I forgot that that Daylight Saving Time, a satanic invention, started last night—at 2 a.m. I thought the time was changing at 2 a.m. Monday morning, but that was wrong. Therefore my alarm (on my iPhone) went off at the right DST time, but an hour early compared to my watch, which doesn’t adjust. (In other words, I lost an hour of sleep. I was going to make up for that by going to be early tonight.) Now I’m exhausted as I was jolted out of a sound sleep and woke up deeply confused. It’s time to get rid of this odious twice-a-year change! Here are the parts of the world that do or don’t do this thing:
Welcome to the top o’ the week (formally); it’s Sunday, March 10, 2024, and National Ranch Dressing Day. What is the stuff? Wikipedia explains: it’s
. . . . usually made from buttermilk, salt, garlic, onion, mustard, herbs (commonly chives, parsley and dill), and spices (commonly pepper, paprika and ground mustard seed) mixed into a sauce based on mayonnaise or another oil emulsion. Sour cream and yogurt are sometimes used in addition to, or as a substitute for, buttermilk and mayonnaise.
Ranch has been the best-selling salad dressing in the United States since 1992, when it overtook Italian. It is also popular in the United States and Canada as a dip, and as a flavoring for potato chips and other foods. In 2017, 40% of Americans named ranch as their favorite dressing, according to a study by the Association for Dressings and Sauces.
This became popular in my lifetime as it was invented in the 1950s. I do love it, but am told that (all are all good things) it is bad for you, and that you should use vinegar and oil. Oy!
It’s also Check Your Batteries Day, International Day of Awesomeness, National Blueberry Popover Day (?), Landline Telephone Day, International Bagpipe Day, Pretzel Sunday, Harriet Tubman Day, International Mario Day Men’s Day in Poland, National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in the US, and Tibetan Uprising Day which began on this day in 1959 as a protest against the People’s Republic of China taking over the country.
On March 19, 1959, the Dalai Lama fled the country. Here’s the present Dalai Lama (and the last “real” one), who’s now 84, lives in India, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Here he is; his “spiritual name” is Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the March 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
SET YOUR CLOCKS FORWARD AN HOUR IF YOU’RE IN AMERIA, EUROPE, OR CANADA AND HAVEN’T YET DONE SO. ALSO GREENLAND AND EGYPT
*Here’s Biden’s first campaign ad, described in the NYT. Watch to the end.
Note how he explicitly says Trump’s name instead of referring to “the former President” or “my predecessor.”
From the paper:
In a new advertisement for his re-election campaign, President Biden tries to take one of his greatest perceived liabilities as a candidate, his age, and turn it into an advantage.
“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” says a smiling Mr. Biden, talking directly to the camera. “But here’s the deal: I understand how to get things done for the American people.”
The president, 81, goes on to list the accomplishments of his first term, including his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, capping insulin prices for older consumers and passing infrastructure legislation — while contrasting his record with that of former President Donald J. Trump, the likely Republican nominee, whom he accuses of taking away “the freedom of women to choose” in reproductive matters.
. . . Mr. Biden often jokes about his age in small settings. But Americans are more likely to be familiar with his angry remarks over a recent special counsel’s report, which referred to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The new ad, titled “For You,” represents a shift in tone. Its joking familiarity may appeal to younger voters, whose support Mr. Biden needs to shore up, and it will play on channels popular with a youthful demographic, including ESPN, Adult Swim and Comedy Central.
The spot even includes an outtake. After the standard announcement that Mr. Biden has approved the message, a voice off-camera asks him to do one more take.
“Look, I’m very young, energetic and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?” Mr. Biden replies, flashing a mischievous grin before the screen goes black.
*According to the Times of Israel, the IDF’s assault of the IDF on Rafah has begun, though it’s against terrorist infrastructure hasn’t killed anyone, terrorist or civilian. (I doubted that Israel would wait the two months until the U.S. builds its planned Pier to Gaza.)
The IDF confirms that it struck one of the largest residential towers in southern Gaza’s Rafah overnight, saying it housed a “Hamas military asset.”
“Acts of terror against our forces and the civilian home front were planned from this asset,” the IDF says in response to a query on the matter.
According to a military source, the building was used by Hamas’s so-called emergency committee.
The IDF says it warned residents of the 12-floor tower ahead of the strike, and they all evacuated in time. There were no reports of injuries.
The IDF “knocked on the door”, as they do if there are civilians. Is this the act of a country bent on genocide?
