Tenor: Ian Bostridge
Piano: Julius Drake
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Heinrich Schütz - O Lieber Herre Gott, Wecke Uns Auf, SWV 381
Dresdner Kreuzchor
Rudolph Mauersberger, director
Score
My favorite recording of this and other six-part motets by Schütz was recorded by Emanuel Music conducted by the great Craig Smith. I don't know if it's still available. It started going through my head yesterday and I wanted to post it.
The First Person Who Says "Nones" Loses
It just happens that I came across several posts and articles about "Nones" yesterday, the category in surveys which means those who are unaffiliated or don't self-identify as any of the religious categories provided by those designing the surveys, quite a grab-bag of religious believers who are unaffiliated, people who merely don't believe in "any particular thing" but who fail to identify as agnostics or atheists, a small percent who do self-identify as agnostics and an even smaller percentage who self-identify as atheists. Anyone who has read much of my blog may know that the category was invented by an active promoter of atheism, Barry Kosmin, for what I hold are the most obvious of ideological reasons. I'll repost my argument below. It is clearly not a scientific description of any real, coherent group, it is an artificially created set, not even a real representation of the people in the set as what defines their inclusion in that set is not any set thing, in itself. The non-affiliation of a religious person, such as myself, who has chosen not to choose any of a number of very worthwhile religious affiliations is clearly not the same as that of an atheist who hates all of religion, yet, if I would be one of the about 8% of those who will even take a poll on this topic, Pew or Gallup or some other polling outfit would put me in the same category as them on the topic of religion. Even the sub-categories are ill defined as I was surprised to find last night when I took another look at it, for example, 14% of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit. If it were me and I got those results it would lead me to the logical conclusion that self-reporting, self-identification was, in itself, unreliable and could not generate anything legitimately considered data for any scientific purpose. But, then, I don't make my living by pretending that surveys and polling are science.
At any rate, the category "Nones", clearly and successfully introduced for purposes of the promotion of atheism at the expense of religion, was always a phony PR effort, not science. Anyone in sociology who uses the term is clearly in on the fraud as it is a blatantly illegitimate categorization of disparate people lumping them together for dishonest purposes. Here's why.
I Accuse Kosmin of Ideological Distortion In Creating the "Nones"
You will certainly in the next few days or weeks hear some reference to the "Nones," that category in the Pew surveys that is often claimed by atheists as proof-positive that they're going to win, man because the "nones" are the fastest growing group of people in the United States and.... something. You know, the group which includes pretty much anyone who doesn't claim membership in a particular denomination of religion. I have pointed out, many times, that, by the definitions provided by the Pew and other polling organizations, I'm considered a "none".
At any rate, the category "Nones", clearly and successfully introduced for purposes of the promotion of atheism at the expense of religion, was always a phony PR effort, not science. Anyone in sociology who uses the term is clearly in on the fraud as it is a blatantly illegitimate categorization of disparate people lumping them together for dishonest purposes. Here's why.
I Accuse Kosmin of Ideological Distortion In Creating the "Nones"
You will certainly in the next few days or weeks hear some reference to the "Nones," that category in the Pew surveys that is often claimed by atheists as proof-positive that they're going to win, man because the "nones" are the fastest growing group of people in the United States and.... something. You know, the group which includes pretty much anyone who doesn't claim membership in a particular denomination of religion. I have pointed out, many times, that, by the definitions provided by the Pew and other polling organizations, I'm considered a "none".
Well, I hadn't given a lot of thought as to who came up with the category until I came across this piece which names the man who invented the term, Barry A. Kosmin. The piece describes him as:
... the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and a professor at Trinity College, Kosmin had been helping to conduct the American Religion Identification Survey for nearly three decades.
I was familiar with Kosmin for a different reason which I'll get to in a minute.
His reasoning in coming up with the term is given as:
Once they’d evaluated data from the 1990s, Kosmin and
his team were determined to name a new category.
“Nonreligious” was a possibility. So was “non-faith” and “non-affiliated.”
But Kosmin rejected all of these. The “non” part bothered him. “Non-affiliated” would be like calling people “non-white,” he said. “We didn’t want to suggest that ‘affiliated’ was the norm, and every one else was an ‘other.’”
“Nomenclature,” he added, ” is quite important in these things.”
So Kosmin began calling this group the “nones,” a shortened version for “none of the above” — which is what people often said when asked to name their religion. He never thought the term would stick.
“It began as a joke,” he said, “but now, like many of these things, it has taken on its own life.”
Indeed. Today, “nones” are everywhere. Both in a literal sense and a literary one.
I will point out that, having looked up the dictionary meaning of the word "norm", in the context of what Kosmin is engaged in doing, purportedly coming up with sociological and statistical information, based on the results of his own data, being religiously affiliated is the norm in the United States and, indeed, in most countries. He might not like that but it is a fact, though like so many on his ideological side, the actual meaning of words don't matter nearly as much as their ideological preferences.
If he had gone with the other alternatives he mentions and put only those who had no religious belief in that category, the percentage given as "Nones" would be less than half of what it generally is claimed to be and less newsy. More of those included as "Nones" express some kind of religious belief than the percentage who are atheists, if not both atheists and agnostic combined, in most of the times I've seen a percentage break down given.
If he had gone with the other alternatives he mentions and put only those who had no religious belief in that category, the percentage given as "Nones" would be less than half of what it generally is claimed to be and less newsy. More of those included as "Nones" express some kind of religious belief than the percentage who are atheists, if not both atheists and agnostic combined, in most of the times I've seen a percentage break down given.
Which gets me to how I knew of Kosmin, he's a member of the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry, one of the alphabet soup named groups begun by Paul Kurtz to promote atheism, primarily by attacking religion. So the conflict of interest you may have suspected in his creation of that category so useful in atheist propaganda, is documented.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Hate Mail On Male Sopranos
You can count on one thing if you raise the topic of men who sing in the alto and mezzo-soprano range, snarky comments mocking the practice. But the very same people who give full vent to their inner-12-year-old-boy on the topic are the very same people who grooved to some Frankie Valli, Roy Orbison, Neil Young, or some other rock singer who sang in the same range, only, perhaps Orbison excluded, no where near as competently, vocally, certainly not as interestingly, musically. The difference is that you have to pay attention to someone singing Handel (I mean the pieces you haven't heard a zillion times and stop hearing due to over familiarity) or Marcello or Monteverdi, or the other composers who I've been posting. The need to pay attention is the real issue dividing pop music and classical music of any complexity, they don't want to pay attention at that mental age anymore than they wanted to do their homework in any subject they didn't like or find easy.
