Sunday, December 20, 2020
Tenure in a purely abstract situation
Michael Kurek gives us a clear and SHARP picture of how tenure works. The picture is nicely pure and unconfounded because Kurek is in a field that has no actual purpose.
Music has a tremendously important purpose. Music has always been created by musicians and enjoyed by ordinary people. The academic version of "music" has been totally divorced from music for more than a century.
Note that Packard sponsored a Packard Six Orchestra for jazz and swing, and a Packard Eight Orchestra for classics. Precise delineation of status hierarchy. Presumably the Packard Twelve Orchestra was by invitation only. If you have to Ask The Man Who Owns One, you can't afford it.
First, at some point around the end of the 19th and early 20th century, the patronage system waned, and support of composers transitioned away from private donors, mostly to academia. Composers began to earn a faculty salary for their personal livelihood, while governments and arts organizations sometimes paid the expenses related to the performance and recording of their larger works for orchestra and opera.In academic fields that (at least nominally) deal with solving real problems, tenure can (at least nominally) be based on real problem-solving work. This is still true in areas that work closely with industry and agriculture. Music can solve real problems, but the academic end of music doesn't even bother to work with the music industry.
Typically, one of the requirements for performing organizations to win this kind of funding, for many a crucial portion of their operating budget, is to show that they encouraged the creation and performance of “new music.” The main source of new classical music being the universities, that pipeline would feed them works that were either written by professors of composition or their like-minded alumni. This explains why much unattractive music still gets programmed, even though the organization knows most of the audience will dislike it. They may even take a hit at the box office for programming it, especially in the case of opera companies, but this is presumably offset by the grant money they can get for programming it.This vicious circle has been running full speed for 80 years. Before 1940, many formal composers were turning out formal music that people could truly enjoy. Every radio station gave airtime to classics, and a profitable segment of the audience enjoyed their choices. Movies used formal music profitably. Now only NPR stations in big cities give time to formal "music", driven by the same vicious foundations who continue to divorce "music" from music. = = = = = Just for fun, here's a 1927 weekly schedule of KFI, the largest station in Los Angeles. I've highlighted the definitely classical segments. Several others probably included some serious music. This was before the FCC started to require "public service", so the station's decisions were solely based on profit.
Note that Packard sponsored a Packard Six Orchestra for jazz and swing, and a Packard Eight Orchestra for classics. Precise delineation of status hierarchy. Presumably the Packard Twelve Orchestra was by invitation only. If you have to Ask The Man Who Owns One, you can't afford it.
Labels: Entertainment, variables and variables
¶ 10:37 PM
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Shouldn't be complaining
Ginn is complaining:
A single mistake of where a guy worked causes a regional shutdown. Don’t assume they checked their work. It’s not their incentive. The absurdity of 2020 continues to amaze us all.
True, but Ginn misses the important and NEW part. The government of South Australia ADMITTED THEIR ERROR AND CHANGED THEIR POLICY. They halted the lockdown.
This is a HISTORIC FIRST. Not just in the current holocaust, but in all the Five Eyes Deepstate lands for the last few decades.
Psychopaths never admit error and never relax their tyranny in response to facts. Death has no input and no feedback. Demons occasionally pull back some aspect of tyranny momentarily, in order to make the next total STOMP more painful and deadly. Pinball. Sucker punch.
The Aussie government has departed from Deepstate and demon norms, and is using NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, the basis of life and civilization. Admitting error is an essential part of hard-wired Natural Law morality. Dogs do it, and occasionally humans learn from dogs.
Will it continue? Of course not. Nevertheless this is UNPRECEDENTED behavior from a government in the Five Eyes Lands.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 11:40 PM
Sunday, November 01, 2020
Belarus about to surrender?
Hard to tell from the badly translated English in Belta News. From the translations, it sounds like Lukashenko is losing support from his inner circle, and seems to be hinting that he's about to step down.
But he's also cracking down on the Sorosian rebels. No hints there. And various video clips show that the country is still solidly normal, not Mascoid.
I'm hoping the implication is just clumsy translation of Slavic subtlety. There are only two perfectly normal countries in the world, and losing the only one in Euro areas would be tragic.
