I have only recently really discovered his music. He was old though. He passed away on December 9th in Saint-Petersburg.
Известный композитор Борис Тищенко скончался 9 декабря 2010 года на 72-м году жизни в Санкт-Петербурге.
A story from Hawaii:
Shit happens.
That’s reality, according to Daniel Petersen, who has taught philosophy for 21 years at Hawaii Community College and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. And it’s a reality he shared — in those words — with his students. Now he says he is sharing that reality in the collapse of his teaching career, which he attributes to the aftermath of a complaint from the father of a student over a few instances of profanity in his class at the community college.
On BBC player right now – if you have an access, watch it – fascinating! [First recorded case of syphilis anyone?]
My favorite music/culture blog – Ionarts – is doing it (yet again). At #5 (the latest post) is my recent favorite – Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Here’s a quick taste:
It’s not me, it’s you. Sadness.
The professor is occupied reading the explanations he has prepared to communicate to the students in the room. But the way he holds his lecture papers, his gestures, his complexion, the shape of his skull and the fall of his hair separate from this professorial presence, and form a foppish, bufoonish, or loutish physiognomy. The instructor disappears, as though he had left the room, leaving there only his trappings and paraphernalia (A. Lingis, The Imperative, 100).
“Last night’s event with Steve Martin did not meet the standard of excellence that you have come to expect from 92nd St. Y,” Sol wrote in an e-mail to ticket holders. “We planned for a more comprehensive discussion and we, too, were disappointed with the evening. We will be mailing you a $50 certificate for each ticket you purchased to last night’s event. The gift certificate can be used toward future 92Y events, pending availability.” About 900 tickets to the event, which cost $50each, had been sold; all ticket buyers received the offer. Perhaps the audience saw that message coming. Midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Ms. Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Mr. Martin’s career and, implicitly, less about the art world, the subject of his latest novel, “An Object of Beauty.” According to Mr. Martin, viewers watching the interview by closed-circuit television from across the country sent e-mails to the Y complaining “that the evening was not going the way they wished, meaning we were discussing art.”
It was, he said, “a little like an actor responding in Act III to an audience’s texts to ‘shorten the soliloquies.’ ” The audience cheered when Ms. Solomon read aloud the note. Still, Ms. Solomon said she had thought until that moment that things were going swimmingly. She said she was “appalled” to have their conversation publicly criticized by the Y and found deserving of a refund. Continue reading
Nice little piece on Ayler in Le Monde:
Albert Ayler, né à Cleveland (Ohio), a été retrouvé barbotant dans les eaux de l’East River, un 25 novembre, à 34 ans. La police a conclu à une mort par noyade. Personne ne l’a crue. Albert Ayler fait partie des musiciens (sax ténor, soprano et alto) que le souffle et la brièveté de leur course portent plus haut que les astres. Au ténor, il avait un son de cathédrale. On a pris sa musique pour révolutionnaire. On avait tort, mais on avait raison d’avoir tort. Sa musique éclatante eut le sens d’une archéologie triomphale du “jazz”. Ses adversaires le tenaient pour un apprenti.“Leur fils de cinq ans en eût fait autant.” Ils avaient raison, mais ils avaient tort d’avoir raison. Et leur fils n’a rien fait.
It is only fitting that the story of the brain should be a visual one, for the visuals had the ancients fooled for millenniums. The brain was so ugly that they assumed the mind must lie elsewhere. Now those same skeletal silhouettes glow plump and brightly colored, courtesy of a variety of inserted genes encoding fluorescent molecules. A glossy new art book, “Portraits of the Mind,” hopes to draw the general reader into neuroscience with the sheer beauty of its images.
See some pictures of the structures of the brain here
