The answer to life, the universe, and everything

Posted on by Dale

When I was a young person, I somehow became fascinated by symphonic music, “classical” music, if you will. Heaven knows how, because I don’t come from a family from whom I would have absorbed that kind of taste. But my father bought a stereo one year, one of those huge pieces of furniture of the early-1960s, all spiffy in its moderne design. (Looking back, I’m sure it was one of those things that he didn’t tell my mother about, sort of like most of my computers, and I’m sure it had the same chilling effect on their relationship.)

He also bought a couple of cheapo hi-fidelity LPs (if you don’t know what an LP is/was, click here), and it was from those that I began my musical journey. It was all what I would call “trash music,” the thrilling cheap stuff that we discount at our soul’s peril: von Suppé overtures, operatic marches, that kind of thing. But it was enough. I was hooked.

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More educational research

Posted on by Dale

Those of you who have been with me for a while may recall a post I wrote on educational research, in which I stated my overall disdain for most research. One set of data beloved of our current administration’s education minions is the NAEP, the National Assessement of Educational Progress, the “only test administered across the nation in all the states.” In fact, it bills itself as “The Nation’s Report Card.” That’s how important it is.

Well.

Back when I first became aware of the NAEP, I thought, well, at least it’s consistent, right? Only sort of no: after I thought about it, I realized that my school was not taking this test every year, and in fact I didn’t remember it ever taking the test. So where is this report card coming from?

The way it works is that schools are randomly selected from across the country each year to be the data sources. Well, that’s okay, sort of, because you can get a “scientific sample” to give good data.

Only sort of no: within each randomly selected school, a small number of students is chosen to take the test. It’s not even random, because selected students and their parents must agree to be the guinea pigs. This small number of students then takes the test, which lasts less than an hour, and it’s from this set of data that we get our Report Card.

That’s right: when you read about how “scores are up” or “down” or our children are the stupidest of all civilized nations, this is the test they’re talking about. A 50-minute test administered to a not-quite-random sample of students scattered across the nation.

It gets worse. I often wondered at the drop off in scores between elementary and high school. You’ve read about that, how our 4th graders are up there with the rest of the world, but somehow they all get stupid by 8th grade (which makes sense, if you know middle school), but then get even stupider in high school. How does this happen?

As a principal of my acquaintance told me, when she was in charge of the test at the high school, the only students who would agree to the test were the losers who simply didn’t want to be in class. Not one of our best and brightest were included. The AP kids, the gifted kids, didn’t want to miss class.

At least at the elementary level, they work their little hearts out on the test. We tell them it’s important, and they believe us. The scabs at the high school don’t care whether it’s important or not. They just slough their way through it and kick back, enjoying their hour of freedom before sauntering back to “Life Skills Math.”

Nor does the NAEP gather any data about what might produce a school’s scores. Funding? Nope. Funding for the media center? Nope. What reading series do K-3 classrooms use? Nada. They scope out the kids’ home language and whether the family owns a computer, and that’s about it. (Their database of info on schools only includes data from the 2003-2004 school year. Their population data for my school, for example, is about 200 students off. Next year, if they follow the same schedule, they’ll be about 500 off.)

So there it is. The next time you read about the requirement to use “research-based strategies” in improving student “achievement,” remember that it’s from the same people who bring you the “Nation’s Report Card,” with about the same level of rigor in their “research.”

A full confession

Posted on by Dale

Wow. I didn’t think anyone would figure us out, but Chris Mathews nailed it.

So I might as well confess that we liberals are in league with Osama bin Laden, just as Chris Mathews (and now many other Rovian mouthpieces) claim. How else do you think he is still free four years after the Bush administration swore to get him dead or alive? That was me.

It’s also because of me that we attacked Iraq. It’s my fault we have killed over 2,000 American troops and so many Iraqis that even I’ve lost count. But it was Michael who suggested sending not enough troups to actually secure the country, guaranteeing destructive chaos and a rapidly rising insurgency.

I’m the one who set up the insurgent training camps in Iraq where there were none before, and my good friend Jobie ramped up the “ongoing war within our lifetime” meme.

Jill, on the other hand, managed the weakening of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, and I think it was Peter who first suggested wasting $20 billion on “reconstruction efforts” and then abandoning the effort. I know it was Peter who first realized the implications of a $300+ billion war effort in terms of domestic programs such as FEMA and that drug program thing. (I don’t know much about our domestic terrorism efforts; that’s a different cell under the direction of a woman they call Counselor Kay.)

