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Open thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Just to see how it goes, I’m experimenting with a new feature suggested by a commenter.

Although I don’t habitually post in the mornings, for a while I’m going to put up a regular open thread in the morning, where you can talk about whatever you’d like – following the usual non-combat rules, of course. Sometimes I’ll add a photo or a poem fragment or some music, but there’s no need to talk about those particular things although of course you can if you’d like.

For instance, today it will be this video, to show you another example of Donovan’s remarkable naturally- produced tremolo, which I talked about recently in this post. The sound is live, by the way – not lip synced.

This song is dedicated to all night owls:

Comments

Open thread — 126 Comments

  1. Robin Gibb had that famous, naturally produced tremolo, too.

    Gosh, I’d forgotten about “Lalena.” Thanks for posting.

  3. “Lalena” is the saddest Donovan song I know. I always assumed it was about a prostitute. Could be.

    OTOH, over at SongMeanings.com, my goto website for discussions of lyrics, a commenter, “still stupid” says:
    ___________________________________________________

    Layena is about the ‘poor little rich girl’ type that hung about the scene in London and Donovan is gently mocking the type of hanger-on that can afford to be there to be cool or in but isn’t realy getting what is going on…. I did interview [Donovan] several times.

    –“Donovan – Lalena”
    https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858554446/
    ___________________________________________________

    The lyrics don’t fully support that interpretation — more specific detail would be needed — but maybe that’s all Donovan wanted to say

    SongFacts.com is good for info and stories about songs and some about the lyrics. SongMeanings sticks to the lyrics.

    Check it out. I’m LuckyTown over there.

  4. Meanwhile SongFacts comes through on “Lalena” with inside dope from Donovan himself.
    _________________________________________________

    Widely considered to be about a prostitute, Donovan talked about this song at a 2004 event to promote his album Beat Café. He explained that “Lalena” is a composite title made up from the name of the German actress Lotte Lenya, who was the wife of the songwriter Bertolt Brecht, who along with Kurt Weill composed the play The Threepenny Opera, which starred Lenya as the prostitute Jenny Diver. (Listen for Lenya’s name in Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack The Knife).

    Said Donovan: “I was fascinated with The Threepenny Opera as a socially conscious musical, so when I saw the movie version with Lotte Lenya I thought, OK, she’s a streetwalker, but in the history of the world, in all nations women have taken on various roles from priestess to whore to mother to maiden to wife. This guise of sexual power is very prominent, and therein I saw the plight of the character: ‘That’s your lot in life, Lalena/Can’t blame ya, Lalena.’ Women have roles thrust upon them and make the best they can out of them, so I’m describing the character Lotte Lenya is playing and a few other women I’ve seen during my life, but it’s a composite character of women who are outcasts on the edge of society: Bohemia.”

    https://www.songfacts.com/facts/donovan/lalena

  6. As someone who was born in 1969 I wonder if the ‘boomer’ generation will be the last to revere the musical heroes of their youth. The is not something the people of my generation do to the same degree and get the feeling that the younger generations are even less likely to. And it is not simply a case of the 60s acts were good and the later ones weren’t.

    Maybe a culture wide loss of nostalgia.

  7. Griffin:

    Was U2 big with your cohort?

    They seemed to have a 60s sort of following and it seemed Bono was ambitious in that direction.

  8. “… your lot in life, Lalena.” Lot in … Lalena, or Lotte Lenya. Cute.

    She played Col. Klebb in the very first James Bond film. Mack the Knife was one of my father’s favorites.

    I was on a long walk with my wife and messing around trying to do basic vibrato, extreme vibrato (I couldn’t), and Donovan tremolo (a low grade success). Old vocal cords and no practice didn’t help. One of the hard things with the Donovan technique is the risk that the sound just stops when the lung air pressure is at its lowest.

    I thought a trick that could help is a close microphone so the big air flow and pressure is never needed. In the beginning of the video the mic isn’t all that close. Later it might be very close or not, because the camera angle is bad. Near the end I believe it is close, but it is a soft intimate passage.

  9. huxley,

    Yes, they were (and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ is my favorite song of all time) but I think they sort of drifted away from the band people liked after ‘Rattle And Hum’. That might be part of the issue in that so many acts from say the 80s on were so visually focused that they were constantly changing their look and often their sound which invariably alienated some early fans.

  10. Griffin:

    I lost the thread with U2 at “Achtung Baby.”

    Rick Beato assures me Achtung is a great album and I believe him — it’s a complex, pro effort but not my cup of meat. Except for “One” I didn’t find it very approachable.

  11. huxley,

    One thing I wonder is it because so many huge stars died so young. Who knows what would have happened with the careers or lives of Morrison, Joplin. etc. but instead they are locked in time and that makes it easier to worship them. Not nearly as many big stars have died from the 80s on so we have seen them get old. get desperate to remain relevant, get horrible plastic surgery, get crazy radical politically and that makes it hard to feel that nostalgia.

    Don’t know just a theory.

  12. Jack A:

    I’m preparing something about Robin Gibb, but (to be a bit pedantic here) his voice was mainly fast vibrato with some tremolo.

  14. Griffin:

    I didn’t share the reverence for rock or pop musicians, although I always liked music. But I agree that a lot of people did revere them. I think it was for a number of reasons. One was that musicians were actually cultural leaders to a certain extent – the Beatles started worldwide cultural trends, for instance. Another was that we were more culturally united – listening to the same music, more or less. Another was that a lot of boomers are nostalgic for the 60s in general (I’m not). They felt like that really were starting some sort of Age of Aquarius.

