Music Sunday: The Magnitude 5.3 Edition

This week's Music Sunday is brought to you by Mother Nature.

No, seriously. Last night at nearly midnight, my region of the world experienced a 5.3 magnitude earthquake. The quake was centered near King City, California, but some of us here in Fresno felt it as a sharp jolt followed by fifteen or twenty seconds of sort of quivering ground motion, during which my floor lamp continued to sway. My poor stomach continued to quiver for some time after that, since I don't like earthquakes at all - probably a function of having been in too many of them, which is a topic for another day.

Anyway, as always happens when I feel a quake, Carole King's song "I Feel The Earth Move" popped into my head shortly after the tremor and has been running on a loop ever since, and so I decided that it was only fair and proper to share some of King's music with you all today.

King has been writing, by herself, with her former husband Gerry Goffin, and with others since the mid-1950s, and her work has been covered by singers and bands in virtually every genre of music. She wrote or co-wrote 118 songs that made the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999, and she has four Grammy awards and has been inducted into both the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Those are some serious credentials. Also, it means that there is a lot of her music out there to choose from.

Of course, I have to share "I Feel The Earth Move", which went to number one on the Hot 100 in 1971. And, although the song is not about earthquakes, at least not the geological kind, the beginning of the song is used in an earthquake exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry in Portland, Oregon. This performance comes from the BBC in the year the song was released:



"I Feel The Earth Move" was actually a double A-side single with "It's Too Late", which King co-wrote with Toni Stern, and which also hit number one in Billboard in 1971. This performance is from the same 1971 BBC show as the previous clip:



Here's another performance of "It's Too Late" that I found. This time, King performs with James Taylor, in 2007 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, thirty-six years after the BBC performance:



James Taylor recorded what is probably the most famous of the covers of another Carole King song, "You've Got A Friend", a song that has been covered by singers and bands in just about every genre of music that exists. This performance looks like it was given around the time that Taylor's cover of the song was released, also in 1971, which was a big year for King. If you look closely, you can see King playing piano in the background:



And, because I'm fascinated by the way singers and songs grow and evolve over the years, here is another live performance of the the song by James Taylor, this time from 2009:



In another aspect of her career, some of King's songs written with Gerry Goffin turned up, along with songs from other writers of the era, as songs for The Monkees. Some were love songs; this one, for example, from 1966, is "Sometime in the Morning":



On the other hand, "Pleasant Valley Sunday", also by King and Goffin, was a piece of fairly sharp social commentary, proving that they could write good songs that were not love songs and that The Monkees might not be as harmless and "prefab" as most people assumed they were:



One of these days, I'll do a Music Sunday post on why I think The Monkees were not the blight on pop music so many critics at the time, and now, seem to think they were. But that will be another day. For now, enjoy your day, and here's hoping you don't experience any earthquakes.

In which your faithful writer gets philosophical...

You never know where you are going to come upon something that just blows you away with its message. That happened to me today when another knitter posted the follwing video over on a board at Ravelry. This is a slightly longer version of the same bit, with a little context at the beginning, with the narration from the audio book version of the book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994, Random House), by Carl Sagan:



Now, some people might argue that all the perspective given in this clip does is make us seem obscure, insignificant, and without meaning or purpose.

I don't think that is true. I think it points out an important truth. We are all here. "Every human being who ever was," as Carl Sagan puts it in this clip, has lived and died here. A few have left for a few days, weeks, or months and ventured out and down the street a little bit, cosmically speaking, but they started here and ended here, on planet Earth. We're all stuck here.

The Spaceship Earth meme got overdone in the 1960s and 1970s, as those few of us began to venture out beyond the Earth's atmosphere, so much so that it became a cliche. But, for all that, it isn't any less true. We are all, very literally, in the same boat. Every ethnic group, every religion, every nationality, has to share this little bit of living space. And the truth is, if we don't start learning to be nicer to each other - all of us - the boat is going to sink and we will all drown in our own animosities.

During the L.A. riots after four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted of beating Rodney King during an arrest, Mr. King himself asked: "Can we all get along? Can we...can we get along?" And people laughed. The quote became a big joke. But it isn't very funny. As Nick Lowe wrote in a song from 1974, "What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?" How did we become so hard and cynical that asking for those things is treated as stupid?

Historically, we haven't been very nice to each other. I know that. But you would think that as species, we would have learned a little bit in all the millennia that we've been "civilized". But, no. We still maim and torture and kill each other for the stupidest things. One of our US presidential candidates recently and famously expressed his feeling that some of his fellow human beings are not entitled to food, shelter, and health care, just because they don't have as much money as he does and haven't had the fortune in life that he has had. Kids regularly bully each other on the playground just because they look different or talk different or are interested in different things.

Why haven't we learned to be excellent to each other, rather than being cruel and petty and nasty over the most insignificant things?

Does asking that make me hopelessly naive? Doesn't matter to me. I'm just fine with being a naive idealist. So much better than being a jerk.

Hat tip, by the way, to AZHikerChick, over on Ravelry, for turning me on to the video from Pale Blue Dot.

Coffee? No, Thanks...I'd Rather Not Torture My Taste Buds

Making my usual rounds of the Internets this morning before I start on the list of things I need to get done today, I came upon this post from John Scalzi, over at his blog, Whatever, in which he proclaims that coffee "tastes like ass".

It is so nice to find someone else who agrees with me about coffee. Which is to say, someone else who thinks coffee tastes nasty.

I get so tired of people looking at me like I've suddenly sprouted a second head out the top of my regular head, complete with a third eye in the middle of its forehead, when I say that I don't like coffee. I have to confess that I haven't really researched the history of coffee - I don't care enough to put in the time to do that - but I have wondered from time to time what the deal is...how did our culture here in the United States come to the point where it is assumed that everyone drinks coffee, and that people who don't do so are somehow wrong. No, really. I've heard people insist that unless you drink coffee, you are not a proper adult.

It is just as tiresome when people ask me, "Is it because you used to be Mormon?"

No. My distaste for coffee - for all hot beverages, for that matter - came long before I ever was a Mormon. My dad started trying to turn me into a coffee drinker when I was about ten years old. My mom didn't drink coffee, and so he tried to get me started on it so that he would have someone to have a cup of coffee with in the morning.

His efforts never succeeded. Even getting past the fact that coffee is hot, which is difficult enough for me to get beyond, it just tastes awful. I don't care how much you dress it up with cream, sugar, or other flavors, there is still that underlying bitter, acidy taste that Is. Just. Not. Right.

The funny thing was that my mom always used to say that while she didn't like the taste of coffee, she loved the smell. I've heard others rhapsodize about how wonderful coffee smells.

No it doesn't. It smells as bad as it tastes.

But, you know, I'm not the judgmental type. So, go ahead. Drink that coffee. I don't understand the attraction, but whatever. Just don't act like there is something wrong with me because I don't drink it. Would you like it if I insisted that you are not a proper adult because you don't like the thing you really, really don't like? Say, broccoli? Peas?

I didn't think so.

Music Sunday/Monday: The Flying High Edition (and that's not a drug reference)

If you're looking for Music Sunday, I have to apologize for being a little tardy this week. I was busy for much of today with other things, chiefly watching Felix Baumgartner taking the most awesome skydive in the history of, well, skydiving.

I have to admit, I did not watch the event live. There were just too many things that could have gone wrong, and I could not make myself watch. However, once I knew that everything had gone as planned and he was back on the Earth safely, I sat down and watched the rebroadcast of the event. It was amazing.

I also have to confess that I've never, ever had any desire to skydive. I just don't understand why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Yes, I know; that's not an original observation. It does, however, sum up my feelings about the subject perfectly.

Baumgartner's jump today is something orders of magnitude different, though. He rode a pressurized capsule, tethered to a helium balloon, up about 24 miles and then stepped out on a little platform said to be about the size of a skateboard before stepping off for a descent that started with a free-fall of over four minutes. Along the way, before deploying his parachute, Baumgartner exceeded she speed of sound by a significant amount, the first time anyone not in an aircraft has broken the sound barrier. And, after all that, he landed on his feet.

Being the history geek that I am, I think a little historical context is a good thing. And that context is this: Baumgartner's jump, and his achievement as the first human to break the sound barrier without benefit of aircraft, came on the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager's flight to become the first human to break the sound barrier with benefit of aircraft. I just hope I don't have to explain who Chuck Yeager is. If you don't know, go watch the film, The Right Stuff, or read the book of he same name, by Tom Wolfe.

