Archive for the ‘Notes to Richard’ Category
Friday Soirée VI: Something Lighter
Tonight I decided I needed a bit of levity, so humor (and "humour") is the theme. We have two very special guests to spend some time with: Anna Russell and Sir David Attenborough. Anna Russell Analyzes Wagner's Ring (Part 1) I expect I first found Anna Russell in my college days, thanks to friend and […]
In: All, Friday Soirée, Laughing Matters, Music & Art, Notes to Richard
Britten's "Serenade"
Awhile back I bought a remaindered copy of a CD containing music by Benjamin Britten, in particular his "Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings", performed by Anthony Rolfe Johnson, tenor, Michael Thompson, horn, and Bryden Thomson directing the strings of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.* It's fantastic. I think I've mentioned before that I frequently […]
In: All, Music & Art, Notes to Richard
On the Ontology of Old Cars
When conversation really, really lags and I feel the need to do something desperate, I have long relied on my metaphysical topics: 1) the potato-chip question*; and 2) the antique-car question. Topic #2 is our purpose at the moment. The question is rather simply put, as it should be. Imagine an antique or classic car, […]
In: All, Notes to Richard, The Art of Conversation
The Purpose of Science (Part I)
About 10 or 12 years ago, when I was still a scientist producing science, I was working on an experiment that eventually flew on two Space Shuttle missions (in 1994, then 1996 — our project was called "Zeno"1). We were working under the umbrella of "microgravity" research, research that wanted to exploit the very reduced […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Notes to Richard
Scientific Truth
Mark, the "Moderate Liberal", wrote a good piece called "The War Against Evolution", trying to understand, as I do with very little success, the anti-science forces at work in the USA today. It's all very trying (the anti-scientism, not Mark's essay). He and I, who both have degrees in Physics and are therefore part of […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Notes to Richard
Unintended Meaning
Sometimes, when my mind wanders (as it is prone to do) while people are talking to me, I occasionally mis-hear them: words that leave their mouths in one shape can enter my brain with an entirely different shape, leading to curious misconstructions of meaning. At other times, I drift along and only hear excerpts of […]
In: All, Hermeneutics, Notes to Richard, Splenetics
Natural Selection II
In my continuing, back-burner research to demonstrate my point that many, many people (including quite a few who should know better) totally misunderstand the operating of natural selection and its relation to evolution, behold this crystal-clear example. From The Advocate magazine (17 August 2004–I'm behind in my reading), in an article ("It's All Natural") about […]
Instrumental vs. Choral Musicians
In addition to being an organist, Isaac is a choral conductor. I am fundamentally an instrumental musician ('cello), although I do some singing, too. Frequently I complain to Isaac about singers who seem to have no rhythmic sense and, in particular, no sense of rhythmic pulse, the feeling that there is an uninterruptable flow to […]
The Value of Stocks
I've been toying lately with the idea of becoming an economist. It doesn't seem all that hard from what I can tell, and it seems the easiest route to winning a Nobel prize–much easier than, say, physics–since they seem to give them to economists who do the best job of pretending to be a scientist. […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Notes to Richard
Martin Gardner on Natural Selection
REM dreaming surely serves some useful function, otherwise why would evolution have invented it? –Martin Gardner, Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000), p. 216. Like any good scientist, and uncomfortably like many bad pseudo-scientists, I have my own share of crackpot theories that I believe in. One of […]