When
· Naughties
· · 2006
· · · January
· · · · 23 (3 entries)
5 ✭ ♫ Mondays · The idea came from JWZ in late 2005: why not rate all the music in your jukebox? If your jukebox is iTunes, you create an “unrated” smart-playlist containing all the tunes with no stars, then you set up the Party Shuffle to draw from it, then you rate them as they go by except when you’re not listening, and after a few months, you have them all rated. I haven’t got them all rated, but I have quite a few labeled ✭✭✭✭✭, which means “a tune that in some way gives me as much pleasure as music can.” I care a lot about (and am reasonably literate about) music, so I decided I to share some of this five-star stuff with the world. I’ll try to post something most Mondays. [Does the title look broken? Here’s why (Updated 2006/01/30).] ...
5✭♫: BWV 131 · I think I should start with J.S. Bach, since we have a special relationship. BWV 131 is one of his cantatas, based on Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (from Psalm 130), composed in 1707, and if you buy it you’ll like it. (“5✭♫” series introduction here; with an explanation of why the title may look broken.) ...
Election Day · I voted early this morning; we’ve been living in this neighborhood long enough that I recognized some people over at the poll, hung out and chatted for a bit. It felt good. I think that what’s happening today here in Canada highlights the single essential thing about democracy; I wrote about this almost three years ago, but it’s worth saying again: I don’t particularly trust “the people” to pick the right policies or even to pick the right leaders. I do, however trust them to detect the condition that the government has been bad and needs to be turfed. Which we, today, are apparently the process of doing. Frankly, I think it would be OK to pick the next government by random selection, and we probably wouldn’t do that much worse than the current electoral crap-shoot. The important thing—the only thing that really matters—is that we retain the right to throw ’em out in a peaceful and orderly fashion, at our sole discretion and for any reason. There are a lot of people in the world without that right. It’s the one that all the others flow from.
