Here's a good quality audience-reocrded video of Sting, from the London Palladium on April 20, 2022. I don't normally post audience videos, (most of them will make you dizzy after a few minutes) but his one is fairly steady and has decent sound.
The songs are a mix of his solo material and Police songs, and still, as someone pointed out in the comments, still don't include many of his big hits (Don't Stand So Close to Me, for example) in a 2-hour-long set.
I'm probably not going to be posting as much as usual over the next couple of months. There's just too much going on around here right now and I have other things I have to attend to that are more urgent.
I'll try to keep up with the regular Featured Links and photo posts at least, maybe more link posts instead of longer screeds.
It's been a year since I purchased my Fujifilm X-S10 and 16-80 mm. F4 WR lens. In that year, I've taken a couple of thousand pictures, so I have a better idea of what I can and can't do with the camera.
TL; DR: I really like the camera and I'm glad I bought it.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about:
Here's a picture of a street art sculpture in front of the Richmond-Adelaide Centre in downtown Toronto. The new TMX media centre is finally open, beside the EY Tower, which is where the main TMX offices are now. As much as I like downtown Toronto, I am so glad I don't have to go there every morning. I took the picture with my Pixel 4a. At some point, I want to get back downtown, but with the X-S10.
Thanks to my beautiful daughter for taking me to Massey Hall Thursday night to see Broken Social Scene.
I first heard them around the time that their album, You Forgot It In People came out in 2002.
As much as I liked the album (a lot), it wasn't until I saw them at Harbourfont in 2004, taking my tween daughter to her first rock concert, that I really got into their music. In 2009, we saw them again at Harbourfront, in a concert that became part of the film, This Movie Is Broken. It was as close to a perfect concert as I've ever been to, and the best concert I've been to in at least a couple of decades.
Broken Social Scene's Toronto concerts are always special. While the touring band of six or seven musicians is great, in Toronto they usually have a larger ensemble - at one point Thursday, I think there were fourteen musicians and singers on stage. In a full two-hour set, they covered some of their classics and newer material, aided at the end of the set by the incredible drummer, Sarah Thawer.
The opening act, Georgia Harmer, was also very good and I would have enjoyed seeing more of her.
The renovated Massey Hall is a vast improvement and the restoration is beautifully done. There are now walkways along the side of the building that take you to a large lobby area behind the stage with food, drinks, and washrooms. And there are elevators! The main floor seats can be removed (and stored under the stage, I think) providing a dance floor that the crowd took full advantage of.
The last decade has seen an usual amount of social and political turmoil, much of it driven by increasing social polarization and disinformation campaigns. In the article Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, Jonathan Haidt lays the blame squarely on the increasing role of social media in everyday life, using the metaphor of the Tower of Babel as a framework.
Recent academic studies suggest that social media is indeed corrosive to trust in governments, news media, and people and institutions in general. A working paper that offers the most comprehensive review of the research, led by the social scientists Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, concludes that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.
When people lose trust in institutions, they lose trust in the stories told by those institutions. That’s particularly true of the institutions entrusted with the education of children. History curricula have often caused political controversy, but Facebook and Twitter make it possible for parents to become outraged every day over a new snippet from their children’s history lessons––and math lessons and literature selections, and any new pedagogical shifts anywhere in the country. The motives of teachers and administrators come into question, and overreaching laws or curricular reforms sometimes follow, dumbing down education and reducing trust in it further. One result is that young people educated in the post-Babel era are less likely to arrive at a coherent story of who we are as a people, and less likely to share any such story with those who attended different schools or who were educated in a different decade.
It's a long and well-reasoned article, although I think that it gives short shrift to other factors, like economic inequity, that are having disruptive effects. He does suggest some things that can be done to help improve the situation, if we have the will to commit to them.
We can never return to the way things were in the pre-digital age. The norms, institutions, and forms of political participation that developed during the long era of mass communication are not going to work well now that technology has made everything so much faster and more multidirectional, and when bypassing professional gatekeepers is so easy. And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis.
What changes are needed? Redesigning democracy for the digital age is far beyond my abilities, but I can suggest three categories of reforms––three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.
It's well worth taking the time to read and think about this article.