Benedetto Marcello - Chiaro e Limpido Fonte
Philippe Jaroussky & Max Emanuel Cencic, voices
Les Arts Flourissantes, William Christie, director
That this began with me finding Philippe Jaroussky singing music outside of his specialty, something any musician with the technique and curiosity to do it does, including those who do rock music, should tell you something about the difference between an intelligent, curious musician and an mindless pop guzzler. And, it being a bit on the forbidden side, raising it was irresistible to a thought criminal like me. I knew the reaction it would get with the usual flyspecks as I decided to go there. They never, ever, say anything new or slightly interesting.
By the way, the biggest motive in the horrible industry in castrating boys wasn't the church, it was the very secular opera industry, the musical comedy - Hollywood type spectacle media of the 17th and 18th centuries. The opera was generally more in danger of being shunned and banned by religious authorities than supported by it, at least before the 19th century. The church use of castratos, mostly in Rome and other Italian cities, grew out of the secular creation of castrati. It was, of course, a bad idea, it was grotesquely immoral - many young boys died of the operation and very few, perhaps one percent of those who were castrated, went on to have significant careers as opera stars.
Less significantly, it led to some really awful church and religious music, as heard in the few recordings that Allesandro Moreschi* left. That is especially true in 19th century Italy where the remnants of the practice persisted into the 20th century. Religion and theater music is most often a recipe for bad music and bad religion, the theater will tend to win out over religion in that contest. It takes a real musical genius to make that reconciliation and they aren't in any more abundance than vocal genius among castrated boys.
Instead of using the issue in some brainless and historically uninformed Christian bashing it would be useful to point out that the international sex industry that all right-thinking sex-positive folk are supposed to support carries out a trade in boys who are abducted, castrated and prostituted, quite often to western men in sex tourism. And, I'll point out that bashing Jews for it is especially stupid because, almost uniquely among people in the ancient Mediterranean basin, Jews forbade the practice for humans and even for animals. Most of the enormous numbers of males who were castrated were slaves kept to labor of for sex with men, not to sing. But concentrating on the real and present evil of the prostitution and porn industries isn't kewl, the uselessness of snarking over things done three or four centuries ago is a lot less work.
* I made an error in my post the other day, Moreschi wasn't an old man when he made those recordings, he was in his 40s, which should be a competent singer's prime. I'm prepared to believe he never sang any better than that. One of the contemporary descriptions of his singing when he was in his 20s mentioned there being " a tear in every note", which describes his recorded sound. I also read there is some indication that he was castrated as a result of medical practice, to treat a particular type of hernia for which, I also read, castration was the only scientifically recognized treatment. All I can say is that if it were me, I'd have tried to do more with my voice than produce those tacky, melo-dramatic effects. He clearly had a voice, he clearly lacked the training to do more with it. Too bad he didn't study with Pauline Viardot who could have steered him in a better direction.
Benedetto Marcello - Chiaro e Limpido Fonte
Philippe Jaroussky & Max Emanuel Cencic, voices
Les Arts Flourissantes, William Christie, director
That this began with me finding Philippe Jaroussky singing music outside of his specialty, something any musician with the technique and curiosity to do it does, including those who do rock music, should tell you something about the difference between an intelligent, curious musician and an mindless pop guzzler. And, it being a bit on the forbidden side, raising it was irresistible to a thought criminal like me. I knew the reaction it would get with the usual flyspecks as I decided to go there. They never, ever, say anything new or slightly interesting.
By the way, the biggest motive in the horrible industry in castrating boys wasn't the church, it was the very secular opera industry, the musical comedy - Hollywood type spectacle media of the 17th and 18th centuries. The opera was generally more in danger of being shunned and banned by religious authorities than supported by it, at least before the 19th century. The church use of castratos, mostly in Rome and other Italian cities, grew out of the secular creation of castrati. It was, of course, a bad idea, it was grotesquely immoral - many young boys died of the operation and very few, perhaps one percent of those who were castrated, went on to have significant careers as opera stars.
Less significantly, it led to some really awful church and religious music, as heard in the few recordings that Allesandro Moreschi* left. That is especially true in 19th century Italy where the remnants of the practice persisted into the 20th century. Religion and theater music is most often a recipe for bad music and bad religion, the theater will tend to win out over religion in that contest. It takes a real musical genius to make that reconciliation and they aren't in any more abundance than vocal genius among castrated boys.
Instead of using the issue in some brainless and historically uninformed Christian bashing it would be useful to point out that the international sex industry that all right-thinking sex-positive folk are supposed to support carries out a trade in boys who are abducted, castrated and prostituted, quite often to western men in sex tourism. And, I'll point out that bashing Jews for it is especially stupid because, almost uniquely among people in the ancient Mediterranean basin, Jews forbade the practice for humans and even for animals. Most of the enormous numbers of males who were castrated were slaves kept to labor of for sex with men, not to sing. But concentrating on the real and present evil of the prostitution and porn industries isn't kewl, the uselessness of snarking over things done three or four centuries ago is a lot less work.
* I made an error in my post the other day, Moreschi wasn't an old man when he made those recordings, he was in his 40s, which should be a competent singer's prime. I'm prepared to believe he never sang any better than that. One of the contemporary descriptions of his singing when he was in his 20s mentioned there being " a tear in every note", which describes his recorded sound. I also read there is some indication that he was castrated as a result of medical practice, to treat a particular type of hernia for which, I also read, castration was the only scientifically recognized treatment. All I can say is that if it were me, I'd have tried to do more with my voice than produce those tacky, melo-dramatic effects. He clearly had a voice, he clearly lacked the training to do more with it. Too bad he didn't study with Pauline Viardot who could have steered him in a better direction.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Handel - Come Nube Che Fugge Dal Vento - Philippe Jaroussky
Jaroussky as that ultimate bad-boy Nero in Handel's opera Agrippina. This sounds a lot more convincing as an approximation of the discription of the baroque castrati's singing than the old counter-tenors of fifty years ago. If you think the costume and wig are a bit over the top, it is opera.
