It's easy to get distracted with Wikipedia. Today's article on Battersea Bridge in London ended up with me watching videos of high speed trains like this video of the record run between Paris and London (in 2 hr, 3 mins) at the impressive speed of around 200 mph. Much more impressive is the following where the TGV set a new world speed record for a "conventional" train at 574.8kph (357.16mph): TGV record breaking run.
The world's fastest train of any type is an experimental "maglev" train (magnetic levitation) in Japan of just over 360 mph. I have to say that, impressive as all of this undoubtedly is, they were talking about maglev trains and how they would revolutionize travel around 40 years ago. There is still no maglev train in regular service anywhere.
But the big disappointment of course is here in the United States. Just take a look at this table of high speed rail networks (by this definition, a high speed rail line operates at greater than 250 kph (just under 160 mph). China is by far the leader, with Spain a somewhat distant second. The United Kingdom is a distant 13th and the United States holds on to its 7th place only by relaxing the speed criterion to include the Acela which has a top speed of 240 kph (150 mph). But the Acela doesn't really live up to its billed speed.
The Eurostar has a scheduled non-stop journey time of 2h 15m between London and Paris for a distance of 492 km (an average speed of 219 kph). The Acela achieves a scheduled time of 2h 48m for the 362 km between Washington and New York (average speed: 129 kph). Indeed the only sections of the track which are cleared for top speed work (240 kph) are in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. However, between New Haven and New York, the speeds are so low that the Boston/New York trip is even slower on average than the Washington/New York. So, as you can see the Acela is a high-speed train in name only.
Unfortunately, the governments of the United States have been very short-sighted in transportation policy. They have consistently squandered the opportunity to increase the gasoline tax which would have had two very positive outcomes: greater fuel efficiency (the market would have demanded more efficient designs many years ago); and money for building alternative infrastructure to help us out when the oil runs out. When gas gets to $10 a gallon, we are going to find it very expensive to get, say, from New York to Chicago. The corresponding European, Japanese or Chinese business person will have a much easier time getting from Berlin to Madrid, Tokyo to Osaka, or Beijing to Shanghai!
It was hard to decide which blog to put this in: Railroads or Letter from Europa. But, I hope you found it interesting.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Life in the freezer
We're experiencing an unusually cold, snowy winter here in the Boston area, the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) since 1995-96. The last few nights have been down in the low digits, or even below 0F (yes, we still use Fahrenheit here). The snow is piling up everywhere and there is nowhere to put it. Every few days we seem to get more. Tomorrow, we may have to miss orchestra rehearsal on account of yet more snow. We'll see.
Speaking of which, I am enjoying preparing this concert very much. Two outstanding pieces: Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (with George Li as soloist) and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. I have written the program notes and I will be giving talks before the two concerts. Our two soloists are outstanding and with all the extra players, the orchestra is sounding really good. We didn't have to miss the rehearsal although the weather was not good and then overnight we got another 8 to 9" of snow. The snow is piled high outside and we have no more room. Let's hope we don't get too much more.
The temperature outdoors has actually warmed up quite a bit and that's helped a lot. The house just couldn't keep warm the last few days (something's up - I suspect a need to bleed the pipes).
I've never been a huge fan of fiction and what fiction I read tends to be adventure, mystery, and that sort of thing. I'm behind in reading many of the "classics", although in recent years I've read some non-English classics like Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and the Count of Monte Cristo. And, while the Aubrey/Maturin canon isn't exactly one of the classics, Patrick O'Brian's prose style is exceptionally good, especially for an adventure writer.
But nothing had really prepared me for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Well, I'd seen the mini-series and the recent movie and liked them a lot. So I knew that the story and the characters were interesting. But as I got started listening to the CDs (read by none other than Jeremy Irons), it dawned on me that this was writing of a type I'd never known. It's not that he uses long words or short words or any other particular type of words. It's just that the way they're put together is simply brilliant. I imagined that he probably wrote the book very slowly, spending long periods of time finding just the right word. Au contraire! He wrote the book, by any standards a lengthy novel, in less than six months.
