Delightful unplayable music

Those of you who read music might enjoy John Stump's score titled "Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz (from "A tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich"). I ran across this and enjoyed its repeated moments of musical absurdity. Faerie aire I searched for some background for the piece and found this:

The composition Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz (from "A Tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich") by John Stump is an unpublished satirical work written and copyrighted in 1980 that is best known for, simultaneously, its humor and unplayability. The piece is most often seen hanging on the walls in music rooms and orchestral settings for the musicians' amusement, due to musical directions such as "Rigatoni", "light explosives now... and... now", "insert peanuts", "Moon-walk", "release the penguins", and "Like a Dirigible".

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The extent of income inequality in America

"The numbers in this Alternet article are shocking. We are well on our way to having a country of very poor Americans ruled over by very rich Americans. Some would say, what are you proposing, COMMUNISM? No, just end the current corporate communism (privatized profits, socialized risks). We need go back to something like the tax codes of prior decades, and consider the other suggestions in the above article as well as the basic principles announced by Dylan Ratigan in his famous rant. Why should it matter to those who are still reasonably well off that there is a stark growing divide between rich and poor Americans? Because social science has demonstrated the clear correlation between income inequality and societal dysfunction.

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More about tribes

This, from Blue Street Journal:

Social Psychologist Geoffrey Cohen found that Democrats will typically support a policy proposal that severely restricts entitlements (something typically favored by Republicans) if they think it was proposed by members of their own party. Additionally, Republicans will typically support an extremely generous entitlement program if they think it was proposed by Republicans. In contrast, if a Democrat or Republican thinks that a policy was proposed by the opposing party, they will tend to reject it no matter what it says. This was tested in a lab study where participants were asked to read the policies for themselves. Democrats were led to believe that the policy they were reading was proposed by a Democrat, even though it was actually proposed by a Republican. Republicans were placed in the same scenario, but with a Democratic policy they believed was proposed by a Republican. In both situations, the participants tended to agree with the policy they believed was affiliated with their own party and rejected the policy they believed was affiliated with the opposing party. A second group of Democrats and Republicans rejected the very same ideas that the first groups accepted when they believed that they were proposed by members of the opposing party. This demonstrates that people tend to accept political ideas based on party affiliation rather than the actual content of the ideas.

 

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