*Well, if you have ears to hear, you’re going to be shocked and saddened, for you’ll learn that, in all likelihood (and I give audio proof below), the tune of the famous song “Over the Rainbow“, the highlight of the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” appears to have been plagiarized from a Norwegian composer—and a Nazi sympathizer to boot! The song’s tune was written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by Yip Harburg (lyrics).
From The Hollywood Reporter (h/t mirandaga):
Norwegian pianist Rune Alver carefully unfolded the brittle sheet music and began caressing the keys of the baby grand. He had found the classical piece buried in an archive and believed it hadn’t been heard in maybe a century. But as he delved into the second section, Cantando, he felt a shiver run down his spine. The melody wasn’t just reminiscent of something he’d heard before — it was iconic. He instantly recognized the unforgettable, yearning opening notes of “Over the Rainbow,” the Academy Award-winning anthem Judy Garland performed in The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most famous song to come out of Hollywood. How could this be? The sheet music was dated 1910, and The Wizard of Oz premiered nearly 30 years later. But the melody hung there (“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high …”). It was hauntingly similar. Too similar, he thought.
About 10 years ago, Alver, now 67, was researching the works of a Scandinavian composer named Signe Lund when he made this disturbing discovery. In the late 19th century, Lund had been the toast of Oslo and went on to a successful career in the United States, before her Nazi sympathies late in life turned her into a pariah. She was now long forgotten. It was at an archive in Bergen, Norway, that Alver unearthed the pages of her composition titled “Concert Étude, Opus 38,” which she had written in the United States and copyrighted in Chicago in 1910 during one of her visits to America. Lund had performed the piece in many American cities. It was “the most popular of her pieces” in her lifetime, Alver says.
The similarities between Lund’s “Opus 38” and composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” cannot be dismissed. Though there are notable variations (the former is in a minor key, for example, and follows a different time signature), the melodies of the main themes are nearly identical. Decades after the deaths of Arlen and Harburg, it is impossible to unequivocally determine whether the similarities are unintended or deliberate — a notoriously difficult thing to prove even when all participants are living. But to Alver, who included “Opus 38” on his 2020 CD Étude Poétiques: Works by Signe Lund, there is no debate about it. “Of course it is plagiarism,” he says today. Given the sacred aura that surrounds “Over the Rainbow,” the accusation borders on the blasphemous, akin to smudging the Mona Lisa. Yet Alver has no doubt that Lund’s DNA can be found in Harold Arlen’s melody.
. . . Lund’s outspoken support of socialism and subsequent allegiance to the Nazi regime during World War II led to her fall from grace. Norway shut the door on both Lund and her music. “After the war, it affected her a lot,” states her great-great-granddaughter Trude Sveen. “She lost her voting rights in Norway and they wanted to forget her. She wasn’t talked about. She was banned from the music world and not welcome at the Norway composers’ union anymore. Her music was not allowed to be played.”
If you have any doubts, here’s Rune Alver playing Lund’s Concert Étude, Op. 38. Start listening at 1:24.
And the movie version:
Convinced? I was. It would clearly be called plagiarism in court.
*You can count on this bird, described in the NYT, to be offered as proof of a “spectrum of biological sex” by gender activists like Agustin Fuentes and others of his ilk. But it’s a developmental anomaly that’s long been seen in birds and other species (I’ve seen them in Drosophila): a gynandromorph, an animal that’s part male and part female. All the cases I know of occur in those animal species in which sex is determined by chromosomes, and is usually caused by the loss of a chromosome early in development or by mis-assortment of chromosomes when the fertilized embryo undergoes cell division. If the anomaly happens at the two-cell stage, you get something like this: a bilaterally symmetrical gynandromorph of the common blue butterfly, Polyommatus icarus. The blue left side is male, the brown side with orange dots is female:
Here’s the bird described in the paper, a green honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza). It was spotted by Hamish Spencer, who worked in Lewontin’s lab when I was there, on a birding trip to Colombia.
During one outing, in early January 2023, the proprietor of a local farm drew his attention to a green honeycreeper, a small songbird that is common in forests ranging from southern Mexico to Brazil.
But this particular green honeycreeper had highly unusual plumage. The left side of its body was covered in shimmering spring-green feathers, the classic coloring for females. Its right side, however, was iridescent blue, the telltale marker of a male. The bird appeared to be a bilateral gynandromorph: female on one side and male on the other.
