Ralph Nader endorses "We Need a Department of Peace"

“…very important little paperback…a pragmatic argument for a department of peace…”

Photo courtesy of The Lakeville Journal.

Nader's radio interview with Charlie Keil.

Meanwhile, in the Twitterersphere:

@hipbonegamer @bbenzon @zenpundit I like what George Will said about this years ago: we have several institutes of peace: USMA, USNA& USAFA

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit Either way, what they do is far more useful than the abstract, chimerical "study of peace."

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit Right. Because the US has done so poorly in conflict the last 230 years.

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit No one said anything about "bombing the world." Stop putting words into my mouth, er, Tweets.

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@Occidentaljihad @hipbonegamer @zenpundit What else have we got? Our ground game is not working. It's blowing us back to the Middle Ages.

— Bill Benzon (@bbenzon) July 26, 2016

Purchase at Amazon.com (paperback, Kindle), or Barnes and Noble (paperback, NOOK Book).

A Young Girl Rocks Out on Keyboard – Do You Think She Hit a Golf Ball?

Dan Everett posted shared this on his Facebook page and I thought I’d say a few words about her playing. I managed to find it on YouTube:

The commenters there identify the piece as Sonatina in D Major, Op 36, No 6 by Muzio Clementi. I wouldn’t have guessed that, but then, I simply don’t know Clementi. But that’s irrelevant.

I want to talk about her playing. Actually, I want to talk about how she uses her body. She plays with her body, as any halfway decent musician does. Look at how her upper body moves once she’s underway. That’s not merely a matter of moving her arms back and forth in front of the keyboard, it is some of that. It’s mostly keeping the groove and it’s setting the muscle tone in which her arms and fingers make the more differentiated movements that activate the keys.

Look, hear how strong her left hand is at 0:22 as she walks it back and forth. She’s leaning into it. And again at 0:34. Meanwhile the right hand is playing scalar figures.

The hands punctuate together at roughly 0:40, marking a turning point in the music. Listen to the left hand chords at 0:54, which are repeated an octave lower at 0:58 – well, not really repeated. But similar chordal figures, and she digs in. The young lady has a firm grasp of the piece’s structure and it comes out especially in her left hand. Hands together at 1:01. Look at/listen to her left hand just before the page turn and then hands together 1:05-1:09.

Now we move to the next section of the piece (I’m sure there’s a technical name for it, but I don’t know it). The left hand just keeps thumping away on a static figure – little or no motion up or down – while the right hand diddles the scalar melodic figures. And now an excursion into minor territory at 1:28. The left hand heads to the basement at 1:34.

She really digs in (left hand) 1:38-1:42, and then backs off on the volume (watch her body here), a short break and back to the beginning at 1:44.

The power at 2:04, 2:13, 2:15. Then she backs off. Watch hands and body at the end, 2:40-2:44.

Guccifer 2.0 Google Search Result Weirdnesses

How is it possible that a few posts scattered here at Mostly Harmless and on some of my other blogs last night led to their being more easily findable on google than anything Studio Dongo has posted on Guccifer 2.0 over the last several weeks?  Anyone who understands google search algorithms better than me, please feel free to respond!

This Is about Guccifer 2.0, not Golf

Quick questions to my remaining readers:

• are you aware of the Guccifer 2.0 story?
• have you been trying to follow it?
• have you been able to find any good sources on it through google searches?

Just to be clear, I had not been aware of or following the story until one of my best friends started blogging about it in mid-June.  As he's been writing about his experiences going down that particular rabbit hole, I've started looking for other sources.  Not very hard, to be sure.  And I know that I've been on leave from blogging for awhile, but what ever happened to google's blog search?  Back in the bad old days, I was at least able to find a wide range of voices on almost any topic, no matter how obscure.  But when I search "Guccifer 2.0" on google, I get nothing interesting or new.  If I didn't know about posts like this, I would never be able to find them.

There's got to be more out there, right?  Are you there, google?  It's me, The Constructivist.

This will have been a test of the google search system.  This will have been only a test.