If you want a sort of battle of the male sopranos, here's another of today's biggest stars, Max Emanuel Cencic.
And here's Jennifer Rivera singing it as a pants role
Update: OK, here is the late Alfred Deller singing Handel in 1953. He was a great singer and artist, you have to grant him that, but he was no coloratura singer, a good part of that could have been the lack of training - he was pretty much a pioneer in counter-tenor singing. It's impressive, considering his training in the English choral tradition, that he managed to learn how to pronounce words clearly, especially at that pitch range.
Update 2: The stupidity of the Brain Trust on this topic is predictable. The value of the life of no-mind. But they'll tell you how smart they are. Since there is no evidence to that effect.
Neo-Integralist Catholics and Neo-Atheists Have A Common Cause of Discrediting Pope Francis
The continuing online obsession with the brief meeting that Kim Davis had with Pope Francis proves that it is extremely important for two groups of people generally taken to be enemies of each other have something important in common. Those groups in this case are the right wing of the Catholic hierarchy and the Catholic and Pope hating neo-atheists. The right-wing of the Catholic hierarchy and the atheists have something in common, a mutual desire to discredit a very popular and liberal pope, to take him down as a popular, world figure, to discredit his focus on economic justice and environmental protection, justice for the stranger among us....
That both groups would like him to concentrate exclusively on the topics of abortion, sexual practice and other legalistic topics that made Benedict XVI unpopular is obvious. It's even true that the two groups have a similar interest in the results of that concentration. Pope Benedict was openly prepared for the Catholic church to lose members. He was a reactionary who clearly didn't like the changes that came with the Second Vatican Council and who pined for a romantic, never extant "pure" church which would be small in numbers and controlled by his own, romantic and fictitious orthodox definition of real Catholicism. He'd been writing things to that effect since the late 1960s. Since his vision of Catholicism was what he was known for, his elevation by John Paul II, who more or less named him as his chosen successor, it was also what Benedict's predecessor favored. That those two had a similar goal as the neo-atheists makes their similar dislike of Pope Francis somewhat less surprising, perhaps. That both groups see other goals as more important than the Catholic church following the instructions left by Jesus and his apostles, in short, to remember the poor, the oppressed, the stranger among us, and the protection of the environment makes their common cause less surprising than it might otherwise be.
I hope that this incident shows Pope Francis the need to move quickly to replace many of the bishops and cardinals appointed in the past two decades. One of the worst aspects of the last two papacies was the elevation of hacks who were incompetent pastors but who could be counted on to toe the line as set by the insiders of the Vatican. This incident was a reminder if not an introduction into the internal politics at the upper reaches of the hierarchy which became a massive series of scandals under those two would-be purifying popes. The lesson for Catholic conservatives should be that they should have removed the beam in their own eyes before they called out others for the spec in theirs. Though, like the neo-atheists, they are rigidly resistant to that because their position isn't really concerned with things like justice and the necessities of life, certainly not with the rights and real lives of real people, it is with getting their own way.
The lesson for the rest of us is that those two groups are not to be trusted, neither of them are basically concerned with real life or even their claimed values.
That both groups would like him to concentrate exclusively on the topics of abortion, sexual practice and other legalistic topics that made Benedict XVI unpopular is obvious. It's even true that the two groups have a similar interest in the results of that concentration. Pope Benedict was openly prepared for the Catholic church to lose members. He was a reactionary who clearly didn't like the changes that came with the Second Vatican Council and who pined for a romantic, never extant "pure" church which would be small in numbers and controlled by his own, romantic and fictitious orthodox definition of real Catholicism. He'd been writing things to that effect since the late 1960s. Since his vision of Catholicism was what he was known for, his elevation by John Paul II, who more or less named him as his chosen successor, it was also what Benedict's predecessor favored. That those two had a similar goal as the neo-atheists makes their similar dislike of Pope Francis somewhat less surprising, perhaps. That both groups see other goals as more important than the Catholic church following the instructions left by Jesus and his apostles, in short, to remember the poor, the oppressed, the stranger among us, and the protection of the environment makes their common cause less surprising than it might otherwise be.
I hope that this incident shows Pope Francis the need to move quickly to replace many of the bishops and cardinals appointed in the past two decades. One of the worst aspects of the last two papacies was the elevation of hacks who were incompetent pastors but who could be counted on to toe the line as set by the insiders of the Vatican. This incident was a reminder if not an introduction into the internal politics at the upper reaches of the hierarchy which became a massive series of scandals under those two would-be purifying popes. The lesson for Catholic conservatives should be that they should have removed the beam in their own eyes before they called out others for the spec in theirs. Though, like the neo-atheists, they are rigidly resistant to that because their position isn't really concerned with things like justice and the necessities of life, certainly not with the rights and real lives of real people, it is with getting their own way.
The lesson for the rest of us is that those two groups are not to be trusted, neither of them are basically concerned with real life or even their claimed values.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Pauline Viardot - Havanaise
Pianist, name not listed
Phillippe Jaroussky, male soprano
Jérôme Ducros, piano
The past few decades have certainly seen a huge development in the recovery of the art of adult men singing in the alto and mezzo soprano range. Phillippe Jaroussky has brought that far, far farther than old Alfred Deller ever did. It's interesting to hear him in 19th century, romantic style music instead of the baroque arias and operas he usually sings. I would guess he's a lot closer to how the legendary baroque castrati sounded than even the available recordings of the last of those surgically created male sopranos singing in a rather horrid, over the top way well into his old age.
But I was going to concentrate on Pauline Viardot instead of male sopranos. A number of Viardot's songs are a reminder that she was Spanish and was able to give first hand advice to other composers about "Spanish music" of the type that would be more often composed well after she wrote this song, probably in the late 1870s.