“It was just incredible,” Dr. Spencer said. “We were lucky to see it.”
Gynandromorphism has been documented in a variety of birds, as well as insects, crustaceans and other organisms. But it’s a relatively rare and poorly understood phenomenon. The bird Dr. Spencer saw in Colombia is only the second known case of bilateral gynandromorphism in a green honeycreeper — and the first documented in the wild.(The only previous example was reported more than a century ago and was based on a museum specimen, Dr. Spencer said. That bird displayed the opposite pattern, with female plumage on the right and male plumage on the left.)
It is not entirely clear how the condition comes about, but one leading theory is that it results from an error during the production of egg cells in female birds.Female birds have two different sex chromosomes, designated W and Z, while males have two Z chromosomes. An error duringegg cell production could result in two fused or incompletely separated cells, one with a W chromosome and one with a Z chromosome.
If those fused cells are fertilized by two different sperm, each of which carries a Z chromosome, the result might be a bird with the WZ chromosomes of a female in some cells and the ZZ chromosomes of a male in others. “And so you get a bird that’s half and half,” Dr. Spencer said.
In birds and butterflies it is the females who are heterogametic (having unlike sex chromosomes) and the males are homogametic (having like sex chromosomes), the opposite of mammals and many other species (in those, including Drosophila, males are XY and females XX). And even in insects like fruit flies, you can get bilaterial gynandromorphs split plumb down the middle, probably caused by a similar mechanism, though there can be other mechanisms as well. (If an XX embryo loses on X chromosome at the two-cell stage, one side will be XX females but the other X-, which are sterile males). I was lucky enough to see a fly gynandromorph every year or so, but I don’t remember ever dissecting one to see if it had both testes and ovaries.
Here’s the bird, and below that the scientific paper from the Journal of Field Ornithology (click to read or get the pdf here).
The green side is female, the blue-and-black side is male.
As the paper notes, whether it’s a true hermaphrodite, having reproductive systems designed to produce both sperm and eggs, is unknown. But there are also human hermaphrodites (probably fewer than one in ten thousand), tons of plant hermaphrodites, and hermaphrodites in insects and crustaceans. These are rare developmental anomalies with developmental systems geared to producing (though perhaps not actually producing) both types of gametes—but they are not a third biological sex.
The bird’s internal characteristics remain a mystery. In some, but not all, previously studied cases, gynandromorphic birds have had internal sex organs that matched their external plumage, with an ovary on one side and a testis on the other. Past observations suggest that some gynandromorphic birds can successfully court mates and reproduce.
But this particular green honeycreeper was never observed engaging in any courtship or mating behavior.
I’n betting that this one won’t mate, as its courtship, reproduction, and parental care may all be wonky.
*Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, had been #1 on all of Amazon, but it’s now #11, which of course is a fantastic achievement. (It’s also #1 in Sociology of Marriage & Family, Pediatrics, and Political Commentary & Opinion.) She’s given an excerpt of it, called “Brittle Monsters and the Folly of Gentle Parenting“, on her Substack site “The Truth Fairy”, but here’s Bari Weiss’s summary of the book at The Free Press, which precedes yet another excerpt. You can read them both for free, but it’ll be worth getting the book, especially if you have kids or want to know why kids in college are all cattywampus.
American kids are the freest, most privileged kids in all of history. They are also the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated generation on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an also alarming 14 percent.
What’s even stranger is that all of these worsening mental health outcomes for kids have coincided with a generation of parents hyper-fixated on the mental health and well-being of their children.
What’s going on?
That mystery is the subject of Abigail Shrier’s fascinating, urgent new book: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.
Longtime readers of The Free Press will surely know Abigail’s name from her groundbreaking reporting in our pages. She is also the author of the best-selling 2020 book Irreversible Damage, which tackled the difficult subject of the enormous rise of gender dysphoria among teenage girls. It was named by The Economist as one of the best books of the year and has been translated into ten languages.
In Bad Therapy, out today, Abigail heads into the breach once more. The book makes the case that the advent of therapy culture, the rise of “gentle parenting,” and the spread of “social-emotional learning” in schools is actually causing much of the anxiety and depression faced by today’s youth. In other words, Abigail argues that in our attempt to keep kids safe, we are failing the next generation of American adults.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Kulka and Hili have a confrontation. Apparently Kulka came too close to Hili, and for that Baby Kulka needs to be taught a lesson. (No worries: they never actually fight!)
