N.A.S.A., short for “North America South America,” is a music collaboration project assembled by Squeak E. Clean (aka Sam Spiegel, brother of film director Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales, professional skateboarder).
Their album,The Spirit of Apollo, was “a conscious effort by NASA to show how people can be brought together by music and art.” It took over five years to create, and some songs required N.A.S.A. to wait up to three years for collaborators’ schedules to match. It was finally released on February 17, 2009, and received generally favorable reviews.
Ellis pitched a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970 despite being, as he would claim in 1984, under the influence of LSD throughout the course of the game. Ellis had been visiting friends in Los Angeles under the impression he had the day off and was still high when his girlfriend told him he had to pitch a game against the Padres that night. Ellis boarded a shuttle flight to the ballpark and threw a no-hitter despite not being able to feel the ball or clearly see the batter or catcher. Ellis claims catcher Jerry May wore reflective tape on his fingers which helped Ellis to see his target. Ellis walked eight, struck out six, and was aided by excellent fielding plays by second baseman Bill Mazeroski and center fielder Matty Alou. During the game, Ellis is reported to have commented to his teammates on the bench between innings that he was pitching a no-hitter, despite the superstition that discourages mentioning a no-hitter while it is in progress. Because the no-hitter was the first game of a double header, Ellis was forced to keep track of the pitch count for the night game.
As Ellis recounted it:
“I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher’s) glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn’t hit hard and never reached me.”
The incident inspired the songs “Dock Ellis” by indie rock singer Barbara Manning, “America’s Favorite Pastime” by folk singer Todd Snider, “Dock Ellis No-No” by Chuck Brodsky, and “LSD (The Ballad of Doc Ellis)” by Boston rock band Random Road Mother.
In recent days, heated policy discussions in Washington have largelyfocused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care legislation carry significant price tags: roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.) In his New York Times column today, columnist Nicholas Kristof asks why hawks claim health reform is “fiscally irresponsible” while enthusiastically supporting a troop surge in Afghanistan, given the fact that fixing our broken health care system is, unlike a troop surge, essential to the health and well-being of Americans:
The health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.
So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?
Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?
Indeed, hawkish legislators have lined up to both demand a costly surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan while at the same time claiming that deficit-cutting health care legislation would simply be too expensive:
– Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has called for providing the “resources [needed]” for a “significant increase in U.S. forces” while warning that he is “really worried about what [health care reform] would do to the deficit.” [9/13/09, 10/26/09]
– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has complained that passing health care legislation would “expand government spending even more,” while also boasting of his Republican caucus’s “broad support” for any troop increase in Afghanistan. [10/21/09, 10/11/09]
– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wrote a letter to President Obama stating that we “urgently need more resources” in Afghanistan, “including more combat troops,” while at the same time claiming that passing health care legislation would be tantamount to “generational theft” that would run up “unconscionable and unsustainable deficits.” [11/10/09, 8/27/09]
Kristof’s question bears answering. Why is it that hawkish lawmakers are so willing to spend such enormous resources in both lives and treasure on a troop surge in Afghanistan that is increasinglyopposed by Americans and Afghans, but are so quick to bark at the price tag of health care legislation that could save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they don’t have access to health care? As Glenn Greenwald notes, “Urging that more Americans be sent into endless war paid for with endless debt, while yawning and lazily waving away with boredom the hordes outside dying for lack of health care coverage, is one of the most repugnant images one can imagine.”
“In 1998 I was hired to make a film for the reclusive rocker Elliott Smith. Very excited, I flew to Portland, Oregon, where he was staying and met with him to figure it out before we filmed. At the meeting he explained, in a very quiet voice, with a slight smile, that he didn’t want it to be a straight-up documentary. So I suggested he write down some of his dreams. The next day, we met again, and he began talking a lot, and louder, telling me all about how he “had a fucked up dream last night.” It was very funny when he explained it, everyone in and around the music business he was in was telling him to get a mechanical hand to replace the hand that he’d trained for so long to play guitar. There was also a military recruiter who came into the bar where he was writing a song that would yell at him for no reason, and Satan was there, that kills me. A lot of people who know him from his music don’t understand that he was really funny. So we wrote the dream into the shot list and intercut it into the more traditional music footage. It was hard to get the documentary footage out of him, he hated being interviewed. He was much more into the dream sequence and we had a lot fun shooting it. It was an amazing experience and just knowing a guy like that, so talented and brutally honest, has changed my life. Bless him.”
What does Earth look like when viewed from Mars? At 13:00 GMT on 8 May 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) had an opportunity to find out. In addition, a fortuitous alignment of Earth and Jupiter—the first planetary conjunction viewed from another planet—permitted the MOC to acquire an image of both of these bodies and their larger satellites. At the time, Mars and the orbiting camera were 139 million kilometers (86 million miles) from Earth and almost 1 billion kilometers (nearly 600 million miles) from Jupiter. The orbit diagram, above, shows the geometry at the time the images were obtained.
Because Jupiter is over 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, two different exposures were needed to image the two planets. Mosaiced together, the images are shown above (top picture). The composite has been highly contrast-enhanced and “colorized” to show both planets and their satellites. The MGS MOC high resolution camera only takes grayscale (black-and-white) images; the color was derived from Mariner 10 and Cassini pictures of Earth/Moon and Jupiter, respectively, as described in the note below.
Earth/Moon: This is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that actually shows our home as a planetary disk. Because Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth. As seen from Mars by MGS on 8 May 2003 at 13:00 GMT (6:00 AM PDT), Earth and the Moon appeared in the evening sky. The MOC Earth/Moon image has been specially processed to allow both Earth (with an apparent magnitude of -2.5) and the much darker Moon (with an apparent magnitude of +0.9) to be visible together. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The bright feature near the center-right of the crescent Earth consists of clouds over northern South America. The image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon, since the Moon was on the far side of Earth as viewed from Mars. The slightly lighter tone of the lower portion of the image of the Moon results from the large and conspicuous ray system associated with the crater Tycho.