She wrote a lot more music than what I read led to believe last week.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
"staunchly supportive despite all" The New York Times Review of Books Review of Mother Country
Note: The recent controversy over the New York Review of Books hiring Andrew Roberts to review the Niall Ferguson's official biography of Henry Kissinger, Roberts having been both Kissinger's first choice to write his official biography (you can read that as "hagiography" with complete assurance of accuracy) who, reportedly gave up the plum assignment because he didn't choose to wade through Kissinger's self-collected papers and it generally being too much work than he wanted to put into it. So another star neo-con quasi-academic type, Ferguson, was the second choice. The "public-editor" for the Times was forced to give that most pathetic of excuses, "mistakes were made" when lots and lots of people complained that they'd obviously hired a reviewer with the most obvious of conflicts of interest and ideological smoke screens to spread. Henry Kissinger is a war criminal who, if he had worked for a less powerful government, would likely have been indicted and if arrested would likely have passed the last decades of his life in prison, his crimes include those in Latin America and South-East Asia involving the deaths of huge numbers of people. Beside those his frequently cited role in the rapprochement between the United States and the massively corrupt and criminal Chinese government has to rank as one of the most vulgar and cynical of defenses ever mounted in the face of massive criminality. Pointing out that Al Capone financed a soup kitchen would be a far more intellectually honest defense of that penny ante criminal of the same kind.
The New York Times, like so many institutions based in that city, has always been vastly overrated, the Book Review no less than their editorial pages. It has always been a reliable prop of the establishment with the rare and always "responsible" (you can read that "ineffective" with complete assurance of accuracy) opposing points of view included. I wrote an analysis of the review with which they helped sink one of the most important books you've likely not heard of before, sunk at the same time by the British establishment which it critiqued most devastatingly. The choice of a reviewer with obvious conflicts of interest in the topic was just as plain as the choice of Andrew Roberts in the current case. So I'm going to repost that piece. I repost it because the New York Review of Books is part of the cover up of the many murders that came from choices and decisions that "Kissinger: The Idealist" made in his public career. It has long taken upon itself the task of slipping the intellectual equivalent of Rohypnol to the NYT reading class when it was deemed desirable to have them forget stuff like that.
In the days as the Fukushima reactors were melting down, there were a number of blog fights on the topic at Eschaton blog, where I hung out quite a lot. I was involved on the anti-nuclear side. One of the the pro-nuclear antagonists, and in his case that word is a massive understatement, was one, Chris Tucker, a typical example of the frequently encountered angry atheist whose religion is scientism. Some of us brought citations from The Union of Concerned Scientists, George Kistiakowsky, other specialists I don't specifically remember to the argument. Tucker brought an xkcd cartoon asserting that the dilution of nuclear pollution in the general, background radiation, make it innocuous, harmless. As an aside, I wish I had ten bucks for every time some college educated disciple of scientism had turned to the authority of xkcd or the like to, as they believe, clinch an argument.
When I pointed out that the cartoonist included a disclaimer at the bottom that his drawing shouldn't be mistaken as a serious reference, Tucker, who was prone to enraged tantrums, had one. He had a number of them over the coming weeks at a number of us, as our predictions of meltdowns and pollution became lines in news stories, stories that were clearly pushing a nuclear industry line of minimization of the risks of what many scientists, some of them prominent figures in nuclear science, warned of.
The New York Times, like so many institutions based in that city, has always been vastly overrated, the Book Review no less than their editorial pages. It has always been a reliable prop of the establishment with the rare and always "responsible" (you can read that "ineffective" with complete assurance of accuracy) opposing points of view included. I wrote an analysis of the review with which they helped sink one of the most important books you've likely not heard of before, sunk at the same time by the British establishment which it critiqued most devastatingly. The choice of a reviewer with obvious conflicts of interest in the topic was just as plain as the choice of Andrew Roberts in the current case. So I'm going to repost that piece. I repost it because the New York Review of Books is part of the cover up of the many murders that came from choices and decisions that "Kissinger: The Idealist" made in his public career. It has long taken upon itself the task of slipping the intellectual equivalent of Rohypnol to the NYT reading class when it was deemed desirable to have them forget stuff like that.
In the days as the Fukushima reactors were melting down, there were a number of blog fights on the topic at Eschaton blog, where I hung out quite a lot. I was involved on the anti-nuclear side. One of the the pro-nuclear antagonists, and in his case that word is a massive understatement, was one, Chris Tucker, a typical example of the frequently encountered angry atheist whose religion is scientism. Some of us brought citations from The Union of Concerned Scientists, George Kistiakowsky, other specialists I don't specifically remember to the argument. Tucker brought an xkcd cartoon asserting that the dilution of nuclear pollution in the general, background radiation, make it innocuous, harmless. As an aside, I wish I had ten bucks for every time some college educated disciple of scientism had turned to the authority of xkcd or the like to, as they believe, clinch an argument.
When I pointed out that the cartoonist included a disclaimer at the bottom that his drawing shouldn't be mistaken as a serious reference, Tucker, who was prone to enraged tantrums, had one. He had a number of them over the coming weeks at a number of us, as our predictions of meltdowns and pollution became lines in news stories, stories that were clearly pushing a nuclear industry line of minimization of the risks of what many scientists, some of them prominent figures in nuclear science, warned of.
Believing that the truth merely has to be true in order to justify telling it, I'm going to tell the rest of the story. It would probably be called out of bounds and, somehow, outrageous to note that in the weeks after that, Chris Tucker announced that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and that he was reported to have died after several months of reportedly drastic therapy, the modern medicine he expressed a rather bleak hope in. It will be seen as unseemly to note this outcome to his story, though I, for the life of me, can't understand what is unfair about noting the extreme coincidence and irony of him very possibly serving as an example of what we were talking about mere months before. I will tell it to stand in for those people who will die of thyroid and other cancer deaths, the people who ingested or inhaled nuclear materials from the Fukushima meltdowns and will die of it, many of whom didn't promote nuclear energy on a leftish blog, sitting on North America as the Fukushima reactors were melting down, as it were, before our eyes, remotely.
