So far, there are three new installments. Have a listen here. And speaking of Derb, here’s a recent essay of his, also at Taki’s: Ridding Myself of the Day.

Churchill said this, once upon a time:

The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.

Spoiler: Dr. Sowell thinks they tend to gum things up, too, if you don’t keep an eye on them.

The comparison is not ideal, because the first clip animates the concerto’s first movement, and the second one animates the third. Also, the first clip features a far better performance than the second, which is obviously the output of a computer playing a programmed version of the score.

Both animations use vertical position to indicate pitch, and scroll horizontally through the score so that the notes currently being played are always in the center of the screen. Both renderings also color-code the individual musical voices. And there the similarities end.

The first animation, which is graphically far more sophisticated, uses colored circles to represent each note, strung along lines that mark off the half-dozen or so separate voices. As each note is struck, it appears as a circle whose initial size indicates the duration of the note. Each circle shrinks at the same rate, so that it has just shrunk to zero by the time the next note is struck. The circles bubble up on the right side of the screen, have their moment in the sun, then rush off to the left — solid before they are struck, and hollow afterwards. The visual effect is lively and effervescent, and in particular the vertically stacked circles that mark off the quarter-note pulse throughout most of the piece have a beautifully propulsive effect. It’s a marvelous piece of work.

The second animation is far simpler, but clearer too: it’s a simple graphic representation of exactly the same sort that one might see on a MIDI display of the score. The notes are horizontal bars, with vertical position representing pitch, and horizontal extension representing duration. As each note plays, it is is highlighted, then goes dark again. That’s it! There’s none of the fancy eye-candy we had in the first clip: the expansion and contraction of the horizontal scale as the circles approach the center, the changing sizes of the circles to represent the lifespan of each note, the passage from solid to hollow circles as each note is played — but the eye is much better able to follow the representation of each note, and to connect the visual input with the music. As much as I admired the creative ingenuity of the first animation, I found the second to be more effective in bringing eye and ear together in a unitary experience.

Have a look. Which do you like better?

(Also: was Bach a genius, or what?)

Oh, and lest we forget: here’s another way of doing this sort of thing.

What is constant in all of this? What gives continuity to the “self” that connects yesterday to today to tomorrow, that makes promises today that must be kept days or months or years hence? Nothing, it seems, but the dance. The “dancers”, the individual atoms and molecules and cells and squirts of neurotransmitters — those come and go; what carries our past forward into the present and the future is nothing more than a dynamic and ephemeral configuration, like the waves of the ocean or the Great Red Spot.

These personality-annihilating illnesses are so particularly heartbreaking because they attack and destroy one of our most cherished illusions, the foundation upon which we orient ourselves in relation to others: the grounding of individual personhood in the continuity of identity. Our institutions, and indeed the social instincts from which these institutions arise and take their form, assume this continuity as their axiomatic bedrock — but as these diseases demonstrate, the ground is not so stable, and for the person whose spouse simply is no longer the person she married, the effect is surely as devastating, and as terrifying at the most primordial level, as an earthquake.

Have a look for yourself.

What was it that Emerson said about hobgoblins?

One of us lives in San Diego, one in Minnesota, one in Cincinnati, and one in Blacksburg, Virginia — so we almost never get to see each other. It’s really easy never to get around to things like this: you keep talking about it in a vague way, and the years roll by, and the next thing you know it’s too late, because you’re dead. Not this time, though!

Anyway, I’ll likely be right off the grid till next week. So here’s an entertaining video clip, just sent my way by my boy Nick: an experiment, involving monkeys, that, as the presenter mentions, goes a long way toward explaining Occupy Wall Street.

(After I watched it, though, I realized that to really get it right you’d need to have monkey A out digging up rocks, and monkey B just banging on the wall, throwing poo, and demanding half of monkey A’s grapes.)

Anyway, we’ll be back next week. I haven’t felt like writing much since getting back from California anyway; I’m still mulling things over, and sorting out what I want the tone of this blog to be going forward. Maybe this will get the juices flowing.

Going on a date? Head for Peter Luger’s.

Last, but not least: there’s no need to be glum just because Earth Day’s over. Not until you’ve read Iowahawk’s annual homage to Gaia, anyway.

Because SU is in the heart of Silicon Valley, the idea that visionary entrepreneurship is the most effective way to get things done in this world is front and center throughout. The faculty are not people who talk about what folks are creating at the leading edge of all these fields: they are the people who are actually doing it — most of them, in addition to being academically prominent, are founders of edgy startups, or project leaders at places like Google — and you begin to feel that you are standing right at the growing tip of human endeavor. It’s intoxicating.

I’m still digesting it all, but I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say as the days go by. One thing I will say right now, though: over the past few years the tone of this blog has become increasingly dark, and increasingly centered on partisan politics and civilization’s decline, and that may change a bit. That isn’t to say that my opinions have changed about any of those topics — you certainly will not be seeing me issuing any calls for a bigger Federal government, or more Islamic immigration, or tighter gun laws, and God knows we still desperately need a regime change in November — but the content here will probably be a lot less likely just to swirl around and around in those gloomy vortices. That way madness lies, and I think I had begun to lose sight of that.

I know it’s been pretty dull here lately: there has been much to comment on, and a lot of it has to do with topics that are so highly charged that I’ve been wary, frankly, of wading in. I’ve been blogging here for seven years now, and need to reflect a bit on where it’s all led, and how exactly to move forward.

The world is changing very quickly now; its effective volume has shrunk very rapidly in the past few years, and so the pressure and temperature are increasing at an accelerating pace. There is some sort of phase transition on the way, I think, but whether any of what we know and love will survive it is terribly hard to say. It is clear, though, that the kettle is about to boil.

Singularity University is a hotbed of optimism about the future. I could use a dose of that, because I feel more like we are all sitting on a volcano, and the ground is starting to rise.

My latest piece, which expresses the deepening polarization of American society in a geometric arrangement of corduroy and gingham, has been nominated for Best Topical Quilt, and I’m hoping I might even have a shot at Quilt of the Year. So wish me luck!

Back tomorrow.

So, when I sat down just now to scribble my daily offering, I realized I was simply in no mood for the relentlessly morose and pessimistic gloom-mongering you’ve come to expect here at waka waka waka. After all, who could nurture dark and dismal thoughts after such a splendid day in Spring? Not even me.

So: time for something light-hearted and optimistic, something merry and gay, to lift our spirits!

Here you go, then: a list of incredible weapons that only America has.

Here’s the latest:

I am currently 13 hrs 37 mins 31 secs of light-travel time from Earth (2012:081:2L)

That’s it: cool, calm and collected. I’ve been a follower for months now, and never once have I seen this thing emit a single dumb joke or snarky political barb. Gotta love it.

Things might be quiet here for another couple of days.

Update: one thing I can offer for your amusement is a corking good rant, this week’s Radio Derb. Here.