  15. neo,

    Yes, a shared culture is probably a big factor. That is actually a huge factor in where we are in general right now. There is very little that can bring everyone together at this point. Maybe sports at least regionally.

  16. Griffin:

    The rise of cable TV, computer games and the internet diversified entertainment options. One wasn’t limited to the Big Three networks and Top 40 radio.

    The Sixties was also a special time insofar as music, movies, art, books and drugs were considered a possible map to Utopia. Which neo mentions.

    The Eighties partly tried to reignite those ideals. I remember Bono waving that big flag in “Rattle and Hum.” I thought, “He’s trying to get a sixties movement going.”

    I don’t think I was mistaken. However, we’d already been through a couple decades of that, smoked a billion joints, marched here and there, held hands and thought peace and love, and the world just muddled along.

    Maybe the world changes in the long song, but people gave up that pop stars were going to make it happen in the next two years or five.

  20. Brian E:

    Listening to that Grace Slick track, I’d say it’s a close call. Most of the time she doesn’t use vibrato or tremolo, but when she does it’s an unusual sound that’s hard to categorize. However, because of the speed of the wobble, I’d say it has to be a form of vibrato. I don’t think it’s possible for a human to have such a quick tremolo.

  22. Marisa,

    In what way? Cobain died young and has been deified and is definitely the closest my generation has to a Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix. As for the others they are all good to great but I don’t see my generation still writing and talking about them like the boomer generation does for the acts of their youth.

    Not really judging whether one is right or wrong but it is definitely a thing.

  23. Well, sort of related to the main theme of this open thread, sometime back Neo had a discussion on mask wearing alone in a car. I’ve come up with a reason why it’s a good idea:

    Nobody can tell you’re singing along with the radio…

  24. Griffin:

    There indeed are Boomers who love to stroll down memory lane just because they like the music, and there are others (a much smaller group, I believe) who seem stuck in the past and really idolize the musicians of the past. I like to listen to old music – especially lately – but never idealized or idolized any of the musicians back then.

    But lately, with my interest in the Bee Gees, it is not a nostalgia at all because I had no interest in them back then. It’s a new interest, because I have found their music to be far greater than I had ever thought, and they also are very charismatic and amusing individuals in interviews, with a fascinating life story. Until about a month ago I knew nothing of that. So it certainly isn’t nostalgia for me.

    I do know you are right about some boomers, though. I just happen to think it’s a small percentage.

  25. neo,

    Of course I love the music too. The Beatles famous rooftop concert was 10 days before I was born but I love them and know a ridiculous amount of things about them and some others like The Who also so for me it is zero percent nostalgia and 100% about the music and the creativity of it and the times definitely played a role in that creativity but since I wasn’t there I don’t have that point of personal point of reference at all.

  28. Griffin:

    I was a teenager when the Beatles came to the US and it’s hard to explain what a big deal it was. I had friends who knew everything about them. I was never like that, but I did get all their records until the white album, which I didn’t much care for. Their movies – especially “A Hard Day’s Night” were important, too, I think. It was done in black and white in this really cool cinema verite style, and we learned that the Beatles were really charming and funny guys. They were naturals on camera. That was a surprise, and one of the things I liked about them.

    Those were the days when nearly everyone watched The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Cultural togetherness.

  30. Those that believe economic populism or national sovereignty is critical to plugging the hole the sinking ship of state need to increase their influence in the Republican party.
    But the big money donors seem to like corporate globalism. And if the Republican party truly becomes the party of the middle class, those donors will flee. That’s one problem that will have to be addressed.
    Framing the agenda going forward (transitioning from MAGA to America First) raises an interesting problem.
    It seems America First is a common slogan in American history (surprise, surprise). Of course, it was used by the KKK.
    Here’s a Snope’s fact check on the phrase, and while they do point out it has been used across the political spectrum, it’s most recent use was by the KKK.

    “In sum, the political slogan “America First” has a pedigree stretching back more than a hundred years, with connotations ranging from anti-expansionism and trade protectionism to outright racism and anti-Semitism. Although it has been trumpeted over time by hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, its use does not automatically confer the most heinous of those attitudes on the user — although given its less savory associations, one wonders why any informed person would embrace it today.”

    We might need to rethink that as the slogan going forward. No sense giving the enemy unnecessary ammunition.

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/america-first-ku-klux-klan-slogan/

  31. JimNorCal:

    What’s your point? Are you saying it is lip synced? Or do you think it isn’t spelled right (there are several variant spellings)? I don’t know what you’re getting at.

    I am extremely familiar with the studio version of Lalena, by the way. This is a different version and the many differences indicate to me it is live.

  32. Sorry I’m late to the U2 bit. I first saw their music video for Gloria and I had to rush out and buy the album. A couple of my best friends were throwing a party and I played a couple tracks for them. The were a little more receptive than a yawn. It’s an amazing song to my ears, but maybe if they stuck to the groove of that song they’d have been a failure?

    Gloria
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybYgP48X2DY&feature=emb_logo

    The lyrics?:
    Gloria, in te domine
    Gloria, exultate

    The Edge plays bell tones and slide. With the slide playing in a psychedelic interlude? I always liked the percussive only strumming. It finishes with a big choral harmony.