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The point that anyone can know enough about plutonium so as to know better than to pour it into the ocean is sufficient to support the case against doing that. The fact is that even scientists have to rely on nontechnical literature to inform them of things their professional competence doesn't prepare them to understand. The decisions of voters depend on that kind of information. That plutonium is, in fact, being pumped into the environment isn't denied by Perutz and other nuclear industry apologists, they have to rely on denying the science that indicates it is dangerous. As Robinson pointed out in her reply to his review:
Mr. Perutz’s argument, an argument which this eminent man clearly intends as a daunting and chastening demonstration of the scientific mind in action, suggests that scientific discourse is not what it claims to be, or what we must all wish it were. His essential tactic is to dissociate radiation from cancer and environmental damage, and to imply that an unsavory mix of hysteria and ignorance is the whole cause of my indignation.
and later:
And look at what Mr. Perutz concedes: Britain reprocesses wastes from its own and foreign civil reactors, and, in the course of producing plutonium, flushes plutonium into the sea, where a quarter ton of it has now accumulated. Plutonium and caesium 137, the only materials Mr. Perutz chooses to talk about in any detail, “were expected” to have no harmful effect because one is insoluble and the other highly soluble in water. After thirty long years these expectations were at last found to have been disappointed—there is plutonium in the surf and the wind, plutonium is highly concentrated in fish and shellfish, which people are allowed to eat. Children in the region of the plant develop leukemia at a rate ten times the national average. A government committee has considered that exposure to plutonium is a “conceivable explanation.” The government concealed information about the Windscale fire in 1957. The factories at Sellafield have produced misleading information about their discharges. When radioactive effluent is found on the coast, the government must be told to warn the public and to clean it up. The plant is shoddily built and technically primitive, characterized by “scandalous malpractices” which have shaken public confidence. The functioning of the plant through its whole history has been based on naive assumptions about the “harmful biological effects of radiation and the possible buildup of radionuclides in living creatures.”
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As can be said of religion, there really is not a single thing that is "science" about which you can make accurate, unconditional universal statements. Science discovers good and useful things that enhance and extend life, it informs us of how we could try to save environments and species and, in fact, our own species. It produces a lot of information which is mainly valuable because it is fun instead of useful for anything. It also produces weapons, biological, chemical, bullets and bombs of increased killing power, it produces oil wells, pumping secret poisons to frack for gas and environmental toxins that probably will be bemoaned in the same media that is promoting them. What science has given to us with one hand it has taken, and more so, with the other. When any criticism is made of science, as in all professions, there is a circling of the wagons and they blast away at their critics with everything they've got. Much of that effect is enhanced by massive funding of public relations by the industries and the governments that the malignant science is produced for.
In order to kill a book dealing with a technical, scientific or scholarly topic, one of the most effective things is to give it a general air of unreliability with the casual, slightly informed reader who would likely pick it up or buy it. The kind of person who reads The New York Review. A bad review of the kind noted above can kill a book in that way. I think reviewers know that they have that power. They may not with movies or sensational garbage that can flourish on bad reviews, but for a serious book on a serious topic, which would never be likely to make any best sellers list, that power is a serious impediment to our intellectual life. In the case of this book, it was a danger to the ability of an informed people to make political decisions and the lives of many millions of people.
* As unsuccessfully resorted to most infamously and, luckily, ineffectively, by David Irving.
Update: After trying to justify those broken lines in the text a number of times, trying to tease out the HTML to fix them, I'm giving up. Please excuse the spaces.
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I mentioned the New York Times review of Mother Country in my post yesterday. It was one of the cases when that most august of book reviews assigned someone with a clear, ideological agenda against the subject of the book to review it. Typical of scientists who want to shift attention from the argument, Max Perutz, began his review by putting the case Marilynne Robinson made against the Sellafield operation which was intentionally and knowingly and openly pumping nuclear wastes, including plutonium, into the ocean.
Here in Britain we are all criminals: guilty of conniving at a crime against humanity committed by a government that is polluting the Irish Sea, the British Isles, the entire globe with the radioactive discharges from its nuclear plants at Sellafield, a village in northwest England, on the Irish Sea.
Just to start, Perutz clearly lied about what the book said. As I've shown this past week, in one of the most detailed indictments ever given in a book of the type, Marilynne Robinson took enormous care to show that the large majority of Britains were innocent of the pathological indifference and selfishness that allowed the Sellafield plant. Even if the New York Times reviewer and eminent scientist, Max Perutz, had entirely neglected to read the long first section of the book, the second section that deals with Sellafield is largely concerned with showing how it was the British people, themselves, who were the first and most numerous victims of the criminal acts of the British government and the industrial-scientific elite which lied to them and duped them.
Having attempted to achieve the discrediting of the book by absurd exaggeration, Perutz immediately went in for the kill by noting that Robinson was a novelist, as he continues to mischaracterize a very detailed and carefully stated case.
According to Marilynne Robinson, the author of the novel House-keeping and now of the book under review, “The earth has been under nuclear attack [from Sellafield] for almost half a century.” This book is aflame with indignation at the diabolical practices of the British Atomic Energy Authority, at the irresponsibility of our National Radiological Protection Board, at the careless indifference of our venal members of Parliament and of the British public, at the American press for failing to warn unsuspecting tourists of the deadly dangers threatening their health if they set foot on these poisoned isles, and the American government for wasting its armed forces on their protection.
The effrontery of non-scientists in questioning what scientists do is a common and frequent resort in these kinds of confrontations. Especially, but not exclusively, those scientists with a financial and professional interest, what for most of us constitutes a likely impeaching SELF-INTEREST. It is interesting to note that a short review in arts section of The Times, the editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Len Ackland noted the same passage to an entirely different tone:
Sellafield, located in Cumbria on the northwest coast of England, is the sprawling industrial complex where Britain produces deadly plutonium for war and for profit. In the process the Irish Sea has been turned into a radioactive cesspool, untold damage has been inflicted on the human and natural environment. ''The earth has been under nuclear attack for almost half a century,'' in Ms. Robinson's words. She seeks to expose why this outrage has been allowed to happen.
I will take a step into the present to point out that even according to the British government, Sellafield today is the ongoing and developing disaster that Mother Country warned of almost a quarter of a century ago. Since it is part of Perutz's discrediting operation to fault the book for concentrating on Sellafield, citing that concentration on that outrage instead of on the American sites that were also releasing nuclear pollution, I will point out, in passing, that in the American context, the cult of national security could stand in place of the British class system in providing cover for the same kind of outrageous, criminal behavior in the United States. History seems to be vindicating the case Marilynne Robinson made in a way that it hasn't Perutz's review, it is also vindicating those who have been making similar arguments about the Hanford and other sites, to a similar reaction presented in the name of science, here.