Some people see what Felix Baumgartner did today as a stunt, on a par with Evel Knievel's jumps over rows of cars or his attempt (much less successful than Baumgartner was today) to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in some sort of souped-up, rocket-propelled motorcycle. And there is little doubt that Baumgartner was partly motivated by the challenge of doing something no one has ever done before.

But today's achievement was much more than just thrill-seeking. What Baumgartner proved today that can be achieved could be the first step in making space flight safer than it now is. This might have been a stunt, but it was a stunt that collected scientific data that could someday save lives.

But, since it is still Sunday (barely, and not anymore in most of the world)...and there is a song for every occasion and an occasion for every song, I'll leave you with some flight music:

Even though this has nothing to do with skydiving or spaceflight, as I watched the balloon taking Baumgartner aloft today, I kept thinking about this song, "Up, Up and Away", by the Fifth Dimension, from 1967:



And then there's this, Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly", in a live performance from 2006. Some of the lyrics: "I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings/Coming down is the hardest thing", could be seen as appropriate to the day in their own way:



Pink Floyd also recorded a completely different "Learning to Fly":



And, not music, but I found this while I was looking around for some music to share with you. It is a dramatization, from The Right Stuff, of that first time the sound barrier was broken. Just, you know, so you really will know who Chuck Yeager (here portrayed by Sam Shepard) is, and what he did:



Well, it has slipped into Monday while I've been writing this, so I'm not sure what to call this. Music Sunday/Monday? It'll have to do, I guess.

Music Sunday: The Led Zeppelin Edition, plus a book review

As I mentioned a couple of days ago here, during the past week I read LZ-75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour (2010, Gotham Books; 217 pages), by Stephen Davis. Davis has written about the band before, in his Hammer of the Gods (1985), which was criticized as sensationalized and inaccurate by the members of the band. I haven't read that book, but due to its reputation, I didn't expect much from LZ-75.

As it turns out, LZ-75 isn't really about Led Zeppelin, but more about Davis's experience covering the band's 1975 American tour. He made it sound just a miserable time, and again highlighted the drinking (primarily by John Bonham who, of course, isn't around to defend himself), the groupies, and the difficulties both musical and technical, of the tour. He makes sure to point out that in its early years, Led Zeppelin was routinely discounted and criticized by Rolling Stone Magazine, a publication that Davis worked for during that time. I think it is interesting that Davis couldn't get an assignment from Rolling Stone to cover the 1975 tour after he was told that an assignment with a reputable publication was a requirement for him to have access to the tour, but ended up getting the assignment he needed from The Atlantic Monthly, not a publication known for its rock/pop music coverage. It is even more interesting that the article Davis eventually turned in based on his experiences on the tour was not printed by the magazine. Well, things like that happen in publishing, but one wonders exactly why they declined the article. Davis's excuse is that the "elderly" editor-in-chief of the magazine "hated" his article (p. 194).

LZ-75 was only ever written, according to the author, because he found his long-lost notes from the tour and thought that "there was a story that could be told" (p. 4). But, it seems to me that it is more Davis's story than they story of a band on tour. Which could have been interesting, but ultimately wasn't, especially. The most interesting thing in the book, from my perspective, is Davis's reporting, in a few pages, of a meeting between Jimmy Page and William S. Burroughs, in which the two men discussed, among other things, crowds and the control of them in the context of the live rock and roll show. In these discussions, Page seems most interested in balancing the energies of band and crowd so that things don't get out of hand, while Burroughs seems obsessed with the times when crowds have gotten out of hand, with disastrous results.

Other than that, I can see few reasons to recommend Davis's book. But, it gives me a chance to share some of Led Zeppelin's music. First up is "Kashmir", which is from the album "Physical Graffiti", which was released during the tour chronicled in Davis's book. I find it interesting that, while Davis makes a big deal about the fact that Rolling Stone Magazine was both critical and dismissive of the band in its early years, six of their songs placed on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. "Kashmir" came in at number 141 on the list. This live performance comes from May 24, 1975, at Earls Court in London:



Of course, the Led Zeppelin song to place highest on Rolling Stone's list is "Stairway to Heaven", the most requested song of the 1970s. It placed at number 31 on Rolling Stone's list and in 2000 it placed number 3 on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs. I believe I shared this song a few weeks ago here, but with it's reputation as one of the greatest song ever, I feel comfortable sharing it again, especially since this is a different live version than I shared before, this one being from another of the 1975 Earls Court shows, on May 25, 1975:



"Whole Lotta Love" came in at number 75 on Rolling Stone's list of greatest songs:



The other three songs that made Rolling Stone's list were "Black Dog", at number 300; "Heartbreaker", at number 238; and "Ramble On", at number 440.

And, because I love drum solos, here is John Bonham's "Moby Dick" drum solo from Led Zeppelin's January 9, 1970 show at Royal Albert Hall in London:



Besides the six songs that Led Zeppelin placed in the Rolling Stone list of 500 Greatest Songs, at least three of the band's albums placed on its list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the band itself came in at number 14 on the magazine's list of 100 Greatest Artists, Jimmy Page placed at number 9 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and Robert Plant came in at number 15 on the magazine's list of 100 Greatest Singers.

It seems to me that, in the end, Led Zeppelin won the argument with Rolling Stone about its worth as a band.

Three books in four days...

I haven't done that in awhile. Finish reading three books in four days, that is. You know, ignoring things that need to get done and staying up much later than I should considering the time in the morning the alarm is set to go off, all because the book I'm reading is just too good - or at least too involving - to put down.

Well, that was the case for two out of the three books I finished reading between Saturday and Tuesday just past. The other one got read just because it wasn't that long, was pretty easy reading, and I wanted to get through it to know if I could use some of the information from it to help construct next Sunday's Music Sunday post.

The first book I finished, on Saturday, was Summer of the Dragon (1979, Tor Books; 277 pages), by Elizabeth Peters. It's a romantic mystery from the same writer who has given us the Amelia Peabody mysteries, and while it is slight in many ways, it was a fun read. The story concerns D. J. Abbot, an anthropology student who secures a summer job working for eccentric billionaire Hank Hunnicutt. The main attraction of the job is the fact that Hunnicutt lives in northern Arizona, 600 miles away from her family. It isn't that D. J. doesn't love her family; she does. But they are, well, a bit eccentric themselves, and she would rather not spend the entire summer with them.

Hunnicutt is looking for a summer intern because he has found something in the desert. Although D. J. and her advisor at school suspect that this something probably isn't really anything, since Hunnicutt has a reputation for interests that are not entirely scientific and is known to surround himself with mediums, UFO enthusiasts, treasure hunters, and other fringe types. However, the pay is good and the scenery will be different, so D. J. takes the job. But, when she arrives in Arizona, D. J. finds more than she bargained for. Hunnicutt is being very mysterious about what he has found, most of the hangers-on at Hunnicutt's ranch are positively hostile toward D. J., and mysterious things are happening. But D. J. likes Hunnicutt from the beginning, and finds his right-hand man quite attractive despite his abrasive personality.

Developments move quickly, and soon D. J. is in over her head. It's a fun story. I won't claim that some of the characters are not rather flat and stereotypical, but that didn't hurt my enjoyment of the story overall. As a bonusm the archaeology is accurate; after all the author is an Egyptologist with a doctorate from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Summer of the Dragon, in short, isn't great literature, but it's a quick, fun read. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes a good story trumps great literature.

I'll only mention the book I finished - in fact, read in it's entirety - on Sunday briefly, because it is going to be part of Sunday's music blog post. I'll just say here that it was LZ-75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour (2010, Gotham Books; 217 pages), by Stephen Davis. It was another quick read, but not my favorite book about the music industry, a genre that I enjoy a lot. It isn't a bad book, but it seemed to me it was more about the author's experience on tour with Zeppelin rather than really being about the band or the tour itself. But...more about that in a couple of days.

The third book, which I finished reading on Tuesday, was Bones Are Forever (2012, Scribner; 288 pages), by Kathy Reichs. This book tells another story in the further adventures of Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, upon which the television series Bones is based. There are no similarities between the character in the books and on the TV series other than her name and her occupation, but that's okay. The books are very good, and I enjoy the TV series immensely. I just accept that they are two very different things.

In this, the fifteenth book in the series, Temperance finds herself investigating the deaths of four newborn infants over several years, all apparently born of the same woman. The mother has disappeared, and Brennan and detective Andrew Ryan, with whom Brennan has a past, find themselves searching all over Canada to find her. Starting in Montreal, they follow her trail to Edmonton and then to the far north, to Yellowknife, where, they find, things are not entirely what they seemed when their investigation began.

