Because of the ruling, there is an opportunity for people to try to find out if their communications were among those shared by NSA with GCHQ. Intelligence agencies use information like ip addresses and email addresses as “selectors” when sifting through the massive quantities of data they collect. GCHQ will comply with the IPT’s ruling by searching “selectors” it received from the NSA prior to December 2014.
But this won’t happen automatically. People need to actually file requests with the IPT. To help people do so, PI is collecting people’s names, numbers, and emails in order to assist them in asserting their rights and finding out whether those selectors were subject to unlawful sharing. If they were, PI will help individuals seek a declaration that that person’s privacy rights have been violated under Article 8 and Article 10 of the UK Human Rights Act, the law that codified the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. Once the IPT issues a declaration for an individual, that individual can also request that their records be deleted. There’s no need to be a UK citizen-anyone can participate.
So instead of what I should have been doing, which was writing a kick ass Breakfast Club, I spent last night watching a movie called Moonrise Kingdom with my family and a few friends.
I think their intention was that I should like this movie, which I do. It’s a coming of age love story between two quirky misfits set in the Penobscot Islands, just about the best place on the planet as far as I’m concerned. It features Bill Murray, one of my favorite actors, and Bruce Willis, in one of his less objectionable roles.
Things work out well in the end, most of the jerks come to the realization that they are being jerks and stop it and become inspired to aid the course of true love.
If it’s still available on YouTube I’ll put it up tonight as a Sunday Movie Spectacular, but I’ll warn you in advance that unless you want to spend between .99 and $2.99 for an Amazon stream or a month or two rooting around the remainder bin, you’ll want to install this tool (Free YouTube Downloader) and grab a copy for yourself. It comes with the usual load of bloatware, so choose ‘custom install’ and decline where possible. View on YouTube, Share, copy the http:// code and paste it in the downloader, hit the downward pointing arrow on the right.
The rest of the audience felt it was terrifically uplifting and funny, but it left me kind of sad and depressed.
I haven’t quite worked that out yet which is why I’ll have to watch it again, but I think a part of it is that I am 120+ years old and no longer have the innocence and enthusiasm of youth and true belief. Instead I am trapped in the ashes of past decisions, mostly good but some bad, along with the awful certainty that things never really change for the better and the best and most heroic you can hope to do is keep sticking your fingers in the dike until the tide overwhelms you. The closest thing to actual excitement I can muster is a rather cynical and insincere quote from a better known Bill Murray movie-
Excuse me Egon? You said crossing the streams was bad! You’re going to endanger us, you’re going to endanger our client – the nice lady, who paid us in advance before she became a dog…
Not necessarily. There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.
…
I like this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! Let’s do it!
But how does this relate to Art Music?
Well, most of the music in the movie comes from the pen of Benjamin Britten, a central figure of mid-20th Century British Art Music which the female lead plays incessantly on a battery powered record player she stole borrowed from her brother.
This is not surprising, among the works he’s best known for is The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra which if you are of a certain age and cultural background will fill you with instant nostalgia.
But he wrote other, more serious, things too and while he has a resume that proves his mastery of all the conventional forms, he’s best known by older students for his vocal compositions which include many popular Operas (“according to Operabase, they are performed worldwide more than those of any other composer born in the 20th century, and only Puccini and Richard Strauss come ahead of him if the list is extended to all operas composed after 1900.”) and many, many complicated and difficult a cappella pieces sadistic Choirmasters use to torture their Choruses and expose their vocal weakness in front of the public (have I mentioned I spent 5 years in purgatory Choir and am a natural, but very bad, Tenor?). I suppose this is only to be expected given his Edwardian, Public School education.
Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy. … He was quite an ordinary little boy … he loved cricket, only quite liked football (although he kicked a pretty “corner”); he adored mathematics, got on all right with history, was scared by Latin Unseen; he behaved fairly well, only ragged the recognised amount, so that his contacts with the cane or the slipper were happily rare (although one nocturnal expedition to stalk ghosts left its marks behind); he worked his way up the school slowly and steadily, until at the age of thirteen he reached that pinnacle of importance and grandeur never to be quite equalled in later days: the head of the Sixth, head-prefect, and Victor Ludorum. But – there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music. His friends bore with it, his enemies kicked a bit but not for long (he was quite tough), the staff couldn’t object if his work and games didn’t suffer. He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it.
He was very conscious of the tenuous hold Art Music had on the public and did many film scores and live appearances as a featured performer (pianist) or conductor to pay the bills. Many of his pieces dealt with alienation, existential angst, and the corruption of innocence.
He was an out homosexual in a long term relationship with his protégé and partner Peter Pears and because of his orientation and his interest in educating young people (as well as his habit, unfortunately common among people of a personality type I share, of simply writing off relationships that don’t work) was the subject of many scurrilous rumors about pedophilia which extensive historical analysis has shown to be no more justified in his case than that of Charles Dodgson, and a secret syphilis infection that was dismissed as “complete rubbish” by his Doctor and the Hospital where he died in 1973 of complications after cardiac surgery.
