MSNBC had an interesting headline this morning: "Researchers find remarkable family connections for the candidates" (link). Namely, Barack Obama and Brad Pitt are ninth cousins, and Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed. That all the major news networks are going crazy over this is nothing short of ludicrous.
Let's do the math. If each of your parents have two siblings, and each sibling has four children, you will have 16 first cousins, 64 second cousins, 128 third cousins, and so forth, ending up with 1,048,576 ninth cousins. You will have 17,891,328 ninth cousins, twice removed (number of ninth cousins + number of children in seventh generation + number of children in eleventh generation). These numbers are astounding! For reference, the population of New York State was 19,306,183 in 2006 (US Census Bureau).
Remarkable family connections? Hardly.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
News story
When I was warming up before a competition last week, some photographers from a local news station came into the room to take pictures and video clips. The video clips were on the news, but I didn't see them and couldn't find them online. I did find this news story, however, and that's me at the piano in the picture.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Tasmin Little
British violinist Tasmin Little has posted a few of her recordings as free downloads on her website, www.tasminlittle.net. The recordings are of the Bach Partita No. 3 in E major, Ysaye's Sonata No. 3 in D minor, and the Luslawice Variations by Paul Patterson. You can visit the download page here.
This is a very interesting idea. It's interesting both as a means of addressing copyright law and as a means of getting more people interested in classical music. The problem is, I listened to her recording of the Bach Partita, and it's terrible. It was horrendously out of tune, and her interpretation was extremely strange (way too fast!). I happen to be playing this piece, and I know how insanely difficult it is to get it in tune, but a professional violinist should be able to do better.
You can listen to the recording of the Preludio (the hardest movement) here.
(If you want to hear an excellent recording of this, check out the Milstein or Szeryng ones. You can watch the Milstein one on Youtube here.)
This is a very interesting idea. It's interesting both as a means of addressing copyright law and as a means of getting more people interested in classical music. The problem is, I listened to her recording of the Bach Partita, and it's terrible. It was horrendously out of tune, and her interpretation was extremely strange (way too fast!). I happen to be playing this piece, and I know how insanely difficult it is to get it in tune, but a professional violinist should be able to do better.
You can listen to the recording of the Preludio (the hardest movement) here.
(If you want to hear an excellent recording of this, check out the Milstein or Szeryng ones. You can watch the Milstein one on Youtube here.)
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