Statistics

Daily Links & Comments

@1 Russell “My Bookie Wook” Brand (shades of Jon “I’m a Comedian” Stewart) edits The New Statesman; quotes Sophocles. Readers die of embarrassment. Link

@2 Did Hitler flee bunker with Eva to Argentina, have two daughters and live to 73? The bizarre theory that’s landed two British authors in a bitter war. Link

@3 Feser, clear as always: A First Without a Second: Understanding Divine Causality. Link

@4 The debate over “transgender” children is playing out across the country and while some say children should be encouraged to be themselves, others warn that no decision should be made before puberty. The hell with biology, you bigot! Link

@5 Pianist Maria Joõo Pires panics as she realises the orchestra has started the wrong concerto. Watch what happens. Don’t skip the video! Link

Please prefix comments with “@X” to indicate which story you’re commenting on. I should hardly need to say that a link does not necessarily imply endorsement.

Categories: Statistics

10 replies »

  1. @2
    I love this quote “To outsiders, the row looks like three bald men fighting over a comb”. I suspect that most of the debates at Briggs’ website look like that as well. The whole thing reads like a script to an Indiana Jones movie “The Escape from Berlin”.

    Bob, I noticed as a graduate student, many years ago, that retired or retiring physics professors turned to philosophy when they could no longer do the real thing. It is now our turn. Does this also explain Briggs’ infatuation? But no, he is not nearly old enough yet.

  2. @5 Gosh and Golly! She’s goes on to play what the orchestra started. Will wonders never cease? James Taylor recently segued to the national anthem from a mistaken start. Not the same thing I guess.

  3. @5 Well, now, come on. How many complete concertos have you memorized and that you can play without practice and on the spot?

  4. @5. Zero. In fact, I’ve memorized the same number of other works. Although I’ve heard enough Vivaldi pieces to know when someone blows one. You only need familiarity as a start. Heck, even Brittany and Miley manage to memorize some. You want a piece that’s really hard to remember? Try Flight of the Bumblebee.

  5. DAV,

    Actually, I don’t think Bumblebee is as difficult to remember as a concerto, or say something by Liszt. Bumblebee has a lot of repetition.

  6. Briggs,

    There’s a lot of repetition in all pieces. We’ve had a similar discussion before. Without the repetition and its anticipation it wouldn’t come across a music. I think in all the concerts that I played, I really did have at least a partial memory of what I was playing. I could never sightread at tempo so I think I was only using the written score as a cue. But I could never play it without those cues. That anybody could memorize a single piece is a wonder to me but not all that amazing.

  7. Thinking about it, Flight of the Bumblebee might be easier to remember if played as a solo. In concert, though, the theme continuously moves across the entire orchestra plus there is the underlying prince’s motif that requires emphasis of different notes at different times. At any given time in concert, an instrument only plays a small but ever changing piece. Hard to memorize. At least for me.

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