Kulka: What do you want?Hili: I have to teach you a lesson.
Kulka: Czego chcesz?Hili; Muszę ci dać nauczkę.*******************
From The Dodo Pet:
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Masih, more oppression of women in Iran. It’s largely about the hijab, which is not optional there. Sound up to hear the English narrative.
“The Islamic Republic banned me from playing football and suspended my career because I competed against men. They punished me for not wearing hijab .”
Shiva Amina Iranian female athlete joins #UnitedAgainstGenderApartheid and has a message for you.
https://t.co/QdCNMFEmKV— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 9, 2024
From Luana; the checkboxes have moved beyond race to “was one of your ancestor a slave?”:
Federal agencies will soon display "𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆” on online and paper forms when asking respondents about their race and ethnicity.
This is being pushed by the ADOS Advocacy Foundation, which is seeking $20 trillion in cash payments as reparations. pic.twitter.com/KYNHDDJYY0
— John Kulak Kramlich (@jkramlich) March 23, 2023
From Malcolm; a cat meets a long-lost friend. Sound up!
Cat sees his friend after a long time 😺 pic.twitter.com/Cgz4DZNMoB
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) February 21, 2024
Cat gym! I don’t think many cats would do this. . .
Morning gym.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/BGOTkM59Pz
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 9, 2024
A rather grim scene from Ricky Gervais’s fantastic series “After Life” (I don’t remember this one):
She absolutely nailed it 😂 #AfterLife pic.twitter.com/jNgI3fl4IL
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) March 9, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial. a Dutch girl gassed upon arrival, ten years old:
10 March 1934 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Carla Bromet, was born in The Hague.
On 26 February 1944 she was deported from Westerbork to the Theresienstadt ghetto. She arrived at #Auschwitz on 6 October 1944 in a transport of 1,500 Jews. She was murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/lZWxi25U1K
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 10, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, look at this lovely bird. It’s not a “knife-billed puffin” (a name that isn’t used) but a razorbill or “razorbilled auk” (Alca torda). Matthew calls attention to its beautiful markings.
Knife-billed puffin.. 😎 pic.twitter.com/4O0At0Fn0R
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 8, 2024
. . . and a lovely fly:
We're laying out the Soldierflies pages for a new guide to Flies of Britain & Ireland for publication in 2025. Fens near Oxford are a haven for them & this tiny Three-lined Soldier (Oxycera trilineata) was seen by the fen @BBOWT's Sydlings Copse @gailashton @flygirlNHM @TVERC1 pic.twitter.com/CJL4efHeaw
— NatureBureau (@NatureBureau) March 8, 2024
Though not until March 31st if you’re in the UK or Europe …
I’ve had enough of DST, and I hope we can shove it where the sun don’t shine (for another hour). Just don’t let the loons who want permanent DST win the argument. Permanent standard time or death (or increased chance thereof).
I have Bad Therapy waiting on the bedside table, but I have to finish re-reading David Copperfield (and I really need to see Uriah Heap get his come-uppance!)
No, permanent DST🤓Lighter afternoons!
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/03/28/why-permanent-daylight-saving-time-bad-idea
Very interesting. I wish they would just pick one and stick with it. Now that I’m retired it doesn’t affect me that much, but does affect the kitties’ yowling for dinner. My natural circadian rhythm has always seemed to be late to bed and late to rise.
Not in Arizona. We don’t change our clocks. But, because the rest of you fools DO, I’m forever confused. Lived here since 1989 and couldn’t tell you what time we’re on. I mean, technically we’re MST until they change, then we’re on, shit, I don’t know. I just keep my out of state friends listed on my calendar/time zone app and check it before I call them.
1. Ranch has a celery seed note as well.
2. How long until we have to checkmark “descendant of slaveowner”?
3. Another interesting case of uncanny musical similarity. George Harrison gave co-writer credit to solve his honest case of My Dear Lord – but Led Zep gave Spirit the passus durusculus business. Rachmaninoff won a case in the seventies or so – this case, I dunno. Too bad, I guess.
I wonder descendant of which “slave owner”? The original African tribe who provided the slaves, or the “end user” Presumably the originator should contribute to the claimed reparations? they profited in the initial transaction.
Good luck with that.
… And check out the book White Cargo.
Thanks for that. I did not realise the magnitude of the numbers.
No reparations for those poor individuals?
