Cat and Shanmao's blog

This afternoon Cat and I attended a concert at Palo Alto Arts Centre. My piano teach, Nora Ayzman, was performing on piano with Claudia Bloom on violin. The program was

Alfred Schnittke (1934-98)

• Suite in the Old Style for Violin and Piano

Johannes Brahms (1833-97)

• Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108 for Violin and Piano

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75)

• Sonata for Violin and Piano

I had read passing references to Schnittke before and knew that he was a modern composer with a dark and biting edge to a lot of his music. However, knowing that the piece was in the old style I though this would be something along the lines of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony: easy listening, light, but not that captivating. I have to say that although the piece started off lightly the well done mimicry of an older baroque style soon had me listening intently. Both Cat and I enjoyed this piece greatly. Only in the last movement was there a hint of the more modern style that the composer normally makes use of.

The Brahms' sonata was well performed. I will definitely have to pick up a cd of the Brahms violin and cello sonatas to absorb these pieces especially this complex, layered, and passionate sonata.

Cat was surprised that she enjoyed the Shostakovich. Not one to normally embrace dissonance, chaos, impishness, or darkness in music she found that the piece had colouring that appealed to her. The piece starts with a first movement that is a long dialog between the piano and violin using a simple theme that, to me, seems typical of Shostakovich's music - impish, dark, pairing the growling bass of the piano with the higher registers. The second movement grew to a fiery piece followed by a sudden and startling finish. The one suggestion I have for the performers in the second movement would be that after the sudden ending of the music, they should pause so that the shock of the silence can be reflected upon by the audience before the usual coughing, shuffling of feet, and readjusting of chairs begins. The third movement maintained both of our interests.

The playing was at a very high level.

More about the Shostakovich. Cat was surprised when visiting the San Francisco Symphony at an earlier event to discover that she actually liked Shostakovich's 15 Symphony. The lyric cello lines in the slow movement spoke to her.

Where I work, there are mailing lists created by groups of employees for non-work related activities. The two lists with the highest traffic are indians_us and dragon_us reflecting the large number of Indian and Chinese employees. Many people who are not Indian subscribe to indians_us to get notification about yard sales, upcoming events, notifications of internal and external jobs, etc. The same goes for dragon_us, many non-Chinese subscribe to this list.

Yesterday I received the following interesting posting to this list:

-o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o-

Posting for a friend:

Two months back when I was taking my car from a parking lot I gently touched the other car. I got down from the car and checked the other car and found nothing. So I did not leave any note. After 10 days a cop came to our house and told me that he is filing a ‘hit and run’ case against me. After one week I went and collected the report from Sheriff’s office. From that point onwards I was continuously talking to my insurance company and they told me that so far nobody has filed claim. I was also continuously interacting with the cop and he told me that there is no prosecution for this incident and traffic department will submit a ‘Supplemental’ report to close this issue. Yesterday I received an ‘Arrest Warrant’ by mail. Today morning once again I went to the Sheriff’s office and explained about this warrant. One of the deputies told me that, they no longer handle this case and I need to deal this with court through a lawyer.

Today I contacted Sprinkles, Randolph who is a lawyer and explained the situation. He agreed to work on this case and told me that lawyer charges are $1500 for this service.

I also talked to my insurance company and even till today nobody filed a claim for this incident. To my surprise the cop with whom I am interacting also called me and told me that I am not supposed to receive the arrest warrant.

I would like to know

a. Whether anybody had similar kind of incident?
b. Do I need to go to lawyer and pay $1500 to fix this issue?
c. Do I have any other options?

I really appreciate your help in this regards.

-o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o- o-o-o-

All I can say is that this guy's friend should read The Trial by Franz Kafka. From the Amazon Editorial Review:

• A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

If he doesn't have the time to read the book he can watch the movie The Trial with Kyle MacLachlan and Anthony Hopkins.

Heard an interview KQED's Forum today in which Michael Krasny interviewed philospher John Searle about the mind and conciousness.

This discussion reminded me of a posting I had read recently which I'm cross-posting here. The assertion by the poster Scott M. is as interesting as the research finding. One view of conciousness I have read about is that the concious mind is like a manager that takes ideas put forward by various unconcious 'modules' and then either vetos the ideas or adopts them and 'rationalizes' them. By rationalize I mean, makes up some story to convince itself that the idea is good. Ideas are not necessarily submitted to the concious mind. They may be deemed too important for this type of processing, eg. pulling hand away from a hot stove.

I read about this model in the book Evolution of Conciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think by Robert Ornstein. I gave my copy to Cat's dad and am thinking about getting another copy of this and related books by different authors. This area is controversial I think so reading a variety of opinions probably won't hurt.

==================================================================
The story below, from 'Monsters and Magical Sticks: Or, There's No Such Thing As Hypnosis' by Steven Heller, illustrates what ALL of us are doing, ALL the time. We are just like this rose lady, in everything we do, all day long.

-Scott M.

"Several years ago while doing research on hypnosis, a professor of psychology induced a somnambulistic trance in a subject."

"While in this somnambulistic state, the subject was told that when a clock chimed 10:00 p.m. at that evening's faculty party, she would remove one of her shoes; place it on the dining room table and put roses into the shoe. Further, it was suggested that she would have no memory of the suggestion; it would appear to be her own idea, and she would fee compelled to finish her task."

