Blogger is weird tonight

When I just tried publishing the blog on trust to my site tonight with Blogger on Internet Explorer, it started going click...click...click... for an infinite number of times. I checked the page and found that the blog had not been published. So I went to Opera. It gave me a weird display with everything huge and few of the buttons I was familiar with. So I quit Opera and went to Netscape. Netscape gave me that same strange display. So I tried posting to it. It gave me a long list of stuff and squawked about some error. To me that tells me that Blogger is going wacky tonight. The first requirement for a blogging system is that it gives me a reasonable display to blog from, and it did not do that tonight, not at any time, not at any place, not with any browser.

Oh finally, I tried Internet Explorer again. This time it clicked twice and then said that my post was successful. So it looks like Blogger came to its senses. But too many of these cuckoo spells and I will be looking for another blogging system.

Trust: interesting article

In this blog before I mentioned that frequently when a politician or other important figure makes a statement, it is false. In fact, I even developed a logic out of it in which the hypothesis are assumed to be false and the conclusion is then to be proven true. An example would be Richard Nixon saying "I am not a crook." I said this means he is a crook.

Today an Leonard Pitts entitled "A matter of trust and the truth" says that this is taking skepticism as a default position. It is assuming that a statement is a lie until proven otherwise. He cites many examples of it including the enduring belief that astronauts really didn't land on the Moon. He says that the Internet makes things worse by letting any blowhard say that anything in the world is false or is a Communist or government plot or CIA plot or something. He even mentions the belief that blue is not blue but is instead a US Government ploy.

If things get this far, trust and communication break down. Each of us has to depend on ourselves, for we can't depend on each other. Mr. Pitts says we need to come back again to a common language and common ground that allows us to disagree and still come together to achieve things collectively.

I say it is more than that. It seems that there have been so many injuries to our sense of trust, including Watergate, statements about weapons of mass destruction, statements about what happened with that intern in the White House office, and so forth that societal trust has broken down. According to The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe, a major societal crisis is needed to build a new world order and bring trust back. Perhaps this is what is needed. In the meantime, we will have to do our best to determining what in the media and other high places is true and what is not.

Singing advice causes mondegreens

Last week I attended a workshop on improving my voice quality presented by Amy Carol Webb and learned a lot about how I can improve my speaking and singing voice. It is a matter of opening up the mouth and breathing below the diaphragm. But I heard a tip there that may not work out. I had heard it before. There are certain vowels that one should not sing long on, because they don't sound well. One of these is long e (in English), as in Bees. My instructor said to sing "biii…" with i as in "bin". This reminded me of advice I had received much earlier in a vocal group. Don't sound the vowel "ir" or "r" as in "bird". In other words, sing "gloooooory", not "gloerrrrrrry", which does not sound as well. This improves the vocal quality of a song.

Unfortunately it can also cause trouble. For example, in "I Come From Woman", one of Amy's songs, she sings "women of tears". Following the advice, she does not sing the "er" vowel at the end. But this leads to a mondegreen; that is, a misheard song lyric. She came out singing "women of tease", which is not what she meant at all. When I heard it, it sounded like "women of cheese", which is also not what was intended. In other words, if you alter vowel sounds to make songs sound better, you will be misunderstood. Sometimes, you need to make consonants clear; for example, pronouncing "t" forcefully with the tongue against the teeth. For example, I also heard "Women who pass this course for me." Sounds like cheating, but she really intended "Women who passed the torch for me."

As one can tell from the link on "mondegreen", which by the way is a web site whose name is a mondegreen (www.kissthisguy.com), many, many singers make mondegreens. How can they avoid it? Here's what I say:

1. Make your voice clear - voice from the abdomen, clear pronunciation, and clearly understood vowels.
2. Don't alter a vowel if it will change the meaning. Sometimes you have to sing "teaerrrrrs".
3. Make your voice substantially louder than the instruments or singers who accompany you.
4. Avoid phrases that sound like other phrases. For example, don't sing "the sky", for it sounds like "disguise" and "this guy".
5. Some lyrics don't make sense grammatically or in meaning. Sometimes this is part of being poetic. Imagine Lucy being up in the sky with diamonds. But the meaning of this is so off-beat that the mind wants to find a more usual meaning for it; for instance, "Lucy met this guy; he's dying". If you must sing unusual lyrics, you need to be especially clear, with faint accompaniment.

Hopefully these pointers will prevent future singers from finding their lyrics on www.kissthisguy.com.

Planning a Planeattack

I heard on the news today that terrorists may be planning another planeattack, similar to the Planeattack that occurred on 2001 September 11 claiming 3,000 lives. In my opinion, this is now much less likely to happen, due to changes since the 2001 Planeattack. So what must a terrorist do to conduct a planeattack? There are certain steps and requirements he has to follow, and these have become much harder to crack due to increased security measures and a changed attitude of the public. Here is what he is up against.