Of course, I never heard any of us, not even Peter, suggest that establishing a universal Caliphate was a good idea, nor that attacking civilians in cold blood was a moral action, but perhaps I missed a meeting. Chris Mathews and Pat Buchanan seem convinced that we liberals are equivalent to Osama bin Laden, and who are any of us to disagree?

Because if we’re not responsible for everything I’ve mentioned, then who is?

Liebestod

Posted on by Dale

Oh my God: how could I have forgotten the “Liebestod”?

Today, I was toodling around doing my errands, stocking up on tonic water for the long weekend, that kind of thing, and my iPod chose John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Very fun piece, and thrilling, and I was driving along, trying to remind myself to go pick up the laundry too, and then I began to imagine some kind of video to go with the music: a short ride starting at Battery Park in Manhattan and proceding across the continent, zooming across the plains and through the Grand Canyon, ending with a swoop up the side of the Rockies and an abrupt fall down the hills of San Francisco to a sudden stop at the Pacific Ocean. Could be a lot fun for someone with imagination and enough computing power. One of you needs to get on that.

Anyway, I was thinking about computer-generated videos for classical music, and I happened to recall early attempts at this kind of thing, back in the 80s, including one for Wagner’s “Prelude and Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde that seemed fairly accomplished at the time. (The author of that particular video seems to be Ron Hays, from a quick Google search.)

I found myself wondering whether in fact that video would appear as accomplished now. (It’s not online, alas.) What would be possible with today’s technology that could match that soaring, gorgeous sound?

That’s when it dawned on me that I did not in fact own the “Liebestod.” Wagner is a difficult proposition from any angle: either you hate him or love him (“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds,” smirked Mark Twain), and even if you love him, you either own whole days’ worth of his music or Top 10 compilations.

Thus it happened that I owned Solti conducting his way through the hummable bits of the Ring Cycle, but nothing from Wagner’s other works. Not a problem: that’s what iTunes is for, ne-c’est pas? After twenty minutes deliberation, I downloaded Daniel Barenboim and some French orchestra playing bits from Meistersinger and Parsifal and finally Tristan und Isolde.

I’ve been playing it all evening, this “Liebestod,” and I have to tell you that it’s one of those pieces you should not play while driving, because you risk running into something when your eyes roll back in your head.

Wagner was a damnable man, personally vile in the extreme, but heavens, what music! A simple motif expands, growing ever and ever more passionate until it effloresces into literal waves of sound, which crash against your ears again and again and again, and just when you think the music cannot take you any higher, it does, in a climax that is, not to put it too delicately, orgasmic.

You don’t even have to know the plot of the opera: Tristan goes to pick up King Mark’s new bride, Isolde. Abetted by a servant’s love potion, they fall in love on the boatride back, but she goes through with the marriage. Alas, they cannot keep their hands off each other, and he is wounded by one of Mark’s minions. Isolde stands over his body and sings this music, willing herself out of this mortal life and into a whole other, higher plane. (“Liebestod” means “Love-Death.”)

There is of course, in one irony, a new movie opening this weekend with a modified version of this story, but somehow I doubt that it’s going to end quite so transcendently.

The other irony of this post is that Birgitt Nilsson, the great Wagnerian soprano, died over Christmas; her death was announced yesterday in the Times. I also downloaded her performance of this from the 1966 Deutsche Grammophon recording, just out of curiosity; I am not one of those who own days’ worth of Wagner’s music. People, even if you don’t like opera, this piece will leave you goggle-eyed and weeping. There is an irrational ferocity in the accompaniment that Nilsson just soars above as if it were nothing, as was her wont, apparently, and when she hits that climax, she threatens to drag you into that higher plane of existence with her. Sumptuous stuff, just sumptuous.

Ho ho ho

Posted on by Dale

Here’s my take on the Christmas/Holidays issue: Bah, humbug.

And it is humbug, an artificial, entitled aggrievement of the right, a dangerous division put about by people who want to take what should be a gentle wish of good cheer and turn it into a partisan battering ram.

I make it my personal business not to be offended by other people’s religious beliefs. If someone were to wish me Happy Hannukah or Blessed Kwanzaa or even Super Solstice, that’s great. The more good wishes coming my way, the better, I say.

However, Mr. Bill O’Reilly (the one they call the big, fat liar) has decided to bolster his sagging ratings by inventing some kind of bogus liberal war on Christmas. Rally the troops, he cries, and boycott any business that doesn’t acknowledge this nation’s Christian founding by wishing you a Merry Christmas, damn it.

