Sending chills--horn arrangements for hymns

James K. Taylor, a retired band director and composer in Texas. He is arranging public domain hymn tunes for four horns. You can find these for listening on YouTube by searching for the name, James K. Taylor.

These arrangements can also be accessed at http://www.diary.cadenza.org/james-taylor/ along with other types of hymn arrangements and experimental sound files. Permission is granted for the use of audio recordings. Sheet music for these arrangements may be purchased for $20 from sheetmusicplus.com

I listened to a few of these.  Wonderful. Thrill your congregation now!

Photo not related to story--this is Quadre,

Neither Democrats nor Republicans can make promises about Detroit

Comments by Mike Smith

"Neither China nor Mexico "killed Detroit." Detroit committed suicide. The Democrat led city government loaded the gun and the labor unions pulled the trigger. When wages and taxes got to a point that the cost of doing business made companies noncompetitive, they had two choices - cut costs or go out of business. Since capital flows to wherever it is most efficiently used to generate profit and companies follow capital, the work went to locations where cost could be reduced. It is as simple as that. Detroit wasn't left behind because China and Mexico had some sort of secret plan to kill it, Detroit died because it gave jobs away, jobs that Mexico and China were happy to accept.

Progressive economic policies are the equivalent of salting the earth. Without changes in those policies, there can be no fertile ground in which companies can plant seeds of job growth."

Spending patterns of older Americans

 

 

  By 2050, when our children are 80+ there will twice as many seniors as today. So the purpose of this study (BLS) is to figure out how do people over 65 spend money (we’re consumer units). If businesses and investor are going to plan, they need to know where the opportunities are.

 

The first thing you notice is how income, which peaks in the 50s, drops in the 70s (retirement pensions, savings, investments—which is why we need to elect capitalists). I think the food category is high, but that’s because it probably includes eating out—and we sort of tuck that into entertainment (we don't do much for entertainment). Everyone eats out much more than they need to—food is pretty reasonable, but if you’re paying someone to prepare and serve it, not so much. In 2013, Americans spent 5.6 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food at home and 4.3 percent on food away from home. 

  

I was surprised that housing costs (as percent of income) were as high as the study shows.

Contributions got lumped into “other” so that’s a pretty sloppy category. I know there are all sorts of categories we could reduce, but really don’t have the will. Clothing costs are down for older Americans.  I just love shopping for clothes at resale stores and getting brand name jeans for $1.00. I didn’t discover them til after I retired. For nice stuff, I just let my daughter do that for Christmas and birthdays. But that trend isn't good for some malls and retail stores with such a shift in demographics.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/spending-patterns-of-older-americans.htm

Today's new word--verisimilitude and book club selection

Definition:  In a literary work, verisimilitude is likeness to the truth i.e. resemblance of a fictitious work to a real event even if it is a far-fetched one.

I heard this word used in a Ted Talk I was watching by Laura Bates, author of Shakespeare saved my life; ten years in solitary with the bard, the book our Book Club will be discussing today.  However, she showed a brief video of Larry Newton, featured in her book, speaking about Shakespeare's impact on his life, and he used the word, verisimilitude.  I thought that if a guy whose last full day in school was somewhere around mid-elementary, and he could use the word, perhaps I should use it, or at least know how.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lahX4dq8OAE

 http://www.npr.org/2013/04/22/178411754/teaching-shakespeare-in-a-maximum-security-prison

                                                       

 "A literary agent contacted Bates after seeing an MSNBC broadcast on the Shakespeare program. She told Bates, "There's a book here. You need to write this book." Bates turned to her hundreds of recorded hours with Newton and to her memories and notes from teaching the inmates and began to write.

 Reviews by Booklist and Kirkus have praised the book. The reviewer at Booklist called it, "A powerful testament to how Shakespeare continues to speak to contemporary readers in all sorts of circumstances." The Kirkus review described it as "An eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books, self discipline and the Bard of Avon."

Bates worked with about 200 prisoners in segregation at Wabash Valley during the program. She examined the records of 20 who spent the most time studying Shakespeare. Before Shakespeare, the men had more than 600 write ups, with most of those falling into the Class A felony and violent felony categories. After studying Shakespeare, Bates examined the inmates' records for a similar number of years and found only two violations for cell phone possession."
 https://www2.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=3505

Today's new word--SACERDOTAL

I came across sacerdotal  in one of the letters of the church fathers, I think it was Irenaeus. This is another word I've seen many times, was sort of confused about the meaning and had no idea how to pronounce because in English, the C has no sound of its own--it is either an S sound or a K sound.  So yes, it is the S--as in sassy.  So just picture this as Saserdotal, and you've got it.  And the root is in so many words.  