From my perspective, reparations is a clever strategy.
It is one thing to convince someone that they are oppressed, but more so that they are owed fantastic sums for the oppression of people they have never met. It appeals to their latent greed and envy.
The people who are expected to pay the debt, once again for actions of people they have never met, will generally be outraged.
Those involved in politics are already finding ways to use the issue for personal enrichment. Plus, the prospect of it can generate votes.
I am firmly convinced that the complicated details of debt and repayment are not solvable, and were never intended to be. The purpose of the whole exercise is to stoke racial tensions.
By the logic of the people behind all of this, Anne Frank is an oppressor, Mobute Sese Seko is an oppressed person. Similarly, the descendants of a Black plantation owner in prewar South Carolina would be owed reparations by the descendants of a White abolitionist who died fighting for the Union at Vicksburg.
The perfect revolutionary tactic is to get your opponents to fight among themselves over an issue that can never possibly be reconciled.
… and :
[ all excerpted from Wackypedia, bold preserved ]
[ I list the subject page description only because links hold up comments in moderation]
“Many Native-American tribes practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America.[2][3]”
See : Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
“Indigenous peoples of the Americas slave ownership refers to the ownership of enslaved people by indigenous peoples of the Americas from the colonial period to the abolition of slavery. Indigenous people enslaved Amerindians, Africans, and —occasionally— Europeans.”
See : Amerindian_slave_ownership
[ end excerpt ]
… it will take me a while to gather the source literature.
I just recently learned this from a talk by Konstantin Kissin.
…. ok I listened to it once, and :
1. Sounds great, lovely stuff. Added to my library.
2. Chopin’s influence is evident
3. SotR can be heard in a certain spot. I’ll have to listen carefully later.
4. The majority of the piece is unlike SotR – but I’ll listen a lit more later.
To prove that as plagiarism will take a lot of argument. Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven was argued as plagiarism based on just the first few notes. They did way more with the song than Spirit though. I bet Jimmy Page heard Spirit play it, and started there.
I do not know if you mean that your watch does not automatically adjust or cannot be adjusted at all. But I have a cheap Casio digital trail watch with lots of tiny buttons and an instruction booklet in micro-font typeface. Between my failing vision and arthritic fingers, I have found that just leaving it set as it was when I got it (daylight time) and subtracting an hour in my head over the winter months has worked fine. Today, though, I need to remember to NOT subtract an hour, but I am now good through next Fall.
Many years ago, President Bill Clinton was criticized for appearing in public wearing a cheap, digital watch. I, like you, have a cheap Casio (model 3229 in my case) with all the little buttons. Fortunately I long ago learned all the buttons; the paper owner’s manual is long gone. (It’s still online, thankfully.) The watch is smart enough to know when it’s a leap year and, therefore, when to add the 29th day to February. But once in awhile—if the battery needs changing, for instance—it loses its mind and I have to figure out how to reset the year so that the watch will get February 29 correct again.
I’ve had at least three of this exact watch (or its unchanged successor) over many years, changing the battery on occasion and changing the band when it breaks. I use the timer function every day at the gym. (And I use the watch to the tell time, of course.) The closest new model is available on Amazon for $16.88. I’ll buy another one if I live long enough and if we still measure time in hours on the clock.
My wife tells me that no one wears watches anymore; that everyone uses their phones. If that be true, why is it that she often blows right past the $1,000+ phone in her hand to ask me what time it is on my sub-$20.00 Casio watch? Don’t know, but with my trusty Casio on my wrist, it’s nice to still be needed.
Yep. That’s exactly the watch and model that I use and have for decades. I am on my second one. Used to use the stopwatch feature on the trail, but these days I am just happy to complete a given distance regardless of elapsed time. My wife tells me the same thing as yours tells you, but SHE wears an Apple Watch, which seems to be useless as a timepiece as it spends quite a bit of time on the charger. I had a really nice Seiko analog watch that served me for forty years and was indispensable for getting me to appointments, meetings, and the like throughout my career and parenting. But in retirement, I find little need for such “time on demand” capability.
I am thrilled that my 8-yr.-old granddaughter has a little ANALOGUE watch on which she has been able to tell time since she was 6.
I also use a battle-scarred Casio on my keychain to keep track of time since our classrooms don’t have clocks. Not an easy watch to adjust, but I also use the alarm to alert me to when Jeopardy is on. And the battery lasts maybe 4 or 5 years!