I shouldn't try to read tea leaves. It's a bad habit even in normal times, and in a crazy world largely ruled by psychopaths, predicting is guaranteed to be wrong. The most important goal of psychopaths is to break the predictive and purposeful functions of human souls by constant rule-changing. Some of the changes are intended to give false hope, some are intended to give false feelings of disaster. The CHANGE itself is the only constant.
11/12: In this case the tea leaves were right. Belarus surrendered. Now the free world is down to Tanzania and Sweden.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 2:29 AM
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Good test question for design vs evolution
Wasting time on Quora again. Most questions are idiotic partisan shit. Occasionally there's a thoughtful one.
How is it possible that there are so many medicinal and generally helpful plants for humans and animals to use? Why are there so many?
It's true that many plants are good food and good medicine. We've neglected a lot of the good medicine, which older cultures understood in detail.
It's also true that animals, including humans, have a specialized hunger for the foods that are good. We've diverted this hunger into processed and manufactured foods, but it's still there after you break some of the commercially induced habits.
What's not obvious at all is the reason. Neither evolution nor design works as an explanation. Some animals are EXTREMELY specific about their ONE necessary food source. Others, including humans, have a wider variety of needs and more flexibility.
Evolution should make all animals fairly adaptable, if not universally adaptable. Design should make all animals precisely synced with their food source. Reality is far more varied.
Labels: Grand Blueprint, variables and variables
¶ 10:37 AM
Friday, September 25, 2020
Same myth
Randomly semi-connected to the 'Darwin causes riots' idiocy.....
An item from Berenson:
C) Japan has certain sociological or other factors that make it more resistant to the virus (ie very low obesity)...
Team Apocalypse has chosen
D) Japan didn't actually fail and DID CONTROL THE VIRUS. (And a well-designed study that says otherwise is wrong! Because science.)
All non-genetic explanations for Japanese difference are pointless. The same failure happens with the question of diet. Nutrition researchers like to claim that the Jap diet gives them long life. In fact the Jap diet is awful by the standards of the same nutritionists. Lots of salt, lots of red meat and white rice. Japs smoke like chimneys and drink like fish. They still live to 110. They're just DIFFERENT, and SUPERIOR in many ways. They would probably be considered a separate species by the more rational definitions of species.
You'd think that the existence of GENES wouldn't be controversial, 150 years after Darwin and Mendel, and 65 years after Watson and Crick. Unfortunately the idiots who claim to be following Darwin still won't acknowledge that GENES EXIST.
In the specific case of the current holocaust, neither side should be drawing conclusions from Japan. Nothing that happens in Japan can be applied to Euro types. Different species. I've been careful to separate out the Oriental countries in my futile counts of sane vs holocaustal countries.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 9:30 AM
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
The biggest oddity
And the most extremely variant variable ever, which makes it the metabiggest metavariable.
Until now, Sweden has been the UNQUESTIONED LEADER in all Sorosian trends. No borders, no gender, no common sense. Break all rules of Natural Law, violate all traditions and experiential learning. Other Sorosian countries watched Sweden eagerly and followed blindly.
Now Sweden is the SOLE counterexample to the most genocidal trend of all. Sweden stuck with TRADITIONAL EXPERIENCE-BASED PUBLIC HEALTH, and the low death count PROVES it right.
Of course this shouldn't be a surprise. Public health has been handling THIS TYPE OF EPIDEMIC for a hundred years, and the methods have been honed and perfected. There was NO FUCKING REASON to do anything different. The only FUCKING REASON was the bloodthirsty need for a HOLOCAUST.
Even more variantly variant, Sorosian media are NOT doing what I'd expect. BBC is looking at Sweden's NON-EXPERIMENT objectively, not lying about it, not MemoryHoling it, actually ASKING if it's worth repeating elsewhere.
Harding again:
America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
NOT EXPERIMENT, BUT EQUIPOISE.
= = = = =
Footnote: Japan and Korea are also following NORMAL PUBLIC HEALTH, but they're so biologically distinct from Euro types that they don't form a useful comparison against most of EU/US/UK. Viruses interact differently with different races. Sweden is a valid comparison, constant except for this one single difference.
Labels: Equipoise, variables and variables
¶ 9:25 AM
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
More Jesus Why
Another Jesus! Why would anyone want to PAY for this product?
Via the Tesla skeptics, a lengthy analysis of a fake IPO for a fuel cell company.