Jupiter/Galilean Satellites: When Galileo first turned his telescope toward Jupiter four centuries ago, he saw that the giant planet had four large satellites, or moons. These, the largest of dozens of moons that orbit Jupiter, later became known as the Galilean satellites. The larger two, Callisto and Ganymede, are roughly the size of the planet Mercury; the smallest, Io and Europa, are approximately the size of Earth’s Moon. This MGS MOC image, obtained from Mars orbit on 8 May 2003, shows Jupiter and three of the four Galilean satellites: Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. At the time, Io was behind Jupiter as seen from Mars, and Jupiter’s giant red spot had rotated out of view. This image has been specially processed to show both Jupiter and its satellites, since Jupiter, at an apparent magnitude of -1.8, was much brighter than the three satellites.
It’s worth checking out the MSSS site, for the fullsize image.
“Why are senior citizens crying “socialism” at town halls?”
As we like to say in academia: I don’t know the answer, so let me tell you something I do know. (Graphs made in collaboration with Daniel Lee.)
First, who has health insurance (from the 2000 Annenberg survey):
Next, should the government spend more on health care (this time from 2004):
Some Obamacare supporters say: Senior citizens have Medicare, which is a government plan, so they should support public health care provision, right? But maybe some people on Medicare are suspicious of expanded government involvement in health care because they see it as competing with Medicare for scarce dollars.
Here are a couple more graphs (pretty similar to the second graph above):
Pretty much the older you are, the less you favor govermnent spending on health care.
P.S. The sample size is so huge we were able to have the luxury of plotting raw data. All we did is pool the age categories 91 and up. Yes, we could make the graph cleaner by smoothing it, but why bother? The picture from the raw data is clear enough.
P.P.S. Yes, it would be good to have newer data. But I thought it would be useful to see this, given that we had the data already at hand and so the graphs were effortless to make. The patterns didn’t change much from 2000 to 2004, so maybe they represent fairly stable opinions.
This week is the Tournament of Champions. In my living room (with no pressure) I held my own, but didn’t get the final. Shit was tough. Maybe you’ll do better than me.
Category: French Classical Music
Answer: This 1928 work repeats a theme, almost entirely in C major, in an unvarying rhythm and has a crescendo lasting 17 minutes.
Facts:
1.This work is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel. Originally composed as a ballet, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is considered Ravel’s most famous musical composition.
2. While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying “Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality? I’m going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.” This piece was initially called Fandango, but its title was soon changed to…
3. This work was a great success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Benois. A scenario by Rubinstein and Nijinska was printed in the program for the premiere:
Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling. [In response] to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated.
Ravel himself, however, had a different conception of this work: his preferred stage design was of an open-air setting with a factory in the background, reflecting the mechanical nature of the music
4. Conductor Arturo Toscanini gave the U.S. premiere of this work with the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1929. The performance was a great success, bringing “shouts and cheers from the audience” according to a New York Times review leading one critic to declare that “it was Toscanini who launched the career of the this work and another to claim that Toscanini had made Ravel into “almost an American national hero”.
5. On May 4, 1930, Toscanini performed the work with the New York Philharmonic at the Paris Opéra as part of that orchestra’s European tour. Toscanini’s tempo was significantly faster than Ravel preferred, and Ravel signaled his disapproval by refusing to respond to Toscanini’s gesture during the audience ovation.An exchange took place between the two men backstage after the concert. According to one account Ravel said “It’s too fast”, to which Toscanini responded “It’s the only way to save the work”.According to another report Ravel said “That’s not my tempo”. Toscanini replied “When I play it at your tempo, it is not effective”, to which Ravel retorted “Then do not play it”.Four months later Ravel attempted to smooth over relations with Toscanini by sending him a note explaining that “I have always felt that if a composer does not take part in the performance of a work, he must avoid the ovations” and, ten days later, inviting Toscanini to conduct the premiere of his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.
*bonus* It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement: the two piano concertos and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée song cycle were the only compositions that followed this work.
SubFacts about Maurice Ravel
1. He was a composer of Impressionist music known especially for the subtlety, richness, and poignancy of his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.
2. He composed large scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (such as the second orchestral version of Ma Mère l’Oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (such as La Valse, 1906-1920). Apart from such compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes (the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane) to his more mature works like Le Tombeau de Couperin (which takes the format of a dance suite).
3. Hewas a stringent critic of his own work. While writing his composition, he said to Joaquin Nin that this work had “no form, properly speaking, no development, no or almost no modulation”.In a newspaper interview with The Daily Telegraph in July 1931 he spoke about the work as follows:
It constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of “orchestral tissue without music” — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.
4. In 1932, Ravel suffered a major blow to the head in a taxi accident. This injury was not considered serious at the time. However, afterwards he began to experience aphasia-like symptoms and was frequently absent-minded. In late 1937, Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery. One hemisphere of his brain was re-inflated with serous fluid. He awoke from the surgery, called for his brother Edouard, lapsed into a coma and died shortly afterwards at the age of 62. Ravel probably died as a result of a brain injury caused by the accident. Ravel was buried with his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.
5. According to SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique), Ravel’s estate earns more royalties than that of any other French musician. According to international copyright law, Ravel’s works are public domain since January 1, 2008 in most countries. In France, due to anomalous copyright law extensions to account for the two world wars, they will not enter the public domain until 2015.
Posted by Cubilist 
Posted by Cubilist 
Posted by Cubilist 