Perutz's hatchet job on Mother Country, appearing in the extremely influential New York Times Review of Books, probably had a similar effect on its suppression that the lawsuit did in Britain. Being the land of the First Amendment, the means of suppression here take a peculiarly American form and a bad review in the NYTRoB probably is more effective than the suppressive British libel law* in achieving that end.
I will grant to the Review of Books that they published a response by Marilynne Robinson, with a reply by Perutz, and further exchanges with other letter writers. Oneby David J. Brenner, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor Center for Radiological Research Department of Radiation Oncology
Columbia University, New York City was a succinct refutation of Perutz's major scientific assertions in the review, claims related to the xkcd cartoon mentioned above. Since, as published, his letter ends in ellipsis, it makes you wonder what else he had to say which the NYTRB didn't think was fit to print. A further letter from Jay M. Gould, Director, Radiation and Public Health
Project, United Church of Christ, pointed out further problems with the pro-nuclear case Perutz made. All of those and Perutz's responses are still worth reading.
Here in Britain we are all criminals: guilty of conniving at a crime against humanity committed by a government that is polluting the Irish Sea, the British Isles, the entire globe with the radioactive discharges from its nuclear plants at Sellafield, a village in northwest England, on the Irish Sea.
Just to start, Perutz clearly lied about what the book said. As I've shown this past week, in one of the most detailed indictments ever given in a book of the type, Marilynne Robinson took enormous care to show that the large majority of Britains were innocent of the pathological indifference and selfishness that allowed the Sellafield plant. Even if the New York Times reviewer and eminent scientist, Max Perutz, had entirely neglected to read the long first section of the book, the second section that deals with Sellafield is largely concerned with showing how it was the British people, themselves, who were the first and most numerous victims of the criminal acts of the British government and the industrial-scientific elite which lied to them and duped them.
Having attempted to achieve the discrediting of the book by absurd exaggeration, Perutz immediately went in for the kill by noting that Robinson was a novelist, as he continues to mischaracterize a very detailed and carefully stated case.
According to Marilynne Robinson, the author of the novel House-keeping and now of the book under review, “The earth has been under nuclear attack [from Sellafield] for almost half a century.” This book is aflame with indignation at the diabolical practices of the British Atomic Energy Authority, at the irresponsibility of our National Radiological Protection Board, at the careless indifference of our venal members of Parliament and of the British public, at the American press for failing to warn unsuspecting tourists of the deadly dangers threatening their health if they set foot on these poisoned isles, and the American government for wasting its armed forces on their protection.
The effrontery of non-scientists in questioning what scientists do is a common and frequent resort in these kinds of confrontations. Especially, but not exclusively, those scientists with a financial and professional interest, what for most of us constitutes a likely impeaching SELF-INTEREST. It is interesting to note that a short review in arts section of The Times, the editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Len Ackland noted the same passage to an entirely different tone:
Sellafield, located in Cumbria on the northwest coast of England, is the sprawling industrial complex where Britain produces deadly plutonium for war and for profit. In the process the Irish Sea has been turned into a radioactive cesspool, untold damage has been inflicted on the human and natural environment. ''The earth has been under nuclear attack for almost half a century,'' in Ms. Robinson's words. She seeks to expose why this outrage has been allowed to happen.
I will take a step into the present to point out that even according to the British government, Sellafield today is the ongoing and developing disaster that Mother Country warned of almost a quarter of a century ago. Since it is part of Perutz's discrediting operation to fault the book for concentrating on Sellafield, citing that concentration on that outrage instead of on the American sites that were also releasing nuclear pollution, I will point out, in passing, that in the American context, the cult of national security could stand in place of the British class system in providing cover for the same kind of outrageous, criminal behavior in the United States. History seems to be vindicating the case Marilynne Robinson made in a way that it hasn't Perutz's review, it is also vindicating those who have been making similar arguments about the Hanford and other sites, to a similar reaction presented in the name of science, here.
Perutz's hatchet job on Mother Country, appearing in the extremely influential New York Times Review of Books, probably had a similar effect on its suppression that the lawsuit did in Britain. Being the land of the First Amendment, the means of suppression here take a peculiarly American form and a bad review in the NYTRoB probably is more effective than the suppressive British libel law* in achieving that end.
I will grant to the Review of Books that they published a response by Marilynne Robinson, with a reply by Perutz, and further exchanges with other letter writers. Oneby David J. Brenner, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor Center for Radiological Research Department of Radiation Oncology
Columbia University, New York City was a succinct refutation of Perutz's major scientific assertions in the review, claims related to the xkcd cartoon mentioned above. Since, as published, his letter ends in ellipsis, it makes you wonder what else he had to say which the NYTRB didn't think was fit to print. A further letter from Jay M. Gould, Director, Radiation and Public Health
Project, United Church of Christ, pointed out further problems with the pro-nuclear case Perutz made. All of those and Perutz's responses are still worth reading.
I suspect fewer people read the exchanges than read the original review and that those had far less of an influence in the reception of the book by the audience for such books. The role that the review had in the de facto suppression of what is an important book is worth considering. The Review, as all other influential book reviewing bodies, at times, assigns books to people with a known bias, as it did in this case. I don't believe that assignment isn't done without an intention.
Marilynne Robinson was clearly aware that her status as a lay person instead of within the hierarchy of science would be used against her. She was clearly aware that her status as a novelist would be used against her. In the first paragraphs dealing directly with Sellafield she made what is as clearly true a case as possible justifying her book:
Having come finally to my subject, Sellafield, I am forced to confront the epic scale of my narrative. My inability to invoke a suitable muse is really my only deficiency in treating this great subject. To the objection that I know very little about plutonium, I can reply that I know better than to pour it into the environment. On these grounds alone I can hope the British nuclear establishment will learn something from my work, so that I may repay them for the insights they have given me into the nature and prospects of humankind.