  33. neo,

    I’m fortunate to have much older siblings. My sister and two brothers were teenagers and went to see the Beatles in concert in 1965 and they were all very influential on my musical tastes until I became a teenager myself and developed my own tastes. My sister still has all of her original Beatles albums except to her great disappointment ‘Rubber Soul’ which was somehow lost. They all talk about what it was like and it is unlike anything in my lifetime with Michael Jackson on Motown 25 being the closest. A common culture is beyond important for a cohesive society.

  34. Sports was another thing that created a cultural bond– we loved to hate the Yankees, but it was all in good fun. The friday before a game, it seemed like at least half of the employees at my last company came to work sporting #12 jerseys, or the # of their favorite player. It always seemed a little over the top for me, but it was harmless.
    But then wokeness or some such nonsense even ruined sports.

  36. Has anybody been following the Perseverance landing? I tuned in just seconds after touchdown; the control room was cheering and I suspected I’d missed something.

  37. Griffin, go Hawks.

    I quit watching football several years ago, and haven’t missed it.

    I enjoy baseball, but I watched every game (on tv) of the Mariner’s 2001 season. What an incredible season. Whoops, what an incredible regular season. What a stinking post season. I started reflecting on how much of my summer had been spent watching tv– and a rather disappointing outcome to that effort, and decided I had better things to do.

  38. I was going to post a liberal analysis of why Trump lost the election, then noticed this piece:

    https://www.governing.com/now/With-Trump-Defeated-Why-Are-Democrats-So-Downcast.html

    Even liberals noticed. But then, Progressives are basically an unhappy lot. Their happiness seems to be just around the next policy win. If they could just change one more thing. It would be perfect. Well, it would be if those damn conservatives would just get with the program, or die off!

  39. Brian E,

    To your point about bonding over sports I have never seen anything like what happened in the NW in 1995 when the Mariners made their comeback and playoff run. It was practically the only thing anyone was talking about. Black, white, man, woman, young, old it was so cool. And it produced one of the greatest sports highlights and calls ever. It still gives me chills 25 years later.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8SBJzOEcyU

  40. The 60s were a special time and the Boomers were a special generation in the sense of the post-WW2 population bulge, economic prosperity and technological advancement. No generation of youth previously had the opportunity to make such a big deal about themselves and their concerns. Boomers got to do it for the first time it had been done.

    Nonetheless, I would argue that the Beatles were a freakishly talented group that merged together into a whole and met their time like a key slipping into a lock. A once-a-century thing.

    If the Beatles hadn’t existed, to turn Voltaire’s saying about God on its head, they still couldn’t have been invented.

    Without the Beatles there would have been the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, etc. It would have remained a glorious era of popular music, but the Beatles are virtually untouchable like Newton or Einstein in their centuries for physics.

  41. Phillip Sells,

    I have been and I have a question:
    Why is the Perseverance rover dropping the core samples it takes where it takes them; scattering them everywhere? Doesn’t that add an unnecessary level of difficulty to the next mission? Why not store them all in the rover in a single container and, maybe drop that container in one place? Is it the weight of the samples? If so, the next rover would have to be “stronger” to carry them, along with the added talent of finding them and picking them up. It doesn’t seem likely mass is the reason, but I can’t think of any other reason.

  42. huxley,

    The amount of musical talent born in the UK between approx. 1940-1948 is truly staggering. Cannot simply be chance.

  43. @Rufus T Firefly:

    Interesting. And totally off the top of my head, I guess it’s to remove a potential point of failure. What if Perseverance scoots around the surface of Mars for 6 Months picking up samples and storing them in its internals and then fails? The samples would be stuck inside it. Whatever autonomous craft is sent later to retrieve them, it’s going to have an easier time picking up core samples from the Martian Surface than it would doing surgery on a dead or erratic Perseverance.

    Could be the main reason, I guess. Also by not having one Container to Rule Them All, NASA is increasing what Nassim Taleb calls Optionality in more ways: e.g. they can decide to collect zero or one or some or all samples and not return or return one or some at one or more times with one or more retrieval craft. I think this would be a Good Thing for them given distances and uncertainties involved.

    Even the form factor of a single large Samples Container to Rule Them All is likely too much of a design constraint/straitjacket for future retrieval craft whose design is going to evolve based on data from Perseverance.

  44. Zaphod,

    Store them in a pouch on the outside of the rover. Can’t be less safe than dropping and scattering them over differing terrain.

  45. @Griffin:

    Every person not from a farming family without large-ish private means or Black Market Gonnections born between 1940-48 lived through a pretty stringent food rationing regime which didn’t fully end until 1953.

    I do wonder.

    In the case of (say) some proles born in Liverpool, having government nutritionists indirectly on their cases may have been a boon for juvenile brain development. Who knows?

  46. @Rufus:

    I’ll consult the Silicon Valley Shaman about this. Kind of question likely to pop up on Quora.

    Perhaps NASA didn’t hire sufficient Women of Color who could have advised them to hang some gourds around the outskirts of Perseverance (very White name, too).

  48. Arizona election fraud is still being I’d— seriously and forensically by the Arizona Senate.

    “OAN Investigates. Why did Maricopa County allow 36,000 non citizens to vote? 11,000 overvotes? Preloaded ballots into voting machines and Republican observers to be excluded from the process? How did they allow hundreds of thousands of in person ballots get switched to absentee ballots? None of those questions have been answered.”