And there you have it. Shouldn’t he be advising you to avoid churches that refuse to use the C word? No, it’s the businesses who are at fault for not recognizing your deeply held belief in Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

This is crazy talk. Businesses are in business, and their business is to make money from customers who may or may not be Christian. The crazies cry that anyone who might be offended by a Christian greeting is free to shop elsewhere, but folks, that’s not what this country is about. Separate economic, political, and educational systems for different religious sects is what you get in places like Iraq.

If you want to cling to the idea that this nation was founded by Christians as a Christian nation, you will want to follow that idea to its very roots: the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, they outlawed it. They saw no connection between the birth of Jesus Christ and the licentious feasts and gift-giving of the homeland.

And you know what? They were right. There is no connection. We celebrate two entirely separate holidays on December 25. One is a religious commemoration of deep significance to a majority of believers in this country. The other is a great social festival that has become vital to the economy of retailers everywhere. They happen to have the same name, but they have nothing to do with each other, unless you count the tenuous connection of “peace” and “good will.”

So the next time you manage to get yourself all offended because a place of commerce hasn’t acknowledged your religious beliefs, you need to ask yourself: exactly where are you worshipping?

Merry Christmas.

Lamest. Ad campaign. Ever.

Posted on by Dale

OK, so this is a totally irrational rant, but something in me snapped and I just have to get this out of my system: Yo, Georgia Natural Gas, what is up with that natural gas dude?

Is that not the lamest ad campaign ever? It’s not witty, it’s not retro, it’s not subcultural. It’s just retarded.

First of all, it’s a guy in an Izzy suit, only with a face cut out so you can see the poor bastard. What kind of advertising company in Georgia abrades the public’s consciousness with memories of Izzy? A retarded company, that’s what kind.

Secondly, this freak’s little pronouncements on his billboards are not pithy or cute. They’re just retarded.

The whole thing is so incredibly lame that you have to wonder, what were they thinking? The goal could not possibly have been to entertain us, or to charm us, or to endear themselves to us, because the whole concept is retarded. What are they trying to do? To enrage the public so much that their only recourse finally is to climb the billboards and deface them with spraypaint? Because that’s what I’m about ready to do.

You know what would make a good website? I mean, in a sick, retarded kind of way? Go to every single one of this creature’s appearances and stalk him. Really: get a friend, and both of you show up at every single event, smiling and beaming and getting both of your pictures taken with him. Every time. Pictures of you hugging him, kissing his cheek, with your face painted blue. Make a big hairy deal out of it. Ask him when his next appearance is, and be there. If he ever makes up a date, claim that you waited hours for him when you see him at his next gig. Blog your adoration of the Gas Guy. Invite others to share in your fascination. Watch the webclicks mount up as all of Georgia laughs itself silly over this retarded, retarded advertising trope.

And maybe then, and only then, will Georgia Natural Gas blow this little fart out.

The Penultimate Peril

Posted on by Dale

I have just finished reading The Penultimate Peril, Book the Twelfth in A Series of Unfortunate Events by the inestimable Lemony Snicket. This is a completely subversive book.

First of all, there is no way this can be considered children’s literature. In tone, in style, and in philosophical underpinnings, this book is the equal of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest or David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. I’m not joking. Snicket has extended his marvelously snarky Victorian narrator’s voice into something that is meta-post-modern wonderful, a word that here means “full of wonders.”

The basic “mirror” motif, the convoluted sentences, the convoluted plotting (which was always circular and inconclusive and in any case grinds to a halt, about which more in a moment), the moral uncertainty: by the time Snicket reaches the end of this, the longest of the books, it all has spiralled out of control and dissipates like the smoke of a building burning to the ground.

I was about to type “moral ambiguity,” but it occurs to me that morality in this book is not ambiguous. The cartoon-character versions of good and evil which have sustained the series still operate, but they are reflected back and forth in Snicket’s moral mirrors so often that we end up looking at multiple images, splintered and reassembled into scary chimeras of truth. The climactic sequence, absolutely thrilling in its breathless action, takes a while to register, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny take action against the forces of evil in ways that are in themselves questionable, and there is one moment in the ultimate penultimate peril which is truly shocking. The children’s acceptance of a kind of Realpolitik is disturbing, but then again, dear reader, have we not spent the previous eleven books wishing they would just kick butt? And now, finally, they have.

