"Being off by a factor of a million is not a trivial error."

An excerpt from a stop in Lynchburg, VA on Dawkins's book tour. Real science's response to intelligent design has taken a few years to get going, but scientists are finally striking back with books-a-plenty, and waging the battle of ideas that they need to.

Einstein said that a unified field theory should be something elegant enough to explain to a small child; Lederman said it should be succinct enough to fit on a t-shirt. Their descriptions of an elegantly formatted complex idea are also ideal standards for the communication of larger scientific principles to the public.

What that objective yields are pithy "memes" - a term which Dawkins himself actually coined - and are exactly what's needed right now for science, for the public can understand little more than soundbytes, and answers to the design inference need to be just that simple. That's what makes quotes such as this one by Dawkins so important:

Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.

Rachmaninoff PC3 on YouTube

I came across Martha Argerich's legendary performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto with Riccardo Chailly and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra on YouTube, and knew that I needed to link to it here. It's an outstanding performance, sure to last. Other excellent recordings of this work include Mikhail Pletnev with Mstislav Rostropovich/RNO, Arcadi Volodos with James Levine/BPO, and Stephen Hough with Andrew Litton/DSO, though I don't believe any are on YouTube. Argerich plays the original, less frequently recorded cadenza. This interpretation sounds as if it's emanating from behind the iron curtain, evoking the rubble of a ruined - or at least decadent - and war-torn city... no matter that the performers (Argerich from Argentina, Chailly from Italy) have no Soviet heritage.

Movement I, Part 1

Movement I, Part 2

Movement II, Part 1

Movement II, Part 2

Movement III, Part 1 - what a tempo!!

Movement III, Part 2 - check out the cool orchesta effect at 1:15-1:52

I'm still hoping for a Chailly CSO appointment - he deserves it, and could bring a sorely-needed recording contract back to that orchestra.

A recording of Yefim Bronfman/Valery Gergiev/Vienna PO playing the same is also on the site. It's a performance with a lot of life and muscle - more of a straight-ahead, modern performance than the Argerich:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (including a lovely performance of the C-minor Scarlatti Sonata, K. 11)

Part 6 (including Chopin's Revolutionary Etude Op. 10 no. 12)

And finally, Horowitz playing it with Zubie and the NYPO from 1978. Some memory and finger slips, and Mehta somehow manages to follow Horowitz's wildly varying tempos, but everyone seems to like it, so I'm linking to it. The second and third movements go significantly better than the first - it's still a great performance. God, his piano was bright.

Captain Abstinence

Amanda Schaffer has a great article on Slate exploring how unhinged Eric Keroack, Bush's appointee to head HHS's family planning program, really is. The more I read about this guy and his organization, the more outraged I am:

I went to Keroack's organization's website. Their current mission statement reads:

A Woman's Concern: Pregnancy Resource Clinic exists to educate, encourage, and empower men and women to make informed life choices.

But, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has their mission statements dating back to when the site opened in 2000. Their former mission statement reads:

A Woman's Concern: Pregnancy Resource Clinic exists to extend the unconditional love of Jesus Christ to those whose lives may be affected by a challenging or unexpected pregnancy, providing help for their physical, spiritual, emotional, medical and material needs, through counseling, support services and education, thus empowering each one to uphold the value of human life.

Disgusting.

Creepily Prescient

Air date: February 4, 1997

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJuMX1GzD6I&NR

Transcript (found here)

Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: On the question of going to Baghdad - if you remember the Vietnam war, we had no international legitimacy for what we did. As a result, we, first of all, lost the battle in world public opinion. Eventually, we lost the battle at home.

In the Gulf war, we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions, every one of which said, "Kick Iraq out of Kuwait." Did not say one word about going into Iraq, taking Baghdad, conquering the whole country and- and hanging Saddam Hussein. That's point number one.

Point number two- had we gone on to Baghdad, I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone. The coalition would have ruptured and the only people that would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

And, oh, by the way, I think we'd still be there. We'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit. We could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying power and we'd be paying 100 percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.

ROBERT GATES, Deputy National Security Advisor: And that was the quagmire. Therein laid Vietnam, as far as we were concerned, because we would still be there. And what's more, given the American way of doing things, we would have then had the responsibility for rebuilding all of the infrastructure and we were just determined not to get sucked into that trap.

I remember watching this when it first aired. I was a sophomore in high school, visiting family in Minnesota. Fascinating.

Thank God he's gone

Rick Santorum is insane. This is appalling:

In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.

Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.

[...]

He and Karen brought Gabriel's body home so their children could "absorb and understand that they had a brother," Santorum says. "We wanted them to see that he was real," not an abstraction, he says. Not a "fetus," either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described -- "a 20-week-old fetus" -- on a hospital form. They changed the form to read "20-week-old baby."

...Clinical.

Commenting on how he felt Democrats viewed him:

"If you have someone who's really effective on the other side, it's nice to get rid of them if you have the chance," he says. "Particularly if you see them, as a lot of them see me, as a fluke. They say, 'How's a guy like this get elected in Pennsylvania? He's just so lucky.' " ("They" is how Santorum generally refers to Democrats and the media. When channeling the views of "they," Santorum's voice acquires an exaggerated whine.) "They say, 'He's always had a bad opponent or ran in a good year.' They see me as an accidental senator."

Well, that's what pencils have erasers for - consider the mistake corrected.

Bunnyocalypse

http://www.hanttula.com/exhibits/bunnies/

Had It Coming

To lose one House may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.

The Republicans had it coming. Now, I'm no fan of the Democrats, but the Republicans' run of incompetence and religious extremism couldn't and shouldn't have been tolerated by voters.

And it wasn't. Thank God.

At the moment, it looks as though the Democrats of all people will be working for fiscal reform, if they are capable of such a thing. I personally don't think so - they're far too fond of spending via self-flagellation to actually eliminate the national debt that so sorely needs to be gotten rid of.

Anyway, the election resut is further proof that religious extremism in government always leads to corruption. Here's to secularism!