Category Archives: Music

Climate Change, Founding Fathers, UFOs and Scientific Literacy

Topics today: Insurance companies, whose business depends on understanding risks, are taking steps to acknowledge climate change and its threats, even if many ordinary people still don’t “believe” in climate change; How the “founding fathers” were woke, compared to the … Continue reading

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The Lies that Bind

How the Christian curriculum ACE lies about science; How some people are happy to submit to tyranny; Wondering if it matters children are lied to about reality, and concluding that it doesn’t, given certain purposes of life; And reflecting again … Continue reading

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Narrative Bias and Control

Another take on why conspiracy theories have become so popular; How home-schoolers who decided to send their kids to public schools exposed the three lies about home-schooling that convinced them to do so; The Week on the state of book … Continue reading

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Then They Came for the Meteorologists

Today’s items. How conspiracy theorists are attacking meteorologists; Naomi Oreskes on how the right attacks Social Security because it’s a “big government” program that actually works; The connection between American Christians and Uganda’s “kill the gays” policy And today’s music: … Continue reading

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Zbigniew Preisner, and the Daily News

Some slow thoughtful music, to keep things in perspective, against the daily news. And then daily news about frightened old people using their guns.

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A New Episode of The Most Beautiful Music in the World

This was an early Zbigniew Preisner score, for a Polish TV series Dekalog, with ten episodes released in 1989, each based on one of the Ten Commandments. I happened to listen to my YouTube bookmark of this as I wrote … Continue reading

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Jerry Coyne on Deepak Chopra, Alex Ross on Max Richter, and others

Jerry Coyne on Deepak Chopra And on the latest argument for the compatibility of science and faith A misleading article on the recent “paradigm” shift in the understanding of human evolution Reviews of new books by Sarah Bakewell and Sarah … Continue reading

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Theory of Mind, UFOs, and Music

Three items today. Do Chatbots have a “theory of mind”? Probably not. Why fascination about UFOs has lingered; my own brief fascination with them when I was 13; and David Brin’s current take on them; How music does not “mean” … Continue reading

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Max Richter Deconstructs and Recomposes Antonio Vivaldi

On Sunday evening, March 26th, we went a concert on the UC Berkeley Campus, at Zellerbach Hall, to see the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. The concert included an extraordinary piece by contemporary composer Max Richter, a re-imagining of Vivaldi’s ever-popular The … Continue reading

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Correction to Earlier Oscar Post

It turns out that a tune I liked, which I described as having “a relentless three note descending theme, underlying colorful violin lines,” in one of the Oscar nominated films, Triangle of Sadness, that I discussed in my post of … Continue reading

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