theWheel

Owl

Let us start with an audio recording.

This little improvised groove was the first of three or four improvisations that happened at my session at Oz’s last Thursday night. Present were Aron Kaufman playing traps, Steve Osburn playing Chapman Stick, and yours truly Dan Bilich playing muted trumpet, piano and voice.

I am really lucky to have guys like this show up to play music with me.

Could this music be an embodiment of the Lunar Glee Club?

It’s definitely rather seriously influenced by the Lunar Glee Club…

Will we ever develop or play this improvised piece again? Probably not, but who knows?

The Process is the Product.

Owl

Even paranoids sometimes really do have robotic dragonflies spying on them.

Last Thursday was Song Night at Oz’s.

When words are not expected to play a role in a given improvisation, I often just cast about until some musical motif begins to attract good energy. With words, I find it harder to just cast about. As a consequence, I’ve been thinking a bit about how best to kick start improvised Words with Music. » Read the rest of this entry «

Owl

Paul Krugman tells us about the right wing’s problem with Al Gore.

theOwl

OK. Let us start with an image of the Necker Cube.

I have been fascinated by these “things” for a long time. What I find most beautiful about Necker cubes is how they show us how we are constructing our universes. Two sentient beings can look at this two-dimensional figure and each simultaneously derive contradictory, yet equally plausible higher-dimensional experience from it. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Stephen Hiltner (cross-posted from PrincetonPrimer)

I looked into getting solar panels for my home. The roof’s oriented all wrong, and there are some big trees in the way. The BP Solar rep, slow to yield to reality, suggested we put the panels in the backyard. What a lovely sight that would be, and a perfect target for soccer balls and various other errant airborne objects.

That puts me in a group that includes most Princetonians, who by and large like the shade and don’t have homes that will conveniently rotate to face south. After a few months of being discouraged, I realized that there are nonetheless large portions of my lifestyle that can be converted to solar power, without the substantial investment in solar panels.

Begin with the realization that all of us are solar powered.   » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

I saw this column from E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post. I think it’s a good idea.