A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Mar 01 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Pentagon Contradicts Findings On Dover

Pentagon Contradicts Findings On Dover

Time to get angry, courtesy of Elisabeth Bumiller and The New York Times:

The Pentagon struggled on Wednesday to clarify confusion created by an independent report that said unidentified body parts of some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were incinerated and dumped in a landfill. Top officials promised a full accounting to the victims’ families.

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the chief of staff of the Air Force, told reporters that only some remains from the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon — but not remains from the plane crash site in Shanksville, Pa., “as best we can tell” — were ordered incinerated by the Department of Defense in what he described as a common practice at the time.

His words were at odds with the independent report, released on Tuesday, into failings at the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The report said that the mortuary had body parts of some Sept. 11 victims from both the Pentagon and Shanksville incinerated and then dumped in a landfill — a startling disclosure that was the latest to tarnish the reputation of Dover, hallowed ground for the military and the entry point for the nation’s war dead.

Oh geez.

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Feb 29 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Concert Rage

Concert Rage

Bonus Alex Ross material: here’s a piece he wrote for The New Yorker in 2001 about people being obnoxious during concerts:

At the invitation of Lincoln Center, Sellars staged Bach’s Cantata No. 82, “Ich habe genug” (“I have enough”), as the death scene of a woman in a sick ward. The mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performed in a thin hospital gown, a light bulb shining in her face. As the concert got under way, a listener on the right-hand aisle started muttering to himself, apparently because he found the production offensive. Another listener asked him several times to be quiet, but the mutterer was undeterred. “This is ridiculous,” he was heard to say. “No way to treat Bach.” Then, just before the end of the piece, the mutterer belched, and his neighbor let loose with a bloodcurdling cry of “SHUT UP, ALREADY!” The heft and color of the voice recalled Jackie Gleason in his prime. Unfazed, Lieberson launched into the cantata’s final aria, whose first words were, conveniently, “Mein Gott!”

It’s pretty hilarious.

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Feb 28 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is one of my favorite musical works of all time. It’s single-handedly responsible for getting me into expressionism and other modernist music. Here’s one of my favorite songs from it, “Der Mondfleck” (#18), performed by soprano Bauwien van der Meer and Ensemble 88.

Bonus material from Wikipedia:

Reaction was mixed, with Anton Webern reporting at the première whistling and laughing, but in the end “it was an unqualified success”.

Colin:
Webern you dick.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Feb 28 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Björk’s lost Pierrot Lunaire performance

Björk’s lost Pierrot Lunaire performance

I’ve been reading Listen to This by Alex Ross, which is pretty cool. Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker, and the book is largely a collection of his writings for the magazine, along with some updates and original material.

Mentioned in the chapter about Björk is a selection of songs from Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire that she performed for a music festival. The fansite Björkish has some info on the performance:

On August 4th, 1996, Björk appeared at the Verbier Festival, and performed Schöenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, with conductor Kent Nagano, the Opera orchestra of Lyon, and Murray Hipkin, who later worked with Björk on John Tavener’s Prayer of the Heart.

The performance required three months of rehearsals, and was never officially released.

The decision not to record the performance was actually Björk’s. As explained to Alex Ross in one of his pieces:

“… Kent Nagano wanted to make a recording of it, but I really felt that I would be invading the territory of people who sing this for a lifetime.”

Which is a remarkably well-grounded position, and one which I respect, but at the same time I MUST HEAR THIS GIVE THIS TO ME

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Feb 27 2012
Mark Twain, probably

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and some cats

OH GOD VINCENT PRICE WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING

YOU EVIL FIEND DON’T YOU DARE DO IT

PETER LORRE IS ONTO YOU

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Feb 26 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Supercolliding a PHP array

Supercolliding a PHP array

/! HIGH NERD ALERT /!

Anyway here is a fun piece about how trivial it is to craft evil keys for a PHP array. This exploit has apparently already been fixed in version 5.3.9, but that doesn’t make it less funny.

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Feb 25 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Photo by Arnd Wiegmann for Reuters of:

Wood burns in a stove as Pascal Prokop drives his 1990 Volvo 240 station wagon during cold winter weather on a road near the town of Mettmenstetten, south of Zurich

Yes, this man installed a wood-burning stove in his car. He even has a permit!

(Photo via MSNBC’s PhotoBlog, but I recommend you not click through as the piece is just an excuse for terrible puns.)

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Feb 24 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Itagaki: Tecmo Tricked Me Into Releasing Dead Or Alive 2

Itagaki: Tecmo Tricked Me Into Releasing Dead Or Alive 2

From a piece by Chris Kohler for Wired’s Game|Life blog:

As the deadline of the PlayStation 2’s launch grew closer, the company’s sales general manager approached Itagaki at his desk [about the development of the port of Dead or Alive 2].

“Can I borrow a copy of this so I can play it a little?” Itagaki remembers the manager saying.

“I said, sure, yeah, go on, and I handed him the disc which was still under development,” Itagaki said. “But this disc was never played by them.”

Instead, Itagaki said to the crowd of game developers and executives, “it was taken into a factory for production on that day without me knowing it.”

What the fuck.

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Feb 23 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Girl Scouts promote homosexuality and abortion, lawmaker says

Girl Scouts promote homosexuality and abortion, lawmaker says

Rene Lynch for the Los Angeles Times:

Girl Scouts are dangerous — and not just to your diet. At least that’s what Indiana lawmaker Bob Morris says. He has labeled the Girls Scouts of America a radical organization that promotes homosexuality and abortion and is out to destroy American values.

…

Morris said he made his discoveries after talking to some knowledgeable constituents and conducting “a small amount of Web-based research.” He said the discussion and research led to his conclusions that the Girl Scouts encourage sexual activity, are a front for Planned Parenthood, and that scouts are encouraged to look up to role models who endorse feminist, lesbian and Communist agendas.

ENGAGE THE LAUGHOTRON 5000

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Feb 22 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Shitstorm ‘best English gift to German language’ in 2011

Shitstorm ‘best English gift to German language’ in 2011

Germany’s The Local:

Germany needed Shitstorm, according to a group of language experts who elected the word as the top English contribution to the German language last year.

…

The jury said in a statement on Monday: “Shitstorm fills a gap in the German vocabulary that has become apparent through changes in the culture of public debate.”

…

The Anglicism of the Year contest, organised since 2010 by University of Hamburg linguist Anatol Stefanowitsch, is designed to recognise English’s contribution to German as the language evolves.

A fine choice.

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