First, he has to get some buddies. A single person cannot conduct a planeattack. It's only one of him against the 3 person crew of the airplane. At least five hijackers are required to bring it off. Since any reasonably minded pilot will resist an order to fly the plane into a building, one of the hijackers must take flying lessons. The flying schools are all aware of what happened on 2001/9/11, and they will be suspicious of people wanting to learn how to find jetliners. But suppose one of them can fly the plane. They have to get on the plane with weapons. But they can't use knives or box cutters, because security screeners will now catch them and take them away. They have to use other objects (a camera was mentioned in the news) or even their fists, and that may not be as successful. When they are on the plane and attempt to take it over, they will now face a reinforced cockpit door and much stiffer resistance. The crew will counterattack, and may even have guns, legal or not. A charge of the cockpit may net a bullet hole in the head. The passengers may attack; this has already happened with United 93. Even if they incapacitate the crew and take over the airplane, the plane will fly in a strange direction and air traffic controllers will pick it up, regardless of whether transponders are on or not. And if they start heading for a building, the chances are more likely now than before that a military jet will be there to shoot it down, killing all aboard the plane but saving an entire building of occupants.

For these reasons, I am not concerned that another planeattack will occur. Terrorists ensured that when they conducted the 2001 Planeattack, making the public much more aware of these threats.

Astrology does have its uses

The ancient discipline of astrology claims that the motions of the planets determine the course of our lives. For example, Mercury in opposition is said to cause accidents, and Neptune is said to influence aviation. There is no evidence supporting this, and indeed there is a whole list of personal characteristics of all kinds that have been shown by statistical means to be independent of the Sun sign. So why do people continue to believe in it? Why are there about 20,000 professional astrologers and only 2,000 professional astronomers?

To me it seems that astrology does not have much use. But wait. It does have a use, because people believe in it. For example, the Reagans have been said to use astrology to select propitious times to do things. This means one can use astrology to predict other people's behavior. For example, many people read the horoscope in the morning paper. If you know the Sun sign of someone, and they read the horoscope, you can figure out how they will behave. For example, for today it says for Libra, "Important news reaches you. You're on top of the world. A new endeavor catches your imagination." Libra, according to traditional astrology (but not astronomy!) is Sept 23-Oct 22. If you know someone with one of these birthdays, and you have something important or big to tell them but are waiting for the moment to do so, now may be the time. Also, if you are looking for ideas for a big project, a Libra would be the one to ask today. If that Libra believes in astrology and reads the horoscope page, they may be listening to their imaginations and capturing new ideas more than usual. You might not want to attract people by this method. If a horoscope for Scorpio reads "Possible chance meeting with the person of your life today." and you are a man who knows a woman Scorpio that looks interesting, today would be the day to ask her for the date or to get intimate with her. However, if you do that, you will wind up with a romantic relationship with someone who believes in astrology, which may not be in your best interest.

But one can predict people's behavior by this method, as long as people fall for the non-scientific advice of astrologers. For example, by studying these columns and horoscopes in the 1980s, one could have predicted many of Ronald Reagan's actions and have taken advantage of them.

Clue to speaking success?

I haven't blogged in some time. This is because of several trips, including SUUSI and an astronomy convention in Nashville. In that last trip, however, I think I may have found a clue to a frustration in my life - not being able to win speech contests. In evaluations in Toastmasters, I keep getting things like "mumbled", "too unclear", "could not understand", and so forth. I looked up in Toastmaster manuals to find out more about this. The Speechcraft manual touches on it some. It says that I should keep my mouth open, so that the words can come out clearly. It may say the same in the manual "Your Speaking Voice". But other than that, few if any Toastmasters manuals and almost no evaluations explain why I mumble.

But I found out how at SUUSI, in a workshop entitled "Empowering your Voice" by Amy Carol Webb. Yes, she is a folk singer, and one of the most popular at SUUSI. She told me that the reason why my voice was not coming out is that I don't open my mouth enough. She said to stick three fingers in my mouth. That is how open it should be. I tried it for the rest of the week, and my voice does seem to come out clearer, although not necessarily louder - I find I can do this and speak softly, but it will sound breathy. This is good in some occasions. But will this advice help my public speaking? Hard to say. I will have to try it out on Toastmasters clubs and in the upcoming humorous speech contests.

Of course there are other factors - being prepared, not saying "ah" and the like, and whether the audience considers what I say funny. Further I don't know if this will slow down my talking - evaluators say I talk too fast. I will have to try it out - of course this causes a Hawthorne effect so that I may improve in the other areas too. But I would like to find out if this is the cause of my not winning speech contests. I will have to await what happens.