Crucial points:
The company has sucked in $1 billion in government subsidies.
The fuel cell installations cost $892 per KW, and expected lifetime of each fuel cell is 34 months. Less than 3 years.
= = = = =
I ran the numbers last year on a similar comparison of lithium ion batteries with Edison's eternal Nickel-Iron batteries:
= = = = = START REPRINT:
The Lithium setup cost 41 million Aussie dollars, which is 29 million US.
For comparison I'm using the retail price list from Iron Edison, figured for small installations. The price for a huge installation would involve a lot less overhead, but I don't have access to those numbers and I'm not going to ask them for a quote! So the best I can do is plain multiplication.
Using the retail numbers, the biggest available pack is 48 volts at 1000 amp-hours = 48 KWH. This setup is listed at $42k dollars = $875 per KWH. If you simply put together enough of these to reach 100 MWH, the cost would be $87.5 million. About three times the cost for the Lithium setup.
The real difference comes in upkeep and replacement, not initial cost. Lithium batteries last two years, so the Lithium outfit was already halfway to the first replacement point when it finished testing. Nickel-Iron lasts INDEFINITELY. Iron Edison recommends flushing and replacing the electrolyte every TEN years. NiFe batteries made by Edison have lasted 90 years in continuous use.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
In this case the comparison is even more dramatic because the fuel cells cost the same per KW as the nickel-iron. So lifetime is the only variable. 3 years versus forever. Which is better?
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 8:00 AM
Monday, September 16, 2019
Pass the test and reject the test
A nice Godel in an article supposedly about numeracy.
The article begins with a word problem about probability, calling it a good test of math skills.
In fact the specific problem isn't about math at all. It tests your ability to see which variables are important and which are irrelevant. After you reject the irrelevant parts the math is extremely simple. The problem would test the same ability if it used non-numeric variables.
(It's a lot like this question, also falsely described as a math test.)
The article goes on to list several cases where people who overestimate their own math ability make poor decisions.
In fact the real variable in each decision is not math but confidence.
I was able to solve the initial problem (slowly!) by rejecting irrelevant mathiness, so I then applied the same rejection to the rest of the article. The decisions, like the probability, had nothing to do with math or math skills.
In short, the article is just saying that people who know their own ability know their own ability.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 5:35 AM
Saturday, December 08, 2018
Perfect contrast
While Paris is burning with protesters AGAINST the current government, Rome has a giant cheerful rally SUPPORTING the current government.
The difference is simple. France's current government HATES the people of France and viciously shits on their concerns. Italy's current government RESPECTS the people of Italy and listens to their concerns.
When you shit on the people, the people shit on you. When you respect the people, the people respect you.
Will France and US and UK and other Sorosian lands learn from this difference? No.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 10:58 AM
Tuesday, December 04, 2018
MIssed the most obvious
Thinking about Bush The Father, who stopped murdering a few days ago, and Bush The Son, who is still murdering, I remembered a quick disproof that I wrote MANY years ago.
Bush The Son constantly said "Democracies don't war." Other neocons expressed the same thought in English.
I disproved it with an easy look at recent wars. In fact there's no correlation. Some democracies have the war habit and some don't. Some dictatorships have the war habit and some don't. Warmaking and voting system are unrelated variables.
Just now realized that I missed the most obvious disproof.
By neocon terms we are a Democracy, and our Exceptional Mission in the world is to Spread Democracy. How do we Spread Democracy? We war.
Syllogism:
Democracies don't war.
We are a democracy.
Therefore we war.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 11:36 AM
Friday, September 01, 2017
Need to praise just as loudly....
Since I've complained loudly and often about Group Health's practice of holding a life-sustaining prescription hostage until the victim comes in at least three times for useless appointments, I need to praise the END of this practice just as loudly.
This year the annual BP pill renewal came up as always in August. I tried to order the next refill, knowing full well that I was triggering the captivity procedure.
Nope! They sent me a message saying that an annual appointment would be a good idea but ISN'T REQUIRED, and the refill went through like clockwork!
Especially amazing since the return of morality happened AFTER the buyout by Kaiser. Normally a buyout leads to immediate loss of all service, basically shutting down the mergee. Not this time. The new owner has IMPROVED the operations of the mergee.
Labels: variables and variables
¶ 3:07 AM
