An HTML question

OK, technophiles, here's what I want: When I use the "blockquote" tag, the font within the blockquote is smaller than the font of the regular post. Is there a way to change this without resorting to "font size=+1" every time, which seems to me to be something of a kludge? What I'd really like is for blockquotes to appear offset and in blue text, but in the same size as the regular post.

I'za good critic!

For a bit of fascinating yin and yang, check out Alex Ross and Terry Teachout on the subject of a new classical work by Elvis Costello. Now, I haven't heard the piece in question, so I have no opinion, but it's always cool to read two articulate and knowledgable critics who stand in disagreement over the same work.

And I also think it's funny that both make veiled negative references to Paul McCartney's "cantata" Standing Stone. I borrowed the CD of that work from the library a year or so ago, and I remember thinking as I played it, "This is the most banal damn thing I've ever heard!" I've never shied from liking stuff that critics don't (Attack of the Clones is a great movie! Someday you'll see!), but still, it's cool to receive vindication once in a while.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

The hands of composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninov.

If there were a classical composer who was most likely to ever supplant Hector Berlioz as the leading light of my musical world, it would almost certainly be Sergei Rachmaninov. I'll write a longer post about Rachmaninov and my appreciation of him another time, but for now I note that in reading a little bit about him recently, I am reminded that apparently his hands were enormous, able to span over an octave-and-a-half on a piano keyboard. This "wingspan" allowed him to pull off feats of pianistic skill that would defy people of, well, smaller hands.

I found the above picture this morning, and it doesn't quite convey the massive size of Rachmaninov's hands as well as I was hoping, but you still get the sense of it -- look how long those fingers are, for one.

(BTW, Rachmaninov's three symphonies -- the first and third are wonderful, and the second is just transcendent -- are available in a budget-priced "two-for-the-price-of-one" set here, performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and conducted brilliantly by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I own these recordings in their earlier, singly-issued, full-price incarnations -- and I've never regretted buying them.)

Two provocative quotes

I read two interesting quotes today that I partly agree with. (Or, more accurately, I'm not sure what part I disagree with, or even if I do, or if I'm just mildly uncomfortable with something contained within them, as a foggy sort of cognitive dissonance holds sway.)

:: Michael Blowhard on "adolescence":

Adulthood now looks sad. Having been crowded off the stage, adulthood mills about disconsolate and lost. Given that we now live in a country whose central values are adolescent, we've lost track of even the best adult values -- wit, grace, perspective, depth, suaveness, conviction, knowledge. In any sane civilization, these would all be regarded as virtues. In our country these days, such virtues often seem the marks of losers and failures.

I'm very sympathetic to this, but at the same time, I don't really know. I don't think it stops at adolescence even; our culture is geared generally toward children to a ridiculous degree. Teens are the "gotta get 'em" demographic, and actual adults aren't merely ignored as Michael suggests, but actually viewed as mere caretakers for the pre-adolescents. Our role as adults is just to make sure that there are more adolescents in ten years, and that's about it. The mere thought that maybe, just maybe, the kids aren't the absolute first priority in our lives is met with a gawking stare. It's really weird, and I don't have the solution, unfortunately. But on a practical note, it's just hard to set aside the Kid in favor of more adult pursuits a lot of the time, on both logistical and financial grounds.

(Allow me to resurrect here my abject hatred for the greatest lie ever foisted on teenagers: "These are the best years of your lives." God, what vomitous prattle that is. That's right, kids: not only are we discouraging you from actually looking forward to adulthood, but we want you to actively dread it. And speaking of that, where did this idea ever come from that "adulthood" is somehow wholly incompatible with things like whimsy and lightness?)

:: The Gray Monk on Islam:

It is time to put aside the "All Muslims are Victims" thinking and recognise that Islam must grow up. The problems in the Middle East and elsewhere relating to Islam are generated by the tension created by the fact that Islam is intolerant of any other religious philosophy.

