Mental Distortion

Um… I’m not so sure about that. Bang Bang’s right hand movement was too consistent throughout to account for changes in melody, not to mention the bass notes. Sometimes he had his left hand on the real piano, but at other times when the same bass notes appeared in the song, his hand was not playing those notes. Seems staged to me… Need a clearer video to truly show if it’s real or not.

Originally posted as a comment
by iggyviola
on The Atlantic using DISQUS.

Interesting take on possible future user interface interaction. Not sure what to think of the five finger concept, which is similar to what Apple is already doing with it’s track pad, with 1, 2, 3 and 4 finger interaction for basic visual commands. Only the most tech savvy would quickly adapt to such a concept.  The everyday average/beginning user would be overwhelmed.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

The official debut of Gustavo Dudamel, or Gustavo the Great/Gustavissimo/The Dude/G*D, as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week at the Hollywood Bowl has certainly created stratespheric expectations for the 28 year old conductor and has had a sort of Messicanic tinge to it all, whether he likes it or not.

But we must be cautious with our expectations. Dudamel is not going to walk on water and he is not going to single-handedly save an art form that has no need of life support. Indeed, were classical music so irrelevant to our times and needs, it could never have produced a Dudamel.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Dudamel is a brilliant musician from what I have gathered so far. But he’s still young and has what will seem to be a stellar career ahead of him. But let him mature and grow more before calling him a genius. However I’d much rather have this sort of excitement focused on someone like Dudadmel than, say, the next André Rieu or Sarah Brightman.

(Via Los Angeles Times.)

It was reported in today’s Times that the New York Philharmonic will be forced to cancel its October tour of Cuba that was originally scheduled for the end of this month. While it’s perfectly legal for musicians to travel to the communist nation, the donors of that trip, who would potentially spend lavishly while on the tour, are legally barred for entering the country. I guess this means musicians don’t make enough money to spend lavishly.

The cancellation was an embarrassment and something of a setback in the New York Philharmonic’s effort to cast itself as the nation’s flagship traveling orchestra. It made headlines with a trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, nearly two years ago (no United States government permission for patrons was required) and leaves on Sunday for an Asian tour that will take in another Communist nation, Vietnam.

This exposes how arbitrary the rules are governing American citizens’ rights to travel to Cuba,” Julia E. Sweig, an expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the Treasury Department’s position. “If you have a family member there, you can go. If you play an instrument or sport, you can go. But if you’re a philanthropist who wants to support arts in Cuba, you can’t?

Let me get this straight. The State Department requires no approval of patrons to accompany the New York Philharmonic on a tour of North Korea, a country that is openly developing nuclear weapons and one that would potentially divert the spending of those wealthy patrons to the development of the country’s nuclear program. But patrons must obtain permission from the State Department when traveling to Cuba, a country that poses no threat to the United States (anymore) except for ideologues that can’t let go of an outdated fear and grudge against an aging Cold War warrior who won’t be around much longer. I know I’m stretching things just a little bit, but the notion that Cuba is a bigger threat to the United States than North Korea is a joke. The restrictions, if there has to be any, should instead be reversed.

(Via New York Times.)

David Brooks has an interesting editorial today in the New York Times about the real world effect of right-wing political shock jocks such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their actual effect on the political process.

Over the past few years the talk jocks have demonstrated their real-world weakness time and again. Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their House election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their campaigns.

In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because ‘we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.’ Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Dittoheads advanced.

This sounds about right, but it’s difficult to actually think so, because they are continually given a pulpit in which to spew from time and time again all under the banner of ratings. Not only do fans of Limbaugh and Beck watch their shows, but a large amount of people who can’t stand them watch the shows too along with the commercials that go with the program. While someone like Rupert Murdoch may have an obvious right-wing slant, he knows where the money goes and would most likely support a left-wing candidate if it meant them being in front of the camera for at least the next 4 years.

Brooks continues:

But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.

I would think that the silent majority is the people who can’t these political shock jocks, both Democrats and centrist Republicans who would like for their party to gain a scent of respectability again.

(Via New York Times.)

My first collection of photos on this blog of Bonefro, Italy received quite a bit of attention, especially from those who were looking for family roots in Bonefro. I was very lucky to spend 8 summers in Bonefro helping to run the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival, and I feel that I came to know the town and its people very well. It’s a time of my life that I will never forget, and I do plan to go back again.