From the Merriam Webster web site: "Sacerdotal is one of a host of English words derived from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning "sacred." Other words derived from "sacer" include "desecrate," "sacrifice," "sacrilege," "consecrate," "sacrament," and even "execrable" (developed from the Latin word exsecrari, meaning "to put under a curse"). One unlikely "sacer" descendant is "sacrum," referring to the series of five vertebrae in the lower back connected to the pelvis. In Latin this bone was called the "os sacrum," or "holy bone," a translation of the Greek hieron osteon."

The Reformation and the response of the Council of Trent

The Council of Trent addressed the two biggest issues of the Protestant Reformation--justification and original sin.  Father Robert Barron--always an outstanding, kind and thorough, yet poetic, lecturer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRZK92T8k28 

Christendom is gearing up for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation--1517-2017.  Be prepared!

Friday family photo 2--Phil's new car

This is called a survivor car.  It's a 1968 Chevy, 2 door "hard top" and I would call this "teal," but not sure what the official color is.  The owner died in 1969, and it was stored for many years, then after the widow's death it was in an estate, then sold. 19,000 miles, and he took an auto restorer with him to look at it and he said "Buy it."  He's one happy guy.

Friday family photo--a dusting of snow

It looked like a Christmas card outside today (I still have my wreath at the door) with a dusting of snow that clung to everything.  This is the view out our living room window, although taken from our neighbor's deck.  The small bushes at the lower right are ours; the deck rail is hers.

Vaginal seeding raises a question

I wasn't familiar with vaginal seeding, although the concept sounds reasonable.  What I thought was odd was the author of the article referred to the mother of his child as his "partner."  He cared enough to swab his baby with her vaginal microbes, but not enough to marry the child's mother?  At least the drawing of a pregnant woman with the article calls her a "mother."

 http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/45505/title/Opinion--A-Mother-s-Microbes/

So I e-mailed him and asked.

Definition:  The term vaginal seeding, also called microbirthing, describes wiping babies with vaginal fluid after they have been born by Cesarean. The belief is that this boosts poorly-defined beneficial gut microbes that keep our immune systems healthy and so may reduce the risk of developing conditions such as asthma, food allergies, and hay fever in later life. (Science 2.0)

March 3 Republican debate

He nailed it. "Cruz's most devastating line was probably this summation: I understand the folks who are supporting Donald right now. You're angry. You're angry at Washington, and he uses angry rhetoric. But for 40 years, Donald has been part of the corruption in Washington that you're angry about. And you're not going to stop the corruption in Washington by supporting someone who has supported liberal Democrats for four decades, from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry to Hillary Clinton. You're not going to stop the corruption and the cronyism by supporting someone who has used government power for private gain."(Weekly Standard)

Question: Why do the parties allow the media to control the debates? Yes, they get ratings, they make money, and indirectly they select our president. But what do we the people get? I wouldn't send a nickle to the GOP.  Why has it allowed this?

Although I didn't hear him say it, I heard a rebroadcast of Trump's boast last night that he would kill the family members of terrorists. That's in violation of the Geneva Convention.  He's said this before, and it didn't faze his followers. Then last night he said the military would follow his orders even though the demand was illegal.

 Too many people seem to want something called a Republican in the White House without considering the cost.  "I believe no American, conservative or liberal, should support Trump. He doesn’t simply violate conservative principles. He violates American principles. Donald Trump is a danger to self-government, civil liberties, the culture of democracy, and the ideals of a free and open society."  (Paul David Miller, The Federalist)

Social dancing is good protection against Alzheimer's Disease

"The theory proposed by Dr. Verghese and his fellow researchers is that social dance is an activity that activates and takes advantage of our brains' neuroplasticity. That is, according to Dr. Joseph Coyle, a commentator on the study, "The cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which are critical to these activities [greater cognitive reserve and increased complexity of neuronal synapses], are remarkably plastic, and they rewire themselves based upon their use."

When the aging process causes our brain cells to begin to die off, our memory of nouns (like the names of people we know and love) often go first, because there is only one neural pathway connected to that bit of stored information. If that neural connection is lost, so is access to the piece of information it pointed to. It's like taking the same well-worn path through a forest, and one day not being able to find the entrance to that path. In patients suffering from dementia, even if they can physically see their destination, they sometimes can't figure out how to get there, because they've forgotten how to find the path they were accustomed to take.

The key to avoiding this, in the researchers' opinion, is to continually forge new neural pathways. And the way to do this is to constantly challenge the mind and force it to make split-second, rapid-fire decisions. Each of these decisions has the effect of creating greater cognitive reserve and a more complex network of neuronal synapses. In short, the more pathways your brain has to the information stored in it, the more accessible that information becomes, and the less likely you are to forget it.