I still wear and use my trusty Omega, a twenty first birthday present and is analogue with sweep second hand but does require a battery every four or five years but simple to replace and not expensive. It is well past 50 years now.
You remember when you got that casio don’t you Prof. Batterson?
I sure do. In 1984 for $14 in Australia I got my first DIGITAL FUCKN WATCH!
I felt like I had the Starship Enterprise and an ICBM on my wrist.
For a few seconds or moments we were gods! Top of the hierarchy at school. Those numbers in black and gray…. killer.
Digital virginity: you can’t get it back but it felt great at the time!
cheers,
D.A.
NYC
It is too long ago to recall for sure, David, but I think that my first digital was a TI led (preceded the lcd revolution) with small red numerals and one function: time. Got it in mid 70’s when I was teaching high school math and physics for a couple of years. It went well with being a physics teacher…early geekish.
For me, it was I think 1978. I saved up for it, and wore it proudly.
Not too long after that I happened to check the time, except I was SCUBA diving at the time. The image of the dead watch on my arm is still vivid.
Time is important to me, so I always wear a watch. I now switch between an Omega and a Breitling. The Omega was a wedding present more than 30 years ago. I imagine my grandchild will wear it some day.
I have a cheap Casio, too, which lasts a LONG time, and I do know how to adjust it, which I did. But, tired as hell, I couldn’t figure out what the problem was for a long time. I had to go to my computer and see when the time had changed!
For the first time in many years I forgot to reset my clocks before going to bed last night and was shocked to wake up an hour late. Fortunately I am retired and no longer worry about alarm clocks.
A few years ago my wife and I toured Arizona and encountered a strange DST anomaly. The state does not change times for DST When we travelled from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley we relied on our Garmin GPS which also told us when we should arrive. As we got closer to our destination we passed towns sooner than expected and finally realized it was because the GPS gave arrival time in local time which in the Navajo Nation does use DST. To make it stranger we learned that the Hopi Nation which is surrounded by Navajo they go along with the state and do not change their clocks.
After listening to Lund’s concert etude I’m inclined to think it was plagiarized from Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff (1895).
Woah – good ear!
…
Yeah, music ain’t words. It has written instructions but it’s more like recipes than novels, so it can’t be “plagiarized”. There’s performance that matters. Are pancakes “plagiarized” crépes? No. But writing credit matters – unlike recipes. Ergo George Harrison, and I think that Rachmaninoff pop tune All By Myself by Eric Carmen and Rachmaninoff.
And when it is “plagiarized”, they just call it “cover tune”.
Found the Rachmaninoff – https://youtu.be/_T8hxogurSc?si=mRH8kScOAAtcg8dp
…. However, I’d argue these issues are more like patent infringement than plagiarism.
Thydoid my friend, I’ve never worked out the differing ven diagrams between plagiarism and patent infringement.
And I’ll forever regret not taking intellectual property in law school!
D.A.
NYC
“Thydoid”
Help help I’ve been misglanded!
“Thydoid” has a nice giggle to it, though. I’d keep it if I were you
Not at all sure that the similarity of Over the Rainbow and Lund’s etude was due to plagiarism. Could it not have been simply that Arlen came up with it independently, or that he had heard Lund’s work at some time and the basic melody was retained in his memory and then recalled later as his own?
I have thought that there are limited numbers of unique musical note strings that just “go” together when one is to emote something like ‘longing with a tinge of hope’, or ‘let’s boogie’. So it’s inevitable that one musical number will inadvertently resemble another.
But then there are cases of naked plagiarism. The music of The Battlehymn of the Republic is openly lifted from earlier pieces, for example.
Would it help to re-sync if you went to bed an hour early tonight, Jerry? Should you oversleep tomorrow, I, for one, wouldn’t mind if Hili Dialogue were a little late.
That’s exactly what I’m gonna do
Say it ain’t so! (That Over the Rainbow was lifted.) But it does appear to be so. It may be impossible to prove one way or the other at this point, however.
Gynandromorphs are so cool! Where/when did I first hear about them? When taking the late Bob Silberglied’s Biology of Arthropods course in the fall of 1978. I went on to be his lab instructor of the course the next year. Bob was a walking encyclopedia of arthropod biology, particularly butterflies.
Yes, Bob was a great guy; I knew him at Harvard. Sadly, he died in the crash of a plane that went down trying to land at “National Airport” (now “Reagan airport”, which I can barely bear to write.