I hesitate to say any more about the story, for fear of giving away too many spoilers. I will say that Bones are Forever is a good book, well worth the time spent in the reading. Reichs has once again constructed an exciting, engrossing mystery, something she is very good at. The characters are well-drawn. The plot is just convoluted enough to hold the reader's interest without going overboard with twists. For someone like me who has read most if not all of the books in the series, the main characters continue to grow and remain interesting, an unusual and not inconsiderable attraction in series mysteries.

Music Sunday: The Everybody's Got An Opinion Edition

Last week, I shared a few of my own favorite songs. It wasn't a "favorites" list, exactly, because I didn't rank the songs in any order and because there are songs that I like at least as much as some of those I shared that I didn't include. It also wasn't a "best" list, because I don't really believe there is any objective way of deciding what is the "best" in art of any kind.

It seems, however, that everyone has an opinion on what the "best songs" are. Of course, Rolling Stone Magazine has it's "500 Best Songs of All Time" list. And I happened on another "best" list, this time the "100 Greatest Songs Ever" list from a blog called Consequences of Sound, which made its list on the occasion of the 5-year anniversary of its existence. Reviewing the two lists, I found some interesting comparisons among the top ten songs from each list.

There are just two songs that made the top 10 on both lists.

Rolling Stone chose Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" as the greatest song of all time, while Consequences of Sound put Dylan's song in the third slot on its list. This live performance was at Newport:



The other song that made both top 10 lists is Aretha Franklin's "Respect". Rolling Stone puts it at number five, while Consequences of Sound rates it at number eight.



Three other artists made both top ten lists, but with different songs. Consequences of Sound rated the Beach Boys at number one, with "God Only Knows", from their classic album "Pet Sounds", while Rolling Stone placed their "Good Vibrations" at number six.





The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" comes in at number five on the Consequences of Sound list, while The Beatles don't show up until number eight on the Rolling Stone list, with "Hey Jude". You'll want to watch the video for "A Day in the Life" closely for some interesting, and perhaps unexpected, guest appearances.





Rolling Stone Magazine rates "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", by the Rolling Stones, as the number two song of all time in it's greatest list, while the Stones don't show up until number seven on the Consequences of Sound list, with "Sympathy for the Devil".





Otherwise, the two lists have some very different choices. For purposes of comparison, the Rolling Stone Magazine top ten reads, in full:

1. Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"
2. The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
3. John Lennon, "Imagine"
4. Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On"
5. Aretha Franklin, "Respect"
6. The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"
7. Chuck Berry, "Johnny B. Goode"
8. The Beatles, "Hey Jude"
9. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
10.Ray Charles, "What'd I Say"

The Consequences of Sound top ten list reads, in full:

1. The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"
2. Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"
3. Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"
4. Michael Jackson, "Man in the Mirror"
5. The Beatles, "A Day in the Life"
6. The Velvet Underground, "Sister Ray"
7. The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"
8. Aretha Franklin, "Respect"
9. The Notorious B.I.G., "Juicy"
10.Radiohead, "Idioteque"

The biggest different between the two lists, from my point of view, is that I know, well, all the songs on the Rolling Stone list, while there are three songs on the Consequences of Sound list that, to be honest, I had never even heard of before I read that list (those would be "Sister Ray", "Juicy", and "Idioteque"). I should probably go investigate those, to see what I might be missing.

What the two lists point out is that, everybody has an opinion regarding music. No two people have exactly the same taste in music, and that is to the good, I think. What I am wondering is, what is your top ten list of "best" or "favorite" songs? Drop me a comment and let me know. Did any of your favorites make either of these lists? What do you think of these lists? In relation to your favorites, do they match at all, or do these published lists miss the point entirely in comparison to the music you like?

Book Review: "How to Think Like a Neandertal"

As you know if you've read very much of this blog, I am a huge anthropology geek. It's what I studied in school. It's what I've loved since I was seven years old. And so, when a good friend who is currently studying anthropology at Cal recommended How to Think Like a Neandertal (Oxford University Press, 2012; 210 pages), by Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge, I immediately requested it from my local library system.

Wynn and Coolidge, an anthropologist and a neuropsychologist respectively and both professors at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, have been studying the evolution of cognition for several years. Part of the result of their study is this book. It's fascinating stuff, written with enough rigor that it is a text for the course on Neandertal cognition that my friend is taking at Cal, but it is also accessible to the layperson. No, not just accessible. It is a well-written, informed, and witty look at how Neandertals might have lived and thought during their time on Earth, from around 200,000 (or a little earlier, depending on which expert you consult) years ago to about 30,000 years ago, when the last of their kind died, probably somewhere on the Iberian peninsula, where they had been pushed by the dominant anatomically modern humans who had arrived late in their history, from the Neandertals former range across much of Europe and western Asia.

The authors cover the expected ground: how Neandertals lived and hunted, including what their tools and weapons reveal about what kind of thought processes they might have used. And really, what the Neandertals left behind in the form of campsites, food remains, tools, and weapons, plus their own remains, are all researchers like Wynn and Coolidge have to go on to figure out how the Neandertal mind worked. Thoughts themselves, after all, do not fossilize. Wynn and Coolidge speculate on what kind of family life the Neandertals had, and point out that it is clear from the remains of some Neandertal individuals that they helped out their fellows who were injured or ill, at least in some cases. However, the authors also show that evidence earlier interpreted as proof that Neandertals buried their dead with religious ceremony and therefore had a concept of an afterlife really only shows that they took some minimal care of their dead but then probably later pushed the bones aside in a manner that was no more caring than their treatment of the bones of the animals they killed for food. And, in fact, they share evidence that at least some Neanderdertals practiced cannibalism at least some of the time.

Aside from matters of survival, Wynn and Coolidge also explore such topics as whether or not Neandertals had language, concluding that the Neandertals probably did have language, at least to some extent. They also explore what Neandertals' personalities were like, explaining their belief that Neandertals were probably stoic, pragmatic, unimaginative for the most part, empathetic and sympathetic to the extent that their pragmatism would let them be, but likely intolerant of change, not welcoming of those outside their local group, and dogmatic. The authors also take up the subject of whether Neandertals slept and dreamed as we do and what that says about their capacity for memory and ability to learn. The Neandertals probably did have REM sleep, but their dreams were probably not as creative as those of modern humans, and they probably did not have as much working memory capacity as we do. They also ask the question, could a Neandertal tell a joke or clown around? The conclusion Wynn and Coolidge come to is that the Neandertals could smile and laugh, as we do and as chimpanzees do, but they probably could not tell a joke, although they do say that there might have been some Neandertals who would clown around to elicit laughs from other Neandertals.

The authors also analyze what it would be like for a Neandertal to live among modern humans today, and what it would be like if a modern human could time-travel back to the time of the Neandertals. They conclude that adults of either species would not deal well living out of their time and with those not of their species. However, they also say that a baby Neandertal raised by modern humans or a modern human raised among Neandertals would likely be able to function in a society not naturally theirs, although not in all roles and not as well as natives to the society. They also say that a Neadertal raised in modern times would probably fit in somewhat better than a modern human raised by Neandertals.

This is a good book. It is not dry and dusty prose even though the science here appears accurate and rigorous. It is obvious that Wynn and Coolidge enjoy their subject, which they write about with humor and vitality. Just a glance at the chapter titles will tell you that - the chapter on humor is titled "A Neandertal Walked Into a Bar...". There is even a reference to time travel and Doctor Who in the chapter on how Neandertals would fare in modern times and we in theirs, with the authors providing a definition for "Doctor Who" in the glossary for their readers who are not Whovians.

More science writing should be like How to Think Like a Neandertal, and just for that it deserves to be read widely.

Music Monday (this week only): The Some of My Favorites, Plus Video Discoveries Edition

So, Sunday was a little busy for me this week. I had something all planned for Music Sunday, a little celebration of Bruce Springsteen's birthday. That's a little redundant now, since his birthday has passed, but in a slightly tardy recognition of the day, here is "Born to Run", which will probably always be my favorite Springsteen song.



Something I've tried to avoid here most of the time is simply inflicting my own favorite songs on you. However, if you're a music lover of any kind, you will know that there are days when you just want to hear what you want to hear. This is that kind of day for me. Despite the fact that autumn is here in the Northern Hemisphere, the high temperatures are still in the 90s F, which displeases me a great deal. Additionally, my job search isn't going well, my allergies are still in full rage, and I'm in a generally cranky mood. So, today I've been in search of my favorite music.

First of all, not because it is my absolute favorite song in the world but because I think it is apropos of the current political, economic, and social climate, and because it is a brilliantly written song, here is John Lennon's "Working Class Hero". It is certainly, in all its rawness, my favorite Lennon song.