But again, why dancing?
Dance, especially ballroom dance and other forms that involve cooperation between two partners – one leading and the other following, or both following not just preset steps but having the ability to improvise – causes the very rapid-fire decision-making that forges new neural pathways. The researchers emphasize that not all forms of dancing will accomplish this; for example, types of dance that rely on retracing the same memorized steps will form no new connections in the brain. Improvements to cognitive function occur when we learn something new, something we haven't done before. The dancers in the recent study who showed the most resistance to dementia practiced what is referred to as freestyle social dancing – foxtrot, waltz, swing, tango, and Latin dance.

In the 21-year study, seniors who danced regularly showed more resistance to dementia than those who only danced occasionally; just as with doing crossword puzzles, more is better. Those who "changed partners" more often benefitted more than those who stuck with the same dance partner, possibly because they had to adjust to the new partner and make more split-second decisions to adapt to their different style.
Interestingly enough, women may benefit slightly more than men from social dancing, because they follow their male partner's lead, and thus are constantly having to make rapid-fire decisions. But this piece of information can help the men, too. By becoming more attentive to your partner's style and constantly adjusting your own to insure their comfort and continuity of motion, you can become not only a better dancer, but improve your brain's cognitive abilities as well.   Juliette Siegfried

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16525/1/The-Best-Means-of-Avoiding-Alzheimers-Is-Dance.html

Based on New England Journal of Medicine journal, June 19, 2003 

"Brainwashing of my Dad" (film)

I’ve heard of this film and was only mildly interested, but given the chatter on left/right, conservative/liberal and the conversation about not being civil in tongue, I’d like to propose this advertising blurb as an example of brainwashing about brainwashing. It came in my e-mail—I get a lot of unsolicited advertising since I have blogs and review books.

“Right-wing cable news and "conservative" talk radio attract older Americans like graying moths to an angry flame. But why would someone who was either apolitical or a Democrat in younger days become addicted to conservative talk shows in their twilight years? Filmmaker Jen Senko wondered how her WWII veteran and Kennedy Democrat father had been transformed into a Fox News Fanatic, suddenly and inexplicably railing against minorities, homosexuals, poor people, and Democrats. Using her dad as an entertaining example, Senko pulls back the curtain to expose the tools and tricks of the wizards behind the right-wing media revolution. And in discovering what happened to him, Senko reveals the all-too-chilling bigger picture of what’s happening behind-the-scenes to influence our national discourse.”

Note the use of hot button inflammatory words and memes (I’ve marked in yellow). Right wing is always a pejorative, and the scare quotes are around the word conservative to warn you that even that isn’t a truthful term. Even the term talk radio is code for fanaticism since there has been no successful talk radio on the left. (The crazies on talk radio are usually the listeners, not the hosts.)  Addicted is always a negative term. Pulling back the curtain is a Wizard of Oz reference—a bumbling shyster who uses tricks. There is no right-wing media revolution except in the sense that the media is no longer the play ground exclusively one party or philosophy, which controlled it even before Walter Cronkite, and there is one channel on cable that is always called right wing, Fox News. The only one, because all broadcast and all other cable are liberal. But note the positive allusions to solid, good old, warm fuzzy Democrat ideas like WWII veteran and Kennedy Democrat, even father. Chilling bigger picture—must be a conspiracy so stay tuned and buy a ticket so she can recover her investment (seems to be an evil capitalist). See how Fox News is linked, without any evidence, to speaking out against minorities, homosexuals and the poor. I’ve watched Fox for years, and have only seen a keen reliance on celebrities, the wealthy, and well spoken Congress members of both parties. Fox has far more minorities and women in front of the camera than the other cable stations. It also carries the usually silly stuff in the morning like recipes and exercise.

This may be one of the most biased blurbs about bias that I've seen in. . . , well, since the last thing the left wrote about how the right wing news treats Hillary.  The author/writer/director never considers that the left may have brainwashed her! All the people she interviews about language and media are academics--all from the left.

Trailer for film

Six minutes, one mile, twenty four calories, and thirty years

My exercycle is next to my bookshelf, so for my third mile of the day I pulled a book off the shelf I'm not sure I ever read, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987). So it's been 30 years (he wrote the preface in May 1986).