Rather than the overplayed Young Person’s Guide, today I offer Gloriana, an Opera in 3 Acts written in celebration of Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953. It’s one of a few works of his that was not a critical success, probably because Elizabeth I (Gloriana) is portrayed “as a sympathetic, but flawed, character motivated largely by vanity and desire.”
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Old Time Religion (Arlo Guthrie/Pete Seeger – Precioius Friend)
Today in History
This day in history: Malcolm X assassinated; President Richard Nixon visits China; Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart makes a tearful confession; Steve Fossett is the first to fly across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
So this is a story I’ve toldbefore but not with such detail and outrage.
The essence of the scientific method is that theories are disprovable (by contradictory experimental results) and that experiments are replicable. The reason I call Economics no more than Shamen dancing around a corpse shaking rattles is that the theories are not disprovable (for the most part, since like all social sciences experiments to test the conclusion are impossible to arrange and only observation is feasable) and when examining the results of natural experiments (oh, say austerity in Greece) they are shown to be in direct contradiction of the predicted results.
It’s worse than that he’s dead Jim, Dead Jim, DEAD!
Not that this keeps the Shamen from shaking their rattles and dancing. It’s FAITH you see and when we’re talking about WASP Christianity the firm belief that the elect, favored by God and predestined before birth to sit at his side on the big rock candy mountain in the sky by and by, display the benefits of God’s grace even in this mortal coil.
That’s why the rich are rich you know. They deserve it. And all you all expecting divine justice like some kind of after-life lottery don’t really understand that ‘so above as it is below’ and the opiate of justice is merely to numb your pain as you suffer and die for the benefit of your betters.
You think God wants to hang with you? You wouldn’t know a pickle fork (two tines) from a dessert fork (three) unless a servant laid them out in the correct order (always good to wait until you can see what your host uses).
Which brings us to the Chicken Heart. This is why I’m conflicted about Cosby.
My dear readers, you may disagree with my opinions, object to my theories, but when I talk about science I insist that my experiments are reproducible and consistent.
The man in the middle of it all was Alexis Carrel, a brilliant and rather dapper Frenchman working at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Carrel discovered that, if you remove some cells from the body, sit them in a nutritious broth and handle them correctly, they can not only survive, but thrive and multiply. Also, if you take some cells from one culture, you can start a new one and, with that, a third, and so on. The importance of this technique – know as cell “passaging” – can’t be overstated. With it, Carrel literally opened a new era in cell research. Unfortunately, he did so with an experiment that, while earning him international superstardom, proved to be a complete and utter train wreck.
On 17 January 1912, Carrel removed a chick embryo from its egg and cut out a small fragment of its still-beating heart with the aim of keeping it alive as long as possible. He had hardly begun this experiment when he announced to the world that his chicken heart culture was immortal, that immortality belonged potentially to all cells, and that death was only the consequence of how cells are organised in the body. In other words, the secret of eternal life is within us all, an attribute of our basic biological building blocks. It captured the public’s imagination and was soon accepted by the scientific community.
Carrel and his assistants kept – or claimed they had kept – that culture alive for 34 years, which is five times longer than the average chicken. For many years, around 17 January, journalists wrote birthday stories on the chicken heart and wondered how large it would have grown had Carrel nurtured every one of its ever-multiplying cells. (According to calculations, it swiftly dwarfed the Earth and filled up the entire solar system.)
The problem was, no one else could keep a cell culture alive indefinitely. Lab after lab tried and failed, decade after decade. Because Carrel was a giant in the field of cell research and a Nobel Prize winner, few dared to doubt him. Scientists blamed themselves when their cells died. They assumed that they lacked the master’s skill, that his lab had higher standards than they could reach, that they had somehow exposed their cells to infection or failed to keep them properly nourished. We now know that the reverse was true. Other researchers probably couldn’t duplicate Carrel’s results because they weren’t incompetent or dishonest enough.
It was only in the mid-60s – half a century after Carrel established his chicken heart culture – that the dogma of cell immortality came crashing down. That’s when Leonard Hayflick, an ambitious young researcher at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, discovered that ordinary body cells have a finite life span – or, more precisely, an average number of times they can multiply in vitro. This is their Hayflick number. For chickens, it is 35. In other words, a population of chicken cells can double about 35 times before they die, which usually takes several months.
By the time Hayflick proved this, Carrel was long dead and his “immortal” chicken cells discarded. Which means that we know Carrel’s most famous experiment was a sham, but not why. If it was fraud, it was one of the most outrageous cases in the history of science. However, the cause may have been carelessness rather than dishonesty. Carrel and his staff used “embryonic juice” as a culture medium and, if they prepared it badly, it might have contained live chick cells. In that case, instead of just feeding their culture, they re-seeded it. It’s an easy enough mistake, but to make it consistently enough to keep their chicken heart cells alive for 34 years suggests an astonishing degree of negligence.
Reproducibility is one of the cornerstones of modern science. Unless an experiment can be repeated again and again by different researchers, each time yielding similar results, it can’t be said to prove anything much. At least that’s the theory. Carrel’s chicken heart experiment shows how far science can stray from the scientific method. And the fault doesn’t just lie with Carrel and his laboratory. The entire scientific community shares some of the blame because it upheld the dogma of cell immortality for more than 50 years despite the fact that it was based on a single, sensational, irreproducible experiment.
