Meta and Meta

Bit Players

Among my many preoccupations (read: distractions from more active blogging) these days has been composing and recording short Celtic pieces for fiddle and guitar as source for a show on FX.

I compose these pieces blind (i.e., without seeing script or dailies or anything), so it is particularly odd seeing the finished product--some actor onscreen air-fiddling in the outdoors to stuff I recorded only afterward in my bedroom home studio.

No wonder these things always look so unconvincing.

Thank You For The Music

This (via Arts & Letters Daily) is a fascinating case. Pianist Joyce Hatto apparently passed off several recordings of other piano virtuosi as her own. The fraud was uncovered when a critic's computer identified a Hatto CD as one of Lás-zló Simon's. The critic then compared the two recordings and found them to be identical. Subsequent scrutiny of Hatto's discography revealed other such cases.

What I find interesting is that it took the CD identification algorithm, rather than a keen critical ear, to betray such a brazen fraud. Many of the pianists whose recordings were appropriated were fairly well-known: László Simon, Yefim Bronfman, Minoru Nojima, Carlo Grante. Yet despite all the rhetoric in music criticism about this or that player's "distinctive" approach, over several years and many recordings the approaches of these distinguished players apparently went...undistinguished.

And That's Got To Stop!

"Thanks to the liberal mainstream media, Americans fully understand the consequences of continuing our efforts in Iraq...."
--Republican Representatives John Shadegg and Pete Hoekstra, in a written set of talking points addressed to their GOP brethren in Congress.

(HT: The Horse's Mouth.)

The Battle Over Homo Marcus

Should Marcus Ross have been awarded a Ph.D. in paleontology if he believes that the earth was created 10,000 years ago? The consensus among science bloggers seems to be "no." P.Z. puts it so:

[Y]ou cannot legitimately earn an advanced degree in geology and at the same time hold a belief contrary to all the evidence, and that the only way you can accomplish it is by basically lying to yourself and your committee throughout the process...."

However, P.Z.'s argument is contravened by the evidence: The article makes it clear that Ross' faculty were completely aware of his heterodox views.

And while perhaps Ross is deceiving himself, existential bad faith seems an extraordinarily flimsy, fuzzy charge to ground the grave punishment of academic disqualification.

So let's be pragmatic. If we want to cultivate science, we should want to invite as many potentially qualified students to the party as possible. Students like Ross--who can preserve their belief in the absurd through the completion of a legitimate Ph.D. program--are extremely rare. (Why else do you think his story made the New York Times?) Far more typical in a case like his would be a gradual evolution from creationist to agnostic to apostate. However, if we make it clear that wannabe creationist revolutionaries have no hope of gaining a Ph.D., they simply won't come. We thereby lose converts, my brothers and sisters.

In sum, science stands far more to gain if Ph.D. committees look not to the content of a candidate's beliefs but to the quality of his work.

Side note: Nothing in my argument precludes severe punishment for substantive academic fraud, even if it occurs after the Ph.D. is granted. For instance, if Ross accepts a position at a university and uses his position (and his credential) to teach that there is a "scientific controversy" about the status of evolution as a unifying theory in biology, Rhode Island would arguably have grounds to revoke his doctorate.

Move Over Heifetz

This may be one of the most amusing things I've ever seen. (But then I'm a fledgling fiddle player, so probably biased in unhealthy ways.) Especially noteworthy are the moves from ca. 1:00-2:05. Unreal. (But real, I assure you.)

The Cheney Length

Some time ago on another blog (before I went "underground" on this one), I composed a post concerning Dick Cheney's "last throes" remark. In trying to assay the length of a "throe," I pointed out the following:

1. Dick Cheney also stated (last October [i.e., of 2004]) that "once those [Iraqi] elections are held, they're [i.e., the insurgents are] out of business."
2. The Iraqi elections were held January 30 [of 2005].
3. It's now June [of 2005]--four-plus months later. So while the insurgency has by official decree "gone out of business," it is nonetheless still at a stage of existence in which it is engaged in widespread killing. I'll call this stage "winding up."
4. It seems reasonable to assume that a "winding up" is either longer or shorter than a "last throe." (The only other possibility, of course, is that the two are precisely equivalent. This seems unlikely.)
5. It also seems reasonable to assume that the "last throes" are distinct from, but ensue somewhere toward the end of, the "winding up." (You don't "wind up" until you're "out of business." That's just the way these things work.)
6. We can therefore conclude (tentatively, of course) that the insurgency will come to the end of its last throes some time between now and when the sun goes nova.

Just thought that might of some contemporary interest.

Surprise, Arizona

The NYT reports on a 29-year-old sex offender who somehow managed to attend a public charter school for four months--as a seventh grader. (As one teacher put it, "[H]e looked like he had been held back.")

The weird thing about it (well, okay, one weird thing about it): In the photo he looks even older than 29.

Okay, another, even weirder thing: From the looks of his record, it would appear that he entered seventh grade merely to get at the first-graders.

As a final note, I want to say how much discipline it took to go with the post title I did. The universe of tasteless alternatives is vast.