Perhaps my favorite song of all, if I had to name one, is this one, "Desperado", by The Eagles. As sad a song as it is, I love it's call to the loners and the lonely to let someone in, to let themselves be loved, and it's recognition that it is probably much more difficult to be loved than to love.



Gordon Lightfoot is one of my favorite singers and songwriters, and this is not only the first song of his I ever heard, but my favorite among many favorites of his work, "Don Quixote":



While I was looking for that song, I happened on this video, that I've never seen before and did not know existed, a 1969 duet of Lightfoot's song "For Lovin' Me", performed with Johnny Cash. The quality of the sound and video aren't wonderful, but the song and the performance both are:



Going from favorite songs to favorite bands, I had to include something from U2. The problem here is that there is no way I could begin to pick out a "favorite" U2 song. While I was looking, however, I stumbled on something else I didn't know existed, a video for the song "Electrical Storm", a collaboration between the band and Anton Corbjin. Corbjin's filmmaking is often surreal, and so is this. But, it is so striking that I could just could not stop watching:



But, although I can't choose one U2 song as a favorite, one of the songs on that list has to be "One". There are at least three "official" videos for "One". This is by far my favorite and, I think, the most remarkable of the three:



And with that, I'll close this Monday Edition of Music Sunday. I hope to be back to the regular schedule next week.

Autumn is here...and a short review of the history of September 22

It's the first day of autumn. Or, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, the first day of spring.

So, of course, there are reports of snow in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. According to Weather.com, this snow, which is enough to stick in some places, is about a month earlier than its usual first appearance, based on long-term averages. On the other hand, it's sill in the 80s and 90s in the southern tier of states, and the predicted high in Phoenix, Arizona for today was 107 degrees Fahrenheit, with 101 degrees predicted a bit farther south, in Tuscon.

Here in my neck of the woods, it was predicted to hit 99 F today, but I don't think it managed to get quite that hot. I wouldn't know. I was only out briefly during the day, well before the hottest part of the day.

Anyway, with it being the autumnal equinox and all, I thought it would be a good day to see what happened on this day in history. So, I wandered over to Wikipedia (which isn't that bad a place, as long as you aren't using it as a source for academic papers, you fact-check what you find there, and you realize that their philosophy is that anything that has been published is an authoritative source) to see what they had to say about what has happened on September 22 through history.

First of all, I found, it is the 266th day of the year; it would have been the 265th day, but this year was a leap year. There are 100 days left in the year. Just what I needed to be reminded of - that Christmas is right around the corner.

There is quite a list of events that happened on this day. A few stood out. On this day in 1692, the last hangings for witchcraft in what is now the United States took place, which serves as a good reminder that religious extremism isn't anything new. But, it does beg the question of why, all these years later, so many people still go to extremes in their religion.

Those are not the only historically notable hangings that happened a September 22: in 1776, on this day, Nathan Hale was hanged as a spy during the American Revolution. General George Washington had asked for volunteers to go behind enemy lines to try to find out where the British were planning on landing in their invasion of Manhattan Island. Hale was the only volunteer. He was captured by the British and hanged at the age of 21. Hale is now the official State Hero of Connecticut, his home state.

There are also other religious events that happened on September 22. In 1823 (or 1822, depending on the source), Joseph Smith said he found the Golden Plates that he claimed to have used to translate the Book of Mormon. There are a few versions of the story, but the general account is that it was on September 22 in one of those two years that he first found the plates, guided by a vision from an angel who said his name was Moroni. Although Smith did not get the plates when he first found them - he said that the angel prevented him from doing so - several years later, in 1827, also on September 22, he was allowed to take the plates and commence his work with them. After he was finished with the translations, so the story goes, the plates were taken from him. So, you know, no physical evidence of them exists. Additionally, there are also several versions of the story of how he translated them to get the Book of Mormon. Honestly, trying to pin down what really happened in Mormon history is like trying to...well, like trying to pin down what position Mitt Romney really holds on an issue.

Maybe we should ask Mitt about the plates. He's Mormon, after all. He served a mission for his church. He might like to get his mind off his campaign for president, seeing how it hasn't been going that well for him lately.

Not related to either hangings or religion, so far as I know, this is the day in 1888 that the first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published. National Geographic has come in for its share of criticism from time to time in the years since that first issue, and not just for its role as young boys' go-to publication for seeing photos of topless women before Playboy got its start. Personally, though, I like National Geographic. It has fed my inner archaeology and anthropology geek since I was very young.

On September 22 in 1896, Queen Victoria surpassed her grandfather, George III (who, of course, was the monarch that the American colonists rebelled against), as the longest reigning monarch in British history. George III reigned for 59 years and 96 days, while Victoria eventually reigned for 63 years and 7 months and remains the longest reigning British monarch and the longest reigning female monarch in history. Queen Elizabeth II is gaining on her, though; Elizabeth has been on the throne for 60 years and a bit over 7 months as of this writing.

Speaking of queens, as we have been - September 22 is the birthday of Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Oh, they weren't married for long - just a bit over 7 months - before Henry had the marriage annulled, and she was never officially crowned as Queen Consort. Which makes sense, as it is difficult to be a consort when the marriage was never consummated. But, by virtue of being married to Henry, she was the Queen in practical terms for that time. And in many ways, Anne was the luckiest of Henry's wives. She never had to sleep with him, which had proved dangerous for his earlier queens. He divorced Catherine of Aragon because she couldn't give him a son. He had Anne Boleyn beheaded, supposedly for high treason, although it had a lot to do that she bore him only a daughter and then miscarried a disputed number of times, including the miscarriage of a son. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died of complications of childbirth less than two weeks after giving birth to Henry's son, Edward. Once Henry decided that Anne of Cleves wasn't really a suitable wife for him, he asked her for the annulment, which she wisely consented to. He gave her a substantial settlement, invited her to court often, and was referred to afterward as "the King's beloved sister". Anne outlived Henry's two latter wives, Catherine Howard, who was beheaded for not having disclosed her previous sexual history to the king in a timely manner, which Parliament arranged to have called treason, and Catherine Parr, who survived Henry.

So, all in all, a fairly interesting day in history. At least for us history geeks.

I Miss You, Daddy, Happy Birthday

It is September 17. Today would have been my father's 90th birthday.

Difficult as it is to believe, Daddy has been gone for thirty-five years. I still miss him. He was my fishing buddy, my movie buddy, my science fiction enabler. He was the one who taught me the love of books and that everything - and I mean everything - is interesting, one way or another.

He was also the most intelligent person I've ever known. He only had a high-school education, but that didn't stop him from reading everything. If there wasn't another book around, he'd go off and pick out a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica and read that. He and my mom bought me that set of encyclopedias when I was in the eighth grade, from a vendor at the Ventura County Fair. But I suspect that I was only an excuse so that he could buy them for himself. The books, and the bookcase that came with them, lived in my room, but he helped himself to a volume on a regular basis. All that reading, in encyclopedias and elsewhere, must have paid off. I have witnessed him more than holding his own in conversations with people with vastly more formal education than he ever had the opportunity to get.

I think I've probably written here before about how Daddy was always arranging educational experiences for me. When I was five and we went to the drive-in one summer night, he arranged for me to get a tour of the projection room so that I could see exactly how the movies got onto the screen. We made regular trips to places like Griffith Park, to the observatory and planetarium, to the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and to the county art museum. He gave me books to read.

Actually, before he gave me books to read, he gave me reading. You see, when I was very young, Daddy made sure he told me a bedtime story every night. Except, I kind of got stuck on one, and started insisting that he tell me the story of "Rumpelstiltskin" every single night. It didn't take that long for him to get bored, telling the same tale night after night after night. So, he started improvising. He'd change the story around and add bits, trying to make it more interesting for himself. Except that I knew how the story should go, and I'd insist that the tell it "the right way". Finally he got tired of that, and told me, one night, that if I ever wanted to hear that story again, I was going to have to learn to read it to myself. Which is how I ended up reading by the age of three.

By the time I was about seven or eight, he had started giving me science fiction novels to read. I had tested out as reading on an adult level when I was seven, at least partly thanks to the availability of a bookshelf full of Readers' Digest Condensed Books that my mother received, volume by volume, every three months but never really read. So, when he started handing me Bradbury and Clarke and Heinlein to read, I was ready. He'd already primed me by introducing me to science fiction films much earlier. But he also encouraged me to read other things, especially non-fiction.