I agree strongly with this idea, the thought that Islam is now roughly where Christianity was before the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment eras all transpired. I'd add, though, that at least here in this country (the Gray Monk is from Britain and writes from the perspective of British politics, a subject on which I know little), the brand of Christianity that at least partially mirrors Islam in its current state is much more ascendent (they dominate the Republican Party); and I'd also add that as much as I may agree with the idea that the Islamic world needs to "grow up", my problem with recent policy decisions from our end -- and I'm talking about the Iraq war -- is that I'm far from convinced that "bomb them until they realize how badly they've gone off the rails" is really a workable strategy for encouraging such. (This point isn't exactly in response to anything the Gray Monk has written today; it's just a thought of mine. Anyway, Gray Monk follows up here.)

Heads up....

....Michael Lopez started posting again. Of course, he's a lawyer, so I don't trust anything he says. Like that John Edwards guy.

(Kidding there, of course. Go read.)

Oh, and Alex Frantz and Stirling Newberry have also started posting again. Now all I have to do is figure out whatever happened to Michelle. Are you out there, Michelle?

Sunday Burst of Weirdness (Lots of Profanity Edition)

Not safe for work, not safe for people at home with kids and the speakers turned up, and not safe for people who don't get an occasional junior-high-school type of chuckle out of hearing the "F-bomb" dropped at least ten times in thirty seconds (consider yourselves warned), but here is what Neil Armstrong really said on July 20, 1969 (almost 35 years ago, by the way).

(via Oliver Willis, whose redesign makes it hard to figure out where the friggin' permalinks are!)

Ye Olde Emporium of High Nerdishnesse, with Divers Geekerye

(Yeah, I know, I'm milking the whole "Ye Olde...." thing for my titles today. It was a whim, one which will presumably wear off tomorrow.)

I saw a couple of things out there in Blogistan that made me want to display my penchant for All Things Geekish And Sad, so here I go:

:: Darth Swank points out a compendium of dumb things in Sci-Fi movies. Now, you might think I'm going to quibble with the one Greg quotes, but I'm not, even if I don't grant that the Imperial Walkers are that bad of a weapon. (Seems to me they pretty much ruled the roost in that battle -- the Rebels only brought down two of them, and one of those was because Luke is such a cool proto-Jedi at the time.) The one that caught my eye is this, about Independence Day:

Independence Day had already lost all credibility when Will Smith climbed into an alien spacecraft and after a few moments, figured out how to fly the thing. But dumb turns to laugh-out-loud ludicrous when Will conquers the aliens with a floppy disk, in an absurd homage to "War of the Worlds." Will should have just stuffed a peanut butter sandwich into the disk drive. It would have had the same odds of working.

Now, there's a decent point there: the idea that these aliens' computers could be flummoxed by something cooked up in mere hours on a circa-1996 Powerbook is totally absurd. But we are talking about ID4, a movie that is so loaded with bad SF stuff that it hardly seems fair to pick on even this most crucial plot point; and anyway, it isn't even Will Smith who does this! Will flies the ship, but it's Jeff Goldblum who does the handy bit of miraculous uploading. Ye Gods.

:: Terminus solicits suggestions for sequels which are superior to their forebeards. There aren't many, obviously -- most people would put The Empire Strikes Back in that category (personally, I don't, but it's incredibly close); Godfather II is often cited (haven't seen it); X-Men 2 certainly fills the bill. Lethal Weapon 2 is amazingly close as well (but it doesn't quite exceed the original, as it gets really bleak in its last half hour). No one mentions Toy Story 2, which is really close to beating out the original, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which most think is far-and-away superior to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I hold to be very underrated, although I certainly understand the criticisms of it). And Die Hard 2 is awfully good, although again, not as good as Die Hard.

But in the comments, a couple of people suggest that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade exceeds Raiders of the Lost Ark in quality. I really think that this film is amazingly overrated, simply by virtue of Sean Connery's performance, which is so good (both by itself and by his pitch-perfect chemistry with Harrison Ford; why on Earth have these two never teamed up again, even in a non-Indy movie?) that it outweighs a lot. But Last Crusade really falters in two key areas of character and story.