Lund plagiarism: I’m reminded of the scene in Amadeus – the movie – where Mozart plays Salieri’s little piano concerto and says, “Ah, that didn’t quite work, did it?” and upgrades it on the fly. ‘Over the Rainbow’ is the upgrade.
Side note :
You ever hear the alphabet song? Twinkle twinkle little star? How about Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?
Mozart composed variations on Ah! vous dirai-je, maman!
Also another tangent : the lullaby song – it’s a Brahms lullaby.
According to Wikipedia:
[Signe] Lund emigrated to the United States about 1900 and took a position teaching at Mayville State Normal School in Mayville, North Dakota. She became active in the North Dakota Socialist party and Nonpartisan League and circulated petitions for the release of anti-war activist Kate Richards O’Hare from state prison in Missouri, which led to her dismissal from the Mayville teaching position.
She later worked in New York City and Chicago as a performer and lecturer until 1920. Lund received the King’s Medal of Merit for contributions to strengthening of the relationship between the United States and Norway, but lost her U.S. citizenship after World War II and had already returned to Norway. She died in Oslo.
I’m late today after a family meal out of town.
On this day:
1496 – After establishing the city of Santo Domingo, Christopher Columbus departs for Spain, leaving his brother in command.
1535 – Spaniard Fray Tomás de Berlanga, the fourth Bishop of Panama, discovers the Galápagos Islands by chance on his way to Peru.
1629 – Charles I dissolves the Parliament of England, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.
1661 – French “Sun King” Louis XIV begins his personal rule of France after the death of his premier, the Cardinal Mazarin.
1762 – French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
1831 – The French Foreign Legion is created by Louis Philippe, the King of France, from the foreign regiments of the Kingdom of France.
1876 – The first successful test of a telephone is made by Alexander Graham Bell.
1891 – Almon Strowger patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1906 – The Courrières mine disaster, Europe’s worst ever, kills 1,099 miners in northern France.
1922 – Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
1959 – Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, thousands of Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent his removal.
1969 – In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. He later unsuccessfully attempts to recant. [It was Ray’s birthday, too.]
1970 – Vietnam War: Captain Ernest Medina is charged by the U.S. military with My Lai war crimes.
1977 – Astronomers discover the rings of Uranus. [Thereby enabling numerous schoolboy jokes…]
2000 – The Dot-com bubble peaks with the NASDAQ Composite stock market index reaching 5,048.62.
2006 – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
2019 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX, crashes, leading to all 737 MAX aircraft being grounded worldwide.
Births:
1628 – Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician and biologist (d. 1694).
1709 – Georg Wilhelm Steller, German botanist, zoologist, physician, and explorer (d. 1746).
1844 – Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, British Pre-Raphaelite painter (d. 1927). [Of the Pre-Raphaelites, she had one of the longest-running careers, spanning sixty years and producing over one hundred and fifty works. Though her work with the Brotherhood began as a favourite model, she soon trained and became a respected painter, earning praise from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others.]
1849 – Hallie Quinn Brown, African-American educator, writer and activist (d. 1949).
1867 – Lillian Wald, American nurse, humanitarian, and author, founded the Henry Street Settlement (d. 1940).
1876 – Anna Hyatt Huntington, American sculptor (d. 1973).
1900 – Violet Brown, Jamaican supercentenarian, oldest Jamaican ever (d. 2017). [She died aged 117 years and 189 days old.]
1903 – Bix Beiderbecke, American cornet player, pianist, and composer (d. 1931).
1903 – Clare Boothe Luce, American playwright, journalist, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Italy (d. 1987).
1940 – Chuck Norris, American actor, producer, and martial artist.
1952 – Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwean politician, Prime Minister of Zimbabwe (d. 2018).
1957 – Osama bin Laden, Saudi Arabian terrorist, founded al-Qaeda (d. 2011).
1958 – Sharon Stone, American actress and producer.
1963 – Rick Rubin, American record producer.
1964 – Neneh Cherry, Swedish singer-songwriter.
1971 – Jon Hamm, American actor and director.
1983 – Rafe Spall, English actor.
1987 – Emeli Sandé, British singer-songwriter.
1994 – Nikita Parris, English footballer.
The definition of ‘morbid’ is an unhealthy preoccupation with death. Unfortunately, there’s no word to mean the perfectly healthy preoccupation with death, which is what I have. (Caitlin Doughty):
1724 – Urban Hjärne, Swedish chemist, geologist, and physician (b. 1641).
