Ruminations - 1may2009

George Rebane

Happy May Day to all of my liberal friends, whether in solidarity with other workers, or still trying to slog through life making a living on your own merits.

Good swine flu site at the CDC here that you may want to make more accessible on your browser during this emergency.  Our county site also provides that link, but you have to dig for it.  Hat tip to RR reader GWI for the heads up.

To counter Bigmouth Biden, the administration is assuring us that travel on public transportation is safe “because” (yes, this is a causal link) people will simply postpone their travel when feeling ill.  This professed safety then depends on everyone hewing to the new social contract.  (All collectivist nostrums are based on the hopes for such altruistic behavior.)  And don’t even bring up the four day incubation period during which time you are contagious and still feel well.

Heard on NPR news this morning that California emergency services are running into some problems in coordinating with local governments.  I expect they’ll sort things out in the next few days.  We are fortunate that this swine flu thing is giving everyone a lot of warning, and, is still fairly benign (remember, in a normal year about 36,000 of us die from flu complications), and appears to be mutating very slowly.  But, we also have to keep in mind that in a tightly coupled society like ours, the non-linear nature of how these things spread can literally cause an overnight explosion of cases.  Recall the story of lily pads covering a pond if they double every day.

Speaking of NPR, they just concluded their spring drive for listener contributions.  Among the genres of music Jo Ann and I like is what is broadly called ‘classical’.  This year again we refused to contribute.  We feel that the local NPR classical outlet KXPR, along with their sister stations across the land, are helping to kill classical music in the US.  As with pop music, all classical music does not come out of the same spigot nor land equally on any ear.  Pop music solves this by having its different genres – 60s rock, show tunes, rockabilly, … - play on different stations or at different times, thereby giving the listener some choice.  Public radio classical music programmers are elitists (‘we know what you want’) and have yet to have that light bulb come on, so they conjoin a contemplative Debussy with a raucous Baroque basso continuo that disconcerts and grinds away at your very soul.  The easy solution is to have different genres of classical play at different times so listeners can tune in and tune out.  But letters and emails have not even gotten a response.  So today we mostly tune out, and buy CDs and listen to cable music.

Millions of us recently sent tea bags to our electeds, yet there are no media reports on who got how many.  I wonder why not.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

George,

I can highly recommend Pandora. I am not a classical fan, but I can pick the genre and then pick the mix. I play it through my Mac to the Bose and the sound fills the office.

I am working on some streaming applications for the Apple TV box. More on that when I have more details.

[George Rebane]

Russ, I've tried Pandora with classical. Since classical pieces are generally longer, I haven't been successful in getting it to play a selected piece past a couple of minutes excerpt. Then it goes on and plays an excerpt from another piece that it thinks is similar to the first excerpt. Very disconcerting. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.