I didn't know much about him, although it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's read the book or seen it on the screen that he went to Oxford, Hertford College in fact. He was also gay, in the modern sense, at least during his time at Oxford. Nevertheless, he ended up marrying (for a year anyway) another Evelyn (a woman) and again later to Laura, this time more permanently and with two children. All this didn't stop him creating perhaps his most colorful character in the book, Anthony (or Antoine) Blanche, as an over-the-top pansy (his word).
Yet the book, which I had initially thought was a literary condemnation of Catholicism turns out to be just the opposite. He himself converted when he was in his late twenties (about fifteen years before writing the book) and was not in the least critical of the church. And whereas I had assumed that it was largely autobiographical, and indeed I'm still sure that it is, he and Charles clearly have very different opinions about the Catholic church.
Now, it's back to Mahler and Beethoven for me: a pleasure but requiring inspiration which doesn't always come easily.
Speaking of which, I am enjoying preparing this concert very much. Two outstanding pieces: Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (with George Li as soloist) and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. I have written the program notes and I will be giving talks before the two concerts. Our two soloists are outstanding and with all the extra players, the orchestra is sounding really good. We didn't have to miss the rehearsal although the weather was not good and then overnight we got another 8 to 9" of snow. The snow is piled high outside and we have no more room. Let's hope we don't get too much more.
The temperature outdoors has actually warmed up quite a bit and that's helped a lot. The house just couldn't keep warm the last few days (something's up - I suspect a need to bleed the pipes).
I've never been a huge fan of fiction and what fiction I read tends to be adventure, mystery, and that sort of thing. I'm behind in reading many of the "classics", although in recent years I've read some non-English classics like Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and the Count of Monte Cristo. And, while the Aubrey/Maturin canon isn't exactly one of the classics, Patrick O'Brian's prose style is exceptionally good, especially for an adventure writer.
But nothing had really prepared me for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Well, I'd seen the mini-series and the recent movie and liked them a lot. So I knew that the story and the characters were interesting. But as I got started listening to the CDs (read by none other than Jeremy Irons), it dawned on me that this was writing of a type I'd never known. It's not that he uses long words or short words or any other particular type of words. It's just that the way they're put together is simply brilliant. I imagined that he probably wrote the book very slowly, spending long periods of time finding just the right word. Au contraire! He wrote the book, by any standards a lengthy novel, in less than six months.
I didn't know much about him, although it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's read the book or seen it on the screen that he went to Oxford, Hertford College in fact. He was also gay, in the modern sense, at least during his time at Oxford. Nevertheless, he ended up marrying (for a year anyway) another Evelyn (a woman) and again later to Laura, this time more permanently and with two children. All this didn't stop him creating perhaps his most colorful character in the book, Anthony (or Antoine) Blanche, as an over-the-top pansy (his word).
Yet the book, which I had initially thought was a literary condemnation of Catholicism turns out to be just the opposite. He himself converted when he was in his late twenties (about fifteen years before writing the book) and was not in the least critical of the church. And whereas I had assumed that it was largely autobiographical, and indeed I'm still sure that it is, he and Charles clearly have very different opinions about the Catholic church.
Now, it's back to Mahler and Beethoven for me: a pleasure but requiring inspiration which doesn't always come easily.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Freedom of speech
The NFL playoffs are back on and New England (at home) is scheduled to play the New York Jets on Sunday at 4:30pm after earning a bye for the first week and home-field advantage throughout. In fact, the Patriots are favorites to win the Superbowl this year, having won 14 of 16 games, including the last eight. One of those was a 45-3 drubbing of the Jets just over a month ago. So you'd expect that the Jets would be quietly and respectfully planning their revenge. But no, this is the land of free speech, where everyone has the right to put their foot in their mouth. From the head coach on down, they are trash-talking the Patriots, targeting especially Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback ever to have played the game (and I've seen some good ones before!).
