Another Nod to Mahler By Shostakovich
Does anyone else think that the embellishing turn that appears frequently at the end of the F major prelude from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 87 collection of 24 preludes and fugues is a rhetorical...
View ArticleRecovery Will Not Come From Reason
The Insight section of today’s San Francisco Chronicle included an editorial by President Barack Obama entitled “Washington needs a better bargain for the middle class.” I assume that this is being...
View ArticleBenjamin Britten’s Sense of Humor
I noticed that in “The Battle of Britten,” Leo Carey’s examination of the life and work and Benjamin Britten in conjunction with three recent books appearing in this centennial year of the composer’s...
View ArticleTrying to Break the Iron Grip of Package Television Deals
According to a BBC News report this morning, Time Warner made a move to resolve the current CBS blackout that may turn out to be the first shot in a revolutionary war over cable pricing. It basically...
View ArticleGetting Closer to a Time-Based Understanding of the Brain
In my most recent Examiner.com article in which I continue to try to puzzle out the complex relationships among the brain, the mind that emerges from brain behavior, and the responses to music by both...
View ArticleFailing to Tell the Whole Story
I decided to share Thursday’s post about the improved temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) in brain imaging with a friend who happens to have far more hands-on experience with imaging...
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Non-Local Interest
While I enjoy the writing I do for many of the articles on my Examiner.com national site, I am still willing to admit that it does not attract a lot of readers. This makes me curious as to what sort of...
View ArticleSamuel (Shmuel?) Beckett’s Yiddishkeit
Fecilia R. Lee just put up a post on the ArtsBeat blog of The New York Times announcing that a group called the New Yiddish Rep is preparing a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in a...
View ArticleHas Buckminster Fuller been Forgotten?
I was glad to see that an obituary for Ruth Asawa made it into today’s New York Times. On the other hand an early sentence by Douglas Martin gave me a bit of a jolt: Ms. Asawa had been shunted from one...
View ArticleAnother Myopic Technology Journalist
Late yesterday and BBC News Web site put up a story by Technology Reporter Jane Wakefield entitled “Tomorrow’s cities: Do you want to live in a smart city?” The bold-faced introduction read as follows:...
View ArticlePriorities
Every morning I tend to read my Al Jazeera English feeds before those from BBC News. There are fewer of the former, so my decision provides me with at least one sense of prioritization. This morning,...
View ArticleDid Yahoo! Really Surpass Google?
All the buzz over Internet news seems to be about the ComScore numbers for July traffic. For those who have not seen them (my own source was Amanda Kooser’s background piece for the Friday Poll on...
View ArticleThe Glass is Neither Half-Empty Nor Half-Full
According to a report on the BBC News Web site, Kevin Spacey told the attendees of the Edinburgh Television Festival that television audiences are demanding “smart, complex stories.” He can speak from...
View ArticleKrugman on Microsoft And Apple
Paul Krugman’s latest post to his blog for The New York Times (The Conscience of a Liberal) is entitled “On the Symmetry between Microsoft and Apple.” This is clearly a reflection on the news of Steve...
View ArticleThe Representation Problem
Having finished Music, Language, and the Brain by Aniruddh D. Patel, I discovered that much of my discontent with the author’s approach had be well articulated by John A. Sloboda in the Preface to his...
View ArticleOn Avoiding Hasty Decisions
I do not always agree with Mark Mardell’s British take on what happens here in the United States, but I have to recommend his latest editorial on BBC News with the provocative title, “How strong is US...
View ArticleThe Spirit That Was Lost in the Ceremony
There was an abundance of impressive oratory at yesterday’s ceremony to honor the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. As is often the case with oratory, much of it could not be easily...
View ArticleConsidering a Scene As a Character
Once again I find myself involved with a major listening project. This time it is the Decca collection of the complete works of Benjamin Britten. This is structured according to categories, rather than...
View ArticleGoogle Glass in the Wild
Last night, during the “Champagne [actually Prosecco] Walk” in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall as part of the Opening Night Gala for the San Francisco Symphony, I had my first Google Glass sighting....
View ArticleOur Government’s Priorities
Jeff Madrick’s latest post to NYRblog, “America’s Jobless Generation,” injects a major shot of reality into any punditry about the unemployment crisis. Nevertheless, in his efforts to be rational about...
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