"A very interesting thing happened on the way to the forum. While she was carrying out the hypnotic suggestion, the professor asked her what she was doing. She replied that her husband had given her a beautiful crystal vase that looked just like her shoe and she had never known what to do with it. She went on to state that it had suddenly dawned on her how to arrange flowers in the vase and shehad to try it in her shoe before she forgot."

"While her explanation appears absurd, she acted as if she believed she was telling the truth. As the professor tried to explain to her how ridiculous her story was, she became anxious, agitated and very defensive. The experiment was terminated due to her extreme discomfort."

I was surprised to see the latest cover of Piano Today, an interesting magazine that contains short articles on piano performance, interviews with famous pianists, mini-lessons, and quite a few short examples of sheet music with each issue. It is published on a quarterly basis.

The cover for Fall 2004 was a picture of Marc-Andre Hamelin, a Canadian pianists who has settled in the USA, and is known for recording lesser known but extremely difficult classical piano works. One of his recent projects was a recording for Hyperion of piano music by Nikolai Kapustin, a contemporary Russian composer (b. 1937) who's compositions have a strong jazz influence. Jazz aficionados would not describe it as jazz I'm sure but instead 'jazz influenced' or 'jazzy'. Nevertheless, it interesting to hear about a 'classical' composer who

1. Is still alive
2. Still composing
3. Writes music that is accessible by most people

My friend Christian is a big fan of Hamelin and was so enamored with Hamelin's Kapustin recording that he went out and ordered a significant chunk of the composer's sheet music from a distributor in Germany (at great expense I must say). The only publisher is in Moscow and the 'official' distributor's website in the UK is not up yet.

Kapustin seems like a Dave Brubeck in reverse. Brubeck is a well known jazz musician who has composed a large number of classical pieces. His background was in classical (he studied with Darius Milhaud) but his fame is from his jazz recordings. I bought the Naxos cd Dave Brubeck: Chromatic Fantasy Sonata / Rising Sun and am enjoying it (usually takes me a little while to absorb a new style or composer). I first became aware of Brubeck (I had heard the name but really didn't know anything about him or his music) when watching the dvd Piano Grand! A Smithsonian Celebration. There he played a piano piece titled Dziekuje ('Thank You' in Polish) which was inspired by a visit to Chopin's homeland (and perhaps his home). The piece was the best that I have heard of that elusive fusion of classical and jazz (many have tried but never quite got it).

Concerning the limitations of democracy, here's that over-used quote from Winston Churchill about democracy:

• Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.

One point of view is that democracy in America was merely an add-on to a system that was primarliy concerned with the establishment of liberty (which necessarily includes economic liberty).

A few choice quotes from James Madison on this:

• Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and check the other many. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Records of the Federal Convention 1787
• But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society ... From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. The Federalist Papers: No. 10

Interestingly, Madison goes on in the The Federalist Papers: No. 10 to recommend a 'republic', a representative democracy, over a pure democracy as a method for protecting the 'opulent minority' from the majority. Read the article in The Federalist Papers: No. 10 link and see if you can understand his reasoning about the dynamics of this protection. Regardless of the soundness of his reasoning, his conclusion is that a representative democracy will actually prevent the majority from accomplishing what it wants (which he characterizes as the 'secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority').

When the government seems hopelessly, mired in process, corruption, bickering, pettiness, etc. just remember that it's actually doing what it was designed to do - nothing!

Getting things done, whether in the economic, social or whatever else sphere, was supposed to be the responsibility of the private sector!

I am disappointed in the result of the recent re-election of Bush but my disappointment is not as wide-ranging as some of my friends.

My biggest problem with Bush is the war on Iraq.

On other issues that come to mind (gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, tax cuts, environment, etc) I don't necessarily support Bush' stance. However, I acknowledge that there are at least two sides to each of these issues and various, large segments of the US population have conflicting opinions. Democracy has not failed when someone is elected who has the support of a substantial segment of the population (perhaps even a majority). Democracy has merely revealed its limitations.

The war in Iraq is different from other issues of the election.

First off, many of the other issues are not about a specific time, place, incident, or event. They concern the ongoing process of government and the decisions of peoples and govenments about these issues is rarely influenced by new information - these issues reflect peoples world views and general attitudes.

Declaring war is different. War completely depends on here and now information. If the information changes the reason for going to war may evaporate.

America was basically led into this war by the President and his administration. The reason given was the threat of WMDs. The administration's evidence at the time was flimsy (someone get me a copy of the Powerpoint presentation Colin Powell gave at the UN). The UN strategy for enforcing UN resolutions unfinished was due to wrap up in a matter of months. The administration pushed for the war anyway.

The electorate may have given Bush the mandate to lead them but this mandate shouldn't involve a pre-emptive strike on a country for apparently flimsy reasons.

Which leads to the question, why did the administration push for the war. The unsatisfying different answers I've read are

• WMD threat
• Support for terrorists
• Oil
• Democratization of the middle east
• Economic liberalization of the middle east
• And the most bizarre - US intelligence monitored communications of a Saddam who thought he had WMDs but wasn't aware that his lieutenants were unable to produce WMDs with the piles of money he gave them. They had to keep up the facade of a WMD-program-in-the-works (heard that one on NPR). Saddam was more surprised than the Americans when no WMDs were found :)