But all this is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps the most sweeping and liberating piece of legislation ever. You don't find too many people opposed to that! Not so, its successor, the second amendment. It is surely one of the most controversial pieces of legislation. What did the framers actually mean? Did they really want to allow everyone to go about their business "packing"? We have no way way of asking them – the Supreme Court must study the words, perhaps making allowance for the different manner of construction of legal language from then to now and make their decisions based on that. Unfortunately, when you combine the first and second amendments of the constitution, and extrapolate quite a bit, it gives anyone the right to disagree with political figures (including bystanders) by firing an automatic weapon at them, as happened last week in Arizona.
At the time the constitution was drafted, the state of the art was the musket, a large (the barrel alone was three to four feet long) and inherently non-concealable piece of weaponry which took about 20 seconds for a well-trained musketeer to load and fire. Today's Glock 19, the gun used by the assailant, can empty the standard 15-round clip in less than 15 seconds! In Arizona, anyone who is 21 years or older can walk into a gun store and, after a quick check that he or she isn't a convicted felon or known lunatic, can walk out with a gun that can legally be concealed and taken into most buildings (not schools and certain other places). No permit is required. Amazing! The surprising thing really is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often! Much has been made of the intensity of the political rhetoric coming from the most recently unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate. Just take a look at the map she created (since removed from her own web site) with Giffords' name and district, among others, clearly marked with a bulls eye.
Meanwhile, closer to home, a long-term violent criminal who had been released on parole in 2008, while serving three (!) concurrent life sentences, shot and killed a Woburn police officer (who was shortly due to retire) while in the execution of an armed robbery of a jewelery store on December 26th, 2010. The fact that this felon was also killed during the exchange was not a lot of comfort to the family of the police officer, nor to the people and government of Massachusetts. Questions of how come this scumbag was released on parole have been answered by a commission set up by the governor. Guess what! It turns out to have been a software error! Middlesex county was not informed of the hearing at all (they had opposed parole three years earlier) and Suffolk county (ditto) was given an incorrect description of the crimes committed so were also absent from the hearing. Didn't anyone on the parole board stop to wonder why the D.A.'s office in these two counties seemed to have lost interest in the intervening three years? In any case, nine people have been fired so maybe cock-ups (as we Brits would put it) like this may be less likely to occur in the future.
We are currently without a working TV, our 10-year-old plasma TV having gone (literally) puff! last week. In its day, the Sony TV was pretty much unique and very expensive. In the intervening years, Sony has stopped making plasma TVs but there are many plasma and LCD units to choose from at a fraction of the old price. And the quality, power-consumption, longevity, etc. have all improved dramatically. And additionally, these new units all have new features like 3D, internet connectivity, etc. It's amazing. So it didn't seem worth fixing the old one. Hopefully, we'll have the replacement before the Patriots play on Sunday!
But all this is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps the most sweeping and liberating piece of legislation ever. You don't find too many people opposed to that! Not so, its successor, the second amendment. It is surely one of the most controversial pieces of legislation. What did the framers actually mean? Did they really want to allow everyone to go about their business "packing"? We have no way way of asking them – the Supreme Court must study the words, perhaps making allowance for the different manner of construction of legal language from then to now and make their decisions based on that. Unfortunately, when you combine the first and second amendments of the constitution, and extrapolate quite a bit, it gives anyone the right to disagree with political figures (including bystanders) by firing an automatic weapon at them, as happened last week in Arizona.
At the time the constitution was drafted, the state of the art was the musket, a large (the barrel alone was three to four feet long) and inherently non-concealable piece of weaponry which took about 20 seconds for a well-trained musketeer to load and fire. Today's Glock 19, the gun used by the assailant, can empty the standard 15-round clip in less than 15 seconds! In Arizona, anyone who is 21 years or older can walk into a gun store and, after a quick check that he or she isn't a convicted felon or known lunatic, can walk out with a gun that can legally be concealed and taken into most buildings (not schools and certain other places). No permit is required. Amazing! The surprising thing really is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often! Much has been made of the intensity of the political rhetoric coming from the most recently unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate. Just take a look at the map she created (since removed from her own web site) with Giffords' name and district, among others, clearly marked with a bulls eye.