He didn't just give me books to read and leave it at that. We discussed what I read. When I said I thought something was boring, he would tell me why it wasn't. His mission wasn't a complete success - there are still things that don't interest me that much - but he did succeed in instilling in me an appreciation for the whole world around me.

He also made sure I grew up knowing that all people are valuable. He had friends and acquaintances in many different ethnic groups, and he taught me that it is important to judge people by who they are, not what color their skin is or where their ancestors came from before Dr. King ever gave his speech to that effect. He had no tolerance for prejudice and made it clear that he expected me to follow his lead in that respect.

On the other hand, from the time I was able to do so, Daddy respected my right to disagree with him about things, including politics. I knew so many kids when I was growing up who were expected to parrot their parents' beliefs and who were punished when they did not. But Daddy always said that as long as I could defend my position on something intelligently, it was all right for me to hold that position. It's possible that this only worked because we agreed on most things. On the other hand, we argued about a few things on an ongoing basis. One of the things we argued most often about was the necessity for the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II - he believed it had been necessary and I do not - but even in those arguments, he didn't try to use his parental status to shut down my arguments, even though the subject was a lot more personal to him that it ever could possibly have been for me.

You see, Daddy spent two years as a prisoner of war in Europe during World War II. Or, as he sometimes called it, his time as "a guest of the Germans". He was a radio operator on a bomber operating out of North Africa and one day his plane was shot down over Italy. Parachutes being what they were then, he landed in a walnut tree (perhaps fitting, since that's what the family had on their land at home in California). He was taken prisoner and shipped off to Stalag 17 (yes, the one the movie was about), in Austria. He never talked about the bad stuff, only the things he found amusing. Things like the time he was shot in the leg by a guard during a baseball game. Forgetting momentarily where he was, he started over the fence to retrieve a ball that had been hit too hard. I suppose it was understandable why the guard shot first and asked questions later, since people were always trying to escape. I'm not completely sure why Daddy thought that getting shot was funny, but he laughed every time he told that story. I don't know if that was the wound that earned him his Purple Heart, but I kind of hope it was.

I suspect that his time as a prisoner of war is what made Daddy as laid back about most things as he was. Oh, things would get to him and he'd get angry once in awhile, but mostly he just sort of went with the flow. One of the things he didn't talk much about was the end of the war, when the Germans marched most of the thousands of POWs in the camp clear across Austria, trying to get away from the Russians, who were on their way. He mentioned that it had happened, but it wasn't until I did some research a few years ago that I discovered that the march was clear across the country and that when prisoners couldn't keep up, the guards just shot them and left them to die. It seems to me that an experience like that, once survived, could tend to lead to the feeling that most of the frustrations of everyday life weren't really much to worry about in comparison to that life-or-death situation. I suspect, also, that the experience had a lot to do with Daddy's unwillingness to have firearms around. He'd probably had more than enough of guns by the time his POW experience was over.

Even without the guns, being in a German POW camp had to have been an iffy situation for Daddy. After all, he had been born in Germany. Although his family came to California when he was just two and a half years old and he didn't speak German, he understood it quite well. He always talked about how it had been very, very important that the guards and other camp officials not discover that he could understand what they were saying when the spoke German. It could have, he said, been very, very bad for him if they had known.

That experience probably led to another of the important things that Daddy shared with me, although he also got a healthy dose of it from his father. Daddy always instilled in me the belief that it is important to always question authority. He made sure that I knew the difference between questioning authority and flouting it, explaining that challenging authority was not about just ignoring it for the hell of it and doing what you wanted to do instead. But his belief that it is not healthy to just do what you are told because someone in authority told you to do it probably also came, at least to some extent, from having lived under the authoritarian Nazis during his time as a POW. He taught me that it is always important to find out why someone in authority wants you to do something, and then evaluate whether that thing is in your best interests, or simply in the best interests of the authority who wants you to do that thing. This went double, he always said, if the person is a politician. He didn't like politicians much.

So, yes. It's been thirty-five years, and I still miss my father. I am the person I am because of him, because of the time he took to teach me thing things he did...that everything is interesting. That you have to be able to support your opinions logically. That other people don't always have your best interests in mind. Also, that fishing is fun even if you don't catch any fish. That everyone matters, not just the rich or the famous or the powerful. That it's easier to be kind than to be rude. That history matters. That science is a good thing. And, oh, so much more.

Music Sunday: The Lots of Love Songs, Dysfunctional Categories, Edition

Sometimes it is difficult to find a theme for these Music Sunday posts. Last week, for example, I went for the birthday theme because I really couldn't come up with anything else. This will probably happen again in the future. Some days it's just harder to feel the music than others. But sometimes the theme of the week comes easily, and from some seemingly unlikely places.

This week, for example. This week's theme came to me while I was reading a book.

This isn't really unusual in itself. I read a lot (if you're a regular around here, you know that about me already), so it figures that at least sometimes I will get ideas for this blog, both generally and in regards to Music Sunday, from things I'm reading. It seems a little more unlikely, however, that I would get an idea for a Music Sunday blog post while reading a book written by an anthropologist and a neuropsychologist...a book that is titled How to Think Like a Neandertal(by Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge [2012, Oxford University Press; 210 pages]).

Yet, this is exactly where I found today's theme, love songs. In the chapter that discusses the idea of whether or not Neandertals had a concept of marriage, and whether their style of pair-bonding was similar to that of modern humans, the authors pointed out that there are only two primates (and, yes, we are primates) that always pair-bond for life and are thus truly monogamous. Modern humans are not one of those two species; that very short list consists of gibbons and siamangs (p. 82).

That got me thinking - a dangerous thing, as I note here from time to time. What it got me thinking was that the fact that because humans do not naturally pair-bond for life, but most often rely - at least in Western culture - on things like romantic love to hold relationships together, we have developed a wide range of love-song types.

Love songs, of course, are not the only kind of songs we have. But, in truth, they probably make up the vast majority of songs in Western popular music. So, I thought that on this Music Sunday it would be nice to look at some of the variety of forms of love songs.

Or, maybe, not so nice, as in the case of the obsessive love song. This type of song is, I think, exemplified by "The Spy", by The Doors:



A more recent example of the obsessive love song - you might also call them stalker songs, really - comes from The Police, in the form of "Every Breath You Take", here in a live performance in Madrid from 2008:



And there is the "I love you but you don't love me and I'm so sad" song. There are a lot of these around, but the one that always comes to my mind first is "I Honestly Love You", by Olivia Newton-John, released in 1974. I'm not sure when this performance, taped at the Sydney Opera House, took place:



A sub-category of this kind of love song is the "I love you and I need to tell you, but will I ever get the chance?" song, exemplified by Heart's "Alone":



Lest you get the idea that this is a category of song that only women sing, here is an example of another sub-category, the "I love you but I can't tell you because you belong to someone else" love song, this time sung by a male to a woman with an engagement/wedding ring on her finger. This is "Midnight Confessions", from 1968, by the Grass Roots, which got to number five on the Billboard Hot 100:



Apropos of absolutely nothing, "Midnight Confessions" was my favorite song when I was in the eighth grade.

Another category of love song, the "I love you but you're so far away, please be true to me because I'm being true to you", is illustrated by Journey's "Faithfully", which could also be put in the category of the "it's so hard being in love with a working musician" love song:



There is another permutation of the "musician on the road" love song, the cautionary "beware of musicians that tell you that they love you, because they're probably lying" song, here illustrated by R.E.M.'s "The One I Love", which starts out with "This one goes out to the one I love" but then confesses that the object of the singer's love is just "a simple prop to occupy my time", followed by the later admission that "another prop has occupied my time". Yeah, life on the road can be hard, and not just for the traveling musician, but also for all the ones he (or, presumably, she) has left behind. No real pair-bonding going on here:



Another category of love song is the "I don't love you anymore, please let me go" song. My favorite example of this sort of song is "If You Could Read My Mind", by Gordon Lightfoot. Here, he doesn't blame his former love, and he isn't even really glad that he doesn't love her anymore. He doesn't really understand why, but "the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back". Yeah, love songs can be really depressing sometimes:



And then there is "Sometimes When We Touch" by Dan Hill, originally released as a single in 1978. This song has made many "worst songs" list. On the other hand, I've also heard it called "the ultimate love song." Well, I suppose that depends on one's attitude toward love and taste in music. It definitely fits here, however, as perhaps be best example in the category of the "I love you, but this whole love thing is really, really complicated and I'm so confused right now" love song:



Maybe one of these Sundays I'll share some happy "Silly Love Songs" (and maybe even that Paul McCartney and Wings song, which isn't really one of my favorites, honestly). But not today, because this post has already gotten long and out of hand, even though I could have probably come up with as many more categories of love song as I've shared here today.