    Phil Wexler — who was in on the Antrim, Co., Michigan, forensic vote investigation — outlines the mysteries of AZ voting shifts benefiting Biden up to 30 recorded batches, see 4:40m to 7m).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gtMmTNxbDU

  49. Griffin, Zaphod:

    There was the famous group of Hungarian mathematicians/physicists who emerged from Budapest before WW2 and were so unusually talented they were known as “The Martians”:
    ____________________________________________

    Leó Szilárd, who jokingly suggested that Hungary was a front for aliens from Mars, used this term. In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: “They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
    ____________________________________________

    Who knows what was in the water or in the culture which nurtured those scientists. The Nazis put a stop to that.

  51. jack,

    Pattie Boyd. Inspiration for ‘Something’, ‘Layla’ and ‘Wonderful Tonight’. Not bad although I’ve always thought ‘Wonderful Tonight’ is a really pathetic song from the singer’s POV. Kind of a loser.

  52. “Wonderful Tonight”

    Yes it’s no master piece but it is something that almost every woman needs to hear if they admit or not.

  53. If the USA is to have any national future, local and state elections must be fundamentally reformed to become secure and fair.

    Doug TenNapel in Exile says Florida Gov. Ron De Santa’s wants to take his reforms there and export them to other states. One key is driving voting security to ever lower and smaller levels by activist minded Rs.

    This report comes with an outline from document and a speech excerpt by De Santis.

    But he sets the table initially by explaining how the next two election cycles are being set up, and if Trump runs in 2024, De Santis will very likely be the Veep selection.

    If, however, Trump decides not to run, Doug expects the President’s new media company to play a significant role in selecting the next candidate.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCJH_qUsJ1w

  54. @Huxley:

    Indeed. Knew there were a lot and some vague notion that several of them went to the same high school in the same year… didn’t know about the nickname. That’s funny!

    Once spent a profitable year up to my neck in graph theory applications. There was more than a whiff of paprika about the literature.

    David Goldman (Spengler) claims that Hungarian Jewish Cuisine is the one variant he’d cross the road to partake of.

    Fascinating time and place when so many possibilities were in play, perhaps that’s a necessary and sufficient condition for an intellectual flowering in a difficult field.

    (Contrast and compare with Konrad Zuse.)

    Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor has some interesting stuff about pre-war Hungary.

  55. Mattress Mac … a business man in Houston opened his store for displaced people during Hurricane Harvey. He did it again for the homeless and displaced people that past week during the ice storm.

    Hmmm … He also bet 3.9 million on Brady and the Tampa Bay to cover the Super Bowl spread and won big time!

    Could there be any correlation?

  56. jack and Griffin,
    I was thinking about Clapton later in the discussion about tremolo. I believe that the pipe organ with a “tremulant” switch wavering the air flow and the Vox Humana stop was all about emulating vocal music.

    From Guitar.com

    In 1967, Clapton told Beat Instrumental, “I am playing more smoothly now. I’m developing what I call my ‘woman tone.’ It’s a sweet sound, something like the solo on I Feel Free. It is more like the human voice than the guitar. You wouldn’t think it was a guitar for the first few passages. It calls for the correct use of distortion.”

  57. Griffin,

    “My sister still has all of her original Beatles albums except to her great disappointment ‘Rubber Soul’ which was somehow lost.”

    I suspect a great birthday gift or Xmas gift would be to buy her a replacement to complete her collection.

    Vinyl records are available on amazon and ebay both new and pre-owned.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KJN9QLC/ref=tmm_fbs_vnl_title_1?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=#aw-udpv3-customer-reviews_feature_div

    I suggest this one as it’s a new, modern reissue on 180gm vinyl. $31.98

    Review:
    Just another perfect album from The Beatles. Mono Masterpiece!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2016
    “Remastered from the analog tapes the sound of these mono reissues is just stunning and the quality of the vinyl pressing is beyond reproach. The freshness of the songs and sound is amazing for being originally released 50 years ago in December of 1965. The soundstage of these mono recordings are amazing and countless times I swear I hear vocals or specific instruments from one side of the room or the other, not the speaker itself. Mono is how the Beatles intended these to be heard (stereo was still a bit of a gimmick at this point) and this mix does not disappoint.”

    IMO, remasters are often worse than the originals but in this case it sounds like the remaster was faithful to the original. Probably because its the Beatles.

  58. Geoffrey- Yes, when the lockdowns first hit she spent an afternoon going through her large record collection which was stored away and hadn’t been looked at in years and to her horror somehow ‘Rubber Soul’ was gone. She doesn’t want the remastered one though she wants an original preferably the UK version but I’m not sure if she has looked into it that closely.

    ‘Rubber Soul’ is my favorite Beatles album which is not a popular opinion as most prefer ‘Revolver’ but I just like it better. It features some of my favorite Lennon songs like ‘Norwegian Wood’ and my personal favorite ‘Girl’ which is just amazing. The beginning of their peak years. Never been done better.

  59. Indeed. Knew there were a lot and some vague notion that several of them went to the same high school in the same year…

    Zaphod:

    Yes, von Neumann, Teller, Wigner and Harsanyi attended the Fasori Gimnázium in Budapest, though not in the same year.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimnázium

    I consider von Neumann a god or at least a Martian. The most brilliant, yet not nearly famous enough, scientist ever in my book.