I say “finally” because it is my belief that this is the end. I know Mr. Daniel Handler, Snicket’s spokesperson, has been quoted as saying the last book will come out in the fall of 2006, but I have reason to believe he’s lying. He has always hinted there would be thirteen books in the series, and there are: twelve in the history of the Baudelaires, and the Unauthorized Autobiography which came between Books Eight and Nine. The location of this book, the Hotel Denouement, is an in-joke, of course; the denouement of a play always comes at the end. Technically, as Snicket points out, the denouement is not the very end, but also technically, the denouement is the untying of the knots of the plot, which signally does not occur in this book. “Unravelling” would be a more apt translation in this case. Snicket throws out enough hints and clues and observations to lead us to a gorgeously complex denouement, but he does not do it. I believe he has chosen to leave all the loose ends loose.

The title of the book, Penultimate Peril, suggests that there is one more volume to come, but this book reads like a finale. The ambiguity of the Beaudelaires’ situation, of VFD, of Olaf and Snicket and all the rest, is reflected (!) in the ending, which at face value is just another cliffhanger, but which I believe is the final ending. Do we get answers? Do we get a happy ending? Do we get an unhappy ending? No, no, and no. And that’s Mr. Handler’s joke.

A brilliant book. I shall be very disappointed if there is another. Unless of course he does tie up all the loose ends. Bastard.

Music for the soul

Posted on by Dale

A couple of summers ago, I went to check on how World War I was going in the classroom of my friend Dave Adams. When I got there, Germany was still posturing, the U.S. was still smug and quiet, and everyone still hated France. While Europe parleyed, music played. I complimented Dave on the music, and he offered to make me a copy of the CD, which he had put together from his collection. He called it his Music for the Soul CD; its contents represented music that resonated deeply for him.

The idea of creating a CD that was filled with music that had special meaning for your soul is right up there with the “10 books for your desert island” meme, but unlike your mythical shipwreck, this is one you can actually do, although I have to say that if you don’t have iTunes, you really really want it on your computer before you try.

I don’t think it would surprise anyone to find that mine is devoid of pop music.

Here’s my list:

  1. Allegretto, mvt. 1 of Symphony No. 2 in D, Sibelius
  2. Prelude, mvt. 1 of Cello Suite No. 1, J. S. Bach
  3. “Juice of the Barley,” an English country dance
  4. Allegro, mvt. 1 of Piano Concerto No. 2 in b minor, Dohnányi
  5. “The Hours,” from the movie soundtrack of the same name, Glass
  6. “Komm, eilet und laufet,” mvt. 3 from Easter Oratorio, J. S. Bach
  7. “Towards the Dream,” from Dreamtime Return, Roach
  8. “Prelude and Fugue No. 7 in A major,” from the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Shostakovich
  9. Fratres, Pärt
  10. Canon in D, Pachelbel
  11. “The Breaking of the Fellowship,” from The Fellowship of the Ring, Shore

The amazing thing about this lineup is that it seems all of a piece. There is contrast between tracks, but there’s an odd coherence about it all. Even the last track, the Fellowship of the Ring piece, segues neatly back into the first track, the Sibelius. One thing that helps the coherence is that most of the works seem to be related to the key of D: D major, b minor, A major, etc.

This CD must truly be my music of my soul, because I never seem to tire of it. I have gone months at a time with nothing in the CD player in the car but this, and it never palls. Even the child has noted that there’s something interesting about the CD, both as a whole and in its parts.

Stylistically, of course, it’s all over the place: baroque, post-romantic, minimalist, new age, movie music, for god’s sake. What could possibly hold it all together?

And why is this music for my soul? What does this say about me? I shall hazard a guess. It’s complex, esoteric, cerebral. It’s melancholy, mostly underneath but occasionally on the surface. It’s coherent, no 12-tone horrors here. It moves, none of it is static, the Glass, Roach, and Pärt notwithstanding. And much of it is inward-looking. Yep, that about sums me up.

Random reminders

Posted on by Dale

Today I was running off some News from the Media Center newsletters and putting them in teachers’ boxes, and a few memories flooded back: I print my newsletters on paper I’ve recycled from the copier at the Governor’s Honors Program, so things will show up on the backs of stuff that remind me of what an incredible intellectual playground GHP is.

