State of the Discussion

And here’s Sepultura in their full Afro Caribbean mode back in 1996

CDs are very durable, because I should have worn all the bits off my "Roots" CD years ago.

This was supposed to go up a day earlier, but I got confused with the date line. Thanks and apologies wonkie!

My confession is that I really don't know anything about flowers. Though I am a big fan of Candide...

I feel pretty much the same as wonkie just upthread. Maybe it's age-related in me, I can hear the clave when it is isolated out, but actually in the music I don't hear it. On the other hand, that doesn't stop me really enjoying the music, and if I didn't feel so under the weather I might even have danced around the room a bit!

Wonkie - my best advice would be to find a good camera store in the area around you (Seattle has to have a few) that has been around for years and has a good selection of used cameras. You are probably looking for either a "compact" camera (with a built in lens) or a "mirrorless" camera (which would mean getting at least one lens to go with it). If it were me, I'd be looking for a camera from Fujifilm, Olympus, Panasonic, or Sony with at least 16 megapixels. If you talk to the people there about what sorts of things you paint, they can probably find you the appropriate combination of camera body and lens to take some good pics with minimal fuss.

I have an Olympus OMD e-M5 with a 12-40mm pro lens. It's nice and compact for carry and the camera and lens are both waterproof. A 12-40 lens is great for landscape and street photos (equivalent of 24-75mm zoom on an old 35mm slr). If it's set to auto and auto-focus with the focus set dead center, you can quickly pick the thing you want to have in-focus, set the focus, then get the framing you want and take the pic.

I spend a lot of time with my pics on the software side to get them to look how I want, but most of these modern cameras have a few presets you can play with to give you some pics that look more like an old school film camera. Find what pleases your eye and then set it as default and you should be good to go.

Anyone heard from JanieM? She'd probably have some good advice here, too.

Fascinating. I don't think I get it--I'm sure I don't--but you have helped me have a deeper appreciation both historically and in terms of the intricacy. I think people who grow up with this have very different "ears" than the more simple and melodic music that I understand.

Fair warning! If anyone posts a comment about a music topic they like with a couple of youtube video links, it is liable to be front paged! You have been warned!!!

Thanks for putting this up, LJ! And thanks for adding the cubanet link, it's great reading.

We were supposed to go hear these fine folks this evening, but their visas were denied or cancelled.

As an aside, this is why we can't have nice things, episode 1,832,782. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN_iMIvPHLc

These folks are not at all traditional, more of a Cuban chamber music ensemble, if you will. But rumba is in almost everything Cuban, one way or another. Certainly everything that isn't purely or primarily European in origin. Espirales (the folks in the video) seem to bring an interesting blend of Euro and trad.

I think a way to think about rumba in Cuba is to compare it to blues in the US. Originally a folkloric style rising out of the people of the African diaspora, but working its way into every nook and cranny of American popular and traditional musics.

It is the demotic musical language of Cuba.

Good weekend to you all, and no worries if the videos make you dance around the room a bit. :)

Oh my God, the surprise of seeing your own video explanation, russell! I wish you could have seen my smile of pleasure and delight to see you and hear you sounding as cool, knowledgeable and just plain nice as you do in writing! Thank you! And I have just watched, also with great pleasure, the Rumba en Atares guaguanco video too, what a mood enhancer. I'm going to hold off on watching the rest because I'm pretty flu-ridden, and need to go lie down, but I'm on for it tomorrow.

On the Robert Palmer piece I searched for lj, I definitely did as thorough a search as I could. But on the other hand, I also definitely have limited ability in these kinds of things (as I have proved to myself many times), so somebody else with an NYT sub (or more advanced google-fu) might do better. I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

hey all, how do I register with this blog? I have a Friday music post but can't login, I don't think I ever registered. I found the login information LJ sent way back in September but it doesn't seem to work

And so, I am sad. :(

Thank you!

Thank you all for the information and suggestions.

I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.

wj, if you're into this type of thing don't miss out on the Chester Beatty museum and library. Among many other artefacts, they have a lot of ancient books, illustrations and manuscripts. Incidentally, they have an exhibition on "Manuscripts and the Mind" at the moment:

https://chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/manuscripts-and-the-mind/

ps You can see every page of the Book of Kells in high res in TCD's Digital Collection - i can't remember where I learnt this years ago, but it might well have been here!

I love the book of Kells! Did you see the Long Room? It's the platonic ideal...I'm down with a very grim flu, so nothing interesting to report I'm afraid.

i'm working on a program to automate the application of large collection of image effects i've written over the years (mostly back when i had a software business). i've called the program "Director", as in "movie director" and it's based around the metaphor of shooting a movie.

there's a Script (JSON) which describes the Cast (a list of Actors (an effect) and the name of their roles (nickname, for easier typing)), and some production info (where to get source images, etc). then, there's a list of Scenes. a Scene is a list of Actors and the Actions they take (turn on/off, change a parameter, etc.) at a given frame in the video.

run it and it reads source frames, applies effects, displays them and saves them.

the Script is just text, so it's not very sexy. but, it does work. the application as a whole is very close to being elegant, internally, which pleases me greatly.

i plan to use it to create videos for songs.

now i just need to write some songs.

Did you go with the iphone 17? For me, the battery is the key driver of a new phone, and the current phone I have is a 13, and my wife and I will probably get a 17 now. I realize that it is not just the battery, chip and phone design makes a huge difference, but it's surprising to me that the models cycle thru without much improvement, so I can't imagine just going up one or 2 model numbers

I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.

It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)

Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.

At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.

I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.

All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.

Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.

If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.

wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.

The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.

Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)

The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.

And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?

** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.

I know it's silly, but I'm one of those Americans who watches the royal family soap opera. I remember reading an opinion column years ago during the Reagan admin. The writer's thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president's role more that of a policy wonk.
Anyway, why to I read about the monarchy and have thoughts about the members? Escapism, I think. It is a digression from thinking about real problems.

My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.

In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.

It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.

The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.