Meanwhile, closer to home, a long-term violent criminal who had been released on parole in 2008, while serving three (!) concurrent life sentences, shot and killed a Woburn police officer (who was shortly due to retire) while in the execution of an armed robbery of a jewelery store on December 26th, 2010. The fact that this felon was also killed during the exchange was not a lot of comfort to the family of the police officer, nor to the people and government of Massachusetts. Questions of how come this scumbag was released on parole have been answered by a commission set up by the governor. Guess what! It turns out to have been a software error! Middlesex county was not informed of the hearing at all (they had opposed parole three years earlier) and Suffolk county (ditto) was given an incorrect description of the crimes committed so were also absent from the hearing. Didn't anyone on the parole board stop to wonder why the D.A.'s office in these two counties seemed to have lost interest in the intervening three years? In any case, nine people have been fired so maybe cock-ups (as we Brits would put it) like this may be less likely to occur in the future.
We are currently without a working TV, our 10-year-old plasma TV having gone (literally) puff! last week. In its day, the Sony TV was pretty much unique and very expensive. In the intervening years, Sony has stopped making plasma TVs but there are many plasma and LCD units to choose from at a fraction of the old price. And the quality, power-consumption, longevity, etc. have all improved dramatically. And additionally, these new units all have new features like 3D, internet connectivity, etc. It's amazing. So it didn't seem worth fixing the old one. Hopefully, we'll have the replacement before the Patriots play on Sunday!
Friday, December 17, 2010
From the mundane to the sublime
One of the hallmarks of greatness at writing opera is the ability to take some mundane aspect of the plot, or somewhat banal text, and turn it into a beautiful aria. It's one thing to create a great aria out of a poetic declaration of love, a fit of jealousy, sorrow, ambition or whatever. But being able to create something sublime out of nothing requires genius. To forestall the likely criticism of my thesis as so far described let me point out that, in the examples that follow, the number might in fact relate to a relatively significant plot element or character development. But in such a case the text will deal with apparently ideas, or will use just plain ordinary words.
A few examples will suffice, although there are indeed plenty to go around. And I mean no disrespect to any of the great opera composers not mentioned here. Let's take as exhibit one, a piece of music so familiar that as kids, who knew nothing of classical music, let alone opera, we even bowdlerized its common name: Handel's Largo which we irreverently referred to as Handel's lager. I've only recently come to really know this piece which more properly is referred to as Ombra mai fu from Serse, the story of Xerxes I of Persia, successor to Darius the Great. Xerxes sings this aria in praise of the plane tree and the wonderful shade it provides:
Never was the shade
of any plant,
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.
There's a wonderful video and recording on YouTube with Cecilia Bartoli [recall that Handel wrote many of his lead male parts for castrato voices which are generally sung these days by women].
My next example is from Mozart and you might quibble with my interpretation of the text as mundane as it tells of lovely fresh breezes in a romantic setting. Yet, the purpose of the letter which the Countess is dictating is to expose her husband's infidelity, it is not an outpouring of some noble emotion. She's not even particularly upset -- she just wants to teach him a lesson. But I don't think you can disagree with my assessment of the sublimity of the duettino from The Marriage of Figaro: Sull'aria che soave zeffiretto. You may even recall one of my all-time favorite movies scenes, from the Shawshank Redemption, when Andy (Tim Robbins) broadcasts this over the prison P.A. system to the consternation of the warden and the wonder of Red (Morgan Freeman).
A little song on the breeze
What a gentle little Zephyr
This evening will sigh
Under the pines in the little grove.
And the rest he'll understand.
Easily the best sound quality that I found on YouTube is the recording (without video) of Jessye Norman and Mirella Freni. The balance, and playing, of the oboe and bassoon are just perfect. Incidentally, there's a clip of Dame Kiri which should be the best but the sound quality isn't good. In particular, the bassoon overpowers the oboe! [I'll bet you never thought I'd say that!]