Today, there was an entry on war from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, from Daniel Byrd’s course on Just War; a piece of music score paper with handwritten music theory assignments; the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in Latin, along with the lyrics to “Oops, I Did It Again” and “We Are the Champions”; an algorithm for a “super-random” number generator; and pages from my own “Sonnet 18” in progress.

There might just as well have been material on emotional attachment disorder, Anglo-Saxon poetry, comic book heroes, the history of the Bible or the Koran, microgenetics, Shakespeare, architectural elements, business law, the Arabic alphabet, Machiavelli’s The Prince, orchestral parts to Stravinsky’s Firebird or Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, personality traits, or Stanislavsky’s acting theories.

This is the kind of stuff that fills the six weeks of every summer in Valdosta as we make our way through the program. Just imagine the kind of student who eagerly devours this material, imagine nearly 700 of them, and imagine the teachers who bring it all to them. This is the life I lead each summer.

Finally, evidence for Intelligent Design

Posted on by Dale

A couple of weeks ago I was stuck at home with pneumonia, and one afternoon, after one part or other of the Lord of the Rings trilogy finished, I found myself face to face with Maury Povich. Merciful heavens. I have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, and I ran a community theatre for over twenty years.

It was almost enough to make one abandon one’s belief in Intelligent Design. I mean, really, who could think that an intelligent force would design creatures capable of those kinds of choices? In one sitting, I saw a woman fail a lie detector test and thus be proven a multiple adulterer; a woman confess to her fiancé that she was having an affair with her female neighbor; and a woman dying of colon cancer confess to her boyfriend that she’d been unfaithful more than 100 times and couldn’t be sure that their two children were his. I missed the segment where a man confessed to his wife that he made pocket money as a male prostitute, but that’s probably just as well.

There ain’t nothing intelligent in the incredibly untidy lives these people have lived, nor in their insane compulsion to confess their missteps, nor to do so on national television. If one were looking for patterns that betrayed the presence of an Intelligent Designer, one would not find it on Maury Povich. Quite the contrary.

I suppose that if one examines the tenets of Intelligent Design, no one is making the claim that this Force (whoever she is) is necessarily benevolent, and I know there will be those who take refuge in the old shibboleth of Free Will, but if I’m going to invent an all-powerful Intelligence who can operate outside the laws of the physical universe, I would hope I at least had the sense to make sure that He/She/It had our best interests at heart.

That got me thinking, in my fevered, antibiotic-induced way, about other particular shibboleths of the IDers. One of their favorites is the eye: how remarkable, how complex it is; surely it couldn’t have just evolved, could it?

Oddly, I remember thinking in 4th grade, as we studied the structure of the eye, that something was screwy with its design. I mean, the cones and rods are backwards, aren’t they? Shouldn’t they face toward the incoming light in order to be most efficient? And what’s up with the blind spot? Why would you run all your cabling out through the middle of your CRT?

And then I thought… testicles. Testicles. If there were ever any fleshy bit that just screams out “random selection,” surely it’s testicles. What kind of Intelligence would design something as stupid as testicles? Let’s face it, guys, any one of us could come up with better ideas on how to stow those puppies in a better place.

For one thing, we might have decided to make sperm a little tougher so that they could survive at 98.6° instead of having to be stored in little dangly pouches outside the body. We could have snuggled them up there somewhere and encased them in protective cartilage or something. Could have made that a pretty useful kind of thing, too, sort of a built-in implant kind of thingie.

But no. There they are, all wrinkly and silly, just waiting to be whacked by a teammate or opponent, or a lover, or even an excited 18-month-old. What’s intelligent about that? Not much, in my opinion.

Discernible purpose in the design? I suppose you could make a case for pleasure, that they’re awfully fun to play with, if not to look at, but I don’t imagine that’s the kind of case that most Intelligent Designers are willing to make in public. So what kind of Intelligent Force would design such a thing?

And then it occurred to me, in a flash of inspiration. If one is willing, as that President Bush has recently said, to explore all sides of the controversy, then the answer is pretty obvious: testicles are clearly the product of the fiendish Intelligence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Isn’t it obvious, guys? We were made in his image, right down to the noodly appendage. This is the only possible explanation that fits in with the agenda of the IDers: Testicles are a testament to the FSM’s almighty power, not to mention his sense of humor, and are a daily reminder to half the population of his presence, or at least of his impetus.

So there you have it: either we can think that testicles are the result of one too many random switches being thrown, an evolutionary path that hung a right instead of a left (sorry…) a long time ago, or we can recognize the overwhelming Intelligence behind their design. Seems an easy choice to me.