Monthly Archives: July 2024

Oligarchy: The polite way to say “conspiracy”

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An oligarchy is a government run by a small number of people. If a country is an oligarchy, it’s not a democracy. It might have the appearance of democracy, with elections for show, but the ruling insiders call all the shots. Some countries fit this description. Most would say that the United States doesn’t, and until recently claiming it is would have fallen under crazy conspiracy theories.

It’s getting more popular, though, to claim the USA is an oligarchy. An article in The Nation, not usually considered a fringe publication, is titled “It’s Official: America Is an Oligarchy.” Its “evidence” is that some people are very rich. Today I saw a post by Robert Reich casually taking it for granted that we’re living in an oligarchy, and a search turned up an article by him titled “How America’s oligarchy has paved the road to fascism (Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 7)”. He makes it clear he understands what the word means, and he claims that the current American oligarchy emerged around 1980.
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Yet another Hugo Award scandal

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged conventions fandom science fiction on by

Someone tried to buy a Hugo Award by buying a bunch of Glasgow Worldcon memberships and having them vote. Fortunately, the attempt was brain-dead stupid and the Hugo administration team caught it. Details are on File 770.

The stupidity consisted of using obviously fake names for the fake members. “These included, for instance, a run of voters whose second names were identical except that the first letter was changed, in alphabetical order; and a run of voters whose names were translations of consecutive numbers.” 377 votes out of 3,813 were disqualified. The nominee that was being pushed did not win, and the Glasgow committee says there’s no reason to believe that the nominee was responsible for the campaign.
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Spohr’s “Das heimliche Lied,” Opus 103, No. 5

This entry was posted in Music and tagged music spohr on by

In this post I’m looking at a single song by Spohr, “Das heimliche Lied” (the secret song). It’s part of a set of “Six German Songs,” Opus 103, where the singer is accompanied by a piano and a clarinet. The combination is unusual, but the clarinet is one of my favorite instruments, and he uses it effectively. The Spohr Society has a discussion of the Six German Songs, with information on the people who wrote the texts. Ernst Koch, the author of “Das heimliche Lied” and a contemporary of Spohr, is obscure today but not forgotten.

Right at the start, there’s a question about the song’s title. Most of the sources I’ve found give “Das heimliche Lied,” but the Spohr Society article gives it as “Das heimliche Leid” (the secret suffering). The latter is a more literal description of the poem’s contents, but “secret song” has a poetic feeling that fits. Neither word occurs in the text. It turns out that Koch’s title for the poem was actually “Relique eines Verschollenen” (relic of a missing person), but nobody uses that title for Spohr’s setting. The poem is about emotions that aren’t expressed or perceived, so we don’t know what they are, making the text broadly applicable. We all have feelings we hide from others.
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YouTube copyright nonsense

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The showing of The Golem went pretty well. I got a notification of a copyright claim, though. It’s from “A Kidnapping Scandal: The Florence Cassez Affair,” which is a Netflix series I’d never heard of. It can’t make a legitimate copyright claim on any part of The Golem, obviously. Maybe I played four or five notes in sequence that were similar to the theme music from the show? Or maybe the show includes some footage of the old movie, and YouTube’s robots decided that the makers of that series now hold copyright to the old movie. Who knows? Fortunately it’s “not a copyright strike,” since the copyright holder allows usage of the alleged copyrighted content. It could affect my monetizing the show, but I don’t expect to try. I get the impression that challenging a spurious copyright claim on YouTube can get you into worse trouble than ignoring it, so I’ll leave it alone.

Spohr’s 6th Symphony

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The Sixth Symphony by Louis Spohr isn’t one of my favorites, but it’s fascinating to write about. It’s known as the “Historical” Symphony, and it presents an overview of musical styles from the Baroque to Spohr’s era. The movements are:

  1. Bach-Handel period, 1720
  2. Haydn-Mozart period, 1780
  3. Beethoven period, 1810
  4. Very latest, 1840

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Bobo the clown

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship Harvard on by

Harvard University has long been a center of controversy. Often it’s an embarrassment to the university. But the Dean of Social Science there, somebody called Lawrence D. Bobo, has come up with a brilliant solution: Make the faculty shut up. Bobo’s babble just has to be read to be believed:

Is it outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business? And does the broad publication of such views cross a line into sanctionable violations of professional conduct?

Yes it is and yes it does.

A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.

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An update on the Glasgow Worldcon code of conduct 2

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In an earlier post, I discussed the Code of Conduct of the Glasgow Worldcon. There have evidently been some changes since I wrote the article, perhaps in response to criticisms. My post quoted and criticized the following statement in the code: “In particular, exhibitors should not openly display sexualized images, activities, or other material, although this content may be kept out of sight and offered based on a customer’s inquiry, in keeping with the Indecent Display (Controls) Act 1981. Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualized environment.”

That text isn’t currently present. Instead, there is this:
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Buffalo NASFiC code of conduct 1

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Continuing my irregular series on convention Codes of Conduct, here’s one on the North American Science Fiction Convention, coming up this month in Buffalo. Compared to some others, the problems of the NASFiC code of conduct are minor. There’s nothing like “Don’t say anything negative about anybody” or “Don’t offend anybody.”

BUFFALO in all caps means the convention, not the city.
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Coming silent film: The Golem

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Germany history silent movies on by

In July, I’ll accompany the 1920 German silent film The Golem twice. On Tuesday, July 16, I’ll livestream it with keyboard accompaniment on YouTube at 8 PM Eastern Time. On Friday, July 26, I’ll accompany it live at the Plaistow Public Library at 1 PM. Watch both if you like; you’ll hear it accompanied two different ways. Please “like” the YouTube item if you’re inclined to give it a boost; that will make it more discoverable.

This is the third Golem movie that Paul Wegener made and the only one that survives. Its full title is Der Golem: Wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How he came into the world). Unlike the others, it deals directly with the legend of Rabbi Löw’s creation of a golem to protect the Jewish people.
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