My final example is by Puccini from that intrinsically mundane seeming story about the canal people: Il tabarro. Even the title refers to something seemingly (though not in fact) insignificant: a cloak. But don't be fooled. This is verismo opera at its absolute best. What appears ordinary is loaded with passion, repression and violence. This rather long aria and duet is known as E' ben altro il mio sogno (I have a different dream) and tells of very ordinary life in the suburbs of Paris (in particular Belleville). Here are Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo. Giorgetta's aria starts at about 0:40 and the duet, some of the most powerful music Puccini ever wrote, starts at 4:12. Here are the words of that section (my own translation):
But whoever leaves the suburbs wants to come back
And whoever returns cannot leave.
Over there Paris is crying out to us,
with a thousand happy voices,
about its eternal enchantment.
I hope I've convinced you that ordinariness or banality is no bar to glorious opera when at the hands of a real master.
A few examples will suffice, although there are indeed plenty to go around. And I mean no disrespect to any of the great opera composers not mentioned here. Let's take as exhibit one, a piece of music so familiar that as kids, who knew nothing of classical music, let alone opera, we even bowdlerized its common name: Handel's Largo which we irreverently referred to as Handel's lager. I've only recently come to really know this piece which more properly is referred to as Ombra mai fu from Serse, the story of Xerxes I of Persia, successor to Darius the Great. Xerxes sings this aria in praise of the plane tree and the wonderful shade it provides:
of any plant,
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.
There's a wonderful video and recording on YouTube with Cecilia Bartoli [recall that Handel wrote many of his lead male parts for castrato voices which are generally sung these days by women].
My next example is from Mozart and you might quibble with my interpretation of the text as mundane as it tells of lovely fresh breezes in a romantic setting. Yet, the purpose of the letter which the Countess is dictating is to expose her husband's infidelity, it is not an outpouring of some noble emotion. She's not even particularly upset -- she just wants to teach him a lesson. But I don't think you can disagree with my assessment of the sublimity of the duettino from The Marriage of Figaro: Sull'aria che soave zeffiretto. You may even recall one of my all-time favorite movies scenes, from the Shawshank Redemption, when Andy (Tim Robbins) broadcasts this over the prison P.A. system to the consternation of the warden and the wonder of Red (Morgan Freeman).
What a gentle little Zephyr
This evening will sigh
Under the pines in the little grove.
And the rest he'll understand.
Easily the best sound quality that I found on YouTube is the recording (without video) of Jessye Norman and Mirella Freni. The balance, and playing, of the oboe and bassoon are just perfect. Incidentally, there's a clip of Dame Kiri which should be the best but the sound quality isn't good. In particular, the bassoon overpowers the oboe! [I'll bet you never thought I'd say that!]
My final example is by Puccini from that intrinsically mundane seeming story about the canal people: Il tabarro. Even the title refers to something seemingly (though not in fact) insignificant: a cloak. But don't be fooled. This is verismo opera at its absolute best. What appears ordinary is loaded with passion, repression and violence. This rather long aria and duet is known as E' ben altro il mio sogno (I have a different dream) and tells of very ordinary life in the suburbs of Paris (in particular Belleville). Here are Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo. Giorgetta's aria starts at about 0:40 and the duet, some of the most powerful music Puccini ever wrote, starts at 4:12. Here are the words of that section (my own translation):
And whoever returns cannot leave.
Over there Paris is crying out to us,
with a thousand happy voices,
about its eternal enchantment.
I hope I've convinced you that ordinariness or banality is no bar to glorious opera when at the hands of a real master.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Birthday fun
 |
| Exceat and the Seven Sisters, East Sussex, England -- by John Allen |
While it's no fun having a zero in your birthday, we nevertheless made the most of it. Kim helped arrange for me to enjoy several of my favorite Bs: bassoon (playing Bach in Belmont), bridge, (draft) beer. We made a weekend of it by overnighting in a super old inn in Marblehead: the Harbor Light Inn. Added to that, the Patriots crushed the Bears on their home turf in their own weather (wind, snow).
I also wanted to share some photos with you from my cousin John who is a very talented photographer. The one at the top, especially, is spectacular. The one below was taken nearby during nature's icy grip early this month.
