Bravo Rosario Giuliani

Grande concerto, ieri sera al Baluardo della Cittadella di Modena, del Giuliani-Bosso-Pietropaoli-Di Leonardo: un omaggio a Coleman a Calcinaia 27 marzo 2012 Eventi a Pisa
„trio Rosario Giuliani (sax contralto), Enzo Pietropaoli (contrabbasso),Marcello Di Leonardo (batteria) con l'ospite di lusso Fabrizio Bosso (tromba). Ero andato senza conoscere il programma e sapere che era dedicato alla musica di Ornette Coleman
(che in genere non amo) mi aveva un po' preoccupato - ingiustificatamente.

Giuliani e i suoi hanno sapientemente rielaborato lo spigoloso linguaggio free creando una terra di mezzo (frrebop, diciamo) dalla quale hanno regalato al pubblico 90 minuti di energia irreprimibile, facendo del proprio innegabile virtuosismo un mezzo espressivo piuttosto che un ornamento fine a se stesso (come capita spesso). Spero di poter più tardi mettere un video della serata.
“

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Contrarian

Reading contrarian reviews of books, movies etc. is usually as or more informative and quicker than reading the majority opinion.

So much about consistency

Ask a physicist, he'll tell you nature is efficient and minimalist; ask a biologist, he'll tell you it's inefficient and wasteful.

Can you falsify

Sam Harris is the author of the book "Free Will". The central point of his book is that free will is an illusion, because the reason of every our action are completely removed from our control and - even - our consciousness.

In other words: "I may be able to choose, but I cannot choose what I choose"

This way of framing the problem (as any other way, I admit) has a side that bothers me, as expressed by the following (Popper inspired) question:

"Is it possible to imagine an entity that is given free will in a sense that complies with the above objection?"

The problem is - obviously - that I cannot (and I'd like to ask Sam Harris). If the answer is indeed that such an entity cannot exist then we need to ask to ourselves if the reason is that the above objection is self-satisfying and therefore not very helpful (sort of saying "black is black" when asked to define black: true but trivially so) ? Or is the idea of free will intrinsically meaningless (like the "heigth of sweetness")? Or - finally - is the underlying definition of free will so bad that we need to go back to the drawing board before discussing its existence?

I rather tend to side with the third possibility, to which the first one may perhaps be reduced. The second remains a possibility, but it begs further explanations - after all, we do not spend much time debating the height of sweetness.

The problem wih music

Next time you hear someone complaining about how internet/piracy/(whatever) hurts music/movies/literature, and that someone happens to be part of the industry, think of this article.

The Problem With Music
by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”. And he does of course. (Read all...)

Happy Birthday, Charles.

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?"


-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Prospero

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

De super cordis - On superstrings

Having read Brian Greene's "The elegant universe" and thumbed through his "The Hidden Reality", I feel the irresistible urge to paraphrase a well known sentence(*) as

"When all you think of are strings, every solution looks like a knot"

*)"When all you have is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail"

--

Avendo letto "L'universo Elegante" e aver sfogliato "La realtà Nascosta" di Brian Greene, non posso evitare di parafrasare un famoso detto(*):

"Quando tutto ciò a cui pensi sono stringhe, ogni soluzione sembra un nodo"

*) "Quando tutto quello che hai è un martello, tutti i problemi ti sembrano chiodi"

G'bye, Paul Motian

There's a Million songs, out there

R.I.P: Dennis Ritchie

/*
* Dennis Ritchie,
* inventor of the C programming language and
* of the Unix Operating System, dies at 70.
*/
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void){
printf("goodbye world :( \n");
return(70);
}