Here is a second batch of photos that I took in 2004, a mix of photos of Bonefro, Termoli and the Tremiti Islands, islands that can actually be seen from Bonefro on the clearest of days, something I saw only once or twice in my 8 years there. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the most important part of any small town in Italy is its piazza. This picture is one of those rare moments when not a soul sits in the center of town chatting, playing cards or simply walking around.

Continue reading ‘Photo Blog: Bonefro & Termoli, Italy’

Wow, who knew people were paranoid about the moon being bombed. It’s curious that people are scared of a small little probe crashing into a small crater on an object as large as the moon. Isn’t that the equivalent of a tiny hair follicle hitting the side of my house? Unfortunately, ignorance is patriotic these days and to offend someone of their stupidity on such an issue is not a smart move to make. So instead we leave these idiots to continue creating more idiots and questioning the validity of science. I’m just surprised that this guys didn’t worry what would happen to all the blasted cheese.

…you could be forgiven for thinking there was something worth worrying about. If, that is, you were convinced that all the scientific minds at NASA, and their academic consultants, were out to get their measurements whether or not it involved imperilling the human race. I mean, even assuming they’d be able to analyse them in the absence of civilisation as we know it, where would they publish?

Or is it that these guys think that NASA hasn’t considered the possibility that ‘the moon controls all the tides’? Some professor at NASA is going to sit up and go ‘Gosh, Joe from North Carolina points out that the moon interacts with the Earth! Stop everything, we mustn’t touch it in case we knock the planet’s orbit out of whack!’ He then mutters, as an aside to his secretary, ‘Send that man a t-shirt as a gesture of thanks. Then have him kidnapped and kept in a Cape Canaveral basement as our Senior Plans-A-Four-Year-Old-Could-See-Though Checker.’

Schrödinger’s Kitten: Why Yes, We Scientists Have A Death Wish And We Are Taking You With Us

Facebook Group: Don’t Bomb The Moon‘

I’ve often had long dry spells of contributing any content to this blog, as I have tried to avoid having this blog contribute to the massive dead pool of other blogs out there in the blogosphere. Perhaps one reason for this is the diet I have been on since the beginning of this year. In just under six months I was able to shave off 50 pounds from my body frame, something I am pretty proud of and hope to now maintain for the rest of my life, if possible. Many people have asked me how I did it, and I have given a variety of answers to the question. I would like to simply dump an email I sent to a friend with various bits of info on what my diet consisted of. I’m sure I digress from various points I was attempting to make, but I believe the list contains most of what I did in order to lose the weight. I will eventually draw up a more official write up of my diet and how it works. But this will certainly do for now:

1. Reduce your daily calorie intake to 1,200 calories total. Don’t do this overnight, but gradually phase it in over a period of a couple of weeks. READ THE NUTRITIONAL LABEL ON EVERY ITEM YOU BUY to see how many calories each food has. Be careful to see the serving size, because a lot of food companies trick people into thinking that the calorie intake is low when in fact the serving size to go with that low number is small as well, since people eat multiple serving sizes of those items. That adds up a lot of calories.
2. Download software that allows you to keep a daily diary of EVERYTHING you eat. iPhone has this (I use LoseIt!) although I’m sure the Blackberry has something similar if not the exact same program. Or download a program for your computer. All these programs tie into a database where you can find the nutritional content for each food, and they should allow you to add your own items with its nutritional content when you can’t find it in the database. A good site to find nutritional info is www.thedailyplate.com, especially it’s data on restaurants.
3. Exercise: Do something for at least 30 minutes a day, whether it’s taking a walk, running, working out at the gym. Daily exercise is critical in this. Many people make the mistake in thinking that if they exercise, but don’t regulate what they eat, that they will lose weight. This is absolutely wrong. So for example, if you work out at the gym, do not go to a cafe and eat a muffin, because if you have worked off 300 calories at the gym, you’ll be eating 400 calories in a muffin alone, thereby canceling out the effects of your diet. So exercise AND calorie control have to go hand in hand.
4. Basically, the diet is a numbers game. If in a day I have eaten, say, 1,100 calories for the day and exercised/burned 600 calories, my daily net total of calorie intake is 500 calories. This allows me then to eat something in addition, perhaps an apple or a banana (each about 100 calories) for the remaining part of the day. This will bring my calorie intake now up to about 700 calories while feeling more full, considering I just ate the banana and the apple. As long as you are honest with your food diary, you can track this sort of thing, it just being a numbers game.
5. Eat breakfast, lunch & dinner. For me, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, with dinner being a smaller affair (ie. salad, soup). Simply not eating at all is not going to work. Your body needs to keep digesting regularly throughout the day, which is ultimately another activity at burning calories (I don’t track that). But in order to stay under that 1,200 calorie ceiling AND eating regularly throughout the day, it forces you to change what you eat each day. For breakfast, I have a bowl of cereal with fruit on top, for lunch I will be more daring in what I eat, allowing myself to have a sandwich or even a slice of pizza but also with a salad to go with it. And for dinner, as I mention, something smaller. It’s also extremely important that you don’t eat 4 hours before you go to sleep at night. The worst time to digest food is while you are sleeping, and if you eat something before you sleep, you don’t want the main digestion to be happening while you are sleeping. In fact, good sleep time and sleeping at better hours actually does help lose weight. There are articles on that that explain that process.
6. Drink lots of water and other drinks that contain low calories. I still allow myself Diet Coke, which I know has its other evils, but I need something to comfort myself, don’t I? But be careful what you drink, but that really ads up. Coffee with added stuff can amount to a lot. Regular coffee is probably fine, but also tea is great.
7. Read. It’s really important that you learn about food processing and the industry in general. Learning the evils of what shit companies put in food really help one to become more motivated in being conscience about what they eat. I really do my best to axe out as much processed food as possible, because there is a lot of hidden ingredients that are very bad for you. And don’t believe what restaurants disguise as healthy options for diet eaters. For example, a restaurant like Chile’s will offer some sort of ‘diet dish’ with it containing chicken breast (great food to eat, low on calories) and salad with some sort of sauce. Well, a recent study showed that Chile’s packs the chicken with all sorts of chemicles that is stuffed with salt, sugar and other additives before even adding the sauce, which has the most calories. So a dish billed as a diet food actually ends up having over 1,000 calories, which is more than half of the normal daily recommended intake of calories (2,000). And that doesn’t even take into account drinks and other stuff. Remember that drinks alone, for the average American, take in over 500 calories a day. I’m digressing here, but read up on the subject. There’s a lot to learn and be shocked by. Good books that I recommend: ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollen’, ‘The World Is Fat’ by Barry Popkin’, and countless articles on the subject. Reading this stuff has really changed my diet in general for good. As little processed food as possible, lots of natural foods (from scratch cooking), slow eating … etc. Here’s some recommended reading to illustrate more my point on all of this: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html
8. Now that I have reached my goal, I have increased my calorie limit to 1,500 calories per day. I still want to lose another 7 pounds or so, and once I reach that goal, I will probably increase the ceiling to 1,750.

So, that’s my Calorie Nazi diet. I’m sure I’m leaving things out, but I can send you those tips as I remember them. There comes a point where you become almost obsessed by it, but in a good way. You have to get into the grove, and once you’re in it (both food and exercise), you can make a lot of progress. You also have to be strong when eating with friends, because they’ll tend to be eating heavier stuff and you have to force yourself to eat the lighter stuff.

I lost my 50 pounds in just under 6 months. So it is possible. It’s hard at first, but it’s guaranteed to work. My brother did the same diet and he lost over 40 pounds, although he didn’t do any of the exercise part. He took longer to lose it as a result, but he lost it. If you focus on the calorie aspect of meals, you’ll improve other parts of your nutrition (ie. cholesterol, proteins…etc.). Not that I pay attention to celebrity diets, but I have often seen the number of 1,200 being the ceiling they set for themselves in their diets (ie. Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey). Not sure why it’s that number, but it worked for them when they went on diets. 1,200 calories sounds low and your friends will think you’re crazy for going that low, probably even saying that it’s unhealthy. But if you pick your foods right and eat at regular intervals, it’s definitely easy enough to stay under that ceiling.