Character first: Walter Donovan is not a very interesting villain, whereas Rene Belloq from Raiders is. Secondly, Sallah is little more than a buddy-along-for-the-road in Last Crusade, fulfilling no vital function in the film. He's certainly a sharper-drawn character in Raiders than he is in Last Crusade. But the most egregious example of bungled character in that film is poor Marcus Brody. Brody only appears in a handful of scenes in Raiders, at the beginning and end, but the implication very clearly is that he's a shrewd and passionate man himself; we can almost see that he is what Indiana Jones himself would be in his elder years. But in Last Crusade, Marcus Brody is literally turned into a bumbling fool who provides nothing more than idiotic comic relief. Every time I watch Last Crusade, I cringe whenever Denholm Elliot is on the screen.

And story: yeah, Last Crusade tells a fun story. It really does. (I don't want to give the impression that I don't like it, because I do.) But upon further examination, it tells the exact same story as Raiders. Don't believe it? Well, which film am I describing here:

A father-figure from Indiana Jones's past turns out to have uncovered the final key to discovering the last resting place of one of the holiest of relics in history, but the Nazis are also hot on the trail, aided by a rival archaeologist. Indy first travels to that father-figure's last known location to reacquire that final key, and then he journeys to the Middle East for the final search. After much adventuring, including a harrowing chase through the desert involving a caravan of large vehicles, the final confrontation is set up in which the villain is defeated because he fails to understand the true nature of the powers with which he is grappling. Ultimately Indy gains no real fame or fortune for having found the relic, which remains located in obscurity.

Sure, there are differences here, and those last couple of points also apply to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which I once hated, but have come to actually enjoy a good deal). But aside from the stuff with Connery, Last Crusade really doesn't have much sense of "new-ness" about it -- it's more retread than anything else.

Ye Olde Greene Lanterne

In commenting on this old post, my friend (and personal source of Minnesota sports commentary) Chris expresses the hope that someday a movie be made about his favorite superhero, the Green Lantern.

The good news is that apparently such a film is indeed in the works.

The bad news (at least, I'm assuming it's bad news, as I know absolutely nothing about the Green Lantern) is...well, here.

(BTW, AICN also reports that the new Superman movie that's been in gestation for years, with at least five different creative teams at various times, now sports -- you guessed it -- a new creative team. At least this creative team has some success under its belt.)

"Fast Fiction Friday"

Go scroll through Warren Ellis's entries for yesterday, starting here and navigating forward. Nothing but short-short stories (200 words and less) from people I've never heard of before, some of which (I haven't read them all) are disturbingly effective.

I suspect that the people who whine that there isn't any good writing anymore just aren't reading.

Ye Olde Blogger Interface

As I noted the other day in a bizarre test post, Blogger's new interface is, well, hard to get used to. For now I'm just using the "Edit HTML" interface, because it's what I'm used to. (And really, what's so hard about typing out "a href" all the time? My fingers just gravitate to it, now.)

Anyway, publishing no longer crashes Mozilla, but there's a new bug that's apparently occupying the Big Heads at Pyra: the "spinning wheel" thing to indicate publishing-in-progress never advances, even though publishing actually works. Something to keep an eye on. In an e-mail from Blogger tech support, they suggest that Mozilla users clear cache and cookies, although this may not help everything.

Finally: It would be cool if for some of these Big Changes, the Blogger folks would actually stick an update message into a prominent position -- say, the top of the screen -- on the Blogger "dashboard" (for non-Blogger users, the dashboard is simply the first screen you see upon logging in to Blogger). I can't be the only person who ever checks status.blogger.com when there's a problem.

Good news, bad news

I found something thing morning called "Celebrating the Underblog", which apparently solicits nominations for underrated blogs, and I didn't see Byzantium's Shores nominated (although I didn't exactly dig through all fourteen pages of comments). That's the bad news.