Tha-thump. Tha-Thump! THA-THUMP!
So why is credibility so important to you ek?
I write pseudonymously. I don’t delude myself that it protects me from various initialed government agencies, that’s not the point. What it has done (so far) is keep my mail relatively spam free and save me from random strangers who want me to help them and people who fiercely disagree with me and would like to burn a cross on my lawn (kerosene just ruins the grass, you have to re-sod).
I can not expect you to accept my assertions merely on the basis of my expertise and reputation. Test them yourself!
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Rear Adm. Jonathan White, the Navy’s chief oceanographer and head of its climate-change task force, is one of the most knowledgeable people in the military about what’s actually happening on our rapidly heating planet. Whenever another officer or a congressperson corners White and presses him about why he spends so much time thinking about climate change, he doesn’t even try to explain thermal expansion of the oceans or ice dynamics in the Arctic. “I just take them down to Norfolk,” White says. “When you see what’s going on down there, it gives you a sense of what climate change means to the Navy – and to America. And you can see why we’re concerned.”
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer gets life in prison; House lawmakers pick a president; Garry Kasparov beats IBM’s Deep Blue at chess; NBA star Michael Jordan born; The Eagles release their greatest hits.
Scientists have bad news for West Coasters in the grips of the worst drought in decades: The worst is yet to come.
The record-shattering drought currently gripping California is a light crudité compared to the “mega-drought” that’s expected to envelop the Southwest and Great Plains over the next 35 years, NASA revealed Thursday. The full study, ominously named “Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains,” was published in Science Advances.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Folk Alley Sessions: Leyla McCalla “Changing Tide”
Today in History
Highlights of this day in history: The U.S. battleship Maine explodes in Havana harbor, bringing America closer to war with Spain; The Soviet Union’s last troops leave Afghanistan; Astronomer Galileo and suffragist Susan B. Anthony born.
Heat the milk, cream, and 1/2 cup sugar in a 2-quart saucepan, until the sugar dissolves and the milk starts to simmer. Add the cocoa powder and chocolate and whisk until smooth. Pour into a heat-proof measuring cup.
Place the egg yolks and the remaining 1/4 cup sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and very thick. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the hot chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Pour the egg and chocolate mixture back into the 2-quart saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. A candy thermometer will register about 180 degrees F. Don’t allow the mixture to boil!
Pour the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and stir in the coffee liqueur, vanilla, and salt. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the custard and chill completely.
Pour the custard into the bowl of an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer’s directions. Stir in the roughly chopped chocolate, if using, and freeze in covered containers. Allow the gelato to thaw slightly before serving.
It’s hard to write about Art Music without getting trapped in the Romantics and especially the Germans and the Russians. As I struggle to break free I look to the mild climes of Italy.
The reason the Brass players like Respighi is that there are a lot of parts for them and you don’t have to spend the concert flipping through pages of rests trying to look interested in a piece you’ve only heard a thousand times in rehearsal and to which your only contribution is an ear shattering blat at the end to wake up the audience and let them know it’s over.
Ottorino is another one of these ‘academic’ composers like Rimsky-Korsakoff and was a great aficianado of Medieval, Classical, and Baroque music and wrote a great deal of stuff that echoed their style, but he also bought into the Romantic ideal that Art should be expressive and emotive rather than formalistic and clever.
Because he was a Romantic Nationalist (though he didn’t overuse the whole ‘folk music’ trope) he was a particular favorite of Benito Mussolini and used what powers of persuasion he had to protect artists like Toscanini and scientists like Fermi from the repressive Fascist regime until his death in 1936.
On the ship back home from Brazil, Respighi met by chance with Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. During their long conversation, Fermi tried to get Respighi to explain music in terms of physics, which Respighi was unable to do. They remained close friends until Respighi’s death in 1936.
Mistah Kurtz? He dead. A penny for the old Guy.
We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men. Leaning together headpiece filled with straw, alas! Our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.
Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.
Those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom remember us – if at all – not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men. The stuffed men.
Ah. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
And our pointy wands strung with cat gut saw at rain wood boxes while brazen trumps blare and reeds vibrate to the complicated fingering of masters beaten by the conductor’s stick to the composer’s tune.
Is beauty truth? What is beauty?
In the late Romantic period the Symphony was supplemented by the Tone Poem. They were enormously popular (among the elite Art Music set) because they were revolutionary rule breaking masterpieces.
I’m sure Respighi never considered them that because they are in fact entirely conventional in form and execution. Still, he would not have bothered writing them if they did not remind him of his experiences. The three he devoted to Rome are quite famous and frequently performed.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Bruno Richard Hauptmann convicted in the Lindbergh baby kidnap-murder; The World War II bombing of Dresden begins; Konstantin Chernenko becomes Soviet leader; Peter Gabriel born; Waylon Jennings dies.
So instead of what I should have been doing, which was writing a kick ass Breakfast Club, I spent last night watching a movie called 
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