Home » Open thread 12/27/21

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Open thread 12/27/21 — 32 Comments

  1. The two gentlemen in the video are new to me. I found their webpage, https://www.twosetviolin.com/ and learned a bit about them. They are Australians Brett Yang and Eddy Chen.

    At the end of 2016, the duo gave up their spots in the Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras and began hosting live classical comedy performances, including a sold-out debut at the Sydney Opera House. Their one-of-a-kind show offers a unique and interactive experience, creatively integrating humour with actual recital—all while upholding the integrity of classical music… Achieving what was considered ‘the impossible’ by current industry standards was not pure luck. It was created by two young boys with a mission to give more people a chance to engage with classical music. Now with over 7,500,000 followers across social media and over one billion views, TwoSet inspires musicians worldwide with humor and a relatable ‘imperfectness.’

    I find that amazing! Brett graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium in 2013 and Eddy in 2014. Then, as the above states, they gave up their spots in the Sydney and Queensland symphonies to work together on their live, classical/comedy performances! For musicians with the ability and years of hard work to win a spot in a major symphony, then to walk away from that in a few, brief years, is not only unheard of, it is incredibly risky.

    Based on their sold out shows and (I assume) youtube revenue, it appears their gamble has paid off. Good for Brett and Eddy!

  2. My daughter introduced me to these guys a couple of years ago – they have a great skit about being a percussion player for an orchestra who literally has one cymbal crash in an entire concert.

  3. NewYorkCentral,

    A lot of parts in a lot of classical pieces for a lot of instruments are fairly pedestrian. It makes sense that symphonies audition for the best performers possible, but many of them are underutilized most of the time due to the nature of the musical works.

  4. I have absolutely no idea what these guys are talking about.

    The haircuts, T-shirts, and eye wear are all quite distracting. English isn’t the 1st language of the one on the right, and his elocution needs work.

  5. Evidently, they live in Australia. They’ve been producing these videos for seven years. At least one of them was at one time employed by the Sydney Symphony, but he does not appear to be employed there now. The other is an occasional performer with symphonies located in Brisbane and Melbourne. They’re both approaching 30. They bill themselves as Brett and Eddy.

  6. Neo,

    The nasty tweet by this academic is interesting.

    “Just so we’re clear on the Right’s agenda – racism good, abortion bad, money good, women bad, capitalism good, sustainability bad, stupidity good, science bad, power good, equality bad, white people good, nonwhite people bad. Stench, indeed.”

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/is-there-a-distinction-between-the-academic-left-and-the-twitter-fever-swamp.php

    Lots of hate. Lots of vile slander. Yet, I suspect most of us believe that she represents millions. I’m curious about your thoughts in two aspects: 1. How and why do so many people get to a place where they enjoy hating and lying like this? 2. How does a nation survive these kinds of vicious attitudes?

  7. The nasty tweet by this academic is interesting.

    What’s interesting is that she’s the dean of arts and sciences at one of California’s research institutions. Obtaining that position is a function of institutional politics, which suggests being a mendacious clown does not damage one’s standing among the arts and sciences faculty at San Diego State University. Note, the dean of arts and sciences was not drawn from any serious subject, but from the women’s studies faculty. All victimology programs are patronage for favored political interests. They are spurious as disciplines and there is negligible student demand for them.

    Forget it jake, it’s California. What’s maddening is when you see these types in higher ed in red states. Republican state legislators do not accomplish jack squat.

  8. stan, Art Deco,

    Here’s what I found on amazon.com:

    “Monica J. Casper, Ph.D. is Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Inclusion in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Public Health at the University of Arizona. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the School of Sociology and in Africana Studies, and is co-founder of the UA Consortium on Gender-Based Violence. She has published several books, including the award-winning The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery.”

    Sounds like a real peach!

  9. Art Deco,

    I just read the Powerline Blog piece on Professor Casper. It states her current position as you do. The Amazon bio I quoted is likely outdated or from a book jacket that predates her move to San Diego.

  10. It makes sense that symphonies audition for the best performers possible

    I heard Hilary Hahn play the Korngold concerto with the Utah Symphony. It was somewhat painful because she was so much better than the orchestra. TBF, it might have been the conductor. I recall a studio drummer who had the same problem when he played with rock groups.

  11. Stan, yes she probably represents millions of such academics. In my own small corner of the academia, the change started just post- 9/11. First to go was the English department, then Sociology, History etc… last to be infected were the Arts and then sciences.

    I know I’m going to sound misogynistic, but the change happened as more radical women were hired. That created an environment where only radical women were the preferred hire, so the system became self-perpetuating. Many schools now have administration and faculty where radical women are now the majority. It’s a place where the Harpies rule.

    As to the cause of their obvious deep seated hate, I have no idea. But they found a way to surround themselves with equally miserable creatures. What is so concerning is to see this situation explode into mainstream culture.

  12. The Korngold violin concerto would do very well as the soundtrack of a pirate movie. Captain Blood, for example.

  13. For me, most telling is to look at an academic’s CV. Here’s a link to hers:

    https://sdsu.academia.edu/MonicaCasper/CurriculumVitae

    What immediately jumps out is her move very quickly after the post-doc to administrative roles. Any teaching is not even mentioned. Obviously of very low priority. As I mentioned above, this is how such people gain a foothold and perpetuate their species. Note the timeline is also parallel to what I described above. I have zero doubt that her ultimate goal is a presidency. Her CV literally reeks of that, as her career has been focused entirely on that end. Also to that end her scholarship has been carefully tailored to be of the “proper type”. I’ve seen way too many of these people over my, now thankfully, ended career.

