The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Carl:

This is something that can be recovered fully from, and that should be the goal. Everyone here is pulling for both of you.
Hang in there!

It's a fair cop.

I, personally (and somewhat professionally - like the delightful ebear, I am also falling back into anthropology) find it interesting, if not fascinating that the various sub-threads on this topic should dovetail so neatly.

This thread started, at least in part, as a discussion of "Bill Sanders is a nitwit" and quickly (as things happen here) mutated into a discussion on racism, the definition of race, and various fine points of the publishing industry.

It divided, as things always do among humans (and possibly other sapients - I'm waiting to meet other species and find out how universal it is) into various groups with fuzzy edges 'circling the wagons' to protect their ideas and mind-sets againt 'the other'.

And ain't that what "race" and "ethnicity" and "you're either with us or you're against us" is all about?

For a group that prides itself (sometimes aggressively so) about being open-minded, we're getting pretty insular about some things.

Yep - I'm several minorities, and have been bashed (in various ways) for those associations. But I have tried (and often failed, alas) to not let that get the better of me and make me a bitter, self-indulgent, nasty believer that only I and those who agree with me are really *people* (AKA: A Loyal Bushie).

I'll get down off of my soap box now and watch and see if any of you can read this without your biases/filters running overtime.

So... is "Sam Chevre" another way to spell "Sean Hannity"? Because this is the sort of nonsense he does on a regular basis.

The political makeup of people who cannot make decisions that affect much are not useful statistically, but the affilitions of the political appointees who *do* make the decisions are. Your argument (such as it is) is about as valid as saying "The pentagon was built during a Democratic administration, end therefore the building is unsound."

A place down on the corner makes french toast from fresh made french bread. Dangerously good.

And I wonder why Hallmark doesn't use some of its resources to track down the spammers and send some 'friendly' old ladies to deal with them. :)

I just wonder how many of the "Other" designees were actually written in as "none of the above."

The Libertarian party, as it exists here at the present is the party whose credo is "Mine!!!" without the baggage of having G.W.Bush hanging around its neck. That is to say, the party of deepest hypocrisy. Saying that makes it clear what I think of Barr.

What I think of Helms would require keys not on this keyboard.

"It's a series of tubes!"

When I was a youngster I used to spend time in the spring and summer with distant relatives in the Oakland/Berkeley area, and was always amazed at how green the hills were compared to my native San Diego. When I was up there in April, things were just as brown as they are down here, which is a sure precursor to wildfires.

I hope everyone up there is holding up all right.

#250 Cat - not writing out bass parts is pretty much standard protocol in jazz, and lots of folk music. Just throw the chord changes at a good bass player and they'll know what to do.

But giving changes to a jazz bass player in a classical setting (especially when marked as "figured bass") can have unusual results. Sometimes good, sometimes not.

As far as written music being the music...

Among jazz musicians, the written parts for a piece are called "the chart" because (as it was explained to me by one of the jazz greats many years ago) the written notes (and appended dynamics, accents, ties and other expressions) are just a map that leads you to the music, if you're lucky.

As one who teaches jazz to high-school age kids, I can guarantee that getting all of the notes right doesn't necessarily lead to the music inside, and conversely, not getting all of the notes 'right' doesn't necessarily mean the music won't arrive. The two ideas are congruent, but not identical.

I don't know about any of you, but for me there are similar applications to written prose and occasionally to poetry.

Serge #121 - About the only part of the film that was carefully considered was the score. But Schickele and PDQ are rather different personalities in the same body.

Goliard #89 - Alas, Breves have been outlawed here by the Department of Homeland Security, as there is too much potential for them to mutate into "Allah Breves.*" So we use whole notes, double-whole, etc.

*And no, I'm really not certain if we ever want P.D.Q.Bach's "Mass in the Allah Mode" to be found, but his other works are very useful when getting people used to listening to classical music. It can be amazing, when dealing with such accomplished plagiarists as PDQ, to notice how much classical music you recognize.

Hmph. How does one measure out 1/4 gram of Perotin? And what about bands like the "Sons of Champlin" or "Cold Blood" or "Tower of Power" (or even some Stan Kenton or Louis Armstrong) where the boundary lines between the music and the chemicals that enhanced/inspired it are blurry in one way or another.

Even when playing with those bands (and yes, I have played with some of those) I tend not to imbibe anything more potent than the occasional Heineken, but I'm not going to say no to others who want/need something more to get them in the zone, unless it messes up my focus.

Simplicity really does not seem to work well when it comes to dealing with sapient species, does it?

At what point does an ad like this cross over into parody? Is it purely intent, or just when enough of the audience are either weeping or laughing from the sheer absurdity of it all?

I had that Jimmy Dean record when I was a kid, and remember the original well enough to (as always) want to smack Cornyn with a rubber chicken or molotov cocktail or something.

#38 - This sounds at least somewhat like the discussions we had in Psych 101 about filters. Trolls tend to be very tightly tied to the way they filter the information that comes to them, and can't/won't deal with you as an equal until you understand and agree with their POV and filters.

Then again, that might just be my filters speaking. :)

#5 - it's the open minds, more like. There are many brains that are overpowered for the amount of work they do.

"...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Not a new idea.

Next suggestion, for anyone in a flood zone or near one: Boil your water.

I dunno... boiling a whole city the size of Cedar Rapids might cause more trouble than just flooding it.

Well if he gets "elected" (Ghu forbid) at least the comedy writers will only have to refinish old Gerald Ford jokes.

But the resurgence of Chevy Chase is too high a price to pay!

Comment statistics for Carl on the Making Light blog

Total: 74 comments. View all these comments on a single page.