Such Wonders

Last night we attended an odd program by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The 20-minute first half featured the Robert Browning Overture by Charles Ives, with Mahler's 5th Symphony filling the second half at 70 minutes.

Perhaps the difficult Ives piece required too much rehearsal time, leaving no time left for a companion piece, but even so, it was awkward and unbalanced to rise for intermission after only twenty minutes. Annoying even, as though we had been cheated of a third piece. 

The Overture is impressive for both density and poor orchestration. Sometimes it wasn't clear whether Ives didn't mind you missing some of the notes he had written, or whether he minded but his orchestration skills weren't up to the task.

But sometimes it was clear. We sat nearest the second violins and violas—placed unconventionally to the conductor's right at the front of the stage, with the cellos where the second violins normally sit—and noticed several apparently intricate lines which hadn't a hope of being heard above the others. I couldn't hear them, and the collective motions of the players suggested that the line they were playing was unique rather than supporting some other line.

When you can't hear instrumental writing like that, it's either a bad performance, listener inattention, or the inability of the composer to translate what he hears to what his listeners hear. The performance seemed adequate and I was certainly paying attention, which leaves Ives as the likely culprit. I can believe that what he heard he put on the page, but that doesn't mean the players could play it intelligibly.

Still, it was a challenging piece I'd like to hear again. Next time I'll sit closer up.

The Mahler was enjoyable. The opening trumpet line works wonderfully, though later echoes used in subsequent movements work less well. I particularly enjoyed the bell-front playing by clarinets and oboes, where they sassily raise their instruments above their stands and direct their playing towards the audience.

On January 4 Pierre Pinoncelli took a hammer to Duchamp's famous urinal, Fountain, chipping it slightly. The Village Voice lauds the urinal and mocks the guy wielding the hammer, a 77-year-old French performance artist who claimed that Duchamp would have approved.

Have you tried Dance Dance Revolution?

The premise of DDR is simple: Players stand on a 3-foot square platform with an arrow on each side of the square pointing up, down, left and right. The player faces a video screen that has arrows scrolling upward to the beat of a song chosen by the player. As an arrow reaches the top of the screen, the player steps on the corresponding arrow on the platform.

People are discovering that playing DDR is good for your health, including significant weight loss. This game should be promoted more widely, because it is socially stimulating as well: unlike traditional arcade games, DDR encourages team participation.

Plus, it's fun to watch!

Coin collectors love a good story and are willing to pay for it.

A coin's collector value, like an Old Master painting, reflects both scarcity and demand. Scarcity often determines demand, but not always. When the Denver Mint released an unusually small run of 2.6 million Jefferson U.S. nickels in 1950, savvy collectors snapped them up and watched their investment rise for a decade to peak in 1964 at around $100 per nickel in 2004 dollars. But then the coin faded, falling gradually to less than $10 dollars today for a near-perfect specimen.

Why? Perhaps it's because the 1950 Denver nickels were just rare. For lasting collectibility, a coin usually has to have an interesting story to tell as well.

And few coins have a story like the Liberty Head "V" nickel, minted from 1883-1913, whose birth and demise were both controversial.


In 1883, the first "V" nickels had barely left the Mint when officials discovered the designer had omitted the work CENTS on the coin. Scam artists quickly gold-plated the coins and passed them off to the unsuspecting public as five-dollar coins. They were about the same size as half-eagles and the "V" was explained as meaning "five dollars".

The word CENTS was quickly added, but 5.5 million coins had already been struck. It's common to find surviving examples of the gold-plated "racketeer nickels" in collections today, where they hold more appeal for their historical curiosity than for their collector value.

Even more interesting is the demise of the coin, which was replaced in 1913 by the Indian Head/Buffalo type nickel. Though no Liberty Head nickels were officially made for 1913, collectors were surprised and delighted to learn that five 1913 coins had been unofficially struck, all of them apparently made in secret by someone within the Philadelphia Mint. These five specimens now rank among the most coveted and valuable of all United States coins. Since there are only five of them, their pedigrees are closely tracked and famous among collectors.

The Wall Street Journal announced today that one of these five coins is expected to sell in New Orleans today for three million dollars.

A writer accepted an assignment to bribe his way into the best restaurants in Manhattan...

My plan was to show up between 8:15 and 8:30 on varying nights of the week. I would go with a different companion each night. I would try to get a reservation by telephone that afternoon and go only if I were turned down. And I would carry a twenty and a fifty in my left pocket, and a hundred in my right pocket. I did have an incentive: I could eat at any place I could successfully finagle my way into.

...with remarkable success:

There were 50 people lingering in the foyer of Sparks Steak House, a bastion of male power, when I entered at 8:15 with a male friend. We were told it would be 9:45 before we could be seated. I asked to be put on the list.

Given the size of the crowd and the length of the wait, I decided to reach for my right pocket. I waited until the man behind the podium was alone (Rule No. 6) and rested my left hand lightly on his back. Suddenly, I was Fred Astaire and he was Ginger Rogers. He knew exactly what to do. He pivoted toward me and turned his right hand from face down to face up, giving me a target. I slipped the bill into his hand and said again, "This is a really important night for me."

He disappeared briefly, then 45 seconds later, he reappeared at my elbow. "Right this way," he announced, and led us to a table. I had jumped a 50-person line and saved myself an hour-and-a-half wait. Forget Frank Sinatra. I was now James Bond.

And sometimes it didn't cost him a penny. All he had to do was bluff.

Let's hope those hospitals using VoIP LANs are encrypting their data, because VoIP looks really easy to hack:

Sure, many of these problems exist with the current switched voice network. But what's different here is the cost of mounting an attack. It's like the difference between junk mail and spam. The cost of postage keeps you from receiving a truckload of junk mail each day, but spam is free—and thus overwhelming.

VOIP is simply streaming e-mail. Traceable, expensive attacks using POTS are anonymous and free over VOIP.

That's voice over the Internet—voice over secure private networks is fine.

Computerworld relates how a Baltimore hospital improved productivity by adopting a VoIP WLAN. Nurses, technicians, and care-unit secretaries wear communications badges (shown at right) and call each other hands-free:

Nurses and other employees log in via a voice-recognition system with their badges and can call other employees by saying their names. The system also tracks users based on their proximity to 120 Cisco access points in the hospital, Greskovich says. To locate one another, nurses speak a simple voice command to find "Nurse X." The system responds, "Nurse X is on the fifth floor," and another command connects the nurses....To call the blood bank or pharmacy, nurses say the department's name and are connected. Staffers can make outside calls by saying the number, and they are then connected through a Vocera interface to the hospital's private branch exchange (PBX), he says.

The new system also reduces those annoying intercom voice pages!

Old castles and forts were often built with parapets containing openings through which defenders could fire at attackers. You may already know these parapets are called battlements. But did you know that the raised portions of the battlements are called merlons (A), the openings crenellations (B), and the flared slits embrasures (C)?