Oh, and just a word of apology for the videos I've shared that have ads at the front of them. When I haven't been able to find those with no ads attached, I've tried to find those with either the shortest ads, or ads that can be skipped after a few seconds.

Music Sunday: Musical Birthdays Edition

Having celebrated my own birthday recently, I've got birthdays on the brain I guess. So, after seeing a post on one of my favorite forums mentioning that today was Otis Redding's birthday, I decided to see who else in the music world has birthdays this weekend. Several, as it turns out.

First of all, there is the late, great Patsy Cline, who was born on September 8, 1932. Primarily a country singer, Cline's music transcends all genre boundaries. One of her best known recordings is of Willie Nelson's "Crazy", here in a performance from 1962:



Another favorite from Cline was "I Fall to Pieces". This performance is from just out 10 days before she died in a plane crash in 1963:



Otis Redding, who was born on September 9, 1941, also ended his life in a plane crash, before, before "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" could even be released. In fact, he recorded it just a couple of weeks before his death in 1967 and added overdubs just a day or two before the crash, and the song was not released until January 1968:



Before this turns into the "Singers Who Died in Plane Crashes" edition of Music Sunday, I think we should move on.

Yesterday was also Pink's birthday. Pink was born Alecia Beth Moore in 1979, and has had a string of hit records. My favorite of all the songs she's released is this one, "Stupid Girl", which asks a question that is probably one of the most important questions we can ask in today's celebrity-mad/paparazzi-fed culture: "Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?" With it's parody, both in lyrics and in the video for the song, she makes the point that fitting in with the dominant pop culture is not the only path for girls, or for anyone else, today:



And then there was "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The fact that today is Doug Ingle's birthday is basically just an excuse to share this song, the title of which is said to be a slightly mangled version of the phrase "In The Garden Of Eden". I loved when it came out in 1968, when I was 11 years old, and which I still love in all it's 1960s-psychedelia-laced excess today. Ingle was the organ player and vocalist and one of the founding members of Iron Butterfly, although he left the band in 1971. The song took up the entire second side of the album, and was longer than just about anything rock'n'roll fans had heard up until then:



I want to give a hat-tip to Nina809 over at Ravelry, for posting "Dock of the Bay" over there and giving me the idea for today's edition of Music Sunday.

I finally finished reading a book...

I finally finished reading a book.

This was a big problem, apparently, in August. Didn't finish reading one book all month. Started a few. Rejected a few. A couple had to go back to the library, even though I wanted to finish them. I had other things to do. It was kind of a weird month.

But...then came Shadow of Night (2012, Viking; 584 pages), by Deborah Harkness.

I'd been waiting for this book to come out for awhile...ever since I read the first book in the trilogy, A Discovery of Witches. It was one of those books that I powered through because it was so good. Then, I got to the end and...cliffhanger. It didn't take me very long to find out when the sequel was scheduled to be published. Fortunately, it was only a few months. Because, you know, I wanted to know what happened next to Diana and Matthew. When we left them at the end of the first book, they had just dropped from the present day into Elizabethan London.

Shadow of Night picks up right where A Discovery of Witches leaves off, and follows Diana, a reluctant witch, and Matthew, a vampire, who have fallen in love and married, as they return to his ancestral home in France, go back to England, visit Prague and the lecherous Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, who wants to possess Diana, and then back to London, all in search of the alchemical text that Diana discovered in the Bodleian Library at Oxford before it disappeared back into the stacks, and which it seems the whole world of creatures - witches, vampires, and daemons - want to get their hands on. Danger and intrigue seem to follow the couple wherever they go.

I really don't want to say any more about what happens as the plot unfolds; suffice it to say that a lot happens, and if you read it you will laugh, you will cry, and you will not want the story to end. Or, anyway, those were my reactions as I read. And I will warn you - there is no word yet on when the third book in the trilogy will be forthcoming. But if you are a fan of historical fiction, or of historical romance, don't put off reading the first two books in the trilogy. They really are a treat, romance for those who don't usually read romance novels (that would be me), with history that has been researched by an expert - Ms. Harkness is a professor of history at the University of Southern California.

Really. Go read Shadow of Night and, if you haven't already, A Discovery of Witches. The writing is wonderful, the story involving, and the cast of characters - a few of which you will recognize from history - fascinating.

Music Sunday: The Day Late and a Dollar Short Edition

Yes, I know. It's Monday, not Sunday. But, it's a holiday here in the US, Labor Day, and it's been a busy weekend. And so real life, as it does sometimes, got in the way of Music Sunday. But I didn't want to completely miss my music post for the week, and so here I am, taking a break from working on the novel I'm writing, to share a couple of very long songs with you.

First, since this week is going to be very short on the history of the songs I'm posting, I thought I'd leave you this little history of the first decades of rock and roll, by Don McLean, "American Pie", from 1972. You can look up the interpretations people have made of the lyrics here, but rest assured, Buddy Holly is here, and Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and the Stones, and a few others:



And then, there is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven". I think this version is from "The Song Remains The Same". Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Robert Plant might have sung this song a few too many times by this point; he seems a little bored to me through parts of the performance. But no matter, it's still a great song:



I was thinking about also including "Alice's Restaurant", by Arlo Guthrie. But then I decided that it is much more appropriate for Thanksgiving. You'll probably see it here around about then.

But, since today is a holiday, I'm going to go off and do holiday things now. Music Sunday should be back on its regular day next week.

Music Sunday: Moon Song Edition, in memory of Neil Armstrong

Today's Music Sunday is a little different, although not lacking in music.

As you've probably heard by now, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died yesterday. The word hero gets bandied about a lot these days, but as far as I'm concerned Armstrong is one man who really deserves that title. He landed the Lunar Module Eagle on the moon, flying it manually after the computer program that was designed to guide the landing turned out to be trying to put the lander down in a place where too many rocks made a landing dangerous. Of course, being a pilot, I suspect Armstrong was not all that disappointed or upset that he actually had to fly the lander, rather than having the computer do it for him. Just having the guts to go to the moon, much less the cool to take over like that and make a successful landing in such stressful circumstances, qualifies him for the title of "hero".

I think it is notable that after his return from the moon, Armstrong simply went about the rest of his life and didn't make a career out of having been the first human to walk on another planetary body. He could have ridden the adulation that came his way as a result of his accomplishment for as long as he wanted to. Instead, he came back and taught, sat on some corporate boards, participated in the spaceflight accident investigations after Apollo 13 failed to make its scheduled moon landing and after the Challenger disaster, and generally led his life. In the US culture of hero worship and celebrity adulation, I think it took a great deal of character not to fall into the trap of living the rest of his life off the fame he gained from being the first man on the moon.

Because it became a tradition at NASA to play musical wake-up calls for the astronauts on missions, I was going to share the wake-up music from the Apollo 11 mission as a tribute to Armstrong. However, it turns out that the wake-up calls on that mission consisted of news and sports reports rather than music, so instead, I'm going to share a few "moon" songs.

"Fly Me To The Moon", by Frank Sinatra, seemed a natural place to start. Two Apollo missions had flown to and orbited the moon before Apollo 11 made the first landing. But the Apollo 11 crew was the first to fly to the moon, rather than just to the vicinity of the moon.



And then, I thought it seemed appropriate to share Louis Armstrong's version of "Moon River":



The Police's "Walking on the Moon" also seemed like a natural song to share here, even though it isn't really all that much about walking on the actual moon:



The moon, of course, plays a role in a lot of songs. "June, spoon, moon" is sort of the classically stereotypical love-song formula, and has nothing to do with moon landings, of course. But I couldn't resist sharing a few more "moon" songs. Many of these songs are romantic in nature, of course. One of my favorites is "Moondance", by Van Morrison:



Cat Stevens's (Yusuf Islam) "Moonshadow" is a song I've liked ever since it first came out. At first listen, it seems awfully depressing, with lyrics about losing, well, just about everything. But then, when you listen to it more closely, it really is about looking on the positive side of every situation, no matter how dire. That is a difficult thing to do, but something I think more of us should try more often. This live performance is from 1976:



Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street" is another favorite of mine. This performance, from 2010, includes a symphony orchestra and is perhaps a little over-produced for my taste, but it's a good live interpretation of a very good song:



Not all songs about the moon are romantic (in whatever way you want to interpret that concept) or hopeful. "Bad Moon Rising", by Creedence Clearwater Revival, takes the opposite tack of exploring the theme of the moon as an ominous omen:



Neil Armstrong's family has requested that those who want to do something in remembrance of him do a very simple thing. On a clear night sometime soon, go outside look up at the Moon, think of Mr. Armstrong, and give him and the moon a wink. I can't think of a more appropriate way to remember a man who lived an ordinary life after doing such an extraordinary thing as being the first human to walk on another world.