But hey, the news isn't all bad: at least I'm not mentioned in "Denigrating the Overblog" either! (Boy, a lot of people apparently hate Kevin Drum. Weird.)

(And if any of you intrepid readers of mine decide to rectify one of the above, well, be nice, OK?)

Huh-whuh?!

Apparently Blogger has gone and jiggered their text-editor and didn't tell anyone, so I have no idea what is what right now. If things look weird in these parts until I figure it all out, that's why.

This paragraph is just a test paragraph to see what happens when I do stuff in this new Editor thingy. Ditto this link.

God save the Queen.

OK, now I'm testing some other stuff. Bear with me. This post has absolutely no content.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

OK, this seems interesting thus far. It'll take some time getting used to, and the editor does seem to have a separate setting so I can do things the way I used to do them, if I want. Hmmmm.

UPDATE: Publishing is now choking Mozilla and making it crash. Ugh.

Exploring the CD Collection, #3

Berlioz: Grand symphonie funebre et triomphale, performed by The Wallace Collection, conducted by John Wallace.







Since yesterday was bastille Day, this CD of French revolutionary music performed by London's Wallace Collection, a fine wind ensemble, leaped to mind. This disc includes a number of works for wind band composed during the years of the French Revolution, such as one of the oldest settings available of La Marseillaise.

The star attraction here, though, is Hector Berlioz's fourth symphony, his Symphonie funebre et triomphale. Composed in 1840 upon a commission for a ceremony to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1830 Revolution (the French like to revolt a lot, apparently), Berlioz's "Funeral Symphony" is a long work in three movements for wind band only (although he later added parts for chorus and strings in the last movement). It's a very compelling work, even if Wagner's prediction that "this Symphony will last and exalt the hearts of men as long as there lives a nation called France" has not come to pass. (The "Funeral Symphony" is rarely performed, and has never come close to entering the standard repertoire either for wind band or for orchestra.)

Of the three movements, the first -- a titanic funeral march that lasts some fifteen minutes -- is the best, although the other two movements are not without their charm. The last movement, entitled "Apotheosis", provides the "triomphale" part of the score with a long series of brass fanfares that break into a fine marching melody, and when the chorus enters toward the end, the result is thrilling.

The second, middle movement is a "Funeral oration", the melody of which Berlioz reworked from an operatic project he had previously abandoned. (Berlioz was never one to allow a melody to go unused.) That long and stately melody is given to a solo trombone, and I've decided to make an MP3 of that movement available for a time as tribute to Scott Parkinson, the Buffalo Philharmonic trombonist who died unexpectedly and tragically two days ago. I have no idea if Parkinson ever got to perform this piece -- I rather doubt it, but you never know. That movement can be heard here.


UPDATE, 8-7-04: I have removed the musical selection linked above.

Are You a Good Mother?

I propose a simple test to determine if a woman actually does, in fact, has her child's wellbeing foremost in her mind. It consists of a single question:

"Do you breastfeed, or do you use formula?"

The facts are pretty much not in any serious dispute: breastmilk is superior to formula, to a simply staggering degree. For us, the decision was obvious -- between the health benefits and the fact that we weren't spending a hundred dollars or whatever a week on formula, I'm amazed that the formula companies can even remain in business.

Or, I was amazed. Then I saw, via PZ Myers, that the formula companies have powerful friends, and they don't hesitate to cash in their chips if they think the prevailing wind is going to shift toward breastfeeding once again becoming the predominant means of feeding babies.

As far as I am concerned, we will never be able to truthfully claim that we only want the best for our children as long as infant formula is available without a prescription.

Sad news from the Buffalo music world

A while back I featured as the Image of the Week the complete assemblage of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, borrowing the photograph from the website of the BPO's principal trombonist, Scott Parkinson.