"There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative."  Introduction, p. 25

That was then.  Now every student is convinced that his or her own truth is absolute--could be Bernie's socialism, or Hillary's right to be our president because she's a woman and it's our turn, or Donald Trump is crazy and will destroy the GOP, or all policemen are out to kill black people, or all Muslims are moles for ISIS, or the U.S. is the most evil, greedy, racist country in the world, or that the end times are nigh and you only need to read your Bible. Just about everyone is an absolutist these days.  Unlike the students of 30 years ago which Bloom said could not defend their opinions, today's student has reality TV or Oscar monologues or Huffington Post opinion pieces or Right Wing Watch to gird their loins and minds. Today's student keeps up with only those views that support his own with Twitter, Instagram, Drudge, Yahoo or Facebook, and any number of news feeds brought by his app to his phone.

The student of 30 years ago, opined Bloom, had rejected natural rights and the historical origins of our civilization.  Today's student never even got a chance to reject them--never heard of them.

Bloom's mind at 25

I hope they fit

I've ordered a new pair of shoes.  Last year was my first try at ordering shoes on line.  Worked as well as buying them at the store and finding out later they didn't feel that great.

Theology of pronouns

If you care about babies (and grammar) you might enjoy this piece by a missionary in Zambia. The Singletons were formerly with the Mt. Morris, IL Evan Free church and are now missionaries in Zambia.

"I had noticed that Zambians have difficulty with pronouns~they will sometimes refer to males as “shes” and females as “hes.” And, I’d observed that babies and children are referred to as “its” and called a “he” or “she” when the child is older. My short answer? A child is never an “it.” This important grammar question also afforded me an opportunity to mount my soap box and share a lengthier viewpoint."

If you've done much genealogy, you see a hint of this not too far back in our history--many babies didn't survive, so it might be some time before they were named.  Also, younger children were often given the same name as one who died.  And in our modern age, a baby is a fetus or a clump of cells.  An it.

The Singleton Story

How white are the Oscars?

For most of the past 15 years, the Academy has largely judged what has been put in front of them: minority actors land 15% of top roles, 15% of nominations and 17% of wins. Once up for top roles, black actors do well, converting 9% of top roles into 10% of best-actor nominations and 15% of the coveted golden statuettes, a bit above their share of the general population.

It is Hispanics and Asians who are underrepresented; not blacks.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/01/film-and-race

 There's a lot more in this article, so read the whole thing.

Too old to cut the mustard

As far as I'm concerned, Trump and Hillary are 70 and Bernie is 75. Yes, I'm rounding up a few months for the men, and 1 year for the woman. This is too old for such a demanding job. It's fine for being a part timer, or retired, or an artist or musician who has a manager, or being CEO of your own business. I just don't want those tired and inactive brain cells making global decisions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-l2GgSkA6U 
Too old to cut the mustard by Ernest Tubb and Red Foley 1951

I used to could jump just like a deer 
                       
But now you need a new landing gear
                       
I used to could jump a picket fence 
                            
But now you're lucky if you jump an inch

Smart Barbie knows how to stay out of debt

The smart Barbie knows that if she lives anywhere without income for four years and borrows for all her expenses she will have debt. If she lives at home, has a part time job, attends one of the convenient two year colleges like Columbus State for her requirements, then transfers to one of our fine universities like Ohio State University, she probably will be debt free and ready to accept a terrific job upon graduation. Even if college were "free," four years of housing, utilities, food, transportation, clothing, and entertainment wouldn't be.

White or not, I don't care about the Oscars

Chris Rock and the all white Oscars--another 10 minutes of fame. He made a ton of money off that one, didn't he? I didn't watch, not because of the controversy, but other than enjoying the fashion, for me it's just about narcissistic rich people gathering to pat themselves on the back. And the diversity controversy? That's getting really old, and doesn't have much tread left. It is the ticket buyers, mostly white, who make the industry rich. I don't think they are particularly sophisticated consumers or deep thinkers, but if they hear themselves denigrated and criticized at all turns especially by the ‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬ crowds, perhaps they aren't buying the tickets and will stay home to watch an old Stallone movie or even Bing Crosby.

The drivers of innovation in the United States

Who is driving innovation in the U.S.? The demographics of U.S. innovation are different from not only the demographics of the United States as a whole, but also the demographics of college-educated Americans and even those with a Ph.D. in science or engineering. . . Immigrants born in Europe or Asia are over five times more likely to have created an innovation in America than the average native-born U.S. citizen, and they are better educated in STEM. . . Women represent only 12 % of U.S. innovators. . . The average male born in the United States is nine times more likely to contribute to an innovation than the average female. . . U.S.-born minorities (including Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other ethnicities) make up just 8% of U.S.-born innovators. However, these groups total 32% of the total U.S.-born population. Blacks make up just half a percent of U.S. innovators. The median innovator is 47 years of age and typically has years of work experience and deep knowledge in STEM fields.

This information was from the summary; an interesting survey and report on an important topic.

 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION | FEBRUARY 2016