Music Sunday: The Protest Something Edition

Since summer is almost over and since this is an election year, with the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions coming up soon, and especially with the rhetoric from both sides of the political divide heating up to unprecedented proportions, I thought this would be the perfect time to share a slightly different genre of music - the protest song.

I suppose people of my generation think first of the protest music of the 1960s when the topic of protest songs comes up, but protest songs have been around for a lot longer than that. Just in the United States, protest music has a long history that goes back to the Revolutionary War, while the genre exploded during the Civil War. Since I have limited space here, however, I'll limit myself to songs from the 20th century and forward. And even with that limitation, there won't be room to share more than a few of the many songs protesting many things.

First, from the 1930s, there is "Strange Fruit", made popular by Billie Holiday. The lyrics for the song came from a poem published in 1936 by Abel Meeropol, who also sometimes wrote as Lewis Allen, that protested the lynchings then occurring with disturbing regularity:



In 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land is Your Land" as an answer to "God Bless America" and in protest of the way the working people of the United States were treated by the capitalist owners of big business in a country and at a time when th captains of industry were revered and worshiped. It was read then as socialist in sentiment, and it was. Later it was reinterpreted (and maybe tamed) by those who chose to take the song as more environmental in nature. But, it is difficult to mistake the meaning of the man who carried a guitar that had the message "This machine kills Fascists" glued to its body. This version does not include all the lyrics to the song, but is the only one I could find that would work:



Even if "This Land is Your Land" isn't one of them, there have been many songs directed at protesting what has happened to the Earth's environment. One of the best of those songs, at least in my opinion, was Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)", recorded in 1971:



In the sixties and seventies, however, most protest songs centered on war, particularly the war in Vietnam. Some of these songs came from unexpected places. For example, the song "Unknown Soldier", by The Doors. This is a live performance of the song, at the Hollywood Bowl:



Other songs protesting Vietnam in particular and war in general, were not so unexpected. John Lennon and Yoko Ono and a few of their friends recorded "Give Peace A Chance in a hotel room in Montreal on June 1, 1969:



Some songs, on the other hand, protest the protest. As Bono has said of U2's song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, "This is not a rebel song". That is reiterated, and reiterated very graphically, specifically and emphatically, in the middle of this performance, a live version of the song from the movie "Rattle and Hum":



And then there is probably the ultimate "protest-the-protest" song, Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee", from 1969 and released just a few months after "Give Peace A Chance". There has been some opinion that the song was a satire, but being half-Okie myself, I see it as a heartfelt statement of the feelings of many people at the time, who were genuinely confused and upset by what they saw going on around them. And there's nothing wrong with that - protest songs can protest whatever the writers of the songs want them to protest:

Music Sunday: Summer Edition

It's summertime in the Northern Hemisphere. With a vengeance, at least here. It was 110 degrees F here yesterday and it is forecast to be 109 F today. That's just too hot as far as I'm concerned.

But, the heat and the crappy air, the winding down of the Summer Olympics, and the fact that here in my community summer vacation is ending for all the kids (and adults) who will be going back to school in the next couple of weeks, all have me thinking about "summer" songs. And there are a lot of them. But, because there are so many of them, I decided, for the purposes of this blog post, to stick with songs that actually have the words "summer" or "summertime" in the title.

First up, this is "Summer in the City", by The Lovin' Spoonful, from 1966, with a lead vocal (and bonus mid-60s sideburns) from John Sebastian. Sidewalks "hotter than a match-head" indeed, or at least it felt like that when I was outside yesterday:



"Summertime Blues" was first recorded by Eddie Cochran in 1958, but arguably the best-known cover of the song is by The Who, although it has been recorded by artists as diverse as Blue Cheer, The Beach Boys, Alan Jackson, and Olivia Newton-John. This is a live performance by The Who, at the Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967:



And then there's "Summertime". This song, which originated as an aria in "Porgy & Bess", by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward in 1935, is one of the most covered songs in recording history, with one source claiming that there are over 33,000 covers of the song in existence. Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that I can't decide which of my two favorite covers of the song to post here, so I'm going to post both of them. First is Billie Holiday's cover:



I also love Janis Joplin's cover of "Summertime", here from a live performance in Stockholm in 1969:



I hope it isn't as hot where you are as it is here. If it is, try to stay cool. If it isn't, just know how jealous I am that you're there and I'm here.

Some posts were just not meant to be...

I truly believe that a person should know when to just give up. This is one of those times.

I wrote a lovely post about a list of most popular YA novels that was assembled by National Public Radio after voting by over 75,000 readers. Within that post, I linked to both the final list of 100 books and series and the list of 235 finalists that readers were then invited to vote on.

In an attempt to get the links to work after they didn't do so initially, I managed to make the whole blog post disappear.

It's been a long day. The post is staying disappeared, at least for the time being. So, if you saw it in the few minutes it was up before I discovered that the links didn't work, that's what happened to it.

These things happen.

With any luck the next post I put up will behave itself better than that one did.

A little Curiosity is a good thing...

I love science.

I especially love the whole idea of exploring space. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise. I grew up listening to test firings of the rocket engines that took US astronauts into space and, ultimately, to the moon. This fascination with space exploration has not faded, and so I watched coverage of the landing of Mars rover Curiosity last night.

Watching on television was not an option, since none of the cable news or broadcast networks bothered to cover the event live. Fortunately, NASA provided live streaming from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, where the project to put Curiosity on Mars is headquartered. I had that coverage open in one tab on my laptop, so I could watch along with some of my fellow science geeks/knitters on Ravelry, open in another tab. I also had a third tab open, where I skipped back and forth between Facebook and Twitter. It was like going to four parties simultaneously.

See why I love science? Not to mention the technology it enables.

As I sat and watched, I was reminded of when I spent an afternoon in 1969 watching TV coverage of the first manned moon landing. I was twelve years old then, and watched the landing with my father. I missed him a lot last night, watching Curiosity's landing. He would have loved it. He would probably have said, as he did in 1976 when Viking 1 landed on Mars to send back the first color photos of the surface of the planet, that it would be absolutely hilarious if a little green guy turned up making faces at the camera in the first pictures back. He took his space travel seriously, but he also had a sense of humor about it.

Of course, there was more at stake when Eagle landed on the Moon. There were two men inside the lunar module, and if something had gone wrong.... Well, it would have been a Very Bad Thing.

But, a lot could have gone wrong with the landing of Curiosity, as well, and while there were no human lives at stake, a lot of effort by a lot of people would have been lost if the landing hadn't gone as planned. The whole landing apparatus was new. The parachute could have failed. The landing engines could have misfired or not fired at all. The sky crane that lowered Curiosity to the surface could probably have malfunctioned in several different ways.

Even if everything went right with the landing, the word was that because of the uncertainties of communications due to the time and location of touchdown, it might not be clear for up to two or three days if the landing had been successful. As it was, the length of time that it takes signals to travel from Mars back to Earth meant that Curiosity would be on the ground for close to fifteen minutes before anyone on Earth would be able to know for sure that it had arrived safely.

Watching the live stream from JPL, it was clear that there was a lot of breath-holding in the control room in the minutes before touchdown. Then, as the signals began to return, tracking the descent of the craft, there were small, tentative bursts of applause at certain milestones. Signals were handed off, then continued to come in. The parachute had deployed. The landing engines had kicked in. The craft was slowing as it should. The sky-crane was lowering the car-sized Curiosity to the surface.

And then, "Touchdown confirmed."

That was the announcement that set off pandemonium, cheers, high-fives, and tears of joy and relief in the control room. Someone had to shout pretty loudly to get the team members to pay attention: "Heads up, folks!" And then, shortly after that, "We've got thumbnails. Keep watching the screen."

And, indeed, there were thumbnails. Pictures. Curiosity had only been on the surface of Mars for a few minutes, but it was already sending back photos, taken through a clear dust cover that had not yet been jettisoned. The horizon was visible. So was a wheel of the rover, and the rover's shadow on the ground in the late afternoon sunshine. You could even see bits of dust thrown up by the landing rockets that had lodged on the dust cover.

It was amazing.

It was also more proof, as were those first photos sen back from Viking 1, in 1976, that Mars - like the Earth and the Moon - is a place. A place with dirt and dust and rocks and hills. It isn't just a slightly reddish dot of light in the night sky.

It is a place we can go, if we just decide to do it.

