Schadenfreude

So ist der Jazz-Nigger auch in das Haus des Figaro, des Fidelio, des Hans Sachs, des Tristan, der Ariadne eingezogen.   .....   Der Nigger, der Bringer der Jazzkultur ... über das Europa Beethovens triumphiert? Man glaube nur ja nicht an eine satirische Pointe.
(So the Jazz-Nigger moved in the house of Figaro, Fidelio, Hans Sachs, Tristan, Ariadne.  ..... The nigger, the bringer of jazz culture ... triumphs over Beethoven's Europe?  Doesn't seem like a funny punch line.)
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The above image is a poster for the Nazi exhibition Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) which took place in Düsseldorf in 1938.  The saxophone-playing "Der Nigger"[1] is a reference to the cover page for the score of Ernst Krenek's 1927 opera Jonny spielt auf.  (One of the opera's principal characters is an amoral and libidinous black jazz musician named 'Jonny'.)  The quote below the poster also refers to Krenek's opera, but did not come from the program booklet for the Nazi exhibition.  It came from a review of Krenek's opera published several years before the Nazis came to power.[2]  The author of the review, Julius Korngold, was a powerful and influential Viennese music critic and the father of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Schoenberg's quip

CHRIS FARLEY to PAUL MCCARTNEY: Remember when you were in the Beatles ... you did that album Abbey Road ...  [where] ... the song goes "And in the end the love you take equals to the love you make"?  Remember that?
PAUL MCCARTNEY: Yes.
CHRIS FARLEY: Is that true?
The Chris Farley Show, Saturday Night Live
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A quip is not quite the same as a line of poetry, and I certainly do not intend to be funny by questioning the factual basis of  Arnold Schoenberg's often mentioned quip:

My music is not modern, it is just badly played.

What did Schoenberg have in mind when he spoke of his music as "badly played"?  Technical defects of execution, such as wrong notes, faulty intonation, or poor ensemble?  Unacceptable deviations from clearly stated instructions in the score regarding tempo, dynamics, or phrasing?

PERVERT... FELON... NATIONAL TREASURE

It took Alan Turing only a couple of years to solve the Entscheidungsproblem (Decision Problem) in a branch of mathematics later to become part of theoretical computer science (along with developing the most convincing mathematical model of computability known today as the Turing machine).
 
It took Great Britain 67 long shameful years before the Bank of England could make this decision ...

I'll have an extra bourbon tonight.

No better way of putting it

It is from performances like this that one realizes that the music of Elliott Carter offers pleasures and delights that no other composer can offer.

CHARLES ROSEN
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Charles Rosen's observation was made about a commercial recording of Carter's Cello Concerto, but is also a perfect description of this 2009 live broadcast from Berlin's Philharmonie of Carter's Interventions for piano and orchestra with Daniel Barenboim as soloist and Pierre Boulez conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin.

From tragedy to farce and back to tragedy, all in a single word

First the tragedy:

29 April 2019, JACKSONVILLE, ARK. (AP)

A baby died after escaping from a truck while visiting a central Arkansas military base for a family event.

Not really a newsworthy tragedy since millions of babies die every year all over the world.  Still, it must have been a tragic event for the baby's relatives and at least a traumatic one for those present at the mentioned family event.

Except that it wasn't because in the above quoted sentence I omitted one word.  Here is the complete headline as it was published by AP (italics mine):

A baby kangaroo died after escaping from a truck while visiting a central Arkansas military base for a family event.

Now start with the trivial observation that kangaroos can no more visit family events at military bases than they can visit friends in state prisons or grandparents in retirement homes.  Then count the questions one can ask about the meaning of this sentence.  If you think of language as a biological organism's most important evolutionary gift, this brief exercise will take you right back to what you started with: the tragedy of death, albeit this time the rapidly approaching death of language.

Giving the C-word its due

chasm, n.,

a deep fissure in the earth, rock, or another surface;

 figurative.  a profound difference between people, viewpoints, feelings, etc.
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In her review of a recent Netflix web series, Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer for The Atlantic, tells us that

... it’s hard to square the chasm between the philosophical comedy the show begins as and the discomfiting farce it becomes. (italics added) 1

Perhaps Ms Gilbert's observation reflects her conviction that, in this era of endless possibilities, we should be doing a lot more with chasms than just bridging or closing them.  If so, I'm one of those not yet convinced.  But if she proves to be right, I would love to learn how to sauté a chasm.  Especially the chasm between the supposedly high reputation of The Atlantic and the magazine's employment of incompetent scribblers like Sophie Gilbert.

Sadly, Ms Gilbert's illiteracy may not be her only professional shortcoming.  She also seems genuinely dimwitted for someone paid to spill her thoughts on the pages of a reputable magazine.  On her website she has a section where she shares with the world what people have said about her.  And the quote she proudly puts first is "Finally! A woman." 2

I leave it to you, my dear reader, to decide what should be done with the chasm between a writer's pride in the acclaim received by her work and Sophie Gilbert's pride in being praised for having two X chromosomes.