Archive for June, 2009
Book Sale & Religion
June 8th, 2009
Sorry, kids, late post today because I’m at the Lancaster Library’s gigantic annual book sale.
Meanwhile, why not watch this lecture discussing the relationship between shamanism and schizotypal personality disorder?
MIT GEB Lectures
June 4th, 2009
For the last few years, MIT has been putting the course materials for many (about 1,900) of its classes online for free as part of its OpenCourseWare project. Most of them are really fantastic, and the site is worth browsing through. Of particular interest to me is the series of lectures for a course devoted to Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. Which, if you haven’t read, you should; these lectures might help you along if you’ve found it a bit difficult.
Incidentally, the course is taught by an undergrad math major! The guy’s teaching style is a little rough, but he’s actually laudably competent.
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Checking In With Vitas
June 2nd, 2009
Some of you who’ve been reading this thing for a while may recall my post about Vitas, the Russian countertenor, and his video for the song “Opera #2.” If you don’t, you might enjoy watching this video before continuing.
Since I haven’t checked up on him in nearly two years, I was curious about Vitas’ current situation. As with my last post, I went to the source of all responsible journalism: YouTube comments. A selection:
- “Vitas is the most overpower!”
- “My neighbour she work with devil are she really??”
- “it is sooo like norways song alright? what is happening?”
- “vitas voice like a screaming creature.”
- “ACCORDION.”
- “I want his 4-octave wailing Russian babies!!!”
- “i want to rub his head”
- “in the music video, he actually has gills.”
- “i feel bad that he lost his home or whatever”
- “I especially like the Nazgul string section. They left Minas Morgul to play in Russia for this dude. “
- “i love vitas, i want him as a pet”
- “Vitas is half-dolphin.”
It sounds like Vitas is doing fine.