Users with tremors caused by Parkinson's or other neurological diseases can have trouble using phones and tablets. If you use an iPad, there is now an app called Staybl that can help by using the device's accelerometer to detect tremors and move the screen in the opposite direction to stabilize the field of view.
Other improvements made to the Staybl app that help make it more accessible and useable for those dealing with hand tremors were the removal of swipe and slide gestures required for navigation, enlarged buttons made easier to press, a higher contrast interface, and the use of the Atkinson Hyperlegible sans-serif font developed by the Braille Institute for improved legibility for readers with visual impairments through a design that makes individual letters easier to differentiate.
The app is currently only available for iPads but the developers hope to create versions for other devices and platforms.
I was a latecomer to the cult of Rush. I didn't start listening to them until the early 1980s and didn't get around to seeing them live until the Clockwork Angels tour. (It was a good concert marred by terrible sound). I still listen to them occasionally, especially the live releases.
Here's a recent interview with the two surviving members, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, that I found very interesting. It's from the House of Strombo channel on YouTube, the home of Canadian media personality, George Stroumboulopoulos.
In this exclusive conversation, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson talk about their eighth studio album Moving Pictures, the loss of Neil Peart, grieving in public, their new perspective on time, the music industry today, being booed off stage, getting high before rehearsals, Taylor Hawkins and more.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
It's Easter weekend up here in the Great White North. Fortunately, I don't live in Manitoba, so it is starting to get green here.
I'm taking the weekend off from blogging. I'll be back Monday or Tuesday, depending on how bad the food coma is.
Here's a picture from my front yard - the promise of spring.
We've inherited my nother-in-law's dog, Tea Sea, a sweet 11-year-old Shih Tsu. I'm more of a cat person myself; we've had cats ever since we moved here. But I've quite fallen for the little thing; she really is quite loveable.
So I found this article quite interesting. It seems that dogs have evolved to invoke that loving response in humans.
Most pet owners probably know what it’s like to cave to those “puppy dog” eyes—no matter the age of their canine. When your dog looks at you with that curled brow and doleful stare, it’s difficult not to give it a loving scratch or meaty treat. And why not: You and your furry friend have been conditioned by thousands of years of evolution for this moment, according to a growing body of research by biological anthropologists like Anne Burrows.
“Dogs are our closest companions,” she says. “They’re not closely related to us [as a species], but they live with us, they work with us, they take care of our children and our homes. So investigating different aspects of the dog-human bond, I thought, would help me understand human evolution and human origins.”
From disarming looks to alarming barks, Burrows and her team at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh investigate the ways dogs have evolved to express themselves in order to earn the title of “man’s best friend.” The research group is taking a detailed anatomical approach to understand how dogs and their wild relatives, wolves, evolved to have different traits, such as facial expressions and vocalizations. Burrows presented preliminary data from the lab’s latest canine facial-muscle studies at the American Association for Anatomy annual meeting in Philadelphia on April 5. These traits are also little windows into the evolutionary history of both dogs and humans.
“The story of dogs is the story of humans,” she says. “It helps us understand how we got here, and what we were doing in terms of technology, social behavior, over thousands of years.”
Recently, I've seen some graphics that really bring home the impact of climate change, and I thought I'd share them here.
First is a spiral graphic showing the increase in temperature over the last century and a half.
I like this type of graph because it shows both seasonal variations and the temperature range over a period of time, which is also helpfully colour coded.
As this web page shows, the spiral graph can also be used to show CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the extent of arctic ice.
Earlier this week I saw another type of graphic showing the sea level rise in Miami over time. It was posted by Brian McNoldy, a senior researcher at the University of Miami.
"Each colored rectangle shows the # of hours that the water level spent above the mean high tide level each day in Miami. King Tide season shows up during the Fall, as do a few noteworthy hurricanes, but sea level rise is also a striking feature."
Again, this presents a lot of information in a compact, easily understood format. It's much easier to understand than a table of numbers.
There are many other visualizations of climate change. See this page for more examples.
The finalists for the 2022 Aurora Awards for the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy have been announced. The are awards nominated by and voted on by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. Anyone can join for a small fee.