    Edward Teller enjoyed that his initials were E.T. — extra-terrestrial — following up on the Martian joke.

  60. https://youtu.be/uDGHKyB3T_U

    All you ever wanted to know about the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife but were too embarrassed to ask.

    Apparently we’ve all been cutting throats the wrong way.

    This old veteran is made of different stuff.

  63. @Rufus & Zaphod: I didn’t know that about the sample collection. I saw NASA’s little CGI video showing this vehicle going around and taking cores and having this elaborate method of stashing them ultimately in tubes on its underside after appropriate packaging, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’m inclined to second Zaphod’s reasoning in general on this. As for pouches on the exterior, I suppose one clear concern is that those could get detached or torn by weather or rock incursions or something. (I’ve been trying to look up weather on Mars – maybe just not doing it right, but I assume there must be some.)

    Another factor that occurred to me was that maybe having a purpose-built collection vehicle means that Perseverance itself, the rover, has then that much more space for instruments and such on board. I don’t think having a second dedicated collection vehicle is much of a solution to the potential problem of rover failure, since if the collector vehicle were to have a failure while the rover continues, we’d be back to square one anyway.

    However, here’s another bit of brainstorming: the whole idea of the collector vehicle is that it’s what brings the packages back to Earth, ultimately. Divorcing core-sample transport from the ongoing work of the rover, then, enables the exploratory and data acquisition mission to continue while the samples collected so far are in transit. The rover can then go about its business in peace. And what Zaphod said regarding the techniques of the Perseverance mission being a testbed for later, more elaborate visits – I second as being quite pertinent to this question.

    I think many of the NASA people have been putting a lot of thought into downstream consequences for manned missions which is being reflected in their engineering solutions to this particular mission. It’s just a pity that the results of the thinking are necessarily ‘tape-delayed’ in the sense that they have idea XYZ, go to build it, then execute, and it takes several years just to get to the target real estate before we see the effects. But there’s no other way to do it at this point.

    I was amusing myself last night trying to figure out things like the Mars-Earth synodic period from scratch. I felt relieved when I finally realized that it was really just a matter of applying a scale factor to overlapping sine waves. I didn’t actually successfully derive the answer, but at least I had the right idea (I think), which, given the deterioration in my understanding of basic trigonometry over the years, is a kind of victory. Celestial mechanics! Incredible. Newton’s last refuge, I guess.

  65. Griffin,
    Thanks for reminding me of that surreal ’95 season, coming from way back to winning the West and then beating the Yankees on the clutch double by Edgar!

  66. Zaphod:

    Great story about Rata!

    As to “Norwegian Wood” there’s persistent speculation it was John’s pun for “Knowing She Would.” We do know the song concealed one of John’s many affairs from his wife, Cynthia.
    ________________________________

    Isn’t it good … [knowing she would].
    ________________________________

    Bob Dylan did a parody of “Norwegian Wood” on “Blonde on Blonde”:

    –Bob Dylan, “Fourth Time Around”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wSIboHqtXY

    Funnier with context.

  67. @Philip Sells:

    I like all your additional reasons why it makes sense to separate functions.

    Separation of Concerns is something much banged on about in computing academia and also learned through real world painful mistakes in Software Engineering and other practical fields.

    And in the case of an open-ended mission at the far, far end of a very long imaginary piece of string, optionality and keeping many decision branches open and available is critical.

    This book is waaaay above my pay grade, but one of the authors co-wrote a classic of Computer Science and must be well worth it for those with a good background in classical mechanics:

    https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Classical-Mechanics-Sussman/dp/0262194554

    It’s good to try to learn new things and keep the grey matter from turning to jelly too soon. Software Defined Radio looks like fun and I once knew all about FFTs, Convolutions, etc. back when the world was young. Got a gizmo lined up on Amazon and will see if can figure out how to hack the neighbourhood’s TV Remotes.

  68. Huxley,

    ‘Norwegian Wood’ is definitely about one of John’s affairs and the most mentioned woman I have seen is music journalist Maureen Cleave who was close to many of the stars of the time but that has always been the speculation. Also for kind of hippy dippy sitar song it takes quite a turn at the end.

  71. zaphod @6:11pm,

    Thanks for that link.

    The tubes are stored in the rover belly until the team decides on the time and place to drop the samples off on the surface. At a time and place of the team’s choosing, the samples are deposited on the surface of Mars at a spot that the team designates as a “sample cache depot.”

    The account I had read implied that the samples would be dropped individually, where they were gathered. It also included artists’ renderings showing tubes all long the rover’s eventual path. I didn’t think that was sensible and apparently neither would NASA.

  72. Phillip Sells,

    “I don’t think having a second dedicated collection vehicle is much of a solution to the potential problem of rover failure, since if the collector vehicle were to have a failure while the rover continues, we’d be back to square one anyway.”

    That’s my thought. If this rover where to not survive the landing, or not start up, or fail during collection, or… NASA would know they have to send another. But if this rover succeeds in all that, why double down on landing another rover in the same area and requiring it to retrace the same steps, picking multiple caches up? There are so many levels of difficulty and opportunities for failure. Seems extra risky to design a mission that depends on two similar, perfect performances to retrieve any samples.

  73. I do not imagine that NASA would be so silly as to attempt to retrieve all the samples in one go either. Surely would be smarter to risk losing some rather than all when attempting to get them back to Earth.

