The Dairy Queen is opening mid-week. It’s not the ice cream (though I am partial to dilly bars). It’s the cheeseburgers.
Archive for February 3rd, 2008
Sometimes, that’s really the only response. Look, I’m no early music geek. I’ve known lots of them, and frankly, I find them to be really annoying when the topic gets to music. However, sometimes, like I said, you just have to say, “Stop that right now!”
I love the Anchoress, but she posted a clip that just made me shudder. There are some things civilization requires that you not allow, ever. One of those things is a baritone singing Ombra mai fu.
Handel wrote the part for a castrato, and of course, we don’t have those any more. A contralto, fine. A soprano, fine. A tenor, well, okay, but that’s getting close to uncivilized. But a baritone? No!
Really, let’s have some respect for the composer and how he meant it to sound, instead of tossing it off at some concert for brownie points. It’s like transcribing Mozart’s Oboe Concerto in C Major for accordion, then putting up a clip of some accordionist playing it as if it shouldn’t be punishable by hanging.
We have no more castrati. The closest is the counter-tenor. This is Andreas Scholl, singing Ombra mai fu. If the crescendo at the end of the first note doesn’t send shivers up your spine, well, there’s something wrong with you. Note the purity of tone and the restrained, but present, ornamentation (as opposed to the vulgar, overdone trills by many bel canto sopranos). This is as close to what Handel meant this to sound like as we can come.
Actually, I don’t know if it’s spin, or just plain, old-fashioned math illiteracy, but back when there were six candidates and McCain got 30%, the dextrosphere was full of bloggers who claimed that 30% was paltry, and it indicated that he didn’t have a lot of support.
Let’s do the math. There were six candidates, and one-sixth is 16.67%. Last I checked, 30% is a hell of a lot more than 16.67%. Nope, not paltry, not when there are five other candidates.
Then, there were bloggers looking at the exit polls and saying that McCain didn’t get a majority of votes from those who identified themselves as conservatives. Other than the obvious fact that they should be viewing exit polls skeptically, they miss one crucial point: They’re not conservative primaries, they’re Republican primaries. And one more thing: All this “base” crap is getting a little silly. Obviously, all of you who are howling that McCain would be the End of the World as We Know It and those pesky people who are, you know, voting don’t seem to agree, do you. So here’s the question: Are they out of touch, or are you?
Let’s stop the spin, please. It makes you look like an idiot. Click your heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home,” and come back to planet Earth.
This public service announcement was brought to you by Reality, Inc.
Rasmussen’s latest has McCain and Romney tied at 30%, but Gallup reports McCain at 44 and Romney at 24. That’s quite a difference, so let’s look at the polls:
Rasmussen, n=800, ±4
Gallup, n=1080, ±3
Gallup has a larger sample space and therefore, a smaller margin of error. Gallup is also indicative of other poll reports. I wouldn’t put much stock in this latest Rasmussen poll.
Mmmm, seal!
The octopus is a very cool critter. Read this fascinating article about octopi.
There are even hints that octopuses have a sense of humor, Linden says.
He talks about the finicky octopus who, in a lab in Pennsylvania, was served slightly spoiled shrimp. The octopus refused to finish its dinner, and when the feeding researcher returned to its tank, the octopus made eye contact with her, then meaningfully pushed all the shrimp down the drain.
This guy, says of his pet brown octupus below, “They make great pets and are highly intelligent, in fact mine would recognize me and come to the top and stick its tentacles out to take food directly from me.” I never have seen the point of keeping fish, but if I had an aquarium, I’d keep an octopus.
Unlike fish, octopi are interactive. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, at both the Sarasota and Chicago aquaria.
You wouldn’t think the moonbats could go further off the rails, but then, you haven’t seen this:
For the record, assuming it’s true, I think it’s just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down’s women to perpetrate the bombings but I don’t see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that.
There are lots of adjectives to describe turning women with Down’s Syndrome into walking bombs and exploding them with remote controls, but “brilliant” isn’t one of them.
Stephen King denounces celebrity endorsements. In an entertainment publication. After endorsing Obama.
Shut up, Arlen.
Amidst the insanity. Dafydd on McCain.
