Opera has another loss

Anthony Tommasini, writing in today's Times, reports the death of Régine Crespin, following the death of Beverly Sills earlier this week.

Régine Crespin, the French operatic soprano and later mezzo-soprano, one of the most important vocal artists to emerge from France in the decades after World War II, died Wednesday in Paris, where she lived. She was 80.

I grew up hearing her on the Met broadcasts. I remember her "Tosca", and her Marschallin ( the image at left is Régine Crespin (the Marschallin) and Elisabeth Söderström (Octavian)) with Solti at the helm. The last side of the set of records was pure magic.

Tommasini concludes her obit with this:

In later life Ms. Crespin won wide recognition as a voice teacher. During some 1995 master classes at the Mannes College of Music in New York, the students were enraptured not only by her insightful critiques, but by her insider tales about opera stars.

Recalling her performances at the Met with the powerhouse tenor Franco Corelli in “Tosca” and Massenet’s “Werther,” she said he was convinced that eating raw garlic before a performance was good for the voice. But when they sang duets, Corelli would regularly burp. She learned to adjust, Ms. Crespin said.

Rachel Ray Moaning and Groaning

Salon's Video Dog explains:

Naomi Leibowitz explains on her Web site that this video is "comprised of clips from over 30 episodes of Rachel Ray's show '$40 a day' on Food Network." Caution: Keep the volume down, if you don't want your neighbor to get the wrong idea.

Go see the video here.

Why I hate NPR: Reason #25

Reason #25:, Besides having incredibly bad pronunciation, oafish inarticulation, and tons of dead air time in her speech, Debbie Elliot is a moron.

It is pretty clear that NPR hosts don't have to know pronunciation. Foreign words such as "Kiribati" or "Pago Pago" are sure to throw them for a loop. Apparently NPR hosts don't have to know grammar, either.

I heard Debbie Elliot interviewing Peter Overby - wow, there are a couple a dim bulbs - (Obama Leads in Election Fundraising). At the 1:08 mark, Elliot clearly chokes on the use of the comparative "than".

Elliot: ... Now you're saying he's [Obama] raised a few million more than her [sic, referring to Ms. Clinton].

That is what a cum laude graduate of the University of Alabama College of Communication* has to offer. It is no surprise that the complications of history completely overwhelm her. And Elliot isn't nearly as horrible as the Morning Edition crew.

* A communcations degree always reminds me of The Simpsons' episode with this immmortal line:

"Dr. Hibbert: I'm afraid your playing days are over my friend, but don't worry, you can fall back on your degree in--Communications? Oh dear Lord!

Come together! (NSFW)

The EU has a YouTube video that has even The Guardian tittering.

World Naked Gardening Day

I missed it again! Shucks, I'll have to wait for next year's World Naked Gardening Day. Now, I'll have to wait until next May 8.

Why we love Keith Olbermann

From what I suppose was the Monday evening (already Wednesday morning here in J-land) broadcast, naming W. the Worst Person in the World (and quoting Cromwell):

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, GO!"

Motivate yourself!

A colleague sent me this link. I have already pissed away time playing with it. Here is one result.

Fishwrap lead of the day

The Globe is so classy.

Naked couple die from S.C. rooftop fall
June 20, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. --Police on Wednesday were investigating how a naked couple fell 50 feet from the roof of a downtown office building to their deaths.

The bodies were found on the road by a passing cabdriver around 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Clothing was discovered on the roof, leading authorities to suspect the man and woman, in their early 20s, may have been having sex. Their identities were not released.

"It's too early to rule out anything," Columbia police Sgt. Florence McCants said, but McCants said a preliminary investigation didn't show any sign of foul play.

The GOP cares about families

The WaPo reports on Rob Portman's resignation as White House budget director.

Heh. Heh.

In an interview on CNN after Bush's announcement, Portman denied that he was leaving now to distance himself from an unpopular White House in preparation to run for governor of Ohio, where more than 60 percent of residents disapprove of Bush's job performance, according to a recent poll. Portman called that interpretation "false," adding, "The reason I'm going home is to spend time with my family.

Right.

Jon Stewart to Tony Snow: Liar, liar, pants on fire

No Contest: The Daily Show vs. Tony Snow.

Lurita Doan can't conjugate verbs

I love good grammar.

But The Economist has it right. The subjunctive is a mood, not a tense.

Can't recall - help for Republicans!

Here is a drug that we could use more of.

Interior Secretary Leavitt confuses dead senator and Dead Kennedys

The Sleuth reports in today's DC Fishwrap that Secretary of the Interior Mike Leavitt tried to make an appointment Thursday with Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY), who passed away Monday.

Posted at 7:01 PM ET, 06/ 7/2007
Cabinet Member Misses Senator's Obit

Maybe Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and his staff are just in denial. Or maybe they don't read the papers, thus missing the sad news that Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) died Monday, seven months after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Whatever the case, Leavitt's office called Thomas's office late Thursday afternoon to request a meeting with the late senator.

Needless to say, grief-stricken Thomas staffers were stunned. One aide to Thomas sent the following e-mail to a friend (both names have been redacted):

From: (Thomas staffer) <@thomas.senate.gov>
To: (Staffer's friend)
Sent: Thu Jun 07 16:49:36 2007
Subject: RE:

Oh yeah, note to Secretary Levitt's [sic] office: Senator Thomas passed on Monday, 4 June. You may want to pass that along to his staff especially after they called today to get a meeting with the late Senator.