    Another advantage of this decoupled mission design is it’s open-ended and they can keep milking it budget- and career-wise for longer that way. Could be a rare case of feather bedding actually working in concert with good mission risk management.

  74. One thing you can be sure of, when the first container of Mars Rock is ceremonially opened, there will be more Strongly Credentialed Women of Colour on the Podium than nerdy white guys in funky nerd shirts.

  76. The smart money is on Elon Musk having a permanent, manned base on Mars long before the Perseverance samples ever make it to a NASA lab for testing.* 🙂

    *And at 1/10th NASA’s total budget for this series of unmanned missions.

  77. ^^^ Beautifully-refined top-of-their-game Musical Filth. Really good stuff!

    Much better than Diana Krall trying to play in this sandpit and coming off like a lizard in heat.

    Speaking of being in heat, hold onto your Birkin Bags Ladies!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpDf6XX_j0

    Or at the very least, hold out for a Birkin Bag 😀 — Seems to be the going rate out here.

  80. Don’t you just love it when you take your car into the “Stealership” to get serviced and they ask if you would like “complimentary” wash job?

    My answer is BS … I paid out the wazhoo for that wash job!

  82. Zaphod …

    I don’t understand half the stuff you say. That’s ok though. I look those words up and sometimes it makes sense … sometimes not. But it does add to my limited vocabulary.

  84. Marisa
    Yes I know. I caught the Allmond Brothers in Houston way back … and there he was on stage with them.

    He has done a lot of that with many groups.

  85. He also played with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends

    Now that is what I call a super group.

    Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, whose members at different times included Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Leon Russell, Bobby Whitlock, Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge, and King Curtis.

  86. @jack:

    Now you’ve gone and done it; I’m going to start inventing words just to make your life harder! 😀

  89. jack, when I was in college in Philadelphia in 1970 I saw a show at the Electric Factory, the Philly equivalent of the Fillmores. The opening act was the Allman Brothers, followed by BB King and then Delaney and Bonnie with Eric Clapton. At the end Clapton and King jammed for about 15 minutes. The jam was not as good as the individual shows, one of my first clues that “superstar jams” are not always what they are cracked up to be. There is something to be said for rehearsal, even in blues and rock music.

    Also, I think a lot of those people were not really “members” of D&B as opposed to being hired as session players on their albums or occasionally sitting in. Even for Clapton it was basically an interlude between bands he was more involved in, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominoes, though he did go on tour with them.

  90. You know times are tuff when people start posting on Facebook

    Walmart has milk … no eggs.

    I guess all the chickens died in the cold weather!

    Also I’d like to thank neo for the open thread. Seems to have gone well. No blackeyes or blood flowing at least.

  91. I begged her to not feed that cat. Now we have a “clowder” that has taken up permanent residence in Gazebo ceiling.

    Chewy.com bill just tripled!

    Mrs jack says upside is I don’t have to clean out cat box.

  92. jack,

    Will likely cut down on the local songbird population also. And, hopefully, pests like moles and mice.

  94. Over at Althouse, commenter Tom says:

    “So, Trump will easily win a congressional seat in Florida if he runs in 2022. The census update likely means the GOP picks up 5+ seats in the house to take control. And then the GOP makes Trump speaker. Then Trump has control over the legislative agenda and impeachment. Fun ensues.”

    I don’t remember if that’s been talked about by Neo, but what a clever idea.

    Would the President’s ego be willing to be #3 in the land? Considering how dysfunctional our system is, being Speaker might give the President more power than the posing president.

  95. Difficult … very Difficult but not impossible.

    All the stars in heaven would have to align and Trump would have to swallow his ego (which is huge) BUT if he thinks he can get some stuff done and stick it to the Dems at the same time … he may do it. Who knows?

  96. There are 16 active cases before the appeals courts and five cases pending before the Supreme Court. It had been reported that the SC was considering whether to hear the cases before it during a conference on the 19th of this month.

    The Supreme Court failed the country when it refused to hear the Texas case brought against Penn. It had been speculated that decision might have been influenced by the violent reaction in the country had the Court ruled in favor of Texas, benefitting the Trump administration.

    Now that President Trump has been removed from the equation, and the possible bias by the Court removed from the equation, it is still in the best interests of the country to hear and decide those cases, which can do much to restore election integrity to our voting system.

    All conservatives need to keep this in front of the American people, that many issues of election impropriety because of illegal bureaucratic rule making are indeed unconstitutional.

    https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/

    Edit: There is nothing on that post to indicate this is still accurate at this time, other than this statement: “we will provide up-to-date information on major election law cases as they make their way through every level of the court system.”

  97. Suggestions, please, for other websites with a weekly summary of the news, both domestic and international. Thanks.

  98. AppleBetty,

    Instapundit is my go to. He and his cobloggers catch a lot of what’s going on in near real time.

  99. I like RealClearPolitics for a broad range of links. It includes a fair number of liberal links for the important stories, which I find useful.

  100. Catch Rantburg. Aggregator with a voice . Comments are frequently knowledgeable.

    I never got into Sixties pop, preferring folk. But when I hear the old pop, it takes me back, which is not unpleasant, or maybe it is, sometimes. Depends .

    Used to follow the Limelighters and noted that Glenn Campbell, when he went on his own, dropped the high notes he used to do. Still good, but you can hear the difference.

    Kurt Cobain killed himself the same month Lew Puller, Jr. did. Cobain got the ink. Disappointing.

