I decided I would perform a Haydn piano sonata movement this Sunday as the prelude. I’m going through a bit of a rough patch at work. Probably not totally appropriate to talk about it here, but suffice it to say it’s not that serious or anything. But I chose the Haydn because it is a beautiful work and I will enjoy performing it and it will soothe me in a trying situation. It’s kind of an indulgence I guess, but it will make a lovely moment in the service.
Here’s a Youtube video that begins with this lovely movement well played.
At 3:30 (3 minutes, 30 seconds) into the video the movement ends and the player begins the finale. This player (who doesn’t seem to be identified anywhere) doesn’t repeat the two sections in the piece as per Haydn’s instructions. This probably gently violates the nature of the form this piece is written in (sonata allegro). I am planning on doing the repeats but I am taking it just a tad faster. My edition suggests a pulse of 108 per minute which is quicker than this player is playing. It’s also a bit quicker than I am planning on performing it as well.
I am managing to get back to exercising.
Started using our new WIIfit plus a couple days ago. It has some handy new features like being able to build a routine that moves immediately from exercise to exercise and some new exercise games.
And I started treadmilling again.
Eileen went to work yesterday and seem tired but satisfied when she got home. I spent some time on Skype with my lovely daughter, Sarah for a bit yesterday, catching up with her. She and her partner, Matthew, spent her birthday in Disneyland in Paris. It sounds as though it’s a replication of the U.S. Disneylands with Tea Cup rides and roller coasters.
I got up this morning (actually was laying in bed) and checked out world reaction to Mubarek’s resignation yesterday.
I checked these web sites:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html
The Daily Mail is pretty useless. Very much an Enquirer type.
I heard one of the editors of Aljazeera talk about journalism last year. This international news organization does some excellent reporting.
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I haven’t finished reading this last article, but thought it had an interesting title and the first few paragraphs convinced me it wasn’t just a diatribe against the US.
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Did you know you can change the setting to different countries on Google News? Pretty interesting to see what Switzerland or Brazil papers are saying. And of course you can use the translate button that pops automatically if you are using Chrome.
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Is George W. Bush above the law?
on the Canadian Edmunton Journal web site. I put this here in case readers miss the comments to the previous post (link). I think I was a bit glib in describing some of my ideas and when prodded by my son’s thoughtful comment tried to fill in a few of the blanks. This article is one of several I looked at about Bush’s recent decision not to go to Switzerland. I put it in my comment and am also putting here as a link.
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This is silly, I know. But my Mom has a bunch of magazine subscriptions that keep coming to my house. At first I took each issue to her, but she didn’t really look at them and told me she didn’t want them. I haven’t gotten around to canceling them so they just keep coming.
Now I look at the covers and decide whether to recycle them or put them in the bathroom to read.
The March issue of Woman’s Day has an article called “The Caregiver’s Survival Kit” by Gail Sheehy. I was skimming it. It’s kind of what you would expect, easy reading. But I have done some caregiving in the last few years and realize it has affected me deeply.
Click on the title to read an online synopsis of the article. But the main reason I’m putting this up is that in the magazine (not on the web for some reason!) Sheehy mentions this web site:
I do find myself trying to find good medical information online and hadn’t run across this government web site…..
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
worth bookmarking
For the record I don’t believe information = opinion. However, I would argue that how the information is disseminated is riddled with subjectivity, bias, and opinion. I also took journalism, but in college and learned a bit about mass communication, media, and reporting.
From your New York Times article:
Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information. But one of them said, “In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process.”
Of all that was reported on in this article, this paragraph stood out to me most. It reminds me of perceptual differences given our unique individual thought processes and experiences. I am reminded of a colleague who once gave a presentation about the deceptiveness of visual media. He presented an actual police video of a shooting of a person from the viewpoint of one police car. The video depicted an unarmed African American running in front of the police car with his back to the video at night and two Caucasian police officers opening fire on the suspect from behind him.
The initial reaction or impression for some was this was racially motivated. For others it was a reminder of the brutality of a corrupt or overzealous police force riddled with men and women who can do anything they want with a badge.
However, my colleague showed a video of the same scenario from a different police car video that showed what had happened seconds before the African American walked in front of the other police car. The African American man had just shot 2 police officers and had thrown his gun at another one before turning around and running away.
After the 2nd video was shown it made perfect sense and clarified the situation. However, if the media got a hold of only the first video, it could have been disastrous for community relations and even sparked riots, but the media would have gotten there information and made news.
The point is, I really don’t know how one can believe anything they read in the newspaper, watch on TV, or read on the internet.
Here is a link to another example of a different view on the WMD idea.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/24/wikileaks-documents-show-wmds-found-in-iraq/
David
The way I believe things I read is the way I suspect you might trust anything you trust (such as the presentation of your colleague or research in your area of expertise): I evaluate the context and people who are giving the information and see if it seems coherent, objective, and reasonable. As I said before, I find the information from TV journalists generally very unreliable. It would never occur to me to give Morrissey (the guy at your link) the credibility of the New York Times. Admittedly I don’t buy everything I read and I was much more influenced by Ron Susskind’s book that I mentioned than the 2006 NYT report I linked.
I think that in my mind there is a difference between information and knowledge. It’s a bit of philosophical thing but I realize that I am interested in the comparing, evaluating, and synthesizing of ideas and developing new insights.
This is what draws me to reading and spending time alone thinking.
In reality the topics we are discussing (politics, WMD, journalism) are not a big part of my thinking. I’m much more interested in other things like my family and my life’s work in music and church work. Along with literature, poetry and art. That’s where I do most of my reading, thinking and acting.
Your comments and point of view make sense top me of course. I am aware of the unreliability of subjective observation, the unreliability of human memory and the fallible nature of second hand reporting. But I helplessly persist in observing, using my memory and factoring in second hand reports even though I know they are inevitably distorted.
Again thanks for the conversation. I hope you find my comments as civil and respectful as I have been finding yours.
Dad
I looked at David’s link and it is this kind of information that is missing from a media with a bias to report it in their own view. This kind of misinformation has been going on for years. Even in the Viet Nam conflict a famous book “News from Nowhere” is illustrative of this kind of reporting. My own Father in-Law has made this observation over and over in his columns.
(americanpoliticalcommentary.com) It is the blatant misreporting of information and using it to support a point of view. This kind of stuff was what made the Third Reich. It is also, a crucial technique in all socialist mantra. Create a problem by exposing it under some unevaluated pretext to support an elite position. This is typical of current media influence. I believe that the only way to stop this kind of reporting is to teach people the idea of critical thinking. Find out the information for yourself. Look to reliable sourcing of information and even that must be approached with great trepidation.
George Bush is not a war criminal. Interpretation of this point is subjective and requires the learned notion that evidence would prove it. It is not my belief, however and until someone proves that they saw him make these decisions with a disregard for life and that he was not acting in Preserve, Protect and Defend the country, I cannot see any other condition. By the way, anyone can file a petition with the world court and say anything about anyone for any reason. This is not the first time that it has been done against an American President.