Call me if you'd like, really unbelievable!

It just seems so characteristic of this administration that a cabinet member could turn what is legitimately a tragedy for the family and friends of the senator into a black comedy.

Is it possible for a male to not think about it?

This reminds me of an interview that I heard with Francis Crick shortly before his death in 2004. His interviewer asked him what the secret of his remarkable research productivity was. Crick replied that, wehn he was in graduate school, he thought about sex 90% of the time, but he found that his peers thought about sex 99% of the time, so he got ten times as much work done!


What Guys Really Think - The funniest videos clips are here

Wear the fox hat

Auchtermuchtie?

White and Nerdy

A colleague sent me this very funny video. The Schrödinger equation appears in the last minute or so. If you look carefully, you can see that they equation is incorrect - it uses Planck's constant h instead of h bar; that is h / 2 pi.

That reminds me of a story my thesis advisor - a Cal Tech alum - told me about his physics prof, the extraordinary Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, whom I had the pleasure to meet and hear speak several times.

Everyone knows what it is like to have a nitpicker in class.

• "Shouldn't that be log base 10?"
• "Is there an apostrophe in D'Alembertian?"
• "I think that should be a minus sign."
  

Well, Feynmann's intro physics class DID have a nitpicker, one who was prolific and vociferous. His corrections - delivered with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel and the tact of an IRS agent - clearly took their toll on the patience of both the instructor and the students, turning the class into a daily Inquisition.

And inevitably, one day late in the term, the bough broke. After spending some time discussing a calculated cross-section, Monsieur Ergoteur interrupted with "Didn't you miss a factor of 2 pi?", at which point Poor Richard lept onto his desk and yelled "Fuck the 2 pi!"

More Falwell

In honor of the guy who died in Lynchburg yesterday, I thought it would be fun to revisit Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). Specifically, what prompted the Jerry Falwell's lawsuit in the first place? This ad, from a 1983 issue of Hustler:



If you can't make out the text, it reads:

Falwell: My first time was in an outhouse outside Lynchburg, Virginia.

Interviewer: Wasn’t it a little cramped?

Falwell: Not after I kicked the goat out.

Interviewer: I see. You must tell me all about it.

Falwell: I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I figured, "What the hell!"

Interviewer: But your Mom? Isn’t that a little odd?

Falwell: I don’t think so. Looks don’t mean that much to me in a woman.

Interviewer: Go on please go on before i have u!.

Falwell: Well, we were drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari, ginger ale and soda—that’s called a Fire and Brimstone—at the time. And Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation

Interviewer: Campari in the crapper with Mom. how interesting.. .Well how was it?

Falwell: The Campari was great but mom passed out before I could come.

Interviewer: Did you ever try it again?

Falwell: Sure. Lots of times. But not in the outhouse. Between Mom and the shit, the flies were too much to bear.

Interviewer: We meant the Campari.

Falwell: Oh, yeah, I always get sloshed before I go to the pulpit. You don’t think I could lay down all that bullshit sober do you?

(the last line in very small print at the end - Greg)

Interviewer: Just to let you know this whole interview is a lie, I just wanted to see what I could get out of you!

Wikipedia has an informative article on the entire case, including the arguements made before the Supreme Court in 1987.

Falwell

There have been a range of reactions to the demise of the vicious vicar from Lynchburg, VA. I personally would have paid a great deal of money to see Larry Flynt's face when he heard the news.

Needless to say, some reactions have been more amusing than others. Wonkette has this, from the "Dept. of Kids These Days Show No Respect."

My own research turned up a number of humorous Wikipedia vandalisms.

First, the man who blanked the page and replaced it with the words FUCK JESUS.

In our next entry, those who scroll down to the "Health" section will note that in addition to being found unconscious in his office on the 15th, many people thought Falwell had been "unconscious for many years".

The jokers in this next one erroneously reported the cause of death to be a "severe bowel obstruction."

Our fourth entry argues that "HE WAS A BIG TOOL, OH YES HE WAS DON'T DENY IT."

Rounding out the top five is a slightly more subtle vandal. Line 15 of this entry refers to Falwell as a "televangalism freak." Line 36 contains the latter portion of this sentence:

Thomas Road Baptist Church has grown to a membership in excess of 24,000, based in a 6,000 seat auditorium and an additional 1 million square feet of educational space for people with way too much time on thier hands (emphasis added).

There are more, but I don't really have the time.

On a final note, just to prove that Jerry Falwell really was an asshole who deserved every bit of this ill will, here's AmericaBlog with some statements Falwell made just last week. Asshole.

"Bubbles 'n' Babes"

As readers may be aware, Australia is currently suffering a severe drought. Residential water use has been limited to a drastic extent, and even agricultural irrigation may be cut off if things don't improve. With private citizens unable to wash their cars at home, car washes - nearly all of which use recycled water - are doing booming business.

Especially this car wash in Brisbane. Funny thing is, Sam and I know a girl from Brisbane, and for some reason she's never mentioned this establishment.

Mr. Butts Goes To Salem

Our Oregon hsa produced this hilarious video of Mr. Butts' visit to thestate legislature, lobbying against funding the Healthy Kids legislation through a cigarette tax hike .