These are the nominees for Best Novel.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
What's in the yellow bin? Can you guess?
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| Fujifilm X-S10 with 27 mm. F2.8 WR at F8 with -.7 EV, 1/140 second, ISO 160, Velvia film simulation |
Today's music is a bootleg by the Jefferson Airplane, the first San Francisco psychedelic band to make the big time. I saw them twice in Detroit, the second time just a few months before when this album was recorded. They were the loudest band I've ever heard and their performance, at the East Town Theater, was absolutely transcendent. This album sounds close to the way I remember them, with the late Paul Kantner's 12-string way up in the mix, the way it should always be.
Most of this album comes from the broadcast of a show called "Go Ride the Music" on PBS, which I remember watching when I was in university. For a better sounding representation of their live performance, check out "The Woodstock Experience", which contains their entire set from the Woodstock music festival.
The finalists for the 2022 Hugo Awards for best science fiction and fantasy of the year have been announced. The awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention and will be announced at Chicon 8 in Chicago over Labour Day weekend.
These are the finalists for Best Novel.
Those of you who have grown up with desktop publishing software and computer printers may have never seen some of the technology showcased on the PrintingFilms.com website. Over 30 films showcase the printing and typesetting technology of the 1950s through 1980s ranging from handset type and Linotype machines through to the first phototype and computerized typesetting systems.
A few of the films:
Back in the cassette era people (myself included) made a lot of mixtapes. Cassettes have gone the way of the dodo, but mixtapes are still around in various digital incarnations. A good example is Save Your Face, a blog by John Hilgart, dedicated to sharing the music of the Grateful Dead and several other groups in a mixtape format consisting of downloadable ZIP archives of MP3 files.
What I like about these collections is that they aren't full shows, which are easily available from many other sites, including the Internet Archive. Instead, most of the collections are "best of" selections from a single show or run of shows, or based on a specific jam or theme, for example, the Dead's famous "Spanish Jam".
There are also collections from other artists as diverse as Miles Davis, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, and Devo. All in all, there are many hours gf good listening here.
Links to things I found interesting, but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
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| Just before my first concert in 2-1/2 years. |
This tree overlooks the bay in Progress Frenchman's Bay Park.
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| Fujifilm X-S10 with 27 mm. F2.8 WR, F8, 1/340 second, ISO 160, Velvia film simulation |
Earlier this week, I attended the world premiere of Philip Glass' Symphony No. 13 at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. The performance, by Ottawa's National Arts Centre Orchestra, was something of a disappointment. The symphony felt disjointed and somewhat muddled. The complex rhythms were occasionally imprecise and the tone of the orchestra muddy. (The acoustics in the hall are fine and the Shostakovitch symphony was perfectly clear and performed precisely). There were moments of beauty, especially in the second movement, but I don't think this symphony ranks among Glass' best works. More interesting was his previous Symphony No. 12, based (very loosely) on David Bowie's Lodger.
Should you wish to experience the symphony for yourself, the NAC will be performing the US premiere at Carnegie Hall Tuesday, followed by concerts in Ottawa, one of which will be webcast.
This performance led me to look at some of Glass' other symphonies. I've listened to most of them over the last few years, and I've come to the conclusion that the symphonic form is not his strong point. I'm not sure why, but his orchestra scores don't seem to have the definition and colour that I've heard in other composers. His music works better with smaller ensembles. A case in point is the music for his opera, Akhanten, which used a limited orchestra (it had to fit the orchestra pit where it was first performed).
Simplicity can be a virtue. Other composers have found this. Compare, for example, the original ballet score of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring to the full orchestral version. I've heard both performed live and there's no doubt that the smaller orchestra suits the music much more than the full symphony orchestra.
Finally, here's John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony, based on his opera of the same name. I heard this performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the Before Times, and it was a revelation. The swirling rhythms and colours of the orchestra were incredibly beautiful. I much prefer Glass' operas to Adams'; I think Glass has written some of the best operatic scores of the 20th century, but Adams' use of the symphony orchestra is hard to beat.
Here are some short reviews of things I watched in March. The list will be sparser next month because baseball season will have started.