Sadly, while driving home from work I heard on Buffalo's classical station that Scott Parkinson died two nights ago, stricken by a sudden heart attack. I thought I caught Parkinson's age as just 26, but I'm not sure about that. In any event, he was too damned young for this.

Condolences to Parkinson's family, both his real one and his musical one.

UPDATE: I am keeping an eye on Buffalo's news outlets, and I will have a link to something when one appears. I also pay some small tribute to Parkinson here.

UPDATE, 7-17-04: Mr. Parkinson's obituary appears in THe Buffalo News today (his age, incidentally, was 27). There is also a Guestbook for anyone wishing to express condolences.

Bye bye! Have fun storming the castle!

Lynn Sislo reminds us that today, July 14, is Bastille Day in France, which is their equivalent of July 4 for us. Lynn also thanks France for its contribution to classical music, listing six notable French composers -- with one stunning omission. Regular readers of this blog will already know which one she leaves off. Harumph!

(By the way, one of my favorite historical anecdotes is that King Louis XVI's diary entry for Bastille Day reads "Nothing". You begin to see how he ended being on the unlucky side of the guillotine blade.)

World...spinning....Must...re-establish...grip....

The current Big Project at The Store is a major remodeling project. It seems that the Powers-That-Be decided a while back that The Pharmacy at The Store just wasn't big enough, and quite frankly, they're one hundred percent right, since the current Pharmacy at The Store is about the size of my first dorm room at college, and yet there are always at least eight people working back there, and often more, and that's just the people. Factor in all the shelving for all the drugs, and the cabinets for packaging, and the computers, and the records they have to keep on hand, and whatever other paraphernalia are required for practicing the fine art of Apothecary, and my amazement mounts that the people actually working in our Pharmacy are about the nicest people in the entire Store.

(I shudder to think what would happen if we put, say, the fellows from the Meat Department in there. I love the Meat guys, but these are the people who listen to Van Halen on a boom box while cutting meat with big knives, or even a band-saw. The results would not be pretty.)

So, this week the Pharmacy people have been relocated to a Temporary Pharmacy (involving a temporary Customer Service area and a double-wide trailer set up immediately outside the Store's side door), where they will remain for two months while their old Pharmacy is rebuilt into a Shiny, New, Improved Super-Duper Pharmacy.

Now, we didn't just dump this change onto the customers with no warning whatsoever. We have posted signs all over the store about the impending remodel, starting more than two months ago. And now that the remodel is actually in progress, we have hung additional signage from the ceiling, complete with Big Green Arrows, such that anyone entering The Store should be able to figure out where the Temporary Pharmacy is in lieu of the old one that is now being refitted with new warp engines and the like.

Or so you'd think.

Instead, I have been subjected to a steady stream of people who walk in, note the huge plywood barrier enclosing the old pharmacy, and then in panicked voice grab the nearest convenient person wearing The Store's logo on their shirt (in many cases, me), and demanding in a mixture of terror and rage, "Where is the Pharmacy?! Why have we closed the Pharmacy?!" And this despite the fact that the Temporary Pharmacy is literally thirty feet from the Old Pharmacy; the Temporary Pharmacy can be seen from the Old Pharmacy; the plywood enclosure on the Old Pharmacy has one of the afore mentioned Big Greek Arrows reading "Pharmacy Thataway" bolted directly to it; and the Temporary Pharmacy has a giant sign hanging directly above it reading, you guessed it, PHARMACY.

At least once I've had the temptation to get this quizzical look on my face and say something like, "Pharmacy? No, we don't have one of those. But we do have an Apothecary. Maybe they can help!" Or maybe something along the lines of, "The Surgeon General has recently advised that all medications be taken in powder form, so you'll find your meds in the baking supplies aisle, next to the flour and confectioner's sugar." But no, I chicken out each and every time, because you quickly learn that the old canard about "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" is a bit of a misstatement, and that scorned women are like purring kittens next to an elderly person who needs to pick up their pills.