The point that anyone can know enough about plutonium so as to know better than to pour it into the ocean is sufficient to support the case against doing that. The fact is that even scientists have to rely on nontechnical literature to inform them of things their professional competence doesn't prepare them to understand. The decisions of voters depend on that kind of information. That plutonium is, in fact, being pumped into the environment isn't denied by Perutz and other nuclear industry apologists, they have to rely on denying the science that indicates it is dangerous. As Robinson pointed out in her reply to his review:
Mr. Perutz’s argument, an argument which this eminent man clearly intends as a daunting and chastening demonstration of the scientific mind in action, suggests that scientific discourse is not what it claims to be, or what we must all wish it were. His essential tactic is to dissociate radiation from cancer and environmental damage, and to imply that an unsavory mix of hysteria and ignorance is the whole cause of my indignation.
and later:
And look at what Mr. Perutz concedes: Britain reprocesses wastes from its own and foreign civil reactors, and, in the course of producing plutonium, flushes plutonium into the sea, where a quarter ton of it has now accumulated. Plutonium and caesium 137, the only materials Mr. Perutz chooses to talk about in any detail, “were expected” to have no harmful effect because one is insoluble and the other highly soluble in water. After thirty long years these expectations were at last found to have been disappointed—there is plutonium in the surf and the wind, plutonium is highly concentrated in fish and shellfish, which people are allowed to eat. Children in the region of the plant develop leukemia at a rate ten times the national average. A government committee has considered that exposure to plutonium is a “conceivable explanation.” The government concealed information about the Windscale fire in 1957. The factories at Sellafield have produced misleading information about their discharges. When radioactive effluent is found on the coast, the government must be told to warn the public and to clean it up. The plant is shoddily built and technically primitive, characterized by “scandalous malpractices” which have shaken public confidence. The functioning of the plant through its whole history has been based on naive assumptions about the “harmful biological effects of radiation and the possible buildup of radionuclides in living creatures.”
------
As can be said of religion, there really is not a single thing that is "science" about which you can make accurate, unconditional universal statements. Science discovers good and useful things that enhance and extend life, it informs us of how we could try to save environments and species and, in fact, our own species. It produces a lot of information which is mainly valuable because it is fun instead of useful for anything. It also produces weapons, biological, chemical, bullets and bombs of increased killing power, it produces oil wells, pumping secret poisons to frack for gas and environmental toxins that probably will be bemoaned in the same media that is promoting them. What science has given to us with one hand it has taken, and more so, with the other. When any criticism is made of science, as in all professions, there is a circling of the wagons and they blast away at their critics with everything they've got. Much of that effect is enhanced by massive funding of public relations by the industries and the governments that the malignant science is produced for.
In order to kill a book dealing with a technical, scientific or scholarly topic, one of the most effective things is to give it a general air of unreliability with the casual, slightly informed reader who would likely pick it up or buy it. The kind of person who reads The New York Review. A bad review of the kind noted above can kill a book in that way. I think reviewers know that they have that power. They may not with movies or sensational garbage that can flourish on bad reviews, but for a serious book on a serious topic, which would never be likely to make any best sellers list, that power is a serious impediment to our intellectual life. In the case of this book, it was a danger to the ability of an informed people to make political decisions and the lives of many millions of people.
* As unsuccessfully resorted to most infamously and, luckily, ineffectively, by David Irving.
Update: After trying to justify those broken lines in the text a number of times, trying to tease out the HTML to fix them, I'm giving up. Please excuse the spaces.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Hate Mail
I am asked why I so often slam the United States Constitution. Given the record of the Supreme Court for the past fifty years and the catastrophic results, things like unrestricted gun sales and ownership making semi-automatic weapons available to homicidal psychopaths, resulting in mass murder after mass murder for decade after decade and the stinking corruption by entrenched, indifferent enablers of that horrifying history like the NRA becoming the determining factor of that in our politics, all using the United States Constitution as its controlling document, calling it anything other than the source of the problem is a huge, fat, obviously and indifferently and corruptly told lie.
The Constitution is the problem, it was a badly compromised document of the last third of the 18th century, born out of corrupt motives and including some of the most blatant corruptions possible including making it practically impossible to correct those. It took the Civil War to get rid of only a few of the most obvious of them, that was an enormous clue as to how bad it was. The phony, hypocritical reverence for the thing is a national pathology given the problems that it causes and allows and encourages in the hands of those who benefit from those problems. The worship of the Constitution is a form of idolatry which includes the unlimited sacrifice of people, even the youngest of children. It is a modern form of Moloch worship.
Someone has to stop lying about that.
Update: This is too serious an issue to waste space on pointing out the stupidity at the jr. high on the Delaware.
The Constitution is the problem, it was a badly compromised document of the last third of the 18th century, born out of corrupt motives and including some of the most blatant corruptions possible including making it practically impossible to correct those. It took the Civil War to get rid of only a few of the most obvious of them, that was an enormous clue as to how bad it was. The phony, hypocritical reverence for the thing is a national pathology given the problems that it causes and allows and encourages in the hands of those who benefit from those problems. The worship of the Constitution is a form of idolatry which includes the unlimited sacrifice of people, even the youngest of children. It is a modern form of Moloch worship.
Someone has to stop lying about that.
Update: This is too serious an issue to waste space on pointing out the stupidity at the jr. high on the Delaware.
Gustav Mahler - Urlicht
Sara Mingardo, alto
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
Primeval Light
O little red rose!
Man lies in greatest need!
Man lies in greatest pain!
Even more would I rather be in heaven!
There I came upon a broad path.
There came an angel and wanted to turn me away.
Ah no, I would not be turned away!
Ah no, I would not be turned away:
I am from God and want to return to God!
The loving God will give me a little of the light,
will illuminate me into the eternal blessed life!
Serial Mass Murder Is A Thing Thanks To Our Constitution
The mass murder by gun at the Umpqua Community College missed out of being the golden anniversary mass murder by a year, it being only 49 years since the inaugural mass shooting at a place of learning in the United States, the University of Texas shooting of 1966, in which 14 people were murdered and 31 injured, shot from a clock tower. Since none of the names of the victims of these murders is ever mentioned or remembered I won't mention the name of the murderers who are generally the only ones mentioned by name. I don't point out the number of years since that iconic event in American history and that we are one year shy of the half-century mark as a form of black humor or irony but just as a means of showing how long this problem has been slapping our nation in the face to no effective remedy and as a means of pointing out why that has not been happening.
Nothing will be done, nothing has been done because the gun industry and its propaganda arm, the National Rifle Association and their property, the Republican Party and the mass media will prevent anything from being done, the thuggish American judiciary will see to nothing happening if they won't. The excuse will be one of the worst written amendment of the Constitution, a document filled with things that should have been changed by the past two and a quarter centuries but which won't be changed because the method of changing the Constitution contained in the document gives the corrupt, the paranoid and insane a veto on changes to the Constitution. And, thanks as well to the naivete of our fumbling founders, commercial interests have the most reliable of all vetoes on sanity and morality.