1826 – John Pinkerton, Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist and historian (b. 1758).
1913 – Harriet Tubman, American nurse and activist (b. c.1820).
1948 – Zelda Fitzgerald, American author, visual artist, and ballet dancer (b. 1900).
1966 – Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888). [Won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the phase-contrast microscope.]
1966 – Frank O’Connor, Irish short story writer, novelist, and poet (b. 1903).
1986 – Ray Milland, Welsh-American actor and director (b. 1907).
1988 – Andy Gibb, Australian singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1958).
1998 – Lloyd Bridges, American actor and director (b. 1913).
2005 – Dave Allen, Irish-English comedian, actor, and screenwriter (b. 1936).
2016 – Anita Brookner, English novelist and art historian (b. 1928).
Women of the Day:
Today is Mother’s Day in the UK (or Mothering Sunday, as my own mother insists on calling it), so today’s Women of the Day are all the mothers out there. We literally wouldn’t be here without you. (Of course, that’s true of fathers, too, but their biological contributions to the process of our existence aren’t exactly comparable!)
On Friday, the people of Ireland overwhelmingly rejected proposed changes to the constitution that would have removed all mention of mothers and women from it. The changes were disingenuously presented as an updating to remove outdated and sexist language, although all the sexed references to the president and other senior state officials (“he shall be elected… “) were to be left in tact. The decision to hold the referendum to erase the words “mother” and “women” on International Women’s Day did not go unnoticed!
I suspect that the addition of “Descendant of American slavery” is to divide African Americans into two groups: Foundational Black Americans, who are descended from pre-Civil War slaves, and more recent immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean or other places. FBAs, as they call themselves, resent immigrants taking advantage of affirmative action, scholarships and other benefits intended to help American Blacks. I read a complaint online that while Ivy League colleges have a “lot of Black faces,” this does not mean that America is making progress in ending racism. Many of these students are immigrants or children of immigrants. The fact that a doctor from Nigeria or Jamaica can send his kids to Yale doesn’t help poor Blacks whose families have been here for centuries. While FBAs and immigrants may look the same to Whites, they don’t necessarily consider themselves one group.
Yep. Barack Obama, though an American of African descent, is not the descendant of slaves, and therefore not part of the cultural group most of us think of when we think “African American” (the “Foundational” term is new to me). I remember this fact being discussed prior to his election.
While the Lund melody may well have stuck in Arlen’s mind when he composed SotR, the full solo piano arrangement (by Shearing) in the Grade 9 Royal Conservatory syllabus doesn’t otherwise sound at all like Lund. Could be my technique—perhaps it doesn’t sound much like Shearing/Arlen, either. The melody is a straightforward, yes, longing, tune in E-flat major but the harmony is so full of accidental sharps and flats, that’s where the action is. Right to the final chord—which resolves to the tonic as expected but has two rogue notes based on a minor sixth and a perfect fourth — we’re left guessing how it will end. I hear it less as plagiarism than as a 20th-century inspiration. But I’m not a composer.
I’ll never be able to play the Lund to compare it in that degree of detail.
In my dad’s day (your age group Jerry) mental health (and LGBT+ for that matter) were just brushed under the rug and forcefully forgotten.
Now it’s gone to the other extreme and is no less damaging for all involved.
Signe Lund lived 1868 – 1950, and Wizard premiered in 1939 when she was 71, plus, she lived another 11 years after that. The film probably hit European screens (and SOtR found radios) fairly rapidly so it’s strange that the issue didn’t come up in those years. (Also, if she had a dislike for our people, she might have rather enjoyed taking Arlen (birth name Hyman Arluck) down a few notches for his purported misdeed.)
Others above made the point that plagiarism may be a too strong word and I agree particularly when we consider that a musically talented person may have a ridiculously powerful memory for musical passages but not necessarily for names, dates and places. A composer exploring possibilities can be unaware that a pleasing passage they experience as a discovery had been lodged many years prior.
Well, it may not be DELIBERATE plagiarism, but simply thinking that you made up something that you actually heard before, but I don’t think the courts would accept that as an excuse. “A composer exploring possibilities can be unaware that a pleasing passage they experience as a discovery had been lodged many years prior” is more or less euphemistic for “using a tune you heard before”, whether or not it was deliberate. I suspect that if they were alive today, Lund could sue Arlen and collect big-time damages.