Oh, it won't be easy. And it will be dangerous, especially for the first people to go. Like the Moon, people would not be able to go out for a stroll in their shirtsleeves. They will need protective suits and breathing apparatus. Habitats will have to be built to enable human beings to live and work there.

It will also be much more expensive to send human beings to Mars than it was to land Curiosity there which, as was pointed out during the coverage last night, cost just seven dollars per man, woman, and child in the United States. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't much.

It will be worth it, though. Worth every penny and every ounce of danger. But, as one JPL official said during the press conference held shortly after the landing, all it really takes is "the passion for adventure". It was more than evident last night that the team responsible for sending Curiosity to Mars and landing it safely has that passion.

If you didn't get to see it last night (or very early this morning, depending on where you are), here is the scene in the control room as data arrived conforming the landing of Curiosity:

Music Sunday: Tempest Edition

I decided to do something a little different this Sunday for Music Sunday.

Since I started writing these Music Sunday features, for the most part, I've been sharing music from artists who have made a big splash in the media, artists that everyone knows. The band whose music I'm sharing this week, on the other hand, are very popular, but in an indie sort of way.

I had heard of Tempest for years. But I never knew their music, which is mostly in the Celtic Rock genre, until they played at BayCon, a literary science fiction convention held in the San Francisco Bay area every year. I was just a bit skeptical going into the concert, but I was a fan by about the second song they performed. I've seen them perform live several times since then, and I like them more and more every time I hear them play.

So, today, I'm just going to shut up and share some of their music.

This is an instrumental piece, performed at an arts and music festival in Humboldt County, CA, in 2010. I was not at this performance, but thanks to a kind soul who posted this on YouTube, I can pass this on to you:



This is the official video for Tempest's cover of The Grass Roots "Live for Today". It kind of tickled me that they covered this song, since The Grass Roots were my favorite band way back in the dark ages when I was in junior high school (late 1960s/early 1970s):



"Black Jack Davy" is an adaptation of a Celtic folk ballad from the early 1700s. One of the things I really like about Tempest is how they can take traditional works and themes from centuries ago and make them sound so contemporary:



Here is a two-part mini-documentary focusing on the making of one Tempest album, in 2006:





More information about Tempest can be found here and here.

A little Olympics geography...

So. I'm still watching the Olympics. Men's indoor volleyball, currently.

What I've been thinking about, however, is geography. Last time I took a geography class, about 10 years ago or so, I did really well. And so, during last week's Opening Ceremonies, while the athletes filed into the stadium, I played the game I always do: Where's That Nation. And I could locate most of them, at least to continent and general location within that continent. Or, body of water, in the case of island nations. I should be able to do that. In that geography class I just mentioned, we had to memorize the locations of all the world's nations. We were tested on them, so it wasn't just an idle exercise.

I recognized the names of nearly all the nations in the parade on Friday. There were four, however, which were a mystery to me. Never heard of them. Really. Never, as far as I could remember. Yeah, I did really well on that map test in geography. I did not get 100 percent.

So, I sat down and looked up the four nations I hadn't recognized. Now that I have done that, I understand why I hadn't heard of them, at least in relation to that geography class. Or, three of them, at least. Three out of the four are located in the Pacific Ocean. In class, we were not required to learn every little island nation in the Pacific. The fourth nation that I didn't recognize is in West Africa. I must not have been paying enough attention when I was memorizing the African nations.

The three Pacific Ocean nations that I didn't recognize the names of were the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru, and Tuvalu. Kiribati is the largest of the three, with 313 square miles of atolls and a raised coral island scattered over 1,351,500 square miles of ocean in the central tropical Pacific. It has a population of just over 103,000, as of a 2010 estimate. It sent three athletes to the Olympics this year.

Kiribati is absolutely huge compared to the other two Pacific nations I didn't recognize. The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in Micronesia, located just 26 miles south of the equator. It covers 8.1 square miles and is the world's smallest republic. A July 2011 estimate put its population at 9,378, with only Vatican City having a smaller population among sovereign states in the world. The other Pacific nation in question is Tuvalu, 10 square miles in area, located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and with an estimated 10,544 residents. But, even with these small populations, Nauru sent two athletes to the Games, while Tuvalu sent three.

Notably, Tuvalu is the second least-elevated nation in the world, with it's highest point at 15 feet above sea level. Only the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, are lower, with that nation's highest point at 7 feet, 10 inches above sea level. It is interesting to note, too, that one of the titles Queen Elizabeth II of England holds is Queen of Tuvalu, as the monarch of that member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

The African nation I didn't recognize, Togo, is considerably larger in both area and population, covering an area of 21,925 square miles between Ghana and Benin in West Africa. It has a population of 6,619,000. Out of that population, Togo sent six athletes to the Games. French is still the official language of Togo, reflecting its history as a French colony, but there are a number of indigenous languages spoken there, and over 50 percent of its inhabitants still practice indigenous religious, although about 20 percent of the population practices Islam and 29 percent claim Christianity as their religion. Togo won its independence from France in 1960.

Another of my geekdoms, as you may have noticed, is geography. I learned the joy of geography and map-reading at my father's knee. So, I feel kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't know anything about any of the nations I've written about here. But they are not the only participants in the Games that have interesting stories to tell about their geography and inhabitants. I could have gone on for several more paragraphs about the very small European states that are represented in the Olympics. I mean, the city-state of Monaco is less than a square mile in area and still sent six athletes to the games.

But I've gone long enough for tonight. I started writing while volleyball was on, there was some gymnastics in there somewhere, and some swimming. It's almost time to go out and put the trash can out at the curb.

And, hey, there are still more Olympics to watch.

Of course, I'm watching the Olympics...

I've been watching the Olympics a fair amount this week. although I have to admit that I like the Winter Games more than I enjoy the Summer Games.

Having said that, however, I will say that I enjoy watching diving. That's what's on as I write this, and I have to give NBC credit for showing the finals of the women's synchronized platform diving in prime time even though the US team did not qualify for the finals. I've always thought that US coverage of the Games focuses entirely too much on US athletes, leaning toward only showing, especially in prime time, events in which US athletes are believed to have a good chance to win medals.

I also enjoy watching gymnastics, although I don't have any interest in what they call rhythmic gymnastics (the women's routines that use ribbons and hoops and so forth as props). I like volleyball, too, mostly because I played volleyball on a church league when I was a senior in high school. It amazes me how different indoor volleyball is from beach volleyball, but I like watching both. Swimming is fun to watch, as well, although I'm not quite sure why I like it. You can't really see anything but flailing arms and splashing.

I have no use, however, for the track and field events. Running and jumping and flinging things just does not interest me. Well, the pole vault fascinates me in a sort of perverse way, because I just can't understand why anyone would do that. I certainly would never launch myself all those feet off the ground on what looks like an excessively flimsy fiberglass pole. I'm just surprised that those poles don't break more often.

Water polo doesn't do anything for me, either.

The sport I'd like to see more of is synchronized swimming. I know. It's a weird sport. And those nose-clips they wear make them look like they've all had the same unfortunate nose job. But I've always been clumsy in the water, and it fascinates me that those groups of swimmers can look so graceful doing what they do.

My favorite parts of the Games? The opening and closing ceremonies. I'm not going to contribute here to the criticism of NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremonies this year (I did enough of that on Friday night, other places online, while I was watching), except to say that the commentary and editing nearly ruined the experience for me. I really, really want to see a recording of the BBC's coverage. I've heard that it was much superior.

I will say that what we got of the entertainment portion of the Opening Ceremonies in the US coverage impressed me and entertained me. I loved the Queen, Daniel Craig, and the corgis. That was fabulous, and I feel a great deal of affection for the Queen for agreeing to be a part of that. On the other hand, who could possibly turn down the chance to be a Bond Girl to Craig's 007? I certainly wouldn't. I loved the music that was chosen (and I did catch the sound of Doctor Who's TARDIS at the end the portion of the music segment featuring Queen). And, I loved seeing Paul McCartney performing "Hey, Jude". I was sorry to see so much criticism of his singing, since it was obvious to me that it was a result of his feeling the emotion of the moment. I've heard the emotion-choked voices of individuals trying to sing before, and that is exactly what that sounds like.

And the fireworks. The fireworks were spectacular, even on television. I don't usually enjoy watching fireworks on TV, but I enjoyed those.

The games have just begun, with almost two weeks of events left to go before the Closing Ceremonies on August 12. I'm hoping for exciting competition, no off-the-field drama (although there has already been one incident of some people throwing around accusations of doping, involving a Chinese swimmer), and a little better coverage from NBC than they've provided so far.

I will be watching.