  14. The Puget Sound region had a heavy (for us) snowfall yesterday, and I woke up this morning to a temperature of 17 degrees.

    In 30 years in the area I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that cold here. Must be that global warming I hear so much about.

  15. Bryan,

    It’s happened a few times but the new hotness is that we reached 108 in June and now 17 in December so that is proof of climate change.

    Warm in the summer cold in the winter what a novel concept.

  16. physicsguy wrote: “It’s a place where the Harpies rule.

    As to the cause of their obvious deep seated hate, I have no idea.”

    Oh, I’d wager $10,000 you have an idea.

  17. This video from Brett and Eddy might be fun for some of you: https://youtu.be/Ec7BR5Zic-U

    They examine audio illusions. Similar to optical illusions but auditory rather than visual. I found the ease at which they understood and were not tricked by the two songs at 4:18 most interesting. As well trained musicians they had no difficulty putting the notes in the right octaves to recognize the tunes.

  18. The Puget Sound region had a heavy (for us) snowfall yesterday,

    Bryan – where were you in 1993? In a week, we got about 24 inches of snow, which stuck. Then a heavy rainfall which just soaked into that blanket, and demolished some long-held engineers’ attitudes about roof loading (wind was supposed to blow away a large part of the snow-load weight) by collapsing a couple of the flat roofs on big-box stores with really massive weight.

  19. Stan, yes she probably represents millions of such academics.

    There are about 1.5 million post-secondary teachers in this country. I’m guessing about 1/2 the working professors in the United States are ruining the reputations of the other half, but that still doesn’t get you to a million.

  20. I recall seeing these guys a while back do a collaboration video with another very well known Youtube, Davie504, a very skilled Italian bass guitar player who does silly comedic videos.

  21. Insufficiently Sensitive —

    I vaguely remember that, although I was living in Tacoma and maybe we didn’t get quite that much. Even so, 4 inches is a heavy snowfall for Seattle, where one inch is enough to practically shut down the city and panic everyone.

  22. Bryan,

    There was one winter when we had heavy snow and then it froze and snapped power poles and brought down the wires. I was out of power, phone, cable for about a week and I went and stayed with my parents who had power. It would have been some time in the early to mid 90s so that may have been the incident he was referring to.

    It’s pretty rare around here but like you said it only takes a dusting of snow to bring about SNOWPOCALYPSE in this region.

  23. Art Deco, OK “many” such, if you want to nit pick. However, your percentage is way off. It was probably true about 2008, now I would say more like 90% which gives .9×1.5 mill = 1.35 mill

  24. Empirical medical PROOF that myocarditis in younger men is more frequent via certain vaccines (ie, two dose Moderna) than post COVID-19 infections.

    Here’s the key bar chart (except the skew of adverse events gets worse the further under age 40 the cohort goes)
    https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myocarditis-stratified?fbclid=IwAR0VXKRs4EPjXhVH8ohvKNFKedN9wU_UXIRkVwkwLSNvt_7YWMydG8fzu_I

    DISCUSSION here
    https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myocarditis-stratified?fbclid=IwAR0VXKRs4EPjXhVH8ohvKNFKedN9wU_UXIRkVwkwLSNvt_7YWMydG8fzu_I

  25. Insufficiently Sensitive,
    … demolished some long-held engineers’ attitudes about roof loading …
    As well as the roofs* themselves in passing. That was cute. 🙂

    physicsguy, it doesn’t sound to me like you’re describing misogyny so much as mis-harpy-ism. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing (the mis-harpy-ism, that is).

    * (edit: I really wanted to use ‘rooves’ here, Dictionary says that’s not a word. I feel disappointment.)

  26. @ Philip > depends on your dictionary

    https://grammarist.com/usage/roofs-rooves/

    “Roofs is the plural of roof in all varieties of English. Rooves is an old secondary form, and it still appears occasionally by analogy with other irregular plurals such as hooves, but it is not common enough to be considered standard.”

    Spell checkers are said to be flagging the “v” spelling , and attempting to force “roofs” as a standard, which indeed seems to be happening, given that pronouncement from the link.

    Commenter john howley says
    January 22, 2015 at 9:31 am
    “Rooves as a plural for of roof is dated, but not incorrect. The Oxford English Dictionary lists “rooves” as an alternate to roofs, one of several outdated spellings used in the UK, and in New England as late as the 19th century.”

    The long comment thread is entertaining; despite the spell-checkers, most of them, but not all, assert that they were taught to use “rooves” as the plural (which is how I’ve always heard it pronounced, regardless of the written form), and that “roofs” is a verb.

    madethatway says
    August 31, 2015 at 1:39 am
    “Ugh. Sets my teeth on edge when I read/hear ‘roofs’, ‘hoofs’, ‘dwarfs’ and ‘elfs’ instead of rooves, hooves, dwarves and elves. Was a time not too long ago when my hands would have been whacked with a cane for such grotesque mangling of the English language.”

    crankybleeder says
    July 7, 2015 at 7:24 pm
    “I’m 60. When at school I was taught that the plural of “roof” is “rooves” and the plural of “hoof” is “hooves”. Maybe my teachers were wrong. Maybe not.
    I was also taught that the past tense of “light” is “lit”, not “lighted”.”

    Don’t get me started on the evolution of past tenses. It sets my teeth on edge to read a lot of current material, even from formerly reputable publications.

  27. “That’s a relief about ‘rooves’! I think I’ll try it out.”

    It behooves you to do so.

    [ducks behind monitor]

  28. There are millions of people in the US who likely agree with the hate-filled academic. And many, many millions more throughout the world.

    It’s likely that the total of such haters include millions who have jobs that would be considered academic. That would include “academics” in K-12 education as well as those outside the US.

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