    Grace Slick had a heck of a voice, but not displayed to its greatest effect in a lot of their work.

    Used to have an album–The Astounding Twelve String Guitar of Glenn Campbell”. Liner notes said he might have a future as a vocalist.

    The Beatles were okay for jump-around party music. Then they went to India and sold themselves as DEEP. Lost whatever intolerance I had.

  101. Brian E on February 21, 2021 at 12:58 pm said:
    Over at Althouse, commenter Tom says:

    “So, Trump will easily win a congressional seat in Florida if he runs in 2022. The census update likely means the GOP picks up 5+ seats in the house to take control. And then the GOP makes Trump speaker. Then Trump has control over the legislative agenda and impeachment. Fun ensues.”

    I don’t remember if that’s been talked about by Neo, but what a clever idea.

    Would the President’s ego be willing to be #3 in the land? Considering how dysfunctional our system is, being Speaker might give the President more power than the posing president.

    John Quincy Adams was elected to the House in his post Presidency career, I think. I don’t recall to what effect. The idea is clever if Trump were capable of filling such a role. Or maybe he would not have to be a master parliamentarian, if he had allies he could work with and whose guidance he could trust. That, though, is as I see it, a doubtful proposition

  102. Richard Aubrey,

    Thanks for the tip on Rantburg. I just spent a few minutes there. Interesting. Very streamlined, information-centric design.

  103. DNW,

    JQA pretty much devoted his post presidency House years to fighting against slavery and he was there from about 1830 until his death around 1850.

    Some great books out there about JQA because he kept a diary from childhood right up to a couple months before his death and he was there for a lot of hugely important things.

  104. Per Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams#Historical_reputation

    Rather than retiring from public service, Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 to his death in 1848. He remains the only ex-president to be elected to the chamber (although John Tyler was elected a Confederate representative, dying before seated). Narrowly failing attempts at Governor of Massachusetts and re-election to the Senate, Adams joined the Anti-Masonic Party in the early 1830s before becoming a member of the Whig Party, which united those opposed to President Jackson. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders who he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery and its political grip on Congress. He also led the repeal of the “gag rule”, which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians generally concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress.

  105. Used to have an album–The Astounding Twelve String Guitar of Glenn Campbell”. Liner notes said he might have a future as a vocalist.

    Richard Aubrey:

    Campbell was a member of the “Wrecking Crew,” the elite group of LA studio musicans who backed seemingly half the hit songs which came out of LA in the 60s. Campbell, along with Leon Russell, left the Crew to establish his own musical career.

    There’s an excellent documentary:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(2008_film)

    I didn’t realize how great a player Campbell was until I watched it.

  106. On a serious and personal note. Mrs jack and I had a deep conversation this morning having coffee on the porch. We have to get out of this house! Mrs jack is sitting on some pocket change and dying for her casino fix.

    I proposed we go to the track and bet the pony’s. We have a casino close by that have the pony’s running this month.

    It’s been close to 2 weeks since we got our second covid shots. The track is outdoors seating and we can social distance. She jumped on it. Compromise at it’s best.

    Finally back to some normality.

  107. Good luck, jack. My father is an inveterate punter. He didn’t have much to do with me as a child until he discovered I had a knack for doing math quickly, in my head, and started taking me along on his outings to the track. It’s not a bad way to spend an afternoon. I hope your and your wife’s horses come in!

  108. @Jack:

    Excellent idea. A risk-free life is a boring life. Manageable risks, of course.

    Horse racing goes on here. It must. Many vested interests plus there’d be riots if they stopped it, but no spectators allowed on course for the last year. Hasn’t negatively affected turnover as it’s been mainly website / smartphone app based for years already. But once or twice a year in the cooler months its a must-do to head to Happy Valley for a few hours of entertainment in an amphitheater of light.

    Race courses are very good for people watching too. Could write an anthropology thesis on a walk from the public entrance end of the Happy Valley Stand to the Members’ end.

    Bats and Horses, FTW:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendra_virus

  109. @Rufus T. Firefly

    My father used to take me also. I loved the smell and the characters you would see in the paddock. There’s also an upside for me pony’s versus casino. I could loose every race and not loose anywhere close to what I’d loose to those 1 armed bandits.

  111. huxley
    I’d heard that Campbell started out as a studio guy. Is that the same as a “side man”?

    Worked in a field project where a couple of the women would nearly break down when they heard “Gentle on My Mind”. Each had an exclusive back home, but I couldn’t see the connection.

    He’s on YouTube doing all kinds of items, by himself, with Roy Clark, just having fun.

    Here’s an odd one. “Fanfare for The Common Man” covered by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. When Copland heard they wanted to do it, he said he’d be honored. It’s done in an empty stadium at maybe twelve below. Also on YouTube.

    For another, see Elvis, “Poke Salad Annie” jamming with Sina, a kid drummer with apparently six arms or something.

  114. In addition to his studio work Campbell also went on the road with The Beach Boys before his solo career. I believe as a sub for Brian Wilson who was becoming more reclusive.

  115. @om:

    There is a Rose in Spanish Harlem. And on that rose reposes a Spanish Fly. So you’re good to go.

    And here’s Rebecca Pigeon (Mrs David Mamet) singing the song:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMTEWsGGEg

    This track shows up on many audiophile demo disks; the spatial separation and definition on a good system is really something.

