UnSpace

I passed the link to the story "Scientists Ask Congress to Fund $50 Billion Science Thing" to numerous friends and made an amazing discovery. Go check out the article and then read the rest of this post.

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At Cathasaigh's concert last night, she spoke of Rob Paravonian's "Pachelbel Rant." You should check out the YouTube video link I just gave — it's a scream. As a pianist, I don't have the problem cello players might have. In fact, I'm usually happy to have to play the same thing over and over again. It means I'm a lot less likely to screw up.

Of course, in some ways, Rob Parvaonian's rant is a sort of a variation on "Songs you can sing 'Amazing Grace' to." You know, like "Gilligan's Island." Seriously, try it. It works. Apparently me wandering around a church singing "Amazing Grace" to "Gilligan's Island" terrifies most ministers. The really weird thing is, I've done a haunting version of "Gilligan's Island's Amazing Grace" on the keyboard, making it about halfway through the song before anyone realized what I was up to.

A lot of music has the same number of measures, so it's quite common to be able to do one song to the tune of another. Pachabel's got a four-chord sequence that, because it can have a descending bass line, is rather common.

Years ago, there was an Analog story about limiting copyrights because there is a limited number of songs. I don't know if the writers of "Yes, We Have No Bananas" were really sued for copyright infringement on the "Hallelujah Chorus" by Handel's descendants, but the possible urban legend does make the point.

I've been playing around with a radio-controlled helicopter at church. Have I mentioned I've got a great job? I'm tempted to do a digital recording of Adagio for Strings and include helicopter noises in the background. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is the song you hear several times, including the end, of Platoon.

Why didn't Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson show up at the "minority debate"? This latest GOP debate featured African-American and Hispanic journalists asking the questions. Why didn't the top four Republicans show up?

They claimed they all had "prior commitments" but the real reason is strategy. Minority voters aren't likely to vote Republican in the primary, so why should the top four bother appealing to them as a constituency? Had they appealed to minority interests, such an appeal might even hurt their cause with those who are racist among the Republicans. Right now, their biggest foe is not the Democrats, but each other — including President George W. Bush.

Of course the also-ran Republicans showed up. They are so little known, any coverage is good. And of course all the Democrats showed up at the previous Democratic minority debate — if the minorities are going to vote in the primary, they are likely registered as Democrats.

The Republicans shouldn't appeal to the minority groups at this point. During the last presidential election, they didn't try all that hard to reach out to the minority voters. Instead, they created a bogus issue like gay marriage to frighten religious minority voters into voting for them. That way, there would be less damage when the Republicans forgot about minorities once the election was over.

Tactic wise, skipping the minority debate was the perfect thing for the Republican front-runners to do.

This does beg the question, though: are these the tactics you want your president resorting to? Is this the sort of morality you want in the Oval Office?

Somehow, this Diversity Matters logo…well, let's just see what you think:

Dr. Pepperberg relates this experience:

There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data.

Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."

Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers,"Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!""Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."

Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing.

These kinds of things don't happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there's a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine.

Alex, co-worker with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, died on September 7th.

African grey parrots have a quoted lifespan of about 60 years, but it is thought by many that with good care, those alive today have the potential to live to be 100. Alex has been treated for aspergillus in the past. In parrots, it's not a disease that's ever cured, although it's far more comforting to forget something like that.

I think I'm going to get Cirrus our African grey parrot and play with her and tell her how much we love her. Nancy is doing the same right now with Holmes, our other African grey.

Bye, Alex.

As Cirrus would say…"Woooo!"

Because my depression is gone (still, thank God![literally, I might add]), I'm getting things done better and more efficiently than before — but I'm also doing more! This "Acting Communications Director" gig at my church has me working harder than I expected. I'm having fun doing it, which means a lot of my energy is going toward the newsletter, bulletin, and all the other things the job entails.

I don't have the time to blog that I once did. I do hope to do a couple posts this weekend, but in the meantime, here's an update or three:

1. I asked the question about "church marketing," knowing I'd be attending a seminar on church marketing by Yvon Prehn. She answered my questions, including some I didn't know I had, and a follow-up post will discuss that. But now that I think about it, the answer is the same as the answer for the standard technology question "Is ______________ evil?" Are computers evil? Is biochemistry evil? Is church marketing evil? The technology is neutral; the question is, what are you doing with that technology? If you're using it to send out computer viruses, neurotoxins, or stuff designed to manipulate people, then what you are doing with the technology is evil. But if you're using the computer to turn data from a CT scanner into images a doctor can use to save a life, medicines to cure HIV or diabetes, or let people know who Jesus is or when the collection of goods for the needy is, then of course it's good. Yvon pointed out some Biblical answers. Yeah, I was impressed. If you're involved in church communications, you should take one of her seminars! More than one, actually! Her web site is a great resource. I'm not just saying that because she wants me to send her the link to this blog.
2. Speaking of links to this blog, I need to get up a statement that points out all of the opinions expressed here are either mine or me playing with ideas. This blog is not sponsored by my church, my church does not even have imprimaturs to give out, and I know some of the opinions expressed here are part of big discussions in my church. This is my blog.
3. I was talking with someone about Mother Theresa, and before I even got to my theory about her, the person said "You know a lot about depression. Did she strike you as terribly depressed?" It's the whole "microexpressions" and body language thing (c.f. Blink). I'm beginning to realize just how much I operate on intuition — trained experience on a subconscious level. So yeah, I have no doubt Mother Theresa was depressed. If anything, watching her when she speaks in a language I don't know improves my ability to catch it. No, it's not a DSM-4 level of diagnosis — I can think of other things that present as depression. As a rough analysis goes, though, she was depressed. And yes, I blame the Catholic church for being in denial about her depression. There are very few churches out there that aren't in denial about psychological problems among their members. If you think I'm picking on the Catholic church, remember that they're just the most public current example.

More later.

I had to remove several photographs from one of my posts. The pictures were of several children enjoying a concert by Cathasaigh. I was looking through my referrer log today and noticed how some jerk found the pictures. There was nothing to identify the children involved, the photos were taken in a public location and with parental permission, and the jerk didn't find what he was looking for, but that doesn't matter. I removed the photos. It's an over-reaction, but it's my blog and I can over-react if I want to.

No, I won't say what the search was for — you can guess, and I don't want to risk attracting any more creeps.

For all my time as a paramedic, for all the horrible things I've had to try to remedy — or call the coroner for — I'm still horrified at human depravity, still surprised. I'm glad to know my heart hasn't been destroyed by my time as a medic.