We are a nation living under a Constitution that does not do the first things it claimed were the reasons for its existence, it does not, "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" it doesn't even protect us from the gun industry and the most corrupt politicians and media scum who went after the SURVIVORS of the attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School, it is the vehicle by which the commercial and political sponsors of this serial mass murder among us operate. This has been going on for a half a century and we are farther away from an any real address of it than were were in 1966 by Supreme Court rulings citing that Constitution. That fact is all the proof any rational person would need to see that our Constitution is so bad that we can't even use it to stop attacks on SCHOOL CHILDREN. We are terrorized by the gun industry who are arming the insane, enabled by the legal establishment and the media, all due to the fact that the Constitution enables them and prevents our government from protecting us.
There, I said it.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Pauline Viardot - Aimez-Moi Ma Mignonne and Hai Luli!
Back when I posted Brahms' Alto Rhapsody, I looked into the performance history to see if there was an off chance that the soloist had lived into the recording era. I found out that the original performance, under Brahms' instruction, was given by Pauline Viardot who lived till 1910, though I don't find that she ever made a recording, having retired even before she sang the Alto Rhapsody in 1870. Brahms asked her to come out of retirement to sing it so her voice must have still been remarkable, even then. The reported range of it, well over three octaves and the range of roles she sang and originated, at the request of top rank composers, would mean she must have been able to sing alto and soprano, a rarity in itself.
But, even if I didn't find any recording of her I found out she must rank as one of the most fascinating and accomplished people of her times with one of the most remarkable musical careers of all time. It started by growing up in a family of famous and accomplished Spanish opera singers who not only toured Europe but also gave the first performance of Don Giovanni in the United States, with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte* in attendance, Don Giovanni being a specialty of their performances.
She was a fine pianist who took lessons with Liszt and studied composition under Anton Reicha as well as having instruction in voice from her parents and others. She wanted to pursue a career as a pianist, having acted as the accompanist for her father's music studio before he died when she was 11(!) but her mother insisted that she concentrate on singing. Which might have been the right decision because her career as a singer was nothing short of spectacular, her huge vocal range allowed her to sing a cadenza - I'd guess of her own invention - based on The Devil's Trill by Tartini, a virtuoso display piece for violin. which launched her into fame.
Her personal and musical life included friendships with Chopin, and George Sand, who were her intimate friends. She introduced them to Ivan Turgenev who, remarkably, quit Russia to go be with her in France and, though she was married with children, he moved into her home and became a part of their household.
In the course of looking for information about her I found out that she was a very good composer, herself, that, too, a rarity among singers after the 18th century. Franz Liszt declared her the first woman composer of genius and Chopin consented to her adapting, with his assistance, some of his mazurkas into songs. She composed several chamber operas to stories by Turgenev and one full, though short opera,
I am only beginning to learn about her and am planning on posting more about her this month. To start with, here are some songs which show she had her own style and put her knowledge of vocal music into them. The accompaniments show her intimate familiarity with the piano, as well.
Françoise Masset accompanied by Françoise Tillard
Cecilia Bartoldi, accompanied by Myung-Whung Chung
And a remarkable Cossack Lullaby which might have a bit to do with her association with Turgenev.
Jacqueline Laurin, Soprano
Laurent Martin, Piano
* Who knew Mozart's greatest librettist moved to the United States where he operated a grocery store as well as being the first Jew and Catholic priest to teach at Columbia (college, then)? Nor that he was born a Jew and was also ordained a Catholic priest who, none the less, had a mistress and fathered children by her. I'll be looking into Da Ponte a bit more, as well. It's incredible where the librettist of Don Giovanni, Cosi fan Tutti and The Marriage of Figaro ended up, why was I not taught this when I studied Mozart at university?
But, even if I didn't find any recording of her I found out she must rank as one of the most fascinating and accomplished people of her times with one of the most remarkable musical careers of all time. It started by growing up in a family of famous and accomplished Spanish opera singers who not only toured Europe but also gave the first performance of Don Giovanni in the United States, with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte* in attendance, Don Giovanni being a specialty of their performances.
She was a fine pianist who took lessons with Liszt and studied composition under Anton Reicha as well as having instruction in voice from her parents and others. She wanted to pursue a career as a pianist, having acted as the accompanist for her father's music studio before he died when she was 11(!) but her mother insisted that she concentrate on singing. Which might have been the right decision because her career as a singer was nothing short of spectacular, her huge vocal range allowed her to sing a cadenza - I'd guess of her own invention - based on The Devil's Trill by Tartini, a virtuoso display piece for violin. which launched her into fame.
Her personal and musical life included friendships with Chopin, and George Sand, who were her intimate friends. She introduced them to Ivan Turgenev who, remarkably, quit Russia to go be with her in France and, though she was married with children, he moved into her home and became a part of their household.
In the course of looking for information about her I found out that she was a very good composer, herself, that, too, a rarity among singers after the 18th century. Franz Liszt declared her the first woman composer of genius and Chopin consented to her adapting, with his assistance, some of his mazurkas into songs. She composed several chamber operas to stories by Turgenev and one full, though short opera,
I am only beginning to learn about her and am planning on posting more about her this month. To start with, here are some songs which show she had her own style and put her knowledge of vocal music into them. The accompaniments show her intimate familiarity with the piano, as well.
Françoise Masset accompanied by Françoise Tillard
Cecilia Bartoldi, accompanied by Myung-Whung Chung
And a remarkable Cossack Lullaby which might have a bit to do with her association with Turgenev.
Jacqueline Laurin, Soprano
Laurent Martin, Piano
* Who knew Mozart's greatest librettist moved to the United States where he operated a grocery store as well as being the first Jew and Catholic priest to teach at Columbia (college, then)? Nor that he was born a Jew and was also ordained a Catholic priest who, none the less, had a mistress and fathered children by her. I'll be looking into Da Ponte a bit more, as well. It's incredible where the librettist of Don Giovanni, Cosi fan Tutti and The Marriage of Figaro ended up, why was I not taught this when I studied Mozart at university?
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