  116. Zaphod:

    I love Rebecca Pidgeon! She started as a musician before getting involved with acting. She has since tried to reboot her musical career with little success and I’m not sure why.

    Maybe her albums vary too much from folk to pop to breezy jazz. Though she did nail down that odd spot for demoing high-end audio equipment.

    Maybe it’s just hard to break in to music later in life, even if your husband is David Mamet.

    For anyone curious about her acting, I recommend her in Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner,” where I first noticed her. Also, “Heist” with Gene Hackman.

  117. Thought/suggestion for open thread:
    As additional topics beyond Neo’s initial one are added, it might be useful/ helpful for commenters to add a word or two “topic title”. E.g., if the core thread is Music or Dance, later topics might be on Trump or GOP or politics, or fly fishing or ???

    Readers can then more easily scan the comments for those with topics that are of interest to them. Particularly since Neo’s comment section does not support nested comments [which has its own positive and negative issues].

  118. Topic Title: Om Bait

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam…

    I sense a looming problem. Perhaps the Dewey System?

    🙂

  119. AppleBetty asks “Suggestions, please, for other websites with a weekly summary of the news, both domestic and international. Thanks.”

    NTD seems to be a video news (or even defunct CNN Headline News) style daily round up offshoot of EpochTimes. Excellent fact to opinion ratio, plus Right centered topics are favoured.

    It runs 30 to 40 minutes, with business news towards the end during the week, and a very helpful story-time stamp index in the description so you can get to stories of interest quickly.

    View it at YouTube, and elsewhere. (NTD = New Tang Dynasty).

    “Watch our videos for FREE directly on”
    https://www.ntd.com?

    Or YT via https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ioh4atNDO5a0Vy2qFmauQ

    I also visit dailymail.co.uk
    sometimes for more international news, and often factual (or gossipy) news missing in the US. A good double check on our Marxist Censors.

    Also, I’m turning to Just The News (John Solomon, Sheryl Attkisson, Sarah Carter, etc) daily, to catch news rarely found elsewhere:
    https://justthenews.com/

    According to Doug TenNaples, Trump Constitutional lawyer Jenna Ellis is starting a daily video cast with Just The News people or ties. Something to look forward to.

    Finally, every week or two, I spent 30 to 60 minutes with Jan Jekielek
    and Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” long form interviews.These are like Mark Levin’s FNC show, usually an author or thinker or even politician, or sometimes an activist, on hand.

    Some guests are so knowledgeable and impressive, I have to bookmark them and listen once more, even months later.

    Here’s Dennis Prager’s interview on our diminishing speech rights,
    “ ‘We’re Living in a Gigantic Lie’—Dennis Prager Talks Free Speech” from January. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVVvF3FuHgI

    In case you don’t know, Prager is an intellectual in the talk radio medium.

    Like others, I often hit Instapundit, or else go straight to pjmedia.com to find a few good, essential — but missed — news worthy topics. This is often over the weekends.

  121. Zaphod:

    I’ve forgotten all the Latin learned in high school, before you were born, so if you have something to say, try English. Sometimes you seem too clever by half.

  122. @om:

    It’s just generic filler text. See here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

    The implication being that you’d take offense at just about anything I post here 😛

    Dunno about too clever by half, but I’ve never made any too extravagant claims about having grown up and learned to behave myself in polite company.

  123. SHOCKING HEADLINE AT Instapundit, Venezuela is quietly privatizing parts of the economy:

    “Nearly a decade and a half later, on the brink of mass famine and a growing energy crisis, Venezuela is now moving in the opposite direction.

    “According to Bloomberg News, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has quietly begun transferring state assets back into the hands of private owners in an effort to reverse the country’s economic collapse.

    “ ‘Saddled with hundreds of failed state companies in an economy barreling over a cliff, the Venezuelan government is abandoning socialist doctrine by offloading key enterprises to private investors, offering profit in exchange for a share of revenue or products,’ write Caracas-based journalists Fabiola Zerpa and Nicolle Yapur.

    “The transfer, which was not announced publicly but was confirmed by ‘nine people with knowledge of the matter,’ reportedly includes dozens of coffee processors, grain silos, and hotels that were confiscated as part of Venezuela’s widespread nationalization that began under Chavez.”

    LINKS to sources in original
    https://fee.org/articles/bloomberg-venezuela-turns-to-privatization-after-being-bankrupted-by-socialism/

    This news follows only a couple weeks after Cuba announced massively expanding privatisation there to deal with the 11% drop in GDP (which must be double that official number).

    With all the Covid related wailing and gnashing of teeth, could these surprising changes be some silver linings not seen in the clouds?

  124. Well isn’t that great! Your #$@# your family built up over generations gets confiscated by the government who run its plant into the ground and then sell it to someone else, said government cronies pocketing the cash from the sale of course + likely taxing new buyer privately as well as officially…new buyer probably a Chinese at that. Chinese will buy literally anything overseas regardless of return because nobody in China wants to be last person holding the parcel (cash/stocks/bonds) when their financial system tanks. We should be so smart.

    I can tell you where the ex-owner’s sons were two years ago: manning the bar every evening at the Hansar Koh Samui Resort. I got talking to these two guys and what they had to say about Maduro would fill a very long roll of toilet paper.

  126. zaphod:

    Too clever by half and a tad sensitive too? Not to be anal retentive, but, how many posts did you make yesterday and how many did I comment on? Write the code and run it. It will shock you! Own goal time?

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