I also wanted to share some photos with you from my cousin John who is a very talented photographer. The one at the top, especially, is spectacular. The one below was taken nearby during nature's icy grip early this month.
 |
| Icy Friston Church, East Sussex, England -- by John Allen |
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Central Florida
 |
| The "boil" pool at Blue Spring State Park |
Way back when explorers were first getting to know Florida, they sent a party up the St. Johns river to find the source. When they got to the area near present day Orange City, they followed the short tributary and found that it dead-ended in a blue pool that had occasional "boils" surfacing. They had found the warm spring that feeds this little creek. But the manatees had found it eons ago. Manatees don't do well in cold water (below about 60F is deleterious to their health), so in winter they swim a couple of hundred miles up the river to this warm sanctuary. The Blue Spring State Park provides a board walk along this stretch and we must have seen well over 100 individuals (which you can see if you look carefully in the photo below which Kathy took).
As it happened, we also saw a Bald Eagle up close and personal when it swooped in just a few feet away (twelve perhaps) to harass a Cooper's Hawk, which later perched less than ten feet from us. There was lots of other wildlife including alligators, anhingas, black vultures, white ibises, etc. etc.
We really had a very enjoyable morning there. It felt really good to get out into the fresh air after all that bridge. But it didn't stop Kim and I from going straight back in to the two-session open pairs at 1pm. We did fairly well, although we definitely could easily have done better if tiredness hadn't intervened again.
The timeshare condo which we had this time at Cypress Point was really nice. There was a very nice pool with large jacuzzi which was only a stone's throw from our door. The apartment itself was palatial and included its own jacuzzi. There were about five TVs altogether, none of which ever got switched on. Furthermore, we also got lucky with the car from Alamo. Not only are there no lines now (because they have an automated check-in kiosk) but they are also on-airport. When we got to the compact row, we could choose any car, including one of several minivans. That turned out to be a great boon as we several times had quite a few in the car with us. And all for less than $20 per day :) Alamo gets kudos from us!
Our favorite place to eat was Tommy Bahamas' which we visited three times. It was a 15-20 minute drive so wasn't the most convenient for the tournament but was well worth it. They do a $33 prix-fixe menu which has smaller portions than the regular a la carte menu: perfect for people who have to go back to the tournament and think! I had a great Dark and Stormy on the one evening we weren't going back to play bridge. We also ate at Roy's which was actually even better than Tommy's and Bahama Breeze which I liked more than my fellows.
Our day at Epcot was very enjoyable. No lines, lots of fun, and two pretty good meals (Chefs de France and the brand new La Hacienda de San Angel). The former was enhanced by a visit from Chef Remy (Ratatouille) - see photo above. The firework show at the end of the day was really terrific - I think they've improved it quite a bit in recent years. At right is a picture of two happy Disney-goers at the start of the day. Note the magic sunbeam which was a good sign.
 |
| Manatees hanging out in the "hot tub" |
As it happened, we also saw a Bald Eagle up close and personal when it swooped in just a few feet away (twelve perhaps) to harass a Cooper's Hawk, which later perched less than ten feet from us. There was lots of other wildlife including alligators, anhingas, black vultures, white ibises, etc. etc.
We really had a very enjoyable morning there. It felt really good to get out into the fresh air after all that bridge. But it didn't stop Kim and I from going straight back in to the two-session open pairs at 1pm. We did fairly well, although we definitely could easily have done better if tiredness hadn't intervened again.
The timeshare condo which we had this time at Cypress Point was really nice. There was a very nice pool with large jacuzzi which was only a stone's throw from our door. The apartment itself was palatial and included its own jacuzzi. There were about five TVs altogether, none of which ever got switched on. Furthermore, we also got lucky with the car from Alamo. Not only are there no lines now (because they have an automated check-in kiosk) but they are also on-airport. When we got to the compact row, we could choose any car, including one of several minivans. That turned out to be a great boon as we several times had quite a few in the car with us. And all for less than $20 per day :) Alamo gets kudos from us!
 |
| Chef Remy |
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