The Human Form, Shadow, and Light

My friend Robert Guttke, whom I know from years of sparring and gibing and generally conversing first on Usenet and then on private e-mail, is a very talented artist whose medium is photography and whose subject is the human form. His goal has been to study the human form in much the same way that the old masters did.

He's just relaunched his website, and he's offering one week of free access to his "Members Only" area in celebration. I'm not the most knowledgable person in judging visual art, but I've always found Robert's work striking -- especially the women, of course. Go check him out, and if you're so inclined, buy something. This is a big part of how he makes his living.

(Oh, and for those surfing at work, Robert's photography probably isn't work-safe.)

Congratulations, Mr. Bergerac! You're getting an EXTREME MAKEOVER!

The Wife, the Kid and I watched Roxanne the other night. That's the Steve Martin/Darryl Hannah version of Cyrano de Bergerac from the 1980s, and as lightweight romantic comedies go, it's pretty good, although to be honest, watching it this time I was less involved in the romantic storyline (which is, as might be expected, frankly absurd) and more amused by the antics of the worst fire department in history. There's a comic montage, set to On the Beautiful Blue Danube, in which C.D. Bales (Martin's character) tries to train this motley crew of firefighters as they do things like wrestle with a hose that's set to full-blast, talk a terrified firefighter into sliding down the pole, and practicing flapping their arms like "Big Bird" as a signal for some firefighting maneuver.

Anyway, one thing that suddenly occurred to me in watching the movie this time came in a single scene. C.D. barges into the office of a plastic surgeon and demands that his nose be reduced immediately; the doc says no, it's too dangerous. Today, though, not only would the doctor cheerfully allow to do the surgery, C.D. would probably end up on a reality show like Extreme Makeover, complete with narrator:

"It's now three weeks since C.D.'s surgery; let's see what he's been up to!"

CUT TO C.D. sitting in Doc Cutflesh's office, with his back to the camera. Doc Cutflesh begins unwrapping his face.

DOC CUTFLESH: Hmmmm....the swelling has gone down nicely....oh, you're gonna love this....

CUT TO Doc Cutflesh, in an interview:

DOC CUTFLESH: (into camera) I'm really proud of C.D.'s new nose. He's going to have a brand new life. He's just going to find a whole new world out there...I can't wait to see the look on everyone's face when he does his 'reveal'.

And then there's "the reveal scene", in which C.D. emerges from behind a curtain into a room full of his friends, all of whom go nuts, including Roxanne; this is followed by a few more testimonials by C.D. about how thrilled he is, yada yada yada.

(I should note that I don't hate Extreme Makeover, because for every "shallow" participant they've had -- "I'm thirty pounds overweight with a receding hairline, and I'm scared to talk to the ladies" -- there's a case that really is calling out for some kind of surgical intervention. I remember two such cases that I watched: a woman whose nose literally hooked, like the classic caricature of a wicked witch, and another woman whose features were nice except for the most amazing example of misshapen teeth I've ever seen (she actually had several teeth that were perpendicular to her lips). So I don't begrudge everyone their makeovers, even if spinning a TV show out of them is a bit crass. I merely note the incongruity of watching Roxanne, with its "Accept yourself as you are" message, in this "Don't like it? Have it surgically amended!" time in which we live.)

Rackin-frackin-dadgummit-schnitzen-furgle-urk!

This post headline is an attempt to render that "muttered swearing" that cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone used to do.

Remember the $700 brake job of a few weeks back? Well, my car's brakes are awesome now. The thing stops on a dime, quickly and quietly, no hiss, no grating, no growling, no grinding.

Although I can't say there's been no hiss, grating, growling or grinding since my drive home today from The Store, because I wouldn't have been able to hear any hissing, grating, growling or grinding over my now-incredibly-loud engine.

Because the rackin-frackin-dadgummit-schnitzen-furgle-urk muffler fell off on the way home.

There had damn well better be a top-secret government lab somewhere inside which obscene amounts of taxpayer money are going to developing a Star Trek transporter, because cars suck.