THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 191 February 4 - 10, 2002

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SEE MAIL FOR A SPECIAL ALERT

It's column time, and I note that they are running bare: what I write this week will be up next Monday. So I had better get cracking.

The LA Times had a rave review of the Bach desecration we saw yesterday. The critic said "I thought I heard a few boos, but mostly it was wild applause." Which is nonsense. There were a lot more than a few boos. And the Times critic noted that because the chorus and singers were under the stage they couldn't be heard. 

In other words, the chorale wasn't very good, and the staging was at best "interesting", but it was wonderful, he thought, because he wants to be hip and with it and show he is all modern. And Freyer is a student of Brecht, and Brecht was the Minister of Culture of the GDR, and an old Communist, and one wonders if that has anything to do with all this? There are things to admire about Brecht, but this one from his student isn't one of them.

The Times critic also admits -- actually he is proud of it -- that the action on stage had nothing to do with the words. As if they could. A bunch of people doing awkward movements while dressed in Frankenstein boots isn't really going to express what Bach intended with his Evangelistic interpretation of the Mass. Or try to, really.

Well, I have work to do. And scenes to write for Burning Tower. And I have some ideas for Janissaries. And there aren't enough hours in the day. Isn't it wonderful?

Googlewhacking:

From Michael Kube-McDowell

My first offering:

Antigravity Gramophone

Score: 77000 x 21000 = 1,617,000,000

Googlewhacking is a game. The rules are, find a combination of words for which there is one and only one hit. The score is the product of the number of hits for the individual words. It's said to be addicting. I don't intend to try.

And I got this mail:

Jerry,

Not all critics are in love with the new because it is new. BERNARD HOLLAND, The New York Times' reviewer had this to say about the Bach piece you saw.

"Musical arithmetic has its own laws, and one result is that one plus one sometimes equals less than two. Adding theater to Bach's music, in other words, stifles and subtracts by forcing eye and ear to compete in a war of attrition. Americans can only envy the German government's largess to adventurous artists, but in this case one wished the marketplace had been around to work its will on pretentious, self-serving enterprises like this one. There are four more performances running from Wednesday to Feb. 15. "

The full review is at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/05/arts/music/05BACH.html, it requires nocharge registration.

As much as I enjoy Bach, I'm glad I missed this performance.

Keep up the good work.

Beck

So I guess I am not totally alone in my views. Thanks!

And Everquest has died again. They keep trying to extract more money from us with premium services and they can't keep their regular servers up. Really makes me want to trust them, it does. Oh, I'm sure they will have it fixed eventually.

And in fact about 5 minutes later it was fixed. But they are wearying a number of old customers.

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Maybe I am just getting more curmudgeonly in my old age, but I was moved to write this by the morning paper:

A Nation Of Sheep

On the back pages of the LA Times was a bit about how an airplane from Hawaii to Dallas had to stop in Los Angeles to have the bathroom inspected because white powder was found. The passengers were not 'deplaned' and after a bit of time on the ground the airplane went on to Dallas. "It was not disclosed what the powder was."  Tooth powder? Talcum? Metamucil?

It is not what Bin Laden can do to us, is is what he can get us to do to ourselves. We are now in the hands of a bunch of incompetent arrogant jerks. 

Now there are moves to let people voluntarily get some kind of "flight clearance" having undergone "background checks". This is going rather slowly, but I suspect it is inevitable. Here comes the national ID. "Why haven't you got your National ID with background check? Have you something to hide?"  At that I would prefer it to what we have.

But at the moment apparently not even military officers can get out of the search system, which, in my observation, isn't going to stop an intelligent and determined terrorist willing to blow himself up anyway. The way to do that is to really look at people from the relevant cultural and ethnic groups, but that's not PC; so we will search well dressed passengers with neckties just so that we can also search the wild-eyed shoe bomber. And all this to prevent at worst a couple of day's worth of traffic fatalities.

And then there is Winona Ryder. I know little about the case, but apparently she was arrested for leaving Saks with some jewelry and clothes she hadn't paid for. Why I don't know, and it wasn't explained. In the old Hollywood days you'd never have heard about something like this: the stuff would have been paid for by the Studio, the money taken from her bank account or out of her next paycheck, and that would have been the end of it: no harm done, and an extra sale for Saks. The only fight woudl have been over the commissions and how much the Security Department personnel got as opposed to the clerks in the jewelry department. 

But she had in her possession "prescription drugs without a prescription." And for that she's got to be made to pay. She didn't pay her tribute to the AMA. So Miami Vice becomes our true masters. How dare she have prescription drugs without a prescription?

Well, the result is going to be that all of us lose what we used to think of as rights. Free men are not equal, and equal men are not free; something we have always known. Now we're having it shown to us. In spades with Big Casino.  Welcome to the New World Order. But we were born free.

For what may now be called traditional reasons, Everquest isn't working again this afternoon. I suspect they are too busy marketing their new stuff. Dark Age of Camelot sounds better all the time.

Of course it began working again in about ten minutes. Servers overloaded, probably.

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It's column time for real...

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This week:

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Deadlines today and I have appointments with movie people. It looks to be a busy day.

I got the following message a few minutes ago:

This is an automated alert message from Winproxy.

At 02:32:53, the client machine "regina.chaosmanor.jerrypournelle.com" attempted to send or receive a file which was infected with the follwing virus:

WORM_KLEZ.E in C:\PROGRA~1\OSITIS~1\WINPRO~1.0\Temp\T3ljn.x-midi.VIR

This file was removed and deleted successfully, so no further action is required.

Winproxy - http://www.WinProxy.com/

Winproxy does that, and updates itself every few hours. The message that the worm was attached to was:

From: cshpaarmlsiuecokks [cshpaarmlsiuecokks@ubsaal.nlest]

Hello,This is a WinXP patch I expect you would like it.

Beware. And now I am off to meetings.

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Meetings, errands, and getting the column off: yesterday was quite a day ending with my getting to bed at 5 AM. But it did get on the wire, and now I can clean up this mess and get on with things. I haven't even had breakfast and it's after 11. Maybe after I get going today I can put up some pictures of the mess...

Meetings with movie people. Maybe things are going well. Hollywood money is fairy gold.

And Niven has done some great work on BURNING CITY.

Meanwhile the President is in Salt Lake City. If I were an enemy of the US I would be thinking of trivial things I could do to make us do terrible things to ourselves.

And Roland reports:

http://www.guninski.com/chmtempmain.html 

and

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie
/download/critical/q286045/default.-asp 

Possibly remotely exploitable via HTML mail.

--------------------------------- Roland Dobbins 

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I thought you could find anything on the Internet but I haven't been successful in my search for a recording of the Battle Hymn of the Republic at the National Cathedral after the 911 attack. I watched the live broadcast of course, but I'd like a copy, video or just the audio. I haven't found them but I am pretty sure they must exist.

Thanks to all: I have the information. Thanks again.

I am taking the weekend off.  I'll be back Monday afternoon.

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Back. Took Metro to Union Station and Amtrak to San Diego. I sure like that. ONE subsidized thing that was useful. Everyone wants public transportation for someone else to use, but in this case it was useful to me...

Union Station

Lots of room here

Pulling out of LA

Went to San Diego for --

Birthday party. Roberta and Catherine, age 2...

Thanks to all who have sent links for the National Cathedral Service.

From Roland, this link to where I can buy a copy:

http://www.cspan.org/terrorism/terrorism
_search_results.asp?SubCategory=&month=
&day=&year=&keyword=national+cathedral  

 Roland Dobbins 

Thanks.

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