candle through the darkness, repeatedly intoning "Awake, thou that sleepest" over a hushed choral polytonal base, stepping over slumbering audience members sprawled on cushions on the floor (where the seats had been removed) as he processes toward the main stage.

New York Festival of Song

The New York Festival of Song has put up its 2004-2005 Performance Schedule.

The Veil of the Temple

Through my affiliation with The Dessoff Choirs, I was fortunate to be able to sing in the New York premiere of The Veil o f the Temple, produced as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

The piece is seven hours long. The Times of London says, "To call this musical extravaganza an epic is a bit little like calling the Sahara sandy."

What an experience that was. The pacing of the piece is extraordinary. It starts softly with a solo soprano and duduk (a middle-eastern reed, like an oboe). Over the course of several hours, it grows gradually to include tibetan horns, gongs, brasses, and well over a hundred singers. There were rose petals, incense, candles, processions of icons, and texts in English,Greek, Slavonic, Aramaic, and Sanskrit.

Individual moments are excruciatingly beautiful; my favorite was a setting of a poem by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), Molitva Strannika (adapted by Tavener):

Mother of God, here I stand now praying,
Before this icon of your radiant brightness,
Not praying to be saved from a battlefield,
Not giving thanks, nor seeking forgiveness
For the sins of my soul, nor for all the souls.
Numb, joyless and desolate on earth,
But for her alone, whom I wholly give you.

The true magic, however, is in the continuous repetition and development of themes over the course of the entire night; as each hour passes, they become higher and longer and richer and more complex.

It all ended with the entire massed chorus singing a hymn from the Upanishads, while leading the audience in procession out of Avery Fisher Hall into the sunrise for breakfast on the plaza.

An interesting note: How does one manage the logistics of getting a complicated staged piece like this together in a hurry? When a piece is seven hours long, even the concept of "a run-through" takes a serious beating. A typical singer is carrying five thick volumes of music.

Technology rescued us, of course. The entire performance was coded into a giant MS Access database, showing where every performer was at every moment of the piece, keyed to the measures of the score, the minutes of the performance, the locations in the hall, and the roles of every performer. Each performer had their own web page, indicating where they needed to be and what they needed to be doing at every moment of the seven hours. Just as an example, here is the link for my assignments during the performance (we also had similar pages for every rehearsal; each one of which was scheduled to the minute).

These are the type of musical projects I most enjoy. They are absolutely singular and unforgettable.

First Entry

Inspired by my cousin-in-law, The InstaPundit, I've decided to stop inundating my friends with e-mail, and start my blog.  We'll see how it works.